I’ve tried Little, Big about four times now. Never even got to him arriving at the house. (He does arrive, I assume?) I love scifi, I love fantasy…heck, I even love modern urban fantasy (Charles DeLint is my secret boyfriend). I should love this book. But I just can’t get into it.
Wideacre, by Phillipa Gregory. Now, I LOVE P.G. I adore her bodice ripping historical fiction. (Well, The Constant Gardener was kind of dull, but I’ve loved everything else I’ve read.) Wideacre just…it just…speechless. I’m speechless. I’m no prude, I think we all know that, but the sheer volume of the depths of depravity of…ugh. Poisonings, incest, manipulations, sexual sadism, children born of a brother and sister…it was just too much. I was literally sickened by it and chose not to finish it.
I think I’ve read the first four pages of Foucault’s Pendulum about 523 times. Maybe someday I’ll get to the fifth.
Marley and Me. Really, allowing your dog to act like that is animal abuse. It’s not funny, it’s tragic.
The Faded Sun… by around the 6th page, you had to know about 40 words of an alien language, all taken entirely from context, not a glossary to be seen.
Nah, there was plenty for a middle-aged conservative woman to hate long before that. If I’d gotten that far (presumably because John Irving is a good writer), I could add to the stack o’ hate without abandoning the rest of the book.
Yup, this is the one. I think I’ve started it 5 times at least. One time I even got maybe 40% of the way through. It’s not the length either - I first tried it after I read Infinite Jest (quickly and loving every page) and someone described David Foster Wallace as Pynchonesque.
It took me 3 tries to finish Ulysses, but finally did. Some great writing, but a lot of incomprehensibility too - I had to read some chapters just for the poetry without trying to grok too much of the literal meaning.
One of the Dune series, I think maybe the 4th one…where the guy turns himself into a sandworm.
I like to think my literary pain threshold is fairly high…I read several of L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth series. If I’m wrong about the whole atheism thing, I figure slogging through that drek oughta buy me some time out of purgatory.
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb was something I just couldn’t get through. I tried, but I was absolutely unable to get past the first quarter of the book. It will be going with me to my next paperback swap.
I had trouble with Shogun and Musashi. I can’t imagine what people see in it (although the miniseries is excellent) - it’s trite, stereotyped to a disgusting degree and frankly dull. Musashi I liked, but the damn book was long, like the old 18th-19th century serials that were paid by the word.
I like Neal Stephenson quite a bit, and read all of the Baroque Cycle on problem. A couple of years later, I found myself reading Quicksilver again, and I just could not do it. Too much theoretical Daniel Waterhouse stuff.
Also, my mom got some book from the library called “The Little Book.” She read a bit (less than 50 pages, I think) and decided she didn’t care for it. I got about 10 pages in before I decided I didn’t care for it. (It’s some time traveling story, but I couldn’t stand the writing style).
I liked Outlander & Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, they had their faults but were at least fun and entertaining. But I only got halfway through The Fiery Cross and just lost interest. Then someone spoiled part of it here on a thread about books that make you cry, and it really bothered me that the writer would do that to one of my favorite characters, so literally threw the paperback away (granted, I left it in my truck and it was becoming unbound anyways).
For my 45th birthday I gave myself permission to not finish “Ulysses.” Twenty-five years of trying to read a book is too much.
I presume this is supposed to be about “good” books we never finished, since I could insulate my garage with the crappy books I put down once and never opened again.
There was one book recently that I did not finish. I can’t even remember what the name was or who wrote it. (I wish I did so I could avoid any future books I may come across)
The very first chapter a child is molested and killed in DETAIL.
I immediately tossed it in the trash. I was truly horrified.
The only one I memorably couldn’t finish was L. Ron Hubbards Mission Earth. Memorable because I got a couple of chapters into book one and thought WTF, there’s no way I’m slogging through ten books of this drek.
Fortunately I had only borrowed it instead of paying good money.
