When I started this blog, it was my intention to post a favorite sentence every couple of weeks or so. This meant that by the end of each month I would have at least two favorite sentences up for said month, and possibly as many as four.
As you can see, for the month of December this has not been the case. For the record this is not going to be one of those blogs that will start and then die out soon after. Well, it may do that eventually, but for now I'm still here, and I'm still reading. I just haven't picked up the right books lately.
I had high hopes for Siobhan Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone, but I just couldn't hang with it. Got to page twenty or so and had to stop, found myself drifting, and I usually don't drift. Matthew Bondurant's The Third Translation and Andrew Davidson's Gargoyle both met with the same fate. Recently my wife asked why I even tried reading these books. I want to try everything, I said.
I used to feel compelled to slog through every book I started. I had to finish no matter what, even if I was not enjoying what I read. That compulsion has largely fallen away and now I'm much more discerning, I give a book at most fifty pages before deciding whether or not to continue. I feel this is fair. I know my own books are given this same litmus test.
I'm reading Nabokov's Pale Fire now and hope to have my favorite sentence up for that work within the next few days. December is looking to be a one-sentence month, but it will be a great sentence.
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