Tag: DNF

Babel

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Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: R.F. Kuang
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Pub. Date: Aug. 2022

DNF @ p. 292

I spent months trying to read this book and it’s time to move on. I’ve been sitting on it since February and as much as I’d like to finish it, I can’t stand to read another 250 pages. I’m still rating it because I made it past 50%. There is honestly a lot to like about this book, it’s smartly written and includes a lot of interesting social commentary about language and colonialism.

The reason I’m moving on? It’s incredibly dull. No shade if you loved it – but even after 300 pages I found it slow moving and it didn’t capture my attention. While the ideas presented are great, they are repetitive. It’s a brilliant concept, but I wanted to see Kuang push the boundaries with it instead of just beating us over the head about the injustice of England growing rich and strong by stealing from other countries. It’s accurate, but not that insightful beyond its initial premise.

I liked her newest book, Yellowface, but it suffers from some of the same shortfalls in that it says the same thing in many different ways. The difference is that Yellowface is short and doesn’t take itself too seriously, making for a fast and engaging read. I do admire Kuang for what she does in this book, but the plot could definitely be tightened up to make this a shorter and easier read. It doesn’t turn me off her writing though. I would definitely recommend Yellowface and I also liked her debut, The Poppy War.

On a side note, I hated the footnotes. First of all, the little asterisk in the text was so small I literally always missed it, but it didn’t matter because the footnotes were boring as hell anyways.

The Blackhouse

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Rating:⭐⭐.5
Author: Peter May
Genres: Mystery
Pub. date: Feb. 2011 (read Jul. 2019)

DNF @ 67%

I was going to try and stick it out, but I can’t do it. My Dad’s been trying to get me to read this series for ages and finally picked it up as an audiobook, but it’s just not working out for me.

Even though I haven’t finished it, I feel like I have experienced enough of this book to give it a bit of a review. Honestly, I would probably still give this a middle ground 3 stars, but it started dragging on and I just don’t have the motivation to finish it. It’s possible it’s the audiobook and I might have enjoyed it better as a print book.

The premise is interesting enough. It’s a classic police investigation story where the investigator is forced to return to his childhood home and confront the trauma of his past. The setting is in remote Scotland, which I actually really liked, and I did think Finn was a complex and interesting character. But only half of this book held my attention. Interestingly enough, I actually didn’t care at all about the present day mystery. Finn is forced to go back to his childhood home to investigate the grizzly murder of the town bully. At the same time, we get flashbacks to an overall mundane childhood.

But it was his childhood that intrigued me. The story is very much character driven by a number of seriously flawed individuals and I was actually quite interested in the drama and intrigue between Finn and his best friend Arthur and their mutual crush, Marshali (don’t know actual spelling as I read as audiobook). There’s a lot of interesting details about the way of life in this remote Scottish town that I found pretty interesting. So it does beg the question why I’m deciding to DNF.

Perhaps I might return to it, but I found the murder investigation pretty boring. I’d tune out for long periods of time, such that I was listening to this while running one day and suddenly realized I had no idea what had happened and had to go back more than 20 MINUTES to get to a place I recognized because I tuned out for so long. I’ve been trying to DNF books a little more when I’m not enjoying them, so even though I think I could push through this one, I think I’ll find something else more engaging.

Sorry Dad, don’t think Peter May is for me.