Monday, March 12, 2007

Unreadable?

In the news today is a list of books which people claim in a survey to have been unable to finish. I have to admit that I have only read two of these:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...long but I enjoyed it and

Crime and Punishment... I had to study this at university so didn't read it for fun, but I don't remember it being that bad.

If I am not enjoying a book much I do try to at least skim through to the end but two that I do clearly remember giving up completely on were:

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ...which I just couldn't get into at all and

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing... but I want to give that one another try soon as I'm getting into books on mental health at the moment.

I like books with good storylines, believable characters I can relate to and above all well written. Anything poorly written and very superficial or, on the other hand, too dry and literary tends to leave me cold.

But each to his/her own and I am very surprised to see Harry Potter in the list, even if that wasn't the best of the series.

2 comments:

Caroline said...

That kind of list fills me with dread! I am surprised that there is a Harry Potter on it.

Cathy said...

Welcome Caroline!

I'm not a fan of this sort of list either...I wonder how scientific the market research was?!!

I was surprised about the Harry Potter too...but that is the longest one in the series so far, I think, so maybe it is more a reflection of peoples short attention spans than of JKR's writing.