Giving Up on Books

or, So Many Books, So Little Time

For the most part, I'm the kind of reader who does not like to give up. I regularly suffer through books I do not much like, and rather suspect I will not like any more as I get through them. The reasons for this are varied. Here are some reasons I will finish a book I don't like:

1. Because I bought it, and I'll at least have got something out of the money if I read it.
2. Because it's one of those things I feel like I need to read, such as a classic or a dystopia.
3. Because I've read the other books in the series.
4. Because I got pretty far into it before I realized how much I was going to hate it.
5. Because a publisher gave it to me and I feel I owe a review.

On Friday, though, I gave up on three books in quick succession. I guess I reached a watershed point where I just could not put up with books I have no interest in anymore. This will probably set me back to my normal amount of getting through them. Sometimes I regret that I don't give up on books more easily when I don't like them, because there are so many other things I would love I could be reading. Of course, some books start out poorly and turn out to be amazing. Neither approach is perfect. Like everything else, you just make it up as you go along.

I wanted to talk about these books and why I gave up on them. I usually don't, but I thought people might like to know.

Book #1: Wolf Hunting by Jane Lindskold

This is the fifth book of six. I got the first five books in the series for free from a library I worked at last year (you were allowed to take some donations home). You may have seen my reviews for the series, which mostly focus on the fact that the series is long and boring. Each book is at least 600 pages long, which is really rough when you don't care at all about the characters. If I even shipped any of the characters then I might have been able to pull through to wait for the cute romance. However, in this book, Lindskold proved that, even when there is romance, she will gloss over it. The only two characters who were in love for the first three books got married off-screen. Really?

Book #2: Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

This is book three in the Mercy Falls series. Even though I really did not much like book one, Shiver, I continued on and read Linger. I actually liked that one more, because it focused more on Isobel and Cole, who are worlds more interesting than Grace and Sam. Actually, I think lint is more interesting than Grace and Sam. Thus why I just could not deal with their disgustingly romantic whining any more. I have found that Stiefvater has amazing ideas, but tends to write incredibly obnoxious characters as the main ones. Sigh. What a waste.

Book #3: Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares

In high school, I read and quite enjoyed the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. Although never my favorite, I really loved Tibby and wanted to see all of them getting amazing endings. I'm pretty sure they didn't especially in book four. I liked where book three ended and pretended that was the cap to the series. When I heard about this book, which portrays the gang as adults, I was excited. Having another book come out in a series you like when you didn't expect one is kind of the dream. Unfortunately, I learned that she killed off one of the girls, and, of course, I knew who that would be. Plus, all of the girls turned out incredibly crazy. It makes me sad to find out that this is what Brashares thinks they turned into.