Books I've Abandoned

I'm starting a new label today as I'll now be keeping track all those books I've abandoned. It happens more often than anyone knows--I pick up a book, read a bit of it, and put it back down. Now to be fair, sometimes it's not the book's fault. I really think you have to be in the mood for certain books. I think the reason some books are so wildly popular is that you can come to them in pretty much any kind of mood and enjoy them. Others may be just as good but have mental requirements for the reader to be able to sink into them. So please don't think the books that fall under this new label all suck. It may be that I was just finicky (or feeling brain-dead) at the time I picked them up.

There are two books I recently started, then abandoned:

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa- I picked up this book because when researching agents I saw one that said this book was her all-time favorite because it had quirky characters and an element of romance. I came across the title somewhere else too before deciding I really should read it. I had to request it via inter-library loan, which makes me feel wildly guilty about abandoning it, but it just wasn't grabbing me. It's an older book and there was no back cover description to give me some context. Maybe if I had that, it would've helped. (I couldn't figure out which South American country it was set in and was too lazy to Google it and look it up.) Then again, maybe not-- like I said, it did nothing to pull me in.

Arcadia by Lauren Groff- I read about this book in Book Page and was intrigued with the life on a commune storyline. The writing is beautiful--but wasn't enough to keep me turning pages. I didn't feel like I connected to Bit, the child protagonist, nor did I see much of a plot developing. It simply didn't interest me, though I kept trying to push through since the writing was so good. I'd definitely like to read her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, (though I have no idea what it's about) because I did love her writing. Arcadia was just moving too slow for me.

I may pick up both of these books again sometime in the future, but for now, they're getting returned to the library and I've found something that succeeded in getting my attention-- a YA novel that is more up my alley for the time being.