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Post by mei on May 7, 2018 4:15:38 GMT -5
I gave up on The Famished Road by Ben Okri. Didn't get very far in, tried to pick it up later, but it just didn't work for me.
It was the bookclub book last night, and opinions were quite divided about the book, which was interesting to hear.
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Post by mod on May 7, 2018 8:45:51 GMT -5
I'm abandoning a book before I even read it. The Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. I've read too much about the book and the author to even open it.
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Post by Liiisa on May 7, 2018 10:37:12 GMT -5
I'm abandoning a book before I even read it. The Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. I've read too much about the book and the author to even open it. Díaz has turned out to be a little shit, hasn’t he? It’s a good book, though, but a little creepy in retrospect, in context.
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Post by scrubb on May 7, 2018 11:19:25 GMT -5
I really liked the book. Didn't know a thing about the author till I read a recent story.
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Post by tzarine on May 7, 2018 11:58:58 GMT -5
i always thought diaz was creepy, liisa. he was the "annointed" voice of latin writers
was his rape story in the nyer a preemptive move?
the writing world is full of predators
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Post by Webs on May 7, 2018 16:22:26 GMT -5
Well it's a double edged sword. I support him as a survivor but I can't excuse his behavior. I no longer buy the excuse of latin machismo.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 6, 2018 7:11:04 GMT -5
I just abandoned Graham Greene ‘s “The Heart of the Matter” halfway through page 1 because the protagonist was being described as someone who, as evidence that he was recently off the boat from England, wasn’t leching after the “Negresses” at the high school across the street yet, and I decided that I didn’t want to find out how (or if) the author was going to dig himself out of THAT hole....
I’ve always heard Greene was a good writer, but maybe this wasn’t the one to start with. Eeeew.
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Post by scrubb on Jul 7, 2018 23:54:52 GMT -5
I don't remember that one very well, except that I don't remember liking it all that much. He is an excellent writer, but he is also very of his time.
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Post by Liiisa on Jul 9, 2018 6:52:33 GMT -5
Lucy Hughes-Hallet, Peculiar Ground
And now the book I replaced that last one with has proved equally intolerable, though it took me about 75 pages to realize that I just couldn’t cope with it anymore.
The structure and plot of the story are kind of like Stoppard’s “Arcadia,” garden design, pets, and all, except the historical part is set in the late 17th century. But whereas Stoppard’s writing fills me with delight, this was a constant irritant... maybe someone else might like it but I kept comparing it to better things that it was reminding me of and finally this morning I’d had enough. Back to the library it goes.
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Post by tzarine on Aug 22, 2018 21:50:13 GMT -5
sing, unburied, sing
ghosts & a troubleed family
i kept thinking toni morrison is soooooooooooooo much better also zora neale huston
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Post by tzarine on Sept 13, 2018 10:54:49 GMT -5
liisa
i like greene's quiet american & the end of the affair
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Post by Liiisa on Dec 27, 2018 8:45:44 GMT -5
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
Ugh! This is the second time I've attempted and then abandoned this book.
The first time was because I thought "oh dear, I don't have sufficient sociological background to read this important text," so I set it aside. This time, having done some more foundational reading, it started off a bit better; I got through the first two chapters just fine. But at some point in chapter 3 I realized that my life is too fucking short to read this impenetrable crap, which they could easily have written in normal language if they'd wanted to. So, enough: into the library donation pile this thing goes, and good riddance to it too.
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Post by scrubb on Dec 27, 2018 14:46:01 GMT -5
Alison Lurie's "Love and Friendship". It's her first novel and I just am not enjoying it - a comedy, set at a university in the eastern US and it feels so much like "Lucky Jim" or "Herzog" (yes, I know those are 2 very different books) that I can't be bothered. I think I've decided that no one is going to do that setting better than Robertson Davies already has, and no sense reading more of them.
I'll try another Lurie if it's a different setting - I really liked the other book of hers that I read (which I think won the PUlitzer or something).
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Post by Liiisa on Apr 24, 2019 19:46:45 GMT -5
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought
I decided that the last third of this book, in which the authors argue with various philosophical traditions, wasn't worth my time since I really only know the slightest bit about Western philosophy (and honestly don't really care).
The first part was really interesting, though. They described the results of their research and opinion, showing that we structure our thinking with metaphor. So that was worthwhile and fascinating, but when they started arguing with Plato I was outta there.
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Post by Liiisa on Jun 19, 2019 16:05:53 GMT -5
Wow, I'm abandoning a lot of books this year.
Anyway, the latest is Marlon James' Black Leopard Red Wolf. This is the new one by James, who won the Man Booker a couple of years ago. I'd really been looking forward to this one since it's an Africa-centric fantasy novel. But it's SO violent, I just couldn't really take it, so I abandoned it after 20 pages. I might be able to pick it up again later because it's interesting, but ugh.
