books I DNF, plus stories I enjoyed (lovestruck in the city + you have a match)
As a kid, I was a voracious reader, but also a very cautious one1. My caution manifested in a reluctance to borrow books unless I was very confident that I’d like them, but also a reluctance to read on if the first pages or whatever didn’t “grab” me. When I was eleven I discovered that sometimes all I needed was someone to read the first chapter aloud to me2.
These days I’ve got decades of data about what sorts of stories are out there and what I like, and the internet is a wonderful source of recommendations and further information. And if I need someone else to read aloud to me, audiobooks are a lot more accessible, too.
But I’m still somewhat cautious and usually won’t borrow a book without a reason -- if not three -- for thinking I’ll probably like it. And I know that I need to give books time because books and I don’t always click straight away.
Therefore if I’ve decided to borrow something, I try to read at least 100 pages (or 20-30%, if it’s an ebook). Sometimes I won’t get around to reading something before it’s due back at the library, but it’s pretty rare that I decide not to finish something.
However, this year I’ve made the radical decision to return books even though I hadn’t yet reached 10%.
• Super Fake Love Song by David Yoon: I loved Frankly in Love but was struggling to find anything that really interested me in the opening chapters. I concluded I’m not this story’s intended audience and would probably rather spend my time reading something else. Which is not a slight on the book’s quality.
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: I love the cover but after I read a chapter and a half, I wasn’t sure about the writing style. So I checked out some more reviews and was rather relieved when they gave me justification for not reading further! Even if the ending is good, I didn’t feel like reading that many pages of so-so prose and melodrama just to get there.
• The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix: It’s a fabulous title but the worldbuilding doesn’t strongly appeal to me. Based on the little I’ve read, and on my experiences with Nix’s other books, I suspect this would be a book I would like but not love.
1 In hindsight, I think I kept reborrowing old favourites when I was eight because things on the homefront were chaotic and stressful and I didn’t have the headspace to be adventurous. On one hand, that was a smart move -- rereading as a strategy for coping with stress has served me well! But on the other hand, I think I established the habits of a super-cautious library user which I then spent years slowly unravelling.
2 Reading a chapter aloud to others also turned out to be an effective method for persuading people in my family, particularly my brother, to read things. (Sometimes, looking back, I am reminded of a line from Jackie French’s Diary of a Wombat: “Have decided that humans are easily trained and make quite good pets”.)
As evidence that it can also be worth persevering with stories, here’s something I just watched. I saw the first two episodes in March and didn’t bother with the third until a few days ago -- at which point I became hooked.
• Lovestruck in the City (2020): A Korean drama with shorter-than-usual episodes about six adults who are being interviewed about their dating experiences. The interview format is fascinating -- more on that anon -- but initially I wasn’t sure if I liked the story. Jae-won (#romantic) is moping after breaking up with a girl he knew as Seon-a (#free-spirited), and the flashbacks didn’t make me sympathetic to either of them. I was irritated with him for so quickly becoming serious about a girl he hardly knows, and irritated with her for deceiving and then ghosting him.
But as I learnt more of her side of the story, and I discovered her relationships with the other characters, I became very invested -- in all of them! I like that the show takes the characters’ emotional turmoil seriously, and the way it shows the truth -- and the sense -- behind decisions which seem crazy to others. I really loved the portrayal of friendship -- nuanced, believable and enduring -- and how central it is. And I enjoyed piecing things together and anticipating the characters making those connections.
I wonder, if I were to rewatch some of those early flashbacks, whether they would seem more romantic now that I know who these two people are and where they are going. And whether I would have more patience for Jae-won now that I know he’s not just very mopey, he’s also caring and forgiving. When faced with Eun-o, he actually isn’t as demanding and self-focused as I was expecting him to be. He’s very honest about his feelings when he’s asked in an interview, but in other situations, he gets that it isn’t all about him.
There are lots of other things I could comment on, but for tonight, I just wanted to mention the format. The characters spend a lot of time breaking the fourth wall while going about their daily lives. Some of the time they’re definitely being filmed by the interview crew in that moment, and other times it seems more like this is meant to be a stylised representation of what they recently said in an interview (or in some sort of group chat?). Sometimes what a participant says is shared with the other participants, and scenes are inter-cut to show some of the responses. It’s effective, and different from other mockumentary approaches I’ve seen.
