What not to read

At the start of summer I went to the library to pile up my new stack of treasures that I'd read all in a few weeks on a chair in the sun....Thrillers, historic novels, some literature: what else is summer for, right?

Well that is not taking into account working, family & friend's parties and some considerable part of renovating of course. I guess I'll have to wait until winter when I'll surely read loads of books next to the fireplace, right? Well, that will be when I'm not attending choir rehearsal, yoga class or dive/swim training or on family visit of course. ;)

Anyway, my reading rhythm truly depends on the book I am reading and on the degree I'm dragged into the story. I always find time to read a good book while boring stories just gather dust.


The summer's been quite dusty since I've somehow managed to pick some really disappointing books. Instead of posting about books I recommend to read, I'll list some you should not read.

• Kaddish for an unborn child - Imre Kertesz
  
  Last year I read Fateless. Although a much higher literature level than I'm used to, it was an intriguing shocking and thought-provoking book. So I was curious to read Kaddish for an unborn child where an adult man doesn't want to become a father in a society that enabled the Holocaust.
  
  Well, I'm not sure if that was the content of the book. I don't really know what that book was about at all. I did not get a single bit of its content. It's not that it was too big or long to read: I estimate about 250 sentences: 2 phrases a page or so.
  It was one long rambling of thoughts that had no coherence to me full of repetition and associations without a timeline or location or flow of events to suit as buoy to the reader. Seriously don't ask me what it is about: I needed a GPS to track myself within one sentence alone!
  
  I've finished it purely on my stubborn perseverance that I had not waisted my time on the first x pages of the book only to give up for a few dozen more. It was me against that little Nobel price winning troll and I wanted to win. Pooh what a waste of time. I think I'm cured from any interest in prestigious award winning authors for the rest of my life. Ugh.
  
  
• Das geheimnis des Hieronymus Bosch/The secret in the Prado - Peter Dempf
  
  Ah a historic thriller after all that uptight nonsense, that would come in as a relief!! And it was. It had it all : intrigues, historic art, hidden secrets, people getting killed, .... Someone had been ticking off Dan Brown's ingredients on his recipe. It was sometimes a bit too feverish & chaotic & strange but since it was all about The Garden of Earthly Delights, I guess that suited somehow.
  
  But he forgot one thing: the ending. There was none. It felt as if Peter Dempf all of a sudden felt like going to the beach, thought "oh well, good enough" and stopped the story. I guess he reached his target word count and sent the pages off to the publisher. Target is target of course, we should respect that.
  
• Indecision - Benjamin Kunkel
  
  I've added this book on my to read list after I had seen it on someone's blog or on FB. It looked interesting and I found it in the library in the humor section. Hah, a good laugh in the garden in the sun works perfectly right?
  
  The person who added the smiley sticker on the book must still be chuckling that he got me good on that one. The story of a narcistic neurotic identity seeking young adult that seemed to be stuck in adolescence in my mind was rather boring. Yawn, ...oops sorry was I supposed to laugh? When was that, when he's freaking out at the sight of giant spiders in the rain forrest when being high on drugs or when she peed her pants? Sorry, I'll try harder next time.
  It's really an excellent novel compared to Kaddish to the unborn child, but I'd still not recommend it to any of my friends.
  
  
  

HELP, I hope next one is better.