The Nix by Nathan Hill (2016) and the importance of saying "this book is going nowhere with interest"

Very rarely does a book retain the ability to be interesting way before it wears out its welcome. The Nix keeps on going well into the night much like a library patron with just one last question ten minutes after you close. You want it to go, need it to be done, but okay, why not?

    Our main character has a problem: he sucks. His follow up novel to his first critical success is decades overdue. The job he got based on that first novel, teaching English, is being threatened by a plagiarizing student and his own "video game playing in the office" apathy. His solution comes when his mother who abandoned him years ago becomes a national obsession when she throws rocks at a controversial politician. If he can get her to spill her secrets for a tell-all book, he can get his life back on track.

    Or he can spin his wheels for a long time and learn the history of his mom and her friends and her activism. Plus his online gaming group. The book is kinda sprawling and loaded with wry observations about education and the ghosts of our past.

    Well worth the read.