Rating: DNF after 25 pages
Cliff Notes: My life is too short to read a book where the dad is called The General and the mom is Miss Mamie. By everyone.
Full Summary: I like a cutesy southern read (looking at you DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD) and I recently LOVED Southern Lady Code, but this is over the top. It took me 4 days to get through 25 pages.
Rating: DNF after about 15%
Cliff Notes: I could see myself coming back to this book someday in a different season of life, but it is not working for me now.
Full Summary: A friend recommended this to me after she read my review of Tattooist of Auschwitz. She said it has her interested in the author’s latest non profit – With Honor.
“He is trying to recruit a new generation of leaders and boy do we need it.”
My friend in her recommendation to me
I agree wholeheartedly that we need it. And Rye Barcott certainly seems like a capable young man. However, my reading life is to fill needs in my life and right now that means an escape. It is not always like that, but right now that is where I am. Yes, I am making this hardship in another country about me, but it is my blog, right?!
I understand that is a selfish way to look at the world, but I am no good to anyone if I run myself into the ground trying to improve the lives of others. I heard someone say that we need to give from our overflow, otherwise what we give may be toxic. Right now I have no overflow so I am trying to take care of that before I can hop on the Save the World Train.
I am leaning into light and fluffy reads, not books about a “troubled youth” who then got a full scholarship to UNC. My “troubled youth” cannot even remember to take pants to football practice. I know we need to let kids fail so they can learn lessons in a “safe” place (forgetting pants now vs. larger stakes later in life), but I just feel like a parenting failure All The Time. And the last thing I want to be reminded of when I am trying to fill that tank and get some overflow to share is those feelings of failure.
Rating: DNF
Cliff Notes: I am half way through this book, 5 hours. And I have no idea what the hell is happening or who any of these people are. Enough.
Full Summary: I cannot give you a summary because seriously – I have no idea what the heck is going on. I know there was a murder, but no idea how any of it was going to come together or who all the people even were.
Rating: DNF
Cliff Notes: Ugh. I cant even with this guy. I threw this book.
Full Summary: First of all, I NEVER want to read a book that takes 3 (super small font super single spaced) pages of a dude dissecting a shark. Then to have to read about him playing two women to sleep with them both in the same night. Almost as gross as the fish guts. I tried for about 2 weeks or so to power through this book because my parents have a condo near Sanibel and I thought it would be fun to connect to those places.
It was not.
Rating: 0 stars
Cliff Notes: Abandoned around 15%.
Full Summary: I like it and plan to return to it someday, but this is not a book for me right now. Delving into his addiction and depression is too much for me at this time in my life.
Rating: DNF around p 60/300
Cliff Notes: Too scattered for me to get traction with the author’s voice
Full Summary: I think part of the problem I was having was I expected Frank McCourt kind of novel. This memoir was more of a series of humorous anecdotes. I would have liked to shoot the shit with Malachy, but could not really engage in his stories. He would have been a great blogger I bet.
Friends, you will remember that we have discussed the fact that I am a quitter. I have no shame in quitting a book that is not resonating with me. This is not to say that I want to ride unicorns and poop rainbows about all of the books I read. I may have a visceral reaction to a character or a theme or plot device – I am looking at you, We Need to Talk About Kevin. But sometimes that is the author’s purpose – to have that visceral response. To FEEL something. To REACT to something. Not to just passively read words and move onto the next.
I have recently starting reading a book by SARK, an author with the tag line: Creating a Beacon of Hope in a Chaotic World. And I believe books are that as well! They are our beacon of hope, but they do not all need to be finished. Some need to be beautiful and sit on our shelves and make us happy. Some may need to be finished, but not by us. Some need to be finished by us in another chapter of our lives – the book just got to us too soon.
I want to declare that books do not need to be finished to be of value. You can dip into this book, gobble it up, do all the things it suggests, explore every resource, game, and invention, or just lie quietly, smiling at the cover.
It will smile back.
S.A.R.K.
Rating: None
Cliff Notes: Kindle – DNF ~ 35%
Full Summary: The alternating story lines of the Vietnam era and farm life in the 50s and 60s made it too disjointed for me to settle into this story.
Rating: n/a
Cliff Notes: It was too dense to wade through with people I hated.
Full Summary: DNF’d after 235 pages (out of 500). I hated all these characters and there were too many to hate them all. Then piling on local politics — BARF. At least with Harry Potter I had Minerva and Hermione to keep me going – I remember being overwhelmed with the amount of people and magical names with HP the first time I read it too.
I wonder how much of my disappointment with Casual Vacancy is that I loved Harry Potter so much. There was just too much hype going into it, maybe? Maybe it just need a basilisk to goose some of these idiots into doing something interesting.
Rating: Did Not Rate. This is a book I didn’t finish so I did not rate it.
Cliff Notes: Did not resonate with me.
Full Review: This book was one I just did not connect with. Critics have given this book rave reviews and it has sold a gazillion number of copies through the decades. I read about 15% over a week or so and just could not relate.
