Not for me

[dolorosa_12]

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 25: Never finished it

There aren't many books that fall into this category, because I'm generally careful about what I read, and try to pick books I'm certain I'll like. So to answer this question, I went to my 'gave up' shelf in Goodreads. In the ten years or so since I've been using the site, I've only added four books to this shelf. I normally just use Goodreads as a reading log, and the star ratings I use to write yearly roundups of the best books I've read, but several in this 'gave up' shelf have brief reviews where I noted why the books didn't work for me. These are as follows:

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness:

It is a rare occurrence that I fail to finish a book, but I realised that I was just reading this one out of a sense of duty. The preceding book in this series, A Discovery of Witches, had made me indescribably angry (for reasons that I will probably go into in a review on my blog), and I could tell from a chapter in that Shadow of the Night was more of the same. This series promises so much, and delivers so little, and strikes me as suffering from a desire on the part of the author to try to be too many things at once. It's historical fiction, but doesn't go into enough detail to satisfy historical fiction aficionados. It's a story about academia, but is filled with glaring inaccuracies about how academic life really functions (a surprising error, considering its author is a full-time academic herself). It's a paranormal fantasy story that suffers from poor world-building. And, most damning of all, it's as if Harkness wanted to write a paranormal romance, but was too uncomfortable to actually include any romance elements. I can't remember the last time I was so deeply disappointed in a series of books.

The Copper Promise by Jen Williams:

I didn't finish reading this book. The first 150 pages read like someone's D & D campaign, and I found all the characters two-dimensional, more like collections of tropes and swords-and-sorcery stereotypes than engaging human beings. It may pick up, but I decided not to waste any more of my time on it.

I feel as if I was a meaner reader back when I took the time to note on Goodreads why I gave up on particular books. These days I just move on.


26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.

Comments

[merit]

I have woefully underused any DNF feature. Alas they still pop up as recommendations sometimes.

I never finished A Discovery of Witches. The plot was tiresome and I couldn't warm to the characters.

[dolorosa_12]

Those books were so, so bad. They were recommended to me because I like vampires, and was, at the time, in academia. And then I tried to read them and realised that they were good at depicting neither vampires nor academia...

[auroracloud]

I must say I'm (mostly) totally merciless at not-finishing books if they don't appeal to me enough to continue. So I've read lots of beginnings of books. (Especially Finnish fiction. There's something about the writing styles popular here that just doesn't work for me at all. Yet I keep trying, because I'd like to read more fiction in my language.) :-P The good thing about this is that I'm more willing to take risks and try out new things than I would be if I felt a need to finish almost everything I've started.

Haven't read either of those books so can't comment on them!

[dolorosa_12]

I'm generally better at screening out the books I'm not going to like before I start reading them, so I rarely fail to finish a book, but I agree with you about being merciless in doing so. If you're not reading for work, I see no point in spending your leisure time slogging through something you're not enjoying.

[bruttimabuoni]

Oh man, I am so with you on the Harkness books. She's a lovely person and very helpful professionally to a couple of friends of mine, but my god, Twilight for Snobs is poor. The wine conoisseurship and the yoga more or less finished me, but like you I made it into volume two before utterly giving up.

I think these days I tend not to start books I have qualms about, rather than abandoning them. Which is a terrible vice too, considering the depth of my To Read shelves.

[dolorosa_12]

Ahahahahah, 'Twilight for Snobs' is such a perfect description. Those books are so, so bad, and what always baffled me was how woefully wrong she was when it came to depicting academia — because she's a humanities academic! And yet her character never seemed to read emails, spend time worrying about administrative work, and seemed to be able to just rock up in Oxford without any preparation and spend her time however she liked. It was bizarre!

I, like you, try to screen out books I'm unlikely to enjoy, so it's rare that I don't finish something these days.

[scripsi]

I wanted to like A Discovery of Witches but it increasingly only annoyed me. I did read the second book, but I didn't like it one bit. Never picked up the third... I did try the TV-series, but it bored me to tears within 15 minutes.

[dolorosa_12]

It really is just dismally bad, isn't it?

[scripsi]

Oh yes! I like the concept, but not the execution.