In past posts, I've written about breaking up with books, and how we know it's time to dump one. However, this year, I thought it would be a worthy exercise to consider other reasons for abandoning a book that I might have finished but chose not to. So here is a listing of books I abandoned in the 2015-2016 school year, along with my reasons for doing so.
A book I want to purchase and write my own annotations in it (eventually):
The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr
Books that were not a great fit for me, but I read enough to recommend to others:
A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me by Jason Schmidt
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson
Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War by Matt Gallagher
The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova
Great by Sara Benincasa
I love the way these books are written, just not the subjects or topics:
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan
Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
I love the subject matter in these books, but not the way they are written:
Mindwise by Nicholas Epley
Rita Moreno by Rita Moreno
Books by authors who have written another book I love, and this is not that book:
Incendiary by Chris Cleave
Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen
I continue to stick to my conviction that saying no to one book gets me closer to a yes for another, and even those books that aren't a home run for me might be well received by one of my students. One of my goals for the summer is to slow down with some of the books I am reading, to choose shorter texts on which I might linger: poetry anthologies, graphic novels and perhaps even a play. I also need to take the time to read with my children as well, and to enjoy books with my entire family. It might be a good time to reread something that we particularly like, and to relish in the read-aloud time that just doesn't happen during the busy school year. Thinking through my reasons for abandoning some books helps me to know myself better as a reader, too, and to determine what might work best for me. Are there circumstances or other periods in my life during which some of these would have gotten read from cover to cover? Absolutely! Sometimes finding the best books is all about timing, but giving up all books all the time? No way. If I was the book world's version of the Baskin Robbins "always tryin', never buyin'" customer all the time, that would be highly problematic. But giving up 13 books over the course of a year in which I read 60? I'd say that's a pretty modest statistic...
Recent Comments