I've decided I'm going to have to abandon Light by M. John Harrison. I'm just not getting anywhere with it. It's clogging up my reading time and I've decided I'm just going to have to let it go.
I'm not dropping Light because I think it a "bad" book: I have no idea one way or the other. I just haven't got into it enough to tell.
This is the first one for the year. Hopefully it will be the last.
I've been thinking about why I've got to this position for the past few days and have come to the conclusion that it relates solely to the way I started to read the book. My usual practice is to attempt to read fifty or sixty pages of a book at the first sitting. After that I've either decided the book isn't for me or I'm right into it. And if I am into it, then subsequent sessions of twenty or even ten pages won't make me lose the thread. But it's the first batch that's all important.
If the book flows in a single plotline, following one character in nearly real-time, then the previous "first-sitting" requirement isn't such a big necessity - I'm thinking that The Closers by Michael Connelly fits into this category - I just have to ensure that the second sitting follows the first one pretty closely. Light, on the other hand, jumps about between modern-day Britain and a far-future deep-space location. For a while there I was thinking that there might have been another thread involved as well but changed my mind, and then changed it back again a day or so later.
So I got lost. And now I've left it so long any re-start is going to be a complete waste of time, and I won't be able to give the book the attention it deserves.
Sorry, Mr Harrison. I will attempt to read it again sometime soon. Honest.
