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As you know, I’m an avid reader who buys a lot of books. Some I love, some I don’t and some I want to enjoy but can’t.

Enter S.

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It arrived wrapped in plastic with a removable hard box and seal.

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I’d read good reviews of it and was eager to jump in.

S, conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams
and written by award-winning
novelist Doug Dorst, is the chroni-
de of two readers finding each other in the
margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces
they don’t understand. It is also Abrams
and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.

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Made to look like an old library book, I admit I was intrigued.

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The synopsis:

One book, two readers. A world of mystery, menace and desire.
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger.
Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own,
leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

THE BOOK: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M.
Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with monstrous crew and launched on a disorienting and perilous journey.

THE WRITER: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.

THE READERS: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad srudent, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

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As soon as I opened it I saw reading was going to be an interactive experience.

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It was positively crammed with letters, newspaper articles, post cards…

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There was even a hand drawn map on a paper towel. You actually had to be careful how you held this book when reading because things fell out all over the place. And while that might sound like fun, to be honest… it wasn’t.

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It was a confusing mish mash of multiple voices and long drawn out tales. The book itself was a story, and a pretty lame one at that. Then there was the translator who wrote the introduction and footnotes about the mysterious author. But the most maddening part? The margin notes conversation between two people who tell yet another story.

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There are so many of them they completely take over the pages. I found it virtually impossible to follow all three narratives at once and tried various ways to finish this clearly epic undertaking.

Did I mention the book literally stunk? As in physically smelled weird. I think they were going for eau de la musty library but it came across as noxious chemical to me. 🤢

As much as I hate to admit defeat when it comes to reading, I couldn’t finish this book.

Well… okay, I could have.

I simply didn’t want to.

J.J. Abrams needs to stick to Star Wars and the visual medium of film because this thing was a mess.

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