An encounter with an annoying noun

I had picked up a couple of "regular" fiction books at the public library, and thought I would read one of them in between some mysteries.

The first one I picked up off the pile was Susan Kelly’s The Last of Something. It’s a fairly typical plot: four old friends, now married, with various levels of successes and problems in their lives, are getting together for their annual reunion. It’s the first time in several years all of them can attend. Early on, as we’re getting to know the players, the narrator notes that “I’ve a prescience of loss” (3). I wasn’t sure which bugged me more: the use of “I’ve” or the use of “prescience.” I wasn’t being grabbed by the narrator anyway, so I put it in my return to library tote bag.

I then grabbed Hilma Wolitzer’s Summer Reading. It’s the other typical plot of women’s fiction: a group of women from different backgrounds are brought together, in this case for a book club. Someone on one of my mysteryfiction online groups had tried to read it but dismissed it as too “highbrow” (the book club’s first read is Madame Bovary). I got toward the end of the first chapter, wasn’t sure I cared for the narrator, but was willing to go on, when I became quite annoyed upon reading the last sentence, in which the narrator notes feeling “a shivery thrill of prescience” (10).

Close book gently. Look for the back to the library tote bag. Insert bag into tote. Go grab another book off the shelf.

Although I had more than a prescient feeling that these two books weren’t for me, I feel so incredibly grateful that I was able to find them at public libraries. I’ve been a fan of libraries since I was quite young, and I don’t know how I would be able to survive financially without being able to score most of my reading material from libraries. I feel really sorry for people who don’t have good access to libraries (or access to good libraries).