I wish I knew how to quit you

If you're not enjoying a book, quit it. (Easier said than done.)

G.M. and welcome back to W.A.R. This is Issue 25.

I’m finishing up The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy (huge fan of his stuff, wrote about him here, and this is maybe his most byzantine novel yet) and Underworld by Don DeLillo (it’s a doorstop, but I’ve absolutely loved it; I wrote about End Zone at The Paris Review in 2018). My last few reads were Red Pill by Hari Kunzru (started out really strong, then lost me in second half); The Midcoast by Adam White (crime potboiler set in Maine that is also about writing and family); and Bad Cree by Jessica Johns (very cool indigenous horror involving dreams and spirits, continuing my recent horror streak that started with This Thing Between Us, then Militia House, then The Boatman’s Daughter, and I enjoyed all of them).

What are you reading?

Some quick housekeeping:

• When I mention books in this newsletter, I link to Bookshop.org (supports indie bookstores) rather than Amazon. The link is an affiliate link, which means I earn something like $2 when you buy a book through my link. I obviously don’t write this newsletter to make money, and don’t charge for it, but if you enjoy the newsletter, this is one tiny way to support it; I’ve earned a hefty $48.50 in Bookshop commissions since 2020. I do admit it’s cool to see when someone purchased a book through my link. (Which of you bought Big Swiss last week after I mentioned it?) On my personalized Bookshop page, I’ve also made a few “lists” of my favorite novels, short story collections, nonfiction, etc., if that interests you.

• Substack has a new(ish) feature called Notes that I keep resolving to use more. They are a way for me to put up a shortform update rather than sending out a whole issue; I might start using them to share great passages from books I’m currently reading. One drawback (or advantage?) is that you won’t see my Notes unless you use the Substack web site or app. I highly recommend trying one or the other if you subscribe to multiple Substack newsletters; it’s a nice dashboard of all your newsletter subs.

Now, let’s talk about quitting books.

I’ve always tried to follow the common rule of giving a book 50 pages to hook me and if I’m bored, I’ll move on. There are simply too many good books to read in a lifetime to spend any of the precious reading time you have on something you’re not enjoying.

But it’s easier said than done, especially if it’s a book you bought. (This is a good case for using the library—no guilt in returning a library book.) In practice, I’ve quit books very rarely. 50 pages usually slips to 100 pages. I’ve often found myself rationalizing, 50 pages in and bored, that there’s reason to give it just a little longer to get good.

Often that’s because if something is really bad, it’s bad in an interesting way. For example, if it’s a hot novel getting widely praised, how can I account for the gap between the critical acclaim and my own experience? I must find out, must keep plodding… et cetera, et cetera.

It happened with Martin Amis’s recent novel/memoir Inside Story, which was so unnecessarily long and had such snoozy stretches about Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin that, 250 pages in, I started skimming. But I couldn’t bring myself to fully give up on it because I usually love Amis.

Sometimes, sticking with it does get rewarded. I mentioned up top I’m nearly finished with Tom McCarthy’s newest novel; the first 50 pages were all over the place, but right around there it got good, and I started loved it—he nicely pulled together all the disparate characters and scientific strings and general confusion.

Usually, there is no reward for your slog, and it’s a mistake to waste your time.

My latest example of not taking my own advice was with The Thorn Birds, the 1977 mega-bestseller (it’s the bestselling book in Australian history) that also became a mega-successful 1983 TV miniseries.

I stumbled on this book in RJ Julia, a wonderful bookstore in Madison, CT, last May. The cover below caught my eye (you may reasonably say: that cover?) and, as I’ve written repeatedly, covers matter; I happily “judge a book by its cover” in bookstores all the time. I also love paperbacks that are small but thick (pocket-sized fatties).

I didn’t know anything about the novel, or the miniseries, but vaguely remembered that there was a running joke on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” involving the book. (The full story is that during peak pandemic in 2020, when Seth was doing shows from the attic of his in-laws’ house, there was a stack of books behind him and The Thorn Birds was on top, and he made it a recurring gag. He told Deadline, “It is amazing what has the capacity to tickle you when you’re slowly losing your mind. It came from the idea that the earliest observation of this time was what books have people got, and it struck me as the funniest book to have.”)

The copy in Seth’s attic, by the way, was the original first edition cover, much cooler / retro now than the current reissue cover.

I think I thought the novel was a cult classic, a sweeping epic, and would be… funny? I think maybe I hoped it would read like Lonesome Dove.

It was not.

I started reading it in September. And man, it was a weird ride. I probably should have known I was in for something extremely dated when I tweeted that I was reading it and someone replied, “Evidently you are a lot older than you look.”

The Thorn Birds spans 54 years in the life of an Irish farming family that relocates from New Zealand to Australia. When the book opens in 1915, Meggie (the closest thing to a protagonist) is turning four years old. She’s one of six children (!) of Paddy and Fiona Cleary, with more on the way (!); the parents are extremely stoic and emotionally withholding; Meggie attends a Catholic school where the nuns are brutally mean. If all of this sounds like an exciting setup, let me assure you, it is not. I was bored immediately, and the book is 692 pages. But I expected that eventually, the action would come.

And to be fair, there is action. Quite a lot happens—sometimes things so dramatic as not to be believed. One son dies from getting charged by a boar while inspecting damage from a lightning storm. Another drowns while out for a spontaneous swim in the ocean.

I laughed frequently, but usually from the awkward, dated lines. (An early description of the father Paddy mentions casually, “His temper was very fiery, and he had killed a man once,” then just… moves on.)

Every so often there’s some trenchant aside about human nature or behavior that I dog-eared and really liked, and this also kept me going. Just one example: Meggie pines for a willow pattern tea set that her Italian friend Teresa owns, and she receives it for her birthday. But after she gets lice from Teresa, and Paddy beats the shit out of Teresa’s father (“I took the horsewhip to that blasted Dago and threw him into the horse trough”) (don’t worry, it’s not just Paddy who’s racist but Fiona as well, she calls Teresa “that Eyetie girl”), Meggie can’t really enjoy the tea set because it’s a reminder of the dramatic end of her friendship. Even at four, she understands that she must pretend to like it, because her parents spent so much of the little money they have on the gift: “It had lost every bit of its enchantment. But dimly she understood why the family had beggared itself to get her the thing they thought dearest to her heart… so she continued doggedly to use it for years, never breaking or so much as chipping a single piece. No one ever dreamed that she loathed the willow pattern tea set.”

Have I just accidentally made it sound like I recommend the book? If so, that’s because every fifty pages or so I would be charmed by one passage or scene. But that happened in between hundred-page stretches of drought, unrequited romantic pining, or yet another Cleary son dying in a tragic way.

I haven’t even mentioned the romance that carries the entire novel: a burning passion between Meggie and Father Ralph de Bricassart, a priest who first meets Meggie when she’s 9 and he’s 27. If you’ve done the math there: he’s 18 years older. He’s also bound to a priestly vow of celibacy. Spoiler alert: he breaks his vow. (Any fans of “Grantchester” reading this?)

There’s no happy ending for anyone in this story, but there’s grim fascination in witnessing their spectacular bad luck. I do hope someone amongst you will read The Thorn Birds so we can talk about it!

In the end, it took me three months to get through, and while I suppose I’ve at times here sounded like I actually enjoyed the novel, I think, on the whole, I mostly regret that I spent so long slogging through when I could have been reading something else.

I am here to tell you: If you’re not enjoying a book, it’s all right to move on. And if you’re even considering it, you should do it promptly.

I am here to tell you: give up.