book info: on sale: now copy from: public library pages: 348 review written: 21.12.17 originally published: 2009 edition read: Penguin NAL 2009 title: Rooftops of Tehran author: Mahbod Seraji In a middle-class neighborhood of Iran's sprawling capital city, 17-year-old Pasha Shahed spends the summer of 1973 on his rooftop with his best friend Ahmed, joking around one minute and asking burning questions about life the next. He also hides a secret love for his beautiful neighbor Zari, who has been betrothed since birth to another man. But the bliss of Pasha and Zari's stolen time together is shattered when Pasha unwittingly acts as a beacon for the Shah's secret police. The violent consequences awaken him to the reality of living under a powerful despot, and lead Zari to make a shocking choice... my thoughts: This book was first published in 2009 and I remember adding it to my list around that time but never actually reading it since I preferred checking out library books to ...
Everyone has known what it feels like to open up a book, a book one has heard so much about, like how amazing it was and such, and opens it with great expectations. And then, the first page is dreadful. The next page is worse. And if possible, the next twenty pages are so dismal, that it's a struggle to go on.
I hate these books. And I'm prompted to write this because I'm attempting to read one called The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies. I have struggled so much, and I'm at around page sixty. Honestly, it sounded like a great book from the summary on the back cover, but now I don't know what to do.
The question is: Does one still read a book, if all interest is lost and the book is hard to trudge through?
My answer: No. It's not worth the time and effort. I'll start books, and try to read them, but if it's not good, there's not point. Too often, I'll say "Oh yeah, I've read the first few pages of that, but it was really awful" to someone with a book I know. There are downsides to this decision, including that the book was slow to start (like, ridiculously slow. I try to give all books a good chance) but turns out to be brilliant in the middle/end.
Some people condemn me for tossing off books like that. For instance, I tried reading Vampire Diaries at a Barnes and Noble and got through about 10 pages and thought, "Why am I doing this to myself?" and tossed it out. Later, I caught a friend reading the second one, I think, and asked her, "Is that a good book?" and she was incredibly eager in telling me it was.
BUT, despite my first-ten-pages rule (in this case, with The Welsh Girl, the first sixty!), there are some books that are just shite all the way through. Like, it never gets better. There's no redemption whatsoever. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but they exist out there, ladies and gentlemen. They do.
I'd like to ask you all, my readers: do you think someone should keep reading a book that appears to be, based on the first quarter (or half) of the book, absolutely terrible?
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