The 10 most disappointing books I read (or started to read) in 2019

Given that there are thousands, actually millions, of books out there to read and to re-read, I'm selective about those that I choose to take on during my time on Earth - and I'm totally willing to stop reading a book that's going nowhere or doing nothing for me, at least after giving it a fair shot (my rule of thumb: 10 percent, 100 pp., or 50 percent - as markers where I assess the book and where I'm willing to give up on what I've begun). With that in mind, here are the 10 most disappointing books (literary fiction) that I read, or started to read, in 2019, arranged alphabetically by author:

Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes (1936). Honestly I see no reason to read any further (little more than halfway through, about 90 pp.) in Nightwood, a cult novel much admired by avant-garde readers and writers, at least in the 60s and 70s, but today just a weird curiosity, one of those peculiarities that once seemed ahead of its time and now seems behind the times, without ever quite pausing in the middle.

The Spirit of Science Fiction, by Roberto Bolano (2016). Bolano's posthumously published book doesn't really come to any conclusion, just sputters to a stop. A beautiful chapter toward the end of this novel, which shows us how great Bolano could be at his best, makes us sad that he died, too young, in 2005. I in no way blame his family for trying to publish as much of his work as possible, both for his literary legacy and to draw some income from his estate. But it's also clear that it's wrong to put forward a manuscript like this as a completed novel. It's not.

John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps (1915). Though it may be entertaining up to a point, I stopped reading John Buchan's novel at about the half-way mark because I just couldn't care less about what happens to the narrator. The novel is full - too full - of ridiculous escapes and the most improbable encounters with friends and enemies. Ultimately, you either go along for the ride knowing this adventure is impossible except in a cheap novel or on film (Hitchcock's loose adaptation is terrific!) or you move on, as I did.

Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery (2010). I was completely lost in the arcana of who's supporting whom and why in the battles for Italian nationhood, so I just had throw up my hands in exasperation and say: Who reads this, other than reviewers paid to do so? Eco's novel is so demanding and so nearly incomprehensible that it does nothing for me other than to prove that Eco was really intelligent and learned. Fine. Got the point.

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling (1901). Spurred by a review in the New Yorker that called the novel the ancestor of today's spy novels, I began reading Kim and  read about 1/3 of it and that was enough: Kim is not a spy novel in any sense that we might recognize the genre today. Kipling's writing is antiquated and far beyond quaint, full of overwritten passages, clumsy attempts at vernacular dialogue, and lots of pasted-on exoticism. Kipling is known today and largely ignored because of his colonial, Eurocentric vision; this novel will do nothing to change one's opinion on that score.

Your Face Tomorrow, volume 1 (Fever and Spear), by Javier Marais (2002). Seldom (never?) has such fine writing and such fascinating info (about the international espionage business) been put to waste by such a lame excuse for a plot. After 380 pp., nothing has actually happened to the narrator - though we sure get a lot of discussion and pontificating, especially by his Oxford-donnish mentor. But there's little at this point to make me want to read volume 2.

Arturo's Island, by Elsa Morante (1957). Sorry to say that 100 pages in (about 1/3) I gave up on Arturo's Island, supposedly a classic work by a well-respected Italian author, the "namesake" of the even more famous Elena Ferrante - but there are so many things that have troubled me about the first third of this novel, notably the mean-spirited contempt for women on the part of all of the major characters and a father who criminally neglects and care for and education of his child (Arturo), that I just couldn't go on.

The Sea, the Sea, by Iris Murdoch (1978). Murdoch's interminable novel is as bad as I'd feared; I continued reading for a 3rd day, hoping this novel would get off the ground, and as I moved into the 2nd section - History One - it was more of the same: Desultory reminiscence by the tedious narrator,about the many love affairs in his life.No man could get away with creating such a misogynist and morally obtuse character, nor should a woman for that matter. Obviously this novel won a Booker Prize in recognition of Murdoch's long career without one.

The Overstory, by Richard Powers (2019), winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. I stopped reading Richard Powers's The Overstory, at about 1/4 in (+100 pp.). I'm sure there's a lot more I could learn about trees were I to finish reading this novel, but I'd rather spend some time among trees or read a nature handbook - and when I'm reading a novel please let it be a novel, replete with fully developed characters who interact with one another in intriguing and sometimes surprising ways. Powers's heart is surely in the right place - who's gonna argue against trees, for God's sake? - and his mind is as acute and copious as ever, but I wish he'd written a pamphlet or a tract.

Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk (2007), winner of a 2019 Nobel Prize; Flights won the International Booker Prize. This "novel" is made up of narratives of various lengths that may, as a whole, constitute a long narrative (400+ pp) about time, space, distance, and dislocation, but to me this work reads like a writer's notebook, full of potential material none of which is assimilated, organized, or resolved. Maybe things cohere in the next 300 pages of the journey - please let me know, because I got off at this next station.