Right now I'm reading Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, one of the most highly acclaimed books published in recent memory. Oprah Winfrey loved it. So did Barack Obama, as well as pretty much every book reviewer in the world. So I was convinced I should go out and read it.
Well, I'm about a third of the way through. And although it is a pretty good story so far, I'll tell you one thing it definitely sucks at: having chapters. In 170 pages, there have been like three chapters. That, my friends, is simply unacceptable.
Chapters are necessary components of books. They represent story breaks, and thus, logical places to pause your reading experience. When I start a new chapter, I can refer back to the table of contents to see how many pages it is, and thus know how much time to budget for reading that day. This book doesn't even have a table of contents, leaving me to flip through page after page, growing anxious with despair as I realize there will be no natural story break for some 90-plus pages. That's a stressful feeling, which is the opposite of how I want to feel when I try to relax by reading.
When I find myself adrift in an ocean of pages, no island of a chapter in sight, I am left to have to try and determine to stop reading wherever it will be the least jarring. But when I pick the book back up again, I inevitably have to scan the two pages between which I put my bookmark, trying to find where I left off. This is confusing and irritating. It diminishes my reading enjoyment.
I also find this is a bit pretentious on the author's part. What, does he expect I have whole days and nights at my disposal to just do nothing else but sit and read his stupid highly acclaimed novel? He's an author; he's probably read books before. He knows they're supposed to have chapters. News flash, Franzen: even your brilliant prose can get a bit heady after awhile. It's not exactly light fare, with all your depressing relationship dynamics and whatnot. It's not Harry Potter. Which, by the way, kicks your book's ass in the chapters category.
