Ersatz TLS discussion

Happy Memorial Day (observed), previously known as Decoration Day. If I weren't 200 miles away, I'd be visiting some ancestors in Linn County, OR, like Fairfax Smith Thayer:




I have a hectic week ahead, as my niece and I plan for a memorial service for my brother on Thursday (his birthday). So, another brief post to open this week, but watch this space! I hope to announce details of a memorial planned for Justine within the next week.

Here are the Literary Birthdays (does anyone miss the GoodReads links?)


And here are some links related to this week's birthday celebrants:

The Walt Whitman Archives

Max Gate, "the atmospheric Victorian home designed by Thomas Hardy"

A Castle by the Sea: Thomas Mann and other German exiles in Southern California

Love the idea of a memorial for Justine, she is much missed!

Just strolled in the benign early summer sun on the water meadows a few minutes from my house, the churchyard rich in buttercups, the distant poplars giittering in the sun and lush long grass everywhere, due to all the rain.

Three books on the go:

The Luftwaffe Diaries has reached the first tentative battles in the air over the North Sea, Poland has been covered and the country has been subjugated, its Autumn 1939. For me the most fascinating read will be the Apr-Dec 1940 period with so much action involved from Norway to the Blitz

The Channel is a joy of a find, a CUP classic study, a modern study of that body of water, its evolution as a named presence and its meaning for the peoples on either side of the water

Selected Stories is an excellent Penguin classic collection of DH Lawrence short stories. I am still reading the 1914 short stories as he moved from the world of the Nottinghamshire mines and dialect, into the "dance of death" between married couples and wider topics.

"Dresden - The Fire and the Darkness" by Sinclair McKay records accounts of citizens of Dresden who suffered the bombing, including Victor Klemperer who was then a slave factory worker and a Hitler Youth who was out on the streets trying to direct refugees fleeing Soviet
Aggression in the East. McKay also explains the chilling science behind firestorms, a natural phenomenon observed and recreated for war, and describes , non- gratuitously, the many horrible ways people died. The RAF bombed on 3 consecutive days. McKay is highly critical of the vengeful Bomber Harris. Apparently Churchill did not approve of the bombing but obviously did not care enough to stop it.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut also Covey's some of the sheer horror of the bombing.

I have visited Germany several times recently and it is illuminating how the country confronts its past. While people people are guarding statues of Churchill , Angela Merkel, with an unsurpassed act of humanity, welcomes refugees. However a recent trip to Dresden was soiled by the tolerance of AFD and Italian neo nazi demonstrations ( they had an accompanying brass band playing Verdi!). It seemed to make a mockery of all the destruction and reconstruction.

Reading these 2 books me to view Dresden far more sympathetically.

Sorry a few typos in the above post..

Also interesting discussion on Radio 4 Start the Week this morning on DH Lawrence between his recent biographer Frances Wilson, Andrew Marr , Simon Armitage and Salman Rushdie. I didn't know Lawrence had fallen out favour following a feminist attack on him in the early 70s , which does not explain why we still had to study him at school in the early 80's. Anyway there is a further revision of him because of the prominence he gives to female characters. His poems are under rated , his best poem A Mosquito and one of his best works A Memoir of Maurice Magnus , the subject of the Mosquito.

I have only read the novels which I still find a bit cringy and too fleshy.

Oggie wrote: ""Dresden - The Fire and the Darkness" by Sinclair McKay records accounts of citizens of Dresden who suffered the bombing, including Victor Klemperer who was then a slave factory worker and a Hitler..."

hi oggie...welcome to the TLS

i read Klemperers account of the bombing of dresden in his diaries and it was one of my first encounters with the german side of the bombing, when i was 17, along with a battered copy of a account of the bombing in my school library

Oggie wrote: ""Dresden - The Fire and the Darkness" by Sinclair McKay records accounts of citizens of Dresden who suffered the bombing, including Victor Klemperer who was then a slave factory worker and a Hitler..."

Going by recent federal elections the AfD represent, at most, 10% of German voters. I'd guess that those sympathetic to their cause are many more. But I'd also say that, if the worst comes to the worst, Germany will be the last country in Europe to succumb to righwing-extremism.

