Ten Times We Toiled to Trudge Through the Type

Isn’t it lovely when you open a book, and from the very first sentence, time seems to fly? Your fingers flip the pages so fast you’re surprised in retrospect that you didn’t get papercuts. You couldn’t stop reading the book. It was just that awesome. You couldn’t wait to finish it. You didn’t want to finish it! You found your little piece of bookworm heaven.

Yeah, this post isn’t about those books. Sorry.

This is about the books that forced us to focus. That taught us the true meaning of relativity.

To rip-off one of my favorite bad-good movies and turn the phrase into one more fitting:

“You open up a great book, and an hour can seem like a minute. You open up a bad book, and a minute can seem like an hour.”

However, it is worth nothing that some of these books we liked in the end. (Maybe didn’t love, obviously, but liked well enough.)

Top Ten Tuesday topics are provided courtesy of Broke and Bookish.

Ten Times We Toiled to Trudge Through the Type

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

I like Alastair Reynolds’ work. I really do. Its just, well, the man has a propensity for turning on the verbal diarrhea and not knowing how to stop it. Revelation Space was truly a trudge for me, and oh dear sweet baby Cthulhu, I want to forget I ever read it. Actually, wait, it was so unmemorable that I’ve basically already forgotten it. Heh!

Ultimate Verdict: Blah

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

I read it ’cause I said I’d read it. I read it ’cause it was one of those books you’re supposed to read. And I hated it. Then I even watched the movie because everyone said it was so much better. I couldn’t like the movie either. For a relatively thin book, it sure feels like PKD was, er, dicking around a lot.

Ultimate Verdict: Blah

Extracted by R.R. Haywood

It puttered around, it stalled in the middle. The dialogue made me giggle. There were flashes of brilliance that were drowned in lakes of mediocrity. It wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been.

Ultimate Verdict: Okay

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Can I just insert a gigantic yawn here? This is a book that promised one thing (science fiction!) and delivered another (fantasy masquerading as science fiction). There was no payoff in the end, and I can barely remember anything about this book other than it tricked me and I don’t like it.

Ultimate Verdict: Blah

Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson

I’m not sure what was going on in Forty Signs of Rain, but it was KSR at the worst I’ve ever seen him. Dear Cthulhu, nothing happened in this book other than people being people until like the last 30 pages. It was literally a gigantic rant on how climate change is happening and politicians won’t pay attention. I like climate change fics. I agree that politicians need to pay attention! But you don’t need to dress up your rant as a book and then try to shove it down our throats. GAH!

Ultimate Verdict: Blah

Book of Shadows by Alexandra Sokoloff 

I generally like Akexandra Sokoloff’s books. I don’t know what the heck happened in this book. The characters are insanely annoying. The detective goes back and forth between belief and disbelief he was like a human yo-yo. And he was a dick to everyone. The witch is pretentious and annoying and rather than hoping they would get together I was hoping they’d fall off a cliff.

Ultimate Verdict: Get. It. Away. From. Me

Just Plain Weird by Tom Upton

This was a book that I was so close to liking. Alas. There were way too many coincidental contrivances. Major plot points are either skimmed over or left totally unanswered. The main character is likable enough but the Love Interest? I think the author was going for Quirky, Unique and Cute but missed and landed on Annoying, Judgmental, and Psychotic.

Ultimate Verdict: Just Plain Contrived

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

This book is creepy and interesting but holy Cthulhu. The footnotes, all the footnotes, annotations along with the kitchen sink that I’m sure is hiding in there make this a pretty hefty book to slog through. I’d recommend the full color edition. I don’t know how much different the reading experience is but it’s prettier.

Ultimate Verdict: Worth the trek but you better carve out a good month or so.

Rage of Spirits by Noel Hynd

So, so boring. To give you an idea I’ll quote myself and my Goodreads notation: “This book is moving so slow. I think it fell asleep.” I know I sure did. A lot. It took me five months to finish this book and made me very disinterested in reading any others by Noel Hynd.

Ultimate Verdict: Yawn

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas 

It can be a fascinating book at times and at others a bit pedantic. It also reads a bit more into some things that I can’t agree with. It also overrates the Paranormal Activity series more than it should. I’m sure my antipathy toward that series has long been known. however, it raises some interesting questions about the nature of the Found Footage sub-genre and the viewer’s reaction to it. It also lists quite a few that are not very well known.

Ultimate Verdict: Interesting but only if you’re deeply interested in the film industry and this sub-genre in particular.

So, dear readers, what books did you toil to trudge through? Everyone’s is different, so don’t be afraid to speak up if you loved one of the ones we whomped on with dismay.