Talking about books, food, and life in general…
I’m sad to say that I had to DNF this one at 162 pages. 😥 I just couldn’t make myself continue on. It was a struggle to get as far as I did and I picked up and finished two books in the time that I got to page 162 in this one. Life’s too short to read books that don’t interest you. On to the next….
So this was my January pick for the What Should I Read Next event….. and I just couldn’t get into it. I read 72 pages over the course of the last week and a half and to be honest I had to force myself to read most of them. It wasn’t bad, in fact it was kind of interesting, but it was very wordy. Too wordy for my taste. I have a feeling that it’s a 500+ page book that probably should have only been 300ish pages. So I’m DNF’ing it for now. I’ll keep it on my shelf and perhaps come back to it at a later date, but right now it’s not the book for me.
The Body Finder
by Kimberly Derting
Copyright: 2010
Pages: 327
Format: Print
Blurb: When a murder is committed it leaves a unique echo … on both the victim and the killer. Most people are unaware of these echoes but Violet Ambrose has always been able to sense them.
Now that Violet’s town is in the thralls of a serial killer the echoes of the local girls he has murdered are haunting her.
The only shining light is Violet’s best friend Jay. She’s started falling for him and his fierce protectiveness gives her hope that he may feel the same…
This was at the top of my RIP VIII list. It was on my Paperbackswap wish list for quite some time. And then it sat on my shelf for a while too after I received it. So I was definitely excited to getting to this book. But, I just couldn’t get into it. I made it to page 62 and realized that not only had it taken me 3 days to get there, but that I really wasn’t all that interested in this book. It’s just not for me and I’m giving up on it.
And now I’m onto my next book … the first Sookie book 🙂
Bossypants
by Tina Fey
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 275
Format: Print
Blurb: Before Liz Lemon, before “Weekend Update,” before “Sarah Palin,” Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.
She has seen both these dreams come true.
At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon – from the beginning of this paragraph to the final sentence.
Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.
I got this book from the library in the hopes of using it for the humor section of the Eclectic Reader challenge. It’s an understatement to say that this book is beyond bad. It just is not the right book for me. I like Tina Fey, a lot. But for some reason this book was  just bland. I flew through 50 pages without blinking an eye and then set it aside. And I never wanted to pick it back up. Want to know why? The writing was so atrocious I almost couldn’t stand it. This book may be for you, but it’s definitely not the one for me.
Silent Partner
by Jonathan Kellerman
Copyright: 1989
Pages: 484
Format: Print
Blurb:Â At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex Delaware encounters a face from his own past – Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that she desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide.
Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon’s life – a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California’s ultrarich, into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.
Here’s the deal – I got 180 pages into this book and just couldn’t make myself go any further. I knew there was sex therapy involved based on the blurb, but I had no idea just how detailed things would get. I’m not easily offended by sex in books, but this one was just a little too much in my opinion. I kept waiting and waiting, trying to figure out where the book would go, but I eventually realized that there would be no way I would even want to write a review if I pushed through to the end and that it wasn’t really worth it to continue reading a book I wasn’t in to. There are plenty of other books on my shelves, plenty other Alex Delaware books. I’m just going to let this one go.
Have any of you ever read this book? What was your opinion of it?
What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James & Jack the Ripper
by Paula Marantz Cohen
Copyright: 2010
Pages: 341
Format: Print
Blurb:  An invalid for most her life, Alice James is quite used to people underestimating her. And she generally doesn’t mind. But this time she is not about to let things alone. Yes, her brother Henry may be a famous author, and her other brother William a rising star in the new field of psychology. But when they all find themselves quite unusually involved in the chase for a most vile new murderer – one who goes by the chilling name of Jack the Ripper – Alice is certain of two things: No one could be more suited to gather evidence about the nature of the killer than her brothers. But it anyone is going to correctly examine the evidence and solve the case it will have to be up to her.
I’m actually very disappointed that I couldn’t get into this book. I waited on the PBS wishlist for quite some time for this book and was so looking forward to it. I don’t know what it was about it, I just didn’t like it. I only got about 75 pages into it and decided that I was uninterested. I thought about putting it aside and coming back to it later, but I figured it was only a 50-50 chance that I would actually pick it back up, so I’m DNFing it for the year.
Undercurrents
by Ridley Pearson
Copyright: 1988
Pages: 435
Format: Print
Blurb: Seattle is a city paralyzed by fear. A serial killer is loose on its streets. And as each new victim surfaces – chest slashed, eyes taped open – the tide of panic rises. Driven by guilt and frustration, too exhausted to consider stopping, Detective Lou Boldt thinks he’s finally gotten the break he needs to end the Cross Killer’s twisted spree. But each new clue contradicts another. And each new corpse mocks Boldt’s efforts. To fathom the silent tale told by the latest corpse washed up in Puget Sound, Boldt has to go beyond every state-of-the-art method at his disposal. But as he gets closer to the truth, he travels deeper into the tortured mind of a relentless killer … into the depths of his own fear … and into a whirlpool of madness more frightening than his worst nightmares.
This is the second time that I have tried to read this book and failed. So I figure that this book must not be for me. I have read a Ridley Pearson book in the past, Beyond Recognition, and I remember really enjoying it. But this book definitely does not make the cut in my opinion. It just wasn’t for me.
Faceless Killers
by Henning Mankell
Copyright: 1991
Pages: 359
Format: Print
Blurb: On a cold night in a remote Swedish farmhouse, an elderly farmer is bludgeoned to death, and his wife is left to die with a noose around her neck. The only other clue the police have is one that they wish they didn’t: the dying woman’s last word is “foreign.” In the first riveting installment in the internationally bestselling Wallander series, police inspector Kurt Wallander doggedly investigates the horrible crime, as he contends with his own demons and tries to keep the public outcry for vengeance against an already reviled immigrant community at bay.
I picked this book up based solely on the recommendation of many fellow readers on the Yahoo reading group MostlyBooks. It sounded like it was right up my alley. But the fact of the matter is that it wasn’t a very good book in my opinion. I never warmed up to the main character, Kurt Wallander, I didn’t find him to be a very likable fellow. In fact, I didn’t think that any of the characters were very well developed. I gave this book 150 pages before I finally had to put it aside. It just wasn’t to my liking.
A Reliable Wife
by Robert Goolrick
Copyright: 2009
Pages: 291
Format: Print
Blurb: He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for a “reliable wife.” She responded, saying that she was “a simple, honest woman.” She was, of course, anything but honest, and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving herself a wealthy widow. What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own.
I wanted to love this book. So bad. And I couldn’t even get through it. 290 pages and I could only (barely) tolerate 100. I’m still kind of curious to know what happens in the end of this book, but not curious enough to suffer my way through the rest of this book. The characters are unlikable, the writing is way too lyrical for my taste, and it’s overall just boring. I searched for some other blogger book reviews for this book and noticed that people either loved or hated this book. Unfortunately, I am on the negative side in my opinion on this book.
So, I got this idea from Marce over at Tea Time with Marce. She posted her DNF books and is offering a spot to link up your DNF list. Here’s mine:
Tales of a Book Addict 
