Top Ten Tues: Struggles

Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, and feature lists related to all things bookish–characters, authors, titles, and favorites. They’re an excellent way to find new interesting books on a variety of topics, and to find bloggers that love the books you do.

Check out their blog for their top ten and lists by other bloggers!

September 5: Ten Books I Struggled to Get Into But Ended Up Loving or Ten Books That Were A Chore To Get Through or Ten Books I’ve Most Recently Put Down (the theme is…books you had a hard time with…tweak it how ever you need)

I’m quite particular about the books I read, which cuts down on the failures, so I’m splitting this between DNFs and Struggles.

DNF

1. Hue 1968; Mark Bowden. Too dry. The writing didn’t engage me, so I put it down.

2. Seven Dreams; Charlotte English. The characters felt flat, and the plot failed to catch my attention.

3. The Shape of Bones; Daniel Galera. Disjointed, with a narrative so confusing I couldn’t quite tell what was going on for some time.

4. Empire Ascendant; Cameron Hurley. The first book was dark, and this book proved to be darker.

5. Jitterbug Perfume; Tom Robbins. I found the prose overwrought, and everything that was meant to be funny didn’t amuse me.

Struggles

6. The Library of Fate; Khorana Aditi. Loved the idea, but there were too many weaknesses in character development, plot, and pacing.

7. The Massacre of Mankind; Stephen Baxter. A sequel to War of the Worlds that didn’t feel like it really added anything.

8. All the Sounds of Fear; Harlan Ellison. A collection of dark, sometimes hopeless sci fi tales, I had to spread this out among other reading. Haunting, but interesting.

9. Heartburn; Nora Ephron. I got the audio book pretty much because Meryl Streep voiced it, and she did a good enough job to keep me going.

10. The Leopard; Jo Nesbo. This is the eighth book in the series, but each one is a slog, driven by the well-written mystery, and slowed by the terrible characters.