Reading Hell

What's better than a good book and a cup of tea? Well, probably everything concerning one of the last books I read. I usually wait until New Year to make a post about all the books I read during the past year but this time I almost died reading a book and needed to share this traumatic experience.

First, tea. Earl Grey. In my favorite cup. It begins pretty well. 

So I read Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin and hated it. When I go book shopping, I love to pick a book by its cover. This was the case. I loved the black and white picture of Grand Central Station and I read the summary on the back cover and thought I could really enjoy this book. 

When it comes to books, the tiniest things make my imagination go wild and even before I start reading I have this whole story in my head that I imagine the book is going to be about. Of course it's never the story of the book in the end but it doesn't matter.

In the back cover summary, it said that the main character was a burglar and during one of his midnight visit to a New York house he was about to rob, he met a very young girl. My mind went wild imagining this very romantic story in the heart of hectic New York before the turn of the 1900's. 

Well, I didn't quite like the style (which I found 'wannabe poet' with very childish ideas such as the one the bad guy has of building a room in the sewers entirely made of gold) but I really lost it when the passage I was really waiting for (the encounter between the burglar and the young girl) turned out this way: he is in her house at night to rob it, she's all alone, her family went away for the holidays, they see each other, he's quite pretrified to be caught red handed, she spreads her legs open and they have sex. Wait, what?

This book is quite long as well (750 pages), it took me more than a month to relunctantly finish it. I read three others in the meantime just to wash this book out of my head from time to time so I wouldn't give up reading entirely and forever.

A movie came out of this book a couple of years ago, just for the heck of it and because apparently I like to hurt myself, I'll watch it soon. It is starring Collin Farrell and Russell Crowe, I can't stand both, too bad. 

There is so much more poison I would like to get out of my system about this book, but I guess that will be it for now, I have to save some for next year's books review.

Maybe I didn't get the grandeur of this wannabe epic tale, I don't know, but it was just hour after hour of pain for me.

Findind comfort with an uncooperative cat.

Yeah a readable book!!! (Conversation d'un Enfant du Siècle by F. Begbeider)