I've been working on it and working on it, but I'm only 106 pages into it.  That's about 1/4 of the way.  Any sane person would just give up and throw it into the "cannot finish" pile, but I simply can't do that.  Maybe it's a byproduct of being an English major in college.  Great life, right?  I got to read novels for my college education.  Oh, but I also had to write essays about everything I read, and when you are in graduate school, you generally have four novels that have to be finished in two weeks.  And I focused on Victorian literature.  Just carrying The Way We Live Now, Bleak House, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda to classes at the same time made it unnecessary to even worry about exercise.


So you would think I would be really good at finishing long novels quickly even those that I'm not necessarily enjoying.  Well times have changed.  When I was in graduate school, reading was a part of the "job."  It's what had to be done to be successful.  Now there is no prize at the end of the journey.  There is no drop dead date for turning in that essay or taking that exam, so the book just lingers on and on.  I read a page one day, maybe three to five the next, and on a good day, an entire chapter, if it is a short one.

Why don't I just give up?  Because there is just some part of me that can't let the book win.  It won't get the best of me.  I finished Carlyle's Sartor Resartus for goodness sake.  I can finish Wicked.  I do really want to know who read this book and thought, "Wow.  This would make a great musical."  Just not seeing the connection.  Wish me luck that maybe someday I'll be rid of this one.  Do you have to finish books or are you one of the blessed who can just toss them away?