What books were you unable to finish?

[108 fountains]

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

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

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

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

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

[Jack of Hearts]

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

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

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





J

[mande2013]

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

[Lykren]

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

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

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

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

[Lokasenna]

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

[AuntShecky]

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

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

[DATo]

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

[Jack of Hearts]

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

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

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

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







J

[stlukesguild]

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

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

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

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

[Lykren]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[tonywalt]

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

[Snowqueen]

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

[Lykren]

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

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

[Calidore]

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

[munkinhead]

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

[Jackson Richardson]

I gave up on Geoffrey of Monmouth's History.

It is years since I read Villette and I did get to the end. I'm never going to read it again - all I remember is feeling very, very depressed.

[Seasider]

Couldn't finish...or hardly start "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. No intention to try again either.

[Jack of Hearts]

I didn't even make it that far through A Confederacy of Dunces.

This book seems drastically overrated. Granted, Jack of Hearts only cleared a chapter and a half, but it was easy to see the mechanic at play with the main character. Also, being a confessed prose snob, most of the books in here are difficult to, erm, plow through.

Also, hate DFW. Hate him in the interviews, hated the opening pages of Infinite Jest, and hate hearing about The Pale King. Dude shoulda stuck to tennis.






J

[ladderandbucket]

I gave up on Catch 22. I'm sure it has many merits but I just couldn't stand his sense of humour.

That said, I think if a book has a reputation it is often worth persevering with.

I've just finished War and Peace and thought the second half was far superior to the first. It begins like a 19th Century Russian soap opera, kind of interesting but not the Tolstoy I knew from Ivan Ilyich or Kreutzer Sonata. By the end it felt like a very different book.

Another one is Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. The first half is a real grind. I expect many thousands of people have given up on it. They missed out because the second half is some of Conrad's best work.

[JHG]

Anything by Charles Dickens. But especially Great Expectations. Makes me cringe to this day.

[Iain Sparrow]

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

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

I agree with knuckling down and reading The Iliad and even Ulysses... but oh my, definitely not Moby Dick.:)

I hate the overuse of soliloquy in any narrative style, always seems convoluted and forced. I much prefer those aspects of the character to come out more subtly as dialogue/body language and action. Felt like shaking Captain Ahab and saying, "enough already, let's go kill us a whale!".:)

[Emil Miller]

Couldn't finish...or hardly start "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. No intention to try again either.

I always avoid the brouhaha surrounding books, films, or anything else that involves mass marketing. However, the publicity surrounding The Satanic Verses convinced me that 1.6 billion Muslims can't be wrong.

[Dark Muse]

I used to stubbornly refuse to give up on a book but now there are just so many books I want to read I no longer have the patience to muscle through a book once it reaches that point where instead of looking forward to reading it I dread the prospect of having to do so.

Here is my shameful list of books I could not trudge through to the end:

Under Satan's Sun by Georges Bernanos - They say never judge a book by its cover, well you sholdn't judge it by the title either such is what first caught my eye, knowing little else about it, and I just found it grueling to read.

Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins - Normally he is actually one of my favorite authors, but this one was too much for even me, I found it utterly confusing and couldn't make myself stick with it.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner -This was my second book or attempted book by him, and though the first one I did finish, I really couldn't get into it. His writing style just is not for me.


Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R.D. Blackmore - I just found this one to be uninteresting and tedious to read.

Independence Day by Richard Ford - I found myself unable to connect with any of the characters in any way, and I could not really get engaged in the story and realized I didn't really care what happened to anyone so there was not much point in continuing to read.

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes - I know a lot of people love this book, but it was a very long book that I found became rather repetitive very quickly.

The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K Rowling - I am not really a fan of hers, never got into the Harry Potter books, but I was curious what she might do in writing for adults, and I am a fan of Film Noir ( and Noir inspired fiction) but It was just a drag to read and I think longer than it really needed to be. Lots of extra unnecessary detail, it could not keep my attention and wasn't that interesting.

[desiresjab]

<Humboldt's Gift is one book I pick up every now and then;>

Yeah, is it the educated Charlie Citrine trapped in the public bathroom stall while two gangsters crowd in with him to "request" he attend an art party the gangster's wife is throwing? One of the most memorable scenes in any novel I have read.

