Book Logging (DNF)
Apr. 27th, 2018 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm doing my book logging in several sections this time because there's more than usual due to me reading a lot of short poetry collections and listening to some audiobooks.
Started but not finished (all types of book adjacent things):
Assassination Classroom 1 - Too damned many characters, and I was in the wrong mood for the humor.
Brand. Christianna. Nurse Matilda - I only read a few pages of this. I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of story. Were magical nannies/governesses/nursemaids a common trope in British literature between WWI and WWII? Looking at the library records, P.L. Travers was born in 1899, and Christianna Brand was born in 1907. The illustrator for the Mary Poppins books seems to have been born in 1906. I suppose I could open a tab to look at Wikipedia for actual publication dates, but that seems like a lot of work.
Gloom Cookie - I think this was a GoodReads recommendation. It’s a graphic novel. I read about thirty pages and just didn’t end up hooked. I opened the book a few times, further in, and still didn’t care. This is more skewed toward creepiness and angst than I really wanted.
Hale, Shannon. Book of a Thousand Days - Audiobook read by Chelsea Mixon. I got about fifteen minutes in and then just couldn’t. Part of it was trying this right after an audiobook that i thought was spectacular, but I’m pretty sure that part of it is that I don’t connect well with Hale’s prose. This is not the first book of hers that I’ve bounced off of hard.
Konigsburg, E.L. The Outcasts of 19 Schulyer Place - Audiobook read by Molly Ringwald. I ran out of time on this Overdrive loan and don’t care enough to go back and try to borrow it again. I liked Ringwald’s performance. I just didn’t quite connect with the main character.
Lackey, Mercedes. One Good Knight - This one is weird in the I started it, got about five pages in, skipped to the middle, and then read forward. I enjoyed the second half of the book, but I’d never have gotten there if I’d actually tried to read the beginning. I don’t feel that I missed anything at all by skipping forward, either. There were some problems that could have been fixed with a thorough editing, mostly reuse of certain words in close enough proximity to make me stumble and some problems with unclear antecedents. The latter were sufficiently confusing to make me have to try to go back to figure out who was doing what, and I couldn’t always figure it out.
Lehman, David. Valentine Place - Short book of poetry. I didn’t get very far in. There was a layer of bitterness, cynicism, and misogyny that put me off. I skipped around a bit to see if it was just a few poems at the beginning, and it wasn’t. I just felt like I was touching something toxic.
Mitchell, David. The Bone Clocks - Audiobook read by various narrators. I got about ten minutes in and actively didn’t want to listen. Maybe I’d have liked it if I’d gotten past the first bit, but it wasn’t promising as a thing I might enjoy. I’ve got so many audiobooks that I want to try that keeping on with one that I’m unhappy listening to seems like burning time.
The Plain Janes - This graphic novel was a hard bounce for me. I can’t even put my finger on why except that I do tend to do that with stuff set in high schools.
Primavera, Elise. Ms Rapscott’s Home for Girls - Audiobook read by Katherine Kellgren. Only made it six minutes in because I didn’t enjoy the reading. That was too early to get much feel for the writing and such.
Schwab, V.E. A Darker Shade of Magic - Audiobook read by Steven Crossley. I got through three out of ten CDs and realized that I just really wasn’t interested in what would happen to the characters. The world building interested me, but I wanted the characters to go away and stop bothering me. Not wanting the characters made me not listen closely, so I was missing the world building bits. Just not something for me.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Devil’s Disciple - Audio only production of the play. DNF. This was the best acted of the three, but I hit a point halfway through where I just didn’t want to go on. I think that three plays in one day might have been too much. Well, three plays in which I wanted to smack 95% of the characters repeatedly with a rotting carp was too many.
Stiefvater, Maggie. The Raven Boys - Audiobook read by Will Patton. I listened to two hours out of the eleven, up to the beginning of chapter 8, and I was so very bored. I don’t think it was the reader. I just wasn’t connecting to the characters and felt like the story was never going to go anywhere. I know a number of people who love the series, so I’m assuming a pacing and style mismatch.
