abandoned books part 2

[sophia_sol]

Time for my second annual round-up of books I started reading but abandoned before the end! With thoughts of varying lengths to go with each one.


1001 Nights vol. 1 translated by Richard Burton

When I started reading it I just wasn't in the mood. I'm sure I'll get back around to it someday.



Magebane, by Lee Arthur Chane

Started reading this but you know, I am just so over your standard fantasy novel tropes thing. Also apparently (according to the online reviews) the only main female character is not great. So. Skipping this.



D&D Essentials DM Handbook

If my d&d group ever starts back up again I will pick this back up and finish reading it to help me get a better handle on how the whole system works.



Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle, by Georgette Heyer

I've read this before and all I remembered was that I wasn't super into it and I couldn't recall why. And after skygiants said it was one of her fave Heyers I decided to reread and see if my opinion had changed in the intervening years. I read the first half of it, but then I got to a part that gave me a sudden presentiment about where the plot was going and I went and looked up the plot summary on wikipedia. And YEP there's my problem: the plot of the book revolves a little too thoroughly around embarrassing misunderstandings and I can't handle it. Which is too bad, because the first half of the book is great fun! DAMMIT I hate my embarrassment squick.



Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus by Ched Myers

"I'M IN LOVE" is all my note to myself in my books-read document says. I do want to finish this book at some point, because it's fabulous! It's just that it's long and dense and takes actual mental energy to read so uh I kept on putting it aside for other books. But I'll be back for you someday, Binding The Strong Man!



A Glove Shop in Vienna, by Eva Ibbotson

Warning for brief discussion of nonconsensual sex.

urghhhh gave up a few stories in because WOW NO. The first story ("Vicky and the Christmas Angels") is a silly thing about a young girl at christmas-time feeling like she's growing up because she's learned that it's not the christmas angel but her family that does the tree and the presents, but whatever, the story's forgivable.

But then the second story ("Doushenka") is just a WORLD OF NO. It's about a man who's infatuated with Russia, goes there on a visit, falls in love with a ballet girl and wistfully imagines staying in Russia with her and making a life together, then goes home to his wife who's always refusing to have sex with him and starts insisting that she not say no, and the whole thing is treated as ROMANTIC AND SAD that he couldn't have the life he'd dreamed of in Russia and that he's stuck with his terrible wife. EVA IBBOTSON WHY.



The Reverse of the Medal, by Patrick O'Brian

aaaaaahhhhhh TOO STRESSFUL, Aubrey making terrible life decisions on land and the resulting consequences thereof, I CANNOT HANDLE IT. I thoroughly intend to finish this book at some point (hopefullysoon???) because PATRICK O'BRIAN but in the meantime I am just like NOPE.



Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson

I was just terribly bored and not getting any more intrigued as I kept reading. I gave the book lots of time, remembering that for Sanderson's Warbreaker it took me till I was a fair ways in to start getting hooked, but nope, I never got hooked. And I didn't intend to abandon it? But I just never picked it back up again and never felt the loss.



Enchanted, by Alethea Kontis

idk, just not very into it. I read the first maybe 50 pages or so and was mostly just bored so I gave myself permission to not keep reading it.



Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley

It was aspirational of me to read it because one of the earliest sff novels and written by a teenage girl, but reviewing the plot summary when I was a few pages into the book, I really don't think this book is for me.



The Green Hero: Early Adventures of Finn MacCool, by Bernard Evslin

Welp, when the introduction has an anecdote that thoughtlessly sexist (OH NO the librarian is so hot and also like half his age, how is he supposed to pay attention to his research???), I'm not reading the book. I probably would have continued anyways if it was a collection of traditional stories merely edited/collected by the dude, but no, looks like these are retold stories, so I don't feel any need to keep reading to find out how sexist his stories are.



Requiem, by Frances Itani

LOLNOPE. My series of texts to Essie as I read the first couple dozen pages:

- Time to start reading my depressing book club book...
- Oh great, the book starts with a recently dead wife and a decision to make a solitary cross country road trip. CAN WE SAY LITERARY FICTION
- Also daddy issues.
- He just had a dream about his dead wife and now is staring out the window and angsting
- I don't know if I can make myself read this whole book
- On a minor plus side, the author is canadian and the book uses Canadian spellings for words
- The mc is also an artist! Who's been experiencing the art equivalent of writer's block!
- ...Sorry, you probably don't need all these updates about how literary this book is
- Also he's Japanese and the first piece of his art described involves tentacles. *headdesk* of course it does
[Essie asked what race the author is]
- White, married to a Japanese man
- Ooh, one of the MC's acquaintances is currently in a "phase" of interest in all things Japanese that began with dreams of geishas...
- Also the MC is being metaphorically haunted by his dead wife
- Oh no, I'm pretty sure the entire plot of this novel is going to be the mc driving his car and angsting
- I'm not one for plot, god knows, but this is outside of enough
- I'm one hundred percent positive that rivers are going to be ~symbolically important throughout the book
- "Basil [the dog] sends a sympathetic noise in my direction, a noise that sounds like a humpback whale, searching for a soulmate underwater." THIS IS THE LEVEL OF PRETENTIOUS TERRIBLENESS I'M DEALING WITH

