Books People Can't Finish

[NickyWithNook]

I very happily abandon books I'm not enjoying. I loved Catch-22, but didn't like LOTR, and hated 50 Shades, which I abandoned after about 12 pages. I abandon a great number of books. There are too many books in the world for me to keep reading one I'm not enjoying.

[Lutraa]

[Glorfindel]

As far as being unable to finish LoTR, some things are fine to skim through, such as Bombadil's house, Frodo and Sam in Mordor, Songs... if you skim this you can finish the books at least.

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Glorfindel

As far as being unable to finish LoTR, some things are fine to skim through, such as Bombadil's house, Frodo and Sam in Mordor, Songs... if you skim this you can finish the books at least.

LOTR definitely one of the biggest Yawns ever. I read the series several times when I was a teen and they were fine...but I tried once or twice later in life and prefer death by a thousand cuts instead...

[Katsunami]

Is 1402 cuts fine too?

In that case, I'll bring death to you by cutting you once with every page of a paper LotR book

[bgalbrecht]

Atlas Shrugged and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are two of my DNF. Atlas Shrugged because everyone was so stupid or so evil, I didn't even make it to Galt's speech. Maybe it's because I didn't read it as a teenager. I read The Fountainhead in my 20s and it was OK, but in perusing it several decades later, I can see that Rand seems to only write caricatures, either noble creators or evil parasites.

I got about a third of the way into Jonathan Strange, but it didn't feel like it was going anywhere interesting to me. I may try again some day since I own it, but probably not. I had problems reading David Brin's Earth, but it was one where I was able to pick it up a year or two later and read it all the way through.

[jersysman]

As a teen in school, I could not finish A Tale of Two Cities. I thought it was the most boring book I had read at the time. However, with age and more life experience, I pick it up again a few years ago and loved it. I could not believe it was the same book.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jersysman

As a teen in school, I could not finish A Tale of Two Cities. I thought it was the most boring book I had read at the time. However, with age and more life experience, I pick it up again a few years ago and loved it. I could not believe it was the same book.

Dickens certainly isn't a children's author. I think you need to be an adult to appreciate his wit and satire.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Dickens certainly isn't a children's author. I think you need to be an adult to appreciate his wit and satire.

I think literature and classics are soured for many people, when they have to read stuff like Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens between 15 and 18 year old. Most are just not interested in it at that age. I'm more of an advocate to let them read what they want. OK, they'll have less classic education, but there's a bigger chance they'll become readers. They'll grow into the classics over time.

[JAcheson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Dickens certainly isn't a children's author. I think you need to be an adult to appreciate his wit and satire.

The other thing about Dickens is that a lot of his works are not really novels, but rather serials that have been collected in book form. If you're expecting the kind of tight storytelling you get in a good novel, you'll be disappointed.

On the other hand, because they're serials, you can probably read a few chapters and then come back in a month, and be none the worse off.

Lastly, a lot of Dickens' literary merit is not in his stories themselves, but rather in the way that his stories capture the era in which he lived. I kind of wonder if 50 years from now, kids will complain about having to read Stephen King's The Stand for the same reason.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I think literature and classics are soured for many people, when they have to read stuff like Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens between 15 and 18 year old. Most are just not interested in it at that age. I'm more of an advocate to let them read what they want. OK, they'll have less classic education, but there's a bigger chance they'll become readers. They'll grow into the classics over time.

I disagree. I think one of the reasons that we see so much functional illiteracy today, and a marked inability for people to think and reason is because they never learned the discipline of having to read longer, more complex works as younger persons, whether "tweens" or teens. I can't speak for anyone outside of the US, nor would I be so presumptuous, but here, people have patently lost the inability to discern fact from opinion--they literally don't understand the difference. They don't study Logic and Language in school any longer, don't have to engage in intellectual debate, etc. They haven't developed the intellectual discipline garnered from reading those "difficult" books, haven't developed the ability to focus and reason that comes from that type of schoolwork exercise.

I'm all for letting twitlets read "Twilight" or whatever, to engage a reader's interest, but a teen's disinclination to read isn't going to be cured by giving him comic books at that age--that should have been addressed many years earlier. A kid should be reading pretty avidly by the time s/he's 8 or so, I'd say, and fluidly. There's no reason a teenage brain can't process Dickens or any of the other classics. Many of us who suffered at the hands of private schools (Catholic or other) managed to live through Chaucer (not "modernized"), et al, and ended up the better for it.

I'd concur that most classics (Homer, Chaucer, Dickens, et al) aren't for "kids," but most reasonably-educated teens of 16-18 can CERTAINLY read and process those, and should. Increasingly moving toward easier reading material isn't helping them. Just my opinion, and worth what you've paid for it, but given that the average SAT scores have plummeted over the past half-century into figures that are un-freaking-believable, I think that the facts speak for themselves.

Hitch

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I disagree. I think one of the reasons that we see so much functional illiteracy today, and a marked inability for people to think and reason is because they never learned the discipline of having to read longer, more complex works as younger persons, whether "tweens" or teens. I can't speak for anyone outside of the US, nor would I be so presumptuous, but here, people have patently lost the inability to discern fact from opinion--they literally don't understand the difference. They don't study Logic and Language in school any longer, don't have to engage in intellectual debate, etc. They haven't developed the intellectual discipline garnered from reading those "difficult" books, haven't developed the ability to focus and reason that comes from that type of schoolwork exercise.

I think the teacher makes a huge difference. While I generally was put off by the classics forced upon me in high school, when I think back, the handful that I enjoyed at the time were all part of the curriculum during my junior year, when I had a terrific English teacher.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I think the teacher makes a huge difference. While I generally was put off by the classics forced upon me in high school, when I think back, the handful that I enjoyed at the time were all part of the curriculum during my junior year, when I had a terrific English teacher.

Agreed. I really enjoyed studying Shakespeare at school because we had an excellent English teacher.

[ApK]

Hitch is saying that reading those kinds of classics builds discipline of thought.
Katsunami is saying they require discipline of thought going in.

To me, it sounds like Hitch is from the "no-pain-no-gain lift heavy weight until you are strong" gym, while Kat is of the "play sports you love, ride your bike, go backpacking and eventually you'll be strong enough to lift heavy weights" gym.

I have no data on this, but it's interesting.

For myself: never read the denser classics when I was young, never had that kind of discipline, yet I did well enough on the SATs to join Mensa, and loved Logic and Language in college.

From my single data point, and my life experience I tend to side with Kat in general.

[shanghaichica]

Unfortunately I finished 50 shades of grey