Wednesday, May 29, 2019

John Dies at the End - My First Ever DNF


I'd been considering reading John Dies at the End for years, but I didn't want to read This Book is Full of Spiders (the sequel) because, like any sane person, I hate spiders. I ended up buying the entire series anyway (I put a book cover on TBiFoS), half because of the reviews and half because I'm somewhat antagonistic and my boyfriend's name is John.

John Dies at the End is not an easy book to take notes on. I didn't know how to go about it. How do you even begin to explain this story to someone? Dave's friend, John, goes out and parties one night and calls Dave over in a panic. Dave arrives, finds John in bad shape, grabs the syringe John probably injected himself with and puts it in his pocket (bad place for it), ends up accidentally injecting himself with the weird drug (Soy Sauce) and now...He can see ghosts? He can "read minds." He knows exactly how many grains of rice are on a person's plate (5,829) and where it was grown (Arkansas). Reading that back to myself, I'm thinking, this is the worst plot summary I could have possibly written, but at least it's accurate.

So here's the thing. The book is kind of gross and early on, I found myself thinking, "I should have waited before buying the other two books in this series." I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not really my particular kind of humor. The book has great ratings and most people seem to love it, so this is one of those times where it really is personal to me and what I like and dislike, and not the overall book*

*That was the last thing I wrote in my notes before I decided to DNF the book. One of the patrons where I work told me her mother always said that life is too short to read a book you're not enjoying when there are so many other books out there. She's right. As much as it pains me to do it, I have to stop forcing myself to read books that I know I'm not enjoying. I made myself finish reading House of Leaves and I was miserable. I wanted to love John Dies at the End like everyone else does, but the humor isn't my style and I'm kind of put off by it. Trying to force myself to read it so I could write a post about it killed any motivation I had to work on this blog at all. I'm not saying it's the book's fault, I'm not saying the book is bad (there must be a reason it has so many positive reviews, right?), I'm saying John Dies at the End isn't my kind of story. Maybe I'll pick it up again one day and enjoy it, but right now, I'm done.

With all that being said. I've been really good about updating this blog for the past month, but I'm taking a break for a week or two to watch K-dramas, read romance novels, play video games with my boyfriend and work on more posts. Because it takes time to watch movies and read books. I'll be back with Pet Sematary, The Monster Squad and Resident Evil soon. I also kind of want to do an "I watched this terrible movie so you don't have to" kind of thing, but I don't think I hate my life that much.

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