Covid-19 Stress = DNF Books

Yes, there are books I do not finish.

This is why I give so many of the books I read high star ratings. If a book isn't for me I usually know and don't even pick it up, and if I start a book and it isn't for me I don't finish it.

You are allowed to not finish a book, people.

Now, not finishing a book does not mean it is not a bad book! It means it was the wrong time, or I found the subject material was something I did not want to grapple with, or I had to decide to leave it and move on to one of the other books I was committed to reading.

I did not finish these books because the subject matter was too dark for me to handle right now. With the pandemic with its social distancing and the looming election, I feel stressed all the time. When I read something disturbing, I can feel the stress mounting. I had to walk away.

I won The Second Home by Christina Clancy through Book Club Cookbook. I was intrigued by the description that "it is about second homes, second families, and second chances."

I read 71 pages. Ann is selling her family's second home on Cape Cod. She has not told her sister or brother she is selling it. One summer, Ann set off a series of events that broke up the family. The description says the siblings reunite and confront their past.

Why did I stop reading? There was a disturbing scene involving an older man and Ann that indicated he was going to be a sexual predator. I decided I did not want to go there at this time.

*****

Two books I was looking forward to reading ended up being too hard to read at this time.

I was so excited by the idea of Nick by Michael Farris Smith! A prequel to F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece The Great Gatsby, it is the story of Nick Caraway's WWI experience. I kept walking away from the novel because it was so dark. I ended up reading 55% and although I could see some merit in the novel, I just was not enjoying it. At all.

I was also irked by Nick's childhood memories that were more 1950s than early 1900s. Like dads picking up the newspaper from the front lawn and kids with cowboys and Indian toys under their beds. The character would have been born in 1892 in the Midwest. My grandfather was born in 1905 and wrote about his rural childhood life. 

I thank Little, Brown & Co and NetGalley for a chance to read the book. 

from the publisher

Critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this fascinating look into his life before Gatsby

Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s periphery, he was at the center of a very different story-one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.

Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance-doomed from the very beginning-to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence.

An epic portrait of a truly singular era and a sweeping, romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know but few have pondered deeply. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of golden age scribes, Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.

Missionaries by Phil Klay early caught my attention and I requested it through NetGalley. The writing is good, the subject matter is devastating. Another time I could read it, but with the pandemic and the election already stressing me out, I had to walk away from this novel. I thank Random House and NetGalley for a chance to look at this novel.

from the publisher

A group of Colombian soldiers prepares to raid a drug lord’s safe house on the Venezuelan border. They’re watching him with an American-made drone, about to strike using military tactics taught to them by U.S. soldiers who honed their skills to lethal perfection in Iraq. In Missionaries, Phil Klay examines the globalization of violence through the interlocking stories of four characters and the conflicts that define their lives.

For Mason, a U.S. Army Special Forces medic, and Lisette, a foreign correspondent, America’s long post-9/11 wars in the Middle East exerted a terrible draw that neither is able to shake. Where can such a person go next? All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with local government to keep predatory narco gangs at bay. Mason, now a liaison to the Colombian military, is ready for the good war, and Lisette is more than ready to cover it. Juan Pablo, a Colombian officer, must juggle managing the Americans’ presence and navigating a viper’s nest of factions bidding for power. Meanwhile, Abel, a lieutenant in a local militia, has lost almost everything in the seemingly endless carnage of his home province, where the lines between drug cartels, militias, and the state are semi-permeable. 

Drawing on six years of research in America and Colombia into the effects of the modern way of war on regular people, Klay has written a novel of extraordinary suspense infused with geopolitical sophistication and storytelling instincts that are second to none. Missionaries is a window not only into modern war, but into the individual lives that go on long after the drones have left the skies.