Failure

One thing I rarely do is get into a book and then give up--I either figure out in the first 20 pages that I'm not going to like it so I don't commit, or even if I get halfway through it, I slog through because I don't want to quit. But alas, the other night I gave up on Redmond O'Hanlon's Into the Heart of Borneo. I'm not entirely why I couldn't get through it--it's highly regarded, it's somewhat Bill Bryson-esque, it's about travel--these are all good things. It's not even like I hated it or anything. I guess I just didn't care (which is perhaps worse than hating it). I found myself reading anything but the book, which isn't a good sign. So after a couple of weeks of denial I finally accepted reality and switched to Kent Haruf's Eventide. I guess life's just too short to agonise over finishing a book you don't care about.