How many books have you started reading and just gave up on? There have been a few for me. In today's blog, you'll read about 4 books - 2 novels, and 2 graphic novels - that were just not my taste. I give a book (I like murder mysteries) about 20 to even 50 pages before stopping. Here are some of them that just turned me off... Ironically, I've had to stop reading some award winning books, most recently Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. A friend lent me the book, and although it won awards, I couldn't get through it. The writing style was like a movie script, addressing names of characters that were not introduced, and had one or two sentences injected often throughout a chapter. I didn't know who they were and couldn't follow it, so stopped reading 30 pages into the book. I'm sure it was good, but not for me!
Another novel I couldn't get through was called The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III. It was 7 years ago when I attempted to read it, and it, too, was an award winner. I don't remember why I didn't like it, but it stuck with me.
The first was about a superhero character I like! Hellboy. In enjoyed the first 2 movies of the character over a decade ago, but this graphic novel: Hellboy: Darkness Calls was awful. The story was disjointed, the characters were dead things that were undefined, I didn't care for the artwork (although the artist is the storyteller and has had critical acclaim) and after 20 pages I gave up!
The second was the comic book character Lucifer, on which the former Fox TV series was based - Lucifer, the fallen angel comes to Earth for a vacation . The TV series is much, much, much better than the comic series and nothing like it. The comic series gets into really weird realities that I couldn't follow. This graphic novel is called "Lucifer: Crux." Of course, we all have different tastes, but I couldn't get through these 4 books. - Rob
