Opportunity Cost

One of the biggest chafes in all of reading is the book that is just good enough to prevent you from putting it down. Its like when you are talking to someone attractive and thinking "Maybe I'll get some play tonight," when the smart part of your brain is saying "Dude, give it up, you're not getting any play tonight, go home." But, being the jackass you are, you stay anyway.

Such it was with Boris Akunin's Turkish Gambit. Set during the 1877 Russo Turkish War, the novel gives us Varya, a wanna be feminist, who serves as a romantic Watson figure for hero Erast Fandorin. She stands there being astounded by his wise ways and how he manages to uncover the plot to break Russian power. I'm annoyed because I really liked the Fandorin character in Murder on the Leviathan.

It's not really a bad book, but as I said, it is merely decent, and in a world with too many great books to ever read, it is a poor move to read a decent book. Much as it is to look for Aphrodite on a barstool.