I have just finished reading Ivory by Tony Park. It started off as a promising read: pirates in the modern age; big business; African culture and colour. Sex and viiolence thrown into the mix. Halfway through the book I started to get bored. Did I really care what happened to Jane, the lawyer from London? Did I care if the dashing pirate (minus a couple of fingers) Alex avoided jail, remained alive, and rebuilt his tumbledown hotel? When I reached the elephant cull/hunt I could not bear to read the details and skimmed over a chapter. I still had a third of the book to go. I could not abandon it after devoting so many hours to reading it. I needed something to show for my efforts (a finished book on my shelf). I struggled on and then started skimming in ernest. Perhaps it was because I was skim reading but events seemed even more far fetched and the ending very contrived. At 434 pages it was a struggle.
Why do publishers insist readers want to read long books? I would rather read two books each at 200 pages than one at 400 pages. There are too many books out there to waste my precious reading time on one book.
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