# Books you just couldn't finish, or almost couldn't finish **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 9, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531 "2009-01-09T15:29:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jettboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/85e7bf/32.png) [@Jettboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jettboy)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/1 "2009-01-09T15:29:50Z")
Do you have any books you just could not finish? Or books that took seemingly _forever_—dozens of starts, stops, reshelvings and “…ok, let’s try this _one more time_”—to get through? I’ve had a few of both. I couldn’t finish “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski. The premise was interesting, the first 100-odd pages were subtly creepy, but the gimmicky formatting and the fact that it just went on, and on, and on, and _on_ made me shelve it. Maybe forever. Samuel Delaney’s “Dhalgren” is a big one; it took years of starts, stops, re-starts and at least 3 or 4 copies to finally read the damn thing cover to cover. I started it when I was about 19 or 20 and finally read it to completion when I was about 40. I can appreciate this bizarre literary experiment in the intellectual sense, but that still doesn’t make it a good read. Or an easy one. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” took forever to finish. I’d put it down for a few months, pick it up again, forget what had already happened and have to review the stuff I had already covered. Terrible book; she could have just wrote one line, “communism bad. capitalism good”, and saved me the ordeal of slogging through her awful writing, idiotic “fuck everyone!” philosphy and wooden characters. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/2 "2009-01-09T15:42:50Z")
Someone gave me \*Angels and Demons \*by Dan Brown. I was not a fan of The _DaVinci Code_, but for some ungodly reason (no pun intended) I thought I’d give this one a shot. Just as with _The DaVinci Code_, I found myself rolling my eyes with every “revelation” (that I saw coming a mile away) and with every dopey half-a-cliffhanger chapter ending. I didn’t read the last 10 pages of the book because I was thoroughly irritated by then. I did follow up with a spoiler on Wiki to assure that the ending I assumed was the ending that was. And I was right. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/3 "2009-01-09T15:44:14Z")
Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was the first book I thought of, for much the same reasons as **Jettboy**. Although unlike (him?), I never even tried to finish it after reading the first few chapters. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/4 "2009-01-09T15:45:24Z")
I’ve temporarily shelved _Little Big_ and _The Confusion_. I know they’ll be worthwhile reads, but I just don’t have the patience for them right now. Also shelved is the first book in Robin Hobb’s Tawny Man trilogy. It’s taking her too long to get the story moving. Oh, and Haldor Laxness’s _Independent People_ – I’m enjoying the story and the setting but the main character ticks me off. Maybe it’s not a good book for winter. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/5 "2009-01-09T15:48:26Z")
Dune. Everyone was telling me how great it was, but I never could get past the beginning of the book. I know I’m in trouble if the book starts out with one or more maps and a list of the characters. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/6 "2009-01-09T15:49:38Z")
Upon re-reading your OP, I guess _Angels and Demons_ doesn’t count. I could have finished it, I just didn’t want to. There was this other book I tried to read once, though, that I couldn’t finish, not because it was so complicated, but because it was so boring. It was called _King of a Small World_, by some guy who is probably a fry cook at Denny’s by now. It was about a poker player who did something … I read half the book and nothing happened by then, so I’m not entirely sure what the point to the story was. It was written in this Chandleresque first person style, but just dwelling on tedium and minutia … there was one chapter that went on for three pages about how the protagonist got out of bed and took a shower. It’s not a good book. I tried to slog through it, but I just couldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/7 "2009-01-09T16:03:15Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Someone gave me \*Angels and Demons \*by Dan Brown. I was not a fan of The _DaVinci Code_, but for some ungodly reason (no pun intended) I thought I’d give this one a shot. Just as with _The DaVinci Code_, I found myself rolling my eyes with every “revelation” (that I saw coming a mile away) and with every dopey half-a-cliffhanger chapter ending. > > I didn’t read the last 10 pages of the book because I was thoroughly irritated by then. I read the first three or four chapters of _Angels and Demons_ and then stopped because it couldn’t have been a stupider waste of time if it had been shit onto a banana leaf by a brainless orangutan. Then I tried _Da Vinci Code_ and stopped after a chapter and a half. But those don’t count, because I had, and