Started but not finished (all types of book adjacent things):
Assassination Classroom 1 - Too damned many characters, and I was in the wrong mood for the humor.
Brand. Christianna. Nurse Matilda - I only read a few pages of this. I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of story. Were magical nannies/governesses/nursemaids a common trope in British literature between WWI and WWII? Looking at the library records, P.L. Travers was born in 1899, and Christianna Brand was born in 1907. The illustrator for the Mary Poppins books seems to have been born in 1906. I suppose I could open a tab to look at Wikipedia for actual publication dates, but that seems like a lot of work.
Gloom Cookie - I think this was a GoodReads recommendation. It’s a graphic novel. I read about thirty pages and just didn’t end up hooked. I opened the book a few times, further in, and still didn’t care. This is more skewed toward creepiness and angst than I really wanted.
Hale, Shannon. Book of a Thousand Days - Audiobook read by Chelsea Mixon. I got about fifteen minutes in and then just couldn’t. Part of it was trying this right after an audiobook that i thought was spectacular, but I’m pretty sure that part of it is that I don’t connect well with Hale’s prose. This is not the first book of hers that I’ve bounced off of hard.
Konigsburg, E.L. The Outcasts of 19 Schulyer Place - Audiobook read by Molly Ringwald. I ran out of time on this Overdrive loan and don’t care enough to go back and try to borrow it again. I liked Ringwald’s performance. I just didn’t quite connect with the main character.
Lackey, Mercedes. One Good Knight - This one is weird in the I started it, got about five pages in, skipped to the middle, and then read forward. I enjoyed the second half of the book, but I’d never have gotten there if I’d actually tried to read the beginning. I don’t feel that I missed anything at all by skipping forward, either. There were some problems that could have been fixed with a thorough editing, mostly reuse of certain words in close enough proximity to make me stumble and some problems with unclear antecedents. The latter were sufficiently confusing to make me have to try to go back to figure out who was doing what, and I couldn’t always figure it out.
Lehman, David. Valentine Place - Short book of poetry. I didn’t get very far in. There was a layer of bitterness, cynicism, and misogyny that put me off. I skipped around a bit to see if it was just a few poems at the beginning, and it wasn’t. I just felt like I was touching something toxic.
Mitchell, David. The Bone Clocks - Audiobook read by various narrators. I got about ten minutes in and actively didn’t want to listen. Maybe I’d have liked it if I’d gotten past the first bit, but it wasn’t promising as a thing I might enjoy. I’ve got so many audiobooks that I want to try that keeping on with one that I’m unhappy listening to seems like burning time.
The Plain Janes - This graphic novel was a hard bounce for me. I can’t even put my finger on why except that I do tend to do that with stuff set in high schools.
Primavera, Elise. Ms Rapscott’s Home for Girls - Audiobook read by Katherine Kellgren. Only made it six minutes in because I didn’t enjoy the reading. That was too early to get much feel for the writing and such.
Schwab, V.E. A Darker Shade of Magic - Audiobook read by Steven Crossley. I got through three out of ten CDs and realized that I just really wasn’t interested in what would happen to the characters. The world building interested me, but I wanted the characters to go away and stop bothering me. Not wanting the characters made me not listen closely, so I was missing the world building bits. Just not something for me.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Devil’s Disciple - Audio only production of the play. DNF. This was the best acted of the three, but I hit a point halfway through where I just didn’t want to go on. I think that three plays in one day might have been too much. Well, three plays in which I wanted to smack 95% of the characters repeatedly with a rotting carp was too many.
Stiefvater, Maggie. The Raven Boys - Audiobook read by Will Patton. I listened to two hours out of the eleven, up to the beginning of chapter 8, and I was so very bored. I don’t think it was the reader. I just wasn’t connecting to the characters and felt like the story was never going to go anywhere. I know a number of people who love the series, so I’m assuming a pacing and style mismatch.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-27 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-27 08:27 pm (UTC)I quitte enjoyed Stiefvater's Raven Cycle books, but found The Raven Boys merely OK (book 2, Dream Thieves was the one I liked, and the one that convinced me I wanted to read on), and her prose definitely took some getting used to -- it's an acquired taste, I think...