Hardest book for you to finish?

[waryan]

What book have you had to struggle the most with to finish and why? :sick:

For me- I've stopped and started 'Light in August' several times to get through it- probably over the course of a month while reading other things. I don't know why I have such problems with Faulkner =( but anyway that's my book from recent memory.

[JBI]

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Its size and difficulty made it difficult.

[Sir Bartholomew]

Henry James' final three novels. Too painful to account why.

[Idril]

First on my list would probably have to be Middlemarch because I was just so mind numbingly bored. I did put it down for a couple months but decided I couldn't let it defeat me and picked up again and finished it...then I burned it because I never wanted to have to see it again. :p The second book that comes to mind is The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky but for different reasons, that one just filled me with such despair, I couldn't continue. I got to about half way before I had to quit, then, like with Middlemarch, I gave it a month or so, reading light, fluffy, happy books in the meantime. I finally decided to tackle the second half, naively thinking it couldn't get worse...it got worse. :sick: Even so, I'm glad I got through it, I would never read it again but I do feel it was worth the depression it flung me into.

Waryan, I have issues with Faulkner as well. I've read A Light in August and The Sound and the Fury and neither were easy reads for me but I did get through them without having to take a break...that doesn't mean I understood anything, but I did finish them in normal time. ;)

[Tournesol]

I'm finding difficulty completing Tolkien's 3rd part of the Trilogy, 'The Return of the King'...I got through the first two and 'The Hobbit' just fine.

But somehow I'm stuck on the last one...I've put it down, and I've read so many, many books in between!

I suppose I just need to sit myself down with it one day, and dig into it!

[Dark Muse]

The hardest thing I ever read was the short stories by Melville. I have read about 4 of them I think, and they were all quite grueling to get through.

[aeroport]

Henry James' final three novels. Too painful to account why.

*sympathizes*
Still haven't finished them, though I'm committing myself to them completely once classes are through. I also seem to keep getting interrupted in the middle of 'The Turn of the Screw'.
Melville's Pierre was a pain; without a class to keep up with, I would never have bothered to finish.
I never got more than halfway through The Two Towers.

[mortalterror]

Twelve years elapsed between reading the first half of Les Miserables and the last half. I loved both parts. I suppose what held me back was that I'm not overfond of long books. I've made a special effort to read longer fiction in recent years, and I've found that by placing a quota of pages per day on my reading habits I can motor through anything. That's how I got through War and Peace, and Orlando Furioso last year.

[Pensive]

The Hobbit. It became slow-paced in the middle. The second time I read it I had no problem with it though and loved it immensely. The Magus has been quite difficult to keep up with too in the middle.

[moose gurl]

Tolkein, for sure. Can't seem to get through some of those books. I love the stories, but the writing can be tough.

Hmm...I had a really hard time reading Great Expectations and The Sun Also Rises. Great Expectations was at the very end of the school year, so that could be why. Not very good memories. Other than that, I've hated reading St. Augustine's Confessions, because it is so disorganized and awfully boring. And some bad fantasy books I've never finished. I started both Ulysses and Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins and never finished either, though I plan to pick both up one day. I was in the middle of a move and trying to read both at the same time in order to return them to the library before I left my home town. Did not happen. I don't recommend reading Ulysses and anything else at the same time. But I WILL finish both someday.

Never had much of a problem with Melville, but I really haven't read that much of his work, just parts of Moby Dick and a few short stories.

While I didn't like Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice very much, I must admit that they were pretty easy to get through. Wuthering Heights was a little slow at the beginning but it really picked up. I read Pride and Prejudice out loud to my mother on a road trip and she really liked it.

[johann cruyff]

Anything by Balzac or Hugo!I honestly don't think I've read a more boring book than Father Goriot...

Also,I've read Moby Dick twice.I don't know,there's something about that book that makes it interesting for me to read it.

