2023, books, History, Mysteries

Quitting

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Pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’m reading biographies of the English monarchs in order.  It’s been awhile since anything got added to the list and when I clicked on the tab of my spreadsheet, I realized why.  Richard II is up next.  I suppose there might be a few more controversial English kings than this one but it would be a close race.  I don’t know all that much about Richard II but I do know that his death ended the reign of his line and that victors always write/rewrite history.  So when I went looking for a biography, I tried to find something more recent and hopefully balanced.

I did watch the series “The Hollow Crown” a ways back but never read the book so when I found Within the Hollow Crown I thought I’d give it a shot.  After two pages it went back to the library.  I’d prefer to have a more straight-forward biography without the author writing whole swaths of what they believe the historical figure is thinking.  If I had known this book was historical fiction, I wouldn’t have checked it out.  Just not my cup of tea.

Now I’m back to a hunt for a balanced biography… or even if I can’t find one that doesn’t absolutely vilify Richard II, I’d at least like one that doesn’t try to fill in the mental gaps!

If you start a book, do you feel compelled to finish it?  What was the last book you abandoned?

39 thoughts on “Quitting”

  1. Coincidentally, we recently watched a movie called “The Lost King” about a British woman and her research that led to the discovery of the remains of Richard III, buried under a car park. By my standards it was quite good.

    I think the last book I abandoned was New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster. I thought it was uncharacteristic of his work, detached and unengaging. I didn’t so much quit decisively as lose steam and wander off.

    I’ve been reading mostly biographies lately as well, though the ones that interest me are not royalty or political figures of any kind but rather clusters of people, many of whom knew and interacted with each other. Some of them, at this distance, could be considered obscure.

    Currently I’m reading Claire Tomalin’s biography of Jane Austen.

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    1. Are you enjoying the Austen book? I read Tomalin’s The Invisible Woman, a biography of Nelly Ternan, a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it although it didn’t make me think very highly of Charles Dickens.

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      1. I picked up the Austen biography because I had heard it was good and I have read Tomalin’s biography of Dickens and liked it, though it wasn’t very flattering to Dickens. I also have the Nelly Ternan book by Tomalin but haven’t read it yet.
        I’m enjoying the Austen biography.

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  2. I recall having abandoned some novels a couple decades ago because they were taking me somewhere that I didn’t want to go. Now, when I reflect on the reasons that I dropped them, then, I’m embarrassed about myself. So, don’t expect me to name titles or the reason.

    Sometime last year I grabbed a couple of novels off of the new fiction shelf at the local library. Though I’m not averse to reading what is sometimes called, “Chick Lit”, BOTH of these seemed to have been written to fit into a setting/style/situation formula that would get them published. Not to far into each of them, having checked off the boxes and being able to anticipate the rest of the contents, I abandoned them. I brought them back to the library for someone else to enjoy.

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  3. I have trouble reading so I try listening to audio versions. I haven’t finished many books that way either.  The last book I finished was “Run Towards Danger” by Sarah Polley. Right now I’m listening to “Mountolive” by Lawrence Durrell which I had read and finished at least once when I was in my twenties. And I have to admit I almost always fall asleep if I try reading and/or if I’m listening.  Cynthia “Life is a shifting carpet…learn to dance.”

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  4. The latest book I abandoned–earlier this week–was “The Origins of the Kabbalah,” which argues that it came out of Gnosticism rather than being a home-grown system of mysticism. While the subject itself is fascinating, the author uses Hebrew linguistics to date the founding texts, and since I have no Hebrew at all, my interest laid down and died in the middle of his discussion of the Sefer HaBahir.

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  5. Rise and Put That Book Down,

    I have become a ruthless reader/listener. (I considerlistening to an audiobook reading, too). I willingly abandon books with the following characteristics:

    1. Incompetent/unpleasant narrator, even if it is an author I love. An example of that is William Kent Krueger. His agent and publisher have not found a narrator that fits the voice of his books, so I usually read those visually.

    2. The book manipulates my emotions shamelessly, i.e. The Bridges of Madison County. That just made me mad.

    3. Relentless pessimism and hopeless suffering without reason. After living with two parents with major neurological disorders, I have had my fill of relentless suffering and struggle. As I learned to read as a child I used reading to escape my parents’ misery. I do not need more of that because I have lived it out. That eliminates Lisa Siy, a lot of Asian sagas, most WWII novels ( although I loved Kristin Hannah’s Nightingale–it showed resilience) including Anthony Doer whose work many love. The Tale of Edward Sartelle put me over the top on this, all that work building a kennel and dog breed in the cold of Wisconsin, then he has the nerve to kill all the dogs in a fire. That author I will not forgive. You don’t kill the dogs, especially puppies.

    4. Animal suffering.

    5. Any author/book who has not a thing to say, but just wants to write “lyrical prose” without purpose.

    I am sure there are more, but that is the list for now.

