What One Girl Knows

I am suffering through Canda Jane Dorsey's Paradigm of Earth, one abstract, ill-worded snippet at a time. This is sad, because the book has been on my Amazon wishlist for years now. I read some really enthusiastic reviews and felt certain it would be a great gender-issue, political, character-driven SF, perhaps in the mode of Octavia Butler or Connie Willis. What's also sad is the fact that I'm halfway through, and so therefore just can't stop reading and go on to something else, something new and better. Really I should be reading classics. I've never read any Faulkner. Or Hemingway. I still have to finish Anna Karenina. What a great thing to tell people - that I spent my summer reading classics.

But the sad, sad truth is this: classics, especially those written before the early 20th Century, almost never hold my attention. My eyes get jittery when they encounter long descriptive passages. I start thinking about potato chips, and kittens. I have the sudden urge to do the laundry.

Very sad. Very true.