All The Books I Never Finished,

And never regretted it.

Let’s start at the beginning. God did it apparently, so it’s good enough for us.

• I’ve been reading Swamplandia for approximately two years and seventy-three days. I borrowed it from my cousin’s girlfriend who is just as much of a book nerd as me, so I feel kind of bad that I’m that person who doesn’t return books.

Hi, I’m Cassie and I don’t always return borrowed books.

I also have two of the three Colleen Hoover books in a series (Slammed and Point of Retreat) on my shelf from her that I have yet to read. I really should have gotten her a “Return to” label for her personal library books.

Quick flashback: This poor girl, Rachel Dennis, who must have gotten married because I can find her nowhere on social media, gave me the book The Princess Bride. She even came to my house, before having a driver’s license, to try to get that book back. To this day (I read it this year), it’s in my personal library with her name scrolled in high school bubble handwriting. I feel less bad today because the book comes with its own small history, but still.

Hi, I’m Cassie and I have a long history of not returning borrowed books unless their from the library and people are going to charge me a fine.

Back to Swamplandia. How did anyone finish this book? It was slow, and completely, unrealistically weird. A brother who works at a hell theme park. A sister who wants to wrestle albino alligators like her mother in a bay watch suit. A sister who believes she’s dating a dead boy who’s stuck on a tug boat. I got through the first round of hell and doom, but as soon as the narrator met the bird man and went after her sister who could have just watched Ghost to live vicariously through, I couldn’t. I keep the bookmark in it just in case I can finish those last hundred pages, I’m not one to give up. But…it’s been a few years. Maybe 2015 is the year of Swamplandia.

Recommendation: Read Lauren Groff’s story “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” to get your fix of Everglade reptiles and sadness without all the kitschy things that make a book seem “unique” and “original” even though it’s just a mass production of a weird best-seller. Groff’s story is one of the only magnificent stories in the Best American Series 2014.

We, The Drowned – Carsten Jensen

I will finish We, the Drowned. It’s just massive. It’s a steel block of book, but it will get done. I always remember the plot when I come back to it, even after months, which is a true sign of a good story. Plus, the cover’s too beautiful not to know it when someone comes into my library and spots it and asks. It has a 4.18 score on Goodreads which might be because so few people have actually finished it and they all loved it, or it’s just a stellar book. One won’t know until 2015.

All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doeer

At this point I’m the only person that didn’t like and didn’t finish All The Light We Cannot See. It was on the bestseller list in our newspaper this morning even. I just couldn’t finish it. After all the WWII books, to be infinite, authors have to write something that breaks the heart open. This just didn’t. I only read until the boy was at the training camp for a few months and his weak friend was bullied (and I think died). I was really interested in the blind girl’s story and the architecture her father built into her veins as a home, but the author stayed so long on the boy and sister that I gave up. Anyone have any reasons to push through on this one?

Diego Draws @ Tumblr (A Rose for Emily)

Other than Faulkner’s Emily, Miss Havisham may be my favorite character in literary history. Unfortunately, she was dragged through the ash of the Industrial Age by Ronald Frame. I couldn’t even do it.

Why do white girls go to the bathroom in groups of odd numbers? We just can’t even.

I just can’t even.

• I work with a literature prude. He teaches British Lit which is perfect for him. He might be the most well-read person that I know, actually. I always return his books partly because I live in fear of his reaction if I don’t. Plus, we have this long standing feud over who is the better Fitzgerald, Zelda or F. Scott. (It’s Zelda). He recommended Special Topics in Calamity Physics which is a book that just makes me feel like an idiot and I’m not even sure if the author researched her own research. People on Goodreads claim it has “literary allusions” but they must be philosophical geniuses because this book is too hoity-toity for the average American girl who reads.
• I’m a girl who loves a girl named Francine. (It’s like Madeline, I can just imagine the perfect etiquette and the way she dabs her lips gently with a cloth embroidered napkin). And her last name is Prose, which if you’re going to be a writer, your last name cannot get any more perfect than Prose. However, the remake of Bigfoot Dreams. WHY. I wouldn’t let anyone reprint a book that was terrible in the first place. You want to reprint my book, choose one that’s good. How about Blue Angel or Golden Grove, but Big Foot Dreams. Open Road Integrated Media, I deplore you. Remake books that matter, not books that are fillers for authors to keep their publishing contract with the big names. (This is also a publishing world problem).

Cormac McCarthy

I think every year readers have books that they just can’t finish. This year was especially bad for me. Most years, I push through the bad and just finish as many as I can, but this year I made a resolution to refuse to read bad books. So this year, I would read a few pages and then put the book down forever. Even Cormac McCarthy had to suffer through this with two of his books on this list. I started a lot of books. I probably read more pages of starters than I did finishers. I’m not sure if this was just me being stressed with teaching and less time to really hook my claws into “good” books, or if this is a publishing epidemic. Are they (American publishing houses) publishing less NEED and more WANT? I can’t answer that question without an insider view really, but lately I’ve felt that no books have moved me so far as to write a brilliant review since probably, The Tiger’s Wife. I want a book I can faint inside. Did you read any books like that this year? RECOMMEND please. I might even start one of those cute little TBR mason jars.