read Infinite Jest

Looking back at my last entry on this goal, I have to say that The Doc of the past was a little over-ambitious. After today (which was supposed to be a day spent reading, but wasn’t), I am now 211 pages into Infinite Jest, and it is still challenging at times, but I think I’m getting into the flow a little more. There are some bits that are nearly painful to read, but other sections that flow and really work for me. So 211 pages in (plus a handful of pages of footnotes) means I’m roughly 20% done. That’s not terrible progress, actually. The real challenge will be to see if I pick it up again some time this week…

I’ve had this book for longer than I can remember, and I haven’t read more than a hundred pages of it. At the beginning, it was a bit of a challenge; now it seems like an impossible slog. It’s not because it’s too long, because I’ve gone through The Count of Monte Cristo, which is even longer and it’s one of my favourite books. It’s just that it has generated more psychic mass the longer it’s stayed, unread, on my bookshelf. If you could project my mental representation of this book onto a wall, it would be twenty feet tall with muscly arms and, somehow, fangs. I’ve started reading it, and it’s not bad, but I just hate opening it up. It feels like it takes a great deal of effort just to open the front cover every time.

But I’ve started and I’m 23 pages in, and I hope to try and do a minimum of 10 pages a day, which would mean it would take me until about September to finish. So I guess I’ll check back in September? Hopefully before then, hopefully not later.

I’ve had it on my shelf for…four years now? Five? And I’ve started it three or four times now, and gotten frustrated and given up every time. I’m going to start it at the end of the week, or when I’ve finished at least two more of the six books I’m currently reading, whichever comes first.