Top Ten Tuesday: To Read or Not To Read?
It’s Tuesday, which means I can use the prompt from The Broke and the Bookish to keep my blog from getting covered in cobwebs. This week’s list is Top Ten Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read — basically any book that has you going, “TO READ OR NOT TO READ?”
1. Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Picketty – I want to read this but I generally only make it 10% into business/self-improvement books before I’m bored out of my mind.
2. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – A book about “a rumination on the nature of art and appearances” doesn’t entice me to tackle a 784 page book, especially when I have its cousin sitting on my bedside table, waiting for me to finish.
3. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton – the aforementioned cousin of The Goldfinch, i.e. literary doorstop with a partially obscured painting on a tan book cover. I started The Luminaries but I too easily set it aside for me to hurry back to it.
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville – Poor Moby Dick. It will never get off of my To Read or Not To Read list, I fear.
5. William Faulkner – He may be brilliant, but he’s a slog.
6. Middlemarch by George Eliot – another English language masterpiece I didn’t connect with.
7. John Green – Was so unimpressed with The Fault in our Stars I doubt I’ll ever pick up another one of his books, especially when a common criticism I hear is his books are startlingly similar.
8. Outlander Books 6-8 – I blew through the first five books one after the other years ago when I discovered Gabaldon. I loved her writing, characters, history and scope. But reading one after the other burned me out on the world. I would need to re-read the first books before tackling 6-8 and I’ve no doubt the same thing would happen. Luckily, the Starz adaptation is brilliant.
9. Game of Thrones Books 5 and Beyond – Started and disliked book five. Immensely. Maybe more than The Fault in our Stars, which is saying something.
I’ll stop there. It feels weird, wrong even, to write a post about books I’m not going to read. Still, blog content!
What books do you vacillate on?
