About the top abandoned classics, the only two I can see good reason for abandoning are Ulysses and Atlas Shrugged. The first because it is a difficult read and the second because it's a piece of cr__. Catch 22 is a hilarious black comedy about war and the anti-communist paranoia of the 1950s. Moby Dick is a classic for all the reasons that books become classics. The Lord of the Rings is worth a read, but hopefully to be done as an adolescent. Any earlier and it would be incomprehensible and much later and frankly it begins to seem silly. To those who mentioned The Brothers Karamazov, that's a great book, Maybe better than Crime and Punishment.

Those Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books I can understand giving up on. Not for difficulty, or bad writing, it's just that the central female character soon becomes an immortal superhero, like a comic book. What will she do next? Crack into the NSA and bring about world peace while beating the heavy weight champion of the world to a pulp with one arm broken?