What are you NOT reading?

[Insane4Twain]

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.

[mtpspur]

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.

[Desolation]

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.

[Insane4Twain]

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.

[blazeofglory]

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.

[Pierre Menard]

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?

[JuniperWoolf]

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.

[Seasider]

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.

[Charles Darnay]

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

[Aylinn]

Alice in the Wonderland Every time I tried to read this book, it lulled me to sleep.

[JBI]

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.

[Calidore]

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.

[Alexander III]

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.

[dysfunctional-h]

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...

[KCurtis]

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.

:lol: 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.

[KCurtis]

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.


An opinion-Dostoyevsky was a great writer, why wouldn't he be popular? I have no idea why he was recognized more than Tolstoy or some of the others, I don't really pay attention to that, and I have not read them. But I have read some Pushkin and loved it.

[OrphanPip]

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.

I really quite like that novel, more than any of her other novels you get a feel for Woolf's sense of humour that comes out in her essays.

Edit: I don't think Dostoyevsky is a bad writer, but it is fair to say that he is perhaps over-rated. I personally read him religiously when I was 14, and there was something in it, but when I go back to him these days I'm much less enthralled by it all.

[dysfunctional-h]

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

Where's a good place to start with Henry James? I own Portrait of a Lady, but I worry that'll be a bad place to start...

I started Eco's Name of the Rose, but I got bored quickly and was already reading like five other novels, so I put it back. I plan to pick it up again, tho... I dunno i just hate these sort of snobby novels. but I guess I should try it anyways...

Well the main reason I liked Portrait of the Artist was because of my identification with Stephen's suffocating in Dublin. I actually didn't really notice much SoC... where did you guys see it?

[OrphanPip]

If you're looking for an introduction to James you can't really go wrong with his two major novellas: The Aspern Papers or The Turn of the Screw.

[Charles Darnay]

^ I second this

[JuniperWoolf]

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.

Actually I kind of suspected that that was what was going on after I finished Portrait of the Artist. I read Dubliners, and one day I actually spent a lot of time "overthinking" Araby, until suddenly things started clicking into place. After I was done Portrait of the Artist and I was left with that empty feeling I started to suspect that "overthinking" is how you're supposed to read Joyce.

Still, I think it'll be a few years before I give it another go.

[Calidore]

I've heard this from many people before and I've come to the conclusion that people approach this book with a certain expectation and find that it's completely nothing like they've read before, or thought it would be.

Speaking for myself, the only thing I think I expected from a Pulitzer-winning comedy was that it would be funny, which it wasn't remotely IMO. I started reading it, then skimming, then gave up entirely. One of my co-workers brought it to work soon after, and when she was finished with it I asked her if I had missed out on anything, and she said I hadn't.

Could you be more specific about the expectations people told you they brought and what you think we were missing?

[dysfunctional-h]

Actually I kind of suspected that that was what was going on after I finished Portrait of the Artist. I read Dubliners, and one day I actually spent a lot of time "overthinking" Araby, until suddenly things started clicking into place. After I was done Portrait of the Artist and I was left with that empty feeling I started to suspect that "overthinking" is how you're supposed to read Joyce.

Still, I think it'll be a few years before I give it another go.

LOL we read Araby in my non-honors English 11 class and nobody understood it (other than me). When it comes to Portrait of the Artist, it really depends on which section, cause I don't really see much point in read the sections about him being obsessed with religion as anything other than simple satire. XD

On another note, I read that Nabokov made his students chart where things were occurring on a map of Dublin when he had them read Joyce. And then, of course, there's Bloomsday. So it may be a good idea to go there at some point before or while reading Ulysses or Dubliners.

[Venerable Bede]

I usually don't give up on books with a reputation for being classics. However, I did quit The Last of the Mohicans because it was terribly dry and stilted. Also, I couldn't make it through Blood Meridian. It was excellently written, but the violence and wickedness of the characters were too much for me.

[hawthorns]

I've gotten better about giving a book/author a fair shake before giving up. But there have been a few that felt like real drudgery:

Wuthering Heights--uugggg (although I love Charlotte and Anne's works)
Ulysses--Too young when I attempted it. Will revisit...
Atlas Shrugged--somebody shoot me...
Lord of the Flies--School assignment. I think I used Cliffsnotes.
The Great Gatsby
1984
Pride & Prejudice / N. Abbey
The Da Vinci Code

[cyberbob]

I do this with all kinds of books, not just boring or confusing ones. A lot of the time I stop only because I feel that I don't want to read it at that point in time and I'm in the mood for something else and maybe I'll come back to it at some other time. That's why I like to own books and not check them out of the library.

