RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[olivermoss]

Who is winning, you or you TBR list?

Comments

Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

I've got a stack of books that I don't want to return to the library unread, but I'm having trouble even making the time to sort through them to choose one to try.

PLEASE tell me that others have found tips for the problem of too much of a good thing and not enough time to enjoy it?

Re: Drowning

[matsushima]

For physical books, taking books out and not reading them is fine - it's great, even! It helps us keep our circulation statistics up, especially if you go back and borrow them again when you have more time to read. Librarians can use that data to show that there is community interest in the library in general and to defend purchasing, e.g., books by/about people of color in a mostly white community. (… not something we should have to defend, obviously, but you'd be surprised (maybe?) by how often it comes up.)

I know that doesn't help find more time to read but I hope it makes you feel better about returning library books unread.

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

It isn't actually "more time to read." I could set a timer and read half an hour every morning after eating breakfast and not really disturb my usual day.

I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling guilty that the books are just sitting there. I can't figure out whether to try to finish the book that is in progress and boring me to tears, part of the reason that this mess piled up the way it did, or try to break my usual habit and pick up a random book to read THAT instead.

So I freeze, and don't read any books at all.

THAT is the core of the problem. It's like dropping a box of matches and trying to figure out how to get the mess cleaned up, when there's a list of "rules" and expectations hanging over the whole task that makes the idea of just picking up a dustpan and whisk broom seem completely underwhelming (and ineffective).

Fortunately, this hasn't happened in years.

But while it's happening, boy, it feels like my brain is a frozen engine trying to hit 4K rpm!

Re: Drowning

[pedanther]

In case it helps, I hereby give you Official Permission to put aside any book that is boring you to tears, no matter how far from finishing it you may be.

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

I am laughing so very hard right now because yes, that actually helped. Thank you.

Re: Drowning

[anehan]

That is so very relatable.

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

It's fortunate that it only happens less than every five years, because I've been a self-powered bibliophile since before I was three.

Re: Drowning

[zenigotchas]

Try reading less books at once so you can funnel in more time to each of them. Or just take out one at a time. Reading doesn't have to be a marathon, you can savor each page slowly.

EDIT: Or read shorter books alongside longer books so you read a lot but don't have as much to have to sink into and digest. Not in equal amounts for each book. One series I'm pretty obsessed with rn is a quick read and pretty light, so it does a good job being something I may read by itself in a day or as something I read ALONGSIDE something heavier and/or longer.

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

Sure, I had to to that during chemo.

I just hope that I can break the current logjam before September.

Re: Drowning

[zenigotchas]

Why?

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

Because the feel of my brain acting like a frozen engine is as painful as a migraine. If I could just hand everything back to the library and start over, I would've done that a month ago.

Re: Drowning

[meteordust]

I write down the name of the book and what page I got up to reading. That gets rid of my guilt in returning it unfinished, because it lets me think I'll reborrow it in future, whether or not I actually do it.

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

OOOH! Tricksy! I likes it!

I should've written down the exact page in Harry Potter #5 where I noped right out of any trust in the author at ALL. Then maybe I could've spared myself the completionist's nightmare of slogging through both #6 and #7.

I'm going to give this one a serious try. It might help! (It's not abandoned, it's just not... finished... yet. Yet.)

Re: Drowning

[spiralsheep]

I ask myself which book I'd choose if this was the last book I'll ever read. Sometimes it makes me focus on interesting and sometimes on happifying. Works for me. :-)

Re: Drowning

[dialecticdreamer]

Oh, that's an interesting question! Thank you!

[pauraque]

I just tore through Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is good because I need to hurry up with the rest of my library books and the one before that took me forever! Next I will be starting The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. I loved The Spear Cuts Through Water so I have high hopes for it. (Almost all of this library haul is "I've read this author before and keep meaning to check out their other stuff".)

[isis]

Oh, I really loved Never Let Me Go, which I read completely unspoiled.

[pauraque]

I loved it too! I was spoiled for it years ago, but fortunately I don't think it diminished my experience.

[phantomtomato]

I found the twist very strongly foreshadowed and therefore predictable when I read it—definitely not a book that I thought was ruined by knowing going in!

