Read Middlemarch

“You spend ages hating it, then you grudgingly admire it, then you end up 5 starring it at Amazon.”

This is what one of the reviewers on Amazon said, and it sums up how I feel about the book too – I’m not quite sure how, but by the end I really liked it. So it’s worth suffering through the first 500 pages to get to the good stuff.

...I will give myself three more months to hit it again otherwise it’s another given up goal. :-(

...thank goodness! 230 pages to go (still haven’t been able to stop counting the pages though).

...this is the longest it’s ever taken me to read a book. I’ve been at it for two months and I’m only halfway through it! There are parts of the story that I like but to be honest, I just find the book boring – in my haste to finish it I find myself checking what page I’m on every few minutes, which I really must stop doing.

This is leisure reading. You don’t want to hurry through it, its the kind to sit down to on Sundays with a good cup of coffee. It is slow, subtle, and it is not a page-turner. But, the characters are some of the best in all of English lit and it picks up a lot in the second half. This took me two years to read (on and off with a couple of restarts) but I loved it. I enjoyed every sentence.

Well, I’ve started it and stalled at around page 80. I like its ironic tone a lot, but just don’t feel enthused enough to pick it up. I know this is supposed to be the perfect English Lit. novel and really want to read it. I will persevere, time for some strict discipline methinks!

This was the most boring book, bar none, that I’ve ever read. It’s also the only book I’ve literally fallen asleep reading. I did finish it, completely underwhelmed.
(And I did like other books by George Eliot, such as Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss.)

I know what I’ll be doing tonight!

only 241 to go!

read another small section in line for a burrito. while i waiting for my black beans and guacamole, Ladislaw had another excruciating encounter with Dorathea.