The Urge to DNF
Last Saturday I spent more money than I should have at the bookstore. I hadn't even meant to buy anything, but first it was an interesting horror book out on a display table, and I can't just buy one book, so it turned into four. I felt guilty about it, so when I got home I made a promise to myself that I would read them all before anything else, to make the money worth spending.
I easily finished the first on the list, a horror translate from Japanese about weird house-plans, Strange Houses by Uketsu. It was quick and easy, and also creepy, and really thought-provoking with its unreliable narrator. I enjoyed it, felt good about finishing it, and felt like I could do this. I could finish the four books.
And then I started the second of the stack and got tone whiplash. It's an adult romantic fantasy, which I don't read very often, called The Last Dragon of the East by Katrina Kwan. The prose is a lot more flowery, almost to the point of being over the top, especially when it comes to the narrator describing emotions (in a very YA kind of way, where every emotion is over-exaggerated). The main character is male, but does not read like a real male character, but rather like how a woman who's never been around a lot of men thinks a man is. On top of that, there have been several things that made it clear to me the author either did not do research or did not think things through. I'm about half-way through and not enjoying it at all. I do want to know what happens, but the prose and characters are not great, so not enough to keep picking the book up.
I'm disappointed. And I have the urge to just give up and take it back to the bookstore. My time is worth too much to waste on something I'm not enjoying. Except, the more books I do this to, the more likely I am to just forget how to finish things.
What a pickle.