Why Am I Reading Of Human Bondage?

I first read Of Human Bondage when I was...Actually, I can't remember when I read Of Human Bondage the first time.  It didn't really stick with me.  What I recalled about the book was (SPOILER ALERT!):

• Philip, the protagonist, has a club foot.
• Philip goes to Paris to become a painter.
• While there, this chick falls in love with him, but he hates her because she's gross and eats the crust of her brie instead of cutting it off. (I didn't know you were supposed to cut it off.  I like the crust of the brie.)
• She subsequently commits suicide.
• Philip falls in love with some hussy named Mildred.
• Mildred's hair was "flaxen", a word I needed to look up in the dictionary because I read the book before the advent of the internet.
• Ultimately, Philip becomes a doctor and marries some chick he knocks up.

The book was so useless to me that it just became a string of facts.  I didn't remember if I liked the writing.  I couldn't remember if I read it in the subway or the park.  I couldn't even remember if I had to read it for a class (I might have).

Then last November I was sitting in the break room at work and I mentioned that thing about the brie.  I couldn't remember how it went, so I downloaded the (free) eBook and tried to find it.  I couldn't.  I ended up having to read the stupid book.

What struck me about the book this second time around, was that Philip was gay.  I don't remember him being gay.  Then again, maybe he wasn't gay; maybe men were just closer and more intimate in the early part of the 20th century than they are now.  And of course W. Somerset Maugham was bi, so maybe Philip was bi.

In any case, Philip was totally enraptured with Hayward in Germany and didn't give a flying fig about the womenfolk. 

By the time Christmas rolled around, I still hadn't gotten to that passage about the brie, mostly due to the fact that I only read the eBook during lunch at work.   I decided to find my physical copy of the book at my parents' place and start reading it outside of my lunch hour.

It's March and I've finally found the stupid passage I was looking for.  The reason I couldn't find it by doing a search is that Fanny Price eats the crust off her camembert not her brie.  I was going to keep reading to the end, but then it occurred to me that this book is boring me to bits.  I don't like Philip and I don't care what happens to him.  I'm not emotionally invested in it at all.  It's leaving me cold.  This is why I can't remember reading it the first time: it wasn't because I was young and immature, it was because the book didn't speak to me at all.

Even the realization that Philip may be a bi man living in a very queer-unfriendly time doesn't make it any more engaging.

Nope.  I think I'm gonna just stop where I am and move on to another book.  Actually, I have moved on already.  I'm onto E.M. Forster's Maurice.  If I'm gonna do olden days gay, I might as well do it right.