should I stick with this book everyone but me likes?
please very quietly whisper to me if this one thing changes it's NOT A BAD BOOK obviously
Ok so, this was my reading early this week. I finished Famous for a Living (fun) and Colored Television. Colored Television is good stuff, a good read, keeps you very tensed up over all the trouble she’s making for herself again and again. I’m feeling very honest today so I’ll tell you I felt like the ending was—I wasn’t sure it would really go down that way. But Hollywood is weird and I’m a white law school graduate so I’m only one degree second class citizen, while the author (Danzy Senna) is biracial and also a woman and therefore has two strikes against her as well as Hollywood experience so…I’ll take her word for it. It was a RIDE anyway, and I do recommend.
And now to our actual discussion.
I’ve started Same As It Ever Was three times now. I’m pretty sure I’ve actually purchased it—in hardcover—twice. (Am keeping better records now, you’ll see next week.) I loved The Most Fun We Ever Had. But I’m having trouble getting into this—and it’s NOT because it’s not just as well written. It’s very obviously a good book and also a “good” book—this isn’t one of those “everyone likes it but I think they have bad taste” situations like when people rag on Where the Crawdads Sing which, for the record, I’m not doing. It’s engrossing and well written and gives all the feels and intriguing and page-turning and I want to like it.
I want to like it even more because I really need a good book, I’m feeling quite low, the weather here is just—weird, dark and cloudy and oppressive and ominous and also 70 degrees which is just wrong for New Hampshire—and there’s family stuff and there’s been a fly banging around my office for three days now.
The thing is, I’m having a really hard time with the protagonist. She’s obviously depressed, in both the present and past sections of the book, and while in real life I so know that’s an uncontrollable thing and I certainly don’t go around shouting or even thinking “yes but just do something already” at real people I am finding myself doing that with said protagonist. It’s all very realistic and relatable whining. I have done a fair amount of this exact whining myself.
But I’m getting tired of it. It’s gone on for a while. And it’s almost TOO well done. I don’t want to be whining in my head like this! And also it’s fairly clear that the thing she’s going to actually manage to do is… some guy named Peter, if memory serves. Or Chris. Something like that.
And I am just not sure I’m here for driving that particular brand of truck through one’s potentially happy life.
The protagonist of Colored Television makes so many bad choices. So, so many. So, so, so, so many. But she makes them. She also has an internal whine going on (don’t we all?) but she’s trying to do something about it. Not the right thing or the smart thing, but things, lots of them, and things that have to do with her career and herself rather than the men in her life.
So, to sum up, I’m pretty tempted to put Same As It Ever Was down. NOT because it’s not good. And not because it doesn’t have something to say—there are absolutely reasons this protagonist is like this. But because I can’t silence my own internal shouty voice at the character, and I have enough internal shouting going on at the moment.
What think you, fellow readers? I had a moment of almost putting down Sandwich (which I ended up absolutely loving, and recommending all over the place and I think the author might read this but I know she won’t mind my saying so) because I was having trouble with the protagonist’s internal litany of regret and recrimination, but I knew it was going somewhere. I also almost bailed on Writers and Lovers but was convinced to keep going by a friend and sure enough, the protagonist managed to quit following the path of least resistance and do some things for herself by the end (although I can’t say I loved it even then). Should I stick with Same As It Ever Was, or send it onwards to someone who will love it more?
And what should I read instead? Help!
PS I’m really hesitating over this. I think if someone wrote this about one of my books I wouldn’t mind, because not every book is for everyone, but maybe I would, so to sum up, don’t share it! Let’s just have a quiet discussions right here. I’m trusting y’all. xx
I used to trudge my way through books that just weren't for me but I have (mostly) given that up. Now I pretty much only do it when it's a book one of my kids has loved and asked me to read. Not every book is for every person and that's ok. As my dad says, "That's why Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors."
I am having this exact question - about this exact book. I read the first 45 pages over the summer, and then it had to go back to the library and I was... relieved. But I put it back in my holds queue and last night it came up again.
Yes, it is a good book. Maybe itoo good? There is a lot of powerful material about how sad and pointless it is to parent a young child, which is maybe not the thing for me to read in my parenting-young-children era.
I am giving it another chance - another 45 pages or 21 days, whichever comes first. If I only read 45 pages in 21 days, that definitely means this isn't the book for me.