And something I read in one gulp:
• You Have a Match by Emma Lord: It’s a bit like The Parent Trap for the Instagram generation. Abby’s best friends are doing DNA ancestry tests so she does one too, assuming the most interesting thing she’ll discover is whether or not she is more Irish than Connie. She doesn’t expect to discover that she has an older full-sister, Savannah. Savvy is going to spend her summer at camp, so Abby signs up too.
This has a compelling mystery: why was Savannah given up for adoption and why was she kept a secret from her younger siblings? There are also pranks, accidents and other complications, as Abby and Savvy get to know each other and try to find answers.
I would have liked to see Abby’s camp experiences get a little more time on-page, but admittedly there’s just too much else going on -- she’s grieving for her grandfather, struggling with parental pressure over her slipping grades, trying to hide her crush on her best friend Leo, making new friends, and making time for her photography. And then there’s Savvy’s popular wellness Instagram, the pressures she faces from her parents, her romantic problems...
An entertaining and optimistic novel that keeps all the balls it’s juggling in the air. (The ending is maybe slightly more optimistic than it is realistic, and I’d maybe have liked it more if it had cut out some elements in order to give more space to others… but hey, quibbles.)“They’re going to murder me.”
“They’re going to murder us,” Savvy corrects me.
“How the hell did they figure it out?” I ask, way too loudly for someone who should be trying to go incognito. Did you put something on Instagram?”
Savvy lets out a snort that borders on hysterical [...] “You think I’d put this shit-show onInstagram?”
I’d be mad at her for insinuating that my existence constitutes a “shit show,” but honestly, I’m getting a kick out of this. Bed-headed, no-fucks-given, slippers-clad Savvy is ten times more dramatic than Instagram Savvy, and she's a heck of a lot more fun to watch.
Except Savvy also looks one light breeze away from losing her marbles, so someone has to take control.
“Okay. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. We’ll head them off and explain… as reasonably as possible… that we have gone behind their backs, dug through the last twenty-years’ worth of their darkest secrets and run away to an island to hide.”
Originally @ Dreamwidth.
These days I’ve got decades of data about what sorts of stories are out there and what I like, and the internet is a wonderful source of recommendations and further information. And if I need someone else to read aloud to me, audiobooks are a lot more accessible, too.
But I’m still somewhat cautious and usually won’t borrow a book without a reason -- if not three -- for thinking I’ll probably like it. And I know that I need to give books time because books and I don’t always click straight away.
Therefore if I’ve decided to borrow something, I try to read at least 100 pages (or 20-30%, if it’s an ebook). Sometimes I won’t get around to reading something before it’s due back at the library, but it’s pretty rare that I decide not to finish something.
However, this year I’ve made the radical decision to return books even though I hadn’t yet reached 10%.
• Super Fake Love Song by David Yoon: I loved Frankly in Love but was struggling to find anything that really interested me in the opening chapters. I concluded I’m not this story’s intended audience and would probably rather spend my time reading something else. Which is not a slight on the book’s quality.
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah: I love the cover but after I read a chapter and a half, I wasn’t sure about the writing style. So I checked out some more reviews and was rather relieved when they gave me justification for not reading further! Even if the ending is good, I didn’t feel like reading that many pages of so-so prose and melodrama just to get there.
• The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix: It’s a fabulous title but the worldbuilding doesn’t strongly appeal to me. Based on the little I’ve read, and on my experiences with Nix’s other books, I suspect this would be a book I would like but not love.
1 In hindsight, I think I kept reborrowing old favourites when I was eight because things on the homefront were chaotic and stressful and I didn’t have the headspace to be adventurous. On one hand, that was a smart move -- rereading as a strategy for coping with stress has served me well! But on the other hand, I think I established the habits of a super-cautious library user which I then spent years slowly unravelling.
2 Reading a chapter aloud to others also turned out to be an effective method for persuading people in my family, particularly my brother, to read things. (Sometimes, looking back, I am reminded of a line from Jackie French’s Diary of a Wombat: “Have decided that humans are easily trained and make quite good pets”.)
