a secret history

i finally bought a secret history by donna tartt, eons after bobbi's review convinced me i had to read it. i was very excited, waited for the exact right moment to start it, and bam! ... i hated it.

maybe hated is a bit strong.i didn't feel that strongly about it atall, in fact. it left me very indifferent.i tried, i did try, because iknew that bobbi had loved it, and if she did,i would too. wouldn't i?

after slogging through the first hundredor so pages, i finally put itdown and drowned my sorrows in some early danbrown (more on that later).after a week or so, i decided i wouldn't finishit, and so i read the lastten pages or so, just to see how it ended. (yes,i do this. to each theirown. mind your own business, thank you very much.)and i was a little intrigued.so i turned back to my bookmark and renewedmy reading with vigour. and gotstuck again.

at this point, i figuredthat a secret history and i had reached a partingof the ways. i put it downagain, intending to banish it to the shelf thatholds the books i will finishif ever i get sick and have to spend six monthsin bed with nothing to do,not even television, and money is tight and ican't buy new books, and allmy friends have abandoned me and won't lendme either books or the money tobuy any, and all my other books are in storagefor some reason.

a coupleof days later, as i was cleaning up the living room, i pickedit up yet again,opened it to a random page, and started reading (anythingto avoid housecleaning,you understand). and got hooked. i decided to forgothe opening chapters andjust get on with the parts that interested me. wheni finally finished it,i went back and managed to read the parts that hadstalled me originally.

now,i understand that this isn't an ideal way to read a book. but i'mpleasedthat i read the whole thing, and i'm not complaining that i did itout ofsequence. sometimes that's just the way it goes. and this is the sortof bookthat lends itself to multiple readings, in any case. it's not theplot that'simportant, it's the character development. and knowing wherethe charactersend up doesn't make it less interesting to find out how theygot th