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Thread: What are you NOT reading?

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    Registered User Insane4Twain's Avatar
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    What are you NOT reading?

    I love reading and finding out what other people are reading. As a rule, I try to finish a book once I get past the couple of chapters. But at some point, I have to cut my losses when it seems obvious I don't understand or enjoy what I'm reading almost halfway through. I wish I'd figured this out years ago with Crime and Punishment and Waiting for Godot. I quit reading Brideshead Revisited and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man twice. Maybe it's just me, but I think James Joyce is the most overrated author next to Ernest Hemingway.

    It might be interesting to find out what books would make folks here say "Naaah" after starting a book and deciding it's not be worth the bother.

    Be fair. Don't put books you had no intention of reading. And tell us what finally made you decide you'd rather watch paint dry on the wall.

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    Watcher by Night mtpspur's Avatar
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    This is easy. Brothers Karamazov. It was HIGHLY recommended by a respected Litnet member and I made a good beginning until I realized the murder victim probably deserved it so why shoukld I care who did it. Not to mention the sheer size of the darn thing. Runner up--Les Miserables--again a good start but Jean Valjean stealing a coin from a kid--on his way to redemption--was a bit too much and again i quit. Knowing the book's ending due to a movie in High School didn't help my incentive to finish either.

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    Registered User Desolation's Avatar
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    The book that I just can't seem to get to the end of no matter how hard I try, ironically, is The Castle by Franz Kafka.

    It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but I've started that damn novel 5 times over the last few years, and I just can't get to the end no matter how hard I try. It's not even that long.

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    Registered User Insane4Twain's Avatar
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    Crap! My own response got beat by a couple other stay-up-lates. But that's a good sign, right? Anyway, here are a couple I wanted to start with:

    1. The Beatles: The Biography (Bob Spitz). I read through 20 pages of John Lennon's childhood, snored through another 10 pages, then began flipping around. Around page 200 George is picked up as member of a fledgling group with Paul and John as the core. Folks, the tome is 850 pages long - 960 counting footnotes and acknowledgments. It weighs about 3 pounds, if the bathroom scale is reliable. And it's b-o-r-i-n-g. College macroeconomics boring.

    2. Don Quixote de la Mancha - This turned up a library book sale. Decent condition, fifty cents. I've been teaching Spanish for about 25 years. Isn't it about time I became familiar with this worldwide classic? Sigh! It was interesting for the first three or four chapters. It's a huge work, and my attention span ain't what it used to be. The best part of the book was the introduction which was an overview of the life of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Maybe I should pick up his biography instead.

    3. The Ox-Bow Incident - I've started this thing 2-3 times. Five chapters in all. Fifty pages per chapter. When I finished chapter 2 - or was it chapter 3? - the five-horse town was still waiting around to ride off in search of the cattle rustlers-cum-murderers in the lower south loop of the back forty or wherever the heck they were saddled up. As my mother used to say, **** or get off the pot!

    4. The Sound and the Fury - Lord, Lord, LORD! Lordy-Lord!!!

    I attempted this several times but never made it past the appendix which, for some odd reason only the author could explain, appears at the beginning of the book. Within the space of ten pages I encountered four passages of interminable length. One stretched on for a page-and-a-half of 663 words. Before and behind this Ozymandian logorrhea were two paragraphs of 444 and 473 words. William Faulkner should have been born in Russia. He'd make perfect sense over there.

    5. Poverty of Historicism by Karl Popper - He made more sense when I was in graduate school. I'm going back to the Angelic Doctor.
    Last edited by Insane4Twain; 04-14-2012 at 02:49 AM.

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    Haribol Acharya blazeofglory's Avatar
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    Many a time we fantasize finishing bulky books to add up to the number of the great classics we have gone through. In fact we simply idealize the reading since we agree told to finish thef jobs wide have started. One of the worst books I have started several times but never to complete is ulysses and I did out of vanity to assert my scholarly disposition. Some writers or professors claim they undrrstand the book but I think there is nothing there to understand there the entire book as being full of streams of thoughts, unprocessed in the psyche and we get lost in the course of reading.

    “Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””

    “If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Insane4twain View Post
    I quit reading Brideshead Revisited and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man twice. Maybe it's just me, but I think James Joyce is the most overrated author next to Ernest Hemingway.

    Sounds like a 'I didn't enjoy it therefore it's overrated' thing which I always find a bit shallow.

    Why do you find him overrated?
    Last edited by Pierre Menard; 04-14-2012 at 03:53 AM.
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    BadWoolf JuniperWoolf's Avatar
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    You're really not missing much with Portrait of the Artist in my opinion. I spent the whole book thinking "come on, it's not that long and everyone talks about it, there's got to be something in here that I'll like... maybe near the end." I wish I hadn't wasted my time. I'm a big fan of Hemmingway though.

    I learned that I just don't like Dostoevsky. I've tried reading Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov and both times I ended up saying "GOD this guy is dreary" and tossing it aside.
    Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 04-14-2012 at 08:13 AM.
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    Between the Acts. I am a big fan of Virginia Woolf but I have tried and tried with this and I cant get into it.

