Every so often, no matter how much I want to, I just can’t get into a book. Rather than give b

Every so often, no matter how much I want to, I just can’t get into a book. Rather than give books I didn’t finish a lengthy bad review, here’s a mini-review for each of the books I’ve DNF’d since January 2021. Unpopular opinions lie ahead:

The Upper World by Femi Fadugba

As much as I appreciate that this is science fiction rooted in real science, there were too many physics lessons and not enough character development in this one. Ended up skimming the last quarter because I just wasn’t invested enough to read at my usual pace.

Grand Union by Zadie Smith

Technically only a DNF because I fell asleep while listening to the audiobook and didn’t care enough about the story I was listening to to rewind. I’m sure there will be people for whom Smith’s stream-of-consciousness prose and commentaries on humanity will be appealing. I’m just not one of them. Each story in this collection felt lacklustre, and suffered from an ambling, idle pace, as if Smith decided to just do away with the concept of structure altogether, which might have been a great artistic choice if she’d done it once, but when every single story in the collection has no conclusion and takes its characters precisely nowhere, getting through it begins to feel like a slog.

The one saving grace was Doc Brown’s audiobook narration. His voices for Smith’s characters, in particular, were marvellous.

Renegades by Marissa Meyer

I’m a huge fan of The Lunar Chronicles, but this just really wasn’t for me. Honestly, I think I knew going in that I wasn’t going to enjoy Renegades - I put off reading it for literal years. Then I tried both the physical copy and the audiobook in an attempt to keep myself from giving up on it. No luck. I’m completely apathetic towards superhero stories, having reached Marvel burnout several years before everyone else did, so maybe I’m just not this book’s target audience.