Vent about the Book You're Reading

[TheCrystallineEntity]

So I just finished a book made of four short stories from four different authors. The theme was dragons, and unfortunately I only liked one of the stories. The other stories...well, let's just say I was vividly reminded of why I mainly read children's fiction. Urgh...I want to clean my mind. The story i liked isn't enough for me to keep the book. >.<

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

So I just finished a book made of four short stories from four different authors. The theme was dragons, and unfortunately I only liked one of the stories. The other stories...well, let's just say I was vividly reminded of why I mainly read children's fiction. Urgh...I want to clean my mind. The story i liked isn't enough for me to keep the book. >.<

I feel this so hard. I love to pick up children's books because I know there's going to be no horrific scenes of sexual assault just thrown in there for no reason. I personally am generally okay with sex scenes, but sometimes it's nice to not have that, because many authors just CANNOT write sex scenes. Literary writers should hire romance novelist ghostwriters for such scenes, but they're too snobby about something something Literary Merit.

 

[Steerpike]

How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I’ve always had this theory that HBO spends good money on bad porn writers to jot down some of their scenes, LOL. It’s always better after they fire the porn writers.

In general, I don’t read sex scenes because I just don’t give a crap. It’s a skim for story at best situation.

I feel this so hard. I love to pick up children's books because I know there's going to be no horrific scenes of sexual assault just thrown in there for no reason. I personally am generally okay with sex scenes, but sometimes it's nice to not have that, because many authors just CANNOT write sex scenes. Literary writers should hire romance novelist ghostwriters for such scenes, but they're too snobby about something something Literary Merit.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.

I tend to not read far enough to need to vent. The only book I’ve gotten past 100 pages on that I have no intent to finish is Name of the Wind. I tried more than once, but life is too short. Most often I don’t get past Amazon’s sample pages.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.

I can usually tell within the first couple pages or first chapter if I'm going to like a book or not, and then I know whether to keep reading if I like it and stop if I don't. Though one time I got around a quarter of the way through one book, and then the protagonist randomly killed someone and made advances on this princess, and I went 'Nope nope nope' and put the book down and walked away.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

How long will you continue to read a book that makes you want to vent over it? I’m curious. I used to finish almost every book I started, no matter what. I quit that years ago, and now I’m quick to put a book down if I don’t like it and move on to something else.

I have difficulties with stopping books without finishing. I feel like even bad ones have something to teach me.

When I get a really bad one, sometimes I will hate-read so I can be snarky about it. It's fun. Or sometimes I just keep going in hopes it gets better because I was hoping this one would be good, but it usually doesn't improve if it's not doing anything for me after the first 50-100 pages.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I used to force myself to finish books I'd started, but these days I try to get rid of that. There are too many other books out there to waste time on once I don't like - at least that's the theory. It's still a hard habit to shake though. I used to feel like I ought to finish what I started, and to a certain extent I still do.

Usually what happens now is that if a book doesn't keep me interested, I do something else instead of read. Like play games, or write. It's lead to long periods of not-reading anything, and I'd like to try and get out of that. So I'm looking at formalising my to-read list, rather than just recognising names of books as ones I ought to read. That way, I'll have something else to swap over to in case what I'm reading at the moment doesn't interest me.

Also, when I'm reading a book from someone I know, or that I'm acquainted with, I try a lot harder to stick with it, but even then there are books written by friends of mine I still haven't gotten through. Knowing how much effort it takes to write a book, I'd hate to admit to someone I've give up on something I've written.

On the flipside, and since I'm derailing anyway. I had someone (unintentionally) tell me they couldn't bear to finish one of my books because it didn't keep their interest. I have a distinct feeling they felt worse about it than I did. Some people just aren't going to enjoy what I do.

 

[skip.knox]

I encourage you, Svrtnsse, to make that reading list. I use mine frequently. In my spreadsheet I include a comment line where I can say something about why I might want to read that book. Once read, I can make a note about what I thought. Not a review, just for personal reference.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I encourage you, Svrtnsse, to make that reading list. I use mine frequently. In my spreadsheet I include a comment line where I can say something about why I might want to read that book. Once read, I can make a note about what I thought. Not a review, just for personal reference.

