In Which They All Lived Lamely Ever After.

Yesterday was a landmark of sorts, the conclusion of what has become an annual tradition. Yesterday I finally finished that first interminable novel of the year.

Here is what happens: While making travel plans for the holidays, I pick a nice thick novel I've been looking forward to reading. I read some of it on the plane, and maybe some while I'm wherever I've traveled to. But not much. Then I come home and I've got a ton of pages left on it, and I nibble away at it before I go to sleep at night, and it lasts for weeks and weeks.

I have got to stop doing this. It's no way to read a novel.

But I was looking at old reading lists, and I discovered I've been doing it since 2004. Whether or not it's a good book, once I get well into January, I just bog down.

So I'm blogging to remind myself of this New Year's resolution -- not for the present new year, but for all future New Years' seasons: I will only begin short novels. Fat books are fine for other times of year, but not for January.

The book I just finished is Little, Big by John Crowley, and I cannot under any circumstances recommend it (though if LibraryThing reviews are any indication, it has quite a following). It's the story of an American family that lives on the borders of Fairyland -- a concept which surely has a lot of potential. But the narrative never really engages with either reality or fantasy, only wanders around in a sort of haze between (though I don't think there should really be a haze between, but bright-dark perilous wonder). And the characters spend pretty much all their time just being passively confused; no one confronts, no one demands, no one can ever say what they're thinking but just pussyfoots around it, hoping that their listener will hear the words they're not saying. And, because the fairies are always looking out for their pet family, everything happens for them exactly as it was predestined to do from the very beginning, without any real effort on the part of the humans. This is not only boring, but runs counter to rule #1 of fairy tales, which is that things can go terribly wrong. You can wander off the path in the woods and get lost forever; you can snub an animal or deny an old woman's request and get your quest cursed to failure. Here, nobody could step wrong even if they tried (though some of them did try, in a halfhearted fashion): fairy tale bumper bowling.

Anyway, it feels good to have finished it. (Don't ask why I can't just put a novel down when I'm not enjoying it; I haven't figured that one out yet.) Now I am reading about what sailors used to eat, and a friend's draft novel.