What is the most boring book ever?

[mono]

anything by james joyce and virginia woolf is boring . i just cannot put up with that terrible style. and also, joseph conrad with his sea stories. a tale of two cities are rather boring, too. actually historic novels are often so .

Some of these I can fully understand. I have yet to read any Joseph Conrad, but many, many people claim to find James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Charles Dickens very boring.
I love them all, personally, especially Virginia Woolf, but she wrote with so much empathy and far more passion than the average author, which, I think, could confuse many readers.
Some historical novels, yes, I can see the downside. I have enjoyed most of them, especially several Russian works, but, for example, I could never read Gore Vidal's Creation over again.

[mingdamerciless]

Laurie Lee - i actually couldn't finish it, which is incredible for me. Also Strange meeting - Susan Hill. It wasn't boring as such but I found it incredibly tedious, with little underlying meaning. The plot was just too . . . simple. I had to study it at school and write a 13 page essay. I did not have fun.

[Hazel-Ra]

I'm sure many will disagree with me on this, but the most boring book I've ever read was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne. I read this after getting really into H. G. Wells while I was a teenager, and I had heard that many argued over which was the better sci fi writer, Jules Verne or H. G. Wells.

In fairness, most of the book was actually very good, and very suspensful, but when I reached the end, it seemed as though he'd reached his wits' end and just couldn't be bothered to come up with a better ending! I have never, to this day, been more disappointed with a book's ending.

[Pensive]

Emma - Jane Austen (I liked P&P a lot but I found Emma quite boring)

A Mid Summer Night's Dream - William Shaky Shocky Shaken Pear.

[blp]

[QUOTE=mono I have yet to read any Joseph Conrad[/QUOTE]

A treat in store.

This thread is an eye-opener. Here I was expecting a list comprised of Robbe-Grillet, Perec, Beckett &c. (all authors I like, by the way) and instead we get all these writers who consummately practice the soul stirring stuff those writers eschew. Jane Eyre? Jane Eyre? Heart of Darkness? I don't even know where to begin except to say that these books absolutely rocked me.

The only explanation I can come up with is that people are being given this stuff too early and with too little help. I only really enjoyed Shakespeare's comedies until I did Troilus and Cressida (with bloody good teaching) aged nineteen.

I also relate to and sympathise with the person who had that bit of bother with their teacher over Zarathustra. I can't even begin to imagine reading that book and getting anything out of it as a teenager. I read it in my thirties and still struggled. The incident with the teacher reminds me of a time when an equally discombobulated didact gave a group of us callow seventeen year olds a Larkin poem to read and then asked for reactions. Partly just to fill the total silence that followed, I said that it hadn't really 'moved' me. 'That is totally irrelevant', came the furious response.

Non-boring yet educationally worthwhile books for teenagers then? I can only guess and dimly remember really. 1984? Catch-22? I would say Catcher in the Rye, which I loved at age 13 as much as at age 23, but there's always someone who can't stand it. Le Grand Meaulnes? I dunno. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino? Borges? Milan Kundera? Paul Auster? Please please, nobody say Terry Pratchett.

My own list of stinkers:

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - trying way too hard
Mao II by Don DeLillo - read almost anything by De Lillo rather than this. Libra, White Noise, Players are all great, but this is just a dull pointless trudge and worse, it's a book about a writer
The Vivisector by Patrick White - a book about a writer disguised as a book about a painter
London Fields by Martin Amis - portentous bilge from start to finish, promises lots of 'meaning' about nuclear bombs and the way we live now, ends up just vaguely, lazily, using a woman as a symbol for all the evil of the world. The central characters are all cheap, easy, badly observed cariacatures. I need words I'm not allowed here to fully express my loathing for this book, but 'boring' is definitely a step in the right direction
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - his style is terrible and the whole book's just a bad rip off of Marquez's excellent and genuinely original 100 Years of Solitude
Love in the Time of the Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - everybody has off years
But in with a bullet at number 1:
Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit

[Unspar]

Whoa whoa, let's slow down here blp. Maybe everybody's got a different understanding of boring, but you're going to throw Midnight's Children on that list and keep Heart of Darkness off it? HoD is hands down my favorite book, and it's one of two books I've ever reread, and I wrote my undergrad thesis on it, but it's easy to admit that it's a boring read to an average reader. It's so much about atmosphere and almost nothing interesting happens. I've tried to explain to people what I love about it, and all the reasons I come up with are largely about personal perspective and suggest to me that it's an exception to the rule to enjoy reading it.

And MC boring? The only reason I could see someone saying that is because it's long. It's got superpowers! And if that's not enough, it's got tons of variety and is incredibly insightful in its exploration of India's history and independence. As far as being a ripoff of 100 Years, then everything magical realism is a ripoff of 100 Years. The stories are different, the conflicts are different, the narrative style is different, the intention is different, and the structure is different. The similiraties are either coincidental or common to all magical realist works--multi-generational, metaphor for nation, supernatural elements combined with natural.