I got a new kindle recently (I put a portable speaker on my old one, and it didn't like that), and it comes with integration to goodreads, so it imported my want to read list from there. It's how the thought eventually occurred to me.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

So...I got another book with a lot more short stories, from discards of my aunt.

There's only two stories I like in that one, but they're so good I wanted them to be whole books. The others...well...

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I attempted to read The Way of Kings again, but maybe I wasn't in the right mood for it. Plus I have a bit of a problem with over-excessive use of names and terms. I prefer both to be kept as simple and concise as possible, in movies and tv shows and video games, not just books. The Alcatraz series proves that Brandon Sanderson can do this.

Maybe I'm just not used to reading high fantasy [besides Tolkien, of course], and need to get in the right mindset. I don't know.

Ironically, when I first started writing, I made up a whole dictionary with invented words, 90% of which never got used and 10% of which were used without explanation.

I'd like to think I've improved since then.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Current read: The Lies of Locke Lamora
spoilers, obviously

This one def joins Gardens of the Moon in being a very excellent fantasy novel...that takes 300+ pages to get going. But when it does get going, holy shit.

I'm horribly irritated with the author continually stopping the story to splice in backstory, though I guess it's important and I feel affectionate toward Chains. But my main interest is in How In The Hell Is Locke Not Dead This Time.

Locke: *gets turned inside out with an emetic, beaten, stabbed, damn near drowned in horse piss, dragged all over creation trying to escape people trying to kill him, witnesses the murders of his closest friends, travels across the city again, and witnesses MORE murders*
Locke: Wtf why am I so dizzy? I can think of nothing in the recent past that could have resulted in me feeling maybe not at my be--*collapses and passes out*

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

On the other hand, anyone complaining that the Lies of Locke Lamora is difficult to get through has obviously not dulled all the feeling in their head on the cinder block that is the Temeraire series.

And I love dragons. Like, absolutely adore them.

 

[Miles Lacey]

I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140. I'm about halfway through and I still haven't figured out what the hell it's about. There's no main character, there's lots of preaching about economics and there's no sign of anything happening. Not since the God Bless America and its military BS of James Paterson's Jacky Ha-Ha have I wanted to punch a writer so hard.

 

[Tom]

Just finished: The Changeling by Joy Williams

I gotta say, this one was a little tough to wrap my head around. Williams is cryptic at best, and her style is deceptively minimalist. You have to really hunt for the double meanings she hides behind straightforward Hemingway-ish sentences. Not that that's a bad thing, but I got a little annoyed by all the short, choppy sentences and small words. I like writers with a more lyrical, syntactically complex style so this book was a real step outside my comfort zone.

I also didn't appreciate the long, punctuation-free stream of consciousness passages toward the end. Really played havoc with my semi dyslexic brain. They probably had some important bits of symbolism in there, but I gave up after the first few lines short-circuited my reading comprehension. I tried switching to a different font in hopes that sans serif would help me process it better, but even that didn't help. The final chapter was two solid pages of stream of consciousness paragraphs so I just skipped to the last line. Not putting up with that.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

For the most part, I like Charles de Lint, which is interesting since I'm not usually a fan of magical realism. But then sometimes, out of the blue, he'll add "adult content", and I want to throw the book at the wall and swear off reading him forever. >.<
This has happened three times in three separate books, by the way.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Argh. Not another book that has a guy act like a huge jerk towards his supposed love interest, and the love interest keeps coming back. Well, that one's going in the 'get rid of' pile for sure.

 

[pmmg]

I don't really have much to complain about. I just finished Homeland in the Dark Elf series by R A Savlatore. I picked mostly cause I'd not read anything by Mr. Salvatore before and he is quite prominent. I noticed his style was much more descriptive than shown and there was not really a lot of dialog as much has head hopping, I did not mind, but its not a style that seems in fashion anymore. Certainly not my style.

I just started A brief History of Time, which is actually pretty cool, but I already know most of it through other sources. I think it would have been cooler if I was learning it for the first time from the book, but....what can you do?

The only book I hated on recently was a wrinkle in time, which I read as it gets a lot of attention and sounded cool when I was younger, but I had never read. I did not like it... Anyway... I don't feel a need to rag on books.

 

[pmmg]

Oh, and before that I read Outpost: Monsters maces and magic from our own Terry Ervin. I thought it was a fun read.