2018 Abandoned books

I seldom give up reading a book, but I find that over the years, my tastes and needs for quality have heightened. These needs are especially noticeable when I read fantasy books... I'm a snob, yes! My patience for pulp literature and sub-par novels have dwindled. I feel that I need to use my reading time to the fullest. 

Note : the image above was copyright free, I added my text, and I'd never throw and disfigure a normal book as depicted, unless it was really really trash.



So, which are the books I gave up reading, where and why? 

1. Christian Charrière's Vergers du ciel was lent to me by a couple of friends who loved it in their youth. I tried reading it and gave up at page 78/443 (31%). I couldn't get into the story, which I felt a bit confusing and less dreamy than I hoped from the friends' descriptions, but the biggest reasons why I gave up on it are these : unlikable characters, one is quite a sexist, and another is a butcher. I really tried reading, because of the bond with my friends, but when these elements and slow-pace didn't grab me, I gave up.

2. Greg Keyes' Infernal city. It's sub-titled An Elder Scrolls novel, and is supposed to be the first part out of 2 "exhilarating" stories, set 40 years after the Oblivion crisis...  Oblivion is the 4th video game in the Elder Scrolls series, in the same universe as Morrowind. I played countless hours on each of those two games and so I thought to try the novel. In the ackwloedgements, the author explains that the novel was conceived with an official Elder Scrolls website as a guideline, but I feel that despite this, the novel failed to captivate me and felt more of a pulp-neo-noir story set somewhere in the fringe of the Elder Scrolls, by making numerous allusions to its, but isn't really set inside of this same universe. 

For instance, some of the names didn't strike me that well imagined... ok, Martin Septim and others have earthly names, but most in these games sound weirder. Here, we have Colin, and he was born with a knife instead of a hand, because of the bad things that happened to his mom, who was thinking about vengeance when she was delivering him, so there you go, he's born with a knife... it felt cheesy, unrealistic, even for something inspired from the video games, and I couldn't grasp how he and two kids are supposed to kinda save their world from an impeding doom... When he's that big flying rock on its way, with only hours until it hits... Oh, and the girl isn't very gifted in her alchemy, and there is no real mages guild left in this world. I just don't buy any of it! I gave up at page 67/304 (22%) of this first volume... 

In terms of fantasy novels, I find that Tolkien ruins everyone's work, and it takes a lot of good quality for me to go on reading (Neil Gaiman and others managed). 
In terms of books to read, I have plenty on my plate, and don't wish to lose more time on unrepeatable, unbelievable and jagged storytelling.

1. 3. Onward to the third book I abandoned this year : Les mécanismes de défense. Ok, the subtitle Théorie & clinique should have indicated it probably wouldn't be my thing. But in early July when I took it in the university library, knowing I'd have 6 weeks to read 3 books instead 2 weeks, I thought I'd give it a try - especially that on first glance it seemed to correspond to the topic of resilience. What I found was a book mostly about psychoanalytical approach of autonomous, subconscious mechanisms geared to defend one's core identity in relation to the freudian and post-freudian definitions, all relating to oedipus complex and similar goals, where a person is believed to automatically face inner impulses, and needs to check them in view of social morals... I just cannot get into that freudian obsession, and I needed something about post-traumatic resilience instead. 

I read the introduction and 1st chapter (which covered mostly a historical summary of freudian schools' approaches to the topic), followed by a quick overview of the table of contents and a couple pages in chapter 6, which seemed to be more about the cognitive approach, but instead, it fell flat on its face by describing what the anti-psychiatry movement, which I found really weird to include in a psych book. Read in total 28 pages.  

4. Come September, I gave up on a book I never thought I would. I tend to love reading Virginia Woolf, but I had such trouble reading Jacob's room, due to constant additions of new characters every chapter, and despite some beautiful passages, this book was very random and swapped topics all over the place. I simply couldn't keep up, and found the numerous, repetitive mentions of non-veg meals and other references to disrupt me even further. So, after 69 pages (out of 148, or 46.6%), I decided to give it back to the library, and might take it another time, when my brain is more capable of following.