If you want to see a real ripoff, compare Midnight's Children to Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex. The structures are exactly the same (book and chapter modes, narrative point-of-view and construction), the plot is remarkably similar (grandparents relocate, contrast between life of parents and children living in new land, protagonists have hybrid identities, protagonists not accepted by community, protagonists run away from home and develop independent identities), and the metaphor for the nation is exactly the same (single character with unique characteristic becomes picture of national experience during tumultuous time in history). I hated Middlesex because it was so deeply derivative.

I don't mean to pick a fight, or if I do, I don't mean to pick an ill-spirited fight.

[blp]

No ill spirit taken.

Come to think of it, some of what you say about MC and Middlesex could also be said to be similar to Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum, which also predates MC.

I read MC a long time ago, so it's maybe unfair of me to include it. But my memory of reading it is so unpleasurable, I have no desire to try again. And I don't think it was because I failed to understand it.

Heart of Darkness is, quite apart from all its other merits, incredibly beautifully written. Same is true of a number of the other books people have been listing here, especially Jane Eyre, but also To the Lighthouse and Ulysses. But you're right. Maybe my understanding of boring is different from a lot of other people's if narrative paciness is not my only criteria for not being boring. Ugh, what a convoluted sentence.

[higley]

Unfortunately, blp, I also found Jane Eyre to be awfully boring, mostly because I simply thought the protagonist herself was uninteresting.

What's considered "boring" is completely subjective. You should see me try to convince someone that baseball is the most wonderful sport in the world...

[blp]

Well of course it's subjective. This is about the most overtly subjective thread I've ever seen here and I kind of love it for that. I'm not trying to convince anyone to like the same books as me. Just a bit flabbergasted.

But also, though I'm not a teacher, I think it raises interesting questions about teaching. I think my best experiences of being taught have involved being pushed somewhat reluctantly to understand and enjoy things I wasn't favourable towards. I think it's a shame if some readers here read great books and didn't have the capacity to do anything but give up with a yawn or, worse, were actually taught them at school, but in such a way as to kill rather than awaken interest. No idea what the solution to that one is. As I say, I myself am not trying to convince anyone - because I wouldn't know how.

[mingdamerciless]

I'm sure many will disagree with me on this, but the most boring book I've ever read was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne. I read this after getting really into H. G. Wells while I was a teenager, and I had heard that many argued over which was the better sci fi writer, Jules Verne or H. G. Wells.

In fairness, most of the book was actually very good, and very suspensful, but when I reached the end, it seemed as though he'd reached his wits' end and just couldn't be bothered to come up with a better ending! I have never, to this day, been more disappointed with a book's ending.

Yeah I know what you mean, it does seem a bit of a let down after such an incredible journey, but I just found it fascinating that such a book was written so long ago. Both Jules Verne and H.G Wells were so ahead of their time. I think I probably found 20,000 LUTS ok because i read it not looking for a good, enjoyable novel but just to be amazed by the content.

[Ryduce]

Of all the many many books I've read there are two which have always put me to sleep.Yall might disagree,but the two most boring books of all time are GREAT EXPECTATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE SCARLETT LETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!









These books have actually made me consider suicide.Sorry if you like them,but it is all a matter of opinion.

[rachel]

I think I understand what you mean.I love Charles Dickenson but a few of his works, that being one of them made me feel severely depressed.
The scarlett letter simply reminded me of some people I knew who were like non stop vigalantes and had to crucify everyone on earth no like them. dreadful
But why are you telling us this. Is it that you were supposed to read them and hand something in but didn't, I don't understand
And hullo, I don't know you but I give you a belated welcome to this excellent forum.

[Ryduce]

Thank you for the welcome.

[chmpman]

I have not read much by Chekhov, only The Cherry Orchard and a short story whose name escapes me. I found The Cherry Orchard very boring (a play, not a novel), but I fear I may have missed the meaning, if there really is one deep inside. Usually I can make it through most readings (this was something for a class) and at least appreciate what the author was attempting, but this one just didnt do it for me.

[bluemonkey]

I have not read much by Chekhov, only The Cherry Orchard and a short story whose name escapes me. I found The Cherry Orchard very boring (a play, not a novel), but I fear I may have missed the meaning, if there really is one deep inside. Usually I can make it through most readings (this was something for a class) and at least appreciate what the author was attempting, but this one just didnt do it for me.

The Cherry Orchard's primary function was to illustrate the conflict that arises between the new rich and the old rich. Another major theme was to highlight people's inability to adapt and change. I do not know if that helps you any, but I found it boring as well. I liked the message, I just didn't like how it was presented.