on finishing books

I used to insist on finishing every book I started. That stopped a few years ago when I realized that some just weren't worth finishing (thank you Ayn Rand for proving that point). Spend your time on things that inspire...not on what you have to.

I just finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and the last chapters struck deep. The whole book has beauty and humor and life.

I used to love and hate finishing books I loved--there is a sense of satisfaction, but there is also already a sense of longing and wanting to stretch time as you reach the last pages. The rich fictional internal life you were living comes to close...

The end of Oscar's story was especially poignant. Oscar's whole life--in love with love, maddened to lose his blasted virginity. But in the end it is not the act itself, but the "intimacies that he'd never in is whole life anticipated." Combiner her hair, the way she'd put her face in his neck, walking naked to the bathroom. "So this is what everybody's always talking about! Diablo! If only I'd known. The beauty! The beauty!"

He'd had to wait for that his whole life--but his lover suggests maybe we need a better term than wait--maybe it's just life (thank you Junot Diaz for that).
I recall my history, and I recall the yearn for those intimacies, particularly after having and then losing, and maybe some bad decisions made along the way in the search, in the life. Indeed, the beauty, the beauty.