Waiting for Godot is not that long, though, and plays are never that hard to get through. I love Beckett and absurdist plays.

I've done this recently with Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. I've also tried reading the Sound and the Fury and had even less success with that. I may give Faulkner another chance years from now or something but for now his style causes me too much mental strain.

[Insane4Twain]

I usually don't give up on books with a reputation for being classics. However, I did quit The Last of the Mohicans because it was terribly dry and stilted. I guess you already know Twain's opinion of that author.

[JuniperWoolf]

1984


We often see the other novels on your list given as examples of classics that people found tedious, but I think you're the first one I've seen to whom 1984 "felt like real drudgery." I've seen people who didn't like it (a bit too sensationalist for some), but no one who was bored by it.

I'm surprised no one has said Moby Dick yet. That damn whale breeds chapter...

[Desolation]

I forgot about Moby-Dick...I've given up on that one a couple of times. It's an objectively great novel, but the first 200 pages (which, incidentally, is about as far as I ever got) are painful.

[Venerable Bede]

I guess you already know Twain's opinion of that author.

Yeah, I discovered his rant against Cooper after I had quit Last of the Mohicans and I had a good laugh. It's hard to beat Twain's sarcastic humour.


I've gotten better about giving a book/author a fair shake before giving up. But there have been a few that felt like real drudgery:

Wuthering Heights--uugggg (although I love Charlotte and Anne's works)
Ulysses--Too young when I attempted it. Will revisit...
Atlas Shrugged--somebody shoot me...
Lord of the Flies--School assignment. I think I used Cliffsnotes.
The Great Gatsby
1984
Pride & Prejudice / N. Abbey
The Da Vinci Code

I'm surprised to see The Great Gatsby on this list. Its short enough and written simply enough that it should be easy to push through even if you don't like it very much. Also, I almost quit Wuthering Heights too when I started because I thought it was written terribly. Then it picked up, and by the end I actually kind of liked it. It's probably worth giving it another shot; just stick it through till it picks up.

[PoeticPassions]

I have tried reading Don Quixote and gave up about half -way through... it just couldn't keep my attention and I found it rather dull. I understand why it is a classic, but I guess I can't understand why two very dear people to me note it as their favorite book of all time...

Also, for some reason, I couldn't get through One Hundred Years of Solitude, though I really like Marquez and have read a few of his other novels. I do plan on trying this one again, however (as this happened with Madam Bovary a long time ago, and then I tried rereading a year or two ago, and I not only found it to be poetic and amazing, but I couldn't put it down).

And Nabokov's Pale Fire... I found my thoughts wandering every few lines... Again, I plan on re-trying this one.

[ashthehunk]

I tried What Is Man by Twain twice and both the times its cynicism made it tough to keep up the flow . I think Twain wrote it after loosing an argument or a game in poker.
But i have friends who had it as their favorite.

Another one is Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Would it be suffice to say that it is the most difficult book to read. Alas! I got to know it after trying it.

But having said that it is an eternal truth that Books are those things which no one can review for you. Literary taste is subjective issue.
:brow:

[KCurtis]

Edit: I don't think Dostoyevsky is a bad writer, but it is fair to say that he is perhaps over-rated. I personally read him religiously when I was 14, and there was something in it, but when I go back to him these days I'm much less enthralled by it all.

He is not for everyone, that's for sure. His stories are depressing, sad, insightful though, sensitive and yes, dreary. But I also see the humor. I have a thing about Russian writers who write about political stuff. Especially when they have been through so much. My grandparents escaped the Russian Revolution, so maybe that's it. I'm glad you were such a reader when you were 14, impressive!

[Jair]

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.

Do you realise that he didn't steal the coin? It simply slipped under his foot when the kid dropped it.

[Insane4Twain]

I forgot about Moby-Dick...I've given up on that one a couple of times. It's an objectively great novel, but the first 200 pages (which, incidentally, is about as far as I ever got) are painful.Hasn't anyone ever told you to read every other chapter? It's like reading The Scarlet Letter - skip the first chapter.

And then enjoy!

[Desolation]

^ I know...But I can't do that. I'd like to say that next time I go about it, I'm going to skip straight to the part where Ahab is introduced (Because Ahab is a badass), but I probably won't.

