Daniel’s Reviews > Hamnet > Status Update

Uh-oh, I plan on reading it too

It is a very slow start, I was tempted to DNF many times, but in the end its quite compelling, but not amazing

I was interested mostly because of the praise it's gotten for the writing. I picked up one of her other books at one point though and had a very strong oh, hell no reaction to that one. I forget which it was. This is good on a diction/syntax level, though still not my ideal.

As Lars says it's just kind of slow so far. I don't love that it's present tense, and it's got a sort of dreamlike detachment going on. The very first part with the boy was a little more engaging than the part about the parents so far, and as we all know what happens to him, that doesn't seem like a great sign. I will give it some more time though. It helps I've got the Baldwin book to switch when I need something more lively.

Daniel wrote: "I will give it some more time though. It helps I've got the Baldwin book to switch when I need something more lively"

Maybe I, too, should read them in parallel then. It could work. I'm used to reading multiple books at the same time anyway.
I'm with you about present tense also. My last couple of reads were first person/present tense and they were draining.

The Baldwin book has been really good for reading in little snatches of time when I'm waiting, or whatever. The kind of thing you can set down and pick back up easily. Whereas with a novel, I typically want a dedicated chunk of time. I don't think 100% of nonfiction works that way, but this seems to.

I used keep multiple novels going at a time when I was a kid, but at some point I stopped.

Daniel wrote: "I used keep multiple novels going at a time when I was a kid, but at some point I stopped. "

Eh. I'm used to reading multiple things at the same time because of work, but yeah. We're reading for fun, it's not a race.