We’ve all been there: too many books, too little time. At any given time, I have about a dozen library books stacked up. And new books arrive almost every day from AMAZON via UPS. So at the certain point, I give up on some books because of the press of due dates or a change in interest. Here are the books I’ve returned to my local public library unread. Did I make a mistake? Was I too hasty? What books have you given up on?
Never heard of the first one and haven’t read Chelsea Cain. Tried to read Da Vinci Code when it came out but couldn’t get past a couple chapters. Thought it too poorly written to bother with.
Steve, I’ve read a couple of Dan Brown books. But the movies are better.
Steve’s comment could be mine, almost word for word. I thought Da Vinci was so badly written I didn’t get past 25 pages.
What have I given up on? A lot, obviously. Sometimes it’s because like George I just have too many other books at hand. Sometimes the book is 500 pages or more and it would mean not having time to read two other books. And too often either the book just doesn’t grab me, I’m not in the mood at that moment or …some other indefinable reason makes me give up on it.
Recently? GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn. I know everyone loves it and it’s a huge bestseller but the characters left me cold and uninterested and I wasn’t in the mood to give it a longer chance. Book 5 in the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley. I wasn’t in the mood at the time. Ditto for the next Billy Boyle book by James Benn.
Jeff, you and I and Steve are pretty much in agreement: too many books, too little time.
Ditto for DaVInci and yet I know reasonable bright people who love them. I return most of the books I take out actually. I am far too greedy. And I live two blocks from the library so it makes a nice walk every day. I am sure they think I am bonkers in there.
Patti, all the librarians know me by name. I’m at the North Tonawanda Public Library three or four times a week.
I gave up on GONE GIRL, too, Jeff. After about 30 pages, I thought, “Who cares?”
Bill, I gave up on GONE GIRL, too. But there’s a movie in works.
I have a 50-page rule: If a book hasn’t grabbed me by page 50, I have to move on–life’s too short and there are so many more books to read. I just gave up on Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang. I’m sure it’s a worthy book, but it just didn’t do anything for me.
George, I wouldn’t have even bothered with the Dan Brown. I wouldn’t waste the time it would take to read 50 pages on that drek!
Deb, I picked up INFERNO just because it was there at the library (I do that a lot). On second thought, when I get home, I asked myself, “What were you thinking?” I, too, follow that 50-page rule, too.
I didn’t like Gone Girl, but I read it, so I guess there was something there that kept me reading. However, anyone who reads a lot of mysteries will guess the big plot twist way before it happens, so I came up with my own tag line for it: A thriller for people who don’t read many thrillers.
Deb, Dan Brown writes books for people who seldom read books.
George, that is 100% correct. People who read a handful of books a year are – I’m willing to bet – the bulk of Dan Brown’s readers. My mother used to pick her books off the bestseller list, then would call me with her discoveries (“have you ever read this guy Michael Connelly?”). She read a lot more than the average Brown reader but she read him because he was a best seller.
Deb is on target. It’s like watching some of the television mystery shows and picking out the murderer in the first ten minutes. It may be a shock to the run of the mill viewer but an experienced mystery reader will get it right away. In most cases, Agatha Christie did it 70 years before.
Sadly, Jeff, I know a dozen people who only read a couple books a year—mostly when they’re on vacation. And, like your Mom, readers like that tend to choose “best sellers.” Everyone who reads this blog is a more eclectic reader than that.
Along with most of the other blog contributors, I’m not a fan of Dan Brown. I’m generally suspicious of books that are barnacles on the bestseller lists. Often the biggest fans are folks who only read on vacations and aren’t aware of all the great books out there. One of my sisters buys most of her books from the racks at the end of the grocery checkout – not a huge selection.
One book I finally gave up on was The Family Fang. It seemed like my kind of book. I tried it repeatedly but never could get into it.
Beth, I know that feeling. I’ve tried reading Proust’s SWAN’S WAY three times. I might give it one more try, but not this summer.
Unintentionally, I’ve been insulted by most of the posters here. I guess I’m a dumbbell, an infrequent reader who enjoys poorly written books. But wait…the Dan Brown books are movies. I’m not concerned about the quality of writing, if I were, I’d be reading Library of America volumes – literature – instead of genre fiction. The thing is, I enjoy Dan Brown’s books. Sure there are weaknesses, coincidences, over-the-top events, but that’s true in a great many books. I recall in the apa many people disliked, to whatever degree, Da Vinci Code. I listened to it on audio book and thought it was fun. I read Angels and Demons and Deception Point and enjoyed them too. Not every Gold Medal mystery was a masterpiece, and neither are these, but they run like a movie and I just whip through them that way. They make a nice break from mystery-science fiction-fantasy, and they only come around every few years, so why not? I haven’t gotten around to the previous book, The Lost Symbol but that’s because I had too much else to read, not because I dislike Brown’s books.
I recently gave up on a book about the Civil War, in which I have only a mild interest, because the book was just too scholarly to be enjoyable.
Rick, I read and enjoyed ANGELS & DEMONS. I read THE DA VINCI CODE and thought if I were ever to visit Rome, I’d check out all the sites Dan Brown uses to hide his clues. I hadn’t found time to read INFERNO and the library wanted it back–plenty of people requesting it–so I returned it. Sometimes, you have to be in the mood to really enjoy books like Dan Brown’s.
George, I never give up on books. I might put them away for something else but
I always go back and finish reading them; in recent memory, books like JUDE THE OBSCURE and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. I have lined up Brown”s DECEPTION POINT for reading next.
Prashant, I had your attitude toward books when I was younger. But now, there are just too many books to read and too little time.
I recently read a horrible entry in a Western series and wish I hadn’t, but I rarely give up on a book once I start. This intransigence has been my downfall at some slot machines. It’s gotta get better, I tell myself. Liar!
Bob, I was just like you: determined and stead-fast. I used to finish every book I started. But after I’d been burned a few dozen times, I decided to bail-out of any book that couldn’t hold my interest and go on to the next book. I have thousands of “next” books.
I swore off Dan Brown after reading his first four books. I started with Da Vinci Code and worked backwards. As Richard said, the poor writing didn’t bother me that much. It was coming to realize that he was telling the same story over and over, with slight variations, that convinced me. When I stared the fourth, actually his first published, I determined to pick the villain driving the action as early as possible based on the previous three. Page twenty-five I had mu culprit and, lo and behold, I was correct.
Never again will I read Dan Brown. Why should I. I’ve already read he story four times.
Randy, I had the same feeling as I read Dan Brown. He has a winning formula and he’s sticking to it!
Geez, Rick, why pretend that “genre” books aren’t often as well-written as anything else (as well as that nothing escapes genre, very much including everything in the Library of America). There are enough idiots who don’t know excrement from wild honey who will make that argument for you, who will insist (for instance) that Bret Easton Ellis is 1) a brilliant writer and 2) not just cribbing clumsily from his betters among crime fiction and novels of manners writers. They are incorrect, but common.
The last one which utterly defeated me past about page fifty, if quite that far, was THE LOVELY BONES. Never did get past page 100 of INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE all those years ago, and surprised myself by slogging along that far (thinking of clumsy prose that definitely did not flow cinematically)…likewise, even as a youngster, I started skipping around and skimming in the likes of Harold Robbins’s THE BETSY rather quickly.