a list of books i own which i have started reading but been unable to finish ( * denotes a book i had to read for class; ** denotes a recent effort) :
crash, j.g. ballard *(too disgusting)
lost in the funhouse, john barth **
(too weird)
subUrbia, eric bogosian **
(too close to the subsequent movie)
generation x, douglas coupland
(i was couplanded out)
girlfriend in a coma, douglas coupland
(ditto)
hard times, charles dickens *
(too convoluted)
middlemarch, george eliot *
(too many people with the same name)
a passage to india, e.m. forster *
(too slow)
tropic of cancer, henry miller
(too misogynistic too stupid too full of himself i hate him)
blonde, joyce carol oates **
(too weird too little interest in marilyn)
george washington gomez, americo paredes *
(too biography-like)
ishmael, daniel quinn **
(too conversational)
american pastoral, philip roth
(too distracted by something else)
catcher in the rye, j.d. salinger
(too willing to loan it to someone else before i finished)
uncle tom’s cabin, harriet beecher stowe *
(too finished with that semester)
infinite jest, david foster wallace
(too many footnotes)
all the king’s men, robert penn warren *
(too wordy)
the glimpses of the moon, edith wharton
(too cutesy, used the phrase “bug-a-bear”)
ethan frome, edith wharton
(too horse-and-buggy)
to the lighthouse, virginia woolf *
(too mathematical)
mrs. dalloway, virginia woolf *
(too detailed too flowers) how come i can’t read any good books anymore? the last book i finished was joan didion’s play it as it lays which, while well-written, wasn’t interesting and didn’t have any good characters or a plot. i used to read books and get into them, really enjoy them, spend entire afternoons with them. what happened? how come i don’t do anything good anymore? the last few things i did were the same things i always do, drinking wine and playing darts and blabbing about nothing to whoever will listen. i used to seek out new stuff every day, stuff i’d never done before, stuff that was different. what happened?