I’m always very hesitant to say I’m never going to read a book, because who knows when my tastes might change? It’s not too often that I actually completely lose interest in ever trying a book. I have many that have been on my TBR for about three years now, that I have never removed because they still interest me. If I haven’t gotten around to them yet, it’s usually because they are hard to get copies of, or I just haven’t been in the mood. There are so many other books that I’ve prioritized, and it would be impossible to get to everything on my massive TBR! The books listed here are ones that I may still read at some point, but they are very low on my priority list.
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
1) Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
I think this is the one and only book that I ever seriously considered removing from my TBR. I added it in the first place because I saw the movie when I was way too young to really get it, and I found it pretty boring. Once I realized it was a book, I thought it might be good to give it another chance. I lost interest in it once I realized it was non-fiction, as harsh as that may sound. I find memoirs rarely interest me much, and considering I didn’t really like the movie either, the book wasn’t particularly appealing. The main reason I’ve left it on my TBR until now is because it has received such positive reviews everywhere, so I almost feel like I’m missing out if I don’t give it a chance. It’s just not the kind of book I think I would ever be in the mood for.
2) The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
To be fair, I was never very interested in this one to begin with. I had it in mind for a challenge prompt a few years ago that called for a book over 600 pages, and it was one of the only ones I could find that seemed somewhat interesting and wasn’t part of a series. I ended up avoiding it the entire year until I finally decided just to switch it out for something else instead, but always vaguely meant to come back to it. The book is about a 13-year-old boy who is taken in by a wealthy family, and all he has left of his mother is a painting that reminds him of her. It follows him into his adult life, although most of the synopses I’ve seen have been pretty vague. It is another book that a lot of people seem to rave about, and I still have some mild interest in trying it, but it is the kind of book that seems like a real commitment to pick up.
3) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabrial Garcia Marquez
Like The Goldfinch, this is another book that I had in mind for a challenge prompt, but never picked up because I was never in the mood for it. I’ve been meaning to read it for a long time because it is such a classic, but I was a little put off by seeing a lot of very mixed reviews. It seemed almost exactly 50-50 between people who loved this book, and people who found it incredibly boring. This book is a magical realism story that follows a family through seven generations. I actually own a copy of this book and I am still a little interested in giving it a chance at some point, but I have literally never been in the mood to try it. There are many other classics that interest me a lot more, so this one will probably sit on the back-burner for quite a while.
4) The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
Technically, this applies to all of Rick Riordan’s series. I know this is one of the most widely loved series, but for some reason, it has just never interested me. It’s a bit odd since I actually love mythology so these kinds of stories should be something that I would enjoy. I think it’s mostly because I’ve never had much luck with middle grade series that I’ve read as an adult, so I feel like I’ve kind of outgrown these. This series also seems incredibly overhyped, to the point where I know I’m just going to be disappointed. There are so many other fantasy series that appeal to me more that I’ve just never been motivated to pick this one up. The only thing that makes me hesitant to say I would never try it is because there have been other books I avoided because of all the hype, and ended up loving. I can’t really see myself reading these series, but I also don’t necessarily want to say it will never happen.
5) The Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke
I’ve only read the first book in this series, but it was enough to convince me that I’m not interested in the rest of them. This is another series that was extremely popular when I was younger, but I never read it when I was in the target age range. I read the first book in 2016 for a reading challenge prompt, and to be fair, I put it off until quite late in the year because I was just never in the mood for it. The concept behind the story was pretty interesting, but I found the book so boring to read. I had to keep switching between the audio version and the text copy just to get through it. It took almost a third of the book for the story to really get going, by which point I had already stopped caring. Since this one was such a slog, I doubt I’d be very interested in the rest of the series.
6) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
I wasn’t interested in this one when it first came out, and it has never really caught my attention since then. It’s one of those books that I’ve always felt like I should try because of its popularity. People are always surprised to find out that I haven’t read it yet, and I’ve heard it’s great, but the storyline has never really appealed to me much. It is about a symbologist named Robert Langdon who is investigating the case of a museum curator who has been murdered, and next to him was a riddle that leads to a trail of clues hidden in Da Vinci’s artwork. Technically, the concept does sound like it could be interesting, but I also feel like I’ve waited so long that I’ve already gotten the gist of the story from everywhere else, so there’s not much point to reading it.
7) The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Just to be clear, I had already lost interest in this series before any of the allegations against James Dashner came out. I find it hard to write off an author completely because of allegations that haven’t been substantiated, by I did see a Tweet by Dashner where he takes responsibility and admits that he may not have always make the best decisions in regards to boundaries and power dynamics. Nevertheless, my disinterest in the book started long before any of these allegations came out. I had this book in mind for my first reading challenge in 2015, but never ended up picking it up. It seemed like just another generic dystopian that, while mildly interesting, didn’t really draw me in either. At that point, I had recently read The Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies, and was a little burnt out on that kind of storyline. I’m still reluctant to say I will never pick this up, but it’s very low on my list.
8) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
This is another of those books that I kind of feel like I “should” read, even though sci-fi is not a genre I really reach for very often. This book is set on Earth in the future, where children are trained from a young age using games to prepare them to deal with alien invasions. It sounds like an interesting concept, but space and military are two things that have never been huge motivators for me to pick up a book. If I’m honest, another thing that put me off was the fact that this book was published in 1985 and I’ve found books published so long ago tend to be pretty dated. The movie trailer did kind of spark my interest again, but never enough that I actually planned to follow through and read the book. It’s another book that I might read at some point, but I doubt I’ll be interested in picking it up any time soon.
9) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and 10) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I have a whole list of classics that I’ve always felt like I should get to at some point, and these two have been on my list for a very long time. The main reason I haven’t picked either of them up yet is because I actually have very little idea what they are about. I know Catch-22 is a war story, and Slaughterhouse-Five has something to do with a prisoner of war and an alien invasion. It’s been hard for me to motivate myself to pick these up when I know so little about them. These are two of the classics that I probably know the least about, so it’s been hard for me to justify whether to keep them, but I also haven’t wanted to remove them because they might actually interest me.
Abyssal Librarian 