Despite reviewing for over seven years, I’m still not at the “so many books. So little time” level. For one, as you know – no day job. LOTS more time for reading when you’re not at work, going to work, coming home from work, too tired from work to read. And while last month was a month in which words were HARD, and I do have days when I cannot concentrate, I still always read and always welcome that “thump” at the front door. We got a stand and it’s starting to work, but on “St Martin’s Mondays”, we still get books on the pavement because a( they haven’t quite caught on (right a sign would work if it didn’t blow away, get wet, etc. And they don’t read signs anyway. No one who delivers seems to read the sign that says “don’t leave stuff here” or the other one on the other door that says “don’t put stuff in front of the door”. Yesterday brought books from 3 different sources. Hurray?! You’d think.

Oh man. I tried but before I could even start, this one was out because it’s hyper-cozy, that one is a thriller that didn’t thrill me in ARC. THIS one was about a psychopath and I’ve just decided life is too damn short to waste my tame saying “this one could be different” when it’s something that makes my skin crawl THAT much. THAT one looked okay til I kept going and realized it was a crazed stalker on an island or something like it.

The one I picked up to try was by a complete unknown and so sure, let’s try it. We like that by page 7 one character was seen using a wheelchair. NOT a big deal at all, but “cool, thanks for that”. But it was a struggle and I kept wondering “am I really going to pick this book up again? And I did, but I wasn’t really thrilled about it but new authors, well, ya gotta try. For one thing, how else do you find new authors, right? And it had plot points of interest to me.

Until this morning. And I don’t know – was I looking to drop the damn book and would I have “forgiven” such a gaffe in a book I liked more or was by someone I respected and/or liked? I think not. I think this was a full out stopper for me. But what had me stopped? Remember the wheelchair? Yeah.

We all have them, don’t we? The knowledge that X can’t happen, Y doesn’t work. We ignore lots of them. As ¾ of Sad Anoraks discussed over brunch this weekend, that whole “do you use Santa Barbara or create Santa Teresa?” issue is always fascinating and can be a headache for the author who uses her real home city only to be told there isn’t an Exxon station on the southwest corner of THAT intersection or that it doesn’t take 35 minutes to go from 4th Avenue to 3rd Avenue. WhatEVER. But yeah, as you know, disability stuff, wheelchair stuff, getting deafness or MS or spinal cord stuff wrong gets up my nose (that’s the expression, right?)

On page seven, we know that this is a motorized wheelchair. We are told it is. So on page 82 we simply hit the wall when she gets into the passenger seat, he folds up the chair and puts it in the trunk.

We don’t know why she uses a power chair. That’s not the stopper, though most or at least many of well, us (gonna be soon) who use those can’t transfer well into a car seat. Many can of course. However, the reason many folks use power chairs is that relying on one’s upper body is an issue. Balance, strength, paralysis, numbness, stiffness, pain can complicate movement. But more to the point, you don’t simply fold up a motorized wheelchair and pop it in the trunk. Yes there are foldable power chairs; I’ve been educating myself on the range of chairs available. But most do not FOLD. And most cannot fit in a car trunk. Hell, my SCOOTER can’t fit in a car trunk. If you take off the seat, bend down the steering column and take out the spare and the other stuff, maybe. Yeah, we’ve done it. If you fit the seat in the back seat. Usually. Yeah, it works in lots of vans. When there are 2 people to do it, to lift it UP and shove it THIS way and then THAT. But he’s driving a car, says so and seems somewhere to have forgotten in the 75 intervening pages, that she uses a motorized wheelchair. Or did not do the research he shoulda. At any rate. I stopped reading.

I was looking for an excuse, wasn’t I? I think so, since this book did not grab me. But I would have tried struggling on, past the horrid whiny wife, and the “let’s start up” girlfriend from the past and the revolting racist (nothing hugely original here) but I grabbed on almost thankfully to this stopper.

Do you have stoppers? Are there things you simply will not read past? Are there degrees for you – that depending on the author or how egregious the error you can forgive some? If you know that it would take very specialized knowledge do you cut more slack or do you just stop believing when you hit the wall of Getting it Wrong.


*Extra credit if you know the source of our "mood" line