I'm a sucker, if I'm going to read something, I have to go from beginning to end.

[mal4mac]

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.

I gave up on this the first time, but found a better translation! Don't you think you should have put a bit more effort, and money, into finding a good version?

How can you teach Spanish without having read this? Do you teach "business" or "tourist" Spanish? Any intellectual students would ask you questions about it, surely? What do you say?

There are sticky patches - maybe you found one after four chapters. But I found it picked up again very quickly, and in the end was, mostly, a very enjoyable and interesting read. OK it's long, but you'd be hard put to find five "ordinary sized" novels as much worth reading.

Note I don't persevere "whatever" - I gave up on Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. I do try a little bit harder to get into acknowledged classics, but there are limits to my perseverance...

[ChicagoReader]

JR by Gaddis. I went into the book with high hopes after enjoying The Recognitions and Agape Agape. It was just too tiresome for me. I got to around halfway and quit our of pure frustration. All the male characters are very similar and their rants go on and on, half of it being gibberish.

Another is DeLillo's Underworld. Again, I'd had positive experiences with several of his books and figured Underworld is most people's recommendation, but it just seemed to take fifty pages to say what many writers could do in twenty or so, just my opinion. I quit this one also around halfway, but I plan to finish it at some point.

[aliengirl]

Middlemarch by George Eliot. It is the only novel which was in my course and I didn't read it. I could not get beyond a few pages. I've tried twice and given up. Maybe later this year I'll give it a chance.

The Adventures of Augie March by Bellow is another novel which I left midway. I read a few chapters and when I realized things were not going to change or were just getting worse, I quit.

[Paulclem]

I wouldn't read the Mill on the Floss - begun and discarded. I include this first as I know Mal4mac is a fan. (I did like Silas Marner though). :biggrin5:

Jane Austen bores me - I have no interest in the manners genre.

I disliked Henry James The Turn of the Screw from the start due to his irritating style.

Many of the ones mentioned I've enjoyed - particularly Hawthornes list.

I very ratrely have to give up on a book because I don't like it as I know what I like.

[Insane4Twain]

How can you teach Spanish without having read this [Don Quixote de la Mancha]? Do you teach "business" or "tourist" Spanish? Any intellectual students would ask you questions about it, surely? What do you say?Are you kidding? I teach high school Spanish. They've barely heard of Mark Twain, let alone Cervantes. If I used the expression "tilting at windmills," they'd look at me like I just grew another head.

[Insane4Twain]

i'm surprised to see the great gatsby on this list. and 1984!

[PabloQ]

I gave up on Don Quixote as well, but I do plan to try it again soon. The reason I gave up on it was because I found it too sad , but I'm sure I can come back at it with a fresh attitude.
The Henry James work that I read all the way through and wish I had had the wherewithall to chuck aside was Wings of the Dove. Hated the characters and the plot. Still do.
I disagree with many of the opinions expressed above. I have no experience with Joyce.
I do agree with JBI on one thing. So many of these threads include the comment that so-and-so is overrated. This typically is synonymous with not to the individual's taste. It does not, however, mean that the author in question has not earned the high regard generally bestowed on him or her. Every author might have a clunker, but it doesn't void an entire body of work. Review the comments on Henry James. There are different works cited as favorites and others as unreadable, but at the end of day, none of our opinions alter James' standing in the halls of literature. Same with Faulkner or any one else here. It's why it is opinion.
Often a work simply does not meet our expectations -- of the author or of the work. As a closing thought, Great Expectations disappointed me, but I finished it. I didn't like different elements of the plot or of certain characters and really didn't care for the ending. It doesn't matter. It doesn't diminsh Dickens standing in the canon of British Literatue. It's just my opinion.

[Ohmyscience]

Beckett's The Unnameable. After getting halfway through I literally lost my place while reading and could not find where I left off. I could not comprehend it. You know you're lost when every page reads the same.

[msmoonlite]

I just have to laugh....I love Dostoevsky but for the life of my I couldn't tell you why. I am far from being an angst-filled teenage boy. I'm going to have to go home tonight and flip through my copies of the Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment to see if I can come up with a good reason why I liked them so much.

