Does listening to audiobooks count as reading? Here it does. Let’s discuss your favorite reads — or listens.
All tagged did not finish
Justin Torres’ “Blackouts” is a stylistic exercise that feels more concerned with its own cleverness than with engaging its readers. The novel's experimental structure, essentially a mixed media piece of art that blends past and present, is undeniably ambitious, but it frequently veers into pretentiousness masked as creativity.
Expectation: A unique journey into the mind of a Midwest housewife and baker.
Reality: A 1,000+ page run on sentence with no plot, or seemingly, purpose outside of threading random topics together.
Between the bloat, uneven pacing and self-absorption you’ll quickly find yourself tired of the lecture and wondering how a book that started promisingly can derail so quickly.
Expectation: A folksy tale of second chances.
Reality: A soap opera of confusing plots, overly sexualized characters and an insane amount of fart jokes.
There are multiple things I took umbrage with in this unfocused, pretentious, and boring historical memoir (is that a thing?) that I gave up at 34 percent read.
While I’m glad to have read a small portion of this very American collection, I wouldn’t recommend most readers start with this unabridged version of “Leaves” unless you’re prepared to seek out the must-read poems from the often confusing and repetitive filler.
The hype was lost on me, here’s six popular books I hated, plus five I couldn’t even finish.
I don’t shy away from epic reads, but in reviewing my 10 longest reads, only about half ended up being the time spent reading or listening. Is this your experience too?
