Abandoned: The Book Thief

I heard so much hype about Markus Zusak's The Book Thief that I wanted to check it out. And when I found it at the library I saw the book was awarded many awards and received much praise--the anticipation was mounting. I began reading it aloud to Isaac and a couple chapters in he confessed he wasn't into it. I wasn't either, but kept looking at the paragraph-long list of honors and awards and was determined to continue. I got to page 114 before calling it quits. I hadn't truly connected with any characters and I found the prose style unskilled, even annoying. I'm sure the novel tells a good story, but I could not press through the book because of the way it was told. I'd love to see a film adaptation someday, but am not interested in continuing the book.

five books abandoned in a single night

The problem with reading a book like The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is that it's hard to find a book to follow. I was in this crazy mindset and it was tough to find something to match it. Here are the five books I tried reading after I finished it...

An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy- A friend of mine is reading this for her book club that I'd like to participate in from afar. I enjoyed Roy's writing and loved that the book begins with a who's who list of characters, but I couldn't get into it, but I'm going to give it another shot after the Mara Dyer dust has settled... So I may be blogging about this again in the near future.

A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer Dubois- Again the writing was good, but I just wasn't in the right mindset for this one. I will probably try picking this one up again some day, but who knows when. I had picked it up (knowing nothing about it) solely because I liked the title. But the praise listed on the book does make me think it might be worth reading.

The Train of Small Mercies by David Rowell- This book's spine kind of jumped out at me and the front cover includes praise by Ann Patchett, whom I love. Unfortunately, it didn't do anything for me and is going right back to the library, where I may never check it out again. The writing was decent, but nothing about it pulled me in.

Boy Minus Girl by Richard Uhlig- I thought for sure a YA book would help cure my inability to read anything. It was a YA book that got me into this mess, perhaps only another YA book would dig me out. But this book fell flat.

Say You're One of Them by Uwen Akpan- I figured short stories might help, since I was having trouble committing to a whole novel. I think this collection was too topic-heavy though for my state of mind. I'll definitely be reading this sometime in the future because there is real beauty in his writing, but not now.

It was indeed a collection of short stories that I was able to settle into. I'll be writing about it soon.

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.