[hazelk]

I have lost count, my tolerance level is very low regarding mediocre books.

[Vladimir777]

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

I read the Lattimore translation of The Iliad, which I greatly enjoyed. I hear that he best captures the "epic" feeling of Homer's similes (there are many) in The Iliad, as well as getting the closest in English to representing the original hexameter (I forget the specific type of hexameter). That being said, if you want the most reader-friendly version that is still very accurate and scholarly, I hear Robert Fagles's translation is amazing.

I read the Lattimore version of The Odyssey as well, and sometimes I have my regrets about it. Since this is the only version I've ever read, I'm not sure if my lack of interest in the epic poem has to do with the work itself or the translation. For whatever reason, you don't hear about Richmond Lattimore's translation of The Odyssey nearly as much as you do his Iliad. Does anyone else feel this way? I feel like Robert Fitzgerald's is the equivalent of Lattimore's Iliad for The Odyssey.

I missed the epic feeling of his [I]Iliad/I] in the latter work. Some of this might just be the poem itself, and it almost feels unlikely (to me) that both poems are by the same Homer (and yes, I know that the issue of Homer himself is very much a matter of scholarly debate).

I really want to re-read The Odyssey in a different translation, in hopes that I will enjoy it as much as I did The Iliad. I will probably read Robert Fagles's translation next (for both works). I'm even considering his translation of The Aeneid, which I often see packaged together with his translations of Homer's two masterworks.

My currently owned version of The Aeneid is the Allen Mandelbaum version here (http://www.amazon.com/The-Aeneid-Virgil-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553210416/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1396628035&sr=8-4&keywords=the+aeneid). Why did I buy this version specifically? It was recommended by Beowulf on the Beach (http://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Beach-What-Literatures-Greatest/dp/0307409570), which is the book that inspired me to go back and study the history of literature. I was an English literature major in college, but I barely ever read the books, since there were so many, and I certainly never read "great literature" for fun. This book was an amazing gift to discover after college, and it's pushed me to try out and enjoy all different kinds of literature.

Jack Murnighan, the author, was the person who suggested Lattimore's translation of The Iliad, and I read both of Homer's works because of this book. Interestingly enough, if you look at the back of the book, he actually uses Fitzgerald's translation for The Odyssey. This is interesting, because he says (about the Iliad), "Read the Lattimore translation, even though he spells the names funny. Many have translated The Iliad, but no one has rendered the stark supreme majesty of its language like Lattimore." It's interesting that he speaks so highly of Lattimore's Iliad here, but then doesn't even read Lattimore's version of Homer's other poem. Is there just a drop in quality of Lattimore's translation of Homer's second poem? Unfortunately I wasn't able to find an equivalent to Lattimore's almost universally acclaimed translation of The Iliad for The Odyssey. I'd love to hear what others have to say about which translation is best for The Odyssey.

For someone having trouble completing Homer, though, I would always recommend the Fagles's translations, which I hear are very lively and entertaining. There is also Stephen Mitchell's new version (http://www.amazon.com/The-Iliad-Homer/dp/1439163383/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1396628691&sr=8-6&keywords=the+iliad), which I don't know much about, but I think is readable, albeit controversial (is it in prose?).

Again, I can't recommend Beowulf on the Beach enough for someone trying to get into classic literature. Murnighan writes about 50 essentials works of classic literature. I have only read 3 books from the 50 since I've owned the book, but they are three of the most essential works in the Western canon: The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Old Testament. I never thought I would ever read the Bible (and I plan on continuing reading it by completing the Apocrypha and New Testament this year), but this book convinced me to read the entire Old Testament. Murnighan recommends "reading the King James version...not only because the archaic language lends an appropriate gravitas to it all, but also because so many phrases that we toss about (like "my cup runneth over") come from that translation and sound funny in modern-English versions." So glad that I chose the King James version!

[Calidore]

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes - I know a lot of people love this book, but it was a very long book that I found became rather repetitive very quickly.


I forgot about this one, but I gave up on it for the same reason. Plus the overly broad humor didn't work for me at all, so all I got out if it was unfunny jokes repeated over and over.

