A Thousand Acres...

I’m gonna let you in on a little secret – sometimes I didn’t do all the required reading in class. Yes, even me, a self-described book lover could not make it through everything assigned. And I am not the only one. Lots of my fellow English majors did it too. Or didn’t do it in this case. Sometimes, in the midst of classes and papers and work and trying to have a bit of a life, you just don’t have time to get it all done. Sometimes, you just hate what you are reading and can’t force yourself to make it all the way through (I’m looking at you Faulkner).

I was supposed to read Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres for class a few years ago. But it was the end of the semester and I had a paper on another book due and since there was not going to be a test or anything else due that would prove to my professor (a lovely man who I feel very guilty to have betrayed this way) that I had read it, I just skipped it. The day we discussed it, I sat and took notes and tried to look like I knew what was happening but really, I was just crossing my fingers that the entire 2 hours would go by and nobody would address me directly and ask for my thoughts.

Now let me clarify, I never felt proud when this happened (yes, it happened more than once. Probably a lot more than any English major will ever admit to). So when my Kindle decided to freak out on me – I turned it on and the screen looked like a broken Etch-A-Sketch and I had to wait a few days for Amazon to send me a new one (yay for awesome customer service by the way, I called on a Saturday and had my new Kindle on Tuesday!) I picked up A Thousand Acres and decided to make things right with the Reading Gods.

I’m about a hundred pages in. And I keep falling asleep. The book is a little slow, but I have also had a crazy few weeks at work, so I am chalking it up to brain overload and not boredom. I already flaked out on this book once, so I can’t bring myself to do it again...no matter how long it takes me to get through it. 

Wish me luck.