[loe]

Goethe, Elective Affinities
The plot was interesting but reading this book was so strenuous.:sick:

[sprinks]

I keep having trouble with Pride and Prejudice... I keep stopping and starting so much so I have to go back to remember what happened, so its taking like 3 times longer to read than it would normally, and most likely I'm finding it harder because its for school.

[Aiculík]

Iris Murdoch's Black Prince. It is the about the author writing what he hopes will be his masterpiece...

Some parts of it are interesting and quite funny; but after few interesting pages, there are several pages of the author's philosophy, and sometimes he even directly addresses narratives. That could stil be interesting - but the problem is, that the author is not just bad man - egoistic immature pompous brat - he is also bad writer. And I simply couldn't stand it.

It is the first book after many years that I haven't finished... that happens really rarely, because I hate the feeling of "unfinished work" so I usually finish the book even if I don't like it, but this one was simply too boring... It kinda remined me why I stopped reading philosophy...

[Equilibrium]

I've mentioned it a couple of time already but Don Quixote has beaten me twice. I will certainly read it through one day, and war and peace which I abandoned a while ago, and Lolita too. I got a good way into each of them and enjoyed reading them but I just wasn't gripped enough to stick with it.

I think there is a definate negative psycological effect when you present yourself with a large book, just the size of it is off-putting. I have actually found in the past that I have much better luck with large books if I read them in PDF format on my laptop - no weighty codex to put me off I find I just plough though in no time.

[George_Berkeley]

Swann's Way, for me.

[Pandora Eve]

Faulker's The Fable - I only finished it because it was short. It was hard though because the sentences never ended. I was praying for a peroid. Moby Dick defeated me. The Bible has also defeated me in my attempts to read though it.

[Bluebiird]

Little Dorrit, only up to chapter 10 of book 1 and I had to do an essay on it last week.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain is very hard to get through, the same goes for the last book in Samuel Beckett's trilogy, The Unnamable. Faulkner is another one who I find hard to understand/get through.

[amalia1985]

Eko's "Foucault's Pendulum". It took me practically THREE years to finish it...

[Mockingbird_z]

Moby Dick...
i hope this time i will read it up to the end =)

[Kafka's Crow]

Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain is very hard to get through, the same goes for the last book in Samuel Beckett's trilogy, The Unnamable. Faulkner is another one who I find hard to understand/get through.

How can you say such a thing about The Unnamable? It is a lovely though strange book. I must have read the trilogy at least ten times! I completely agree with you about Faulkner though. Can't bring myself to read anything by him after reading As I Lay Dying. The Magic Mountain is on my reading list for last ten years. One of the most influential books. I can't even finish reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in spite of starting repeatedly and each time failing more miserably than before (oh, how Beckettian!)

[vheissu]

Eko's "Foucault's Pendulum". It took me practically THREE years to finish it...

I tried it once...and haven't picked it up again...well done on finishing it! I couldn't finish Eco's The island of the day before...

[KyleBennett]

War and Peace- Tolstoy...

Anyone else?

[djy78usa]

War and Peace is rough, but my vote has to go to Don Quixote. I started reading that book four seperate times before I finished.

[waryan]

books like War and Peace, Ulysses, Don Quixote and Swan's Way I haven't even approached for lack of strategy. I keep putting them off until I'm more "educated" which probably isn't the best idea because who is ever satisfied with their knowledge? These are the books I imagine I'll only read by simply jumping into suddenly.

[Bluebiird]

I said Little Dorrit specifically but Dickens in general, I've never finished a dickens book. I got A Christmas Carol from the school library (The only Dickens book I haven't been forced to read), ran out of time, took it back, couldn't be bothered to renew it and finish it.

[Akeldama]

I'm having a hard time getting anywhere in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, I think it's just the giant stack of books (nine or so) that I'm the process of reading.

[aeroport]

How can you say such a thing about The Unnamable? It is a lovely though strange book.
...I can't even finish reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in spite of starting repeatedly and each time failing more miserably than before (oh, how Beckettian!)