In 1965 Ulrike Marie Meinhof published an article on the bombing of Dresden. She was a brilliant journalist. I do not think it has ever been translated into English.

http://www.todesnacht.com/raf/Ulrike%...

Two memorable reads in the last day or two, both completely recommended..
Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness, translated by Magnus Magnusson.
I’m new to Laxness, despite having read lots of Icelandic literature. I really enjoyed this, so am looking forward to more from him.
This is an unusual story told in an unusual way. It is narrated by ‘the undersigned’, who refers to himself as the 'Emissary of the Bishop' or 'EmBi for short', and who, for the most part, writes this account in the third person (as recommended by the bishop who gives him his assignment). In the tiny glacier community the children aren't getting baptized, the dead aren't getting buried -- and the bishop can't get any answers. It’s a sort of religious comedy with a cast of odd characters that you think may struggle to work, but it most certainly does. His characters live by the Sagas, the weather, and some type of supernatural force that passed into remission with the coming of electricity but waits in the glacier to return.
Though much of the subject matter is serious, Laxness experiments with styles and presentation, and the result is something quite different to anything I’ve read before; zany, eccentric and refreshing fun.

Here’s one of his character descriptions..

Prof. Dr. Godman Syngmann..
He is a big, thickset, old man, not too fat but heavy in the shoulders and beginning to stoop; he would probably be a full six feet tall if stretched. He is splay-footed, and carries his head sunk into his neck like some seabirds, the guillemot for example, or more particularly, the penguin. There is no sign of his having knees when he walks. He has an enormous face. His eyes have the moist sheen of a snake’s. For an elderly man, his hair is waxy and vital, chestnut in colour and with a life of its own like Saint Olaf’s beard after his death; a grey toothbrush moustache. The lower lip sags in a loop to one side; in dogs this is called barring the teeth; perhaps the professor once had a protruding tusk there that was extracted, leaving a kind of sag in the lip; perhaps the professor has also clenched his teeth too hard at one time or another.

..and..
The Search for Heinrich Schlögel by Martha Baillie.
This is almost like reading two separate and quite different books.
In the first half, a young man, the titular Schlögel, a young man from a provincial town in Germany flies to Canada in 1980 to hike in the Arctic. From boyhood he has been fascinated by the Canadian Arctic, deeply influenced by the explorer Samuel Hearne, and the German 19th century naturalist, Brehms. The first half concerns Heinrich’s upbringing, his influences and his endeavours to get to the Arctic, and is quite compelling.
The 12 day solitary trek itself occupies only a couple of chapters, but during it, he experiences visions from the past; his hero Samuel Hearne, his own parents, and coincidentally relevant after the tragic news from Kamloops this week, the plight of Inuit children in residential schools.
I had forgotten the summary, so when the twist when it occurs, it was to my surprise. The plot, which wasn’t a strong part of the book, takes on a completely new dimension when Heinrich reaches Frobisher Bay, only to find out that it has been renamed Iqaluit, as it is now 2010.
It’s a slow, almost plotless novel, of Arctic exploration that reads like non-fiction with footnotes and is likely to interest only those with a Polar passion, that changes abruptly, and throws the reader completely off balance; it is now a tale about searching, and about the elusive traces we all leave behind.
Baillie does several things very well. In a more conventional book, the author might present historical wrongs as problems to be solved, but here she simply points to them, as inescapable truths for us to meditate upon. Heinrich’s romantic notions of the Arctic that he has built over his formative years are shattered, and he is taken aback, and bewildered - time has changed and his own place is uncertain. Countries have previous atrocities that they must always consider and not forget, perhaps hence the choice of country for the young visitor.

Things I saw on cars today.

Finished reading The Three Paradises By Robert Fabbri, the second in his Alexander the Great series. I enjoyed it just as much as the first book To the Strongest. I would give you a review but with 94 characters in the list at the back it would be a bit difficult. But basically the generals are still fighting over the different areas of the the empire, stabbing each other in the back, almost literally as well as metaphorically. And that is just the men! In the background is hovering the fate of Alexander's mentally handicapped brother Philip and his son by Roxana.

Makes me think that politics hasn't changed that much except that ours don't often resort to murder. But poison was used, then as now......

