The Silkworm: Not a Review

I wrote most of this short piece a year ago, and it only took me a year to post it. Ironically, it's about a book that took me a year to finish.

This is not a review. This is nothing more than a man writes out his nostalgia.

I first opened Robert Galbraith¹’s The Silkworm last September, and it took me nearly a year to finish. During the time I had read many other books. The Silkworm, on the other hand, progressed but slowly. As a result, this thick book moved with me from one coast of the continent to the other. Almost like an old friend, it was always there for me. I remember when I was in elementary school, finding a good book to read was the happiest thing for me. Knowing there was a good book awaiting at home filled me with an excitement which I couldn't contain. I felt a big void every time I finished a book. Kind of like breaking up I guess. I haven't had a similar feeling for so long, and I miss it a ton. If this is the price of growing up then it's too much a price if I had a say.

The Silkworm didn't have a fast pace you would normally expect from a detective fiction. However I thoroughly enjoyed the characters' daily activities, even when they were mundane, in fact especially when they were mundane. There were many scenes that existed purely for character development, and I couldn’t get enough of them. When reading Harry Potter, I wished there were chapters that were just about their lives in Hogwarts and had nothing to do with the plot. What did they do on a weekend when they were not trying to save the world? Did they steal pumpkin pasties from the kitchen after a late night session even when they didn't need the help from Dobby? Tell me more, please. Maybe the Strike series is a belated fulfillment for those wishes.

Epilogue

I read the next installment in the series when the post was lying around in the drafts folder. From time to time, I almost felt I was reading text from a Harry Potter book, catching a glimpse of my younger self's mind. Thank you, Rowling. Please keep writing.