As evidence that it can also be worth persevering with stories, here’s something I just watched. I saw the first two episodes in March and didn’t bother with the third until a few days ago -- at which point I became hooked.
• Lovestruck in the City (2020): A Korean drama with shorter-than-usual episodes about six adults who are being interviewed about their dating experiences. The interview format is fascinating -- more on that anon -- but initially I wasn’t sure if I liked the story. Jae-won (#romantic) is moping after breaking up with a girl he knew as Seon-a (#free-spirited), and the flashbacks didn’t make me sympathetic to either of them. I was irritated with him for so quickly becoming serious about a girl he hardly knows, and irritated with her for deceiving and then ghosting him.
But as I learnt more of her side of the story, and I discovered her relationships with the other characters, I became very invested -- in all of them! I like that the show takes the characters’ emotional turmoil seriously, and the way it shows the truth -- and the sense -- behind decisions which seem crazy to others. I really loved the portrayal of friendship -- nuanced, believable and enduring -- and how central it is. And I enjoyed piecing things together and anticipating the characters making those connections.
I wonder, if I were to rewatch some of those early flashbacks, whether they would seem more romantic now that I know who these two people are and where they are going. And whether I would have more patience for Jae-won now that I know he’s not just very mopey, he’s also caring and forgiving. When faced with Eun-o, he actually isn’t as demanding and self-focused as I was expecting him to be. He’s very honest about his feelings when he’s asked in an interview, but in other situations, he gets that it isn’t all about him.
There are lots of other things I could comment on, but for tonight, I just wanted to mention the format. The characters spend a lot of time breaking the fourth wall while going about their daily lives. Some of the time they’re definitely being filmed by the interview crew in that moment, and other times it seems more like this is meant to be a stylised representation of what they recently said in an interview (or in some sort of group chat?). Sometimes what a participant says is shared with the other participants, and scenes are inter-cut to show some of the responses. It’s effective, and different from other mockumentary approaches I’ve seen.
And something I read in one gulp:
• You Have a Match by Emma Lord: It’s a bit like The Parent Trap for the Instagram generation. Abby’s best friends are doing DNA ancestry tests so she does one too, assuming the most interesting thing she’ll discover is whether or not she is more Irish than Connie. She doesn’t expect to discover that she has an older full-sister, Savannah. Savvy is going to spend her summer at camp, so Abby signs up too.
This has a compelling mystery: why was Savannah given up for adoption and why was she kept a secret from her younger siblings? There are also pranks, accidents and other complications, as Abby and Savvy get to know each other and try to find answers.
I would have liked to see Abby’s camp experiences get a little more time on-page, but admittedly there’s just too much else going on -- she’s grieving for her grandfather, struggling with parental pressure over her slipping grades, trying to hide her crush on her best friend Leo, making new friends, and making time for her photography. And then there’s Savvy’s popular wellness Instagram, the pressures she faces from her parents, her romantic problems...
An entertaining and optimistic novel that keeps all the balls it’s juggling in the air. (The ending is maybe slightly more optimistic than it is realistic, and I’d maybe have liked it more if it had cut out some elements in order to give more space to others… but hey, quibbles.)“They’re going to murder me.”
“They’re going to murder us,” Savvy corrects me.
“How the hell did they figure it out?” I ask, way too loudly for someone who should be trying to go incognito. Did you put something on Instagram?”
Savvy lets out a snort that borders on hysterical [...] “You think I’d put this shit-show onInstagram?”
I’d be mad at her for insinuating that my existence constitutes a “shit show,” but honestly, I’m getting a kick out of this. Bed-headed, no-fucks-given, slippers-clad Savvy is ten times more dramatic than Instagram Savvy, and she's a heck of a lot more fun to watch.
Except Savvy also looks one light breeze away from losing her marbles, so someone has to take control.
“Okay. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay. We’ll head them off and explain… as reasonably as possible… that we have gone behind their backs, dug through the last twenty-years’ worth of their darkest secrets and run away to an island to hide.”
Originally @ Dreamwidth.