paulw53•11d agoMost Upvoted

My friend told me to skip the last 100 pages of 'The Goldfinch' and I wish I had listened

We were picking our next book and my friend Sarah, who had already read it, said straight up, 'Just stop when Theo gets to Vegas, trust me.' She said the ending was a letdown and the book lost its steam. I figured she was wrong and I wanted to see it through, so I read the whole 784 pages. Big mistake. The last section felt like a totally different book, full of long, boring thoughts that didn't go anywhere. It took me over a week to push through it and I ended up hating a book I was really into for the first 600 pages. Now our club is meeting on Sunday and I'm the only one who finished it, so I have to talk about the bad parts without spoiling it for everyone else. Has anyone else had a friend give perfect book advice they ignored?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_anthony11d ago

Tell your book club the Vegas advice was wrong, the Amsterdam section is the real slog.

emery29011d ago

Wait, is the Amsterdam part really that bad or did you just hit a boring chapter? Our whole group hated the Vegas stuff, it felt so fake. The Amsterdam section at least had some weird history stuff going on. Maybe you just needed a break from reading.

jakewhite11d ago

Hold up, your friend said to stop in Vegas? Tbh, I thought the Vegas part was the whole problem. That middle part dragged on forever with Theo and Boris just getting high and doing nothing. You're telling me it gets even worse after that? I forced myself through all those empty desert chapters thinking it had to get better. If the last bit in Amsterdam is just more of that, but with art history, I would have lost my mind.