[books tasted]

I used to believe I would never NOT finish a book. But now I realize life is too short to spend time reading books I dislike! :)

I've seen a few books mentioned that I too could not get through:
Middlemarch
The Sound and the Fury

Other books I just couldn't get through:
Billy Budd
Sister Carrie

The latest book I've been reading that I gave up on was An Everlasting Meal, an essay-style book about cooking. It's not hard reading, I just found it pretentious, and it's hard to read about cooking in essay format. I enjoyed reading Julia Child's memoir, but reading about how to cook written in paragraphs is not my cup of tea.

I was relieved to see someone else say they don't like Hemingway, because I have never been able to get into his books, and analyzing them back in undergrad classes was always a chore.

[kev67]

I gave up on Don Quixote too. I seem to remember it had lots of digressions and lots of repetition. It seemed like a reasonably good idea flogged to death.
I think I finished the first part then gave up.

I never completed 1984 neither. I tried reading it when I was fifteen or sixteen, but I got about three-quarters of the way through and realised he wasn't going to escape and lead the counter revolution, so gave up.

I did not get past the first few chapters of Catch 22. I was more interested in real air battle histories at the time.

I also gave up on the Life of Pi after the end of part 1. It won a Booker Prize. Several of my friends said it was a great book.

[Atomic]

The Magus by John Fowles. Having read The Collector in a single day, I devoured The French Lieutenant's Woman and The Ebony tower with equal zeal. So, yeah...my expectations were kind of great...

Unfortunately, The Magus is a flop. 350 pages in and I'm crawling through this condensed, contrived and oh so boring magnus flopus at the pace of salted slug. Had his other works not impressed me so much, I wouldn't even try. :svengo:

[Paulclem]

I just have to laugh....I love Dostoevsky but for the life of my I couldn't tell you why. I am far from being an angst-filled teenage boy. I'm going to have to go home tonight and flip through my copies of the Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment to see if I can come up with a good reason why I liked them so much.

I read crime and punishment recently, and I thought it very good. I felt he drew the characters very well, and related all the mad things that happened in the camp brilliantly - like the Christmas play and the eagle they kept for a while.

I read Crime and Punishment at uni - good while ago - and I thought it a pretty claustrophobic book - not an enjoyable read. The ending was a big disappointment too - oddly contrived with him getting off due to Raskalnikov saving the children from the fire. I found the vision of the tents of Abraham seemed to belong to a dfferent book.

[Paulclem]

I gave up on Don Quixote too. I seem to remember it had lots of digressions and lots of repetition. It seemed like a reasonably good idea flogged to death.
I think I finished the first part then gave up.

I never completed 1984 neither. I tried reading it when I was fifteen or sixteen, but I got about three-quarters of the way through and realised he wasn't going to escape and lead the counter revolution, so gave up.

I did not get past the first few chapters of Catch 22. I was more interested in real air battle histories at the time.

I also gave up on the Life of Pi after the end of part 1. It won a Booker Prize. Several of my friends said it was a great book.

1984's not an easy read, but it has a few good ideas in it hat have relevance today - newspeak and Big Brothwer come to mind. I think it's worth the read just to glean an idea of where those ideas come from.

I liked Catch 22 too, though I had seen the film first.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

One example that comes to mind is Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago, started about three years ago and made it about one eighth into the book and set it aside.
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a much easier read addressing similar themes as The Gulag, but in far fewer pages. I plan to give The Gulag another attemp at some point.

[Insane4Twain]

I think my next thread should be What are you NOT reading to your kids? Some of the books I see here are prize-winners among critics. Sometimes that tells me all I need to know about a book. Is having a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize attached to a work of literature a good thing, a bad thing, or indifferent?

I've read a lot of children's books in my life as a parent. I confess that when I see the Newberry Prize stamp on the cover, that's the book I tend to avoid.

[Paulclem]

One example that comes to mind is Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago, started about three years ago and made it about one eighth into the book and set it aside.
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a much easier read addressing similar themes as The Gulag, but in far fewer pages. I plan to give The Gulag another attemp at some point.

We have the book, and it's on my to read list. I read it when I was in my early twenties, but my knowledge of Russia was much more sketchy. I think I'll get more out of it this time. I found Ivan Denisovitch much easier too. It has more punch being so much shorter.

[Calidore]

I think my next thread should be What are you NOT reading to your kids? Some of the books I see here are prize-winners among critics. Sometimes that tells me all I need to know about a book. Is having a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize attached to a work of literature a good thing, a bad thing, or indifferent?

I've read a lot of children's books in my life as a parent. I confess that when I see the Newberry Prize stamp on the cover, that's the book I tend to avoid.

