Don't Read This Book

One of the other books I checked out of the library was so bad I didn't want to finish it. I kept with it, regrettably.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead wasn't the worst book I've ever read but it's on my top-10 list. Many of the loser books I didn't even finish, unless they were short. Whitehead's book is nasty, brutish and short, mercifully short.

If you enjoy humorless repetitious drivel about the end of the world, this book's for you. I thought the plot was going somewhere, or that some explanation for the plague that kills most of the Earth's population would be revealed. I just read last week that humans are mainly immune to the plague or black death. This must be a different plague.

To be fair, I chose the book because I've read other books by the author. John Henry Days is a keeper, as is The Intuitionist. Last year's beach book, Sag Harbor, wasn't great, but it wasn't duller than dish water.

Before I go back to Infinite Jest, I'm reading a book I had to buy today, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. He wrote Kafka on the Shore, which I loved. It's another 900+ page tome, but seems more readable than Jest. We'll see.