Monday, April 20, 2009

Books I can't seem to finish

Every once in a while, we come upon books that take us forever to finish, if we finish reading these at all. It seems like that these books have been forever at our bedside tables. We may occasionally pick them up, but after reading a page or two, we move on to the next book.

Sometimes I can't even figure it out why I find finishing certain books difficult. They may be by our favorite authors or written in a familiar language and yet we don't have the stamina to read them. Here's my list of some of the books that I can't seem to finish. Perhaps, you, dear reader, will give me the motivation I need to finally take them out of my to-be-read pile.


I think what killed my eagerness to read the first of the Sookie Stackhouse series was the TV series. I brought Dead until Dark when we went on vacation during the Holy Week, which was the same time the TV series premiered on cable here in the Philippines. I saw the first few episodes and they didn't make any impact. I know I shouldn't be comparing the TV show with the book, but still...


The Descent is supposed to be a horror-slash-technothriller. Well, the horror bits aren't that scary at all, and the technothriller parts are, at best, amateurish. The novel, based on the 50% I've finished so far, seems disjointed. There's just too many improbable ideas being thrown around -- Satan is among us, devils really live below the surface, and the shroud of Turin is actually Satan's image. For a novel that mostly takes place several miles below the Earth's surface, The Descent is quite shallow.


I've read the first three Shopaholic books, and I can say that the fun factor of the books decreases significantly as you progress through the series. Becky may have a new challenge ahead of her (after all she's finally a mother), but it seems unbelievable that she continues on with her shopping urges. Shopaholic and Baby feels so contrived.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

My book that I can't seem to finish is The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray. I've been waiting for my interest to pick back up in the story since Christmas and fear it never will. There are just too many great stories out there to waste my time on one that doesn't draw me!