I have now moved on the A Hostile State the latest in the Marc Portman series by Adrian Magson. Portman is a professional "extractor" who works on a contract basis mainly for the Defense Intelligence Agency of the US or MI5/6 rescuing people or information. Action packed books, making James Bond look sedentary. Suspend disbelief and get with the action!

Andy wrote: "Two memorable reads in the last day or two, both completely recommended..
Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness, translated by Magnus Magnusson.[bookcover:Under the Glacie..."

Laxness has been hit and miss for me. I loved Independent People and then my father loved it too, all the sheep farming was right up his street as he is a gentleman sheep farmer of 21 years now since he retired.

the Fish can Sing was also a great read but since then i havent enjoyed either the one you just read or The Atom Station...

Its worth looking up the Faroese writer William Heinesen who writes even better novels of even smaller and less populated islands in a similar period

I'm about three quarter way through James Crumley's 'The Right Madness'... this is not a review, though as usual I've reached the point where I have only the vaguest idea of what is going on...

But as usual, for me the great delight in reading Crumley lies in the language used, which is extraordinarily rich and varied... some recent terms:

'stalking horse' - OK, I knew roughly what this meant, but it has several possible interpretations, all of them interesting... I was unaware of the existence of 'stalking horses' as artefacts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalkin...

'willy peter grenades' - apparently, phosphorus grenades used for incendiary or smoke production - though clearly these could be used 'illegally' against enemy combatants, as this rather warlike website explains (quotation does not imply endorsement) https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty...

"I'll call in a dust off for the girl"...To be extracted from a location by helicopter. Often used when talking about a rapid extraction from a hostile or active combat situation. I did blink, though, when I read the first definition on offer here:https://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...

I hope you won't mind this digression, but words and expressions are such fun, and they are the reason I enjoy Crumley so much.

The old folks day centre i volunteer at re-opens in 25 mins , its been almost 14 months, looking foward to catching up with the folks

though its an odd feeling, like something from the distant past, to be heading out to spend 3-4 hours with a group of other people who arent family or close friends...covids shadow!

Has anyone here ever bought a book forgetting they already had a copy? I haven't yet, but I double-checked a Tolstoy collection just before to make sure I don't have a particular novella.

The Linden Tree by César Aira, translated by Chris Andrew’s.
This short fictionalised memoir is ideal for a single sitting, a couple of hours of reading.
I’ve only read Aira in the last year, and have managed 5 of his in that time. In each one he continues to demonstrate his versatility.
This is set in the small town of Pringles in Argentina and concerns the narrator’s early years as he tries to understand his parents and his family’s place in society. Though not autobiographical, the timeline matches Aira’s own birth, the looming spectre of Peronism at the heart of his writing. He would have been 7 years old when the coup to overthrown Peron took place.
Touches of absurdity and subtle humour grace the chapterless pages, but nothing like the amount in his more outrageous work. This has its feet on the ground. In particular, the descriptions of his father’s quirkiness and his work as the town’s first electrician linger.

About my father’s earlier life, I never discovered anything, and I didn’t dare to ask. Somehow he had managed to create the impression, among the three of us, that the slightest movement of his thoughts in the direction of the past would trigger an irreversible nervous breakdown. Like those drive mechanisms with a fixed pinion that simply cannot operate in reverse.

For me, very readable and enjoyable, but not one of Aira’s best. I like them outrageous.
I’ve read in a few media reviews that it’s a good starting point for Aira. I disagree, better to come later to it. Better, something like The Proof.

AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Two memorable reads in the last day or two, both completely recommended..
Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness, translated by Magnus Magnusson. not so long ago, and had a conversation after reviewing it. It was a bit lengthy, but certainly of interest.
I have The Black Cauldron on my tbr list also.
Was Under the Glacierone of your hits or misses? Or one you haven’t read? Thanks for the The Fish Can Singrecommendation..

Haven’t we discussed Heinesen before AB? Or maybe it was with someone else. I read The Lost Musicians not so long ago, and had a conversation after reviewing it. It was a bit lengthy, but certainly of interest.
I have The Black Cauldron on my tbr list also.
Was Under the Glacierone of your hits or misses? Or one you haven’t read? Thanks for the The Fish Can Singrecommendation..

Oh, it is saddening to see that "Justine Memorial" title atop the home page. I still go to her guardian comments page to see her voice once again. I do miss that gentle enthusiasm and witty heart.