Another one I forgot that came up in another thread: Dune. Very dry and dull.

[R.F. Schiller]

I typically try to finish books out of my stubbornness, but sometimes a book comes along that is just too boring or challenging:

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon: A chaotic mess of "ugly" sentences.

The Gift - Vladimir Nabokov: Nabokov is my favourite author, but this English translation of his Russian Magnus Opus was just too difficult; it makes Pale Fire look like a walk in the park.

This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald: I enjoyed the Great Gatsby, so I thought I'd try one of Fitzgerald's earlier works. Unfortunately I came away with bored and only managed to finish half the novel.

[Whosis]

I have The Iliad on CD. It was necessary for a long trip west, but I did stop around disc 10. I still intend to finish it. Other than books I'm still currently reading and books where I've scanned the first page (The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner), the only book I know I couldn't finish that I intended to was The Testament by John Grisham. Terrible, terrible book in my opinion. It gave me a reason for why I shy away from mainstream (non-literary) literature. I find it hard to believe people buy this ****. Who could? And yet it had an excellent, enticing title, in my opinion. I just couldn't see past how he was trying to impress the literature, which is something I thought had been relegated to writers who had too many moral points to make. No; first, there was the unrealistic introductory character with too much on his dish. Then, a plane killed a cow, which ****ed me off to no end. Why? On train tracks I could see this, but what are the chances? He might as well have had a UFO come crashing out of the sky. Anyway, that's my rant on the only book I could never finish--one of the few wealthy authors. Go figure.

[Anna Komnena]

I've started to read "The Charterhouse of Parma" and after like 50 pages I gave up. I haven't read any other novel written by Stendhal so I couldn't compare with anything and I know maybe it is wrong to judge a book by reading just a quarter of it. Nonetheless, it was so hard to get into the story.

[mal4mac]

Couldn't finish...or hardly start "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. No intention to try again either.

I found it difficult getting to page 50, then gave up. Also gave up on:

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Hunchback of Notre Dame - Hugo (though I did make it through Les Miserables with great enjoyment)
Mason & Dixon - Pynchon
Remembrance of Things Past - Proust
Being & Time - Heidegger
The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence (made it through Sons & Lovers, wish I'd given up...)
Naked Lunch - Burroughs (Junkie was a good read.)
Treatise on Human Nature - Hume
Fear & Trembling - Kirkegaard
Physics - Aristotle (Made it through Nicomachean Ethics, with a struggle)
The Bible

I did make it through one Iliad (Rieu's translation!) but not another (Fagles' translation)

[mal4mac]

Another one is Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. The first half is a real grind. I expect many thousands of people have given up on it. They missed out because the second half is some of Conrad's best work.

I also found this, and "Lord Jim" followed a similar pattern. He's the only author I've encountered who starts as a tedious grind and finishes well. So (apart from Conrad) give up if it's a grind! There's enough literature out there that's great all the way through, why waste time with something you aren't enjoying.

[kev67]

I gave up on Catch 22. I'm sure it has many merits but I just couldn't stand his sense of humour.

That said, I think if a book has a reputation it is often worth persevering with.



I put down Catch 22 when I first tried it about age 14. It annoyed me. I read last year. I cannot say I really enjoyed it except for the Milo Minderbender parody of the stock market/financial sector, which I thought was brilliant.



I've just finished War and Peace and thought the second half was far superior to the first. It begins like a 19th Century Russian soap opera, kind of interesting but not the Tolstoy I knew from Ivan Ilyich or Kreutzer Sonata. By the end it felt like a very different book.

Another one is Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. The first half is a real grind. I expect many thousands of people have given up on it. They missed out because the second half is some of Conrad's best work.

Nostromo is reputed to be Conrad's best book. In a weak moment I bought a copy, so I ought to read it. I am not looking forward to it. I am sure I won't finish it feeling happy and uplifted.

[kev67]

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes - I know a lot of people love this book, but it was a very long book that I found became rather repetitive very quickly.



I agree with this. I slogged through the first part. Didn't fancy the second part.

[kev67]

I always avoid the brouhaha surrounding books, films, or anything else that involves mass marketing. However, the publicity surrounding The Satanic Verses convinced me that 1.6 billion Muslims can't be wrong.

