Walker’s Unfinished Books
May 29, 2025
Sometimes you can’t finish a book because it’s either bad or uninteresting. These are books Walker could not finish for a variety of reasons explained below. Hopefully, one of these books will spark your interest!
The Second Crusade by Jonathan Phillips - Any history of the Crusades could be interesting and gripping, but not when it is drier than the Sahara Desert. I recommend The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge. It covers all of the main crusades, but in a more entertaining way.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - I recently played the point-and-click video game adaptation and thought I would give the book a try, but it gives a little too much information to the reader. It definitely could cut about 200 pages or so and be fine. I recommend the Plantagenets series by Sharon Kay Penman for your medieval historical fiction needs.
Savonarola by Donald Weinstein - A biography on a fascinating and interesting character from the late 1400s Renaissance Italy, but written in a way that left me wanting to claw my eyes out.
Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh - It’s about ten astronauts stuck on a 23 year long flight to a new planet, but things go wrong when the six teenagers can’t talk about their psychological issues with each other. Just put them in cryo-sleep for Pete’s sake.
Mask of the Sun by John Dvorak - A small history of eclipses and how they have been interpreted by different cultures throughout time, but boy does it not skimp on some of the technical jargon associated with scientists.
The Book of Kings by James Thackara - A depressing novel set in 1932 Paris, talking about Germany’s slide into fascism and the four gentlemen living through it. Just sad all around for me.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - I mean look at it. Long and dry? No thank you. I will read some different classics and save it for when I’m old and dry.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Máquez - Another classic that just could not grab my attention. This might be the only one on this list that I might actually go back to read someday, mostly because it feels like a badge of honor.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao - Do you like Pacific Rim and The Handmaid’s Tale? Then this might be for you. Pacific Rim is not my jam, which is sad because I usually like putting teenagers in robots to fight (Gundam and Evangelion).
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell - When you could just use one wordto describe a situation, the author decides to use fifteen. There are a lot of flowery words and over exposure to grammar in a way that makes my head spin and not in a good way.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - I read Emma by Ms. Austen a few years ago and actually finished that book, but I did not like thetitular character at all. Elinor and Marianne also don’t interest me, making this a short try.
The Trial by Franz Khafka - An absurdist novel about a man who is arrested for a crime. What crime is that? Neither the reader or the character ever find out. Trust me, I read the Wikipedia article when I quit the book halfway through. Is it because Kafka died before he finished this book? Maybe, but we’ll never know.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard - A play that follows two side characters from Hamlet who are just confused about what is going on in their play as I was. Possibly a great film with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, but I’m too jaded to give it a try.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti - Have you ever looked at modern art and thought “What does this mean?” That’s what this book did to me.
Understanding The Lord of The Rings by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs - The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite book series of all time. But reading a book of Tolkien criticism? Not the best idea I’ve ever had and I’ve had some doozies.
Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski - A book on the men and women who started and finished the myriad of revolutions and rebellions against tyranny from the American Revolution of 1776 to the Paris Commune of 1871. But as with many historical non-fiction, it just feels more like a textbook than a his
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