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 22, 2020 6:34:18 GMT -5
Hi it’s me again, abandoning a book:
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
My dad gave this to me when it first came out; I tried to read it and gave up. So recently I thought “I’ve learned more about science since then and am more patient with nonfiction, let’s try it again,” but I still can’t get through it. Probably because I’ve never taken physics... but there are statements like “because of x, y is impossible so Newton concluded z” and I don’t understand the relationship between x and y and therefore the sentence makes no sense, and that’s just the first chapter. So I think I’ll stick with biology and let other people worry about this stuff.
I just wish I could have said to my dad “I don’t understand the book you gave me, please give me some background,” but it’s too late now, he’s gone.
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Post by tzarine on May 23, 2020 18:41:38 GMT -5
alice munro runaway
i just don't like her people or their epiphanies
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Post by Liiisa on May 31, 2020 14:43:05 GMT -5
Elisavietta Ritchie, Tightening the Circle Over Eel Country
A book of 1970s poetry. I only like about 0.0001% of the poetry I read, and the few I've scanned so far in this collection didn't work for me, so I've set it aside. Despite the tempting eels in the title, I don't think I'm going to pick it back up again, so let's just get it over with and list it here now.
It was the "experimental literature" part of my used-bookstore grab bag... I should have specified prose.
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Post by scrubb on Aug 2, 2020 16:37:27 GMT -5
Umbrella, by Will Self. It's written with little punctuation or sentences or chapters, and large parts of it are stream of consciousness. Which is all suitable for the subject I guess, which is a sort of catatonic woman in a mental hospital. It's like Awakenings, though - the patients have sleeping sickness rather than dementia, etc.
There's a doctor who wants to try to help her and the others in the same situation. His personal life is all messed up too. The book jumps in and out of her head, where she's remembering her childhood, then her adolescence, WW1, and other random times. Then over to his head where he's worried his wife is going to leave him, because he's too obsessed with his work and ignores his family.
The structure doesn't change when you're not in her head and there's no warning or anything. Making it a reasonably difficult book. Now, difficult books can also be great books but after about 80 pages I just wasn't getting enjoyment from it. I read a review where someone said they struggled for the first 200 pages then got sucked in. I decided that even a Booker nominee that makes me work for 200 pages just doesn't make the cut.
So I jumped to page 250 and am skimming the last 100 pages.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 2, 2020 21:08:22 GMT -5
Yeah I considered reading that book but decided that life was too short.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Aug 3, 2020 0:30:07 GMT -5
I've never been able to read any Will Self. Years back a friend at the time raved about him and I did try quite a few times before deciding it was just not to be.
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Post by Liiisa on Aug 3, 2020 4:58:50 GMT -5
I read the one about the culture that worshipped the taxi driver from the past, which was sort of like the conceit of "A Canticle for Leibowitz," IIRC, and thought it was good, but Umbrella just looked like too much.
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Post by tzarine on Oct 9, 2020 14:44:26 GMT -5
vargas llosa is brilliant but the war at the end of the world about the real war of the canudos was way too dark & grim for these days
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Post by ozziegiraffe on Oct 10, 2020 6:00:21 GMT -5
I downloaded several books by Susan Kiernan-Lewis, Murder mysteries set in the South of France, with attractive looking covers. They were probably Book Bub specials. Read two for a Good Reads Cozy Mystery challenge, but I won’t be opening the others unless I have absolutely nothing else to read. They aren’t cozy, and the characters and plots are awful.
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Post by Liiisa on Oct 18, 2020 17:37:32 GMT -5
In this week's New York Times, Claire Messud has made me feel better about abandoning "A Brief History of Time" twice:
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Post by kneazle on Nov 21, 2020 4:16:53 GMT -5
Is this a record? I only got to page 14 before giving up.
The book is The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCullough she so woefully misinterpreted Mr Darcy that I looked up reviews and consensus seems to be it doesn't improve - I figured I'd quit while I was ahead.
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Post by HalcyonDaze on Jan 13, 2021 0:50:35 GMT -5
I didn't even get as far as 14 pages for this one - Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony. It has had some decent reviews and is a political farce about a gay Republican congressman but it turns out it is written in the second person. And I hate reading books written that way. Back to the library it goes
(or, to play along "you give up on the book and resolve that you will take it back to the library on your next visit")
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 13, 2021 6:02:08 GMT -5
lol Hal I read that last year and thought a lot of it was stupid but it kept my attention, I suppose because books about the suffering of Republican Congressmen make me deeply happy right now, no matter how stupid. If it had been about an Australian member of Parliament I probably would have abandoned it too.
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Post by kneazle on Feb 28, 2021 21:29:13 GMT -5
I'm reading Middlemarch and I'm just not feeling it - she goes off on a whole bunch of tangents about different parts of the characters lives in a way that's not all that interesting.
Am I missing something?
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Post by Liiisa on Feb 28, 2021 22:03:53 GMT -5
I think back fondly on it, but in kind of a "welp that was worth suffering through" kind of way
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