Thursday 19 November 2020

The Race!

For the first time I can remember, I am racing to finish a book.

It's a large book.  Five hundred and something pages.  (It's "Leviathan Wakes" btw.)

The day I picked it up from the library I didn't think I would be able to finish it in the... whatever it is, two?  three? weeks you get?  I tried to renew it but it has holds so I'm not allowed and never ever in my life have I not returned a book on time so I can't just... you know, pay late fees.  So I've had a couple of tiny little stress moments where I put pressure on myself to read FASTER or something and I worried about not finishing in time (stupid anxiety)... would I put a hold on it and have to wait months to find out how things ended?  Would I stay up super late the last night and finish it out of spite not even really enjoying it?  WHAT WOULD I DO?

And I didn't want to stress myself over the book but it was coming down to the wire this week so I decided to do some math.  It seems the authors (it's co-written but under a single pen name) made each chapter about ten-ish pages.  So on Monday I had around 90 pages (about 9 chapters) left and I told myself I could do three chapters a night (I really only read in bed these days) and rush it back to the library tomorrow just under the wire.  I figured that was doable. 

And then I ended up not paying attention to the chapters anyway and just wanting to find out what happened and ugh, ok, one more chapter and so now I'm done and yeah.  I really didn't expect to be able to read the whole thing but I did!   I guess that's a good book, eh? (Some of the early chapters did drag a bit but that's ok.)

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