End-of-the-year book asks: #12
12. Any books that disappointed you?
ooh, yeah, definitely. in the last few years i’ve been trying to get over my need to finish a book no matter how much i may dislike it it, because what if it gets better? (sometimes it just doesn’t). but sometimes i make myself finish them anyway. not counting DNFs because i think that’s a separate question:
- aimless love - billy collins i made a post about this (very briefly) but billy collins just doesn’t do it for me. i got really tired of how many poems there were about the act of writing poems, or how often he inserted himself in things that didn’t need him to be there, and the “i’m so clever” tongue-in-cheek tone of almost everything. i genuinely liked maybe 5 or 6 poems in the whole book.
- black cats and evil eyes - chloe rhodes this was a loose collection of superstitions and folkloric traditions, and it was fine as a sort of starting point, but it was poorly organized and felt pretty shallow. i did learn a few things though.
- severance - ling ma maybe if i hadn’t been morbid enough to read a zombie novel during a pandemic, i would have enjoyed it more. i understand why the protagonist’s voice was so bland and unemotional, but it didn’t exactly make it thrilling. i did like the shen fever concept, since it was pretty different from other zombie plagues i’ve seen, but again, read it during a pandemic. i wanted to like it for what it was trying to do but i was kind of skimming by the end.
- most likely - sarah watson i read this for a book club at work that never happened because of covid, and i made myself finish it anyway because, i don’t know, some stupid sense of duty? i was already on furlough, what did it matter? anyway, the basic concept of this novel is kind of interesting, where one of four girls becomes the first female president but you don’t know which one at first. but the concept fell apart on a closer look because of how they framed it, and there was also an extremely uncomfortable subplot with a teenager pretending to be someone else and, more importantly, older to get close to a city councilor’s assistant (to the point of going on dates), which would have been very fun in an adult novel, but which was just statutory waiting to happen in this case. (luckily the guy fucking bolted as soon as he found out)
- an easy death - charlaine harris one of the only books i’ve ever left a goodreads review on, and only because i wanted to rep Wake of Vultures (because i will take every opportunity to do so): “A very exciting premise with very boring, inconsistent execution. If you want a gritty, funny, heartfelt historical fantasy western, skip this one and read Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen instead.”
- malamander - thomas taylor also read this one for work. overall not bad, a strange little kids’ mystery, but with some elements that struck me as purposefully weird in a way that didn’t feel very natural. i had been expecting (hoping for) it to be creepy based on the cover and some of the marketing materials, and it very much wasn’t.
