beware reading whiplash

One thing I learned this summer is that going from reading a master artist at the top of his game writing beautiful, sparing, tragic novels to a new author's first book road novel (definitely not the destination but the journey and all the stories you hear along the way) can cause a severe case of reading whiplash.  It was like watching an Olympic-caliber swimmer slicing cleanly through the water and then having the water turned into, I don't know, gelatin or something.  It was SUCH A SLOG.  But the first author does not have any new books for me to read, and I needed to move on to something . . .