There is nothing more frustrating than spending time in your local library or bookshop, finding something that catches your eye, taking it home and diving in….. but hitting your feet off the bottom!
Of course I am not physically jumping into a book like in Sabrina the Teenage Witch (yes I am that old).
I am speaking about trying your hardest to read a book that you just can’t get into, you don’t like the writing style, the plot is boring or simply you do not like! I would try again, and again, to get through a book I had, renew it at the library two or three times to get through it. It was so frustrating and I didn’t want to read at all, which of course is not a place I want to be!
I was watching my BookTube videos and it was in the comments that I saw some had decided to have an “100 page rule”. This was very interesting to me, especially since I was only reading library books to help my budget (I was just finished my undergraduate degree and wanted to buy a new car) and my TBR shelf/pile was getting out of control.
So I did it! I decided if a book was too tiresome or a chore that I would not read past 100 pages.
It freed me.
I gave away the books I couldn’t get through to charity (after giving them another chance of course) and found myself falling in love with reading again. Gone were the days of dragging a book around from place to place in the house that I felt I would never finish! It closed in on my TBR and my library books were making it back without needing to renew.
I was able to look up recommendations and discovered the Young Adult (YA) genre of books, which blew my mind.
I went deeper and had a phase of dystopian fiction where I read all the trilogy of “The Hunger Games” in a fortnight.
The little girl who would get the maximum of books from the library and read them all, even though I was not doing as such, was back… well her giddiness and appetite for reading was back.
It is hard, I am not going to deny this, I was reading what I thought I would love and be fantastic, “Armanda” by Ernest Cline. (His first book is amazing, honestly I have read it three times, and I thought I would love this one too, it’s called “Ready Player One.” Check it out at your local library)!
And… it didn’t live up to my high exceptions. It is well written, the plot makes sense, the “in” jokes for geeky games and film buffs were there, but I guess what was going to happen!!!
It was too much like a film I had seen and it was driving me up the wall. I renewed the book three times and have had it for 2 months from my local library. Last weekend I said, at page 96, that was that. I might come back to it someday, but I just couldn’t do it, and that’s okay. This doesn’t mean I hate it, or it is written badly, I just didn’t want to read it right now.
Instead I went to my TBR shelf and picked up “We Were Liars” by E. Lockhart. I read this in a week! 🙂
Again, I guessed the ending, but the emotions poured out of the page and I teared up a little towards the end.
It is about a a posh, upper class family, who holiday on an island every summer.
There is an accident, that the main character, Cady, is involved in, but we don’t know what it is until the very end.
She has a brain injury so she can only remember very small bits of information, and we get to see her put the pieces back together while she heals and learns how to deal with the outcome of her memories coming back.
It is fantastic. Some parts feel like you are reading her thoughts and other parts you are not sure if it is a memory of a reflection or a poem!
I would highly recommend it for someone who is looking for a book to read on holidays, as it is 242 pages and it doesn’t involve a lot of thinking, great for the commute!
So ditched that book that has been lurking in your handbag that you can’t get your mind around, pick up something else and give it 100 pages, if it catches your interest you won’t even see the page numbers fly by!
I hope you are all having a great week so far!
If you have any questions or any suggestions for books for me to read, please comment or contact me on all the socials.
Thanks for reading!
Jade x
My MLIS Journey (so far) 