Why Hating The Watchmen Worked for Me

When I recapped the best of my reading for 2009, I mentioned that the biggest disappointment of the year was The Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

I forced myself to slog through to the end, thinking about the praise it has received and continues to receive, yet never really finding anything I particularly liked, not the story, not the art, not the characters, not the ideas. I cannot even be sure what it is that other people like.

I was pleased to come across a column in Salon.com by Laura Miller, called Read a book you think you'll hate in 2010. It made feel it was right just to take the challenge, and to maybe keep a separate year-end entry going: the challenge of the year. (Better than the disappointment of the year, I think.) I have put a permanent link to Laura Miller's wonderful column (mainly bookish) in Best Reading Links.

The marigold wonders nervously:
What should the challenge be for this year? What category would I normally avoid? HMMM. Huge best-sellers? Business-analysis books? Huge business-analysis-type best sellers? Picking a suitable challenge might actually be more challenging than doing the reading.