TTT: Books that were difficult to read

Today TTT is about books that were hard for me to read (because difficulty of book, subject matter, cringeworthy, or bad audiobook production.)

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez---Half the battle was the self-talk required to start the book. Once I did start it I realized that I needed help to understand it. This required that I do extra research and talking to others about the book. Eventually it was a very satisfying but it was difficult to read, admittedly.

2. True Sisters by Sandra Dallas---this was a recent book club selection so I felt I must finish it but I was so irritated by the book which is about people who traveled the Mormon Trail pushing handcarts across the American prairie. At first I thought the author was just trying to make an editorial statement about the Mormon faith and i just didn't want to be that mad at them as it seemed the author wanted me to be.

3. Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan---I tried to stay open-minded in the beginning but I read on I found it harder and more difficult to remain so. Aslan dismantles just about every tenet of the Christian faith describing Jesus as an illiterate man with little truth about his life actually reported in the Bible. I finished the book but was pretty shook up afterwards.

4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn---it is hard to want to read a book when neither of the characters are likeable. I finally conquered the book because my husband was willing to listen to the audiobook with me

5. Room by Emma Donoghue---this book was difficult to read on two fronts. The first was the subject matter...a woman is abducted and held for years and years, has a child with her abductor, etc.  Yuck! Secondly, the actress that read the audiobook had a very irritating voice.

6. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell---I can't believe I finished this book. It was something like a billion pages long and had all kinds of words in other languages which made it even harder to read.

7. Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta---ultimately I ended up liking the book but it took me forever to read this book and to get any traction while doing it. Students by and large love this book so I'm sure it was something to do with what was going on with me at the time.

8. The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean telt by Hisself by David Almond---the book is written in vernacular. I was only able to read about ten pages before I gave up. It was too difficult to decipher the words without reading it out loud to myself. I wasn't willing to work that hard.

9.  The Tyrant's Daughter by JC Carlson---I liked the storyline but the narrator of this audiobook had a fake Middle Eastern accent which was quite off-putting.

10. White Teeth by Zadie Smith---I read 100 pages of this book in one sitting then couldn't make myself go back to it because I couldn't keep the characters straight in my mind.