Inspired by this thread, Your favorite book written in the first person, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=882670, I looked at lists of first person narrator books and came across Emma Donoghue’s Room. But after reading 21% of it on Overdrive, I couldn’t go on. It’s very well written, which is part of the problem–it captured the atmosphere of menace, claustrophobia and helplessness all too well.
The last book that I just had to put down was The Kite Runner, just before the rape scene. I did pick it up again the next day, and it was worth it. From the description it seems that Room ends happily but I’m not sure that I can pick it up again and finish it.
So, are there any books that you’ve had to stop reading?
This happens to me a lot lately. I used to be able to plow through a book, not fully understanding it even, when I was a kid. As an adult, with better understanding, I sometimes would stop when the reading became a chore or too stressful (fear for the protagonist etc.)
I even do the same with Netflix; when I take a chance on a film and it’s just going badly, I stop and don’t continue, saying to myself, “life’s too short…”
Let me offer a book that I just stopped in the middle of and never went back to: “Dies the Fire” by Stirling.
This is a fantasy / SF book whose premise I just could not buy, that of certain laws of physics magically disappearing so that we no longer have the ability to run electronics (computers, radios) or certain kinds of combustion (like powder in a bullet, or fuel in an engine). Just these few choice bits of physics were ripped out. All so that mankind was forced to go back to Feudal ways, and people with horses and swords who knew how to use them were suddenly our rulers.
I had thought it would be legit SF, worth reading, but Gawd. So ripped off.
“Had” to stop reason for emotional reasons? I don’t think that has ever happened. Stopped reading because they are crap? Happens all the time. Most recently with the newest Neil Stephenson.
The first book I ever just finally went “nope; not reading this” was Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast. It’s just crap. Most of his stuff is absolutely brilliant; he truly is one of the Big 3 and genius writer. He’s one of my favorite authors and has been since I was single-digit aged. But this was just crap.
I’ve actually picked it up several times since it was first published to try it again and each time I make it about 80 pages in before I say “nope, still not reading this.”
I recently started reading Corrie Ten Boom’s classic “The Hiding Place”, and just couldn’t continue after I got to the part where the Germans start confiscating radios, and an ethnically Jewish neighbor who had converted to Christianity decades earlier poisoned his beloved bulldogs, because he and his wife just couldn’t imagine what would happen to them if they were taken away
For me, it’s George Packer’s Assasin’s Gate about the mistakes made after the invasion of Iraq. I was there and lost friends, the incompetence is just too upsetting.
Many people have recommended Stephen R. Donaldson to me, gushing about how he is the bestest author ever. On three separate occasions, with many years between each, I tried to read Lord Foul’s Bane. I think the furthest I made it was about halfway through. I just couldn’t take the utterly ridiculous dialog. It made George Lucas look like a master wordsmith.
A man I dated many years ago was a big fan of this book, and he told me, “If you can get through the first [approximately] 40 pages, you’ll love the rest of it.”
I thought the first 40 pages were great, and by about page 44, I wondered WTF I was trying to read.
This guy also liked to quote from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a book I also found impossible to read.
Dune. Impenetrable. and all those followups? Yikes.
Mr. Norris and Jonathan Strange - I really did enjoy large parts of this, but didn’t really have all that time to read the whole thing, and those thousands of footnotes! Gave it up eventually, though I liked the parts about ‘the man with the thistle down hair’ (who I pictured as David Bowie.)
As with movies about animals, I can’t bear to read any book about animals, like ‘The Incredible Journey’ or ‘Watership Down’. Even if there are happy parts or happy endings, I end up blubbering like a 5 year old.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man. The protagonist was a complete moron and I stopped reading when he watched the bad guys setting a up trap to catch him and waiting until it was completed before taking any action. I didn’t care to see him getting out of it, because he could have left before they were done.
On the other end of the scale, I gave up on The Da Vinci Code pretty early on. I’m not exactly a literary snob (I’ll happily plough through the latest Jack Reacher on holiday), but TDVC was appalling
I bought the first three books in a B2GOF deal and read them all. I actually liked some of the characters and the plot seemed to be going okay. Yes, a bit bloodthirsty, but I tend to skip detailed descriptions of violence anyway.
I bought the fourth book once it was remembered and pretty much abandoned it halfway through. My considered opinion is that Martin got bored and decided to kill off his most interesting characters and the plot went to pieces.
I have not seen any of the films, but I believe that the screenwriters sorted out some of the failings and fixed it.
I don’t even remember the name of the book, just that it was by Tom Clancy.
At the time, Ivylad had gone on a six-month submarine mission and I was home alone with a nearly-three-year-old and a newborn. (He missed both of his children’s births.) I was lonely, new-mom-stressed, with sore nipples and sleep deprivation.
The book I was reading had a scene where a Russian sub has its hull punctured and all the sailors on board drowned. Absolutely NOT what I needed at that moment; the book got thrown across the room and that was the end of that one.
I recently reread Dune. I found Paul to be a bit of a Mary Sue and I have no interest in the other books.
Under the Dome is decent, although I would characterize the ending as something only King could get away with.