Abandoned Books

I guess I'm a bit of a masochist. Writing this post makes me feel horrible—I feel guilty because these books don't deserve to be abandoned and also embarrassed because in the time that I didn't finish The Wordy Shipmates I did manage to read the entire Jesse Stone series. On the other hand, I'm really enjoying putting this post together—I like revisiting my lists of books and thinking about how I feel about each title. (By the way, Beth wrote a similar post a while back.)

I'm fighting the urge to explain too much but talking about why I didn't finish these makes me feel mean. I hope that you understand that just because I didn't like these doesn't mean you won't. And feel free to let me know how wrong you think I am.

Here are the books that I've truly abandoned:
The Little Book by Selden Edwards*. I picked it up last week, read a while and it just isn't for me. It didn't grab me or particularly interest me and there are too many other books that I know I want to read. It's also possible that the ridiculously gushy blurbs had an adverse affect (that happens to me sometimes).

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I know, I know. This probably makes me a bad person but I completely lost interest after whatsername died.

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron (Shades of Grey, #1) by Jasper Fforde. I'm still kind of mad about this one. I love Jasper Fforde. I wish he'd keep writing books about books.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil. I don't know what I was thinking with this one. Here's the description:

The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. 

Oh my god so boring. Speculation about the future, no matter how well-supported, is almost never something I want to read about. Note to self: stick to science books by Mary Roach or on a creepy topic (preferably both!).

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowel. This one is just temporarily abandoned. I honestly think I'll get back to it, I just need to be in the right mood.

I haven't "finished" these and I'm not exactly still reading them but I like them and I'll probably dip into them periodically:
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

*This was an unsolicited free advance copy from the publisher. I received it as part of a program where publishers send advances to staff at other publishing houses.

Books I Can't Seem to Finish

One theme that has played out repeatedly in my life is a tendency to start things but be unable to finish them. No one (myself included) wants to think about the many reasons why this happens to me in general, but I will say that when it comes to books, I've realized that it's not always the book itself that makes me stop. Sometimes, I'm too busy to read, or I find that I'm just not in the mood for a certain kind of book, or it becomes apparent that I just can't concentrate for whatever reason, and so forth.

However, there are occasions when I can't finish a particular book because of the book itself, and one recurring issue I have in this regard is with books that are (IMO! always IMO!) unnecessarily long.