[pauraque]

It was stated plainly much earlier than I was expecting. I had the mistaken impression it was a Sixth Sense-style twist where you think you know what it's doing for ages and then new information makes you reevaluate everything, but it's not that at all.

[olivermoss]

I've read:

* The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid. It's another m/m hockey romance, but not in her Game Changers universe. It's a stand alone. Holy hell have her writing skills leveled up. This is a really impressive book. I read it so fast. It's about two guys with a very messy past that hurt both of them, but one waaaay more than the other. It's about coming together and getting past the past, but in a way that really feels really good. Usually when I read a story like that, certain things don't feel properly resolved, and this was just really, really well handled. Also, it dealt seriously with the fallout without being too emo about it. Just... goddam.

* Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Read it in prep for the movie and also for an upcoming book club. I heard that the trailer spoils a bit of the book, so I wanted to read it before seeing the trailer. I enjoyed it, but I also see why people love or hate his books and writing style.

* Six of Crows - Making progress through the Grishaverse! I enjoyed it, but wound up reading it in bits and starts due to needing to finish other things. The Grishaverse is published as YA and in this the YA-ness feels very tacked on and also we are repeating reminded of how young a character in Shadow and Bone was. Reminded or told, because I really didn't think Alina was supposed to still be that age by the end.

* What Moves the Dead by Kingfisher - Finally got this done, both for book club and also the author will be at my local comic con. Her writing style is really good. Looking forward to reading more in the series, but I will wait a bit.

Currently reading: A Dark and Drowning Tide, also for a book club. My main book club has a Romantasy spin off that I rarely go to because I am not into their picks, but this interested me.

[anehan]

The Shots You Take sounds interesting, so I added it to my TBR list. Win for TBR.

[olivermoss]

I hope you like it! I loved it and I finally I have a book I feel I can recc without caveats. If you do like the book, a series by the same author is becoming a TV show, but also that series is of very uneven quality, her earlier attempts at writing novels.

[givemeyourhonor]

I keep adding more books to my list just as I catch up.

In War and Peace today Tolstoy told me that the French didn't lose this particular battle because Napoleon had a cold and goes on about the great man theory being bullshit. I agree with him, but this is so boring.

I'm almost finished with the LN adaptation for Twisted Wonderland's book 1 and I've been enjoying it, though the typos and mistakes are getting bad.

I also have the The Virgin Crown</> by MA Wellons as a back burner book on my phone. Not sure where it's going though I want to learn why the protag was exiled.

I'm going to be starting the fourth Rowan Blood book once I finish reading the twst novel, so I'm excited, but also worried because the last book left off on a frustrating cliffhanger as in I seriously thought my copy of the book had been cut off.

[pedanther]

One of my favourite things about War and Peace was the way Tolstoy is shamelessly one-sided about Napoleon: any time Napoleon achieves something admirable, it was fate, or luck, or so obvious that anybody else would have done the same, but any time Napoleon does something detestable, that was all his own work.

(It took me a couple of years to struggle through War and Peace, but I got there in the end.)

[givemeyourhonor]

I've been doing a daily reading thing so I'm slowly chugging along.

Tolstoy is very petty, though! It's like so biased.

[bluapapilio]

Ack, sad to hear about the typos in the TWST LNs. :(

PS your italics syntax is broken there are at the end.

[givemeyourhonor]

There are a few weird name swaps that are clearly accidental, which is a shame since I like a lot of what the novel is doing.

And damn :/ There I go again.

[matsushima]

I think of my TBR less as a to-do list and more as a menu. I pick and choose what I'm in the mood for with no expectation that I'll finish anything [that I don't have to read for grad school and/or that a student recommended to me - I always finish those].

In the past week or so, I've finished Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis, The AI Con, and A Well-Trained Wife. I've got No More Tears on Libby to read next but I'm always open to narrative nonfiction recommendations, especially sociology/"issues" books.

[zenigotchas]

So. Fucking. Close. To finishing. Beyond Good And Evil. Closer to issue #50 of Spawn and reached issue #83 of Sonic The Comic

[rocky41_7]

Definitely not me! We're in the triple digits on the TBR now ~(>_<。)＼ Having to stop myself from looking at ANY more book rec posts or articles just so I can make some progress. Having fun with it though! Planning to start Victoria Goddard's "The Bone Harp" later tonight.

