The next book

I am between books and ready to pick the next one. It shouldn't be that difficult. But I am overwhelmed at all the possiblities. There is so much out there, too many choices. In this lovely piece by Linda Holmes, you can't help but realize that you're never going to come close to reading all the books you want to read (go here for details: Too many books!) And do I want to waste my time on a book that is just "meh"?

The wonderful, terrible thing about books is that you can't know until you read it. You can listen to critics, read reviews, look at best-of lists, but until you pick it up and read it, you just can't know. There are some books that grab me and sweep me away with their beauty. I don't want them to end but I can't help but read them as fast as I can to see what comes next. These books inspire and intimidate me. I'd love to write something that touches another person so deeply, but I fear that I don't have that talent or ability quite yet. Books like this are never a waste of time. I want every book to be like this. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.

I read "Catch-22" with all these hopes of greatness: after all, it's on all these "Best Books Ev-ah!" lists. I couldn't hate that book more than I do. I hated it so much that when I finished, I was afraid that I no longer liked reading. I though that, like eating too much dessert of some kind, it was too much, that I was finally sick of it. Sure, I had been reading stacks of books since I was six or so, but this was it. I had hit the wall. I kept thinking it might get better. Surely there was something that made it a great novel. But I never found it.

I usually gut books out until the end. I try to have a 100-page rule, but if I get that far, I can often see the halfway point, and then it should be downhill, so I'll make it to the end. I find myself resenting that book even more ("The Finkler Question": I'm looking at you, but that's for another post). But I want them all to have a level of beauty and/or plot and/or interesting characters. I want them all to be worth the time.

I look at my shelves of unread books. Which one do I choose? Which one will make my heart sing?