Sooooo, I picked up Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari in December but I havenāt been able to finish it. Itās super-interesting but I really struggle with non-fiction and have been super slow with it Am just wondering, is this just me? Or do other people pick up books theyāre super enthusiastic about and then just leave it half-read and unloved?
(TBH I picked it up mostly because it was on Barack Obamaās reading list. I think that man is too cool for school.)
My boyfriend says the same about Stephen Hawkingās A Brief History of Time, so I have one other outlier
War and Peace! Itās been a curse for years. Itās the names, i canāt remember who is who, Iām constantly flicking back to see when they were mentioned before and who exactly they are
Oh wow, thatās ambitious. I donāt think Iāll ever attempt it! I couldnāt even do Anna Karenina. (Heck, I couldnāt even watch the BBC adaptation of War & Peaceā¦)
Iām also 58% through sapiens after initially starting around December time. I think Iāll get back on it and finish it off this week. Agreed, itās a really interesting book!
I think itās more because of the way /style itās been written in and I think it could have been written a lot simpler. Iād still recommend it as a good book though and itās been really enlightening!
Oh god that book is just the absolute bane of my life. I started it years ago, over time Iāve read about 75% of it and I just canāt for the life of me finish it!
When I started the Red Rising series of books, I really couldnāt start the first novel. It didnāt draw me in. Took me a few weeks, but after I knuckled down to get past those first few chapters, itās one of the best books Iāve read and I finished it in a couple of days and the series in 2 weeks.
OMG I havenāt even attempted it! Good on you to try it though, salutes
I actually went to see the author in conversation with Armando Iannucci (he did The Thick of It) and he didnāt come across that well, tbh. Fascinating and dark stuff though! (ā¦ And I didnāt read the book before I went to the event
I used to feel quite guilty about doing this. I came to realise that there is still a lot of value in reading half a book. This is especially true when the authors put all the important stuff in the first half!
I have a lot of half-abandoned lit books I had to read because of my degree- I confess to writing a lot of essays in exams on books Iāve just barely skimmed. Jane Eyre is easy to read but so boring to me, I skipped doing English Literature at A Levels because it covered Jane Eyre (as well as books from the Victorian period).
I have recently abandoned Banvilleās āThe Seaā (Booker winner) and another Booker prize nominee, āOn Beautyā. One wasā¦ self-wankery and convinced of its cleverness and the other was over-descriptive and read like a bad fanfiction. Booker lists usually disappoint so I donāt pay attention to it anymore.
Am just wondering, is this just me? Or do other people pick up books theyāre super enthusiastic about and then just leave it half-read and unloved?
