#bookaday 25: Never finished it

There are actually loads of books I've never finished. I don't believe in wasting time on leisure activities that I don't enjoy, and I never want to see reading as a chore, so if I don't like a book, I will happily give up on it.

However, I think the book I spent longest on reading before I gave up was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke. It's a hefty tome, about 800 pages, and I read about 700 pages of them before putting it down and completely forgetting I hadn't finished it. A couple of weeks later I remembered I'd never got the end, and realised I had absolutely no interest in how the story would conclude.

It's not that I didn't think it was a good book, exactly. I can absolutely see that it probably is. It's just that at no point did I feel excited by anything that was happening in it, and at no point did I really give a toss about what happened to any of the characters. I don't know why it left me so utterly cold, as on paper, it should right up my street, but I just couldn't feel any sort of investment in it.

Comments