The great unread

The shortlist of five novels for this year’s Montana fiction
award. Yes. I find that in the course of the past few
months I tried to read four of these books and got no
further than the second chapter at most. They just weren’t
interesting enough or well enough written to make me
want to read on. This is either

(a) an appalling indictment of my lack of literary judgment
(b) an appalling indictment of my lack of literary stamina
(c) a telling reflection on the state of NZ literature

The envelope, please. And the winner is: (b). Memo to self:
must try harder.