When you don't like the book

 I finished the book in my tea break today. If it wasn't for book group I'd have thrown it against the wall, picked it up when I was cleaning then taken it straight to a street library. 

But I don't like doing that to authors I genuinely admire. 

The book. The Fraud. The author. Zadie Smith. 

It took me 10 days to read - all 454 pages of it. 

The chapters were short. This was good and bad. Great in you could put the book down easily. Dreadful for narrative thrust. It was all over the place going from one part of the 19th Century to the next willy-nilly. 

There was a 70-page bit set in Jamaica which was relevant and interesting - but also short lived. 

I loved that a lot of it was set around North London. 

With the exception of one character, I couldn't get into any of the characters. 

The book was meticulously researched, but it came off as a bit of a passion project. 

And generally, I didn't really care much about what went on in the book. 

It's got a lowly 3.29 GoodReads.com score, which is often a good indicator if you're going to like the book. Looking at the comments, most people gave it around a three and the reviews state they had exactly the same problems with it that I did. 

And in book group, we all had a similar reaction to it. 

But it's good to be a part of a group which, even when you don't like something that much, you can have a lively and civil discussion about something, and nobody gets mad or angry. 

There should be more of it. 

Today's song: