Unfinished

[grace86]

This kind of goes along with "Slowest Reads" thread, and I don't know if someone already started a thread, but as I was looking around the threads, I realized there are quite a few people who read a book and just stopped - they could not read it anymore. Does anyone keep a list of unfinished books in hopes they will get back to them in the future?

They don't have to be books you hated necessarily...it could be that you just never got back to it.

My list:

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
Crimson Petal and the White - Faber
Weapon X - can't remember
Paradise Lost - Milton

and currently Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

[Idril]

There's only two books I've started and didn't finish, A Son Of The Circus by John Irving because I was horribly bored and Ulysses by James Joyce because I was horribly, horribly confused. :rolleyes: I would like to think I'll attempt to tackle Ulysses at some time in the future but I don't ever see myself picking up Son of the Circus again.

[subterranean]

The one and only Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. The reason: same reason with Idril's Ulysses. Maybe I am not giving my best shot with this book :(.

[Pensive]

It happens to me now and then...and I don't really remember those books actually because I stop reading the book if I don't like it, and if I don't like a book, then it means that I have no intention of getting as much as near it again!

[Shannanigan]

I usually just keep the book somewhere nearby to remind myself to get back to it, like Robert Jordan's "The Eye of the World" sitting next to my bed right now, ~sigh~ I started that like, 2 years ago...no time to finish it...

[aeroport]

I usually just keep the book somewhere nearby to remind myself to get back to it, like Robert Jordan's "The Eye of the World" sitting next to my bed right now, ~sigh~ I started that like, 2 years ago...no time to finish it...

Your mention of Jordan reminds me that I never did get through the Wheel of Time series. I had to stop right in the middle of Lord of Chaos when school started a couple years ago, and never got back to it. I guess the last few still have not been written yet, though, so I'm not worried about letting it wait. I will have to go back to The Eye of the World and do it all again, so I think I will give it a bit, as they have a way of taking a while; they aren't exactly Harry Potter instalments.

Also, James's The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl both kicked the crap out of me somewhere around the middle and caused me to withdraw.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon was another, as was Frankenstein.

I've started The Lord of the Rings several times now, and am consequently rather familiar with The Hobbit, The Fellowship, and the first half or so of The Two Towers, but time has this way of making itself scarce at the most inconvenient moments, and so I never finished.
Oh yes, and Eragon, but that was just because I found Paolini's style too annoying to stick with.

[existentialIAN]

I have a tendency to start many books and put them down, especially when i realize there is so much I want to read and so little time. I don't like reading more than one book at a time so its hard for me to get through what I want to. Whether I put a book down dut to boredom or lack of time differs. Here are some memorable "put-downs".

From boredom-

Eragon by Christopher Something-or-other (gonna be a movie)
loathed it

From lack of time-

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
The Maker of Dune by Brian Herbert
The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card
A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (got up to Crossroads of Twilight)
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke


As you can see its mostly fantasy/sci-fi that I put down simply because it is so involving. I usually need to refresh my memory when continuing a series which takes up so much time plus I just find that classic literature is more important to me and picks my interest with more intensity.

[miss tenderness]

I remeber To The Light House ,Virginia Woolf, I read it an stipped but I was foriced to complete it . I'm not sure if I reached the end though!

[Thorwench]

I tink I have only one which I didn't finish ALTHOUGH I TRIED TWICE:

Simone de Beauvoir "The other's blood", I hope it's the right or at least similar English title

it so bored me that I broke my rule to finish whatever I start. I have another go when I retire in many many years.

[PeterL]

I usually finish what I start, but there have been a few that I just couldn't get through. The reason has always been that the book was very badly written. The only ones that I can think of were:
The Last Immortal by J. O. Jeppson
The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West

There are others that I should have dropped, but I usually convince myself that they will improve.

I just remembered "Coney Catching" by Kirby Farrell. I am acquainted with Kirby and I liked his other novels, but even he agrees that "Coney Catching" is bad.

[Shannanigan]

awww...sad to hear that a couple of you didn't enjoy Eragon (I'm sure there's lots more, lol) I liked it, to each his own.

I never would have finished Frankenstein if I hadn't been reading it for school.