:lol:
Actually, I remember The Unnameable being kind of tough to get through - however, this could be just because my whole Beckett experience took place in a single week (allowing exactly one day to read this book)...
I enjoyed Malloy a bit more. Perhaps I'll try to read through them all this summer...

[*Classic*Charm*]

The Black Book by Pamuk. Oh my.

[Kafka's Crow]

:lol:
Actually, I remember The Unnameable being kind of tough to get through - however, this could be just because my whole Beckett experience took place in a single week (allowing exactly one day to read this book)...
I enjoyed Malloy a bit more. Perhaps I'll try to read through them all this summer...

Spent only one week on Beckett!!! Look here, 19 years and counting!!!

[Sana Koulagasi]

Heart of Darkness
this book was very hard because of its long descriptive parts.

[Sir Bartholomew]

had problems with Under the Volcano, but I'm glad I finished it.

[kelby_lake]

moby dick and crime and punishment was v. hard to read because of the russian names.

[aeroport]

Spent only one week on Beckett!!! Look here, 19 years and counting!!!

Yeah, it was a nightmare. And two days for Joyce's Portrait. The whole class took place in three weeks. I would very much like never to take one of those again. I'll probably go back to him sometime - the novels, at least. Roth seems to mention them an awful lot, and I feel rather ignorant...

[Godiva83]

"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova, jeez...

And it wasn't even worth it. Bleh.

[kasie]

[QUOTE=Inderjit Sanghe;556280]Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain is very hard to get through....QUOTE]

The Magic Mountain is one of the very few books I've given up completely and never gone back for a second try. I made the mistake of taking it with me on holiday to Switzerland (thought it would gain something from being read in the appropriate ambience etc) but oh dear, it was so depressing - I thought I would break down in tears after a while and it was definitely not the thing to read on what was turning out to be one of the best holidays of my life - my mother's first holiday abroad and she was loving every minute of it, game for anything, just like a child!

Ulysses? - try reading it with something like Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses - a Study close to hand. Though I'm a great believer in letting a book speak for itself, I feel something as dense with allusion as this needs a gloss to help one along.

Proust? Read it a volume at a time, not all at one go or you'll get mental indigestion! Or maybe try another translation, if you're not reading it in the original. It's not one for speed-reading - those lengthy sentences need time for the rhythms to unfold.

Austen - please persevere. Remember Jane was writing a comedy of manners, not Great Literature - again, let those rhythmic sentences develop in their own time, hear the gently wicked smile behind them!

Dickens - no, sorry, I just can't get on with that sententious style at all! And to me somehow his characters lack a third dimension, even those that are supposed to grow and learn from their experiences. (Now all the Dickens lovers will come down on me like a ton of bricks!)

I suppose all Great Literature needs time and is inappropriate for speed-reading. I've never finished The Brothers Karamazov because it was a set book and I read it under pressure in an intensive course that had thirty-odd similarly chunky books to cover in just over twenty weeks - read into the small hours (and was quite enjoying it) but woke next morning with a burst blood vessel in my eye so no more reading of any description for a few days and a severe reprimand from the medical centre for reading so much and a severe reprimand from the tutor for not finishing the text!

Under the Volcano? Well, that turned up as the examination book for the above course. We weren't examined on any of the books in the course - we had shown we had read the books (or not!) from seminar work and essays, we were told: what the examiners wanted to know was, could we assess a book which was completely new to us and for which there were no critical texts? We were given copies of it a week before the exam and told to go away and read it, bring it back a week later for the exam and answer the questions set. (We were allowed to take the text - unmarked in any way - into the exam room with us.) There was a short period of silence while we all went away and read it, then some frantic ad hoc discussion groups and 'question spotting' in the coffee bar for the remainder of the week!

Sorry this has been such a long post - I've only just caught up with the thread.