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    2. Glad you mentioned you consider audiobooks reading. I know a friend who doesn’t think so. He thinks if you listen to it, you’re not reading it. I respond to that with “does that mean if you are blind and knows braille – that’s not considered reading?” He knows he has to go there to keep his argument alive, but he’s not willing to. So it’s an agree to disagree kind of thing.

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      1. Without getting into whether audiobooks should be considered reading, I do think that audiobooks narrow the experience of a book in that you are no longer creating the sound of the narrator in your mind but consuming one that has been chosen for you. Whether or not that choice is acceptable, it’s missing a personal connection—your role in telling the story to yourself—that a printed book provides.

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        2. Which begs the question:
          When you read a book do you hear a narrator in your mind and is that voice yours or does it vary?

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    3. Glad to know that someone else got angry at Bridges of Madison County.. I threw it across the room half way through it and never finished it. Then got mad when our book club discussed it and the husband of a doctor told us he had kept his wife awake all night reading to her…..and she had to go to work in the morning! I didn’t like the movie either.

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      2. I was lucky enough to not have picked it up before the reviews started coming in from other women I knew. So never read it. Never saw it. Never was sad about it.

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  6. The thing about audio books that don’t work for me is that they never are made for the books I want to read. And also I often want to go back and reread a passage, which is problematic with audio books.

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      2. I listen to audiobooks a lot. But I usually also get a print copy of the same book from the library so that if I have a need to refer back to something, I look for it in the print copy rather than try to search in the audiobook.

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  7. Usually I want to finish a book. In the case of Ulysses, it was a matter of heroic personal pride to say I read it all. As it turns out, no one is impressed.
    I gave up on The Man In The High Castle. Dick’s reliance on the I Ching and Tibetan Book Of The Dead to tell an alternative history sci-fi story was just confusing.

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    1. Even to score heroic pride points I can’t get through Ulysses. It hasn’t stopped me from trying though. When I did an epic cleanup of books about 10 years ago, I realized I had three copies. And you didn’t miss anything by not finishing High Castle. I did slog through it because I really kept thinking it was going to go somewhere or make some sense. It didn’t.

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        1. Actually, I googled the TV series and it doesn’t sound like it was really anything even remotely close to the book. Don’t read the book. It’s just a waste of your time.

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      2. Have tried Ulysses several times, finally finished it when I found a “cartoon” version online. Finally understood the story! Though I did like the ending where Molly talks to herself. But I think that was watching a film version.

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        1. “And the head coach wants no sissies so he reads to us from something called Ulysses.”
          Even after all these years, I have yet to place this lyric in the book.
          Can you help me explain it?

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  8. Agree with Jacque about reading about relentless suffering. Also books that are just too formulaic – same basic story and interactions with just a few details changed (Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum comes to mind).

    I stopped reading Sue Grafton’s series at P, when (if memory serves) she didn’t tell us quite how Kinsey got out of whatever dire straits she was in – just glossed over it and said basically “she got out of it.”
    I also won’t read things with too much detail about someone being raped or very abused.

    There have been a couple lately that I started and realized I wasn’t in the mood for – YET. I want to read Frank McCourt’s ‘Tis (loved Angela’s Ashes, which I finally read last year), but it wasn’t the right time. I’ll see if I can remember the other…

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    1. Those mysteries that put the character in dangerous situations just for the “action” drive me nuts. Plum is one. Vick swar….somthing set in Chicago is another.

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  9. My mind wanders from books read to me. I suppose that is my recently recognized ADD. I have if anyone wants them for free Hobbit and LotR very well narrated. On CDs. I did listen to those driving around the country. It did not matter if my mind wandered a bit since I have read them several times. With my bad eyes it is too much effort to read.
    I often quit reading books. BTW I think any fair biographer of Dickens would make him unlikeable.
    Let me know if you want the Tolkien. The Mankato library does not nor MSU nor GA.
    Clyde

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  10. My focus isn’t improving ay as I get older, so sometimes I just wander away from a book without making an active choice to abandon it. Sometimes it just hasn’t grabbed my attention. Kristin Hannah’s True Colors was probably the last one like that. It was due back to the library so I didn’t finish and can’t articulate why.

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  11. Well, I’m a day late. I just finished Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water. Without giving anything away, there is plenty of misery and suffering in that story. I struggled through the middle portion and almost put it down because it was making me feel such despair. I almost always push through (stubborn Prussian German genetics) and I did this time too. I’m happy to tell others who might be reading it that the story does kind of resolve at the end and it does make sense. There is sadness and also hope in the end.

    I listen to audiobooks in the car, usually if I’m traveling somewhere. I agree with Bill about the narrator in my own head. I also agree with VS about audio books for the blind. My grandpa was blind and listened to “talking books” from a Braille library when I was a child. His life would have been insanely boring without them.

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