Less

A neighbor loaned this book to me back before Christmas, right before I received a huge influx of new books I wanted to read (alongside a big backlog of books I wanted to read). With fifty books waiting for me on my shelf, one that I'd never heard of wasn't really a priority. Even if it had won a fancy award. But in keeping with this month's theme, and because I was starting to feel really guilty about not reading it, I finally picked it up.

Honestly, this was the most boring book I've slogged through in a really long time. Sure it's clever and meta, which I generally love. But there's no shortage of clever, meta books that are things I'm actually interested in. Less is essentially about a man having a midlife crisis. And I just couldn't make myself care.

The midlife crisis takes the form of a trip around the world. Less has just learned that his boyfriend of nine years is marrying the man he left him for. Not wanting to endure the pity of his friends, Less decides instead to skip town, by accepting every other invitation he's received. An interview in New York, a convention in Mexico, a class in Germany and an award in Italy. Then an extravagant trip in Morocco followed by a writer's retreat in India and finally an assignment in Japan. It will keep him away from home and distracted for months.

It's not that the book is poorly written or lazy or any of my other normal complaints when I dislike something. It's that the main character is so incredibly mediocre, but continues to fail upward. He's not a great writer, but that hasn't stopped him from earning a living at it. He's not a great boyfriend, but all of his exes remember him fondly. He can barely speak German but no one at the university is willing to point this out to him. And that's kind of the point, but it doesn't make me care about him or what happens to him.

But at least it's not sitting on my shelf collecting guilt anymore.

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