Reading is great, but some times you just aren't really in the mood for it. You pick up a book and you start reading it but your heart just isn't in it. You try to get through it, but you find yourself picking it up less and less, you realise you've forgotten half of what going on and before you know it you have abandoned ship, you've run off with another book and the previous one get guiltily slipped back onto the book shelf half read, but you tell yourself you will get back to, and yet you never do.
Here are some of my half read books that sit on my shelf and I try not too look at them for too long as I feel way to guilty !
Escape From Camp 14 By Blaine Harden
This is a really moving story about a young man, Shin Donghyuk, who is the only person to have ever escape from North Korea's harshest labour camp. Families are sent there with no trial and no chance to escape, they work doing hard labour until they die, also any children who are born in the camp are also seen as prisoners and they do will never get a chance to leave the camp.
Shin was born in the camp, he knew nothing of life beyond the fence, he was always hungry he felt no love for his family as they could all easily turn each other in for being rule breakers and it wasn't until he was in his twenties and a new prisoners came to camp and told him about barbecued pork that he decided to try and escape, and some how it worked.
Now doesn't this book found just fantastically intersting ? And for the most part it really was, I really enjoyed it. However there were two things that stopped me getting to the end. One was the nature of the book, unsurprisingly, is rather depressing and it is sometimes hard to keep reading when you know the next page isn't going to bring any more joy then the last, even when Shin escapes it just brings on a new wave of hardship.
Two, the book will sometimes stop the narrative of Shins life to explain North Korea politics and history to help you understand why something is happening. This is helpful and informative but I have never been one to take too much interest in politics, and if they had just been a paragraph or two I may have made it but it would some times go on for a few pages and I just found it hard to keep going.
The worse part is I abandoned this book on the last chapter, I made it through all of it, but I couldn't give it that final push. Netflix also have a documentary about Shin's story, and you guessed it I didn't make it to the end of that either
The Remains of a Day by Kazuo Ihsiguro
I bought this book because during university we had to read two of Ishiguro's other books Never Let Me Go and A Pale View Of Hills, both of which I loved so I wanted to read some of his other works. I picked The Remains of a Day because it was his debut novel and it had such fantastic reviews that I felt I had to read it.
However once I got it the subject matter just did not interest me in the slightest. It is about a long serving butler who decide to take his first holiday in many years and goes on a motoring trip ( I just had to look that up as I thought he had retired!) I really can't tell you more then that as I never made it much further then him getting in the car.
I so wanted to like this book but it just wasn't one for me, its not a bad book I really liked the way it was written and I was interested in the idea of a book from a butlers point of view, but in practise I found it dull. This book sat on my Goodreads Currently Reading list for two years before I admitted defeat and marked it as unread.
Animal Farm by George Orwell
I FEEL SO MUCH GUILT ABOUT THIS!
I bought this book because it is such a classic, and I had read 1984 and really loved it, and so many people recommended this to me so I went out and I bought and started reading it and really enjoyed it. I thought it was really interesting a moving and well written, I honestly wanted to cry over Boxers story line and thinking about the scene of him in the back of the cart waving to all his friend... Oh I just can't its too upsetting. This book is great it would say it is one of those must read books for everyone.
So why didn't I finish it ? I DON'T KNOW! I literally had about 4 pages and I just never read them, for some reason I took it out of my bag put it back on my shelf and just never read those pages.
When this post goes live I am going to walk over to my shelf pick it up and read those 4 pages!
The guilt is made worse every time someone asks me if I had read, because I always say yes, but I know deep down I haven't.
The Whispering Road by Livi Michael
I don't know where this book came from, I have had it for a long time, always telling myself I will read it. I think I got this book when I was around 15 so that's nearly 10 years of telling myself I will read this book. I have started it three times and have never made it much further then the first chapter.
The book is about a brother and sister in 1800's England in a Workhouse and one night they decide to escape and try and find new life for themselves. they want to get to Manchester and find their mother and basically escape the cruel conditions their short lives have experienced so far. It sounds like the type of book I would love. Industrial England is an area of history I love, the reviews have called it a Dickens like book, but with more modern language, and yet I just haven't made it through
I don't know why I can't make any progress on this book, I tried to read it again two years ago, I had the mind set that I was an adult and this was a children's book and therefore I could probably read it in about a day or two. Well once again I was defeated by it. I cant get rid of it, I have to read it one day it just sounds too interesting. Plus look at that cover it is so beautiful !
So there are a couple of my bookshelf inhabitants that I shamefully haven't finished, or in some cases barely started. It is better then the handful of books that I have barely started! Does anyone else have books like this that they just can't finish the enthusiasm to make it to the end?
Rella Xx
No comments:
Post a Comment