The Books I Could Not Read This Summer...and One I Wish I Had Hadn't Read

Not all books are meant to be finished, and some are finished when they should have been left unread.

I passed on a few books. I am burning out after 120+ books read this year. My husband had knee replacement surgery and I had more to do around the house and to help him. I usually skirt around genre fiction and plot-driven reads, but they are going down easier right now. I need more happy and upbeat books.

So, here are the books I am missing out on:

I requested Sight by Jessie Greengrass through NetGalley. It seemed right up my alley: a woman talks about the death of her mother, her decision to have a child, and science. The language was quite amazing. But I found I did not have the energy to deal with the dense and demanding prose, and after nearly 50 pages felt like I had been reading for a hundred. I decided I had to move on.

Sight
Jessie Greengrass
Hogarth Books
Publication August 21, 2018
ISBN 9780525574606
PRICE $21.00 (USD)

Because I had read Daniel's Torday's first book The Last Flight of Poxl West I was offered his new book Boomer1. I read nearly 200 pages then bowed out. I had trouble wanting to read it.

There is an interesting situation illustrating the nature of Internet technology today, how ideas are put out there and take on lives of their own.

As an early Baby Boomer myself, the protagonist's obsession with Boomers not retiring and keeping Millennials down was difficult. Hey! We Boomers had the 1970s inflation and high gas prices to contend with. Our first house mortgage had 15% interest rate! We barely made $40,000 with two incomes! Quit yer griping!

The guy made bad decisions and blamed everyone but himself. I just decided to give myself a pass rather than spend more time with him. Sorry, Daniel. As a reader, I feel I failed you.

Boomer1
Daniel Torday
St. Martin's Press
Publication September 18, 2018
ISBN 9781250191793
PRICE $27.99 (USD)

I made myself finish the much-touted Ohio by Stephen Markley. It is well written, beautiful writing at times such as in the opening, and the characters are well-drawn and the theme timely and the plot is part a mystery and part a character study of a whole cadre of classmates.

But it is dark, gruesome, shocking, and violent, the characters struggling with horrible situations and issues. I stopped reading it several times. I was sure I was going to walk away, unwilling to spend more time with these broken people.

And when I finally did finish the novel, my stomach was in knots and I felt slightly ill. Graphic sex and self-abuse and violence and all kinds of stuff going on which I usually avoid like the plague.

And these kids, ten years out of high school but trapped by what happened in those few years, destroyed by it. They don't move on, they can't move on. The beautiful ones are destroyed and the less beautiful ones who love them are destroyed.

I am so destroyed, I wish I had not finished the book.

Which perhaps shows how successful the novel is--

I was given a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Ohio
Stephen Markley
Publication August 21, 2018
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 9781501174476
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

The Last Flight of Poxl West

Fifteen-year-old Eli idolizes his surrogate 'Uncle' Poxl, both as a war hero who flew bombers over Hamburg--a Nazi-killing Jew--and as an urbane professor who introduced him to the arts and read his manuscript to him. When Poxl's memoir Skylock: Memoir of a Jewish R.A.F. Bomber becomes an 'instant classic' Eli is proud the book is dedicated to him. In the midst of the hoopla over the book, and his subsequent fall from grace, Uncle Poxl disappears from his life leaving Eli with anger and questions.

Poxl's memoir is sandwiched between Eli's story line. Poxl was interesting and complex; he endures great losses during the war. He has been a widower for twenty years. He finds in Eli a surrogate child, but one he abandons. Eli is an appealing voice.

The book deals with a number of interesting issues regarding the fine line between memoir and literature and the ethical and literary implications of manipulating fact and fiction.

Poxl's decision to wordlessly abandon his war time lover can be seen as the self-centered impetus of youth, eager to fight Nazis and avenge his parent's deaths, or his mistrust resulting from accidentally learning of his mother's infidelity.

I did not like the ending; after the war Poxl searches for the woman he abandoned and then pushes himself into her new life. SPOILER ALERT: his desire to make love to Francoise one more time seemed less about love and romance than once putting his selfish needs over another's best interest. But if I look at things another way, perhaps less as a woman and more as a guy, it is his desperate clinging to the last vestige of the life he has lost. After all, the book begins by Poxl telling us that this book was about love, not war.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley for a fair and unbiased review.

The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday
St. Martin's Press
ISBN:9781250051684
$25.99
Publication Date: March 17, 2015