throwing them back
Feb. 25th, 2010 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaideni returned an unfinished book to the library today.
we have a wonderfully large library and a great holds system here, so with a bit of planning i can have a nearly unbroken stream of reading material that takes no money from my budget or space on my bookshelves. the nature of the holds system means that the books must flow - many of the things i read aren't eligible for renewal because there is a line behind me.
so sometimes i have to give up. when i purchase a book and it doesn't grab me on the first try, it goes to slumber on the shelf, to be revisited at a better time. often the right moment is all i need. sometimes the better time never comes, and it heads out to a used bookstore to find a happier home. unfinished library books fill me with guilt, because i know that the book and the right moment are unlikely to have a chance to meet after that initial pass.
i feel like i am letting that book down. in January, it was Treason's Shore. it's book four (i think the last) of a fat fantasy series that is very good. (martial arts! egalitarian society! pirates! complex well-defined characters! really.) if you start to read Inda and are enjoying it, just get the rest of them because they read as one very long continuous book. which i normally applaud, because i hate recaps. but put a year between the reading of book three and book four, and all of the complexity that was so pleasurable in the first three volumes makes picking up the fourth without a reread of the prior three nearly impossible. i carried a 700 page hardcover around for three weeks, knowing how much i enjoyed the beginning of the story, seeing the potential, barely able to pick at it - knowing that if i let it go i may not ever read it.
today i admitted that Finch wasn't doing it for me. i don't know why, when i find a description of Finch so enticing, that the book itself does not beg to be read. it's not about being depressing - i tore through The Windup Girl and immediately ordered up and read Bacigalupi's short story collection, which are all post-apocalyptic and hopeless.
it's so much easier when i definitely don't like the book, it doesn't feel like my failure. when my failures belong to the library i'm not filling my shelves with their spines, spines that reproach me for failing to unleash their potential - i can just turn my head as the door on the return bin slams shut.
we have a wonderfully large library and a great holds system here, so with a bit of planning i can have a nearly unbroken stream of reading material that takes no money from my budget or space on my bookshelves. the nature of the holds system means that the books must flow - many of the things i read aren't eligible for renewal because there is a line behind me.
so sometimes i have to give up. when i purchase a book and it doesn't grab me on the first try, it goes to slumber on the shelf, to be revisited at a better time. often the right moment is all i need. sometimes the better time never comes, and it heads out to a used bookstore to find a happier home. unfinished library books fill me with guilt, because i know that the book and the right moment are unlikely to have a chance to meet after that initial pass.
i feel like i am letting that book down. in January, it was Treason's Shore. it's book four (i think the last) of a fat fantasy series that is very good. (martial arts! egalitarian society! pirates! complex well-defined characters! really.) if you start to read Inda and are enjoying it, just get the rest of them because they read as one very long continuous book. which i normally applaud, because i hate recaps. but put a year between the reading of book three and book four, and all of the complexity that was so pleasurable in the first three volumes makes picking up the fourth without a reread of the prior three nearly impossible. i carried a 700 page hardcover around for three weeks, knowing how much i enjoyed the beginning of the story, seeing the potential, barely able to pick at it - knowing that if i let it go i may not ever read it.
today i admitted that Finch wasn't doing it for me. i don't know why, when i find a description of Finch so enticing, that the book itself does not beg to be read. it's not about being depressing - i tore through The Windup Girl and immediately ordered up and read Bacigalupi's short story collection, which are all post-apocalyptic and hopeless.
it's so much easier when i definitely don't like the book, it doesn't feel like my failure. when my failures belong to the library i'm not filling my shelves with their spines, spines that reproach me for failing to unleash their potential - i can just turn my head as the door on the return bin slams shut.
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Date: 2010-02-25 07:31 pm (UTC)So, yeah, after that one and a few other books, I decided that life is too short to read shit.
But, I also understand what you mean about putting stuff aside and getting back to it later. I had to do that with the Dark Materials series. First time I tried to read it, I just didn't get it. I waited about a year and tried again, and loved it.
The library will still have that book later if you decide to give it another chance.