When my TV went into the shop, I figured that I’d fall back on the train of reading a lot. Instead, I’ve cleaned, written and worked out a lot. I’ve wanted to read, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Then I realized that I just didn’t want to finish the book that I started. And while I was vacuuming my couch this afternoon (hush – I have a cat and my condo is dusty and I like my couch *much better* when it’s clean, thank you very much) I figured out why.

There were reasons why I was enjoying this book. It’s fairly well written — sometimes there’s a clunker sentence, but mostly the verbs “pop” and the descriptions are interesting. I didn’t mind the going back and forth in time, or the descriptions of the instruments.

About halfway through the book something significant happens. However, the author goes to great lengths and massive amounts of hand-waving to try to get the reader not to pay attention to it. Basically, it’s like the great booming voice which says, “Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain!”

This pissed me off, but I was willing to go along for a little while. However, then I got stuck because the POV character (and it’s in first person) explains that the reason why he’s not paying attention to the man behind the curtain is because, basically, he’s stupid.

This, I felt, was the author breaking the contract with the reader. The POV character up to this point could be described as being stuck in his life, stuck in a rut, possibly lazy and unmotivated, but no where is it mentioned that he’s dumb. In fact, part of the novel takes place at his old college, with him interacting with former college professors, who treat him as if he was very intelligent indeed. So him being dumb in this instance is just more hand-waving, and I’m sorry, you’re not in a parade. The hand-waving is not acceptable.

In addition, this is something that I’m very sensitive to right now, as it’s an important part of the current novel. My characters — all of them — are *smart*. They ask questions and they figure stuff out. Of course they’re still screwed, cause that’s part of the fun. But they’re never in trouble because they’re stupid, or they didn’t talk with each other, or because they didn’t know something they could have figured out (except in one instance and I’m still refining that one.)

So — I’ve decided not to finish this book. This is always a difficult decision for me, however, the author can’t make it up to me. I was hoping maybe he could, but then I went out and read the reviews of the book on Amazon and realized that there’s no way he could. So I’m putting it on the pile of books going to Powells to be recycled, as it were. I have other books to read (way too many other books) — including ones that I may actually finish.