Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Hi,
Have you ever abandoned a book?
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Yes.
Not counting books I had to read for school (I only abandoned one of these, though) I distinctly recall abandoning Dracula and Key to Conflict.
In the case of Dracula, the "letters" style of reading rubbed me the wrong way really badly. It felt like I was reading poetry, which I never read because I hate it. I've enjoyed many other books written around the same period, such as Frankenstein, etc, so I don't think it was the "old English" that drove me away.
"Key to Conflict" was a terribly written (probably self-published) book I picked up at the library. It was just terrible, and after reading a certain scene I put it down. I was shocked that the author managed to sell one or two more books in the series.
I should have dropped some Dune prequel novels but forced myself to read them. It was so bad. (The Dune series by the original author is very good, IMO. The successors are another story.)
The author who coined the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night" (Edward Bulwer Lytton) wrote a book called "Harold, Last of the Saxons" which was filled with purple prose. I made myself read it though. Like many of the Wheel of Times books, it was two to three times longer than it needed to be, but was otherwise good literature, so I finished it anyway.
Mark Twain wrote Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses about an author whose books you definitely should not read. He wrote "Last of the Mohicans", which I wanted to read until I read the criticism. Ouch. Why don't we have a modern day Mark Twain?