[Schokokeks]

Interesting thread, thanks for opening, grace :nod:
I usually force myself to finish any book I've started, out of pure hope that it might get better on the next page. Sadly, most boring and tedious books that I've read so far didn't improve later if they hadn't in the first third of the book :rolleyes: .

Here's a short list of books that I remember not to have completed:
*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I have some kind of collector's edition including the sequels of the original Guide, which makes it a rather thick book and thus not exactly the right one to take with me to boring lectures :p I don't know why I never finished it, I had a good laugh or two, but didn't regret having put it down. Maybe be I first need to improve my command of English in order to be better able to understand all of the jokes :rolleyes:
* War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, of which I read about a sixth. I got so confused with all the family names that I couldn't quite keep track of the story and soon lost interest in the plot. I don't think that I'll ever take that one up again, although there seem to be many fans of it :).
* Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. See War and Peace :rolleyes:
* Although I finally made it to the end, I remember having skipped several (large) passages of Middlemarch by George Eliot :D

[grace86]

You guys reminded me I forgot a couple more:

The Lord of the Rings

(I have only gone through the first, plan on reading the others but just time consuming right now)

Frankenstein

(I was in business english classes through highschool so I did not get to read it for class like you Shann - tried it on my own and only got a few pages in it before I stopped)


Interesting thread, thanks for opening, grace

You're welcome Schokokeks!

Some of you all have the same author or titles in your response. Hmm.

[Bysshe]

Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice) - it bored me into a coma. I considered giving it to a charity shop, but changed my mind and decided to keep it as a cure for insomnia. It works, by the way.

Vanity Fair (Thackeray) - I have absolutely no excuse for not finishing this. I got 9/10ths of the way through twice, and then ended up getting distracted and starting something else before I had a chance to finish it. I'll read the whole thing one day. I'm still annoyed at myself for not finishing it.

Lives of the Monster Dogs (Kirsten Bakis) - I kept liking it, then not liking it, then liking it, then finally deciding that it wasn't worth finishing. I was reading it at the same time as my mother, who reached the end before me and said that it didn't improve. It's a shame. It looked so promising from the blurb, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) - Again, no proper excuse. I simply got distracted. I wasn't loving it, but I wasn't hating it either. I'll go back to it one day.

[amanda_isabel]

It happens to me now and then...and I don't really remember those books actually because I stop reading the book if I don't like it, and if I don't like a book, then it means that I have no intention of getting as much as near it again!

true for me too. right now i'm trying to finish Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder, which my friend says is worth reading but i haven't even gotten through half. why? finding myslef quite bored, but i'll try to finish it anyway.

[grace86]

Bysshe - My dad was like you are with Vanity Fair. There is this one book he read as a student in college. He read it several times and never made it past a certain page. It was the same page every time. I cannot remember the title, but I bought a copy of it for him again about six months ago...and the same thing happened.

The title will come to me sooner or later.

You know, I had serious trouble getting through Anna Karenina as well. I think it took me like three months to read...but eventually I did get through it...and surprisingly I understood it!

[Idril]

* Although I finally made it to the end, I remember having skipped several (large) passages of Middlemarch by George Eliot :D

Oh man! I hated that book! I finished it as well after a time. I took a month off because I was so dreadfully bored but I persevered and when I was done, I had a bonfire with it. :D

[Schokokeks]

Oh man! I hated that book! I finished it as well after a time. I took a month off because I was so dreadfully bored but I persevered and when I was done, I had a bonfire with it. :D

:lol:
I had to read it for school and the exam at the end of term was the only thing that could have made me complete that book :D. Although I estimate that I missed out about a third of the book, I was still able to answer all the exam questions about plot and characters. Couldn't have been that much action in the parts I left out, I conclude :D
"More matter, less art !" would have been it.

[aeroport]

Ah, yes, The Hitchhiker's Guide. That was another of mine, as were Interview with the Vampire (along with The Vampire Lestat) and Vanity Fair.

[Bysshe]

true for me too. right now i'm trying to finish Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder, which my friend says is worth reading but i haven't even gotten through half. why? finding myslef quite bored, but i'll try to finish it anyway.

Yes, same here! I want to finish it, because I'm interested in philosophy, but even though the philisophical bits are interesting, the plot is quite tedious.

[subterranean]

I happen to love Sophie's World and I personally think that the book has enjoying flow of story :).