Have you ever been 'beaten' by a book?

[Penforhire]

Hmm, I knew better than to crack open JJ's Ulysses so it hasn't beaten me yet

Haven't abandoned any book that I've started but I have struggled through quite a few. The Thomas Covenant series come immediately to mind as mostly torture for me to read. Yet many folks love that series.

Most recently, Cormac McCarthy's The Road was tough to finish. Yes, his prose is lyrical and magical. That man can write! But two things made this a struggle, the unrelenting darkness of his post-apocalyptic vision (masterful in its way but such a downer!) and his unique punctuation.

Some people consider it genius when he omits quotation marks in dialogue. I say it adds a distraction. Superficially it makes the text look clean and sparse but I am so used to convention that it hinders rather than helps. It was not quite as distracting to me in No Country for Old Men. I was not bothered by his use of imaginary words because it usually evoked a sense of poetry.

[HappyMartin]

The Castle by Kafka.

I loved The Trial, it really spoke me as I was deep in the belly of the South African Defense Force at the time but just could not penetrate The Castles defenses.

[Connallmac]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Most recently, Cormac McCarthy's The Road was tough to finish. Yes, his prose is lyrical and magical. That man can write! But two things made this a struggle, the unrelenting darkness of his post-apocalyptic vision (masterful in its way but such a downer!) and his unique punctuation.

Some people consider it genius when he omits quotation marks in dialogue. I say it adds a distraction. Superficially it makes the text look clean and sparse but I am so used to convention that it hinders rather than helps. It was not quite as distracting to me in No Country for Old Men. I was not bothered by his use of imaginary words because it usually evoked a sense of poetry.

I loved The Road but it was damn awful depressing through much of it. The ending was not what I had expected though.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Connallmac

I loved The Road but it was damn awful depressing through much of it. The ending was not what I had expected though.

It's one of his most hopeful books!

[time4mercy]

I actually finished it, so not sure if it counts (took me about 10 tries, though):

Foucault's Pendulum

I think this book may have damaged my self-esteem. The amount of "homework" I had to do to understand the big picture was huge. Brilliant, though. (I also tell people that the DaVinci Code stuff is just "Foucault's Pendulum for Dummies.")

[mikemc2]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace has beaten me several times. A thousand pages of heavily footnoted "postmodern" fiction. *SIGH* Maybe I'll take another stab at it when I finish The Stand. I've Read War & Peace and LOTR several times I can finish Ininite Jest...maybe.