[Proust71]

Plato's Republic took me the longest amount of time to read (peruse). Three months were spent on what it would have taken me at least two weeks-time permitting-to read about three hundred and more pages. But what a fantastic work! Deeply inspiring and thought-provoking, indeed.

[DapperDrake]

Well, If non-fiction is allowed then I must confess I've not finished half of the non-fiction shelf in my bookcase. Particularly anything by Hume or Kant, you can bet I've started several times and failed miserably.

One particular book that I actually use as an insomnia cure (never fails) is "A guide through the theory of knowledge" by adam morton. Very interesting so it captures my attention but so dry and so stuffed with philosophical jargon that my brain just expires after a few pages :)

[papayahed]

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

[DapperDrake]

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

I always struggle a little with Woolf but its always worth it, The Waves is one of my favourite books.

[Kafka's Crow]

[QUOTE=Inderjit Sanghe;556280]Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain is very hard to get through....QUOTE]

The Magic Mountain is one of the very few books I've given up completely and never gone back for a second try. I made the mistake of taking it with me on holiday to Switzerland (thought it would gain something from being read in the appropriate ambience etc) but oh dear, it was so depressing - I thought I would break down in tears after a while and it was definitely not the thing to read on what was turning out to be one of the best holidays of my life - my mother's first holiday abroad and she was loving every minute of it, game for anything, just like a child!

Ulysses? - try reading it with something like Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses - a Study close to hand. Though I'm a great believer in letting a book speak for itself, I feel something as dense with allusion as this needs a gloss to help one along.

Proust? Read it a volume at a time, not all at one go or you'll get mental indigestion! Or maybe try another translation, if you're not reading it in the original. It's not one for speed-reading - those lengthy sentences need time for the rhythms to unfold.

Austen - please persevere. Remember Jane was writing a comedy of manners, not Great Literature - again, let those rhythmic sentences develop in their own time, hear the gently wicked smile behind them!

Dickens - no, sorry, I just can't get on with that sententious style at all! And to me somehow his characters lack a third dimension, even those that are supposed to grow and learn from their experiences. (Now all the Dickens lovers will come down on me like a ton of bricks!)

I suppose all Great Literature needs time and is inappropriate for speed-reading. I've never finished The Brothers Karamazov because it was a set book and I read it under pressure in an intensive course that had thirty-odd similarly chunky books to cover in just over twenty weeks - read into the small hours (and was quite enjoying it) but woke next morning with a burst blood vessel in my eye so no more reading of any description for a few days and a severe reprimand from the medical centre for reading so much and a severe reprimand from the tutor for not finishing the text!

Under the Volcano? Well, that turned up as the examination book for the above course. We weren't examined on any of the books in the course - we had shown we had read the books (or not!) from seminar work and essays, we were told: what the examiners wanted to know was, could we assess a book which was completely new to us and for which there were no critical texts? We were given copies of it a week before the exam and told to go away and read it, bring it back a week later for the exam and answer the questions set. (We were allowed to take the text - unmarked in any way - into the exam room with us.) There was a short period of silence while we all went away and read it, then some frantic ad hoc discussion groups and 'question spotting' in the coffee bar for the remainder of the week!

Sorry this has been such a long post - I've only just caught up with the thread.

Good post and I totally agree on Dickens. Think of it, I have his Complete Works on my ereader but I am yet to complete reading any of them. Same goes for almost all the English novelists except George Eliot, Jane Austen, John Cowper Powys and Henry Fielding. While mentioning Dickens, let me touch on some other of the great unreadables: Henry James (the KING!), The Bronte Sisters (yes all lumped together!), Anthony Trollope, Thackeray etc. I think this must be the so-called 'realism' thing. British culture is thoroughly realist and empiricist which is reflected, mainly, in English novel. I like English humor. Writers like Austen, Fielding, Swift, Wilde, Wodehouse and Jerome K Jerome etc are some of the world's greatest humorists but if you want serious novels, look elsewhere.

