Tell me a story- or not

I picked up a novel the other day. It has a very intriguing cover, black with the eyes of a wolf staring at you. In fact it is kind of scary if the dogs are howling outside and the house is dark and silent. I have to turn it over so the yellow eyes are not staring, staring, staring at me. I don't like yellow eyes staring at me in the cold, dark, silent house. And I want to open the book and see why that wolf is staring at me.

Except, I open the book and start reading and am bored to tears. I got the book two weeks ago, it is 273 pages and I am only on page 150ish. I don't care about the characters. I don't care about the wolves. I don't care about the story. Bored, Bored, Bored is how I feel about it. Yet I keep trying to get through it because I have this thing about not finishing a book once I start it. I think Great Expectations is the only book I have ever not finished.

I think I have read other books by this author. I don't remember. I need to adopt my sister's practice of keeping a list of everything I have read, then I would know.

You know how your kids come home from school and want to give you a blow by blow description of something that happened that day? ".... then Jan said to Tom..." "Then they all went to the playground." "Then the principal got mad" "she said, he said, they thought, we felt" and you tune out and hope you are saying um hmm in all the right places? That is how I feel about this book. The story has happened sometime in the past and the author is telling us about it and I am tuning out and hoping I say um hmm in all the right places.

An example: The romance part of this book. Man likes woman, then thinks she wouldn't want him because he is a widower and has baggage- aka kids. He decides to tell woman they can just be friends. This is how that scene play out:

He tells her his reasons. She smiles and asks if he wants to be right. Then she tells him her reasons why he is wrong. End of scene. We never "hear" them talk to each other. We are just told that they talked! I want to get to know the characters, who they are, what they like, what they don't like, how they walk and all of their little idiosyncrasies. Let me fall in love with the hero. Or at least like him. I could not even tell you what color the main character's hair is.

If this book doesn't get interesting soon, I just may be forced to put it down and go clean a bathroom or two.

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Indeed.