I'm currently reading Tim Pat Coogan's hefty tome about the IRA. It's interesting stuff but I do have a sneaking suspicion that I'll get distracted before I get to the end.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Is that the one where everyone has the same name. That book is very enjoyable until it becomes completely incomprehensible. Catch 22 is about 300-400 pages too long. It could do with more jokes as well.

Underworld is just toooooooo big. It's well written in spots, but if something is going to be about the size of a bale of briquettes, at least it should whip along at a decent pace.

I've never been able to finish At swim two birds, mostly because I lose the book. I always found myself running out of steam halfway through.

I do this all the time. It's got to the point where I can just open one of my unfinished books at a random page and still enjoy it - Yay! I'm freed from plot and narrative.

Most recent entries are:

Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys. I felt I should really like it but got stuck about halfway through then accidentally on purpose left the book in a cottage in Norfolk. I then contrived to buy another one secondhand and lent it to someone almost immediately, as if scared out of my wits that I'd have to try and read it again.

The Book of Prefaces (ed. Alasdair Gray) - probably not supopsed to read it all in one decade anyway.

Albion by Peter Ackroyd. I just know it'll be one of my favourite books but I just fall asleep when I open the pages. Currently on chapter three after three years.

And I am the Life wrote:

QUOTE:
I've never been able to finish At swim two birds, mostly because I lose the book. I always found myself running out of steam halfway through.

Coincidentally I tried reading a that ccouple of weeks ago and gave up very swiftly, abandoning my copy on a train so someone else could have a go.

Hofzinser wrote:

QUOTE:
I'm currently reading Tim Pat Coogan's hefty tome about the IRA. It's interesting stuff but I do have a sneaking suspicion that I'll get distracted before I get to the end.

I'm reading Ed Moloneys take on the IRA and have discovered the same problem. It was great whilst I knew the beans were yet to be spilt on certain events but now I'm at the cease-fire/politics stage its lost its appeal...can't think why that is.

And Steve McQueen's Hunger just won the Palme d'Or.

QUOTE:
Underworld is just toooooooo big. It's well written in spots, but if something is going to be about the size of a bale of briquettes, at least it should whip along at a decent pace.

I'm a pretty slow reader, but I flew through 'Underworld'. I found it really pacey. Not in a Dan Brown way, but in a so-addictive-you-want-to-pick-it-up-at-every-opportunity way. It was originally conceived as a novella (just that 80-something page first section). But when he'd done it, De Lillo saw an opportunity to turn it into something much wider. Which I reckon is one of the things that marks him out as a great.