Books you know you'll love but haven't finished...

DeNiro's Game by Rawi Hage. Canadian-Lebonese writer, Dublin Impac award winner of 2008. I'm halfway through and it's brilliant. It's lyrical without being frou-frou, the language is sometimes like arabian poetry without being self-conscious. It's about Beirut and its people, about living in a constant war, it's about friendship and betrayal. I read half of it at the lab waiting to have a bloodtest done. It's on the front seat of my car and if I would remember to bring it in, I would finish it. I look at it every time I'm in the car and somehow I never bring it in. Maybe I need to go see my doctor again. Last time I did, I managed to read all of THE Curious Incident Of the Dog at Night-Time. (Walk-in medical clinic and the doctor was an hour late starting that day)

The Road, Cormac Mcsomething. Read the beginning and the end at the grocery store waiting for a prescription to be filled. Promptly cried at the end without even having read the book. Got it from the library. It stared at me for weeks before I had to return it. Someday I will get it and read the middle.

Hells Belles, by our own Jackie Kessler. Got it from the library, it's on my couch, I read the beginning, it was awesome. I put it down and now it glares at me every time I walk by. Maybe tomorrow.

Stew21 said:

Snipped...

What's on your shelf you wish you'd finished?

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I have yet to finish Christopher Paolini's Eragon. I've highly enjoyed it so far, but some circumstances with my former GF made for reading anything about dragons not good. Thankfully, I did not completely get rid of the book, and I'll be able to find where I left off soon enough.

In the mean time I'm reading something else.

You should just come over and see my TBR books lying aimlessly by the side of my bed...

Stew21 said:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (yep. A classic. I knew I wanted to buy this book. I started it. Can't wait to finish it. Why haven't I?)

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Ha! Have you ever met anyone who finished this book? Of the 300 overachieving HS seniors in my class who had to read this book with the most beloved teacher at our school for the most interesting class in school, I was the only one who finished it. While I was carrying it around reading it, at least 25 people came up to me and said, 'boy that's a great book! i never finished it, though.' Awesome book, but 2/3 of the way through it feels like you have to bushwhack your way through dense philosophical undergrowth with a machete. But it comes through in the very end! Push on! Push on!

I'm almost finished with The Book Thief. I love this book, and yet, I keep finding other things getting between me and finishing it.

The Bible. I've done the new testament a few times, but never read the beginning.

My goodness, I can't STAND "Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance." Had to read part of it in high school and am GLAD I wasn't required to finish it.

There's never a book I know I'll love and haven't finished. I'll just get back to them when I have time! Seriously. If I really love something I'll finish it, it just might take me a while.

I sometimes have a bad habit of skipping out on the last chapter or few pages of books but obviously, I didn't LOVE those books else I'd have finished them. "The Hobbit" is one such book. I might get back to it someday but I've got more promising things to read.

I do have loads of books that I know I'll love but haven't had time to read yet!

*thinks* AH! I correct myself. There is Michael Scott Rohan's "Winter Of The World" trilogy...I've started reading the first book of that like two or three times so far and it was good but I have yet to finish the series! It's hard for me to commit to reading a series straight in a row but I have to else I'll lose track of what's happening. Like I said, will get to it someday!

Just a note/question, isn't this a thread for the "Book Club" forum?

Stew21 said:

I just realized, as I put away the three books I got for Christmas that I have a ridiculous number of books I have started, knew I'd love ( DO LOVE), that I just haven't finished.
I can read 2-3 books at a time, switching up for a change of pace, but lately this isn't working for me. I don't have time.

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I often switch between fiction and nonfiction before finishing a book. I've just started "The Singularity Is Near" (published as non-fiction, but it's futuristic enough, some may say it's fiction) which I should have read years ago when it came out, before the Signularity passes me by.

Stew21 said:

Most of my book reading is...well...listening lately. Long commute - audio books from the library.

So, the books I haven't finished:

(don't tell Patricia, she'll kill me) Lottery (I'm predisposed to liking this because it is such the type of story I would want to write and how do you not love Perry?) I recommended, then loaned this book to my mother. She adored it. I haven't gotten to the end yet - not because the book lost me, but I lost the time. (I should be reading this right now instead of posting shouldn't I)

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Lottery is a pretty SHORT READ (or maybe it just seems that, I read through it in what seems like a blink of an eye, in about two sittings), a lot shorter than the Zen book. There's so much good stuff I can't tell you about, such as how one character <spoiler deleted> and how that affects the other characters, both immediately, and later toward the end of the book. Have Kleenex onhand.

Stew21 said:

...
(don't tell Will, he'll kill me) Obedience. What a kick ass premise this is.

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I meant to go to the bookstore last time I was "in town" (in a Real City that has a megatbookstorechain in it). Presuming I find two books by AW'ers, there goes $50. I may have to order some AW'ers' books online.

Stew21 said:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (yep. A classic. I knew I wanted to buy this book. I started it. Can't wait to finish it. Why haven't I?)

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It's been a while since I read it, and maybe I didn't get a lot of it (also, this was the early '90's when ISO 9000 qualification was becoming a big thing, I thought that was hilarious in the context of the book), but I found it long and tiring. Imagine listening to the Beatles' "The Long And Winding Road" while reading this thing, and by the time you've got to the end you've heard the song a thousand times. But it did have some interesting micro-things to say regarding "motorcycle maintenance" or really any kind of technical tinkering, such as laying the parts down in the order that you remove them to make it easy to put them back on in the reverse order without forgetting something.

But some people read the title and think the book is about "the religion of Zen..." - no, it's more about the religion of motorcycle maintenance.

Stew21 said:

What's on your shelf you wish you'd finished?

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Airframe. I read halfway through it, the woman executive played chutes-and-ladders in the big plant with some union assembly-line thugs trying to do her in, and that's about the last thing I read in it.

There's also some I may never get back to because they didn't really catch on with me: "The Firm," "Digital Fortress" and several Koontz books. I should at least finish a couple of Koontz books. The truth is I've wanted to read these to analyze why they're so popular rather than enjoying the story. I may be getting too analytical to be able to read for enjoyment...