Hello and welcome to a bit of a round of post for the year 2020. I wanted to take a moment and share a few of my most disappointing reads of the year. In a few days I will have a bit more of a positive post where I will be sharing my best reads of the year. Until then, here is a collection of books that just didn’t do it for me for one reason or another. Sometimes books just aren’t for me.
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
This is a book I would have never tried to read if it was not on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize. Saying that, you can most likely see I ended up giving this book 1 star. While the idea of this book did sound very appealing as soon as I started to read it a red flag for my personal reading tastes went up. The first few pages was just a never ending list with commas, never a period. The book was being told by someone who is just rambling on and on, which I can see is most likely a choice to get the feel for how thee narrator is feeling about life.
For me, this was so stress inducing for a few reasons. I felt like I was reading the equivalent to Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder movie) taking the winners down the chocolate river through a tunnel. It was just getting more and more intense because I was reading faster and faster just trying to find a period. I. just wanted a natural stopping point to put the book down. The second being, I personally dislike stream of consciousness writing.
Mainly due to the formatting and how the author choose to write this book, I did not like it. But, thesee are mainly personal reasons and if any of these don’t bother you I say give it a go. Like I said the idea of this book is great, it was just ruined for me based upon the formatting.
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Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was so much enjoying this book for the first 400 pages or so. Then it just started to feel like there was a. huge ending coming, but there were 100s of pages left. I feel like this book went on for way too long and the pacing was just all messed up. I liked it less and less as it went on and it is a shame because I really was loving this book at the start.
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The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner’s Guide to Getting Good with Money by Chelsea Fagan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was a VERY basic finance book that seems to be only for women. If you know anything about basic budgeting you can skip this. But, this could be good for someone who just graduated and is just starting out.
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Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I got very bored halfway though. The main selling point of this book is seeing more of the Cullens. That is how this book got 2 stars. The rest, really didn’t really keep me engaged and was not really interesting.
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The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
While the content and the writing overall easily warrants 4 or 5 stars I cannot give it this rating. The main reason being there are no footnotes or end notes to share any sources. Quotes that are in the text have no mention of where it is from, which is very disappointing. This is not acceptable for a nonfiction book.
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House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am going to be honest, I really went into this book thinking I was going to enjoy it quite a bit. The idea sounded interesting and the world created sounded very interesting, but I was kind of bored reading this… okay very bored. The weird thing is, things were happening, some pretty intense stuff. So, I am not sure how or why I was bored, but I was. I might go back in the future and give this book another go, I might not have been in the right mood for it. (Update, no I will not).
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I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy these and tbh, I’m glad I’ve avoided sjm books all this while 😂 I need to come up with mine soon!
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Yeah, for me personally I liked her stuff earlier. As time has gone on it has gotten to be here I don’t want to even try to read her stuff anymore.
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For some reason even though I thoroughly enjoyed TOG by sjm I just couldn’t bring myself up to read House of Earth and Blood, I just never seem to be in the mood. Sorry it didn’t work out for you though.
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No need ti apologize, it happens from time to time. If you do end up picking it up, I hope you enjoy it.
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Crescent City will be on my worst books list as well. Maybe because it was my first SJM novel, so I have no attachment to her? It was far too long!
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I personally liked her earlier stuff more. As time has passed I feel like her style has changed a bit, but the style just doesn’t work for me. It was really long, for sure!
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I guess I should consider myself lucky, because I haven’t read any of those! Lol
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Woohoo! It is always a bonus to not read a book you wouldn’t like.
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Although I didn’t hate Crescent City, I definitely felt extremely underwhelmed 😦 Not quite sure what the hype is…
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Hype is a very dangerous thing for a book sometimes.
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