Started: 4/7/19
Gave up: 4/7/19
This is hard to admit, but I gave up on Dandelion Wine. I love Ray Bradbury, but I couldn’t read this. It’s an ode to small-town life before the Great Depression. Remember when boys were boys and men were men and small towns were great and aren’t little brothers wonderful and gosh, summer lasts forever, and MAYBE if there had been a plot!
Started: 2/18/19
Gave up: 2/22/19
I couldn’t get into this story. It started with so much exposition, and when we finally got into some characters’ heads, I was relieved and then disappointed. It’s slow-moving, and the depiction of an alien race (native to a planet humans settled on) strikes me as vaguely racist, so it’s unpleasant to read. Add to that the abundance of unnecessary commas and I had to walk away.
Started: 2/5/19
Gave up: 2/7/19
This could have been (and might be, to a different reader) an interesting story about belonging and ownership of self and taking action to control your life, but it felt like several stories all muddled together. It starts in a factory with child labor, but it leaves there quickly (and abruptly), with no sign any of that will be revisited. Then it switches to a school, with great details about tiny things that appear to have nothing to do with the plot (but they’re neat). In both settings so far, there are off-hand crude comments involving sexualizing young girls that I found really disturbing. We’re following one main character, but I have no idea what she’s going to do or even what she wants to do. I gave it up.
Started: 2/4/19
Gave up: 2/7/19
This is a horror story set in a store that is identical to Ikea, but isn’t Ikea. The premise is kind of funny, but the novelty wears off quickly. And then the story got actually scary (or scary enough), so I stopped reading it at night, and then I found I didn’t care enough to pick it back up during the day. No ringing endorsement here.
Started: 1/31/19
Gave up: 1/31/19
I picked this one because the author will be at the convention I’m going to in a couple of weeks, but I gave up on it almost immediately. The writing was stilted, formal, and boring, and the characters are all high-elf types with ridiculous names, and I am SO not in the mood. Hard pass.
Started: 1/30/19
Gave up: 1/30/19
I gave up on this one almost immediately. The writing was bad. Very bad. I couldn’t make myself continue, even for a clone story.
Started: 1/23/19
Gave up: 1/25/19
This is the first book in the Craft Sequence. I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t get into the story. I didn’t find the characters particularly interesting, and the pacing was odd, so I wasn’t feeling involved. I gave up after a couple of days of avoidance.
Started: 1/3/19
Gave up: 1/4/19
The dialogue killed me. The story could be good – combination of magic (special abilities, anyway) and space adventures – but the dialogue between every character in the first few chapters is PAINFUL. I quit.
Started: 12/11/18
Gave up: 12/12/18
I have loved (or really liked) everything I’ve read by Octavia Butler, so it pains me to say I gave up on this book. SF vampires = all good, but the main character presents as an 11-year-old. I don’t care that she’s actually in her 50s or whatever (because vampires) – that makes the sex icky and weird. I tried to get past that and kept reading, but then it turned into all exposition, all the time, and I couldn’t care enough to get to the plot.
Started: 11/27/18
Gave up: 12/1/18
Someone visits people before Death does. Could have been good, but there’s no plot (I got a quarter of the way in – nothing) and the main character isn’t interesting enough to carry the book without a sense of purpose to what action there is. Gave it up.
Started: 10/11/18
Gave Up: 10/13/18
I’d been looking forward to reading this – grimdark fantasy series with a mercenary army – but the writing style was impossible. I wasn’t getting any information about the characters, the action scenes were muddled. I couldn’t tell what was happening, who it was happening to, or why I should care. Good reasons to give up reading it.
Started: 10/10/18
Gave Up: 10/11/18
This sounded like fun – the gates of Hell open, demons possess most humans, and the only ones saved are those who make it to cathedrals which are being guarded by the gargoyles who came to life. I couldn’t get into it. The characters didn’t grab me and the dialogue was annoying.
Started: 9/15/18
Gave up: 9/15/18
Started and gave up on the same day. I just wasn’t interested. The characters didn’t feel real, their actions didn’t make sense (for real people), and the plot didn’t get going before I quit. I’ve heard really good things about a different book by this author. Maybe I can get it from the library. It would be interesting to know if her style changed (improved) or if she’s just not for me.
Started: 9/12/18
Gave up: 9/15/18
The premise is interesting, but the explanations were mind-numbing. Most books explain the necessary future tech within the plot of the book, but here, we’re getting some of it that way and some of it in footnotes. Usually, I love footnotes in novels, but that’s because usually, footnotes in novels are amusing. These were dry. So dry. And filled with information that explained stuff characters mentioned but did not appear to be relevant to the actual story. This is bad worldbuilding. Pass. I’m just annoyed it took me three days to give it up.
Started: 8/16/18
Gave up: 8/17/18
Interesting premise: Victorian missionaries travel to the lands of the Fae to try to convert them to Christianity. Our protagonist’s brother never returned, so she heads there to try to find him. And then nothing happens. For a long time. So I gave up.
Started: 8/12/18
Gave up: 8/13/18
I was so ready to love this book and then I didn’t. It was written in the Hitchhiker’s Guide style (which I knew going in – that was part of the appeal), but it was too deliberately and obviously and painfully done that way, and it wasn’t fun to read. I gave up.
Started: 5/29/18
Gave up: 5/29/18
The writing drove me crazy and I gave up within a couple of hours. At 7% in, the narrator had mentioned a dozen times how dude’s wife’s research is critical to his business and his health, but she barely rates her own name (always X’s wife). That and the exclamation points are too much. I quit.
Started: 4/29/18
Gave up: 5/1/18
It’s a thriller, but I didn’t like the protagonist, and the whole thing felt weirdly paced and plotted. I don’t think I made it a third of the way in before I gave up.
Started: 4/29/18
Gave up: 4/29/18
Supposed to be in the vein of Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which I LOVED, and Today Will Be Different, which I strongly disliked (both by Maria Semple). This one fell into the strongly dislike category. The main character and the overall situation should be relatable, but I just can’t with her character, her decisions, her choices. So I quit halfway through.
Started: 3/26/18
Gave up: 3/28/18
Gave up on this. No character development, and there’s a taken-for-granted-women-are-objects-for-sex assumption that I just can’t handle.