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.

Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics

• 6th June: Books or Covers that Feel/Look Like Summer
• 13th June: Bookish Wishes
• 20th June: Books on My Summer 2023 To-Read List
• 27th June: Most Anticipated Books Releasing During the Second Half of 2023
• 4th July: Book Covers in the Colours of My Contry’s Flag
• 11th July: Freebie: Books Set in Rome
• 18th July: Books With One-Word Titles

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This is a bit of a challenge for me because it is really rare for me to give up on a book! I like to think that this is because I find it easy to find something to enjoy in most books: the genre may not be a favourite, but I may like the characters; I may not like the characters but the language could be sublime; I may find the language pedestrian but the plot could be thrilling; the plot might be cliched and quotidian but the ideas and themes might be powerful. And oftentimes, if I do put a book down, its because I was not in the right headspace for it then but I may well go back to it later… a pause does not a DNF make, does it?

On the other hand, it may also reflect negatively on me as a person. I am generally a completionist, keen to finish a book – or a series – just because I started it. Yes, I am that sort of person who cannot leave a sidequest incomplete in a game! I also fall foul of the sunk-cost fallacy easily: I feel that when I have invested in a book (the time to start reading it probably more than the price), I must “get my money’s worth” from it, even if giving up and finding a book I do love would be a much more enjoyable use of my time. And perhaps my eternal optimism: even halfway through a book, even three-quarters of the way, I might still be thinking This could get better any moment…

So, the upshot is that there are few books that I have officially given up on, but let’s see…

Books I did not finish:

Pod, Laline Paull

Ea has always felt like an outsider. She suffers from a type of deafness that means she cannot master the spinning rituals that unite her pod of spinner dolphins. When tragedy strikes her family and Ea feels she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave.

As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. But just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life.

In her terrifying, propulsive novel, Laline Paull explores the true meaning of family, belonging, sacrifice – the harmony and tragedy of the pod – within an ocean that is no longer the sanctuary it once was, and which reflects a world all too recognisable to our own.

I have mentioned before that I find animal narrators a challenge to my willing suspension of disbelief, but the bigger problem for me with this novel was that I found it tedious – and dolphins, for all their playful intelligence that grace our TV screens, are brutal beasts. I have heard from divers that they would much prefer to dive with sharks than dolphins. And to be fair to Paull, there was enough vicious brutality that you can’t accuse her of over-anthropomorphising them… but it didn’t make it a nice reading experience.

The Death of Francis Bacon, Max Porter

Madrid. Unfinished. Man dying.

A great painter lies on his deathbed, synapses firing, writhing and reveling in pleasure and pain as a lifetime of chaotic and grotesque sense memories wash over and envelop him.

In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist’s mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life.

The result is more than a biography: The Death of Francis Bacon is a physical, emotional, historical, sexual, and political bombardment–the measure of a man creative and compromised, erotic and masochistic, inexplicable and inspired.

This one is all down to me, and it is a book that I will return to because I love everything else I have read by Max Porter… but it was a challenging read at every conceivable level! I am always wary of a novel labelled experimental.

Detranstion, Baby, Torrey Peters

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn’t hate. She’d scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina’s pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family – and raise the baby together?

Reading the blurb again, I am once more intrigued and interested and feel that I want to read it – it seems an important novel exploring a complex and difficult topic. What was it that put me off this one? Characters fetishising the risk of contracting HIV from unprotected sex

The Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson

Bled dry by interminable warfare, infighting and bloody confrontations with Lord Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, the vast, sprawling Malazan empire simmers with discontent.

Even its imperial legions yearn for some respite. For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his Bridgeburners and for Tattersail, sole surviving sorceress of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, still holds out – and Empress Lasseen’s ambition knows no bounds.

However, it seems the empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister forces gather as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand…

I gather I am not the only reader to be overwhelmed by the vast array of characters, of politics, of war, of magic in this world… and many have said that it is so worth keeping faith with. But, yes, I got overwhelmed and lost!

The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Moiraine Damodred arrives in Emond’s Field on a quest to find the one prophesized to stand against The Dark One, a malicious entity sowing the seeds of chaos and destruction. When a vicious band of half-men, half beasts invade the village seeking their master’s enemy, Moiraine persuades Rand al’Thor and his friends to leave their home and enter a larger unimaginable world filled with dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light.

Unlike The Gardens of the Moon which was overwhelmingly alien and foreign as a world, I found The Wheel of Time‘s first novel tediously familiar – a young man in a rural village turns out to be the one… and oh the dream sequences!

Books I wish I had not finished

The Fault in Our Stars, John Green

I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis.

