Turns out I'm not the only one who gets lost in Brooklyn

I have been peer-pressured into reading A Winter's Tale. 

One of my work friends strongly suggested that I might like this book. Furthermore, there are like a million reviewers on Amazon chortling about how this book changed their lives. This is high praise even if some of the reviews are straight out of an "How to get someone to ok-Boomer you" playbook. 

Ok, Boomer.

So people love this book, but big downside!! A Winter's Tale is a long-ass book! And if the lengthy nature of this beast wasn't enough of a reason to abort, my bookclub selected the Dressmakers of Auschwitz to read this month. Which is also a long-ass book. 

So you might be able to see why, with great trepidation, I tiptoed into the Kindle Store to download the sample. It was like an out of body experience when I did this. The whole time I couldn't believe what my fingers where clicking on. Why am I doing this?!? I asked myself. I'm already reading four books and some of them on a deadline. Book Club meets in three short weeks.

"But you're going on vacation and clearly you will read a lot of vacation," the shadows whispered in my ears. 

"But we're going with friends and pretty much have plans booked all day and all night the entire time we'll be away!"

"You'll find the time," the shadows countered in their silky click-bait voices.

I convinced myself that I would just read the Kindle sample and then make the choice to continue. And probably it'd be a no go. Not to brag, but I'm kind of a little famous for downloading Kindle samples and then abandoning them. Half my Kindle library is books I did not actually buy or read. I'm picky and my attention span is short, what can I say?

After the Winter's Tale sample downloaded, I discovered some good news/bad news. The Winter's Tale book is so damn long, the "10% of the book" Kindle sample is like 175 pages. 

I tossed the Dressmakers of Auschwitz to the side and dug in. I ran across this paragraph:

excerpt from A Winter's Tale about
everybody getting lost in Brooklyn.

"Are they in Brooklyn? I don't know Brooklyn. No one does really. People always go there and never come back."

OMG. This resonates. I am lost 99.5% of the time in Brooklyn. I disembark the train and I swear magnetic north switches sides of the court like it's the middle of a tennis game.

Immediately I text Jamie and let her know that I'm not the only one with a Brooklyn problem. She taps the little "ha ha" comment thingie on iMessage. This is not a ringing endorsement of my new excuse for being late for Brooklyn-based events while wandering around streets of brownstones and shoppes and five-way intersections that all look exactly the same.

So anyway, I'll let you know if I make it past the sample.