Top Ten Tuesday: Five Books I Almost Put Down But Didn't

 Top Ten Tuesday topic is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is Top Ten Books I Almost Put Down but Didn't. This is a tough topic for me, because I almost never intentionally stop reading a book. Whenever I put a book down, it's always with the intent, however misguided, of picking it back up again. And I will finish them someday! So the books left unfinished have been seared into my brain, whereas the ones I slogged through regardless have just sort of faded into the back of mind. Lately when I come across a book that's giving me trouble, I think of this quote from Doris Lessing:

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag—and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. ” 

Sometimes it's best to just put a book down and pick it back up when the time is right, but, for better or worse, I have trouble following Lessing's advice. What if it's just about to get good? So here are five books for which I refused to admit defeat. There are one or two I worry I may have read out of their right time, some that I grew to enjoy once I "settled in," and a few that I suspect will never have a right time for me.

1. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta: I was tempted to abandon this one because the novel seems like such a jumble of different ideas at the beginning, the protagonist herself is so closed off, and there are lots of allusions to events that aren't fully explained until much later  in the book. I'm so glad I stuck with it, though, because part of the beauty of Jellicoe Road is slowly watching the pieces come together.

2. The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon: The aphasic nonsense words just kept giving me headaches! And the pacing was a little too irregular to keep me genuinely hooked, but I'm glad I persevered.

3. A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins: We had to read this for high school, and for some reason I was just a total brat about it. I didn't just put it down and walk away; I would throw it across the room. I really just made it more difficult than it had to be, probably because it was school-assigned. I did actually finish it, and although the writing was a little spotty, I came to really enjoy the memoir of a man's walk (part of the way) across America.And I'm always a sucker for an awesome dog.

4. Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr: I got an ARC of this from a former coworker, and the description sounded awesome, but the book just fell flat for me. I finished it begrudgingly, and I probably remember about as much of it as I would if I had stopped reading it less than halfway through.

5. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes: I read this when I was fourteen, and I was too young! I'm a little torn on this. On one hand, I was proud that I'd stuck with it and finished it, but on the other hand I wonder if it would've been better to have put it down and come back to it a few years later. I should reread this...