Tag: books I loved but will never re-read

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Loved But Will Never Re-read

“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” – Margaret Atwood

I read a lot of different kinds of stories. Some of them are downright disturbing and reflect a side of life that we  would rather not see. The following are books that I found wonderfully awe-inspiring, but for reasons I’ll explain, I would never read them again:

  1. The Coming, Daniel Black. Written in the collective first person (“we”), this book follows a group of Africans taken from the continent in the early 1800’s and their horrific journey to America by ship (“The Middle Passage”), to their sale as slaves in the New World. If you really want to understand what African Americans endured to get to the U.S., you must read this book. It is absolutely devastating, an emotional wringer.
  2. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng. Despite the fact that this is a good book with good reviews (and deservedly so), the dysfunctional nature of the family in the book is one that I don’t ever want to read about again. Everybody’s clueless, and their oblivion to real life put me in such a tizzy that I wouldn’t do this twice.
  3. Aquarium, David Vann. Another great book, about a family that puts the “D” in dysfunctional. The mother is a monster, and there’s a little girl at the center of the action that you just want to hug forever.
  4. An Untamed State, Roxane Gay. Haitian American attorney Mirelle is vacationing in her native Haiti with her husband when she is kidnapped and held for ransom. When her wealthy father refuses to pay for her release, her captors retaliate with a campaign of rape and torture. It’s heavy, heavy stuff. Forgiveness and healing does come, but it’s not in the form that you’d expect. Great book, but I would never dream of opening it again.
  5. The Summer that Melted Everything, Tiffany McDaniel. This is a “thinking” book about what happens when “The Devil” in the form of a child comes to a small Ohio town in 1984. It’s an excellent book I read this two years ago and I’m still thinking about a lot of the questions this book brings up. Still no answers.
  6. Problems, Jade Sharma.  Maya is a married woman with a lover, a dead end job, and a heroin habit. She’s also one of the most unlikable characters I’ve ever read about. Her descent into chaos is the reason why, even though I loved this book, I’d never read it again.
  7. The Warmest December, Bernice McFadden. Another book about a girl’s experiences growing in a highly dysfunctional family in 1970’s Brooklyn. It’s a good book but a hard one to read, I remember having to take frequent breaks to finish it.
  8. Dime, E.R. Frank. A very gritty YA book about a young girl’s life while in the sex trade. It is raw and terrifying, but I was completely blown away by this book.
  9. Notice, Heather Lewis. Several months after this book was published, the author, Heather Lewis, committed suicide. When you read this book you will understand some of the demons that tortured her, because this is, quite frankly, the most profoundly disturbing book I’ve ever read. It’s good though. Really good. Read it again? No way.
  10. Delicious Foods, James Hannaham. A book about modern day slavery, drug addiction, greed, pain. This book had a profound effect on me because I distinctly remember that at the time I read this, my son was the same age as the protagonist of this book. Excellent read, but wouldn’t read it again. It’s too much.