I'm flirting with trying to read 52 books again this year. Zipping through Early Work and Immigrant, Montana, library books that I borrowed after seeing the titles on the NYT Notable 100 list, has me sitting at two books for the year. A brief thought about contemporary literature. Is every protagonist a writer? All of the books that I've recently read that were written in the last couple of years have writers as the main characters. This recurring theme is getting tiresome. I'm a week away from finishing Martin Chuzzlewit, and I should make it through my next library ebook, A Spell for Chameleon, before heading to Disney World next week. That would bring me to 4 books read 4 weeks into the year. We'll see if I can maintain this pace for another month or so before I commit to the big 52 number again (or 53 just to set a new high score).
I must finish Martin Chuzzlewit before I head to Disney World. The fat book I was reading the last time I was in Disney World, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has somehow woven it's way into my vacation experience (I also have unreasonably vivid memories of the book I read on our first trip back in 2015, it was In the Red Circle or something like that. It was a SEAL memoir.). Memories of the resort are interwoven with associations from the book. It's a weird memory alloy. I really don't want to associate Martin Chuzzlewit with Disney. (I'm not exactly thrilled with the overlap of JS &MN with the magic of Disney either.) This is easily the most boring Dickens book I have read. I'm well past the point when the story really gets going. Sure Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend started slow, but once all the threads starting coming together the book was a pleasure to read. I can vividly remember reading several of the late chapters of Bleak House on one of the lab computers in graduate school. I couldn't get enough! Not so with Chuzzlewit. The characters are all so moralizing and flat. The cracks made at the United States are trite (maybe they were edgier or more interesting 175 years ago), and the frequent coincidences characteristic of a Dickens novel are predictable and boring. At this point I'm pretty much reading to finish the book. I kind of want t know what happens, but I'm not all that eager to get there.
I am eager to finish the book and head to the magic of Disney. I'm eager for a three day weekend, but I'm dreading the cold.
