Reading a Long Book

What do you do when faced with an immense book, one that very well could take you the rest of your natural life to read?

Do you plod steadily, reading page after page, until the end? Do you break it up: read a little of the big book, then a short book — if only to feel as though you have actually accomplished something?

Or does it depend on the book?

Recently, I discovered that for me, it depends on the book. Drood was one of the longest books I had read in a while, and I was captivated. The first chapter was a little dry to me, but I was rewarded with one of the most original stories on the shelves today.

But it wasn't easy. In fact, it was a challenge. Don't get me wrong: the book was fabulous, and Carole and I will discuss it soon on this blog. However, after a week of staying up late and eschewing most other kinds of entertainment just so I could see what happened next, I was exhausted.

The book was weighty enough, but the story was equally weighty. In this tome were real-life people weaving stories amongst others whom I can only hope are fictitious and even others whom I hoped were real. The story captured the mores of the day with a touch of 19th century sensibility wrapped in modern-enough language. (I love 19th century literature, but some is a little ornamental for my everyday interest.)

Some books can be short (or short enough) and yet feel very long. The first 80 pages of The Mighty Queens of Freeville felt like an eternity. The 7th Victim was the normal length but insufferable.

Even good books can feel long, at least in part: The City of Dreaming Books was a teeny bit slow at the beginning, ramped up to a fevered pitch, then kept going and going. The Lord of the Rings is very complicated and riddled with Elvish and Middle-Earth language, but the story is compelling and a reader is catapulted forward. (One can see a little of the wisdom of breaking the book into three separate novels.)

From time to time, I read recommended books that aren't up my alley, and sometimes those books feel long as well, no matter how many pages. The ones I don't enjoy don't always feel like like an albatross around my neck. For the most part, though, I am keen to continue (or start) a book only if I'm interested enough to give it a certain amount of time or pages.

However, after the thrill that was Drood, I won't worry about a book's length — and I might have a little more courage to pick up the new Dumas find again, after a few years of its presence on the shelves. It's the quality, not the quantity, right?

The 7th Victim — Review by Chris

Poor Job — er, Karen Vail. She's having one tough time.

Alan Jacobson invites us into this FBI profiler's ramshackle life. At home, she's divorcing her abusive husband, who it also turns out is abusing their son. Her mother, who has advanced dementia, lives alone in the country in New York — a seven-hour drive from Karen, who doesn't visit too often. During a non-lucid moment, Karen's mother makes a statement about her past that Karen remarkably accepts as true.

The FBI special agent is beleaguered at work by her boss, who doesn't respect her cutting-edge research. At least one person in her department actively dismisses her. She encounters a hostile former co-worker, who again becomes a colleague and remains hostile. A new young co-worker has the hots for her, and she for him — and starting a new relationship in the middle of an investigation is such a good idea.

Oh, and did I mention she's the profiler on a grisly serial murder gripping Northern Virginia?

All this and more — next, in The 7th Victim.

Don't get me wrong, I love crime drama. I just couldn't take another moment of Karen. I didn't respect or trust Karen. She made terrible choices. She made her life a train wreck.

However, I appear to be the only one with these feelings. The author loved her and the publisher thought Karen tested well enough with readers to release another Karen Vail novel within the next year, changing another Jacobson book release date.

Unfortunately, my issues with the novel went beyond Karen. The killer never felt truly threatening because the killer was veiled, purposely obscured, to add to the "twist" of the story. The title told me no resolution could come before victim number six, no matter how the story unfolded. The book jacket blurbs trumpeted the book's surprises, twists and turns. And don't tell me the end will shock me — because now it won't.

As an editor, I didn't like the inconsistent editing. Words were spelled differently (missing hyphens and apostrophes) throughout the book and the language was trite. Cops in Hollywood are the only ones who say, "Give it to me straight, doc."

If this is typical in this genre in the post-Hannibal world, then I am disappointed — and possibly reading in the wrong field, much to my dismay.

I would be willing to check out another book by Alan Jacobson, just in case this atypical book for him. I just can't recommend this book.