I just discovered there's a genre of books which publishers term "New Adult" - it's an age-related follow-on to "Young Adult" in which the protagonists are college age.

Hey Georg Esler - I think I found an English translation of the Meinhof translation - a powerful piece (although it does mention David Irvine also name checked by Vonnegut) and which then led me to an interesting academic article from Swansea University on
the reluctance to personalise and thus possibly idealise Meinhof and other RAF members in German literature .

And hey AB76 - will definitely get a copy of Klemperer' s diaries


Sorry I have not figured out how to to reply directly to posts

Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Two memorable reads in the last day or two, both completely recommended..
Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness, translated by Magnus Magnusson.[..."

under the glacier was a miss andy, i think you will love the black cauldron. plus there is also barbara by jorgen frantz jacobsen another faroese writer and contempary of heinesen

Oggie wrote: "Hey Georg Esler - I think I found an English translation of the Meinhof translation - a powerful piece (although it does mention David Irvine also name checked by Vonnegut) and which then led me to..."

i read klemperers post war diaries last year and they are a sad tale of the reality of communist eastern europe. he becomes disillusioned within a few years and tries to justify his belief in the empty communism of the DDR

Paul wrote: "Oh, it is saddening to see that "Justine Memorial" title atop the home page. I still go to her guardian comments page to see her voice once again. I do miss that gentle enthusiasm and witty heart."
It may help a tiny bit to know that the Justine poems are still wandering, now at 248 and 207 views, Paul. I like to think that she would have loved the idea of them venturing afar, maybe she is doing the guiding!
(Only the first time someone views is recorded)

Just found an excellent indie press in Canada called Durndurn that has a series of canadian classics in print, entitled "Voyageur Classics". they are not cheap at £18 but i have ordered two, i was led there by a Wyndham Lewis novel in the series

SydneyH wrote: "Has anyone here ever bought a book forgetting they already had a copy? "

Definitely once, and probably two or three times in all.

Oggie wrote: "Hey Georg Esler - I think I found an English translation of the Meinhof translation - a powerful piece (although it does mention David Irvine also name checked by Vonnegut) and which then led me to..."

I think it says a lot about the person Ulrike Meinhof how she dealt with the English 'side'. Her empathy with the RAF pilots who were so cruelly deceived. Her fairness in pointing out that there were people who condemned the killing of German civilians.

It is a great shame that she and other members of the RAF (Gudrun Ensslin being the first that comes to mind) have, somehow, been depersonalized. Reduced to "terrorists". So easy, so lazy.

And the last two paragraphs of her Dresden article alone should have put her in some hall of fame for journalists.

I'd be very interested in that Swansea Uni article. Do you have a link?

(you'll find a most inconspicuous "reply" button at the bottom right of every post)

Oggie wrote: "Sorry I have not figured out how to to reply directly to posts."

Georg has just pointed out to you the small 'reply' button below and to the right of comments, so you can specifically reply to a single person... you then get the first couple of lines of the post you are replying to...

Now, it may be (as with this reply) that you wish to reply to something much further on in the comment - then, just delete everything except "Oggie wrote" (say), then copy the exact part you wish to respond to, and paste it preferably in between " ....."marks.

Not especially user friendly, but you get used to it.

My wife has returned to work after an extended maternity leave, so I'm staying at home to be with our 9 month old son and go to work in the evenings. This has opened up my reading, as I can read while the lil punk naps.

So, I was able to read relatively quickly through Miriam Toews' and I enjoyed it quite a lot. oddly, it reminded me a lot of a playwright that had been recently on my mind, Arthur Miller. Both in terms of fatalism and religious shenanigans, the subject veers into his territory, but also in terms of structure. Almost the entire book is told as the minutes of a meeting of Mennonite women who are deciding how to confront a horrific event involving their brethren.

The different women confront the horrors of man, and how much they value thier promised kingdom in heaven. Whether the place of a mother is to protect a child's spirit or their body, ans whether they, as women, have any value in a world that treats them no better than livestock.

It was stunning and maddening, and utterly unsurprising. That cult of religiosity revolves around the control of wombs and treats mothers as no better than slaves.