They weren't.

[Poetaster]

They weren't.

That it was a blasphemous novel?

[Emil Miller]

That it was a blasphemous novel?

Possibly but overhyped definitely

[Calidore]

I also found this, and "Lord Jim" followed a similar pattern. He's the only author I've encountered who starts as a tedious grind and finishes well. So (apart from Conrad) give up if it's a grind! There's enough literature out there that's great all the way through, why waste time with something you aren't enjoying.

Sounds like the literary equivalent of French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear, Diabolique)--takes his sweet time setting everything up, but by the end you have pieces of the couch under your fingernails.

[Marbles]

I found it difficult getting to page 50, then gave up. Also gave up on:

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez

What??

I think people are too easily intimidated with picaresque and complex works which do not read like airport novels. This and a few other books you listed require considerable investment of mind and time.

Reading constitutes more than just perfunctory enjoyment; it's hard work, reading a great work of fiction is always hard work (one only need to think of War and Peace and In Search of Lost Time) but the dividends at the end of the day are immense. One masterpiece vs 100 mediocrities and the scale will still tilt downwards on the side of the masterpiece.

[kev67]

That it was a blasphemous novel?

It wasn't very blasphemous. It implied Mohammed was a bit of a politician, but that was only a substrand of the story.

[Poetaster]

It wasn't very blasphemous. It implied Mohammed was a bit of a politician, but that was only a substrand of the story.

Ah, I've not actually read it. It's sitting in my 'to read' pile. Any good?

Open question.

[kev67]

Ah, I've not actually read it. It's sitting in my 'to read' pile. Any good?

Open question.

IMO, no. It's not an impossible slog. I just didn't like it.

[prendrelemick]

Recently I have been not finishing books because of my Kindle. I don't invest much time and effort in choosing what to read any more, if I don't like it, it I just leave it and click on the next one. Life's too short (and so is my attention span in this modern age.)


The two books I couldn't finish for significant reasons, were "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist" - because I became too painfully involved with a character's plight and began to feel depressed in a scary way - and "When the Lion Feeds" by Wilbur Smith.

Not finishing the Smith one was a life changing moment. I was a fan, I bought the book as soon as it came out, I couldn't wait to get it home. I began reading and 10 pages in suddenly saw that it was formulaic crap , and realized that most popular fiction was formulaic crap too. I do mean "suddenly", in a flash the tawdry tricks and cliches the author was using were revealed and I hated it. I put it down and decided to seek out quality Literature from then on. I am still seeking it out now, and I am in no doubt that what I've read since has had a great affect on my outlook on life.

[prendrelemick]

Ah, I've not actually read it. It's sitting in my 'to read' pile. Any good?

Open question.

I found it entertaining.

[Marbles]

It wasn't very blasphemous. It implied Mohammed was a bit of a politician, but that was only a substrand of the story.

If you tell the Muslims that Muhammad was a bit of a politician they will nod their heads in agreement. Of course he was; he was the leader of a new state and he traded and signed treatises of peace and went to war when his nascent community was threatened and etc etc. But he was a 'good' politician. You know what I mean.

In between the larger debate, the real offensive stuff in The Satanic Verses was the depiction Muhammad as being under the influence of Satan, about Quran a book that teaches how to "fart, f*** and clean one's behind", and the scene from a bordello where prostitutes are named after the prophet's many wives. It was these deliberately designed insults which got the better of the believers.

[deborah8315]

I could not finish:
-The waves; virginia woolf
-The sound and the fury; faulkner....

[perhapsican]

I always find it so surprising that people dislike Conrad, or at the least find his writing non-engaging! I loved Lord Jim (and of course HoD), but to each his own....

I have never finished a piece of Bret Easton Ellis' writing, including novels American Psycho and Lunar Park. I can't tell if I have a particular dislike for Ellis, or if it just stems from my overarching disdain for- dare I say the word??- postmodernism.

[readspider]

I enjoy reading disturbing and or banned books and most I have enjoyed immensely.

I could not, however, finish 'Tropic of Cancer' by Henry Miller and 'We need to talk about Kevin' by Lionel Shriver.

