I have decided to seek another challenge or two to help me meet some of my 12in12 commitments, one being: the 2012 To Be Read (TBR) Challenge (as I heard about via a friend’s book review blog).

Every week one out of three days my spouse takes the responsibility of driving the “childcare taxi” and I get to leave my car at home and use an alternate form of transportation to commute to work. When I can’t cycle commute, I usually opt to take transit. I look forward to using my commute time to catch up on reading. This morning as I waited for the #80 I sat with my book hoping that I could turn the final page by the time I got to my destination. I looked up as a woman passed by on her morning walk. She saw my book, and couldn’t help but stop and ask how I was enjoying it. My immediate response: “I’m not, or at least wasn’t until about 100 pages ago.” was met with shock! “Your kidding!? I loved the book, and I’ve never before talked to anyone else who didn’t love it too!”

I hear myself utter the words and question myself every time, why are you still reading it? Why not move on to something better? The truth is that when it comes to books I am stubborn. I can’t stand to think I didn’t give it a chance. Everyone kept telling me that it would get better. Plus, I had to to discover what all the hype was about! Why do so many people love this godawful book SO much?!

I never did discover the answers. Granted, the book got more interesting finally around page six hundred and thirty five. But you know when a book is more than 800 pages long, and takes that long to become interesting, sometimes I feel compelled to put it down just so I don’t have to experience the dismay of it ending. I invest so much time and energy in getting to the good part, and then it just ends. In a flash.

For those who loved this book and cannot fathom why I didn’t. You are advised to stop reading, now. The rest of this post is only going to disappoint you further. I have to put into words just how much I disliked this book and why. I’d say I hated it, but it had a few redeeming qualities – although I can’t for the life of me identify what they were.

To begin with the book was just so dry and slow to get started. I know, there are people who are drooling at the mention of financial and corporate mumbo jumbo, but I’m not one of them. At first I excused it, waiting for the groundwork to be laid so we could jump into the story. Then the story took flight and I was waiting. And waiting. Waiting for some substance, some connection, some emotion. I never felt my wait was satisfied.

The characters felt detached, their relationships weren’t believable. I couldn’t imagine the people as existing. Conversations were stilted, like watching some really awful amateur actors attempting to pull off a school play with the direction of an inexperienced self-proclaimed director slash playwrite.

The book was filled with SO many unnecessary details that could have reduced it’s size to something much more manageable. Essentially to me this was a typical run-of-the-mill paperback. It deserved a run-of-the-mill paperback print limitation of about… oh I don’t know… 500 pages would be generous.

And yet the important details were left out that would have brought life to critical scenes. Instead these scenes left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I was truly angry that this author would have the gall to attempt to address the issues that he did, as they were handled so poorly and tastlessly.

And so I arrived at my destination, dismayed that I hadn’t quite finished the book before my final bus stop. The book waited for me. I finished it tonight. The best thing I can say about it right now? “It’s over.”

I don’t believe I will be reading the other two books in the triology.