Sunday, January 25, 2026

Not really a book report: Land of the Blind

I won't number this, because it's (as I say in the heading) not really a book report—because I didn't finish it. Heck, I barely started it.

I love Jess Walter. The various books of his that I've read—most recently the 2025 So Far Gone—have been 100 percent enjoyable. I ordered this book with great anticipation.

So yeah, I was disappointed to start this one and, early on, find myself completely uninterested. 

It's the story of a man who's arrested after he's climbed high on a landmark hotel in Spokane, Washington. As he talks with the interrogating detective, he says he wishes to confess. A murder, it seems.

The book (as far as I can tell) then switches between his confession as he writes it out and the detective's detectiving.

I fell out of the story at the start of his confession, which is (a) written in a tediously formal legalese (he fancies himself a lawyer) and (b) harks back to childhood in excrutiating detail. Excrutiating.

I fell out, and then skipped forward, finally, to the end of the book, where the confessor and the detective find themselves again high on the originating hotel. Both alive. Both, apparently, with stuff to consider. 

I guess I'm patting myself on the back for abandoning a book that just doesn't grab me. So many books, so little time! But I'm sorry this one didn't draw me in. 


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