# Books that you have to stop reading
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 27, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924 "2019-09-27T20:53:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/1 "2019-09-27T20:53:43Z")
Inspired by this thread, **Your favorite book written in the first person** , [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=882670](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?
---
### Author:  [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/2 "2019-09-27T21:09:22Z")
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.
---
### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2019, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/3 "2019-09-27T22:01:54Z")
“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.
---
### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2019, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/4 "2019-09-27T22:30:23Z")
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.”
---
### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2019, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/5 "2019-09-27T23:08:05Z")
_Under the Dome_
Made it almost halfway and just couldn’t take any more.
---
### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2019, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/6 "2019-09-27T23:35:50Z")
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
---
### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/7 "2019-09-28T00:15:53Z")
A Game of Thrones. I got through about half of it and couldn’t take it any more. Ugh.
---
### Author:  [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/8 "2019-09-28T00:24:49Z")
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.
---
### Author:  [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/9 "2019-09-28T00:24:57Z")
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.
---
### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/10 "2019-09-28T01:38:39Z")
> [@GESancMan](#):
>
> 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.
---
### Author:  [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/11 "2019-09-28T15:52:48Z")
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.
---
### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/12 "2019-09-28T16:02:30Z")
_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.
---
### Author:  [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/13 "2019-09-28T16:08:45Z")
_Pet Semetary_ could only be read about 3 pages a sitting at several points in the book.
---
### Author:  [@MrLee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrLee)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/14 "2019-09-28T16:37:52Z")
Ulysses - I barely made it to page 2.
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_
---
### Author:  [@Periwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Periwinkle)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/15 "2019-09-28T22:27:44Z")
American Psycho. I won’t even tell you the scene that made me put it down, too horrible. That book got huge buzz but I think it was all BS.
---
### Author:  [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/16 "2019-09-28T22:34:31Z")
After finishing _The Road_, I decided I wasn’t going to put myself through any more horrible books. The most recent on I gave up on was _The Overstory_.
I was pre-warned that Game of Thrones was nasty, and that gets confirmed pretty fast.
---
### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/17 "2019-09-28T22:42:36Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> A Game of Thrones. I got through about half of it and couldn’t take it any more. Ugh.
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.
---
### Author:  [@DummyGladHands](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DummyGladHands)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/18 "2019-09-28T22:45:05Z")
The Dark Tower series. I like King but not those.
---
### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/19 "2019-09-28T22:57:40Z")
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.
---
### Author:  [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2019, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924/20 "2019-09-28T23:48:17Z")
> [@DummyGladHands](#):
>
> The Dark Tower series. I like King but not those.
For m the second book brought everything to a screeching halt.
“Lets establish our hero as a badass and then cripple him.”
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-you-have-to-stop-reading/840924.md?page=2)