Brief Hijack: When the movie of Garp came out, I was dating a girl that refused, refused, no way in hell, you’ll never get that from me, nope no way was going to get her face anywhere near “that thing” “It has one use as far as I’m concerned and that’s not as a feeding tube” Great girl, horny 25 hours a day, but not for that.
Now, I had read the book, so I knew what was coming up. She didn’t. As the scene unfolded and the front seat activity got underway, I reached for her hand - she gave me a nasty look as if to say “smart ass, it’s still a no”.
Car crash - she screams. Yells out (really loudly, when I say loud, it was loud) “SEE! That’s why you don’t get your blowjob, a car would drive up our trunk and I’d bite your prick (can I say that in CS? ) off!!”
Brief total silence followed by massive laughter. Guy in front of me turns around and attempts to console me.
End of hijack
I forget the name, but it was Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography. No mistake, I love Sammy, even pre Rat Pack. Massive talent. But he had to be to carry the chip on his shoulder over the fact that he was black and that he his dad and uncle never got to work big stages. I swear, no less than four times a page for at least the first couple chapters.
Put me in the Dune line too. Just. Did. Not. Get. It.
At our local used book store they have ‘grab bags’ of mysteries, sci-fi, romance, etc., 10 for $5.00. You can’t see what’s in them, but I usually end up buying a mystery one once in a while. And usually end up throwing 3/4 of them in the trash after a chapter or two. I can’t stand the alcoholic former police detective who’s divorced, running from the mob, etc. ack. Or political spy thrillers. I just can’t manage to care enough what happens to any of the characters.
Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban. A prize-wining book, a brilliant achievement, an exploration of language, oral tradition, and the resonance of myth. AND it’s important science fiction. I should eat it up. I want to like it. But…it makes my head hurt to read it for comprehension.
The author himself says writing it ruined his spelling:
The spelling and “folk etymology” of the book were creative and fascinating at the time of publication – 1980. However, nowadays it looks simply too much like standard Internet idiot output for my comfort:
Yes I Can is the first one. I read it (and enjoyed it) when I was still young and somewhat naive.
I read his follow-up Why Me? many years later (it was published in 1989). It is remarkable that a person as successful as Sammy was could write two autobiographies and retain such a total lack of insight into his own character.
My unreadable book was Confederacy of Dunces. Maybe my expectations were too high - the guy who recommended it to me said it was the funniest book he ever read.
I got about a third into it without even cracking a smile, shrugged my shoulders, and gave up.
Thomas Covenant whatever the first one was called. I got a little further than where he raped the girl and the reader was supposed to sympathize with him before I just said, “Oh, fuck this.”
**Time Enough for Love **by Heinlein. I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of Heinlein’s works (and some others, not so much) but lord this book was a chore. I tried. Got past the “Tale of the Adopted Daughter” story, which was mentioned as a good part. It was ok. Then we got back to the incest and the kiddie-diddling and that was enough of that for me.
Umberto Eco’s been mentioned several times here, and upon first reading I always have trouble finishing his novels. They go much more quickly upon re-reading. This is because he always seems to have a good chunk of the novel devoted to information that, while it may be interesting in and of itself, doesn’t seem to have much to do with the main plot. For instance, there’s a lengthy theological debate in The Name of the Rose that doesn’t contain any hints about who is committing the murders in the abbey.
There are two ways to deal with this, depending on why you’re reading the novel. You can either push through it or skip ahead. I prefer the former, but I’ll admit it sometimes takes weeks and I wouldn’t blame anyone for doing the latter if they find it boring.
It took me quite a while to get through the section where the narrator is listening to old records and reading old books, and I was afraid for a while that the whole book was going to continue like that. But if you either push through or skip ahead then it picks up a lot as the narrator finds clues about his personal past and begins to learn (and later remember) about his own life.
The VERY end of the book is ambiguous and I found it rather frustrating, but after thinking about it I realized the ending was similar to his other novels so I really should have expected it.