reader's block

I never get chance to suffer from writer's block. I won't write unless I can dedicate a good block of time to it, and that doesn't happen very often, so I've always got a build up of stuff I need to write. Which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your viewpoint.

I do, however, suffer from painful bouts of reader's block. I've got a painful flare-up at the moment as it happens.

It's all the fault of a book called 'let The Right One In', a Swedish book about a vampire living on a sink estate. For the first half, this book was unputdownable. It was so moving, intelligent and clever. I resented ever having to stop reading it to go and do something else. Then, around the halfway mark, it turned rubbish. No kinder way of putting it. It just got crap. The story fell apart, signs of any editing disappeared, the characterisation went to pot.

If it had been this bad to start with, I would have abandoned it early on, or more probably never bought it. But having got so far, and having loved the film it was made into, I am determined to finish this book.

Trouble is, I just don't want to pick up my Kindle and read it. The pressure to finish it, get it over and done with, has sort of paralysed me. I've stopped reading it and I can't get myself to start again.

So I'm not reading anything at the moment and it hurts.

The obvious answer, of course, would be to just pick another book, start reading that. As it happens, I've got another book lined up that I'm really looking forward to, but I know that if I start reading another book now, I will never finish 'Let The Right One In' and I am so close to the end now that would be silly, and weak, and self-defeating. I WANT to know how this book ends. I want it to REDEEM itself, goddamnit.

I'll pick it up again tonight, I will. I will, and I will finish it.