I Just Couldn’t Finish Them

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly frustrating when it comes to reading and enjoying some of the old out of print horror titles that dominate my bookshelf.  I don’t know happened, but the last several novels I have attempted to read (not counting the book I’m currently reading, which is a wonderfully twisted tale about serial killers titled Blood Related by William Cook) have just been impossible for me to get through.  Making this even more bizarre is that they have all been by authors I love, ones that I have read several times each, my eyes barely able to stray away from the page because they were so good.  This time around my eyes wanted to do everything but look at the page, the journey back into the world of the novel being one that seemed daunting rather than appealing.  With one, just getting to page two hundred was a struggle because the characters seemed so out of touch with reality that I just couldn’t allow the scenes to unfold in my head.  With another, the events of the novel were so cliché to the depictions of an exorcism that I wanted to just go back to The Exorcist and read it instead.  Adding to the frustration is the sense of failure that arrives in putting a book back on the shelf unfinished.  I don’t know if others ever experience this, but it is something I just can’t stand.  Thankfully, it looks like this odd occurrence is coming to an end.  Blood Related by William Cook is turning out to be a great read, and had it not been for my cats always jumping in my lap when I sit down with the computer to read it (it’s a Kindle novel and I don’t own a Kindle, just a laptop with the app on it), I would have had it finished it within a day or two.  After this I’m not sure what I will read next.  So many wonderful looking used horror paperbacks are sitting on my shelf, but I don’t want a repeat of what just occurred.  Instead I may re-read the first four books of The Dark Tower saga by Stephen King as a way of refreshing myself for Wind Through the Keyhole in April.

 Note: Since I didn’t finish the books I won’t be reviewing them here.  Writing negative reviews is something I really don’t like to do anyway with books (though I have done some in the past), and since I wouldn’t want to inadvertently turn people away from the other works by these authors it just seems best to simply let the disappointment fade away.