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Saturday 29 November 2014

I've Cheated

Have you ever started out a book and found yourself drifting after a set number of pages? We've all been there. Sometime the last 100 pages in a book really change your perspective 'Hey , that wasn't so bad'. Then you rate it 3 on 5 stars on Goodreads. A happy medium. Readable , endurable but just once.

I did hit a wall this time. It was Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. Yup. I cheated on a suitable boy. (pun intended). Okay . Jokes apart. This book one of the finest works in Indian Literature. Critics have loved , my friends have stated this as one of their favourite books ever. (Even tagged it on their Top Ten Books list that was circulating social media). However , I am just 700 pages deep into it and I have put it down. For now ( promise!).

I have never done this before. Yes,  I have loitered around my fair share of terrible books and still have managed to finish them in all fairness but this I felt was taking too long to reach the intensity to which it would have been a sure-fire page-turner for me.

This book is massive. 1399 pages. One of the longest works published in one volume in English. Do not mistake me, Seth is commendable poet and writer. I remember being thoroughly delighted whenever we would start learning his poems in school.  Yet I struggle.

I don't intend to pinpoint here , more to show an example. There are times when book bloggers , booktubers and even literary enthusiast have wanted to jump to the core of the book. There are time when even reading it beyond 10 pages seems like such a task. In order to avoid any bias , we dive into it regardless. Largely and sometimes even pretentiously , I have managed to  muster up all the enthusiasm I could find and decide to go on with it.

Most people would say this is completely normal and understandable. Some would say 'what's the big deal?'. I can't help but feel like I am cheating myself and the author.

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