[Remarkable]

D.H.Lawrence's "Women in Love".It took me more then three weeks,an amount of time I can dedicate only to a very long novel or a great historical book!
It was a good book,after all,but boring from time to time.There were only a couple of chapters I read with pleasure...It was interesting to study those strange point of views but it could have definitely been more engaging!

[ben.!]

Heart of Darkness was a pretty hard slog to get through. It's short, but you feel like it's long with all the hard density of the text.

Lord of the Rings, I'm sad to say, I never finished. I had to read it for school. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I stopped about halfway through, too hard I found and a bit of a plodding read.

Joyce's Dubliners, as much as I loved it, was pretty dense and difficult too. Especially his last short story, The Dead. That was probably the densest short story of his that I read.

[amanda_isabel]

i;'m still in the middle of vistor Hugo's Les Miserables.. the history part is a bit boring and i feeel guilty skipping it so it's just waiting for me..

[huntress4eva]

Jonathan stange and Mr Norell good book far to many footnotes

[kitten]

The Hobbit - I just can't get into that.
Most things by Faulkner - those are a challenge and a half
Don Quixote (sp?) - bored bored bored bored bored

[waryan]

Has anyone tried to read David Foster Wallace's INFINITE JEST? It's infinite allright. Most people I know who have read it say they liked it, I ought to give it more time though probably.

[jenmcd]

I made the mistake of starting The Tree of Man by Patrick White in hospital when I gave birth to my 3rd child 10 weeks ago. Far too heavy for a time like that - it took me six weeks to finish it.

[mickitaz]

For me.. Lord of the Rings. I have this thing, once I start a book, I have to finish it.. no matter how horrible it is.

Not that Lord of the Rings was horrible.. on the contrary. But for some reason, it took me over a year to read it.. A long time for me.

Now, my cousin has me reading "Paradise Lost". I find it interesting.. but I am a grammar/vocab girl. If I don't understand a word/phrase, I have an electronic pocket dictionary that I look words up. With this book, I find I am doing that constantly. That, and reading prose.. I have a tendency to want to find a rythym with the reading. I purposely bought the audio book to help me in this aspect... I am only on book three :bawling:

[kasie]

Does this mean you don't believe Jane Austen wrote great literature?.....

No, no, not at all - but while she was writing it, it was Comedy of Manners. It's Posterity (with a capital P ) that has bestowed the Great Literature tag on her. In fact, I think it's up to Posterity to hand out the Great Literature awards: authors who set out to write GL so often seem to produce unreadable, sententious stuff (I was going to put rubbish there but I thought it sounded too condemnatory.) I call the Booker Prize as my first witness.

I liked Orlando but I like Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway is my favourite.

Are you really in Wessex? My husband came from Dorset - Port Bredy in Hardy's Wessex - lovely part of the country.

[kasie]

For me.. Lord of the Rings. I have this thing, once I start a book, I have to finish it.. no matter how horrible it is....

mickitaz - life is too short to read books you don't like. If you can't get on with something, stop reading it and move on to something else. Give it a fair crack of the whip - fifty pages should be enough, though I must admit, you may need a bit more for Lord of the Rings:lol:, and if it doesn't hold your attention, start something else. There is no moral obligation to finish a book just because you have started it - it may be the wrong book at the wrong time. You can always come back to it - if it niggles in your memory, maybe it was the right book, but the time was wrong.

Ignore the people who tell you you owe it to the author to finish his/her book - if it doesn't enthral you, it doesn't - you are the best judge of what you enjoy, don't let other people tell you what you like. Allow them to suggest things, by all means, it's the best way to find out about new authors, but have the courage of your own convictions and follow your own inclinations. I should perhaps exclude from this sweeping statement books that are on reading lists for school/college/university - they are usually on the lists for a reason and as a student, maybe you have to work at finding out the reason for the book's reputation, and in so doing you will expand your critical ability.

