Having A Difficult Time (Rachael Marks)

         Here is the thing about The Reader, I am not quite sure that I like it. It is not that it is a bad book or that it is poorly written, in fact it is exellently executed, but that is the problem. It is too down to Earth for me. It is kind of a book that makes me think about the things that I do not want to think about, making it very difficult to get through. It renders me very emotional and so I can only deal with reading it little bits at a time.
         I love reading. Mainly the things that I read (as well as the songs that I listen to and the poetry that I enjoy the most) are quite down to Earth and not for the faint of heart. But sometimes it is too much to handle and I can not deal with the amount of energy I have to put into reading it. For me The Reader is exhausting (maybe because I read too much heavy material- or this is not the kind of heavy that I am used to). I hate saying that I dislike a book (unless the writing is utterly poor). But this is written beautifully. The author has really captured the essence of the material and knows how to talk about it. There is so much realism in it, that I, being a writer myself, cannot help but envy the insane talent that went into this book. It is to me, the emotions put into poetry that are normally not able to be portrayed in any other way. Maybe the problem is that these emotions are too hard to take in if they stray from a lyrical form that soothes them. I do not know if this makes sense but I cannot explain in any other way why I am hving such a difficult time with this book.