Which Newberry books didn't work for you? I can think of three off the top of my head that were great: A Wrinkle in Time, Lloyd Alexander's The High King (the finale of his excellent Prydain series), and one of the books in Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series.

[kev67]

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.



I read Daisy Miller. It was one of four books mentioned in another book called 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' about a women's book group in Iran. The others were Lolita, Pride & Prejudice, and the Great Gatsby (I think). Daisy Miller was quite a nice book on the whole, quite short, has an unnecessarily miserable ending and I couldn't see what the fuss was about.

I also slogged my way through Foucault's Pendulum, even though nothing much seemed to happen till about fifty pages from the end. You would be better off reading 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, which covers the same ground, even though it's not strictly fiction. I have gone right off Umberto Eco. I liked 'The Name of the Rose', and did not mind all the interminable digressions into all the various medieval heresies because they were interesting. Then I read 'Focault's Pendulum', which was two inches thick and never seemed to get going. Finally I read 'The Island of the Day Before', which despite being two inches thick, did not have a proper ending.

[hawthorns]

I admit I couldn't make it through Winston Churchill's WWII series either. I got through Their Finest Hour (all fantastic), but by then I felt like I needed a grad degree in WWII military tactics/history. Got pretty dry.

[Alexander III]

I tried read Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint - and not only did I find it to be dull and lacking in beauty, but it was inexperianced, I spent a lot of time looking down patronizingly on the book because it felt like it was written by a man who knew little of the world. I gave up on it.

[Insane4Twain]

Which Newberry books didn't work for you? I only remember one that had a bear in it. Late 1980s, if memory serves. I get the sense that those books appeal a great deal more to the committee than to kids.

[mal4mac]

I have tried reading Don Quixote and gave up about half -way through... it just couldn't keep my attention and I found it rather dull. I understand why it is a classic, but I guess I can't understand why two very dear people to me note it as their favorite book of all time...


Why not give it a second chance? I had a similar experience to you, first time, but I sailed through it the second time, with much enjoyment.



Also, for some reason, I couldn't get through One Hundred Years of Solitude... I do plan on trying this one again, however...


I also gave this one a second chance, but still got nowhere! More difficult than Cervantes, but nowhere near as funny or interesting...

[AlysonofBathe]

I tried to get through Clarissa at some point a few years ago, couldn't make it past 100 pages. I should have known better anyway, I struggled through Pamela some time before that and barely finished. Samuel Richardson is not my cup of tea.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I tried to get through Clarissa at some point a few years ago, couldn't make it past 100 pages. I should have known better anyway, I struggled through Pamela some time before that and barely finished. Samuel Richardson is not my cup of tea.

:lol: Samuel Richardson is nobodies cup of tea. He's not meant to be enjoyed. I remember when I was forced to read some Richardson for university, right at the very first class. Our wonderful tutor explained before that Richardson was horrible reading, but important in the development novel etc, etc. When someone asked why we had to read it she replied that she had suffered so you lot have to as well. Brilliant!

[Alexander III]

:lol: Samuel Richardson is nobodies cup of tea. He's not meant to be enjoyed. I remember when I was forced to read some Richardson for university, right at the very first class. Our wonderful tutor explained before that Richardson was horrible reading, but important in the development novel etc, etc. When someone asked why we had to read it she replied that she had suffered so you lot have to as well. Brilliant!

hhaha, I think I may be the last living person to actually like Richardson, there is an elegance to his prose which I find to be highly soothing, like a fireplace with a few cackling flames.

[LitNetIsGreat]

hhaha, I think I may be the last living person to actually like Richardson, there is an elegance to his prose which I find to be highly soothing, like a fireplace with a few cackling flames.

Ohhh, I so love an open fireplace. I swear that I would just be happy if I had a big library and an open fireplace (and I didn't have to work). Also the Richardson could come in handy to keep the flames going for a little while longer as well.

It has been about eight years since I had the dentist experience of Richardson, so I will believe you, at arms length, in regards to the elegance of his prose, ha, ha.

[Calidore]

hhaha, I think I may be the last living person to actually like Richardson, there is an elegance to his prose which I find to be highly soothing, like a fireplace with a few cackling flames.

If the flames in my fireplace start cackling, I'm grabbing the extinguisher and calling a priest.

[CarpeNixta]

I started Shogun... but put it aside as I have some tests coming soon, I'll pick it again in my next hollidays