Do you every stop reading books midway? I generally don’t. I treat books like I do food – one thing at a time and don’t start a new thing before you’ve finished the earlier one. But. I am learning to value my time more than I value the accomplishment of reading a book.

For my book club we read The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta for the month of December. This should haver been a fabulous book – it’s made end-of-the-year top 10 lists. And the idea if really super.

The basic premise of The Leftovers is that The Rapture has occurred and a significant segment of the population just disappeared. Contrary to religious ramblings, the people taken weren’t the most devout and spiritual. Rather, a hodgepodge of people left. This leaves the remaining population to come to terms with losing loved ones, being left behind and having religious expectations challenged. Also, a valuable plus for me, this book is not religious even though it focuses so much on The Rapture.

I think Perrotta started with a really meaty idea for a story and it should have been exciting and dramatic. Instead? Yawn. A woman in my book club described her issue with the book by saying it was all one note. Like a story should have highs and lows and have something that keeps you interested throughout the book. This doesn’t mean that the ploy has to be exciting because the movement can also occur by just keeping the reader engaged or creating an emotional connection between readers and some or one character(s). Instead, The Leftovers was like reading a news article for me. I didn’t mind the story but I didn’t really care either.

And so, I returned The Leftovers to the library only half read and I have gone back to The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. It’s a enormous book and has taken me a while but since I give a d2mn about the characters, I’m okay with devoting a little more of my time.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.