Books I ditched without finishing

2020 - second list, books that covid made me toss but that I might have otherwise enjoyed.  First list are books that I would never have finished, no matter what

• True to Form 
  Foundation
  
  Difficult women, Roxanne Grey, beautifully written, far to dark to be read in a climate change threatened, trump tans trimmed quarantined world.
  17.10.2. First Bite, Bee Wilson. Should have loved it, but I couldn't.
  19.5.20 Mars Curiosity Rover. Rob Manning. Soooo much detail.
  19.5.20 The Grace of King's, Ken Liu. Meh
  2.5.20 The 100 year old. Man who climbed out the window and disappeared. Jonas Jonas son. Audiobooks are not my thing.
  21.4.20 The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt,. Just cannot get on with it.
  14.4.20 The Caves of Périgord. Martin Walker. Meh, can't get invested. All men
  11.4.20 Stranger than we can imagine. John Higgs. Scjttering wildly from one patch of darkness to the next.
  5.3.Mrs Lincoln's Dressmaker, Jennifer Chiaverini. A dull overly detailed weirdly angled retelling of US history. Yawn
  23.1.20 the Red Canary, Tim Birkhead. Omg. Focus!!!!
  15.1.20. Lost Girls of Paris. Pam Jenoff. Impossible to suspend your disbelief.
  15.1.20 Spring, David Szalay. Why am I reading about these idiotic people?
  All That Man Is, David Szalay. Seems that all that man is is deeply dismal and depressive.

• Tough Love, Susan Rice
• Lilac Girls ?
• The Mirror and the Light, this made me sad I was so looking forward to it, but we all know it's going to end badly and I just didn't want to go there
• Telephone
• The Structure of Scientific Revolution (took this out about 8 times, still no)
• Me and White Supremacy
• Humankind
• Blue on Black
• Bomber, Len Deighton
• The Crossing, Michael Connoly
• First Bite
• Hotbox
• The misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
• Adventures in Human Being
• Grasp
• Bad Feminist
• An Untamed Stae
• Difficult Women
• Foundation
• The Lost Massey Lectures
• Coming up for Air
• Fear and Trembling
• 6 characters in Search of an Author
• The Pursuit of Love
• Hard.BOiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I need to read Murakami in Catalan
• Brazzaville Beach
• Hammnet and Judith

2019 

• Smart Blond, Dolly Parton. Stephan Miller. Fine, but more than I need to know about Dolly Parton.
• Confederate in the attic, Tony Horowitz. Too depressing.
• Ciceró, Robert Harris. Seems few women lived in Rome, and those that did were tedious
• The Borrowed, Chan Hi-Kei, the protagonist's a know it all.
• Do not say we have nothing, Madeline Thien. So much sorrow
• The House of Broken Àngels, Luis Alberto Urrea. Just not interested.
• Invisible Women, data bias in a world designed for men. Caroline Criado Pérez. Too frustrating, may pick it up again. Tbr in very all doses.
• Flatland, Edwin A Abbott. I so wanted to love this, but it is boring and I dreaded it.
• What the Robin Knows , Jon Young. Should be titled, 'what Brilliant I Know.' I want to read this book, but the author's ever-present arrogance is too firmly in the way. Gross.
• Necropolis, Santiago Gamboa, Depraved and depressing
• The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, Jonatan Evison, Unbearably Dreary
• Native Tongue, Carl Hiassen, vicious
• The Great Weaver from Kashmir, Halldor Laxness. Unbearably Pompous
• Frog Music, Emma Donahue. Depressing AF. 8.19
• Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe. Nightmares after reading just a couple chapters
• Levels of Life, Julián Barnes. The author may have won the man booker, but I'm doubting my love for that prize. Utterly without plot.
• The Awkward Thoughts of W Kamau Bell, by same. Unfocused and uninteresting
• This Side of Murder, Ana Lee Huber. Irritating.
• The Hamilton Affair, Elizabeth Cobbs. I just don't care enough about US history
• The Back Channel, a memoir of American diplomacy and the case for its renewal. Too many trees, not enough forest for this reader. .
• The Master and Margerita. Sooooooo repetitive.
• The Fued, Vladimir Nobokov and Edmund Wilson, the end of a beautiful friendship. Alex Beam. 1st half was fine, the just dull.
• The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Michael Cabbon. Meh.
• Scorpia Rising, Anthony Horowitz. These books are just so bad.
• The Year of Reading Dangerously, Andy Miller. Loooooong winded. 

