Quality of Life Report

I don't always read books, sometimes I listen to them. I think I have ADD and therefore have a need to do many things at once. This includes when I am in the car driving. I decided it would be a good time to listen to books, that way I feel I'm accomplishing something.

The last book in my CD player was The Quality of Life Report by Megham Daum. As I looked this book up to hyperlink it I found there are currently 110 copies available beginning at 1 penny. This should clue you in to the quality of this book. Maybe that isn't fair. It is an older book (2004), but it really dragged.

This book is about Lucinda Trout, a 20 something New Yorker who is an on air reporter for "Up Early", a local morning show. As she follows a story on meth addicts she travels to Prairie City, a small town in the plains. Tired of the rat race, enchanted with small town life, she sells her boss on a monthly experiment where she can bring "small town living" to the big city people who are wondering if the are missing out. She proposes to move to Prairie City and produce "quality of life" reports. They give it a try and she makes her move.

This is a "year in the life" book that fell FLAT and felt like it took a year to listen to. Do you know at the end of a really good book, when you are sad that its over and you hope they write a sequel? I never wished for anything less. I kept listening , expecting at any minute to actually start caring about anyone in this book. There was no lack of weighty issues but I never found myself involved. When it ended I felt cheated. I tried to care, I stayed with them through all 9 discs. I listened to all her problems...but remained unmoved and unaffected. The only saving grace...listening to it wasted less of my time than it would've taken to read. On the other hand, if I had started reading it, I probably would've lost interest more quickly and stopped reading by about chapter 2.

On my scale...this was a 1