Edit-itis

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who suffers from this particular malady? I have a stack of books next to my bed, another in a basket by the couch, and yet another in the bathroom. All of them are perfectly reasonable books, some better than others, but none horrendously written. Yet they all have one thing in common - I've only gotten through a few chapters before giving up.

I usually love reading. But because I'm in the editing stages of two novels, I can't seem to shake this rather serious case of edit-itis. I'll jump into a new novel, excited about the upcoming adventure, but then instead of thinking about the story I'm thinking: "Author intrusion!" "Two pages of narrative summary? Come on! Cut...cut...cut!" "Telling, telling, telling. Show me something!"

It's not that these authors are bad...it's just that my brain can't stop looking for the defects in their writing. And the pleasure has been sucked out of the reading. In fact, I'm getting pretty good at Sudoku, since that's where I usually end up in my brief moments of downtime. J.K. Rowling is the only author I've found so far that I've been able to get through without the disease kicking in.

So I'm curious. Does anyone else suffer from this rather serious malady? Is there any hope? Any suggestions? Any other authors whose writing is immune? Help!