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The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert A. Caro

Five Easy Pieces

To alcohol! The cause of – and solution to – all of life’s problems.
Homer Simpson

Regular visitors to this site may have noticed that my Current Read, The Emperor and the Wolf, hasn't changed for about two months. That's because it's a really big book. Well, it's about 800 pages; not huge, but hefty. I've read bigger. It's just one of those books that you can put down.

Not to say that it's a bad book. I am enjoying it. It's just not the type of book that I can't wait to get home to. It has heft, both physically and mentally.

I'm reminded of the episode of South Park where everyone learns that Officer Barbrady can't read. During the show, he learns to read and at the end he's read his first book. He holds up a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and declares that reading sucks ass.

I couldn't help but laugh my guts out. I had read it and knew exactly what he meant. Like my Current Read, it's not a bad book; it's just a big dense pile of words that isn't easy to plow through, even for the most seasoned reader. It took me several months to get through and, while I enjoyed it, I too had that "reading sucks ass" feeling.

I'm going to keep plowing through The Emperor and the Wolf, because I have several other books stacked up, waiting to be read. I figure if I read one chapter a day, I should be done by mid-August. Stay tuned.