Some more books to cross off my list

Today Good Reads sent me a list of recommended books, based on the books on my "Abandoned" shelf. Those are the books I found so boring that I never managed to finish them, so I take it that they are saying that I will find these books boring too, and if I see them in a book shop I must not be tempted to buy them.

I don't think that's what their recommendations are intended for, but it is nevertheless probably quite useful, and could save a bit of money.

According to this list, the books to avoid are:

• A quiet belief in angels by R.J. Ellory
• Any human heart by William Boyd
• Instruments of night by Thomas H. Cook
• The mermaids singing by Val McDermid
• The road home by Rose Tremain

So if you share my taste in books, you'll probably not enjoy those books. On the other hand, if you hate my blog posts, you might love those books.

PS On second thoughts, scratch that

There was a little note at the bottom of each of the other books saying that it was because I had added Engelby, by Sebastian Faulks, to my "abandoned" shelf.

And the reason I abandoned Engelby was that the copy I had was incomplete, and had been badly bound, with lots of pages missing. I was quite enjoying it up to that point.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks




I was a bit reluctant to start reading this book, because the last book I read by Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces I hadn't enjoyed very much. So my wife bought it three years ago, and it has sat on the shelf since then, but then looking for something I hadn't read for bed-time reading I picked it up and started it, and it seemed quite different from Human Traces and I was rather enjoying it and finding it interesting, and beginning to think it was the best thing I had read by Sebastian Faulks.

So I had reached page 280 and hoped to finish it tonight. But unfortunately page 280 was followed by page 25, and it seems that the book has been misbound. After three years it is probably far too late to take it back to the bookshop and ask for another copy that has been properly bound -- they probably won't even have one in stock anyway.



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