Rainy Day Reads

This is my second attempt at Donna Tartt. My first attempt (The Little Friend) failed miserably early on, but I liked the writing somewhat and everyone said that Tartt was a great writer, so I decided to give it another go. I did finish this one, but only because I had spent so much time on it, that I felt would be wasted if I gave up. But I was actually quite uninterested in the story by the end, and just wanted it to finish already! Tartt can write really well and atmospherically (is that the word?) if she wants to with vivid descriptions, but boy, can she also just drone on and on! At several points I could not understand how this book could be so long, because for pages on end nothing much would happen plot-wise. She would just harp on about this or that without advancing the plot. When something finally did happen it was usually quite quick and the aftermath and the thinking about it would take up many more pages than the actual event. For example (SPOILER!) the murder in the...

I started this book because I had heard so many good things about Donna Tartt's other books, especially “The Secret History” and “Goldfinch”. But this one was the first that came to my library, so I figured this would be equally good.   I recently did a post on why I find it SO hard to give up on a book even though I don’t like it. I decided that life is too short to waste precious reading time on books you are not really enjoying, and this book will be the victim of that determination! I’ve read 283 pages, just short of the halfway mark, and I just can’t get into it. Aside from the main plot point nothing has really happened yet, and that is just FAR too slow-moving for me!  The book is about a family in the American South. The son of the family dies under mysterious circumstances and more than 10 years later his youngest sister decides to try and find out what really happened. And that is pretty much the synopsis and pretty much everything that has happened so far....