I also threw De Sades Sodom away a couple of times before I could finish it. That book was tough.

[Jaylon Wennings]

I couldn't get through Moby Dick until I bought a nice hardback edition, and then because I was fetishising the physical book (shallow I know) I was motivated to get through it and loved every page. Probably helped that I was a few years older and came at it differently also. The above also worked with my first couple of Shakespeare plays, although I now, knowing better, get a Norton Critical paperback for those...

Ulysses I finally got through after putting it down halfway for perhaps as much as a year. I launched back in a second time last year from the start but got bored. I once watched a discussion between Clive James and Martin Amis where James said something to the effect that he had read it many times but never in the correct order of chapters. At the time I thought he was being a pretentious ******, but on reflection I think he's right - in future I'll pick a chapter I remember liking and just read that.

[Iain Sparrow]

I always find it so surprising that people dislike Conrad, or at the least find his writing non-engaging! I loved Lord Jim (and of course HoD), but to each his own....

I have never finished a piece of Bret Easton Ellis' writing, including novels American Psycho and Lunar Park. I can't tell if I have a particular dislike for Ellis, or if it just stems from my overarching disdain for- dare I say the word??- postmodernism.


Now see, Heart of Darkness ranks in my top 25 all time favorite books, but I hated Lord Jim.

I could never finish Les Misérables... not that I really gave it a valiant try.

[readspider]

I too struggled with American Psycho and finishing it was a task.

I liked two other later novels by him - The Rules of Attraction and Glamorama. They seemed to be better written.

[Paulclem]

There's quite a few books I couldn't finish. Life's to short with too many good books I like to struggle with any.
The Turn of the Screw was tedious.
Middlemarch was dull though Silas Marner is excellent.
I finished Austen's Emma, but only because we were studying it. I won't be reading another one. (Oh no, but you can bet some weird occurrence will compel me against my will to read one day - bah).

[Marbles]

I can't remember any book of note which I had been unable to finish. Although there is a long list of books remained unfinished, but that's because they were badly written and boring and the reason I can't remember them is that there was nothing to remember about them. Most of them were newly printed contemporary novels which I acquired and started on in a fleeting moment to 'see' if the new writer has something 'new' to say. Most times I was disappointed, only reading 1/3 of the junk and skimming through the rest of the waste and finally relegating them to the forgotten nooks of my bookshelf.

[Whosis]

I was able to finish The Iliad over audio CDs. I thought there was enough action in it that reading would have been bearable. I could not finish The Testament by John Grisham after page 100. I thought he was trying to impress me too much, and I thought the writing was insincere. I had to put down Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann after a short read because of the dense vocabulary.

[YesNo]

I was not able to finish Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake.

[Emil Miller]

I was able to finish The Iliad over audio CDs. I thought there was enough action in it that reading would have been bearable. I could not finish The Testament by John Grisham after page 100. I thought he was trying to impress me too much, and I thought the writing was insincere. I had to put down Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann after a short read because of the dense vocabulary.

It's no less dense in German but it's a great novel.

[Emil Miller]

I was not able to finish Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake.

I was unable to start them.

[mal4mac]

What??

I think people are too easily intimidated with picaresque and complex works which do not read like airport novels.

I stand by my rejection of 100 Years of Solitude and In Search of Lost Time. I've read enough to know what I like, and to drop something if I don't like it. I like most things, and surely I can drop the 1 in 10 "great" authors I don't like! If you happen to like them, then bully for you, but you shouldn't accuse someone of being an "Airport novel reader" if they don't like your favourite author.

After trying (quite) hard, I didn't find myself enjoying Marquez or Proust. For me, reading should be serious *and* enjoyable, and I have enjoyed the major works of Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hardy, Conrad...

So it's not a question of lowering my taste because Marquez and Proust are too difficult, just that I have a different taste.

[Marbles]

I stand by my rejection of 100 Years of Solitude and In Search of Lost Time. I've read enough to know what I like, and to drop something if I don't like it. I like most things, and surely I can drop the 1 in 10 "great" authors I don't like! If you happen to like them, then bully for you, but you shouldn't accuse someone of being an "Airport novel reader" if they don't like your favourite author.

