A History of Fear

The main character was so insufferable that I genuinely can't tell if this book was dragging on for too long or if my exposure to him made every page feel 3x longer than it actually was.

It kind of works for this book, though! The dude's a pedantic narcissist with a tenuous grasp on reality, so seeing that reflected in the experience of reading the dude's LITERAL memoir helped me stay sane.

That being said, the book is well written, and it does a fine job of planting the right seeds at the right moments narratively—I just wish getting to the payoff wasn't so painful! I'd forgotten why I put this book down last year after getting through 20% of it; but I don't entirely regret trudging through it this time. It was a pretty good read, would recommend it to people that like themes of religious abuse and unreliable/unlikable narrators.