What books were you unable to finish?

[108 fountains]

I’ve always taken pride that I finish any book that I start, even if I find it difficult or dissatisfying. But in the past year, I couldn’t finish two books; I had to just put them down after struggling through the first 100 pages or so.

The first was The Iliad - the epic poetry writing style was difficult for me to read, I couldn’t keep track of all the characters, I didn’t like Helen (and wondered why all the fuss about a woman as capricious as she), I couldn’t get into the concept of the gods interfering in the affairs of men to further their own ambitions, and I couldn’t identify with the value placed on the glory of doing battle for its own sake.

The second was The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt - it was just too dense (or perhaps it was just me being too dense to understand it).

Two other books I struggled through to completion, although with lack of enjoyment, were The Red and the Black by Stendhal (I just didn’t like the main character) and Mrs. Dallaway by Virginia Woolf (I know the book is praised for its "stream of consciousness” writing style, but I found that style of writing to be tiring. I was glad it was a short book and was happy to be done with it.)

Anyone else out there in LitNet who started a book but couldn’t finish it?

[Jack of Hearts]

Hot tip on the Iliad-- get a more recent translation. It's infinitely more readable when the scholastic pretense has been dropped. Enjoyable, even. And everything is still 'wine dark.'

(If you don't believe in the epoch of translation, try translating something. You can find translations from the 1800's, the 1960's and early 2000's; and they all belong to their eras).

Couldn't finish Atlas Shrugged. Couldn't even really start it after reading The Fountainhead.





J

[mande2013]

What translation of The Iliad did you have in mind? Rieu? Lattimore? Fagles? I read the Rieu translation when I was a mere 15, and it was enjoyable even then, but Lattimore and Fagles seem to be the gold standard.

[Lykren]

War and Peace and Moby-Dick both took two tries from me before I got through them, but eventually I finished them. The former was much more fun.

Books I haven't yet completed? The Bible comes to mind. I read the Torah (first five books) and a little ways after that, as well as a few selections (Job, Song of Songs) but haven't yet gotten through the whole thing. I definitely will though, it's just near the bottom of a very long list. I also haven't finished reading through the deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass. When I will get to that is a little more nebulous.

I've had a pretty easy time finishing books the past few years, since I seriously got into reading. Even The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which I mostly disliked, and which was over a thousand oversized pages, I got through, albeit slowly, over a four or five month period.

I thought Mrs. Dalloway was a fairly straightforward read, clear and reasonably paced - in my mind, it makes a bit of a contrast with To The Lighthouse, which is rather more ponderous, and in which events are separated by large amounts of space, space Woolf fills with descriptions of thought and nature that seem, curiously, both limpid and turgid. Have you read To The Lighthouse? Has anyone found it difficult to get through?

[Lokasenna]

I used to be like you, making never giving up on a book a point of pride. These days, however, I have so little free time to spend on reading for pleasure that I frequently find myself ditching books if I'm not enjoying them. It's one of life's little compromises.

[AuntShecky]

Life is much too short to waste a minute of it reading Ayn Rand. (I wish I could get those hours back from my high school days.) On the other hand, some books can change as you yourself change. For instance, reading The Catcher in the Rye later in life gave me a different impression than the one I first experienced as an adolescent. My assessments of that novel were both positive, but in highly divergent ways.

Humboldt's Gift is one book I pick up every now and then; there is so much gold there that I have to return to the mine on occasion. For this reason, a person should try to read The Iliad, Moby Dick, and James Joyce's Ulysses in various decades of his or her life.

[DATo]

Finnegan's Wake, which i consider as worthlessly pretentious as its author.

[Jack of Hearts]

Life is much too short to waste a minute of it reading Ayn Rand. (I wish I could get those hours back from my high school days.) On the other hand, some books can change as you yourself change. For instance, reading The Catcher in the Rye later in life gave me a different impression than the one I first experienced as an adolescent. My assessments of that novel were both positive, but in highly divergent ways.

Humboldt's Gift is one book I pick up every now and then; there is so much gold there that I have to return to the mine on occasion. For this reason, a person should try to read The Iliad, Moby Dick, and James Joyce's Ulysses in various decades of his or her life.