But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

We have DEAR time in my school – Drop Everything And Read – where we read novels with our students. And this book was on our list this year. And oh lord, did I not like it. The whole premise is depressing – and far too many of our students had personal experience of cancer and we had real tears – and the writing was not sensitive: it was pretentious and unconvincing, lurching between bad jokes and a mawkish pathos… and the rhythms of it did not read well aloud. If you want a YA novel about cancer, try A Monster Calls instead.

As Good As Dead, Holly Jackson

Pip Fitz-Amobi is haunted by the way her last investigation ended. Soon she’ll be leaving for Cambridge University but then another case finds her . . . and this time it’s all about Pip. 

Pip is used to online death threats, but there’s one that catches her eye, someone who keeps asking: who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? And it’s not just online. Pip has a stalker who knows where she lives. The police refuse to act and then Pip finds connections between her stalker and a local serial killer. The killer has been in prison for six years, but Pip suspects that the wrong man is behind bars. As the deadly game plays out, Pip realises that everything in Little Kilton is finally coming full circle. If Pip doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears . . .

This is an interesting one – because I quite enjoyed the first two books in the trilogy. But… Pip becomes the very thing that she had been fighting against and uses her (somewhat precocious) knowledge of crime not to solve a murder, but to evade responsibility for a murder she committed. That I could accept. But framing someone else? Even a deeply horrifically unpleasant someone else? Nope.

Series I have not finished

Obviously, having not finished book one of either The Wheel of Time or Malazan Book of the Fallen, they belong on this list too. And it is interesting that a lot of these are fantasy series where it is perhaps the world that did grab me…

The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher

Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard P.I.
Turns out the ‘everyday’ world is full of strange and magical things – and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in.

Harry’s business as a private investigator has been quiet lately – so when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, he’s seeing dollar signs. But where there’s black magic, there’s a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry’s name.
Magic – it can get a guy killed.

I will probably return to this series because they were like a summer movie blockbuster: all swagger and tropey and unapologetically fun. Popcorn books. I did lose some faith in the way they treated Karrin Murphy – she was a good character who became sidelined and in one book trapped into a space that she could only get out of byt stripping out of her trousers…? Please say you were being ironic, Mr Butcher.

Skulduggery Pleasant, Derek Landy

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: detective, sorcerer, warrior.

Oh yeah. And dead.

Stephanie’s uncle Gordon is a writer of horror fiction. But when he dies and leaves her his estate, Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror, it certainly wasn’t fiction.

Pursued by evil forces intent on recovering a mysterious key, Stephanie finds help from an unusual source – the wisecracking skeleton of a dead wizard.

When all hell breaks loose, it’s lucky for Skulduggery that he’s already dead. Though he’s about to discover that being a skeleton doesn’t stop you from being tortured, if the torturer is determined enough. And if there’s anything Skulduggery hates, it’s torture… Will evil win the day? Will Stephanie and Skulduggery stop bickering long enough to stop it? One thing’s for sure: evil won’t know what’s hit it.

I enjoyed this for what it was, initially: and it was in some ways rather like The Dresden Files. Then it took a sudden turn towards gore and I recall a scene where Valkyrie is lying on an operating table being dissected whilst conscious and escaping to put herself back together literally…. I am not overly squeamish but the series seemed to heap up the gore and violence and horror to the point where it became, well, tedious.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

A mysterious island.

An abandoned orphanage.

A strange collection of very curious photographs.

As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

The first book felt like it had been forced into being around the photographs that are embedded in the book – and which, perhaps, should have been published in their own right without the novel. And it became rather tedious and strained as the first trilogy went on… and the plot felt so contrive. But then a second trilogy came out…

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Perhaps this is your chance to remind me that these books and series are worth returning to – and I am always more than willing to give books a second or a third chance! And of course, if I have mentioned a book or series that you love, please treat my not finishing it as entirely my own failing and I am so glad that you found something to enjoy in them!

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Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

August 1: Forgotten Backlist Titles (Spread love for books that people don’t talk about much anymore!)
August 8: Books I’ve Read/Want to Read Because of Top Ten Tuesday (books you discovered through Top Ten Tuesday, or they kept appearing in top tens and you got intrigued) (submitted by Ellie at Curiosity Killed the Bookworm)
August 15: Characters from Different Books Who Should Team Up (or date, be friends with, etc.) (Submitted by Cathy @ WhatCathyReadNext)
August 22: Genre Freebie (Pick a genre and build a list around it.)
August 29: Water (This can be covers with water on them, books with bodies of water in them, titles with bodies of water in them, etc.)
September 5: Books That Defied My Expectations (books you thought you would didn’t like that you loved, books you thought you’d love but didn’t, books that were not the genres they seemed to be, or in any other way subverted your expectations!) (Submitted by Sia @ everybookadoorway.com)
September 12: Favorite Character Relationships (These can be platonic or not. Romantic relationships, parent/child, siblings, family bonds, friendships, found families, pet/human, etc.)
September 19: Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List
September 26: Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book