1 Your wish is my command...here I am. I do think it's a great book (and the reason I cut the passage down was mainly because I was too lazy to type the whole thing.) But I don't see any need to finish this, or any other book, if you're not enjoying it. 140 pages is probably a fair test as to whether you're going to like it or not.

2 Sarah-- I agree with David. I vividly remember when I turned 25 and I suddenly realized that life is short--and there is no way I'll be able to read all the books I want to! Don't waste your time on a book you don't love or that doesn't challenge you.

3 Here's another GR excerpt, and one which I think is highly relevant to some of our current issues, as I explain in the post: Journalism's Nuremberg

4 Sarah, I have to agree with Lara. Books are for either education and reference (in which case a certain amount of trudging through sludge is acceptable) or for enjoyment (in which case "life is short".) If a reading for fun book isn't, trade it at a used book store for something better. Maybe someone else will enjoy it more than you. Keep looking for things what you will enjoy. One of life's reading pleasures is finding a previously unknown to you book by an author that you enjoy. As you can tell from my name, my favorite genre if obvious.

5 Sarah, Try reading _The Crying Of Lot 49_ or the stories collected under the title _Slow Learner_. The BIG BOOK is a poor introduction to Pynchon.

6 Reading things that do not interest or entertain you should have stopped being an option once you got that degree. Stop the madness and toss it aside. Sorry,140 pages is more than a fair try. If the author can't reel you in and make you want to know what's next,they aren't very good. I'm not terribly hard to please,either. I love to read and will happily dive into any genre. The last book I tossed aside was "Infinite Jest" back in 1996,by the way. I just didn't care enough to finish the thing. Some people love it and more power to them. JUST don't feel guilty. Please.

7 Yeah, I do a similar thing. I read about books on Amazon, then ask the local library to order them for me. When I get them, I read a few pages and think "Hey, they really gave this piece of junk five stars? Why!?! Maybe it becomes clear later." So I have stopped reading FIVE diffent books this week. One for each night. And yes, I do feel guilty, because I brought them down from Belgium and the Netherlands. Live and learn. I need to read the first few pages myself before taking some unknown reviewer's comments to heart.

8 I almost took a class at university here, until I read the course description very well: "In 1997, exactly 25 years after the publication of Thomas Pynchon's 'masterpiece' Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, a historical rewrite of the life of James Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, hit the bookstores. This course will be devoted to a very close reading (in the best of academic worlds, I would assume that the book has been read 'at least once' before the start of the semester) of this long-awaited novel by one of the most enigmatic, notorious and fascinating authors writing in America today. In the course, we will follow the slow, traumatic drawing of the Mason & Dixon line across the body of the American continent. The work on this 'line' brings together a bunch of illustrious people (Benjamin Franklin, a psychedelic musician sporting blue sunglasses; George Washington, inhaling; Vaucasson's duck, alive and in love with a French chef; Capt. Zhang, a Feng Shui master running from a Jesuit monk) and a number of curious concepts (a secret Jesuit telegraph system making extended use of balloons and satellites, a 'hollow earth,' 'eleven lost days,' a werebeaver and smoke-rings in the form of möbius-strips). Topics dealt with in the course range from questions about narrative structure, narrative voice (the narrator, Wicks Cherrycoke is a minor character from Gravity's Rainbow who seems to have made it into this new novel by virtue of some sort of 'transpagination'), historiographic metafiction, cultural studies and traumatology to questions about coffee, hemp, ghosts, and lost loves." As a history major this would have really really tested me. And I decided to pass...(Also, I love how the book should be read "at least once" before starting the class.) A few years ago I started the whole "not finishing a book thing". The first time it's hard, but afterwards it gets easier. If the literary world is a smorgasbord, I don't want to get stuffed up on the "100 year old eggs" just 'cos they are character building...take me to the prime rib and the eclairs!

9 Postmodernist dog feces. "it is a book not set aside lightly, it should be hurled with great force". May as well read Slaughterhouse 5, which will at least have places that you have been.

10 Assuage your guilt by donating those unfinished books to your public library. Not only will others get the benefit, and the lilbrary get a book it may not have been able to afford but you can always go check it out if you really MUST finish it. )

11 P.S....and if you donate it to the library; it's tax deductible (get a receipt). I, too, hated to give up on a book. But I've found over the years that some books aren't worth the time. So, give it up and don't feel guilty. The time you save can be used reading something really worthwhile!!!