Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I have a confession to make.

I’m the sort of reader who makes quick judgements about books. If they don’t grab my attention in first chapter, there’s a high chance I won’t finish them at all. Sometimes I even decide for sure to DNF after a few pages if the story includes something that I really don’t like.

Sometimes this is a good thing. In other cases, I have made judgements about tales that I later enjoyed quite a bit when I decided to give them another chance.

1. The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

This was originally described to me as “Harry Potter for adults,” so I was surprised by how non-magical the beginning was. The first time I read it, I assumed the opening scenes were a good approximation of what the rest of the storyline was about.

It wasn’t until I began watching the TV show based on this book that I realized just how much the plot changed only a few scenes later. I’m so glad I gave this one another chance.

2. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

It took me a few tries to get through this book due to all of the terrible things that happened to the Joad family. There were only so many setbacks and examples of injustice against poor people during the Great Depression I could take before I would give up again, although the ending made me very glad I kept trying to finish it.

3. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice.

The thought of interviewing a creature as dangerous and unpredictable as a vampire blew my mind the first time I heard of it. It took me a couple of tries to get through the slower pace of the beginning of this story before it started to pay off.

4. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

I’m pretty particular about the types of thrillers I read, and this one didn’t grab my attention the first time I attempted to read it. After hearing so many people rave about it, I eventually decided to keeping going at least a few chapters into it. Now I’m glad I made that decision. This was such a fun way to pass the time when I wanted something light.

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To be honest with you, I wasn’t a huge fan of this author’s previous books. There was something about The Host that interested me, but it took two tries before I finally finished it. I needed some extra time to adjust to the idea of two different consciousnesses inhabiting the same body, although it was worth it in the end.

6. Native Son by Richard Wright.

The reason why I had so much trouble finishing this tale is because I saw the ending coming from a mile away. I loved the writing and plot, but I also dreaded the thought of the main character, Bigger Thomas, meeting the fate I was pretty sure he was going to find by the final scene.

7. The World According to Garp by John Irving.

This tale began with a selfish, criminal decision the main character’s mother made. I was so disappointed in her for making it that it turned me off from finding out how it turned out for her and the child that resulted from that choice for a long time.

8. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.

There’s only so much pain I can handle in a story. This one had so much of it that I kept needing to step away from it for very long periods of time before starting again at the beginning. Eventually, it was nice to know how everything ended, though.

9. The Bridges of Madison Country by Robert James Waller.

Once again, this was a case of a character making such an awful mistake that I had trouble pushing through that scene to find out how things ended for her.

10. Under the Dome by Stephen King.

As I’ve mentioned in previous Top Ten Tuesday posts, I like Stephen King’s work in general. But this was one of his stories that I struggled to keep reading. It took me a while to finally finish it due to how sad I felt for the characters as they ran out of food and other supplies.

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I’m not the kind of reader who gives up easily when I stumble across something that doesn’t necessarily appeal to me the first time I try it. There are some stories that I finally learned to love after several attempts to finish them.

This technique works for me in many cases, but there are some books out there that I sadly don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get into. The first five novels on this list are classics, and the last five are from the fantasy genre.

1. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to get through Les Misérables. Based on the subject matter and rave reviews of it, I expected to love it the first time I read it. Sadly, I was never able to adapt to the long-winded narrator.

2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

The idea of a family worrying about who their daughters will marry is bizarre to me even though I know it was a genuine concern for many families in the early 1800s due to the inheritance laws back then. To be fair, I almost never read historical romances in general, so I knew going into it that it probably wasn’t going to be my cup of tea.

3. Jo’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott.

I loved Little Women and Little Men, but the third instalment of this series had so little to say about the March family that I quickly lost interest in it. There are still times when I wonder what Jo, Meg, and Beth were like when they were middle aged or old women. I’m sure they never stopped trying to find ways to make ordinary life more entertaining.

4. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

One of my high school English teachers was obsessed with this writer. She taught us a detailed unit on how Thoreau lived and why he wrote Walden. While I was amused by the fact that Thoreau apparently had food regularly brought to him by relatives while he was living alone by Walden pond, the contradiction between the deliveries of his meals and how self-reliantly he portrayed that period of his life makes it impossible for me to enjoy this book.

5. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

I don’t like reading about children being mistreated. This is especially true when they are being harmed by their guardian and have no way to escape. If only Maud, the main character, had been an adult when she moved into her new home. The idea of attempting to outsmart a murderer appeals to me quite a bit, but I only want to read about adults taking on that task.

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Due to how violent the first scene was, I never want to read the rest of Game of Thrones even though I liked the writing style quite a bit in general.  It only becomes more gory from there according to what I’ve heard, and I can only handle that kind of storytelling in small doses.

7. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan.

So many people love the Wheel of Time series in general that it took me a very long time to understand I’d never be one of them. The pacing of The Eye of the World was simply too slow for me to keep going to find out what the Wheel of Time was or why other folks enjoy it so much.

8. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin.

There are several Ursula K. LeGuin books that I really love, but A Wizard of Earthsea isn’t one of them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to change this. Normally, her storytelling grabs my attention from the very first sentence.

9. The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett.

I’ve read multiple Terry Pratchett quotes that I found deeply amusing, but I’ve never been able to get into The Color of Magic or the rest of the Discworld series.  I will keep trying to find something else from him that suits my tastes, though.

10. A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony.

As cool as the covers are for A Spell for Chameleon and the rest of the Xanth series are, their writing styles simply don’t do anything for me.

What books have you given up on?