After trying (quite) hard, I didn't find myself enjoying Marquez or Proust. For me, reading should be serious *and* enjoyable, and I have enjoyed the major works of Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hardy, Conrad...

So it's not a question of lowering my taste because Marquez and Proust are too difficult, just that I have a different taste.

Serious reading is difficult. Sometimes the 'enjoyable' bit doesn't come in far into the book when the story comes to life by the turn of narrative. I remember my exasperation and a little boredom when I was exactly on the 95th page of One Hundred Years of Solitude and would probably have put it down if it was not for my insistent friend whose opinions on literature I hold high esteem. So I persisted and by the time I was past 130/135 pages I found myself deeply absorbed in the story. It's difficult and it has so many characters but the reward lies for the reader when they have read it to the end. I cant forget the scene when the runnels of blood of one Arcadio flow throw the town to rest at his mother's feet who is informed of his son's death in this way. Beautiful.

War and Peace is great but so many times we hear people giving it up in exasperation because they can't follow the dense story and the whole bevy of ridiculously named characters. It is normal to have multiple failed attempts before reading it finally to the end. So yeah, a little bit of perseverance goes a long way. Education is tough to come by; it's not always enjoyable but in the end it is very rewarding.

[Cleanthes]

Samuel Butler once wrote something like: 'I think that, if I put some effort into it, I may come to enjoy Bach's music, but I like to enjoy the things I like without effort.'

After modernism, being difficult and requiring effort by the reader has often been seen as de rigueur for great novels. That's why when it comes to Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, etc. some readers cannot enjoy their works.

[English reader]

I could never finish any Stephen King novels. Otherwise, I'm pretty good about finishing books.

[AuntShecky]

I could not finish:

-The sound and the fury; faulkner....

I finished that particular novel only because it was part of a course assignment (several-- I mean several--Presidential administrations ago.) All my academic life I heard how great Faulkner was supposed to be, but I just couldn't see it. It's not merely a question of the difficulty of his writing; it's just that it moves soooooo slowly. Even so, I figure the highbrows are more in the know than I am. That's why I feel extremely inadequate as well as slightly guilty about disliking Faulkner. I did like the Joanne Woodward/Paul Newman movie "The Long Hot Summer," which was based on a couple of Faulkner's shorter works.

Coincidentally, just this morning I enjoyed reading " Requiem for a Noun, or Intruder in the Dusk," a parody of the Bard of Oxford, MS by Peter DeVries, a writer who's always good for a laugh.


Also gave up on:

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez



Tried reading this one and failed. Next time I can get a ride to the library I might check it out again for another go, since I'm a fan of "magic realism."





I have never finished a piece of Bret Easton Ellis' writing, including novels American Psycho and Lunar Park. I can't tell if I have a particular dislike for Ellis, or if it just stems from my overarching disdain for- dare I say the word??- postmodernism.

I'll agree with you here. What I disdain about Ellis is his writing style, which strikes me as affected and pretentious. That irritating use of the second person, for instance. (Or have I got him confused with Jay McInerney?) I'm pretty sure that I would not characterize either writer as "postmodernist." According to my understanding of the term, postmodernism is the realm of the wonderful Donald Barthelme and the great John Barth.

[Vota]

I stopped reading Don Quixote and Catch-22 before getting to page 100, and frankly don't care. I read The Inferno and realized I had no interested reading the other two parts, nor would I every likely re-read it for pleasure or knowledge.

I made it about 3/4 of the way through The Aeneid, and thought, meh, he's biting off Homer and can't hold his jock strap. I told this to a professor of mine and I was surprised when he agreed with me. He did say that the chief thing about Virgil was the quality of it when spoke in Latin.

The Iliad and The Odyssey translations by Robert Fagles are both fantastic. They have a great sense of speed, yet still retain an epic quality to them. The Richmond Lattimore version of The Iliad is fantastic because it really does have a stately and epic quality to it. If I could only have TWO translations, it would be his and Robert Fagles. I think the reason that translators often only get high praise for one translation of Homer is because the two works are so different from each other. I can't comment for any other translator, but I was introduced to these two epics back to back through Robert Fagle's translation, and imo, he nailed both.

