What’s a book you never finished but still think about?
I really wanted to love A Discovery of Witches. It has witches, vampires, magic, history, forbidden romance—the whole package feels like exactly the kind of series I should enjoy.
And yet… I couldn’t finish it.
I’ve started the book, put it down, picked it back up, and tried to convince myself that maybe I just wasn’t giving it enough attention. Maybe I needed to slow down and really let myself get absorbed in the world. Maybe I wasn’t thinking about it enough. There are definitely books that take a little more effort before they click, so I kept giving it another chance.
But then I realized something: I didn’t finish the TV show either.
At some point, I have to wonder if the problem isn’t that I’m reading it wrong or not paying enough attention. Maybe I’m just…not that interested.
And interestingly, I feel almost exactly the same way about the Outlander series. I’ve started the books. I’ve watched the show. I’ve enjoyed parts of both, but somehow I never make it all the way through. And I think about both A Discovery of Witches and Outlander surprisingly often. They clearly have something that sticks with me, which makes me want to go back and try again.
Maybe that’s what keeps me forcing myself to continue. These are the kinds of series I feel like I should love. They have so many of the things I normally look for, and I genuinely want to be swept up in them. So I keep wondering if I just haven’t given them enough time, attention, or thought.
But maybe the simpler answer is that I’m just not that interested.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that we should like something because the premise sounds perfect, everyone else loves it, or it seems like exactly our kind of story. But liking the idea of a series isn’t necessarily the same as actually wanting to read or watch it.
So maybe it’s time to stop trying to force it. Maybe A Discovery of Witches—and Outlander—can just be those series I think about from time to time without ever actually finishing.
And honestly? I think I’m okay with that.
