Sorry I did not finish this book, too pretentious, not a good read

I started this book and could not get past the wordy prose that was difficult to wade through. I think the book sounds promising (especially given its setting in a museum, and I work in one), but I just didn't enjoy the author's writing style. I have not posted my review elsewhere as I did not finish the book.

I could not even get halfway through the book. It was very disjointed and did not hold my attention.

I wanted to love this book but it was impossible. Billed as a mystery, set in an art gallery, it promised an exciting read. I found it at times manic, other times beliegered by too much background information that got in the way of the plot. So much ruminating about love lost. I mostly lost my way in trying to connect the dots; it seemed to flail about all over the place. And for the first time in my life as a reader, I did not realize that the last sentence was indeed the end. Due in part to how it was printed. I kept slogging through what turned out to be historical information looking for some way to regard the ending other than muttering to myself, "What?"

A book in many ways about unrequited love, it left me feeling jilted as a reader.

Try this one if you like books written by and for, for want of a better description, hipsters. The premise is good and I'd hoped for more humor about the museum world. Ives does have a sense of fun but there are just SO many words. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Sorry I can't review as you have archived before I can review

Impossible Views of the World by Lucy Ives is a so-so novel about a hipper-than-you-or-me art curator.

This is a week in the life of Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan's renowned Central Museum of Art. Her friend and colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Her mother, the world renown glamorous art dealer Caro, wants to have lunch with her. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is stalking her. She's been having an affair/fling with her boss. And she's uncovered several different secrets, including an intriguing map, that she wants to research and solve the mystery.

Billed as a mystery, it really isn't, so if you are a fan of mysteries you might want to by-pass this selection. Sure she discovers some answers to the questions she raises about her discoveries/encounters along the way, but it never has the feeling of a true mystery. To make following the mysteries more challenging is the fact that Stella's not very likeable, or perhaps I'm just not as cool as she is.

I'll go with a so-so rating, conceding that small glimmers of hope for the quality of future novels appear in the pages. Honestly, I struggled to finish this one but kept reading for one reason alone - some of the descriptions in the writing. Not all of the writing is worth the struggle, but there are small, subtle gems hidden among the dregs of way-too-much. The problem was in the way-to-much. It isn't always satisfying to read a novel that seemingly strives for pretentiousness.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Penguin Publishing Group.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/08/impossible-views-of-world.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2081303388

2.5
Sadly this book was just not for me. I wanted to love it so much after reading the blurb, which sounded so interesting & promising, but then it never really delivered what I wanted. Part of it was the writing style which was, as kindly as I can put it, all over the place. Sometimes I don't mind that but in this case I didn't feel like it landed. Most of the first half or so of the book I felt completely lost & like I was trying to catch up to something & though the writing evened out a bit in the second half I still felt like I'd been spit out of a very loopy roller coaster. I guess I was hoping for more of a mystery, going by the book's description, but that element just wasn't there for me. Overall it felt flat. I went ahead and bumped my rating up to 3 stars, mostly because it was just interesting enough to finish, though I almost gave up after the first few pages due to the odd nature of the writing style. By the end I was racing through just to be done. I might end up being in the minority but again this one just wasn't my thing and I can't think of anyone I'd recommend it to.

Sigh. This book was such a disappointment. I loved the summary and had high hopes for the book as a result. But it was just too convoluted and hard to follow. Even worse, the writing was a slog. It was hard to read because it seemed the author just tried too hard to be literary. It could be beautiful at times but mostly it seemed pretentious.

DNF. The author has chosen to depict a character that is difficult to like and/or the author's writing style is so difficult to bridge that the book is one long slog. I have tried three times to get started again and read further but each time I find myself thoroughly frustrated by either author intent or accident. If this is humor, I missed it. If this is an accident, I'm sorry for my lack of tolerance. Either way, I can't recommend this book or think of an audience that would enjoy it. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Perhaps the only immutable rule of writing is not wasting the reader’s time. Lucy Ives broke that rule in Impossible Views of the World as far as I’m concerned. I requested this book from NetGalley because the description had tantalizing elements of a mystery set in a museum, possible corporate conspiracy, and nineteenth century utopias. I’ll be frank: all of this fizzled, due mostly to a narrator that I found so scatterbrained and non-confrontational (with one spectacular exception) that I could barely tolerate her. I hung on because of those plot elements but, now that I’ve finished, I feel that my time has been wasted.

