Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Recent Books I Started...But Didn't Finish

Consider this blog post an "unbook review" of a sort. I started these, but didn't finish these book early these years. I never finished them. I will tell you why.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A Novel by John La Carre

I won't lie sometimes when I watch a British film I turn on the subtitles so I can understand what everyone is saying. And even then I get lost in the jargon. Even further, British stories seem to have more people and more talk. And while the characters are differentiable, they are quite as diverse as they seem to be in American stories.

Such seems true in this story that I'm sure is fascinating. I tried reading it. But I felt like I was reading Alias where I couldn't tell who was Sydney Bristow and who were the bad guys.

I know there's a popular British film version that has previously come out, as well a star studded film version coming out this November. I wanted to read it ahead of the curve. But frankly, they don't usually make subtitles for books (or little bubbles on the side of the page that say: "remember this guy, he's kind of bad, but not really bad").

The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better by Chris Farrell

Blah, blah, blah. Boring. I felt let Chris Farrell had this thought..."you know some of the environmental choice we make end up being frugal choices and it all sort of works together." But making that into a book is boring. Sixty pages in I just couldn't glean any value from it.

I didn't disagree with the thoughts but it was not engaging. I didn't feel like any thought he was presenting was new. And when he built it out with "interesting support" it seemed unconnected or kind of preachy.

So here's what I haven't been reading? How about you?

2 comments:

cathy b. said...

Faster by Gleick. Compared to his good stuff like Chaos, this one seemed phoned in. Besides I didn't read fast enough. I just read on someone's blog that much of it is obsolete.

RC said...

@ cathy b, I feel like sometimes those follow up books have that phoned in feel. That's a funny observation relating to not reading Faster fast enough.