This has been a terrible book year for me so far. I don’t know why it is so hard for me to finish a book. I have the library app on my phone, I’m constantly checking out books and then starting them and giving up on them 10 pages in. I don’t think that it is the fault of the books. Rather, I think it is the fault of my brain. It’s flighty and perches on a branch for only a few minutes when what really needs to happen is for it to hunker down and roost for a couple of hours.
When I was in Ann Arbor and Vickey was in Chicago in the final week of March, we both independently purchased this edition of Middlemarch. I remember there were about 4 different versions of MM at the bookstore that I was at and I did spend a few minutes deciding which edition was going to allow me to finally reach the end of the story. I was buying Middlemarch because I had recommended Silas Marner to Vickey a few weeks prior and she loved it and retold me the plot because even though I vividly recalled loving it, I had forgotten the whole plot of the book except for the part about gold at the bottom of a well.
Vickey recently decided to give up on her neighborhood book club even though she loved cooking for it because they were constantly reading terrible books (well maybe not terrible books, just books that didn’t need to be book clubbed) all those books about orphans, or books about WWII or books about orphans & WWII or Wonder/A Wrinkle in Time or some random self help book. And I’ve been in a book slump, so we decided to start our own book club of two. I immediately suggested Middlemarch. She said – did you read the forward? Let’s not read Middlemarch. I think she’s right, we have to start the first month with some possibility of success. We are reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. We’ll see how it goes.
