Don't you hate it when....?

Have you ever tried to read a really bad book? It is rare for me to quit reading a book once that I have started it, but every once in awhile I just can’t finish one. Last night was one of those times. In fact, the book was so bad, I finally threw it across the room! Something, I might add, that I have never done. But it deserved it. What a bad book.

The specific book that I am talking about right now is The Shack by William Young. There was a huge display and promotion for this book when I was in Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago and I got suckered into buying it. Big mistake.

The premise of the story is a good one and on paper sounds very interesting. Mack’s youngest daughter is abducted during a family camping trip and is never found, presumed dead. The dress she was wearing is found all bloody in an old run down shack in the middle of the woods. Four years later, Mack receives a note in the mail from “Papa”, his wife’s name for God. The note tells him to meet him in the shack the following weekend, and, of course, against his better judgment, Mack goes.

I know, I know…so far it sounds like a good story. What threw me off of the book was how it was written. I kept checking the back cover, thinking that I had bought a Young Adult Christian novel. It read so simplisticly that I couldn’t stand it. It reads like it was a book written for 6th graders. And everyone was praying for everyone else every moment. Now, I don’t have anything against prayer and praying for others, but in the real world that isn’t the conversation that everyone has at every opportunity. I just couldn’t go on with finishing the book!

As I said, I rarely don’t finish a book, but it happens once or twice a year.

Then, there have also been those times that I do finish a book and the ending is so poor that I am mad at myself for wasting the time to read it!

There are so many good books out there to be read, I just hate to spend time on a “bad” book!