Bookish Thoughts

I wanted to read this. I wanted to like it. But I was a third of the way through it when my husband died, and I just couldn't bring myself to pick it up and finish it. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice a book for something like that. Move on to the next thing or you don't have any hope of moving on at all. If this was a bit more compelling I might have stuck with it, but it was very slow. I actually had a similar issue with Never Let Me Go . I attempted it once, made it about 100 pages in, then put it down for years. But on my second attempt I finished it and ended up really liking it. So maybe I'll revisit this one some day and fall in love with it. In the meantime, it's the book I was reading when my husband died, and so I didn't finish it.

I started reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go way back in college. Or possibly just after college. I remember hearing that Joss Whedon has used it as partial inspiration for Dollhouse , which didn't premiere until 2009, and I think that's why my mom bought it. But things are hazy. The point is that, for one reason or another, I got 2/3 of the way through the book and then stopped reading it. It's haunted me vaguely ever since, so when I found a cheap copy at McKay's I had to buy it. This book is something of a mystery with some mild science-fiction elements. Really mild. I'd hardly classify it as sci-fi at all, really. Sure it's about advanced technology and its ramifications on humanity and society. But it's much more personal than that. More intimate than the books I typically classify as science-fiction. The narrator, Kathy, is a carer and has been for many years when the novel opens. She's approaching the end of her career...