I hate reading e-books, but I had to read
Parable of the Sower as an e-book because it was our latest book club selection and I didn't have time to order it and have it arrive in time to read it, and I couldn't really get myself to a bookstore. Also, I'm trying not to acquire too many new books; I'm out of bookshelf space at home and I already have so many books I haven't read. Fortunately,
Parable of the Sower was available from the Brooklyn Public Library. Since we usually only have 3-4 weeks notice, my book club has forced me to read e-books quite a bit. I learned early on that the number of "pages" doesn't correlate in any way to paper books.
Parable of the Sower was 264 "pages," which I estimated amounted to about a 400 page book. I ended up being a bit rushed to read toward the end because my library loan expired today and I couldn't renew it. This morning I had 80 "pages" left, and I wanted to go out walking with my camera, but I decided I better finish my book first. So, I sat down to it after breakfast ready to commit 2-3 hours, only to finish an hour later because the book actually ended on "page" 211. After the main text, the e-book included the first three chapters of
Parable of the Talents and a biography of Octavia Butler (complete with some fantastic photos, including this one of her at age 3). Anyway, I suppose I could have figured out from the table of contents where the book actually ended (and I also suppose I could have had the same issue with a paper book that included extra material at the end, though I think I probably would have noticed in that case), but this is an illustration of one of the reasons I don't like e-books. I feel a little crazy for saying this, but to some extent as I was reading, it it wasn't clear to me that the climaxes were the climaxes and the end caught me totally off guard because I was expecting to read another 50-70 pages.
As you may have gathered from the previous paragraph, I found Parable of the Sower a tough read. I never wanted to sit down and read it; I dreaded what it had in store. This isn't to say it's not a good book; it is good. (In fact, I just texted my father to recommend it to him.) But it's hard. It describes a reality so bleak, with so little hope, where you know terrible things are going to happen to the protagonists. I found what hope the book did offer -- via Earthseed -- hard to connect to (though, to be fair, the same can be said for some of the book's own characters, so perhaps it's not meant to be fully articulated). I don't know for sure that I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read a paper edition and had a better sense of where in it I was, but I might have found it less stressful. The entire time I was reading it, I thought the worst was still ahead.
