Generally speaking, I don't like to abandon books. I normally try to finish them even when I'm not enjoying myself, if only out of spite. I need to be able to write a scathing review of them after all, and I can't exactly do that if I haven't read the whole thing. I'm half joking, but on the other hand the book may actually improve halfway through and make me thankful I decided to finish it. Whatever the reasoning for that particular book, the point is that I don't usually like to leave a book half-read.
But there are always exceptions. In this post, I'm going to list five books that I have abandoned halfway through, for a variety of reasons. Some of these I would like to attempt to finish sometime in the future; others I would happily never read a word of ever again.
It by Stephen King
I really tried with this one. I first attempted to read It one Halloween many years ago, getting approximately 50% of the way into the story before abandoning it. I didn't exactly mean to drop the book, instead gradually losing enthusiasm until eventually I realised it had been three months and I hadn't picked it up once. Since then, I've tried a few times to make it to the end of the book (I always pick it up again from where I left off, because I feel I remember it well enough and I can't bring myself to slog through all those pages again), but never to any success.
I think the main thing that put me off was the "teenage werewolf" scene, in which the titular antagonist It transforms into - you guessed it - a teenage werewolf. The scene felt comical rather than scary, and it jolted me out of the otherwise very creepy story. I enjoyed other parts of the book though, plus it's about time I read a Stephen King novel from cover to cover. Perhaps 2021 will be the year I finally manage it?
The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
I can't for the life of me remember why I initially bought this book, but it may well have had something to do with the vaguely-amusing title. If the title is funny though, the book's content certainly is not. It begins by detailing the US military's attempts to literally weaponise New Age ideas, in a narrative which quickly veers from humorously bizarre to incredibly dark. Reading about the US military's torture methods was too much for me, and I quit around the point when the book started talking about the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib. I don't think I'll ever read this one again.
If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous
Perhaps more than the other books on this list, I expected to enjoy If You Follow Me. It's about an American woman who moves to Japan with her girlfriend to start work as an English language teacher. That ticks at least three interest boxes for me from the summary alone. Sadly, the book didn't live up to my admittedly high expectations. I found the main character unsympathetic, her infatuation with her male supervisor uninspiring, and her and her girlfriend's "culture shock" to paint them more as frustratingly inconsiderate rather than pitiable.
The final straw came when there was a horrible scene involving the death of a pet cat, something which is personally very upsetting to me and which I don't like to see in fiction. The book wasn't worth continuing with after that.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
I hadn't heard of this novel until it was assigned to me as part of a course on dystopian literature at university. In theory, it's a fascinating concept for a book. Set in a post-apocalyptic, post-nuclear-bomb future that is almost unrecognisable to the reader, it's written in an incredibly unique style as well. The idea seems to be that the book is written more or less as the narrator would write it, complete with idiosyncratic speech and irregular grammar and spelling. Words that we are familiar with have been distorted with the passage of time and the breakdown of society, meaning that terms like "Prime Minister" are now "Pry Mincer". To give you an example, here's an unedited excerpt from the book:
“I stil aint qwite said how it wer. Not like a diffrent country. It wer mor like I wer behynt the back clof in a show. Thats how it wer. Thru the clof I cud see the other figgers moving I cud see the peopl watching only no 1 cud see me. If I wer a figger in a show what hand wer moving me then? I cudnt be bothert to think on that right then. Theres all ways some thingwl be moving you if it aint 1 thing its a nother you cant help that.”
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Finally, we have this relatively new Southern Gothic book that was recently adapted into a film on Netflix. I absolutely do want to finish this one before watching the film, so please, no spoilers for either!
The main reason I stopped reading this one is because I had to return it to the library, but there are two other reasons why I couldn't finish it in time before returning it. The first is that two plotlines in the story (there are several) seemed to have somewhat homophobic undertones, which diminished my enthusiasm a little. The second reason is that I was having trouble sleeping around the time that I got this book, and I decided that reading it before bed wasn't likely to help with my lack of sleep and nightmares, seeing as the novel can get quite dark and violent at times. The combination of the two meant that I didn't manage to devote the time needed to finish it before the library needed it back, so I ended up returning it only partially-read.
I think this is the book on the list I'm most likely to finish, and hopefully I will do so soon, as I recently bought an ebook copy to allow me to finally get to the end of the story. Fingers crossed the end is worth it!
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Have you read any of the books I mentioned on this list? If not, do you have any books you abandoned partway through, and if so, do you intend to finish them someday?
I'd also really like to know what people think of the Riddley Walker excerpt I included here. I really struggle to read it, so I'd be curious if others find it easier or harder than I did.
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