Toss It!

I have the habit of reading parts of many books, often because I want to find out something, but also because I have a tendency to start a book and while reading it another grabs my attention, and I may not get back to the earlier one for a long time, if ever.

However, a few times, I just grow disgusted with a book and give up on it. After 50 years of building a library to upwards of 13,000 titles, I am beginning to “de-select”, as we librarians say, when I pick up a book that I expect to benefit me, only to find that it is weak, tedious, or so marginal to my current interests that it’s useless to me.

Sometimes I find one so pathetic I trash it when I can’t imagine anyone anywhere wasting their time with it. Others go back into the thrift market where they came from. This fussiness over books raises its head as well with books borrowed from the library. The mantra, “So many books, so little time,” hangs over my head. I am not like my mother, who once she began a book, she felt obligated to finish it because she was being disloyal to the library, to the author, or to her lifelong occupation as a reader.

I have no such feelings of obligation. Here are some of the books I quit reading.

Frank Herbert, Dune (1965).
When I was active in science fiction fandom, one of the books enjoying a rage of praise was Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965). It had such buzz that I believed I had actually read it from all the talk in reviews and conversation. Finally, around 2000, I realized I had not read it, even a bit.

Dune is a massive achievement in concept and scope; I envy Herbert for all his sustained efforts to create its world and ethos. The David Lynch movie version thrilled me. I have an off-air tape of that film and watch it periodically, getting worked up over it every time. This is likely due to the high caliber of the actors and the otherness of the story-telling sometimes with more flesh than the novel. But, I gave up on Dune after reading 75% of it. I could no longer stand the continual internal monologues as the characters probe and question their own psyches and the motivations of others. Perhaps this impatience is a factor of my age or the absence of any real reason to know the end.

The fallout of my failed Dune experience, is that although I had acquired a number of titles in the Dune series by the Herberts, father and son, I tossed them. I had only read one other, Children of Dune, that I also wearied me. I thought it would never end. My displeasure, I think, came from the ceaseless family rivalries that bothered and bored me.

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt (2002).
A couple years after the trial with Dune, I read a good deal of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) which had so caught my attention when I heard it discussed on National Public Radio that I had to have a copy right then.

I bought a hardbound at full price, something I almost never do, and plunged into reading it. I have long been fascinated by the concept of alternative history and intrigued by what authors can imagine. But after reading about 60% of it, I found I was forcing myself to read this tedious, episodic, somewhat-crazed exercise that seemed to be going nowhere and relied on reincarnations of the major characters over time to continue the story. Not for me.

Ross King, Ex-Libris (2001).
I had high hopes for Ex-Libris, a novel by Ross King, the story of a rare book dealer, hired by a mysterious lady to track down certain books in order to fully restore the library of her father. His search turns perilous due to lurking evil, then alternates with stories of the father who was instrumental in amassing the library of Rudolf II and saving it at the outbreak of the Thirty Year’s War.

After plowing through 60% of very erudite prose and 17th century English, I decided that this was all so contrived and purple enough to rival the most outrageous parody of Bulwer-Lytton. I could not care less as to what might happen next. Worst I had not learned anything.

Hugh Prather, A Book of Games (1981).
I’m always in search of alternative views of consciousness and cognitive development. I’d bought A Book of Games: a course in spiritual play by Hugh Prather, only 15 cents at the Red Wing Salvation Army. However, it is totally vacuous.

Open it anywhere and you find drivel like “Thoughts set the goal and therefore start the traveler on his way” (page 49). All too obvious; I don’t need these insults to intelligence, and I am repelled that anyone has the gall to try and make money in this manner.

Yes, I am fussy. I accept that my stance has a personal dimension. I like to think I have high standards, but often my regard or disapproval of a book is due to the values I like to see upheld in the daily world and also in literature. I give up on many plots and characters when in my mind, they are stupid or act for reasons that have no real accountability to life and its opportunities.
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© 2009 by Roger Sween.

I welcome substantive comments on the contents of this blog. Personal comments to me may be made at my email, rogdesk@charter.net.