A better choice

I found in the boxes I'm clearing out in the garage a novel about a priest by a Catholic writer; the book had received a lot of praise a few years back. It also got a favorable review in America  - I should have taken that as a warning! 

I started reading it. The style was a little off-putting at first, but I thought I'd get used to it.

Then I came to chapter where the future priest, while still a teen, had sex with two teen girls next door, giving one of them money. They had multiple sexual encounters, stretched over a couple weeks and pages, emptying one of his bank accounts in the process. He also got a venereal disease. He then went to a priest in his parish, who helped to set him up with a doctor to treat the disease, with no mention of the wrongness of what the teen had done.

Disgusted, I closed the book, and put it in the bag of books being donated to the library. No thanks.

Instead, I picked up a copy of My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber that I had also rediscovered out in the garage.

Good choice.

Clear writing, humorous stories, and dealing with Thurber's "youth" - the same period covered in the chapters in the book I stopped reading. 

I had read one of Thurber's stories in this book, "The Night the Bed Fell." previously in some anthology. Still amusing in this second reading.

The book made me want to read more by Thurber. That's a tribute to him.

Pax et bonum