Y'all Come Sit a Spell

I have tossed plenty of books in my life. In frustration, in anger, in absurdity…. But only two stand out in my memory as books I threw. Not casually tossed aside. Thrown.

My Sister’s Keeper went flying because I was furious. I had invested myself in those characters, in that impossible family, in all that emotional damage, and then came the ending. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t understand why anyone would end a book that way. I was mad at the book. I was mad at Jodi Picoult. I was probably mad at literature as a concept.  How – or Why – anyone would do that was simply beyond my comprehension.

Swan Song was different. Robert McCammon scared the absolute shit out of me. That book gave me nightmares. Actual, sleeping-in-my-bed nightmares. More than one, on multiple days.  It, too, was thrown.

Both were eventually retrieved when cooler heads prevailed.

And here’s the problem with calling either one a book I regret reading: they’re magnificent books.

Isn’t that what a writer wants? To make us feel something? To create people and worlds that follow us after we’ve closed the cover? To make us angry or frightened or devastated enough that decades later, when someone asks whether we’ve ever regretted reading a book, we know exactly which one, or two?

So yes. I regret reading them.

And I’m very glad I did.

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