Well, this one took awhile too, and with most of my recent audiobooks being a re-listen to the Hunger Games series, I haven’t had a lot to write about. Hope the next books I read will be page turners! But I guess not all books can be.
Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I don’t think a book being a slower read is a bad thing. This one tells stories from the Erikson family, six people dealing with life in Iowa throughout the years. It was a journey through life told in many perspectives, and reminded me of a mixture in styles from A Visit from the Goon Squad and Cutting for Stone. But unlike Goon Squad, it was chronological, and all perspectives were from the same family.
The thing is, with books like this that just talk about characters, that just have lots of chapters about people’s lives without any real overreaching theme or plot, it has to be really good for me to not lose interest. Goon Squad was more interesting in writing style than this one. Cutting for Stone was just flat out incredible. However, Cutting for Stone also had the benefit of only focusing on one character. This book skips around so much, often ending a chapter just as I’m getting interested. I wonder if just one character had been focused on, would I have liked this more?
Just as I was getting involved in what was happening with which member of the family, that was when the chapter ended, time skips forward, and I get frustrated. It seemed like the author was constantly cutting out of the story just when things were getting interesting. Maybe that’s the whole point. But I found it slightly irritating. It’s similar to what happened with Goon Squad, so maybe I’m just not cut out for books that are more like short stories all sewn together. This one took me almost two weeks to read, and I think if it had been more of one overreaching story, I would have read it faster. Because I did like the book as I was reading it.
So, in summary, this was a good book, but not a great one. I liked it, but it wasn’t a page turner. Another three.
So, in summary, this was a good book, but not a great one. I liked it, but it wasn’t a page turner. Another three.
No comments:
Post a Comment