Continuing my list of classics I decided I would read The Time Machine. Actually I didn't really decide anything, my buddy thrust it in my chest and said "read this." I wanted to love this book, actually I did love this book for the first 60 or 70 pages and then I really started to become indifferent towards it. I read the bulk of it in one sitting and by the end of that sitting it started to become boring so I put it down expecting that I was just suffering from plot overload and that I would come back and finish it in another sitting (since it is only like 95 pages). This, however, was not the case, I came back time and time again trying to beast the rest of it out and found myself unable. The plot, like a good gravy thickened over time but like a sea of good gravy I found myself unable to wade through it. Bad similes aside the book became damn unreadable near the end. Right when you were expecting it to get good again it wrapped up with damn near no conflict which answers my questions when I watch movies and read books of "why didn't so and so just do this or just do that it would have made life easier. The time traveler did things the easy way and it worked out, huzzah, without being interesting at all. Also this book is damn boring. The man invents a time machine and finds a way to find, what must be, the most boring period in Earth's history.
Oh man, I totally had a different reaction. I loved the book! I'd agree that it was slow, but I think it was slow at first and later on turned interesting. A solid, if dated, commentary on the then-growing divide between the upper class and the working class.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading the Invisible Man right now (also Wells) and it's not quite as good - but it is equally as short!