Moby Dick is a great book. It's just this grand, bizarre thing that is beautiful even if Melville's syntax is at times strikingly odd.

War and Peace is not a hard read at all, and the cast of characters isn't that big. It's mostly the names. It started really slow for me, but Tolstoy is such a solid writer that the first 110 or so pages while being fairly dull, did a nice job introducing the characters and setting up the massive story. By the time you're halfway through the book the characters work themselves out and it's not hard at all to follow along. I'm about 4/5 of the way through the book and enjoying it very much. I can't say it's the greatest book of all time, but it is definitely a great book, one that I will look forward to reading again. That's pretty much become my gold standard with books. Did I enjoy them, and do I think I can learn more and or get more out of them on a re-read? If yes to both, then it's a keeper, otherwise sell it.

[Ramona Tudor]

I have come across several books that made it difficult for me to finish them. When I was in high school I was unable to finish Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. The funny thing is that I didn't find it hard to read, or anything of the sort (and I was certainly not displeased with the book's over-all content). What bothered me was a certain passage from the book where a certain character was skinning a meadow... it made me go nuts, if I should say it in a way that would match my past self. I know, however, that today I would enjoy the book and it's on my to-read list for a while. Even though I now can state with a sort of certainty that I would enjoy the book, there still ”is” a past-me in high school who didn't enjoy the book. Or, to be more accurate, this person that was once myself did not enjoy Tolstoy's exaggerate description of a man who was skinning a meadow. Meanwhile I've come across certain books that were similar to the certain passage from Anna Karenina, and I was surprised by how much I actually liked them. I have in mind this particular Romanian novel, called ”Ion” (Ion is a name which is rightly translated as ”John” in English). This character, let's call him John, was very fond of Earth and agriculture, so to speak. And there is this mad passage where he kisses the Earth, and it's one of the most intense scenes I've ever read. Anyhow. what I am trying to say is that even though I found that scene boring when I was in high school, I am sure that today I might perceive it differently.

There were also certain books I couldn't read and dropped them very fast. I don't remember those titles, as they were not as important as to note them down... though this is this one book I haven't been able to finish until now (even though I am not so sure that I don't like it, it's more like I haven't got the right chance and mood to read it). It's a Romanian book that I hardly know how to translate... I could roughly translate it as ”The publican of rains” or ”Rain's turnpike man”, or something along those lines (it is rather weird, though). The author's style is very dense and I can hardly cope with it - you find yourself wondering what was he talking about two pages ago, and it's hard to follow the sentences as they are very long. The book in itself, as well as its content, is quite interesting. However, I find it hard to cope with it for too long and end up by dropping it.

Even though I have already given two examples, I still haven't made my point. The above paragraphs are only the introduction to what I actually wanted to say: that I am having a hard time trying to finish Soren Kierkegaard's works. I've come across two books until now, Fear and trembling and Sickness unto Death. I started reading both of them, but could not finish them by any means. I've read most of Sickness unto Death, but was quite impossible for me to finish it. Even though I found the book very interesting, I couldn't finish it because in the last part, it seemed to me, the author was talking too much about Christianity, and it made me feel uneasy, frustrated, and in the end I had to drop it because I wasn't even able to pay attention to what he was ”saying”. I have to confess that this is very frustrating for me because I know how interesting Kierkegaard actually is, and I have also been studying parts from Fear and trembling last semester, at my Faculty. However, even though this is the case, I cannot finish these two books. I found Sickness unto Death extremely interesting, and I even felt a certain corespondency between me and the text. Even so, from a certain point, I was unable to finish it (and the book still lays somewhere in my bookshelf, rented from my faculty's library). It's frustrating and quite annoying that I can't finish them, and I plan to try The concept of anxiety soon and see whether I can finish this one or not. I admit Kierkegaard's works aren't an easy read (or, well, that's what most people suggest), yet I feel disappointed that I cannot finish it. And this disappointment, I have to say, is fully and rightfully directed to my own persona, not towards the author or the books.

[Emil Miller]

Another book I was unable to start is Fear and Loathing in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

[ennison]

That cruel novel "The Crimson Petal and the White". Lots of others. It's a long time since I felt the necessity of finishing because I have started.