2018

• Fascism, a warning, Madelinee Albright. Should read it, too depressing
• The Seveneves. Neal Stevenson. Too much explanation, too little story.
• The Happiness Curve. Jonathan Rauch. Good, but there wasn't enough for a whole book.
• Less, Andrew Sean Greer. Dreary and dismal.
• I am Bride, Laura Wilcocks. Just. Terrible, on so many levels.
• Shrill. Lindy West. Shrill indeed .
• H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald. Beautifully written, sooooo self-absorbed.
• A New Lease on Death, Ruth Rendall. Pedantic
• The Glass Universe, Dava Sobel. Dull and too long. The story got lost in the detail.
• The Line of beauty, Allan Hollinghurst. Trite.
• The Outpost, Jake Tapper. Too dreary
• J. M. Coetze, Disgrace. Repulsive.
• Y is for Yesterday, Sue Grafton. Too ambiguous about sexual assault as a crime.
• The Widows on Malabar Hill, sujata Massey. Good basic story, really annoying flashback second storyline.
• Robert B Parker, God Save the Child. Dislikable characters, too much mysogyny and too much description
• The Children's Book. A. S. Byatt. She usally writes a brilliant ending which redeams the dull meandering book. Today it doesn't seem worth it.
• Ka, John Rowley. Obtusely written chase saga. After a few pages i kept finding myself playing solitaire.
• Enlightenment Now. Stephen Ponker. Wanted to read it, but it is so turgid. Uuuhhhghf
• The Potlikker Papers, John T Edge. The book is fine, I'm just not that interested in the topic.
• Travels with Herodotus, Ryszard Kapuscinski. Very good writing, but ultimately dull.
• From Cold War to Hot Peace, an American Ambassador in Putin's Russia, Michael McFaul. Waaaaaaayyyyy too much detail and no big picture
• What you're getting wrong about Appalachia, Elizabeth Catte. Undoubtedly she has some very strong points with which I would agree, but it is a book against another rather than about something. Also needs better editing.
• Vagabonding. Rolf Potts. Politically adolescent and structurally patronizing
• 12.5.18 The Son. Phillip Meyer. If it says 'epic family saga', it's too long by half and entirely unbelievable.
• The Shadow of the Sun, Ryszard Kapuscinsky. It was fine, but very old and not quite engaging enough for an incredibly busy time in my life.
• Umami, Laia Jufresa. I just don't care enough to try to track the identity of the deliberately obscured multiple narrators, so many you forget who they are.
• Wallflower at the Orgy, Nora Ephron. A book complaining about people being trite that is, in itself, trite. I just don't care
• Founding Gardeners. I have to give up on Andrea Wulf, she takes a great idea and makes it boring. In this case, failing to discuss slavery within the context is at best, bizarre and definately takes away from her basic premis
• Cycling Home from Siberia, Rob Lilwall, fine (just) till he brought in Jesus and American know how. Had enough of that lately.
• The Communist's daughter, Dennis Bock. Sooo grim!

2017

• Dragon's Fire, Anne McCaffery and Todd McCaffery. So dark and not well written.
• Chasing Venus, The race to measure the heavens. Andrea Wulf. Wanted to love it, but it was soooooo dull.
• The Invention of Nature, Alexander Von Humbolt's New Nature. Wanted to love it. So badly. So depressing and still boring.
• Artemis, Andy Weir. I thought the main character was a 14 year old boy. Nope, turns out SHE's a 25 year old. Shit writing, crap characters, uninteresting story.
• A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler. My husband loved it, it just didn't grab me.
• Believe Me, Eddie Izzard. Terrible writing
• I am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes. Too much very graphic violence