have, no interest in attempting to continue the slog. More in the line of the OP’s idea, it took me several weeks to read _The Name of the Rose_, because it’s so _thick_, narratively and conceptually. At least, the first half to two thirds. The last part of the book, concluding with the burning library, I _flew_ through. I loved every page of it, but it was definitely climbing a hill. Similarly, it took me several shots to read _Dune._ The first hundred pages are incredibly dense with exposition, setup, and background, and I got bogged down repeatedly. I didn’t try to continue from a stopping point, because I didn’t feel I had a grasp on the world; I went back to the beginning and started over. Finally, I got to the point in the story where things busted loose and all the setup began to pay off, and I roared through it from there onward. And I still haven’t finished _Moby Dick._ It’s like a whole book of the first hundred pages of _Dune._ One day. One day. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/8 "2009-01-09T16:07:57Z")
This wasn’t me, but my Aunt got to the car crash scene in _The World According to Garp_, and then she threw it into the fireplace. _Can’t…read about…blowjobs…must burn…book_ ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/9 "2009-01-09T16:10:40Z")
I “wanted” to finish _The DaVinci Code_ because of all the “how can you criticize it if you haven’t even read it” stuff from the fans. I gave it my best shot. I don’t recall how far I made it, but I really had problems continuing when Brown was writing about driving a Citroen like it was a really awesome car, and kept repeating “Citroen” over and over in the descriptive passages (like it was **such** an exotic word for us Americans) when another writer would probably have defaulted to “car” or something similar after mentioning the car’s make at the start. After all, it’s not like the particular driver had a choice of vehicles during the course of the drive. I had thought that Matthew Pearl’s [The Dante Club](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dante_Club) would be a top pick for me. Murders using references to Dante’s “The Inferno”, which I adore, and set in Boston around the time of Longfellow and the like - I was reading this on a trip to Boston. It just kept falling flat. The characters didn’t come to life, the Dante material didn’t have any spark either. I quit reading after a lot of effort to keep going out of hope it’d come together. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/10 "2009-01-09T16:11:47Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > This wasn’t me, but my Aunt got to the car crash scene in _The World According to Garp_, and then she threw it into the fireplace. > > _Can’t…read about…blowjobs…must burn…book_ Was it that, or the painful _result_ of the accident? Cause I can see how that might scare someone off from continuing. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Jettboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/85e7bf/32.png) [@Jettboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jettboy)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/11 "2009-01-09T16:30:36Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > Although unlike (him?) Yes, even though my wife keeps my balls in a Mason jar in the kitchen, I do consider myself a “him”. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/12 "2009-01-09T16:31:09Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Was it that, or the painful _result_ of the accident? Cause I can see how that might scare someone off from continuing. :eek: I don’t want to spoil it for you. Let’s just say it wasn’t “Blowjob Lite.” Still…hello, Auntie! It’s a book! Plus, it was the final quarter or so of the book. Hundreds of pages into it. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/13 "2009-01-09T16:33:17Z")
Books’ fault: _From a Buick 8_, Stephen King _American Psycho_, Bret Easton Ellis _Haunted_, Chuck Palahniuk _Greyfax Grimwald (Circle of Light, Book 1)_, Niel Hancock - The Worst Book I’ve Ever Tried to Read™ My fault: _Swann’s Way_, Marcel Proust _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, Gabriel García Márquez ---
**Author:** ![Ian\_D.Bergkamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Ian\_D.Bergkamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ian_D.Bergkamp)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/14 "2009-01-09T16:34:05Z")
I’ve tried three times - and failed - to get through _Gravity’s Rainbow_. I’ve been told by people I trust that it’s worth the effort, so I’m sure I’ll keep trying. Also, despite a great affection for Umberto Eco’s other works, I have not been able to finish _The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana_. Just too dense and dull. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/15 "2009-01-09T16:39:07Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > I don’t want to spoil it for you. Let’s just say it wasn’t “Blowjob Lite.” Still…hello, Auntie! It’s a book! Plus, it was the final quarter or so of the book. Hundreds of pages into it. Oh, I know what happened as a result of the accident. I was, however, under the impression it was in more like the first quarter of the book - with everything else in the book that I think happens before that event, I wouldn’t suspect it would be the last straw. (Haven’t read it but did read a fairly detailed plot summary.) ---
