I used to not talk about books I didn't finish because I didn't think it's worth mentioning but now I think it's a good way to sort of find out what I don't like in books. Or just to share the hatred, outrage or the sometimes snarky discontent. I'm always interested in what makes a reader put down a book.
So maybe I shouldn't have chosen these books to read but once in a while, I go a little mad and decided to read outside my comfort zone so this is the result.
Here are a few of my unfinished reads lately.01 - Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine MackWhat's it about: a book tour, arrogant authors, details of what people are eating and drinking, vacation-like sceneries, maybe a murder
Quit at: 25% or more
My thoughts: Let's explore the reasons why I quit reading this book: (1) The annoying narrator/main character. Maybe I don't like rich, successful women who don't have problems but decided they do because being rich and successful apparently is a problem. So she is being blackmailed but it sounds like she could have stopped it by paying a lot of lawyer fees but she prefers to pay her blackmailer instead.
Maybe her attempt to sound quirky, knowledgeable, sincere, kind, chic, modern, and even pitiful, annoyed me. I think she sounds like a teenager pretending to be an adult. The way she uses the four-letter f word freely makes me wonder if she's trying to sound like she's tough or something. Also, using the word
thick a lot and often to describe someone's hair because every single person she sees and meets have thick hair because goodness, we can't have people with different types of hair.
Maybe this should have been told in the narrator's younger sister's perspective because there is too much of the narrator's thoughts and commentaries and not enough of the actual story. You can say, the narrator is full of herself so much that she spills over the edge and that's why there are footnotes to her thoughts.
(2) Reads like an annotated book with footnotes only you wish that person had withheld their judgement and kept to the facts and not sounded like she's writing to familiar strangers trying to over explain her thoughts. The footnotes sounds like frivolous things an editor would have cut out. Here are a few footnote examples:
I've have always wanted to write that. I'm feeling very prose-y
today.
...yep, I've been saving that one, too.
So we're clear: I'm not plagiarizing. I cited my source twice.
Spoiler alert: It's not going to be fine. Does these footnotes sound like they are worth reading? There are 236 of them while the book is slightly over 340 pages.
(3) The murdered victim is not Conner Smith (I only remember his name because he is mentioned every few seconds). He's a successful and probably professional blackmailer as he blackmailed the main character for 10 years and also he's her ex-boyfriend. They kept hinting he might get murdered but the final victim wasn't him.
The way he is told and described by the main character, he sounds like an arrogant playboy and despite being a detective, he needs the main character's help to find who is supposedly trying to kill him - why? The main character comes off as unwise (or maybe too stupid) to be a sleuth but they said she is because she solved some crime which her books are based on.
(4) The sometimes flowery and sometimes inane writing. Examples:
"...the paintbrush trees reach toward an inky, starless sky." "That first plate of pasta I had yesterday was like a sexual experience." (5) The humor. If there's humor here, I didn't find it. The main character tries to be funny but she just sounds cliche and awkward.
(6) Not much of a mystery, more like a reality show gone bad or a bad romantic comedy trying to fit in a mystery. So much drama around all the characters and yet, still very dull. If they all got killed at once, that might have been better.
(7) The notes, articles or whatever they are called in between the chapters (though there are not a lot of them). I called them extended footnotes. They supposedly told a couple of back stories, promoted the fictional author's books and something else (see below).
(I didn't read this far but I saw this when I was browsing to see if it's worth continuing.) In one of these extended footnotes after chapter 22 titled
Breaking the fourth wall, the fictional author talks to the reader and describes the so-call process of writing a book and a recap of what the reader just read. Basically you can read this part and skipped chapters 1 through 22. The main character being an author must use her author prowess to help the reader read this book. Also, telling the reader it's their turn to solve the mystery annoys me because some of us read so we don't have to solve problems. And there are footnotes with this - why? I suspect there would be more reasons to stop reading if I kept on so I stopped.
02 - A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell #1) by Deanna RaybournWhat's it about: a modern-es arrogant woman and an arrogant man wandering around England and doing a lot of talking, maybe a murder mystery buried somewhere
Quit at: 10% or more
My thoughts: Any time there's a main female character who is so confident and self-righteous, that she thinks everyone, including other women, are beneath her, then, it's a book I don't want to read. The main character has an unknown origin which I just went
meh as there is no reason why her character shouldn't have a known background other than to make her sound mysterious. I read a spoiler of what her background is and I have to laugh because it sounded so unbelievably stupid.
The writing has a romance-like undertone that I don't like. At one point, she was breathless in reply to a simple question even though there was no reason for it.
What? And the murder? Judging from the reviews, it seems the murder was pretty much background noise while the main character and another main male character run around England bickering/bantering/whatever and pretending they are solving a murder but are really just meandering and prolonging who knows what, maybe their would-be romance?
The main character brags about being promiscuous but not in her home town because
she's a lady. What arrogance. Does she really believe people won't gossip about her just because she keeps her habit outside of the country where she resides? It's not like these gentlemen she slept with doesn't travel or perhaps they make some promise not to seek her out because everyone knows all men keep their promises.
Yeah, sure. And also hunting butterflies because
she's a scientist seems like an excuse for her to go aboard and seek out men. I'm not against women fulfilling their desires but what was she trying to say? She wants to be thought of as a proper lady but just in the place she resides?
[I don't believe the next thing I'm talking about is a spoiler as this happen very early in the book but just a warning.] In one scene, when she got home and her house was ransacked and instead of going to the police, she decides to confront the thief who is still in the house. He turned out to be a giant man and almost kidnapped her if not for a gentleman whom she later decided to take up his offer of going away with him to save expenses. She almost got himself kidnapped and then she decided to go off with a stranger - is she so confident in her abilities that she thinks she wouldn't get kidnapped (again) or murdered? Would it be rude to give her the title, intellectual bimbo, which I define as a smart woman who makes dumb decisions. I gave up. It's more enjoyable to read the negative reviews than to read this book.
03 - The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly
What's it about: Y2K, 1999, time travel, middle-grade worries, poverty
Quit at: 45%
My thoughts: It started fine but then it got a bit boring. I guess I'm just not that interested in a kid during the 1999 and in near poverty. It was slow paced and not much happened or perhaps it was because I didn't get to the more exciting parts?
In between chapters there are stuff you read in textbooks about things involving time travel which should have been fun but it was monotonous plus dialogues from people in the future which frankly adds very little interest to what's happening in the main story.
It's ordinary life with hints of time travel and if you don't care about the main character and what's going on with his life, which I don't, it's a boring read. I read a small spoiler which told me I wouldn't like this book if I continued so it really is better to leave it.
04 - Drowning: The rescue of Flight 1421 by T.J. NewmanWhat's it about: plane crash-land into water, rescue, slow-moving human dramas
Quit at: 47%
My thoughts: Once all the exciting stuff happens in the beginning of the book, the boredom level dropped when they go back and reveal some tragic past which slows down the book but then it slowly re-builds up again. The bit about the parents who had lost a child years ago while their other child is on the crashed plane just irritated me because do we need all that depressing past hanging over the story? Supposedly this makes the reader care more about the survivors but for me, I find my concern for these people dropped significantly when I read this past tragedy. The way the story unfolds with coincidences that I knew I would encounter, it becomes less exciting to read.
While reading this, I realize I really prefer watching disaster movies rather than reading them. In the movies, you can easily get over the slow-moving human dramas while in book form, you feel like you're slugging through them. I guess I'm saying I have no patience for this book no matter how fast-paced at times.
Have you unfinished any books lately?
