I am slowly, ever so ssssslloooowwwwlllyyy, wending my way towards the end of Dragonquest.  The book is more interesting now than it was at first; the writing is about the same, the characters standardized and not especially interesting as people, but the plot has gotten a bit thicker, and now the book is actually going somewhere.  We have a few Problems, some Potential Resolutions, and of course still being in the middle of the book, I don’t know but assume we’ll get some Solved Problems right after we reach a plotline Climax.  Stock.  Oh well.

All of this has made me wonder why I drag myself through books which aren’t very satisfying, when I have something like Memoirs of a Geisha or an impending re-read of Herbert’s Dune series awaiting me.  Why don’t I jump right to them?

My friends and family will attest to the fact that I am really not great at finishing projects which bore me, so why don’t I just put the thing aside, move on to something more interesting, and should the desire ever crop up again read the damn book down the road some year.

Somehow I am driven to finish the novel, to see where the story goes, to prep myself for future Dragons of Pern novels, should I ever read more, to get some sense of completion out of the experience.

In truth, I feel some sort of obligation to the author, I suppose, who clearly made great effort to put together the story for me (as a member of her reading audience), regardless of what I think of the end result.  That doesn’t always hold me to the end of a book or movie; if I’m offended by the content, for example, screw the presumed efforts of the creator.

Somehow, in a book like Dragonquest, there is enough for me to hang on to, and nearing the end, I know that I will, of course, finish it, remember it (at least a little) and even if I don’t cherish the book, it will have added at least a little something.

I suppose that I read such books for the same reason that I occasionally watch B movies.  And it is enough, somehow — just hard to describe why.