TTT#3: Books I Struggled With

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by Broke And Bookish !

We all struggled with a book at one point of our reader lives. It can be that the writing isn’t captivating, the characters aren’t likable, maybe it’s just boring, or simply way too long. Maybe it’s the dreaded book slump, or if it just wasn’t the book for you at the time, or at all. I try not to DNF books, I do ! But if it’ll have me wind up in a book slump ( I’ll have 0 cups of that, please. ), I am definitely willing to put it down and rant to every inanimate object about exactly how frustrated I am.

So please, serve yourself to a sample of books I crawled my way through!

1. A Game of Thrones by G.R.R. Martin

I literally never spent so much time on a single book as much as I did on this one ( hope that made sense XD) It took me maybe 2 years to finish it. I put it down and pick it up over and over again. I did not expect that ASOIAF books would be like this! Freakishly long, terribly complex for my poor brain. SO many POVs, 10 characters I don’t remember in every page. Details of how that unimportant person did that little thing the other day, and it was just dizzying for me. (Of course now that I’m reading the second book I’m used to it and I’m better at it and going a lot faster than before. )

What kept me coming back and not burning this book is that I REALLY wanted to read the series and know everything that happens. I didn’t want to be left out and I’ve heard so much love for it. I’m still determined as hell to make it happen and read the entire series. What made me finish this books quite fast is how things got super fast at the end. I definitely didn’t see it coming when I finished this book late at night with my mouth agape.

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2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The shame, the shame. Everyone who loves it loves it. And everyone who hates it hates it. Maybe it’s because I DNFed it early enough that I only remember the first line because it got my attention. But I personally was SO bored through this book. I’m glad that where I live we don’t have required reading ( in English ) because if this was required reading, I don’t know what I’d do xD

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3. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I DNFed this at some point last winter, and came back to it, set my mind on finishing it and got through it quickly at the end. But it doesn’t stop the fact it wasn’t the book for me at the time. I remember I was super busy studying, all week. I hardly had enough time to read large chunks, so what I needed was a fast-paced and short book, so that I can catch up on a lot of events in a minimum amount of pages. This book was slower than what I expected, so it didn’t hit the mark properly.

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4. A Clash of Kings by G.R.R Martin

No need to even finish this book to realize I’m struggling through it. Much less than AGOT but still, people, still U.U I’m still around 200 pages in, and I haven’t read a word of it in 2 or 3 days. Don’t panic, I’m reading it at the same time as other books, so I’m not on a *dun dun dun DUNNNN* book slump *shudder*

Sometimes I wonder if G.R.R Martin has used every single word and combination in English. If there ever was THE Door-stopper, this book is it.

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5. Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski

I started this at the beginning of this summer when I was listening to Serial. It’s written like a podcast, so I wanted badly to give it a try. Unfortunately it missed the mark entirely for me. I appreciate the original way of writing it, as I’ve never come across it before, but it just didn’t captivate me. Plus, I kept getting distracted and there were so many characters introduced at once and it expected me to memorize who’s who and who did what from the first time, and I really struggled with it, so I let it go and moved on *sniff* 😥

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6. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis

Might sound surprising, ‘cos everybody ever loved this series. And I did too ! I still think fondly of this series and am a huge fan of the world, the characters and mostly the writing style. BUT, I read this as a bindup; all the books in one huge volume. I binge read them because it still felt like one big book to me, and it took me too long to finish it. The more time I spend reading a book, the more likely I am to not like it so much. Yeah, that’s thanks to my admirable and infinite patience ❤

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7. Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke by Anne Blankman

It’s a fact that romance is my least favorite genre. This book started to stray from what I was interested in it, towards what I wasn’t interested in. Although I didn’t finish this one, I put it on my TBR for a readathon I’m still getting through, and I plan on giving it my all, because I really want to see this duology to an end !

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8. Persuasion by Jane Austen

‘Why’ , you might say, ‘would you read this if u no like romance ? Vat is wrong wit’ u, mate 😱?’ And you’d be right! Sort of. My teacher recommended it to me. So I picked it up, and put it down. I wanted to try an Austen book, but it wasn’t my thing 😭

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9. The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien

8 words; Read this before The Fellowship of The Ring. I didn’t have the first book, so I skipped it like, 7 years ago. I couldn’t tell you why if my life depended on it 😂

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10. The Shining by Stephen King

Ugh this book. Just no. Maybe it gets better after I DNFed it, but I almost got to the half and I was like OMG ENOUGH. The perspective of a 9 year old scared half to death of a waterhose just didn’t grab me?? Also, there was a point where I felt it insulted my intelligence, like dude I know this is a little boy, but still D: !!

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Thanks for staying with me all the way through !

Did you struggle with any of these too ? Did you like any of them ? Let’s complain together in the comments 😂💙 !!