Stella Krakus is a self-described functionary for the Central Museum of Art in New York. CeMArt specializes in American decorative objects and Stella works on whatever projects her boss sends her way. She has a difficult mother, is in the middle of a divorce, and frets about her affair with a coworker and her lingering feelings for him. When Stella’s sort-of work friend, Paul, disappears and is later found dead of an apparent overdose, she starts to investigate what he was working on.

Paul’s work leads Stella on a research bender into a pseudonymous nineteenth century author and a long, kind-of interesting family history. Being a librarian, the parts of the book in which Stella scoured catalogs and diligently googled and compulsively read obscure books were catnip to me. If I were a different reader, I might not have been so annoyed when Stella would get derailed by her personal life. If Stella were a different narrator, there’s also a good chance I would have been less frustrated by this book.

Sometimes, I like unlikable characters. The degree to which I like them depends a lot on what makes the character unlikable. I’m fond of curmudgeons, the damaged, the vengeance-seekers, etc. But Stella’s passivity bothered me. She lets other characters—her boss, her mother, and her former lover—take advantage of her good nature. The only character she confronts is her soon-to-be-ex husband. Stella’s narrative style is also incredibly scatterbrained. While some of my best friends and dearest family members are scatterbrained, Stella bops around from subject to subject so much that it was hard to track where the book was going.

Impossible Views of the World is a strange book—so strange that I don’t know what it’s trying to be. I don’t recommend it and I wish I could get back the time I spent waiting for it to get better and for the mystery to start making sense.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 1 August 2017.

This book was not for me. I felt like I was reading a story told by my four year old niece. It jumped all over the place, and I simply could not get into the book.

I was unable to finish this book and thus I will be not be posting a review on my blog.

I'm not sure if this was originally written in another language and then translated but this book was very, very off both in jumping for thought to thought without any natural break (this was beyond stream of consciousness) but also in failing to make little to no sense. I had no idea what was going on and frankly I did not want to. Thank you for the opportunity.

DNF after about 50 pages.

Written in a very pretentious way, sometimes I wondered if what I was reading passed through the hands of an editor at all.

I could have pretended and spoken about the intelligence, wittiness and poetic style, but frankly when you put too much sugar in the cake it no longer brings you pleasure, just as a book with metaphor on top of metaphor, figurative speech on top of weirdly constructed sentences.

It was difficult to get into the story when I had to detangle each word in every sentence.

From the description, this sounded right up my alley. But I unfortunately was disappointed. I found it dull and obtuse. It felt like the author was trying too hard. The main character was flat and the story meandered so slowly and in virvkes that 25% in I still was wondering when the story would start. It all felt like setting up for something that never came.

Did Not Finish. Please see the above note in the opinion section.

Review published on Booklover Book Reviews website: http://bookloverbookreviews.com/2017/07/impossible-views-of-the-world-by-lucy-ives-book-review.html

The blurb was intriguing so that's what drew me into reading this book. And for the most part it was mildly interesting - there was a great attention to detail in the writing style and that made sense for a book set around a museum and those who worked there. But I also felt this went against the story as it just felt 'overdone' - there was little about the characters that felt endearing so the story fell a little flat.

The mystery of the map was the bright light in the story and did keep me fascinated but then even that seemed to get caught up in itself and just become too over elaborate and took away from what could have been an interesting study of some different characters and the solving of a mystery.

The writing style did take some getting used to and did distract at times from the plot.

Based on the description, I really thought I was going to love this. Unfortunately, after reading 50% (my general rule of thumb), I abandoned it. Here's why: (1) I couldn't keep any of the characters straight. None of them were very developed by halfway through, which is a red flag for me. (2) The writing style is... different. It's a little all over the place for me. (3) Nothing much happened plotwise in the first half, so I lost interest every time I sat down to read. I really wanted to like this, but just couldn't.

This novel follows a woman in her late 20's who works in a museum through several tangled threads in her life. Started with very strong writing, but soon rambled and seemed to zig zag. There is a significant amount of attention paid to American art and would be interesting to someone in the industry or informed about the topic. For me, it was a bit tedious.