23 February 2012

The Unreadable Book


Did you every have a book that you just couldn’t read?  Not that it was written in a foreign language, or even an old version of English, but still it was unreadable?  Sometimes you read something that you just don’t like at all, and sometimes there is no good reason.  It’s as if you feel like you should be enjoying the book, but you’re not.

I run across books like this every once in a while.  They are usually a gift, or even something that I read the back of and felt was right up my alley.  Then I get into the book and its just meh.  I feel like it’s a waste to not finish the book, but find myself picking it up and putting it down every time I see another book I like the sound of.  This creates the problem that when I do pick it up again I don’t remember everything t hat had been going on.  I then finish another 50 pages and then replace it with another book.  This can go on for ages.

Right now I’m reading one of these.  It’s called Legacy by Susan Kay.  This is exactly the type of book that I typically love.  A narrative history.  I have a hunch that reason I’m struggling with this book is that it’s a bit too manufactured.  As much as we know about Queen Elizabeth, I don’t think we know enough to hear her inner monologue.  However, this hasn’t bothered me in other similar books.

As of right now I’m about 300 pages in. I know that I’ll finish it, eventually.

Does anyone else ever have this problem? 

2 comments:

  1. Oh yes and last year I finally made a decision - if I'm not enjoying a book I'm not going to waste my time struggling on with it. I managed to do this with 3 books and it was actually quite liberating to unburden myself of something that was causing me such disatisfaction.

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  2. That's much better than me. I feel like the book is daring me to give up and I can't let a bunch of paper show me up!

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