When in the UK recently I bought a bunch of books to rekindle my reading habit. One of these was Station Eleven. I am not sure where I came across this book – I have a memory of it being on one of the TWiT shows – but I can’t find any hits when searching for this book and any of the shows of that network, so it must be a mistaken memory. Anyhow, all the blurbs on the book cover made it sound amazing, and it’s won some sci-fi award, and it’s supposed to be one of these dystopian future sort of novels from a Canadian authoress (and I think of Margaret Atwood whose books I like), and it was on half price in the book store … so I purchased it. Bad decision!
To be fair I have read about half the book. Am on page 146 of 333 and finally giving up. I think if I stick with a book till nearly midway and it still doesn’t interest me then there’s no point spending more time further. There are other books to read or stuff to do, I must call quits here. Sucks that I spent money on this book though coz I can’t just return it like I would do an audiobook, and I don’t want to keep it in my library either, so I’ll have to donate it I guess. Bad decision. Very bad decision buying this book!
The book just meanders on and on. There’s some flu, the end of the world, civilization has come to and end, everything’s reverted to an older age of small towns and no technology and a bunch of survivors. No there’s no zombies or some crazy dystopian future – it’s just people wandering around. There’s some group of traveling artists, and a lot of flashbacks to some character who died initially … it’s just so boring and pointless. In fact, I don’t even know why I am wasting time writing about the book. :) I just need to vent it out somewhere I guess and get it out of my system.
To be fair the book is not like some of the newer books that read more like they are written for a movie or TV series. A lot of books I read recently on the Kindle are written that way and it’s irritating – I’d much rather watch it on screen then. No, this one is well written and I could have fallen in love with it had there been some point or purpose or direction or pace to the whole narrative. As of now it’s just wasting my time.