I tried three times to read this one. First two times on an ereader where the need to flip back to the family tree on the first page (the book is a memoir that spans several generations) made getting absorbed by the book nearly impossible. The third time I got the book from the library and made it a least a third of the way in and then… nothing. I just couldn’t commit I guess. And I feel like a first rate reading fraud as the rest of the world assesses this book as one of the very great, and I know I *should* as a literary sort, think the same thing, but I don’t. I just wasn’t interested in the family, in the reasoning behind the acquisition of the art objects, I wasn’t concerned with the attempt to write a meaningful, deep memoir of objects, memory and family. I’m very willing to admit this as my failing rather than that of the book. So take the advice of the heaps of others and read it, but know that I found it resistant. And a little dull. Does this make me a terrible reader? Person? Maybe. But I made the commitment to stop reading books that didn’t move me (either for better or worse) and so I have with this one.
Literary Vice 