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    In the fog Charles Darnay's Avatar
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    Daisy Miller. I really like Henry James, and this story was in a collection of his that I had, but I just couldn't get through the first quarter of it - it is so bad.

    Another one is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I quit this one as a result of sheer non-understanding, but I do hope to return to it someday.

    Portrait of an Artist does tend to turn a lot of people off. The people who really like it, and what you may have been searching for JW, is the stream of consciousness. People who like SoC absolutely love it, and people who don't tend to hate it.

    Personally, I read Portrait after Ulysses, so I already had a liking for Stephen Dedalus and so wanted to read more about him. I also love SoC
    I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...

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    Registered User Aylinn's Avatar
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    Alice in the Wonderland Every time I tried to read this book, it lulled me to sleep.

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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf View Post
    You're really not missing much with Portrait of the Artist in my opinion. I spent the whole book thinking "come on, it's not that long and everyone talks about it, there's got to be something in here that I'll like... maybe near the end." I wish I hadn't wasted my time. I'm a big fan of Hemmingway though.

    I learned that I just don't like Dostoevsky. I've tried reading Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov and both times I ended up saying "GOD this guy is dreary" and tossing it aside.
    Dostoevsky really appeals to troubled youth, particularly males, who are just beginning to come to terms with a sort of intellectual freedom. In a sense he offers a form of liberation through the act of reading, which is I think what really gets him his fanbase.

    As for Portrait of the Artist, it is a well crafted book, and a short one. You may not like it, but it is still a good book - granted that it is not Ulysses. The book really has a lot more in it than people think, which is what gives it its appeal - even Dubliners was designed for people to need to either have been there, or to overthink what is actually going on. Joyce's fiction seems designed by a need to investigate - to see the missing key to everything.

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    Registered User Calidore's Avatar
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    Both failures that come to mind for me are comedies. Don Quixote had moments but was too repetitive, and A Confederacy of Dunces wasn't any kind of funny.

    I think the difference there between tolerable and intolerable is how the author feels about the characters. Cervantes obviously had affection for Don Quixote as a character, whereas Toole seems to hold all his characters in contempt.
    You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi

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    Quote Originally Posted by JBI View Post
    Dostoevsky really appeals to troubled youth, particularly males, who are just beginning to come to terms with a sort of intellectual freedom. In a sense he offers a form of liberation through the act of reading, which is I think what really gets him his fanbase.
    After having read some dostoyevsky i felt inclined to think that his popularity was only because of the same reasons you stated above. Especialy after having read pushkin lermontov tolstoy and turgenev before i could not understand how in a century and country which produced those great 4 how dostoyevsky could not only be ver popular but even manage to obscure the others.

    Yet on the other hand hemingway joyce virginia woolf, all had great admiration for him and all saw great genius in his work.

    I would very much like to say he only appeals to agsty teens, yet there is a genius there which it seems many of us dont get.

    I never liked Joyce but and i gave up on portait twice, but this year for uni i had to read it and i finaly not only enjoyed it but came to really see beauty in it.

    Anothe author i have never been able to stomach is phlip roth, nothing in there which appeals except for thedull thoughts of adull man.

  14. #14
    I have to totally disagree with the attitude of this thread for the most part. If a book is established as a classic, I believe we should at least attempt to read it to the end at some point in our lives. I thought Portrait of the Artist, Absalom, Absalom! and Lolita were confusing boring and dull much of the time I was reading them. But when I finished they left me spellbound, and amazed at how important even the boring sections were (okay I admit Portrait of the Artist's boring bits seemed a bit unnecessary. but i maintain it was a good book)! If it is not well established, then by all means drop it completely! I tried to finish 1Q84 and quickly realized how much I concurred with most reviewers: it was NOT worth my time. But (as an example) to assume all Faulkner is trash after only reading The Sound and the Fury (my favorite of his works even if it is difficult and certainly not the one to start on) is utter foolishness! I actually feel a duty to return to novels that I know people I respect have loved even if they are difficult, and even if i need to take breaks.

    On the other hand, I feel no need to return to works whose prose proves not only easy but banal even, and whose philosophy I utterly detest. Never again will I pick up a copy of Atlas Shrugged. XD And of course this is not to say that if you've read multiple books by an author (NOTE: including the "easy" ones) and disliked all of them you somehow have a duty to read more of the author! XD Unless you feel you've changed much since then or gotten some good background, there's really no reason to feel guilty putting down the third book by an author you detest...
    Last edited by dysfunctional-h; 04-14-2012 at 02:08 PM. Reason: well this i must concede...
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    Quote Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf View Post
    I learned that I just don't like Dostoevsky. I've tried reading Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov and both times I ended up saying "GOD this guy is dreary" and tossing it aside.
    I love your choice of words for him. Dreary.
    I love Dostoevsky, but I would never tackle Crime and Punishment. I have only read Notes From Underground, and while I thought it was very depressing, after learning about Dostoevsky's life I re-read it and found it very touching and funny, depressing and sad. I admire Dostoevsky, he spent so much time in a Siberian prison- that is dreary.

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