I hesitate to lumber you with yet more poetry but I found on a recent re-reading of Tolkein that I appreciated his style the more for re-reading Beowulf (the Seamus Heany rendition) - the rhythms are similar.

Good for you for looking up words but don't let it get in the way of the flow: the meaning of lots of new words becomes apparent as you read but if you are still not sure, save your delvings into the dictionary for a natural break in the storyline.

Can you listen to Milton while you are doing something else? Travelling or ironing, for example? What a heresy, ironing to Milton! Well, why not? I iron to Mozart!

[mickitaz]

mickitaz - life is too short to read books you don't like.
I hesitate to lumber you with yet more poetry but I found on a recent re-reading of Tolkein that I appreciated his style the more for re-reading Beowulf (the Seamus Heany rendition) - the rhythms are similar.

Good for you for looking up words but don't let it get in the way of the flow: the meaning of lots of new words becomes apparent as you read but if you are still not sure, save your delvings into the dictionary for a natural break in the storyline.

Can you listen to Milton while you are doing something else? Travelling or ironing, for example? What a heresy, ironing to Milton! Well, why not? I iron to Mozart!

Haha.. now I know where your previous post came from ;) Honestly, if I don't like a book.. I just don't like it.. The idea of finishing a book is more so that I can honestly say that I gave it a fair shot. Back when I was young, I would start a book.. decided I didn't like it, then hear other reviews and think "maybe I missed something".

Most of the time... I can let the vocabulary go. I can generally judge by the context of the story. I if I loose the meaning of the story because of a word or phrase, then I will re-read it.

There are some books I can listen to while doing other things. Specially if I already read the "book". I have tried listening to Milton at work, and I just don't get anything done.

Hey, ironing to Mozart is no tragedy. I mainly listen to classical music, from work work, to house work, to reading...

[sprinks]

The Chosen by Chaim Potok... Must keep reading... It HAS to get good at some point...

[naomi moon]

The Prophet by Gibran Khalil Gibran

[Idril]

Has anyone tried to read David Foster Wallace's INFINITE JEST? It's infinite allright. Most people I know who have read it say they liked it, I ought to give it more time though probably.

I've read it and loved it but I certainly admit it was there were times when reading it was a bit of a chore. Any book with 100 pages of notes is going to take some work. Although it's not just the notes, it's the fact that on almost every page there was a word I had to look up in the dictionary. :blush: But do keep going because it honestly is worth the trial.

Kitten, I had a hard time with The Hobbit too and I'm a huge Tolkien fan. I read through it once and struggled then tried to reread it when I got a new edition with Alan Lee illustrations and got about a 4th of the way through it before I decided once was enough. :rolleyes:

[NotWoodhouse]

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I just couldn't get through it easily.

[Scorpio Ascendant]

The English version of Anna Karenina. So many Russian phrases here and there, which requires checking all the time to get the point. I read it before in a different language and it was great. I still don't understand why those phrases were left untouched.

[relgart]

It was early winter (grey weather) and it was just too depressing.

I picked it back up in the spring and everything was okay.

[thelastmelon]

For some reason I haven't been able to finish Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco yet. When I read it, I do like it.. but for some reason, I simply can't get through it. But I will have finished it this year, or else.. shame on me. I always finish what I read, and this was a good book.. just a bit complicated when I couldn't concentrate.

[betzen]

I'm so glad to see a few people mention the Sound & the Fury. That was the first one that came to my mind. I know many people on these forums love Faulkner, so I was beginning to think it was just me.

Also, Portrait of the artist as a young man, by Joyce. I think with both these books, they were hard to get through, but what was worse was that, when I did finish them, there was no satisfaction. It's not like I ended them with an appreciation for them. I had hoped the endings would tie the books together for me, but they didn't.

