Books You Finally Got Around to Reading - And Wish You Hadn't

poohbear_nc · 10-21-2019, 09:36 AM

I am an enthusiastic reader of 18th, 19th, and 20th century novels. I tend to re-read novels that I enjoyed, and thus skip other titles written by my favorite authors. Thus, I occasionally will select a random unread title by a favorite author to see if I've been missing anything. Or to discover a new favorite novel. It's a hit-or-miss experience, and some of the misses have been memorable.

My latest miss is Anthony Trollope - He Knew He Was Right. It literally took me months to slog through it (over 100 chapters). A preposterous plot populated with improbable characters, with 3 equally inane subplots. Finishing it became a sort of personal endurance goal for me ... whew!

So, what books have you struggled to finish, only to rue the loss of time and brain cells you expended to reach "The End"?

pwalker8 · 10-21-2019, 10:20 AM

Certainly, there are quite a few books that I slogged through thinking "it has to get better", but usually they are books that were recommended to me rather than books by favorite authors that weren't very good.

One that might fall into your group was the follow up books to the movie Willow. I loved that movie. George Lucus hired a writer named Chris Claremont to write a follow up novel. Claremont was best know for his work in comics, but he wrote a space opera series called First Flight, which I though was pretty good. I slugged my way through Shadow Moon, the first of the follow up novels, and somehow got through it. Never bothered reading the other two.

issybird · 10-21-2019, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

My latest miss is Anthony Trollope - He Knew He Was Right. It literally took me months to slog through it (over 100 chapters). A preposterous plot populated with improbable characters, with 3 equally inane subplots. Finishing it became a sort of personal endurance goal for me ... whew!

Say it ain't so! I've been rereading Trollope and have worked my way through the Parliamentary novels and have two of the Barsetshire novels left to go, and I was saving He Knew He Was Right for a treat when I'm done. It's the favorite Trollope of a Goodreads friend.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Certainly, there are quite a few books that I slogged through thinking "it has to get better", but usually they are books that were recommended to me rather than books by favorite authors that weren't very good.

Yup, this is the kind of book that occurs to me off the top of my head. Two loathsome examples are the Ice and Fire books and the Dragon Tattoo books (the ones written by Larsson). Why I finished them I'll never know; momentum, mostly. I'll certainly never pick up another in either series (assuming GRRM ever writes one).

As to the original question, I'll have to think some more. Mostly I bail when I don't like a book and I'm the more likely to bail the longer it is. Little Dorrit is a fairly recent example; I had high hopes as I had just read Barnaby Rudge and was enthralled, and no one likes Barnaby Rudge! Still, I recognize the emotion, that of a forced march to get through a book out of a combination of pride and a sense, mostly a wish, that there's more there than is readily apparent, and an unwillingness to acknowledge time already wasted.

JSWolf · 10-21-2019, 11:50 AM

A book I never should hve even started let alone finished is Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. It was one of the most wordy books I've ever read. Just awful.

theducks · 10-21-2019, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A book I never should hve even started let alone finished is Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. It was one of the most wordy books I've ever read. Just awful.

Be glad you did not read his Mission Earth series

gmw · 10-21-2019, 09:26 PM

It's been nine years since I read it, and yet still the first book that jumps into mind for this is Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

I guess I can't entirely claim "And Wish You Hadn't", as it was a book that I wanted to be able to say "I have read that", and now I can. The book does have a few excellent sentences (you will know them because they are the ones that get trotted out fairly regularly to demonstrate the literary credentials of characters in other works). There were not enough of them to redeem the book, but it was interesting to find them in their full context ... as you can tell, I keep trying to find the up side of the struggle to finish this book.

ratinox · 10-21-2019, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Certainly, there are quite a few books that I slogged through thinking "it has to get better", but usually they are books that were recommended to me rather than books by favorite authors that weren't very good.

I've learned that a book (or film or TV show) almost never gets better. If it's bad at the start then it's bad for a reason, and that reason taints everything it touches. And I've realized that anyone who insists it does get better is rationalizing their time spent slogging through it.

Which is why there are no books that I've gotten around to reading and wishing I hadn't. I never get far enough into a book I don't like to regret reading it. I might regret having paid good money for it but that's something else.

ZodWallop · 10-21-2019, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gmw

It's been nine years since I read it, and yet still the first book that jumps into mind for this is Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Ah, too bad. Moby Dick has been on my to-read list for a long time.

A book I don't regret reading, but probably should have read in a class or book club is Heart of Darkness. I didn't much care for the book when I read it.

darryl · 10-22-2019, 05:20 AM

I'm afraid I disagree on Moby Dick. It's a while since I read it but skip the tedious facts at the beginning and start at the Inn. Wonderful book.

JSWolf · 10-22-2019, 05:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Be glad you did not read his Mission Earth series

Battlefield Earth was bad enough. There was no way I was going to ever read anything bu Hubbard again.

JSWolf · 10-22-2019, 06:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by darryl

I'm afraid I disagree on Moby Dick. It's a while since I read it but skip the tedious facts at the beginning and start at the Inn. Wonderful book.

Moby Dick cannot be that wonderful if you are tell us to skip part of it.

pwalker8 · 10-22-2019, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by darryl

I'm afraid I disagree on Moby Dick. It's a while since I read it but skip the tedious facts at the beginning and start at the Inn. Wonderful book.

