Reading Books You Don't Like

Is there anything more tortuous (excluding torture) than desperately trying to drag your eyes through a book that you don't like? Watching a film or listening to an album, the end is always in sight and you don't have to pay attention if you don't want to, but the masochism of reading a horrible book requires your full attention, and every page feels as if it lasts forever. Ordinarily, I'd just put the book down and move onto something else, but it was only when I was three-hundred pages into Martin Amis' London Fields that I realised exactly how much I hated what I was reading, and now I'm too close to the end to stop. It may have been the surprise as much as anything: I tend to like everything that I read, including the backs of shampoo bottles, and even if I don't engage with the story that much I still find it really interesting to see how an author has written what he or she has, and the choices that they've made while crafting the novel. But, other than the fact that I'm going to have to finish reading it because I want to know what happens at the end, I can't really think of anything good to say about London Fields or Martin Amis, except that he knows a lot of words.

It's a rank feeling, knowing that you're picking up a book to enjoy yourself, and having to read a load of steaming navel-gazing dung, featuring three characters whose actions and motivations make no sense whatsoever. The central character, Nicola Six, is spinning a web of deception so unbearably stupid that I'm finidng it confusing whether I'm supposed to believe that the two male leads under her retarded spell are the dumbest people in the history of the world, or if Amis actually thinks a woman pretending not to know what an erection is is believable. It's bad, but I have to finish, even though it's making me miserable when there are so many great books on my shelf itching to be picked up. Maybe the point of London Fields will become apparent when I finish it, but I'm not holding my breath.