[EugenieIsabelle]

Don't be shocked, but I was never able to finish Robinson Crusoe. I don't know why. It's totally my fault, but I just can't manage it. Also, shockingly enough as well, David Copperfield. David just exasperates me, I can't help it. Lastly, The Flood by Henry Senkevitch. (I don't know how to spell that in English.) All three are such famous books that I think there must be something the matter with me.

[Chesterfield]

I had to do some summer work for an Advanced Placement class last year, and "The Scarlet Letter" was one of the requirements. I don't know if it was the subject matter, or Hawthorne's sleep-inducing diction and syntax, but I found it nearly impossible to finish. Walden Pond took quite a while, too; Thoreau just seems full of himself.

[Chesterfield]

I read The Scarlet Letter once, but I remember nothing at all about it. LOL I guess it is sleep inducing. Now, I did like The House of the Seven Gables, though.

Well, it was a combination of many things...especially with all of the outside work that I needed to do with the book, and the lack of time (or rather, procrastination) just added fuel to the fire. Peculiar, because I looked into more of his work, like 'Gables', given that we were covering Hawthorne in class again, and I enjoyed it. :p

[AdoreroDio]

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

It took me multiple tries and over all two years to read this book- on average it takes me a week to read a book its size normally

reason- It's impossible! Maybe I was to young to understand it or it was just confusing, I'm not sure but it was the hardest for me to ever finish- rarely did I succeed in getting past the first chapter when I tried.

2nd place goes to Moby Dick but that only took me two months to read.

[sharpie]

Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant...... I bought the book over a year ago and i have only read the introduction in the course of a year.

Absalom! Absalom! - Faulkner.......I just can't stay focused on this one either

[Cailin]

Catch 22 - each time I pick it up, I get a little further - but I have yet to complete it!

[Kafka's Crow]

The Shadow of the Wind. I read about halfway or a little more and nothing was happening, so I gave it up. It's still on my shelf, unread.

I found it to be the quickest ever read! It was like a whirlwind and never slowed down. I love books about books. I think I finished it in 2 days and I am a very slow reader.

[Sir Bartholomew]

im reading part one of The Alexandria Quartet, seems as if a good candidate for this thread

[kasie]

The Shadow of the Wind. I read about halfway or a little more and nothing was happening, so I gave it up. It's still on my shelf, unread.

Keep going, Antiquarian - it finishes at a gallop!

[Devil Child]

The Russian Novelist Alexandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn's August 1918, was probably the one book that I struggled on the most, there were so many minor character names that seemed all alike. I love military history, but this book was over to top.

[Devil Child]

How could you not love the Catcher in the Rye? It was a very insightful book that portrayed the disulutions of humanity, the pressures that society puts upon people's shoulders. But it also portrayed that one ray of hope, the hope of catching those that don't fit with society and make mistakes.

[Hank Stamper]

I have Don Quixote and Moby Dick to tackle over the summer holidays.. I dunno if that is wishful thinking! One book I really laboured over recently was V by Thomas Pynchon... dunno why, I didn't particularly dislike it, just found the constant jumping around of the narrative tiresome

[valleyjune]

1. Gulliver's travels. Even though I hated it, I had to read it through, since it was part of one of my university courses.
2. War and Peace. I liked but it seemed too long with all this philosophical quest. Probably I was too young then... :(

[Nossa]

Robinson Crusoe, simply because it bored me to death. It's just one of these novels that you wonder why it got published in the first place.

[cipherdecoy]

The Black Book by Pamuk. Oh my.

Yes!
:lol:

[Beautifull]

believe it or not...
the last harry potter book
I had it set aside for about four months...

[S.MacConmidhe]

1. Gulliver's travels. Even though I hated it, I had to read it through, since it was part of one of my university courses.



Why don't you like Gulliver's Travels?!?

[Beautifull]

do you like Gulliver's Travels...?

[Hank Stamper]

I'm reading Gulliver's Travels at the moment and I'm, er, sailing through it... honk!