50 Books in a Year: Book #28 Ragtime

          So, I've been meaning to read Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow for about two years now. From the moment that I realized that Ragtime the Musical was based on a book, a book, that from what I understand is out of time and hard to follow. It's suppose to follow the lives of three families (a white upper middle-class family, a Jewish immigrant family and a poor black family) as they struggle with the progressive era.
          I've also read that this is the first book that is the first of its kind in the sense that Doctorow is putting his characters inside the first 20 years of the 20th century and, includes factional information within the lives of his characters. Most of his fictional characters don't have names and are called by their family station there's Mother, Father, Tateh and so forth depending on which family.
          It is a little dry so far, but I've already met Harry Houdini and a murderer, I'm looking forward to getting to the meat of the action, of course, knowing that there is no meat (or, that it's all meaty and worth my attention?) and that these characters go in and out of time in the Progressive Era teaching me what it was like to be an American so I can appreciate this concept as a Post-Modern American, way past the Progressive Era, and not waste any of the precious time I have.
          I miss the music.