I am not somebody who really does spring cleaning in real life. Cleaning is just not my favourite thing at all. But given how my life is currently rapidly changing, I did feel the need to go through my ARCs and really reassess whether I want to still finish these books. I have unread or partially read ARCs on my Netgalley shelves going back as far as 2017 – and I am very much not the same reader I was then. For one thing, I have to just admit to myself that I struggle with Scifi – which is why I am starting with this genre. Even if a Scifi book is apparently super tailored to my tastes, I rarely rate it higher than three stars. Which is why I am genuinely close to just given up on forcing myself to read the genre at all. With my physical TBR, this is not a problem at all because my boyfriend primarily reads Scifi (yes, we are stereotypical like that), so the books will indeed get read – my digital shelves are different. Long story short, here are three ARCs that I have for now given up on.
Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe
Published by Orbit, 2019
I actually got a good chunk into this book before putting it down and never picking it back up. I did mostly enjoy it while reading it but not enough to power through my inertia. Ultimately, my problem with this book is my problem with most science fiction books: I am just not interested in the intricacies of a book’s world building. I also did not love all three POV characters equally, which often means I won’t finish a book.
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
Published by Head of Zeus, 2017
This is very much an aspirational book: I want to be the kind of reader who reads a Jane-Austen-esque science fiction novel with highly complex ideas and sentence structure. But I am not. I read a few pages, got frustrated, put it down, picked it back up again from the beginning, read a few pages, got frustrated, put it down again, and so on and so forth. I am sure this is brilliant but I am even more sure that I will just never be in the mood to read it.
The Outside by Ada Hoffmann
Published by Angry Robot, 2019
I got this ARC when I was in the middle of a weird reading slump/ romance binge and just never felt compelled to pick it up. AI Gods sounds like something made for me – and still, here is sits, nearly a year later, never once cracked open. I might read this at some point but not anytime soon. And I am feeling super guilty whenever the book basically stares at me from my Netgalley shelf. I am the worst reviewer.
I have thoughts on books 
Science fiction is such a broad category, and all three of these are hard/space opera. Maybe you just need to try something else?
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a fair point! I went through my goodreads to see if I ever rate scifi high and even the books that are softer scifi (like Jessie Mihalik’s first in her scifi romance series which should be so up my alley!) are usually three star reads for me. When I love a scifi book it’s usually borderline another genre (like VanderMeer’s Annihilation which feels like a horror novel or Station Eleven). But then I often adore the book! So I do like scifi elements (maybe I just dislike space but that sounds so uncool!).
LikeLike
I get it, sometimes you’re brain just bounces off a genre! I’ve had a couple instances where I’ve tried to dive into “hard” sci-fi (that really cares about the science behind space travel etc.) and ohhhh my god it always takes me so long to get through it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The weirdest thing for me is that even those books that do everything else I love (like the first in Jessie Mihalik’s scifi-romance series which features a kickass woman and a grumpy man), don’t really work for me. Something about space travel just bores me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember being excited about The Outside too and then just never….being excited once it actually came out.
LikeLike