A Drift of Quills for June 2018
Somehow, I manage quite frequently to miss sharing on Booklikes when my fellow Quills and I publish a new joint-blog post. I'll try to do better going forward . . . In any case, this time our topic is whether we finish books we hate. Do you want to guess in advance what each of us said? Be sure to click on the links for each of us, below, so as to get the rest of each of our stories.
Now, in truth, I can't imagine my fellow Quill, Robin Lythgoe, author of As the Crow Flies, reading anything to the bitter end that she doesn't very much like. But perhaps I'm wrong . . .
Well, Robin?
We’ve all come across them—those books that are so badly written you wonder if the author was even an earthling. Or, assuming that they weren’t hatched on another planet, if they bothered to attend grade school. Or if they live in a sensory deprivation chamber and have no freaking idea what the real world is like. The first pages of such a book are usually painful. Do you risk the agony of finishing the entire book? You want to know my philosophy?
P.S. Broaddus, author of A Hero's Curse, do you read things to the bitter end? Even when you hate them? I suspect you might be a bit more likely to do so than Robin, although I can't put my finger on why I think that might be . . . Am I right or am I wrong?
What to do with a book you hate? Or, even worse, a book that was just, 'meh.' It doesn't even warrant the energy of hurling it against the opposite wall. It barely deserves a sigh and a shrug, and certainly won't get a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Too much effort for a story that simply didn't captivate. So what do you do with that story? Are you a finisher? A staller? Or a tosser?
Does anyone want to guess what I'll say, in advance? Do I read things to the bitter end, or do I not? What do you think? Well, here goes . . .
Do I finish books that I start, but hate? I can answer this question with a single title: Moby Dick. I found it utterly incomprehensibly, annoyingly, mind-bogglingly boring, and odd—and downright awful. I hated it. Nothing anyone could say about a color or its significance, or what the author may have intended that color may have symbolized, could resurrect this title for me. I found a solid 70% of the work to be complete nonsense. Lest I be mistaken, let me put it simply: I truly and completely abhor this work. Perhaps more than any other I’ve ever read. So . . .
Please do join us again next time when we'll share some more (new) flash fiction. Later, then!