This seems to be categorically true. Ulysses, Catcher, etc. For instance, Pet Detective was on tv this morning. Jack of Hearts hasn't watched television in many years and he and hadn't seen the movie since it came out when he was a child. But it was hilarious, full of 'adult' jokes that went uninterpreted but sank into the ether of the subconscious. A truly rich experience, that Pet Detective.

Ahem. Whoever wrote about the translation thing, who cares. Just find one that doesn't say 'thou' or use words like 'equanimous.'







J

[stlukesguild]

I’ve always taken pride that I finish any book that I start, even if I find it difficult or dissatisfying. But in the past year, I couldn’t finish two books; I had to just put them down after struggling through the first 100 pages or so.

The first was The Iliad - the epic poetry writing style was difficult for me to read, I couldn’t keep track of all the characters, I didn’t like Helen (and wondered why all the fuss about a woman as capricious as she), I couldn’t get into the concept of the gods interfering in the affairs of men to further their own ambitions, and I couldn’t identify with the value placed on the glory of doing battle for its own sake.

The primary goal of a work of literature is not to reinforce one's own personal likes and dislikes, standards, values, beliefs, biases, and prejudices. Great literature allows us to enter into other foreign worlds... and very the thoughts of individuals of a time and place far removed from us... with values, standards, beliefs, and experiences far removed from our own. Disliking a character or their actions, or concepts and values espoused by the author does not strike me as enough of a reason to dislike a book. I found myself wholly disagreeing with a great many of the ideas put forth by Plato in The Republic... but I have no doubt that the book was brilliantly written and fully worth the effort.

On the other hand, I disagree with the vast majority of Ayn Rand's philosophy... but the reason I find her books unreadable is simply because they are so badly written.

[Lykren]

I’ve always taken pride that I finish any book that I start, even if I find it difficult or dissatisfying. But in the past year, I couldn’t finish two books; I had to just put them down after struggling through the first 100 pages or so.

The first was The Iliad - the epic poetry writing style was difficult for me to read, I couldn’t keep track of all the characters, I didn’t like Helen (and wondered why all the fuss about a woman as capricious as she), I couldn’t get into the concept of the gods interfering in the affairs of men to further their own ambitions, and I couldn’t identify with the value placed on the glory of doing battle for its own sake.

The primary goal of a work of literature is not to reinforce one's own personal likes and dislikes, standards, values, beliefs, biases, and prejudices. Great literature allows us to enter into other foreign worlds... and very the thoughts of individuals of a time and place far removed from us... with values, standards, beliefs, and experiences far removed from our own. Disliking a character or their actions, or concepts and values espoused by the author does not strike me as enough of a reason to dislike a book. I found myself wholly disagreeing with a great many of the ideas put forth by Plato in The Republic... but I have no doubt that the book was brilliantly written and fully worth the effort.

On the other hand, I disagree with the vast majority of Ayn Rand's philosophy... but the reason I find her books unreadable is simply because they are so badly written.

Yes, literature (and art in general) is not really about ideas, it is about aesthetics. I'm not sure I agree, though, that the purpose of literature is to help us emphathize with otherwise unfamiliar experiences. Not that it can't do that, but to be honest, I read for the same reason I eat food. It makes me happy. It's a pleasure with infinite variations - even when the feeling expressed is a sad one, if it's good literature it's sad in a way that's superbly indulgent, somehow tempering my own sadness.

Empathy of course plays a role in that aspect of reading, but I suspect it's more of an empathy with the creator of the text at the moment of composition, rather than with a whole cultural mindset.

[tonywalt]

I struggle with Pale King by David Foster Wallace. It's the only DFW book I haven't read, but a book about the IRS.....too depressing (RIP DFW)

[Snowqueen]

I usually don't leave a book unfinished, but there are exceptions. I couldn't complete Villette by Charlotte Bronte and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.

[Lykren]

I usually don't leave a book unfinished, but there are exceptions. I couldn't complete Villette by Charlotte Bronte and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.

I felt that it was the first two-thirds of Tom Jones that were easy-going. Then the last third, with its labryinthine plot twists and revelations just became incomprehensible to me.

[Calidore]

I was only able to get halfway through War and Peace before giving up. I didn't even make it that far through A Confederacy of Dunces.

[munkinhead]

I give up fairly frequently, probably to my disadvantage,
but my reading list is long and my attention span ain't what it used to was.
I read a lot of history though and my bs fitler is fairly high-grained.
I don't have to agree with a premise, but I do have to respect it to go on.