4 because I love petty reasons and 5 because it's interesting
I think I have multiple followers who love petty reasons lmao because three of you asked number 4! And I don't have a petty answer for you, sadly!! I just answered this in a prior ask but basically I only DNF four books this year, and none of them were for petty reasons. I'm a surprisingly not-petty person lol, especially compared to my EXTREMELY petty wife. I'm sure she'd love this question and have a great answer. But anyway, one book I DNF this year was How to be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir and honestly it was because I had an extremely difficult time understanding the narrator and following along with her reading.
Audiobooks are a stretch for me already with auditory processing, and although WOW was this author's Trinidadian accent one of the most BEAUTIFUL accents I've ever heard, I found it really hard to follow her and understand a lot of what she was saying. Which I was really sad about actually because I super wanted to read the book. I also didn't want to read the paper version, because this memoir read kind of like lyrical spoken word poetry, and I felt like I wouldn't get the same experience just reading the words on a page. But I also couldn't get the experience listening to it because of my damn auditory processing issues. :( So that was a bummer.
5. What's a scene you read this year that sticks with you? This one is kind of tricky because my memory is so bad lolsob that even when a scene really moves me, it's so hard for me to hold onto it. But I will say that there are a lot of scenes from Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi that are really sticking with me. The author so poignantly and poetically describes experiences of multiplicity and also struggles with things like self-harm and suicidal ideation. And also just like...the struggle of existence? Of understanding existence? Of dealing chronic SI while trying to understand your own existence? There's this quote that I saved in my phone because it moved me so much: "Just stop, the others suggested. You could just stop breathing. It feels so easy. They were right, it did. I held my breath, but it didn't feel like I was holding my breath, it felt like there should never have been breath. It felt like the entire concept of breath had been something I imagined. After all, my body was never meant to move like this. These lungs had to have been built for show. They should never have expanded and I should never have been alive."
Anyway that's kinda dark lol but the things that tend to stick with me the most are the things that make me feel less alone in my own inner experiences, especially the dark experiences.
