A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, Near To The Wild Heart,The Fault in Our Stars

2017 has been off to a rough start for this reader. The year began with A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride which irritated me so much I decided to stop punishing myself about one third of the way into it. If you were able to wade through this fragmented, stream of consciousness tale of woe I congratulate you.
Next I decided to tackle Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector's 1942 novel Near To The Wild Heart, a book that had been hibernating on my bookshelf for many, many years. I should have left it there. I have discovered that I no longer have the patience to try to make sense of another stream of consciousness novel. I have always felt compelled to stick with a book once I open it. No longer! Two highly acclaimed (by others) books started and abandoned just two weeks into the new year.
Next I picked up The Fault In Our Stars, a  book by John Green that a friend had passed along to me ages ago. I resisted reading it because it is YA and I am more than a few decades past being a YA. If this book had been published when I was sixteen years old I would have sobbed my way through this story of two teens with cancer who fall in love. I would have wallowed in my sadness but I didn't because I am an old woman who is only mildly amused by pretentious teenagers and their snappy patter. The book is not to blame and at least I finished it.