Journal Entry (Friday December 30, 2022)
I’m reading “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book ranks 168th on the list of best books of all time (1) and it won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but it’s still boring. (2) It’s a story about a Butler in England. If you can think of anything less interesting than that, good for you, I can’t. Oh, it’s well written. The author has the British upper-crust manner of speech down to a tee. I think that Is precisely what causes this book to drag incessently. I’ve read that you should never be afraid to put down a book that you don’t find interesting, there are too many in the world to spend your time reading one that does not speak to you. Generally, I subscribe to that philosophy. But for some reason I can’t put this one down, even though it is annoying the hell out of me. The reason I suppose is that I want to find out why it is regarded so highly. I just hope I don’t get to the end and find out I regret the investment. I can tell you one thing for sure, it won’t wind-up on my list of the top reads. (See tomorrow’s post.)
(1) https://thegreatestbooks.org/?page=4 I think this should be considered a trusted source, at least as far as book lists go. The list was compiled using what appears to be a pretty sophisticated algorithm, a “list of lists” approach which probably yields good results, at lest as far as something this subjective can be calculated.
(2) In fairness, I’m only on page 43. I looked it up on Wikipedia and I’ll admit it probably gets better from here. Still, I find the “air” a bit tedious.