Here's the problem with writing a terrible review of a book like this: it's a book about a major serious issue that too often gets swept under the rug (Canadian internment camps of Japanese people in WWII) and that's so important! And sometimes it feels like you're not allowed to be super judgy about books like that. But the thing is, a book being about an important issue doesn't preclude it also being a terrible book.

I can't state outright that this book has no redeeming qualities, because I didn't get far enough in to reach any of the more detailed flashbacks on the subject of the internment camps. But it certainly has few enough redeeming qualities that I do not have the strength to continue reading. It's just so...so literary in the most unfortunate senses of that word, with bonus hints of orientalist attitudes wrt Japanese people. So I have zero interest in reading further.

(Yes I proceeded to drop out of the book club I was reading this for. Really what I need is a book club of people interested in reading sff and 19th century literature, and that's a LOT harder to find than book clubs that read literary fiction.)

Comments

[skygiants]

I had to read Frankenstein THREE TIMES for class. The first time I hated it; the second time I still hated it; the third time I had been hating it for so long that I flipped my brain around and sort of ... began to love it ...? My relationship with Frankenstein is weird.

[sophia_sol]

I....I know that feel. My feels about The Great Gatsby are kind of similar. I HAVE A LOT OF GREAT GATSBY FEELS, I love to talk about how much I hate it ENTIRELY TO MUCH for me to be sanguine that my feelings are in fact as negative as I profess. I STILL MAINTAIN THAT I HATE IT THOUGH. (although I've never read it for a third time, so who knows what will happen in the future?)

[pauraque]

a book being about an important issue doesn't preclude it also being a terrible book.

Yep yep yep. When I was doing the 50books_poc challenge, one of the things that happened is I became aware of my squeamishness about judging books that deal with important issues (as many of the books I chose to read did), and then in the course of reading so many of them that were good and bad, I more or less got over it. Since I knew I liked the ones that were well written, I freed myself of the All About Me angsting over whether it made me a bad person to dislike the badly written ones.

Because yeah. Searching for a soulmate underwater. Man. o_O

Anyway, I always really enjoy your book posts even though I often don't have anything to add, but I do read them all and hope you continue them!

[sophia_sol]

Yeah. Some books are just badly written, no matter the topic, and it is okay to not like them! It's hard though. And I...I don't think I want to read a whole bunch of books about Important Issues in one go to help myself get over it, because books where the focus is on important issues are not the books I tend to enjoy reading. I'm much happier reading a book that has important issues happening around the edges of a genuinely interesting story, instead of focusing on the issues.

Thanks for letting me know you enjoy my book posts - that's always so good to hear! And I don't anticipate stopping ANY TIME SOON. (or ever, hopefully!)

[pauraque]

I'm much happier reading a book that has important issues happening around the edges of a genuinely interesting story, instead of focusing on the issues.

I think some of my favorite books are those that manage to weave the "important issues" into the story so well that it doesn't feel issue-laden. It's just a fascinating story that happens to involve these things. I like it when an author ties those elements together really smoothly so that they don't feel mutually exclusive, though it's certainly not every author who can pull it off!

Of course I'm in no way saying you should read different books or like what I like, just musing about what speaks to me personally. :)

[sophia_sol]

yes, exactly! And going back and looking at my list of books I read this year, I DID read and thoroughly enjoy a number of books with serious issues, including some where the serious issue was the most prominent thing in the story - the difference being that all of those books were well-written

oh - yes, of course, I certainly understood you weren't saying what I should read. :)

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhh, if you can make it to the end of Reverse of the Medal it's so worth it! Not just because it and the rest of the series is good, but because a thing happens at the end that is BEAUTIFUL.

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Oh oh oh PLEASE TELL ME MORE, it is much more likely I'll be able to make it through if I know what I am working towards!

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay! I was being vague because I don't remember how you feel about spoilers.

SPOILERS

So Aubrey is convicted and sentenced to spend time in the pillory. The people who set him up send their goons to egg him or whatever, but his loyal sailors make them leave, and then actually the entire crowd is all his own crews and people who know them and people who have heard of him and they all cheer for him and throw their caps when he is put in.

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Awwww that is SO GREAT <3 thanks for sharing!

(my feelings about spoilers: I actively prefer to be spoiled whenever possible)