The Book Tower

From Booking Through Thursday:

The books that you start but don’t finish say as much about you as the ones you actually read, sometimes because of the books themselves or because of the circumstances that prevent you from finishing. So . . . what books have you abandoned and why?

If I could define a meaning for the expression that sinking feeling it would be the mood of resignation I fall into when I abandon a book. When I start something I feel obliged to finish it, especially when I’ve had such high expectations. This year I have abandoned several highly acclaimed novels. Why is this? Is it me? Snow by Orham Pamuk was an early casualty, followed by The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. There are others, but I feel ashamed to mention them. And these are just recent novels; that sinking feeling becomes that sunk and underwater feeling when I give up on a classic. A Tale of Two Cities did nothing for me, and neither did Sense and Sensibility. Visitors sometimes comment on the rich selection of books on my shelves. They do not know that some of them are abandoned…

I excuse my behaviour as natural spillage. After all, I do read a lot so some books will get left by the wayside as I journey on. There comes a point where you have to give in to your instincts. Snow had some great reviews, some from fellow bloggers, but I was peering over the pages and looking at the next book on the top of my pile and dying to read that. And when that happens it’s time to give up. With Philip Roth it was a similar experience, but my treatment of classics is less easier to explain away. I think I have perhaps become a little lazier in my reading, and possibly subconsciously relate the harder books to being a student. Reading becomes as task rather than a pleasure and I’m compelled to make pencil jotttings in the margins of my Dickens and Austen…