Too Much of a Good Thing - or - Why I'm Running Away from the likes of Robert Jordan

[jacey]

I have the first Jordan book waiting for me because I figure I should at least read one to see what it's like, but somehow it never seems to reach the top of the pile. I've just started Karen Chance's 'Touch the Dark' and my to-read pile includes: 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell', Kari Sperring's 'Living with Ghosts', Liz Williams' 'Winterstrike' and Ken Follett's 'World Without End'.

I've got a wish list, too, maybe thirty books long. Truth to tell, though, I also have a lot of unread books on my bookshelves - my guilt list. Am I alone in this?

I am guilty of buying more books that I have been able to read over the last decade, therefore accumulating plenty of unread books. Some are a special case, for instance I still have some unread Andre Norton's, but I'm not rushing to read them because I know there's a finite number left and I'd like to have some to look forward to. Daft, I know... A bit like leaving the best bit of food on your plate until last.

But some of the other unread books remain unread because... well... I just can't seem to face them. Specifically I have some trilogies and series where I bought the whole lot in a fit of enthusiasm only to somehow find I can't bring myself to read beyond a certain point - often the end of the first volume (but not always). In some cases I actually enjoyed the first book, too. (It's not as if I bounced off it or anything.)

Now, with Amazon, the Amazon marketplace and Abe Books I'm not generally worried about books being hard to find, so I never buy more than the first book in a series until I'm ready to read subsequent ones. A decade ago there was no guarantee that I'd be able to complete series that was only available in the USA, so sometimes, while on my travels to the US and Canada where I found books on the shelves of fantastic specialist bookstores like Bakka in Toronto I took advanyage and bought whole series that I knew I'd never be able to buy at home in the UK.

After reading the first -  I've got all of the Maggie Furey 'Artifacts of Power' series but despite enjoying 'Aurian' I haven't been able to quite get round to starting the next. Julian May's Saga of the Exiles similarly. Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars remains stubbornly stalled after volume four despite having the fifth book ready and waiting, though to be honest what pissed me off about that was that I was looking forward to the fifth book thinking it would be the final one and would wrap up the story - and then I realised that there was at least one more after that and my heart fell. For some reason I've not been able to start the final Jaran book of hers either, despite loving the others.

It's like a bad case of mental indigestion... Or maybe aversion therapy. I once went strawberry picking when I was a teen and I loved strawberries so much that it was one for the bucket, two for me; one for the bucket,
two for me, until I was so sickened of strawberries that for the last thirty years I've been very ambivalent about them. I think the same sometimes happens with books. It's no reflection on the quality of the writing - more on the psychology of the reader-writer interface.

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I completed Sage of the Exiles decades ago, but there was less choice in books back then. I never felt any urge to go out and buy my own copies (or if I did own them, I've long since given them away)

And I suspect the treatment of women might make one flinch a little now.

[slrose.livejournal.com]

I stalled partway through book 5 of Harry Potter.

And despite being the sort of thing I like, I bounced off of Pamela Dean's work.

I do buy books of people I know online, even if I'm not going to read them. If not for me, than for my library.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I didn't stall on Harry Potter but 'Order of the Phoenix' was definitely the worst of the set. Harry was fifteen and went through a phase of kicking the furniture and sulking because life wasn't fair. I wanted to slap him. Mercifully the film cut out a lot of the teen-boy-angst. Books six and seven were better though the last book should have had about a hundred pages of endless camping trip edited out of the middle of it to tighten it up.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I've read some Pamela Dean that I liked but I hard-bounced right off her Tam Lin. I guess being a Brit I just culd not get to grips with the USian college system.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I hear you on all points. My bedroom has bookshelves filled with unread books. However, you do need to read the last Jaran book, as I appear in it as one of the characters. (I have my own spaceship.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I will get round to this one.
:-)
I do have it on my shelf.

I think it was getting stuck on Crown of Stars that put me off reading the Jaran book. Silly but true. I'd read the first Jaran ones before CoS and then I read the first three CoS all in a rush. I liked King's Dragon and Prince of Dogs was even better. By The Burning Stone I was starting to feel as though I'd been given a ticket to banquet, but the dowmside was I had to eat everything on my plate. The starters were filling but delicious. The fish course was tasty but resulted in being overstuffed by the time I'd finished the main course and then I discovered that there were still three puddings to eat and a cheese board, coffee and brandy. I struggled with the fourth book (Child of Flame) but finished it and I thought I'd get the fifth so that my hours spent on the first four would not be for nothing and I could at least claim to have finished the series.... then there was a big GLURK! moment when I realised number five wasn't the last and I started to wonder if it was ever going to reach a conclusion. In fact there seem to be seven, so having read four I now discover that I am barely halfway through. Aaargh!

Run awaaaaayyyyyy.....

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

She's somewhat sensitive about her five book series becoming somewhat longer, and her current trilogy is, in fact, just three books long. So it's safe to read. :-)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd started it on the understanding that it was going to be a five book series, but when I discovered it wasn't I thought it must be my mistake.

Did she get pushed into the elongation by her publishers or did CoS just grow from five to seven books of its own accord?

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think it just grew. However, Tad Williams still holds the record for turning in the longest book to DAW. (To Green Angel Tower)