Top Ten Tuesday: 'Books I Almost Put Down But Didn't'

This is going to be a pretty hard list for me to make because I simply don't put books down. No matter how much I am not enjoying a book, I will always try and read it to the end just to make sure I don't miss a sudden change for the good. There are a few books that have brought me close though and I don't know if I will reach ten, but I'll give it a shot!

1) The Twilight Series; Stephanie Meyer. Yes not just the first book, but the whole lot. I think this will count as 2, 3 and 4 in my list because they are all individual books. I'll start with number one, Twilight. I had such high hopes for this book, everyone raved about it! But the only thing I remotely liked were the three nomadic vampire villains. The romance was awful, it felt completely wrong, and Bella. Well. Never has a Main Character irritated me so much. Still, I persevered with New Moon and hated her even more for the way she messed Jacob around and moped about. At this point, Twilight was at three stars and New Moon at two. Surely it can't get worse? Surely Meyer is leading up to something? Nope. I can't remember Eclipse at all which shows how much impact that one had. And as for Breaking Dawn that was the worst of the bunch. This series of books basically brought me to the point of tears wanting to break my 'try and finish all books' rule. I know a lot of people enjoyed them but they just made me angry for time wasted, especially as I really enjoyed 'The Host'.

5) Fire Star; Chris D'Lacey. This is actually the third book in the 'Last Dragon Chronicles' which I started reading quite a while ago. The first two books I thought were okay, but for me they became more and more confusing and by the third book I was lost and uninterested. I suppose in a sense, though I did finish the book, it did actually make me put the series down and not revisit it. A lot of my friends really enjoyed this series and it was certainly an original idea, just not for me.



6) IT; Stephen King. Now I sense many people might be loading their guns about this decision, but hear me out. I have no problem with King's writing style and I can see why he is so popular as an author. His world-building is fantastic. My issue with this book was that it was long. And there weren't any real scares or shocks that kept my interest up along the way. The characters were pretty cool but I just felt bored a lot of the time and took frequent breaks from it.






7) If On a Winter's Night A Traveller; Italo Calvino. This book started off so well in my opinion and I thought it was so clever. I don't normally like second person but this was the best use of it I'd seen in a long time. But as it went on I found myself getting angrier and more frustrated with it. It comprises of a series of unfinished beginnings to books and it became clear I would never hear the endings. As well as this, the constant story-line that I was relying on to actually hold my attention became more and more ridiculous in plot and I didn't just almost put this book down. I almost threw it down in annoyance!

8) The Hotel Fakir; Adam Smolka. I was sent this as a Giveaway Win and I wanted so much to enjoy it but everything about this book was just not meant for me. The setting jumped about, the plot-line was confusing, every other word was 'Tango' or something relating to the dance and in the end I became confused because I couldn't figure out how the plot-line threads linked. At all. It was only a seventy page novel too so could have done with a lot more padding out to make things clearer. Unless you're big on Tango, I really didn't see much point in reading this book.


9)The Telling Error; Sophie Hannah. I was quite excited about this book when I received it, it was a little out of my usual reading zone but was written by a pretty popular author and looked interesting. My main problem with this book was the Main Character. I almost put this book down so many times due to the sheer amount of stupid decisions that she made and I could not deal with her selfish, spoilt attitude. I had other issues with this book too, mainly in the form of loose ends not being tied. But the MC was the real reason for my frustration with this book.



10) Wicked: the Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West; Gregory Maguire. My thoughts on this one were pretty mixed and I did actually end up enjoying it in the end. But it really took me a while to get into it and there were a few times I really wanted to put it down and not bother with it anymore. I found the plot-line confusing in a number of places and just didn't connect with the characters like I had in previous versions of Oz that I had read. I did like that Oz grew up a bit though, the world-building was good. It wasn't a total waste of time but I guess it didn't give me what I expected from it.


So I did come up with ten after all (sort of). This list was really difficult to make actually, I really don't like putting books down. In fact I don't think I ever have! I can't wait to read other choices!