After Philip Roth’s My Life as a Man, a heart breaking tale of a writer’s marriage, I quickly began Alex Garland’s The Tesseract.  I was excited about The Tesseract because years ago I thouroughly enjoyed Garland’s debut novel The Beach. However, two weeks later I was still only 60 pages in. It was a struggle to get that far. I’m one of those readers that can’t stand to not finish a book though. I’ll usually push on through and give the writer the respect to get to the end before making a judgment. This time, I’ve put it down. There are too many books I haven’t read to get bogged down in one I don’t like. 

I went to my library to decide which book would be next. I picked up Brad Watson‘s Aliens in the Prime of Thier Lives, a collection of short stories. Guess what? I’ve read it before and I’m reading it again. It is that good. Brad Watson has mastered the short story. His previous collection, Last Days of the Dogmen, won the Sue Kaufman award for first fiction. 

Maybe I’ll get back to The Tesseract soon, but in the meantime, I want to enjoy reading instead of making it feel like work.