There are a lot of things in this world to be scared of – spiders, snakes, terrorism, Britney Spears.  Books shouldn’t be one of them.

But I have to confess I am a bit of a coward when it comes to some books.

I wrote in a previous contribution about how I often choose books because of their cover or title (You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover).  If you haven’t tried it yet, you should.  But I omitted to say that I will also judge a book by another superficial criteria – how thick it is. If it’s thicker than two of my fingers, then I balk – I’m a coward and a wimp.

I look at the book, it looks at me.  Everything else around goes out of focus; all I see is the spine of the book in wide-screen, high-definition, digital, Blu-Ray clarity.  I hear a faint buzzing sound in my ears and the thump thump of my rapidly increasing pulse.  I break out in a cold sweat and I’m almost overcome with a wave of self loathing – “you nob” I think “you’re such a hypocrite – an intellectual snob on one hand, yet you don’t have the balls to tackle a really meaty story.  What a lightweight!  Ohh poor you, your hand will get sore and it will take you a while to read it and it will be heavy in your bag … boo hoo you little baby”.  Well that last part might be an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

And even if I do close my eyes, grit my teeth and go against all instinct and buy the book, I can never quite shake the feeling.

A number of years ago I read Illywhacker by Peter Carey.  When I bought it, it met all of my criteria – great title, great cover, an author I have been encouraged to read for years – everything; except it is a monster of a book.  To my eyes it’s a foot thick, weighs in at 150 kgs, is written in 4pt font single spaced and the page edges are intermittently serrated or razor-sharp.  Each day I would pull it out of my bag and I’d think I’m never going to finish it and even if I do I’ll be 87 and won’t have remembered what happened at the start of the book, so I’ll have to read it again.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it.  I read all 817 pages (I feel nauseous) and it was a great read.  Not many authors can use words the way Carey can.  It’s clever, funny, well researched etc etc.  But even today, it frightens the living hell out of me.  I’m tired even thinking about it.

Now, years later, the feeling is still there.  When considering the prospect of a long book I look like Homer Simpson faced with a day without doughnuts or Paris Hilton faced with the prospect of wearing polyester – totally and completely petrified and out of my depth.

Other books like 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (925 pages) and James Joyce’s Ulysses (933 pages) had just the same effect, worse in fact in the case of Ulysses, and if I can bring myself to, I’ll make that the subject of a future blog all it’s very own.

Now excuse me while I get back to enjoying the 201 pages of Vladimir Nabokov’s Bend Sinister.