Aborted Review: The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
How I got here: I saw it on a few “best of 2007″ lists plus I also read and enjoyed the first two books in the “trilogy:” The Sportswriter and Independence Day.
When I saw that Ford was releasing another book to continue the saga of Frank Bascombe, I knew I would be reading it. I didn’t think I would only get 150 pages deep (the book is huge—just under 500 pages). I always described the first two books in a similar way: It’s about a guy in the suburbs who drives around doing unspectacular stuff, remembering a lot of stuff, and talking about his opinions on different things.
Which makes it sound really boring. And this one did bore me quite a bit, in a way the first two never did. Maybe it’s because Frank is older now and may die of cancer—I’m not sure. But it just didn’t interest me the way the other books did.
The loyalty to those two books kept me reading, but when I flipped through a couple of uninspiring pages and realized I had over 400 more to go, I said no more.
I’ve said it before but this is another good example: there are too many books in the world to torture yourself through ones that don’t entertain you. Move on to a good one.
I guess I’ll never know how Frank Bascombe passed his last days. Oh well, no bid deal.
Coming up Next: Finance Just in Time by Hugo Dixon.
