I hate to start a book I don’t finish, squiders. You guys know that, if you’ve been here a while, since I once posted about a book I started in high school and finished quite a bit later.
In fact, normally I pride myself on finishing what I start. Even if it takes me months. Or years.
I’ve done a lot of reading this year. I think I’m ten books up from where I normally am, or maybe 15. And I’ve enjoyed most of them. But every so often, I’ve started one that I just wasn’t feeling.
Normally, I’ll just slog through them anyway, or put them down and come back to them later.
Unfortunately, one of them was a library book, so I didn’t have the liberty of time, especially since it was a new release. It was kind of weird, actually, because this book came in as being a request, but neither I nor my spouse had any memory of requesting it. But it was near-future scifi, which is a genre we both like, so it was likely one of us had anyway.
(Jury’s still out on that one. I’m leaning toward my spouse.)
I started it, got 50 pages in. And I just…wasn’t feeling it. I don’t think it was a bad book, so I’m not going to name it so I don’t dissuade other people, but it was very depressing. Climate change had essentially made Earth unlivable, rights were being stripped away from women and minorities, and in the height of the world burning down around me, I couldn’t stomach reading about the sort of thing that feels all too plausible.
And I said to the smaller, mobile one, that I didn’t want to read it.
And she said, “Then don’t, Mommy.”
And I said, “But I put it as Currently Reading on Goodreads,” and she said she didn’t know what that was and wandered off.
Hey, guess what? You can delete books off your Goodreads. It’s not too hard, once you look for the option.
So I did. Delete it, I mean. And I returned it to the library. And I feel a little guilty about it, but not really.
So, today, I said to myself that that was actually probably a good thing, and why was I forcing myself to read things that weren’t enjoyable that I didn’t have to, and I should clear off another book.
I am going to name that one. It’s called Holly Banks, Full of Angst and I got it through the Kindle First program or whatever it’s called, where they give you a list of free Kindle books the first of every month and you can pick one. It’s contemporary, which isn’t my favorite, but it was sold as being a funny novel about motherhood.
I started it in…February? Earlier in this forever year. And I’m sorry, I really hated it. I got 35, 40 percent into it. And it was just the worst sort of secondhand embarrassment. I was hoping to be able to identify with Holly and that it would resonate with my own mothering experiences, but I hated Holly and what she was doing only made me anxious.
But now…it’s gone! Well, it’s at least out of my Goodreads account. Still need to delete it off my Kindle. Hooray!
I’ve got to remind myself that sometimes, it’s better to not finish something. That sometimes it’s okay to not push myself through something that I really do not want to do. That it’s okay to recognize that something is not working for me and move on to something that’s going to work better. It’s not being lazy or giving up; it’s listening to and trusting myself.
It’s a good thing to be reminded of, sometimes.
I am unlikely to be back later this week, squiders, so I’ll catch you in that weird liminal time between Christmas and New Years.
