I realised this week I have very little patience with books and the things that annoy me in them. Let me set the scene so I can explain myself:
I started reading At Risk by Stella Rimington, a book about a female UK MI6 agent — to be honest, the thing that interested me the most, was that Rimington worked for such an agency before becoming a writer.
We’re introduced to Liz and her life early on in the book — she’s having an affair, and she’s enjoying herself — and she’s thinking about the affair just before she goes into a meeting. Where she meets a new person and starts thinking about him sexually, and I still can’t figure out why. There was no reason for the following line in what was a meeting about work:
Was she unknowingly transmitting some kind of bat-like sonar? OR was Mackay one of those men who felt he had to establish complicity with every woman who crossed his path, so that afterwards he could tell himself that he could have had her if he wanted?
The line came out of nowhere and threw me out of the book immediately. I couldn’t get back into it after that and I abandoned it for another title. It’s just so random in amongst a work meeting of all things.
I sometimes feel there are way too many good books out there to waste on slogging through something that annoys me. That’s why I tend to go with my gut and if something throws me out of the book as much as this did, I’d rather move on.
Is there anything that has out of the blue, just kicked you out of a book? Or am I being too hard on this? Should I give it another chance?