I was impressed,although I didn't really expect it to end in the way that it did. Or, rather, I didn't expect it to have a clear ending. I expected an open-ended finish without a clear resolution as to how the women chose to confront their situation.
I'll definitely be happy to give Toews another try further on down the road but in the meantime I've moved on to:

SydneyH wrote: "Has anyone here ever bought a book forgetting they already had a copy? I haven't yet, but I double-checked a Tolstoy collection just before to make sure I don't have a particular novella."

Unfortunately - yes! I've seen a used, usually cheap paperback in some bookstore, bought it, and when trying to enter it in my little! catalog - find I already have it. Here's one so old (pb copyright 1994) that Amazon couldn't find it (problem with inadequate search function) Rip Tide by Sam Llewellyn.

My fascination with the end of colonialism in the 1950s to 1970s has been sparked again by re-visiting the world of Portugese Angola

Just started The Return by Dulce Maria Cardoso , is a modern novel about the massive exodus of Portugese settlers from Angola and Mozambique in the 1975, after the old Portugese regime fell in the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

The dogged and costly defence of the "ultramar" (overseas) ended quickly, many extreme leftists were in the Portugese military command and Salazar fascism went socialist within 6 months

In this novel, a 15yo boy called Rui narrates the departure from Luanda, back to the "motherland" of Portugal. One of around 500,000 who returned to an indifferent, small and more seasonal place than the vast, hot expanses of Angola

Like with the French-Algerian Pieds Noirs, i am interested in these people who were more at home in Africa than the motherland. Although unlike the Pied Noirs, the "retornado's" of Portugals empire were all of Portugese stock, mainly from the Azores,Madeira and the North of Portugal

For anyone interested in a Portugese view of the colonies when they existed, i recommened the Antunes novel The Land At The End of the World" about his military service in the colonial wars of 1961-1974

AB76 wrote: "Just found an excellent indie press in Canada called Durndurn that has a series of canadian classics in print, entitled "Voyageur Classics". they are not cheap at £18 but i have ordered two, i was ..."

Thank you for that link - my mother's parents emigrated from Quebec to Maine, and she was the first to be born in the States. Will have to have a probably expensive look around.

AB76 wrote: "For anyone interested in a Portugese view of the colonies when they existed, i recommened the Antunes novel The Land At The End of the World" about his military service in the colonial wars of 1961-1974"

I prefer the original title - Os cus de Judas -, which was inspired by (or perhaps inspired it in the first place) a famous popular phrase - cu de Judas - meaning literally 'Judas's arse', which is indeed used to refer to a place in the middle of nowhere. Never read the novel though.

Brazilians also employ a similar phrase, less vulgar in tone, to express the same notion: onde Judas perdeu as botas - 'where Judas lost his boots'.

Slawkenbergius wrote: "AB76 wrote: "For anyone interested in a Portugese view of the colonies when they existed, i recommened the Antunes novel The Land At The End of the World" about his military service in the colonial..."

yes i had read that the english title was a rather "tidy" version of the real title in Portugese
I loved the novel, its short and quite severe, dripping with slow burning anger and ennui. (It is a fictional version of the experiences of Antunes as a military medic in the empty east of Angola).

Antunes has little time for the colonial world of the dying Salazar regime, the sons of diplomats who evaded conscription and the violent, cynical PIDE (portugese secret police)agents working close by the military. His impressions of Luanda convey the depression sinking on many conscripts as they arrived to defend the "ultramar", disgust and despair

MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Just found an excellent indie press in Canada called Durndurn that has a series of canadian classics in print, entitled "Voyageur Classics". they are not cheap at £18 but i have ordere..."

i think you will find a good variety there. McLelland and Stewart pubished many canadian classics too but then got swallowed up by Penguin. They via the "New Canadian Library" were my first introductions to canadian novels before the 1970s and 1980s

Georg wrote: "Oggie wrote: "Hey Georg Esler - I think I found an English translation of the Meinhof translation - a powerful piece (although it does mention David Irvine also name checked by Vonnegut) and which ..."

Here is the link below.


( Found out I had to change from Goodreads mobile to Desktop to find the reply button)

"(PDF) The lives of the RAF revisited: The biographical turn" https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

Oggie wrote: "Georg wrote: "Oggie wrote: "Hey Georg Esler - I think I found an English translation of the Meinhof translation - a powerful piece (although it does mention David Irvine also name checked by Vonneg..."

