Books You Couldn't Get Through

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

Having just picked up Faith, that is exactly what I didn't want to hear.

As I said, there are many positive reviews (and a few less than positive). The first two chapters were readable, but it went downhill (for me) from there. Read it. You may be one of the positives.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Apache

The first book I never got through was The Scarlet Letter....

I liked The Scarlet Letter, but it took so l-o-n-g to get into the story proper. There was no need for all the preleminary to the actual tale.

[Rumpelteazer]

Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth) although I did force myself to read it in one day because I had to read it for a literature course and IMHO these types of books are better to get over with quickly than drag the torture out. After finishing I literally threw it across my room.

Last year I gave up on In the Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco), it was too slow and too descriptive for my tastes. I also gave up on The Murder of King Tut (James Patterson) because I got annoyed with the unneccesary chapter breaks and general lack of quality.

I also am another person that couldn't get through Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I tried several times and lose interest when reading the second book (I don't think I've finished it).

[drofgnal]

George RR Martins, A dance with Dragons. I've bowed out of the series.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I liked The Scarlet Letter, but it took so l-o-n-g to get into the story proper. There was no need for all the preleminary to the actual tale.

It may have been because I was 17 at the time.
I have had so many negative memories of that attempt that I have never had the least desire to go back and attempt to read it again.

I could not get into The Dark Tower Series either.
Apache

Originally Posted by bfisher

I have never been able to get more than 20 pages into any Thomas Hardy novel. The only time I watched a film adaptation ("Far From The madding Crowd") was no better, I would have left after the first ten minutes except that I was a fifteen year old boy on on what I hoped would be a hot date :-)

Oh yes, how could I forget Tess of the d'Urbervilles. One attempt at reading that was one too many. I could not even manage to sit through the entire film starring an incredibly hot Nastassia Kinski. I was there because the woman I was dating at the time insisted that we go see it. Even she lost patience with the Tess character perpetually doing everything she could to make herself miserable and we both left long before the closing credits.

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I'm thinking of starting a separate "abandoned" list in Goodreads. Does anybody do this? I abandoned several books last year and now I don't even remember what they were (perhaps it's better that way?).

One that I WISH I abandoned: The Passage. I know some here loved that book. I hated hated hated it and wished I never slogged through it.

Oh I remember one that I did abandon: Three Men in a Boat. Every page I felt like, that was cute, that was mildly funny, when does the story start? Just not for me, I guess.

eP

I have had an abandoned shelf for my Goodreads account almost from the time I opened it. Sadly a monthly book club selection is about to wind up there. I thought Three Men in a Boat was very funny. The follow up Three Men on a Brummel not so much.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I liked The Scarlet Letter, but it took so l-o-n-g to get into the story proper. There was no need for all the preleminary to the actual tale.

I love The Scarlet Letter. You are correct about that long introduction though. Especially when at the end one finds that the only purpose was to describe how the old set of documents from which the author spins the tale was found.


I don't get how anyone could have trouble with A Confederacy of Dunces. I found it hilarious from the first page on.

Looking at this thread I am glad to see that I am not the only one that thinks The Lord of the Rings is vastly overrated. Don't get me wrong when I read it, probably at about the age of 13-14, I thought it was an enthralling fantasy tale. To me that is the optimum time of life for the read. To attempt it at a much younger age the reader would find it too difficult and incomprehensible. Very much older and much of it would begin to seem silly. What I just don't get is adults wanting to reread it over and over.

[issybird]

I bailed during The Fellowship of the Ring during my adolescence and never looked back. Dreadful stuff. Aside from the turgid prose, I hate anthropomorphized furry things.

Otherwise, I see many of my very favorites mentioned here. Wuthering Heights, Jane Austen, The Scarlet Letter, Confederacy of Dunces, Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure has the most gut-wrenching ending of any book I've every read). Also some books I at least was in like with (Ulysses, Don Quixote) and which well rewarded the effort.

I have an abandoned shelf at Goodreads, but it's books I couldn't finish because they exceeded my tolerance for trash and/or just plain badness, not because they were boring. That said, I have one book that's languished on my currently reading stack for the best part of a year and while I'd like to finish it, it's long on statistics and short on narrative and I find it a very hard slog. It's called The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, for the curious, so not a classic. It's the type of thing I'd expect to eat like ice cream, but not in this case.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Apache

It may have been because I was 17 at the time.
I have had so many negative memories of that attempt that I have never had the least desire to go back and attempt to read it again.

I could not get into The Dark Tower Series either.
Apache

If you ever change your mind, I might recommend skipping that long, boring, and unnecessary introductory segment, "The Custom House", which comprises almost 20% of the book's length. Past that point, which is where the story of Hester Prynne really begins, it's quite fascinating.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

If you ever change your mind, I might recommend skipping that long, boring, and unnecessary introductory segment, "The Custom House", which comprises almost 20% of the book's length. Past that point, which is where the story of Hester Prynne really begins, it's quite fascinating.

Thanks for the information. I do believe I will have to give it a go.
Apache

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

...I love The Scarlet Letter. You are correct about that long introduction though. Especially when at the end one finds that the only purpose was to describe how the old set of documents from which the author spins the tale was found....

Exactly. Who cares about the occupation and labors of the man who discovered the documents? I would have left that entire section on the cutting room floor. Carl Sagan said, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe," but that doesn't work nearly as well for novels.

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

...I don't get how anyone could have trouble with A Confederacy of Dunces. I found it hilarious from the first page on....

The audiobook had me in stitches. Oh well, humor is subjective.

[Abtacha]

Frank Schätzings Limit was a close call for me, though I did make it eventually. A huge letdown after his other books which I enjoyed very much.

Originally Posted by issybird

... The Fellowship of the Ring... anthropomorphized furry things.

Ok, I'll admit it's been some years since I read the Lord of the Rings but I certainly don't remember any anthros.
Someone care to help me out here?

[tecweston]

Originally Posted by Abtacha

Ok, I'll admit it's been some years since I read the Lord of the Rings but I certainly don't remember any anthros.
Someone care to help me out here?

Me neither. The Hobbit had some talking animals, but none in Lord of the Rings that I recall.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by tecweston

Me neither. The Hobbit had some talking animals, but none in Lord of the Rings that I recall.

LOL, shows how long it's been, it's all just one mass of magic folk, even absent the furry toes. My apologies and I'll definitely take your word for it.

[JaneD]

"Skippy Dies At the End" - a bunch of navel-gazing silly people at a boys' boarding school in Scotland (or Ireland?). Just seemed to be leading nowhere. I forced myself to read to the end of the first part (about 250 pages) before bailing out.

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" - best title ever, but couldn't get through even 20 pages.

"Billy Budd" - I feel bad about this one. I am determined to get through it one day, but the last time I tried it was a dismal failure. Only plowed through about 7 pages.

[Asawi]

Too many to list! Especially now that it's so easy to check out library ebooks. I pick something up and if it starts to annoy me for one reason or another (bad language, stereotype character descriptions, bad dialog...) , within the first 20 or so pages I put it down and move on.

A recent no-finish: Tender is the night, the MR Book Club selection. That one did grab me at first because of great descriptive writing. But the further I got into it the more I hated the characters and I honestly couldn't care less what happened to them!