Darkcargo

Guest Post by Rhi Denissen

Understand that, being raised in a Jewish home, and going to Sunday School every week for years, it’s been drilled into me since a very early age that books are special. Sacred, holy, not to be defaced, bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated. I mean, c’mon. We’re “The People of The Book“. In Sunday School, if you dropped a book, you had to pick it up, make sure the pages were still perfect, kiss the spine, and say a prayer asking for forgiveness. We, as a people, don’t take books lightly.

Recently, I bought Jean Auel‘s “Land of Painted Caves” for all the right reasons – I was familiar with the author, familiar with the series, and looking forward to something fairly light and pleasant for a long flight.

I also bought the book for all the wrong reasons. The cover was pretty, I assumed that being book six in a series, this must be the same quality as the first couple I’d read, and – sadly (I’m cheap) – it was much less expensive than the other book in my hand.

Jean Auel’s “Land of Painted Caves” was $8.99 for 848 pages. Kathryn Stockett‘s “The Help” was $16.00 for a meager 451pages.  A penny a page, versus $.35 per page.  It LOOKED like a better value. So, it was cheaper over all, and was, page for page, a much less expensive book – penny a page versus thirty-five cents. I know, you get what you pay for… Remember, I was in an airport magazine shop with a small selection, and I was working with a very limited budget, facing down almost a month on the road, and I went for the value buy.

It was fairly clear, early on, that this was not the authorship I remembered. I was, however, stuck at 40,000 feet for the next six hours. By the time the plane landed, I’d read the entire Skymall catalog and all of the Spirit Magazine, including doing all the puzzles. I’d also managed about 20 pages of “Caves”. On retrospection the next morning, surely, the book couldn’t actually have been that bad, could it? Surely, I was just stressed being on a plane, and headed to pack up my mother’s apartment. I must just have had the blues or something. So, that next evening, after a long hard day of packing, I pulled the book out again. At least, I woke up 12 hours later with it on the pillow next to me. By the end of the first week I’d managed maybe a hundred pages. Clearly, I was just tired. By the end of the second week, I’d reread the first hundred pages.

By the time I got back home, I’d read two Skymall catalogs, two different (December and January) editions of Spirit Magazine, a Spanish language edition of People magazine, a couple of Watchtower magazines I found in the night stand, a large print Reader’s Digest, some cereal boxes, the inserts for all my medications, and about 150 pages of book.

Clearly, I wasn’t loving the book. However, I still assumed it was me. I’d enjoyed books 1-4 of the series. Somehow, I’d missed number five. Surely, THIS was the reason I wasn’t getting along with book six terribly well.  By the time I’d reached the end of Section One, I was pretty clear that, nope, it wasn’t me. All of the characters’ have long, multi-syllabic, related names that I can’t keep track of, the descriptions of the interiors of caves, while undoubtedly painstakingly accurate, were duller than dust, and there are entire passages that just get repeated and repeated. And, I’ve come to understand that I’m not the only one….

And yet. I’d made a commitment. I’d bought the book. I was going to finish the book. Personally, I think of the purchase of a book as a non-verbal contract between writer, the publisher and the reader. SOMEONE must have thought it was a good read, or it wouldn’t have been published. I’ve read enough decent, unpublished manuscripts to know how hard it is to get someone to invest in a good story, let alone a bad one. I set myself a goal. Read a minimum of 20 pages a night. I was aiming for more like 50. I wound up doing about 150 pages a night, just to get it over with.  But, just like I don’t think you can rant about the current political situation if you don’t vote, you can’t whine about a book unless you’ve bothered to finish it. You never know. There might be a surprise at the end. I, for one, sit through the credits at the end of a movie, just to see if there’s an “Easter Egg“. Surely I owe an author as much as I owe a film maker. Nope. No Easter Egg.

It took me over a month to finish the damned book. I warned my husband off, but no, he had to find out for himself. He doesn’t like it either. But he’s going to finish it. He owes it to the author.

My problem is what to do with it now. I really don’t think it deserves shelf space. It’s never going to be reread. I don’t particularly want to post it to one of the online book-swapping sites because, well, it was really long, dry, repetitive and largely plotless. I can’t however, throw it out, toss it in the woodstove, or pass it on in any good conscience.

Anybody want a very slightly used copy of a very slightly readable book?