One imperfect letter, one missing page

Originally posted in May of 2007 in fiveforsilver:

Here are the books I've tried to read recently and am giving up on. They're all library books, too, so I didn't waste any money on them :)

Expanded Universe by Robert Heinlein

Not because I didn't think it was well written or good stories or whatever - I did. But the stories are all so depressing! They're all about nuclear war and so on, and I just couldn't deal with a dozen short stories, one after another, by the same author on that same topic.

It's possible that the later stories weren't like that, but that is my impression after getting halfway through the book, so enough is enough.

The Victorian Fairy Tale Book edited by Michael Patrick Hearn

I thought this was going to be interesting, but instead it was boring. Perhaps I should have skipped this one story once I realized that it would just not stop - there is this magic ring that makes whoever wears it seem beautiful and charming and intelligent and attractive, but once you take it off, you of course revert to your original state, so these princes and princesses and ladies and so on just kept accidentally passing this ring amongst themselves and falling in love with whoever was wearing the ring and out of love when they took it off and...every time I thought it was over, a whole new round started up. Bah. I got a third of the way through and set it aside.

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

I tried, I really tried to like this. A friend suggested it to me. But Hoff is so anti-intellect, anti-science, that I just couldn't take it. I struggled halfway through the book and just couldn't take it anymore. All these people who think science is so awful should go live somewhere without science. No central heating, no vaccinations or modern medicine, no supermarkets or modern kitchens, etc. Then talk about how worthless intelligence and science are.

The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro

Another one I tried to like. I don't remember how far I got into this one, but it was a ways. I simply can't relate to the main character. Or basically anything that happens to her. Since I don't smoke and I don't drink and I've never been drunk, and basically all the stupid shit this girl does is because she's drunk. And it's one thing to hear a story every once in a while from a friend, but this book, I just didn't enjoy it at all. Oh, well.