In this informal vlog, the speaker lists four books he abandoned, explaining personal, stylistic, and linguistic reasons for each. He starts with CJ Box’s Joe Pickett series, praising the prose but quitting because the wife character mirrors a recent divorce, making the narrative emotionally intolerable. Next he tackles Don Winslow’s The Power of the Dog, a highly regarded noir novel that forces the reader into Spanish dialogue; the speaker, an Australian, rejects the language barrier and finds the prose laborious. He then moves to a David Mamet work (title unspecified), stopping after 20‑30 pages because the dialogue feels halting, overly French‑inflected, and fails to engage him. Throughout, he emphasizes a personal rule: if a book doesn’t hook him within the first half‑hour, he won’t persist, regardless of its reputation. The video ends with a brief sign‑off, inviting viewers to form their own opinions.
Chapters
Right, you lot, how are you? Something a bit different. Here are 4 books I didn't finish and why. So in terms of the books to brilliant meter, you'll have to read them and work it all out for yourself. So first one, CJ Box, the Joe Pickett series. I love his writing. That's the problem I have. So the wife in here is a whiny, whingy, disrespectful Piece of work, and I don't like her. I— when I picked this up, I'd just gone through a divorce from exactly the same sort of person, so I ain't gonna spend 2 or 3 hours talking to her again. So, Box, your problem, mate, is you write too well. So if you love this sort of concept, Joe Pickett out there in the bush solving problems, you're gonna love Box. But be aware, his writing's too bloody good. Next one, The Power of the Dog, Don Winslow. So this fella's got a reputation for writing incredibly good novels. I couldn't finish it. He wants me to learn bloody Spanish. Listen, I'm Australian, mate. I can flat out learn how to speak English. So, uh, Power of the Dog, didn't want to learn Spanish. So this guy is a bit of a legend in, um, In Noir Circle. So I picked it up, I was very excited about it. I just want to read you a bit. Very excited about it, but I couldn't do it. It was like scraping my head down gravel. So let me just find a bit here. Um, so this is how it goes. Golf bored him. Wayne Senator insisted. Little stood by the drink. Little dodged the heat. Vegas heat scalded. Vegas heat singed. No, mate, like Like, you can do better than that, uh, James. You can actually use, you know, make full sentences. Couldn't do it. Didn't like it. Won't read it. Didn't touch it. Spent a lot of money. Good to throw at a burglar. I love everything Mamet does except this. As you can see from the flap, I was 26 pages in and stopped it because the dialogue just didn't get me. I don't know what he was trying to achieve with the dialogue. There's a whole lot of French stuff in there again, so maybe I just Maybe I just want to read my books in English. There's a whole bunch of French stuff in there and I just couldn't do it. It was too halting. Didn't grab me. I was 20 or 30 pages in. People would say, well, you need to give it more. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I've got thousands of books back here I want to read. So if it doesn't get me in the first half hour, 45 minutes, I'm probably not going to persist. So anyway, there you go. 4 books that I did not complete and why, and you make up your own mind. All right, cheerio.
