The book I couldn’t read…

If I was sitting at a desk, this would be an accurate representation of how I felt, trying to read this book.

Last week, I promised I would write about a rare occasion for me: not being able to finish/read beyond the first chapter of a book.  Well, if you are expecting a book review, I am sorry.  There isn’t going to be one today.  I will have one for you next Thursday.  Since I feel like this post is a bit of a cop-out, I might write up something else this weekend.  Who knows?  I am a wild card.  Hah!

As I said, the time rarely comes where I can’t bother to read past the first few (in the case of this book, the first twenty—and the chapter still wasn’t done!) pages.  It happened with the last book I tried to read, though.  That book was Darkmans, by British author Nicola Barker.

I read the back of the book, and the blurb drew me in.  I decided to check it out from the library.  The book itself was 800+ pages, but I am not one to be daunted by page count.  I find that there is usually something that hooks me within the first chapter.

Since the other two books I checked out with it (the reviewed Choke, and Everything Asian) were shorter, I decided to read those first.  The night I finished Everything Asian, I decided I would read the first chapter of Darkmans as I was going to bed.

This is a routine of mine.  I usually start books just before heading to sleep.  I have time enough to read the first chapter, and get hooked.  Going to bed in between reading that chapter usually makes me eager to read more when I wake up.

I began reading the first chapter.  I was introduced into a (maybe main) character on the first page, normal book stuff.  He was in a restaurant watching his father read a book.  All right, not the most exciting thing to be doing, but I understand how things may seem boring but turn pretty interesting.

After a brief exchange of dialog, the son learns his father is at the restaurant waiting for someone of ill repute…I think the character may have been a drug dealer, or something.  Anyway, the son begins thinking about how odd it would be for his father to be meeting up with this person.

And that is totally where I got lost.  Following this brief exchange, an exchange that took place on a few pages, the author begins filling out Beede’s (the father, and the only character I remember the name of) character.  This back story was the most boring thing ever.

It took place over, what seemed like, fifteen pages of the first chapter.  The author went on to describe how Beede’s (is it bad that he is the only character I know the name of?) family was from a nearby area, and about how the local government had decided to build a throughway—or something—connecting that area with the one they currently lived in.

The story went on from there about how Beede tried to keep one historical building from being moved, but it was moved anyway.  And it continued on about the reconstruction of this place…and blah blah blah…

Seriously, I could even feign interest at this point.  Maybe I was too tired to keep reading, so I set the book aside and went to sleep.    I decided to pick it up again the next night.  And it wasn’t any easier to keep reading.  I knew then that I wasn’t tired, and that I would never finish the book.

I understand that characters need back story to be believable, but this was just far too much.  Did I really need to know any of this information given?  Granted, some of it could have been pertinent to the continuing story, but I bet most of it wasn’t.  I guess I will never know, though, as I do not plan to pick that book up again.  Ever again!

Next week, I will be back with a review.  I am reading a funny little book, right now, called The Pirates!  In an Adventure with Scientists.  It’s about a group of pirates who attack the Beagle, that ship that Charles Darwin was a crewmember on.