Yep. I read Moby Dick first in my 8th Grade English class and thought it was great. I will admit that most of the class disagreed with me.

darryl · 10-22-2019, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Moby Dick cannot be that wonderful if you are tell us to skip part of it.

I understand your sentiment, but if you look at the first part of the book you will understand.

Pajamaman · 10-22-2019, 08:39 AM

For better or worse, I very rarely persevere reading anything that I'm not enjoying. For that reason, the only 19C British novel I've ever finished was Wuthering Heights, which though very long I must have enjoyed.

I was forced to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles at college, which I found to be over-long, over-descriptive (going on endlessly about fields, etc), and led by a character who did nothing to fight back. Yay! It didn't help that I was the only male in a class of females taught by a strident feminist. I took the wise choice of not actually reading Tess, but skimming it and finding some notes.

When the class did Hamlet, the class complained bitterly throughout and I think none of them actually read it (they whined a lot about the language), but referred to notes. I lapped it up. Ah, sweet revenge.

Pulpmeister · 10-22-2019, 09:36 AM

A few years ago, at the age of sixty-plus, I got around to reading Jack Kerouac's "On the Road". Penguin edition, described as a novel. I'd heard about it most of my life.

To my disappointment, the legendary novel of the beat generation turned out to be a rather dull travel book, and so far as I could deduce after researching the book, non-fiction. I gathered that Kerouac didn't even change the names of the real people involved until the publishers leaned heavily on him to do so.

I haven't read anything else by Kerouac since.

10-21-2019, 09:36 AM	#1
poohbear_nc Now what? Posts: 58,862 Karma: 135181808 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Durham, NC Device: Every Kindle Ever Made & To Be Made!	Books You Finally Got Around to Reading - And Wish You Hadn't I am an enthusiastic reader of 18th, 19th, and 20th century novels. I tend to re-read novels that I enjoyed, and thus skip other titles written by my favorite authors. Thus, I occasionally will select a random unread title by a favorite author to see if I've been missing anything. Or to discover a new favorite novel. It's a hit-or-miss experience, and some of the misses have been memorable. My latest miss is Anthony Trollope - *He Knew He Was Right*. It literally took me months to slog through it (over 100 chapters). A preposterous plot populated with improbable characters, with 3 equally inane subplots. Finishing it became a sort of personal endurance goal for me ... whew! So, what books have you struggled to finish, only to rue the loss of time and brain cells you expended to reach "The End"?

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10-21-2019, 10:20 AM	#2
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,195 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Certainly, there are quite a few books that I slogged through thinking "it has to get better", but usually they are books that were recommended to me rather than books by favorite authors that weren't very good. One that might fall into your group was the follow up books to the movie Willow. I loved that movie. George Lucus hired a writer named Chris Claremont to write a follow up novel. Claremont was best know for his work in comics, but he wrote a space opera series called First Flight, which I though was pretty good. I slugged my way through Shadow Moon, the first of the follow up novels, and somehow got through it. Never bothered reading the other two.

10-21-2019, 11:50 AM	#4
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 73,983 Karma: 128903378 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	A book I never should hve even started let alone finished is Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. It was one of the most wordy books I've ever read. Just awful.

10-21-2019, 09:26 PM	#6
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,809 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	It's been nine years since I read it, and yet still the first book that jumps into mind for this is *Moby Dick* by Herman Melville. I guess I can't entirely claim "And Wish You Hadn't", as it was a book that I wanted to be able to say "I have read that", and now I can. The book does have a few excellent sentences (you will know them because they are the ones that get trotted out fairly regularly to demonstrate the literary credentials of characters in other works). There were not enough of them to redeem the book, but it was interesting to find them in their full context ... as you can tell, I keep trying to find the up side of the struggle to finish this book.

10-22-2019, 05:20 AM	#9
darryl Wizard Posts: 3,108 Karma: 60231510 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura H2O, Kindle Oasis, Huwei Ascend Mate 7	I'm afraid I disagree on Moby Dick. It's a while since I read it but skip the tedious facts at the beginning and start at the Inn. Wonderful book.

10-22-2019, 08:39 AM	#14
Pajamaman Wizard Posts: 2,827 Karma: 10700629 Join Date: May 2016 Location: Canada Device: Onyx Nova	For better or worse, I very rarely persevere reading anything that I'm not enjoying. For that reason, the only 19C British novel I've ever finished was Wuthering Heights, which though very long I must have enjoyed. I was forced to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles at college, which I found to be over-long, over-descriptive (going on endlessly about fields, etc), and led by a character who did nothing to fight back. Yay! It didn't help that I was the only male in a class of females taught by a strident feminist. I took the wise choice of not actually reading Tess, but skimming it and finding some notes. When the class did Hamlet, the class complained bitterly throughout and I think none of them actually read it (they whined a lot about the language), but referred to notes. I lapped it up. Ah, sweet revenge.

10-22-2019, 09:36 AM	#15
Pulpmeister Wizard Posts: 2,502 Karma: 28893796 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Perth Western Australia Device: kindle	A few years ago, at the age of sixty-plus, I got around to reading Jack Kerouac's "On the Road". Penguin edition, described as a novel. I'd heard about it most of my life. To my disappointment, the legendary novel of the beat generation turned out to be a rather dull travel book, and so far as I could deduce after researching the book, non-fiction. I gathered that Kerouac didn't even change the names of the real people involved until the publishers leaned heavily on him to do so. I haven't read anything else by Kerouac since.