"What I didn't yet understand was the importance of taste and timing. Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn't guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and stay friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it's we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don't get along any more, an experience that I had when I returned to both Gravity's Rainbow and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. Unlike people, one can at least dump them or hand them to a friend without causing offence or feeling guilt. Indeed, we forget sometimes that a vital part of loving literature is hating certain books and certain writers, just as hating Spurs is an important part of supporting Arsenal; and the embarrassing truth is that I have probably got far more satisfaction out of trying to persuade friends that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a tawdry piece of misogynistic torture porn than I have out of discussing the reasons why Wolf Hall is a masterpiece."
--Mark Haddon, 'The Right Words in the Right Order'
Stop What You're Doing And Read This!