[pedanther]

I have been actively at war with my TBR backlog for the past few years, and I'm steadily gaining ground. I signed up for a challenge with the goal that each year you read an increasing number of books from the TBR backlog - 23 in 2023, 24 in 2024, and so on - and I recently completed my 25 for 2025. It's sometimes a bit wearing, though, dealing with books that I bought out of passing interest 15 years ago when I was a different person, so I've started thinking that next year I might call a ceasefire and focus on hitting the library and reading some new stuff instead.

This week, I've been knocking a few shorter works off the TBR - Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, The Practical Princess and other liberating fairy tales by Jay Williams, and E.M. Forster's A Room with a View.

[olivermoss]

Knocking off the shorter works can feel so satisfying

[mistressofmuses]

The TBR list is always winning, but I'm trying to put up a fight!

(Uprooted has proven to be a very quick read so far, and hopefully I keep up the pace.)

[inchoatewords]

My TBR will never be conquered, in this lifetime, anyway. I had paper lists, which moved to Goodreads eventually, and now the "want to read" shelf is over 1k. However, there probably is some stuff on there that I no longer care to read, but it would take too long to weed through, so I am very free with the delete button, heh. (I randomize my shelf and then take a look at what's up top to help me choose what's next, when I don't have a book club selection).

I finished Algospeak this week, which was a decent read on how social media is changing language faster, and now I'm reading Nexus by Henry Miller.

[olivermoss]

That is a very long TBR! I wouldn't even know what to do with one that long

[valoise]

Continuing to revisit Murderbot I read Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry and liked them both on the second read. But I do think the novellas are more effective than the longer novel.

On the TBR discussion, for a long time I felt obligated to finish books even when I disliked them. I found it hard to start anything new until I'd read what I started. Finally realized that it was okay to stop and a waste of my time to try and force myself to read stuff I didn't like. Sometimes the time is just not right or I'm just not in the mood for a certain kind of story. And that's okay - nothing wrong with me or the book, we just don't match at that time.

[drawnecromancy]

How did you manage to get yourself to stop forcing yourself to read stuff you're not enjoying ? Because I'm currently really struggling with it :O

[valoise]

I don't know exactly. I just kind of came to the realization that life's too short to keep trying to do unpleasant stuff for no good reason. There's so much stuff out there - books, tv, movies, etc. - that why should I force myself to read or watch something I hate no matter who else has reviewed it or liked it?

[drawnecromancy]

It makes a lot of sense put that way !

[drawnecromancy]

Possibly it's weird to reply 2 weeks later, but.
Despite years of my friends trying to convince me that life IS too short to keep trying to read books you hate, it's you who actually convinced me to just drop the book I wasn't enjoying when we were having this conversation. So thank you, because I'm having a lot more fun now ! I think I'm going to listen to my gut more when I start disliking a book.

[valoise]

Glad you're able to find more fun in reading now!

[drawnecromancy]

Yay!

[olivermoss]

DNFing has been huge for me. I feel the need to stick with a book in case it gets good or whatever, but honestly life is too short for a book that may or may not come together in the end

[screechfox]

I just got in a parcel of secondhand books, so... my TBR list, definitely!

I'm still working on The Monster by Seth Dickinson. I'm having the same feeling that I had when reading the first book - I should have been taking notes on who's who! Still enjoying it, and I've reserved the third book from the library.

Non-fiction, I finished Love in Exile by Shon Faye, and now I've started Crown of Blood by Nicola Tallis, which is about Lady Jane Grey, who was queen of England for nine days (or thirteen, depending on how you count it) in Tudor times.

[drawnecromancy]

Oh, clearly the TBR. I've been stuck in the middle of a book series because I am nearly incapable of just dropping books I don't enjoy, so I haven't been reading much, and a friend has lended me a new book, and I've gotten my ereader back... I'll figure it out eventually LOL

[phantomtomato]

I started The Inheritor by E. F. Benson this week, though I think I might put it aside. It’s definitely a slashy, just-barely-subtextual queer book in the vein of his David Blaize, but with the mysticism elements of his short horror stories, which I’m not very into. I’m not certain that I want to read 300+ pages of that.