This is not a Review, but a Confession



  
     I confess, I do not often read those short synopses on the back cover of books or in the descriptions on Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites. I read books that someone I know recommends or if I hear an interview with the author on NPR or if I've read everything an author has written and finally they come out with a new book. Consequently I usually read books without any foreknowledge of their specific content. And, if I've never read that author before, I'm a complete innocent.

     Another confession -- I have recently learned that I don't have to finish a book just because I start one. There are may other things that have always been extreme guilt producers. Forgetting to use coupons I take to the store, not brushing my teeth at night, damaging a book whether accidentally or intentionally, leaving the laundry in the washing machine long enough that it smells spoiled, etc., etc.

     My husband recently recommended The Art of Racing in the Rain. He reads voraciously but recommends books to me sparingly. Mostly nonfiction – narrative histories, popular science, that sort of thing. Our tastes in literature are as different from each other as are our politics.

     So when he said he thought I would like The Art of Racing in the Rain, I started it right away, completely unaware of its story line. Early on I began to think the story was written from the dog’s point of view, but my husband hates movies with talking animals, so I thought surely this book takes a twist and changes to a human’s point of view. And surely it would be in the next few pages.

     Finally, too many pages into the book, I hesitantly asked my husband (whom I want to continue to recommend books to me) if the whole book is written from the dog’s point of view. And he, equally hesitant (because he likes me to like things he likes even though he knows that is not always going to happen) told me “yes, pretty much.”

      So I confessed that I was stopping reading it right there. I explained that I have problems with the willing suspention of disbelief. That’s why I don’t like stories with vampires and ghosts and books from any animal’s point of view.

      He smirked at me and said, “Like that 300 page plus book you just finished writing about a murder that takes place on an asteroid with women who are pregnant for thirteen months and it only takes 40 days to travel from Ceres to Earth?”

      Busted!