Ponder Post: See Me

See me. See me flounder. My reading pace has not been very impressive so far this year. See Me by Nicholas Sparks is only the second book I have completed in 2016 but I am hoping it has rescued me from my reading malaise. I started and stopped reading Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff. My determination to stick it out sidetracked me from pursuing other books until I just gave up on it as too mundane. I could not get into Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty and I started the magic strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom and abandoned it, also. These last two are by authors I generally like so I will give these books a second chance. It must be my mood that is making me so lackadaisical. By this time in 2015 I had read nine books.

I carried See Me out and back to Oklahoma with me and never cracked the cover. But I did read it within one day once home. I have read all of Nicholas Sparks' books and I would rank this one in the bottom third for the first half that was romantic, yes, but slow moving. I would rank it among his top third for the second half where the pace picked up and there was more action and intrigue. The title is still somewhat of a mystery to me and the yellow roses on the cover design did not relate back to the story in my opinion.

This book seemed to deviate from Sparks' normal style. It almost had a thriller tone to it. The male main character presents an interesting perspective and insight into growing up with ADHD and describes ways he copes with it as an adult. Generally ADHD is discussed mainly in the context of children so I found the adult aspect thought-provoking. In Sparks' novels there is often a heart-wrenching emotional twist near the end. I rarely anticipate the exact moment it will occur and seldom guess what it will be so, ironic as it may sound, I have come to expect, and even eagerly anticipate, this element of surprise. There was no such thing in this story. I had to wait until after the tale concluded and I was reading the acknowledgements at the end. There Nicholas Sparks first thanked Cathy, "who remains a wonderful friend" and "our children".

Friend? Don't you mean wife? I did a Wikipedia search and learned he and his wife had amicably divorced in 2015 after twenty-five years of marriage. I was bummed and disillusioned. How can someone who consistently writes such romantic books, focusing on tender love relations between couples, not be able to sustain those sentiments and practices in his own marriage? I am not one to follow the private lives of celebrities or care about the contents of magazines such as People, and it is none of my business, but I could not help being a bit saddened to learn this information. Setting that thought aside, I pondered what next I should read.

I thought I might try again to select my next book from the list of thirteen books about to be made into movies this year. From our local library I requested Let It Snow, The 5th Wave, The Zookeeper's Wife, and East of Eden. As luck would have it, they became available all at once. I checked each out. Each became due. I renewed each once and some of them twice. Still, I was never inspired enough to read them. I will try again, or maybe instead I should select from the books I own in my "to Read" pile that is collecting dust. Hmmm. Am I fooling myself? It is April 1st after all.