Friday, April 17, 2009

Unfinished Friday


So, I had an idea to start a new feature on Boston Bibliophile- Unfinished Friday. The idea is to post each Friday about a book that I've left unfinished, and then let you all tell me if you think I should finish it. If you want to play along, I'd love it if you left a link in the comments with your own unfinished book. Because, you know, we book bloggers need another weekly meme.

My first Unfinished Friday book is Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen. This book came out last year, and has been widely praised and even won some awards- it was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2008 and won the Salon Book Award of 2008.

It's a character-driven novel about a man who believes that his wife has been spirited away and replaced with an exact duplicate- a premise reminiscent of Borges, and the wife is even from Argentina, so I sense a direct link here. Anyway I had kind of a hard time muddling through it, and my husband, who is reading it right now, is also considering giving up on it. So tell me- have you read it? What did you think? Do you think I should muddle through and finish it, or not? I really would love to know what you think.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

You should finish it so I can give up on it in good conscience.

Dawn @ sheIsTooFondOfBooks said...

Fun idea for a new weekly feature. I must have a Pollyanna attitude (which doesn't always serve me well!), I tend to muddle thru until the end, thinking it will improve.

Make a deal with your husband - if one of you finishes it (and the other doesn't), the unfinisher has to cook dinner every night for a week (or some other good trade off!)

But back to the book itself ... it does sound interesting and I'm sorr it's not living up to the expectations!

bermudaonion said...

Great new feature. I haven't read it, but if it wasn't working for you, I see forget about it and move on to something better.

Sandra said...

I read it and wondered if I should stick it out too, but I did and it was worth it for me. I just can't stand not knowing what's going on in a story and how it worked out. That probably doesn't help much I know. I do like the meme though-I think we all hit that spot in a novel once in a while where we could use some input.

Anna said...

I say life is too short to read not-so-good books. But that's just me. I think this is an interesting feature.

--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric

Candy Schultz said...

The premise sounds very interesting but if both of you don't like it I guess I won't look for it.

I used to always make myself finish a book no matter how much I hated it. Now I think life is too short and there are so many really good books why waste my time. You might pick it up in ten years and feel totally different about it.

Alyce said...

I read the summary and actually thought that it sounds like something that wouldn't appeal to me, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask.

There are very few books that I've given up on in the past. It seems to be happening more often now that I'm a book blogger and reading more books outside my comfort zone.

Serena said...

Thanks for stopping by and cheering me on today! I will be catching up with everyone's blogs tomorrow, probably!

Marie Cloutier said...

Dawn- I love it! He's still working on it. He's thisclose!

King Rat- hahaha. I will take that into consideration:-)

Everyone- thanks for your comments on this. I'll probably do another one next week. Basically, I just want a way to get some mileage out of the books I don't finish. Maybe I'll write partial reviews or something on books that I remember better than this one! :-)