First Impressions (books)

I'm sure that I have written more than once that I need to trust my instincts and just give up on books a lot more quickly than I did in the past.  Of course in the distant, distant past (my late teens through mid-20s) I was so determined to finish every book I started, but with time I realized this was just foolish.  In terms of books that simply didn't get any better but I did finish (though I should abandoned at the 50 page mark or before) I can put Faulker's A Fable (though I suppose in this sense I am a completist and will eventually want to read all of his novels) and Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival firmly in this category.  Brigid Brophy's In Transit wore out its welcome long before it ended.  And if I am being brutally honest I have kind of regretted reading all the Kundera books I have read to date.  In the case of Mann's The Magic Mountain and Musil's A Man Without Qualities and even von Rezzori's The Death of My Brother Abel, I knew going in these would all be grinds, but there were at least some interesting bits along the way (though not that many in My Brother Abel) and there was no serious thought on my part that I would abandon them.

So consequently I have started dropping books sooner, particularly if I didn't have a truly compelling reason to read this book in the first place.  (I generally do a quick scan of Goodreads, discounting all the sycophantic 5 star reviews, to see if there are readers who found the book improved but more often than not, I find myself in agreement with the 2 and 3 star reviews.  And frankly, I don't think I have enough time left to me to read that many 2 or 3 star books...)

I'm actually starting to try to get a sense within the first 5 pages (rather than 50) to decide if I will continue a book.  I stumbled across a positive review for Jane Igharo's Ties that Tether, so I gave it a shot.  But I realized that it was only a step or two above a romance novel, though one with an inter-racial and inter-cultural twist.  

Most of the reviewers agreed that Igharo leans pretty heavily on romance tropes (whether this is a good thing or bad thing depended on their taste), but it definitely turned me off.  I then read some SPOILERS that said there was a surprise pregnancy (which naturally should have come with a trigger warning...) that came up quite early in the book, so this already had me thinking this was a rip-off of a plot device used in The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (not that Igharo has probably ever even heard of that TV show, as it never came out on DVD).  But I read a couple more pages until there was a ridiculous plot twist (with the narrator finding out that her one-night stand was now working at her company) that came straight out of a romance novel, and I said to myself, I simply cannot read any further.

On the other hand, I read just a few pages of Jean-Christophe Rehel's Tatouine (also recommended by Star book reviewer I believe), and I said this sounds like quite a unique narrative voice.  Not a person I would want to spend any time with in real life, but still worth following through the book.

The narrator is living with cystic fibrosis in a basement apartment in the suburbs of Montreal.  He has a somewhat vivid imaginary life (shades of Walter Mitty) but his thoughts are largely colonized by LucasWorld, and he wishes he could live on the desert planet Tatouine, primarily so he can be left alone.  While I am not sure it is a conscious riffing off of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (with its anti-social anti-hero), I wouldn't be surprised if Rehel was making a link between the two.  At any rate, this is a book that sold me (on continuing) within a few pages.

I spent a bit of time looking at the other offerings from QC Fiction, which is an imprint that translates books by Francophone authors from Quebec.  Almost all of them grabbed me just through the book blurbs, though I haven't had a chance to get that many out of the library.  They have some decent sales (3 books for $45 plus shipping) but you can't mix and match.  I wish they would do something like Brick Books where you could order a lot of the e-books and drop the price down to $10 or so.

Fortunately, the library has a copy of virtually the entire run.  I'm actually quite interested in Listening for Jupiter, Prague, The Unknown Huntsman, The Electric Baths and Songs for the Cold of Heart (which has won a number of awards).  The next one I am likely to read is In Every Wave, as it is the shortest!

Because Eric Dupont's Songs for the Cold of Heart is quite long (just breaking the 600 page mark), I think this is one I would prefer to own rather than attempt to read from the library.  I actually biked past BMV on the way home on Monday and hit the jackpot.  They had a nice used copy for $10, whereas I had been thisclose to paying $13 (plus shipping) from Amazon.  I would probably have picked up The Electric Baths as well, but that wasn't in stock at BMV.*  Hopefully, my Spidey sense isn't malfunctioning, and I will more or less enjoy Tatouine and Songs for the Cold of Heart all the way through. 

* Another great pick-up was Richard Ford's Canada for $5.  I had just seen Richard Ford talking a bit about his newest story collection, Sorry for Your Trouble, at the Toronto International Festival of Authors.