Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Books I am not reading

We all have them--books on the coffee table or the bedside table that are collecting dust because we're not reading them. Oh, we meant to start them (or finish them), we really did, but somehow we just...didn't.

Right now I'm not reading Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams, by Lynne Withey. The first few chapters were fascinating, but I put the book down a few months ago and I haven't picked it up again because I'm no longer in the mood to read a biography.

(So that's where my silver-plated bookmark got to! I was looking for it just the other day.)

Recently my Number One Son read Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and wanted to discuss it with me. It's been twenty years since I read it, I told him, I'd need to brush up. I snagged a copy from Amazon just before Christmas, looked at the first few pages, and got distracted. Now here it sits in my office, not being read. (Behind Zen is the small rubber ball I bounce off my closed office door whenever I need to let off some writerly steam.)

Another book I am not reading is Walden. As I have already mentioned a time or two on this blog, I have been not reading Walden for years. I have tried and tried, but I just can't get into it.

What books are you not reading, and why?

6 comments:

Robin Bayne said...

I am currently not reading "The Last Templar" by Raymound Khoury. It looked good in the store, but there are so many characters introduced so quick I lost interest.

By the way, Brenda, beautiful flowers!!

Lisa said...

I am currently NOT reading The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien. I have been NOT reading that for years, but in the fall I started it and got about 1/3 of the way in and then got distracted.

I am also NOT reading Ted Dekker's Showdown, which reminds me of a book I also didn't finish by Stephen King.

Another Not-read for me is Introducing Postmodernism. I wanted to read it, I really did. It's just ... boring and.... makes me feel hopeless.

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks, Robin.
<3<3<3

Lisa, I am not reading The Silmarillion, too! What a small world this is!
;-)

Robin Bayne said...

You guys are lucky--I had to read the Silmarillion in college. Bleh!

Pilgrim said...

I am not reading Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene AND Road Map to Holland AND French Women for All Seasons for the second time. I bought a lot of scarves after the first reading. I need to re-read it and figure out how to wear them!

Brenda Coulter said...

Oh dear, Julana. Those all sound like very good books to be not reading.