**Author:** ![Ichbin\_Dubist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/51bf81/32.png) [@Ichbin\_Dubist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ichbin_Dubist)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/16 "2009-01-09T16:41:35Z")
I never made it through _Dhalgren_. I gave up about two-thirds of the way through, because I just stopped caring what happened next. I don’t mind difficulty (my favorite science fiction writer is probably John Brunner), and even the most poorly written science fiction will at least keep you going based on plot. (Not that _Dhalgren_ is bad writing.) I do recall throwing the first “Lensman” book in disgust across the room about fifty pages in. I hit a reef with Pynchon’s _Against the Day_ about a year ago. There are just too many characters and subplots to try and read it here and there, like I was doing. I need to just start over, maybe over the summer. I did make it through _Gravity’s Rainbow_, although there’s always the possibility that I’m getting stupider. I found it hard to get to the end of _Infinite Jest,_ but got there eventually. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/17 "2009-01-09T17:27:13Z")
A book has yet to beat me, but Pynchon’s \*Against the Day \* ran me close (worth picking up again **Ichbin Dubist** , maybe!). Many stops and starts, shelved for a couple of months etc before I straightened it out on holiday. _Mason and Dixon_ is also a very difficult work - Pynchon is well known in popular culture but he really is one of the most difficult authors I think. GR, M+D and Against the Day are very challenging on all levels It’s really all about having the time to read, for me. Ball-breaking books just don’t work reading the odd few pages a night, putting it aside etc. Give me a clear run at a book, say on holiday, and I could polish off the collected works of William Gaddis, no sweat. The worst thing with the stop-start approach is that you start to think the book sucks because you can’t get into it. With _Against the Day_, I laboured with the first half and thought it was poor, but it’s just that I wasn’t reading it right. I finished the second 500 pages on holiday and really enjoyed it, so I’m a little cross with myself that I didn’t do the whole thing justice. Life has now crept up on me (work, baby, mild addiction to online bridge) that I don’t think I can read a really tough book day to day. I’ll need to save them for holiday. _House of Leaves_ mentioned in the OP is unusual - the paranormal story is fabulous but the other half about the guy in LA is garbage, really challenging to get through. I assumed after finishing it that the two halves must have a lot of links and connections, and I’m usually keen to pursue this sort of stuff online. No way am I reading that bullshit again though. Its a classic example of a talented author trying to show his ass with his first novel, he should have reined it in a bit. I really like Dhalgren, and Delaney in general. It’s a unique book all right. I remember it saying on my paperback version that the book sold over a million copies (?!) Seems incredible. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/18 "2009-01-09T17:42:47Z")
I barely finished Neal Stephenson’s enormous _Cryptonomicon_, and even then I had to skip the long sections about code-breaking. There are some interesting stories in there, but it’s meandering and turgid, and his dialogue frequently tends toward speechifying. ---
**Author:** ![maladroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f475e1/32.png) [@maladroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maladroit)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/19 "2009-01-09T17:56:05Z")
The first book I never finished was Emma Goldman’s autobiography Living My Life. It was 1971 or thereabouts and I would have been 15 or 16. I got through it well enough and enjoyed it until towards the end when it was more of an autobiographical summary of her policital, social, and philosophical views and not so much about her external life or activities and involvements with other people. I carried that book around for weeks because I’d lost interest but had never abandoned a book without finishing before, and it took me a while to accept that as an option. Since then, too many to recall and nothing memorable to speak of. There are too many good books available to waste precious reading time on ones I don’t enjoy for whatever reason (was gonna say crap but maybe somebody liked it, just not my bag) I’ve tried for decades to get through The Glass Bead Game by Hesse. I loved many of his other books but can’t get a feel for this one, after serveral starts. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531/20 "2009-01-09T17:58:41Z")
Burroughs’ \*Naked Lunch \*was a chore. I read the whole thing … I think. Still not sure if understood one word in it. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-just-couldnt-finish-or-almost-couldnt-finish/480531.md?page=2)