Brady Dale’s Reviews > A Moment in the Sun > Status Update

I have never dreaded the last 100 pages of a book more. Why was this made?

I hate this book so much I’m starting to hate myself

Yes, I am still reading this/sucker for punishment. There’s moments that are OK, but I still have no idea what the overall point or structure of this book is.

For example, in the Philippines we got the entire biography of one character who met the maybe-one-of-semi-main characters, but we’ve never gotten that much information about anyone else before. Nothing makes sense. I think the book is about colonialism?

I don’t like this book. By rights, I should just quit reading it… But I’m so far in like a moron I’m just gonna make my way to the ending. It’s written in this annoying way where much of the key action occurs off screen. It’s also clear that it’s written by a filmmaker because he assumes you’ll remember all of his bajillion characters as distinct people. He forgets you can’t see them.

OK here’s a weird thing about this book… I see this again and again and it’s in the text of the book not just the characters’ dialogue.
When Sayles should write an abbreviation like “could’ve” instead it’s written “could of”
They sound a lot alike! I’m prone to this one!
But in such a highly produced book it must be intentionally done, but...
What’s the intention??

OK it’s about the Spanish-American war or at least that time period. Mainly it seems to be that old timey vibe. I don’t know where it’s going and it’s popped over so much ground I’m not sure where we have been

So the thing about this book is, it has 1 million short chapters which is good. But with each new chapter you have to struggle to figure out what part of the world it is in, because it could be anywhere. You also need to figure out which of the characters it’s about, and I think there’s about 20 or so. And to be honest I’ve pretty much given up on sorting out what the overall plot is.

This book is about a lot of things. I have a feeling it’s also about one thing, but, here about a fifth of the way through I still have no idea what that one thing might be.

Introducing characters so far. Nice stuff. Sometimes I lose track of who he’s talking about or whose head we are inside.