Reading, I Suck at It

The last book I finished reading was completed on Wednesday, October 5.  That's over a month ago.  The book was Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver, and I read it as part of my librarian friend Carolyn's YA For Adults book club at the library. 

Next I got Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy.  I wouldn't say I'm a Kennedy-ophile, but I am interested in 20th century American history, and especially how women lived in previous generations. 

Jackie's book was interesting, because it's a transcript of interviews she did right after JFK died, but which were sealed in a vault until recently.  So it's sort of like a time capsule, which is always kind of cool.  You hear her say things like, "You'll have to talk to Bobby about that," and you're like, Oh no, you don't know, Bobby gets shot too! 

But the book was also very tedious to read, because she would make these references to something, and there were footnotes to clarify what she was talking about, and it was so hard to not get bogged down in all those details.  I plugged away earnestly for the entire two weeks I had that book from the library, but I only finished about 2/3 of it.  But I think with nonfiction you can still count it as having read the whole book, even if you didn't, because you mostly got the gist of it.  And also, I did look at all the pictures. 

I probably should have read a novel after that to clear the palate, but another nonfiction came in from the library for me.  It was Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.  Now, a book about fonts sounds horifically dull, but since it was on the New York Times Bestseller List, I figured fonts might be more intriguing than I previously thought.  And it was sort of interesting.  For example, I learned that in the days of movable type and the printing press, capital letters were used less frequently and were therefore kept in the less-convenient upper-case, hence the term uppercase.  Mind your p's and q's is also a phrase that comes from the printing press, because it was very easy to get confused between the blocks for p and q if you weren't careful.  I also learned that font aficionados hate it when they see a font in a movie that was invented after the historical period where the movie is supposed to take place, and that when Ikea changed the font of its signs it caused an Internet fontroversy. 

However, there is only so much you can care about fonts.  The author really tried to make the book interesting to a mainstream audience, but at a certain point it just becomes dull to talk about the unfinished lower bowl of lowercase g in some font or the other.  I only got through half the book before I took it back to the library, about a week before the due date. 

I did, however, reserve a library copy of a movie about fonts, the documentary Helvetica.  I figured I would employ comedian Jim Gaffigan's philosophy of "You know what I liked about the movie?  No reading!"  I figured Helvetica would be one of those movies that sounded so boring it just might be interesting.  But no, just boring.  Enough for my feigned interest in fonts. 

Meanwhile, another meeting of the library YA for Adults book club had passed, and I never read the book, Ten Miles Past Normal.  I still have the book, and I'm plugging away at it, but I just do not care.  

I have another book, The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton.  I read her other book, The Wednesday Sisters, and I really liked it.  This new one though?  So boring. 

I have another book called The Tea Rose that I got for my Kindle and started reading, but then all these library books came in for me and I had to put that one on hold.  And I have Flip for the next book club, but I haven't even looked at it yet. 

So many books, none of them finished.  Someone recommend a guaranteed winner so I can get out of this slump!