Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Trouble With Books

I was feeling under the weather yesterday, so I spent most of the day in bed. I figured this was a good time to read the last book in the Hunger Games series. Ugh! See, I love books, but I almost NEVER read them manually. I do all of my "reading" with audio books, borrowed from our great library system, while I cook and clean my kitchen.

The trouble with reading books is mainly because I loathe myself if I sit still long enough to actually read a book. It feels like pure laziness. True, I could replace my nightly 10 minutes of TV watching, after the kids go to bed, but I don't really think that would work. I can't generally manage to keep my eyes open for longer than 10 minutes at the end of the day, so it would take me an eternity to finish a book that way, and I'm just not that patient when it comes to finding out what happens in a good book.

When I do pick up a good book, I go through a real internal battle. My brother John told me I'm nuts, and maybe I am. First I get mad at myself for doing nothing productive, but at the same time, I can't put it down. Then I get madder at myself, so I want to finish it just to get my life back in order. My house falls to chaos, more self loathing follows, I boar through it and count how many stupid pages left till I finish the stupid book every 10 minutes. It's like a virus ~ the only thing to do is bear with it till it's done. In the end, I resent the book for even existing, even if it was a good book.

Anyhow, I felt mostly better today, but that stupid book had it's hooks in me so I had to get it over with. I've spent two whole days reading a book that really was just depressing and I didn't really like the ending after all. It was like this: depressing, more depressing ... hopeless depressing... when will the depressingness ever end...30 pages left and no end to the depressingness... 10 pages left, still depressing... 5 pages and still depressing... the last two pages do a quick, totally inadequate, sum up of a happy ending, without giving you any real details whatsoever, to a three book series of nothing but depressingness. It was a total let down.

What a waste of two days! That is why I am an audio book fiend.

6 comments:

Curtis Gibby said...

I wouldn't say that "Mockingjay" was just depressing the whole way through, but I do agree with you that the ending felt rushed and wasn't emotionally satisfying.

timpani76 said...

I think I will put off starting this series for awhile. I don't do depressing for the year after a baby ;)

Dana Cheryl said...

I think it's great that you have found a compromise that works for you. Actually I started listening to audio books a few years ago after you posted about one you particularly enjoyed. I travel a lot in my car and audio books have made that an enjoyable experience. I've even created trips into town just so I can listen to my book.

Renae said...

Curtis, I'm not saying it was a horrible book. Anytime I read something, my view is always a little skewed, because I'm mad at myself for being so unproductive. (I told you I'm nuts.) But yeah, the end was a total let down. After three books of building up a relationship, I wanted more than 'they eventually fell in love'

Timpani, I would definitely put this in the depressing category.

Dana, that could get expensive after a while! lol!

Dana Cheryl said...

Yeah, esepcially when "town" is a 40 minute drive. :)

Anonymous said...

Mockingjay was stupid. Book 1 was great. She should have stopped there. She tried too hard to shoehorn in a twilightesque looove triangle (which never really had any sort of real resolution)and she just baffed on all handling all the scifi elements of the story.

J