I have a vague memory of attending a woman's car maintenance course taught by Astrid Poll, in Islington, in, if I remember correctly, the late 70's. I decided after one lesson that car maintenance wasn't for me, but If i had realised, at the time, that my tutor was Astrid, and had been part of the Baader Meinhof group, I think I might have stuck with it, on the off chance that we would all go off to the pub afterwards and she might have regaled us with stories from her Baader Meinhof days...

SydneyH wrote: "Has anyone here ever bought a book forgetting they already had a copy? I haven't yet, but I double-checked a Tolstoy collection just before to make sure I don't have a particular novella."


More than once!

scarletnoir wrote: "Oggie wrote: "Sorry I have not figured out how to to reply directly to posts."

Georg has just pointed out to you the small 'reply' button below and to the right of comments, so you can specificall..."

If you are using a tablet you have to be in desktop view and to change to that you have to look towards the bottom right of the page, under the Google Play ad.

scarletnoir wrote: "Now, it may be (as with this reply) that you wish to reply to something much further on in the comment - then, just delete everything except "Oggie wrote" (say), then copy the exact part you wish to respond to, and paste it preferably in between " ....."marks."

I have found that very useful and feel better using it rather than inflicting a he said/she said list, or finding the actual bit you want to refer to isn't there!

Well, I finished reading A Hostile State all in one day. Rip roaring James Bond type adventure story, our hero Marc Portman has a Russian department sanctioned by Putin chasing him all over France with ill intentions in revenge for his rescue of a US citizen from their clutches. All very suspend disbelief but good fun.

Now, what next? The latest Martin Walker Bruno, Chief of Police book I think.

giveusaclue wrote: "Well, I finished reading A Hostile State all in one day. Rip roaring James Bond type adventure story, our hero Marc Portman has a Russian department sanctioned by Putin chasing him all over France ..."

Please don't tell me that you get to read before I do. It won't be out here in the States until August! How unfair is that?

Something I know Justine would have been interested in: a conversation between Will Wilkinson and Jeet Heer on the roots of GOP extremism.

This is a conversation about Leo Strauss, Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, the mystique of ancient Greek philosophy among German thinkers, Lincoln, the role of eros in education, the schisms that follow the death of a prophet, homophobia’s not-so-surprising compatibility with intense homosocial relations, East Coast Straussians working with George W. Bush and West Coast Straussians becoming Trump fans, and, well, at least a few other topics.

I’d heard the phrase "the eros of education" before, but Wilkinson here gives a clear explanation of the concept. Among the other topics is Allan Bloom (Saul Bellow’s model for Abe Ravelstein). The podcast gave me some idea of why Bloom’s interpretation of The Republic of Plato was so persuasive, and maybe some hints as to why his The Closing of the American Mind was so bad.

Reportedly from Bookforum:

Good Moshfegh quote, Bill.

I'm beginning to question my self-imposed insistence on always finishing a book I've started.

AB76 wrote (33): "Like with the French-Algerian Pieds Noirs, i am interested in these people who were more at home in Africa than the motherland. Although unlike the Pied Noirs, the "retornado's" of Portugals empire were all of Portugese stock"

AB, I don't understand what you mean about the pieds noirs not all being of French 'stock'? Unless you're referring to the fact that the rapatriés included the Harkis?

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote (33): "Like with the French-Algerian Pieds Noirs, i am interested in these people who were more at home in Africa than the motherland. Although unlike the Pied Noirs, the "retornado's" o..."

the pieds noirs were a mix of italian, jewish,spanish and maltese stock with smaller numbers of other nationalities. the french descent percentage was roughly about 60% from the census returns i looked at but a lot of inter mixing too. Hence they were an interesting cultural mix rather than being settlers from France exclusively

For me the pied-noirs are algerians of european descent

Cabbie wrote: "I'm beginning to question my self-imposed insistence on always finishing a book I've started."

Drop it. Life is too short.

Cabbie wrote: "I'm beginning to question my self-imposed insistence on always finishing a book I've started."

i think it can be a fustrating thing to stick to, if a book is slowly draining your will to live or annoying you