This. I’m a big fantasy/science fiction fan, and I’ve read some painful examples of both sides of the genre, but the Circle of Light books were like literary meatloaf…it’s full of bits you don’t really want to recognize, dense as a brick, and seems to never get close to the end no matter how much you shovel in just to attempt to get rid of it.
Ha! This, too. I did start it, but stopped reading about 1/3 of the way in. The concept was interesting, and could very well have been the foundation of an incredible book, but this isn’t that book. It wasn’t horrible…it wasn’t good, either. It just…was. I didn’t really care about any of the characters. I really didn’t care how things turned out. I didn’t find the book’s version of London a compelling setting…it didn’t feel like it was set in a real place at all.
Tried really hard with Crime and Punishment. Read over 100 pages and NOTHING. HAPPENED. There wasn’t yet even a hint (or maybe a brief, vague hint) of the murder I knew was coming, and by then I didn’t care. Reminds me of a description of another book I read once: “Some stuff happens, then some people die. The end.” It was like reading the blog of the most boring person in the world.
Also tried hard with The Echo Maker. This was released a few years ago to rave critical reviews and awards, and I really wanted to like it because it’s set in a really small town that a lot of my mom’s extended family is from, but it was absolute shit. Even my wife, who can get through any book, couldn’t get through it. I don’t think either one of us made it more than 100 pages, and it was over 400 pages IIRC. Also, nothing happened. And the writing sucks. Seems like a book that critics love and everyone else hates.
And to show I’m not just the type of person who gives up on everything: I’ve read Moby Dick, and Walden, among other generally considered boring and hard to finish books. I actually loved Moby Dick and plan to read it again someday.
Well, I enjoyed WoT up until the author started milking it, around #8 or 9.
Yes, the “Anita Blake/Vampire Hunter” weren’t too bad too start, then turned into poorly written vampire porn. I can only assume advanced “Mary Sue” disease set in.
Lolita was… difficult. I was older than you were when I read it, but I too felt uncomfortable. The cover had a quote of somebody saying it was the “greatest love story of all time!” and I kept thinking it was more smut than love. This is another one I finished mostly because it was short.
I appreciated it a little bit more after I had read a little about it, but still–blech. Never will pick up again.
Lord of the Rings starts off quite slow… I think it took me several tries to get through it.
Stranger in a Strange Land. Tried twice.
I almost listed LotR among the “difficult” books I’ve finished, because A LOT of people (including me) have trouble with the prologue and first few chapters of Fellowship. I finally finished it about 10 years after I started, all due to the first little bit. I was so enthralled once I got past that part that I finished all three books in the next couple of days.
The person who recommended *The Illuminatus! Trilogy * told me that if I re-read it, it would start to make sense. It’s been over two years and I just can’t imagine wanting to slog through that book again.
(you were supposed to look for the fnords)
Oh yeah . . . Illiminatus . . . I felt pretty much the same as Jack Batty. I actually kind of liked parts of it but it’s like they wrote a good story and then went out of their way to sabotage it and make it shitty. At times I felt like I was reading an Andy Kaufman joke.
I assume you never made it to the bit where you go through sixty pages in under a minute?
Only tried once, but still. Everyone’s raving about it, but I just could not get into it.
I liked the first book of Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, but after spending weeks with the second and not getting a quarter into it, I returned it to the library and got on with my life. Pity.
Fnords? What fnords?
I barely finished that one, but it was work and brought me no pleasure to speak of. I have deep suspicions that the acclaim for the trilogy is akin to the “No soap. Radio,” joke.
Did you hear about the Discordian blue parrot?
He was pining for the fnords.
It helps if you’re a teenager. . . . and it’s the mid-1970s. I ate that book up in 1976, when I was 15. Fascinating for the sex alone, at that age. Now it seems like an incredible mound of self-indulgent crap.
I loved it, but I’ve only ever had it as an audio book. I can well believe I might have had trouble just reading it.
The last book I tried and failed to force myself through was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I was within a few pages of the finish line when I conclusively decided it wasn’t ever going to get good.
Hey, question for anyone who didn’t finish Crime and Punishment…
Did you guys finish/like Catcher in the Rye?
Catcher has always been my favorite book of all time, and Crime jumped right into number two as soon as I read it. I love the book with a passion, and one of the reasons is I think of the book as Catcher in Russia.
So I am curious as to the people who didn’t finish it if they read and/or finished Catcher
Nah, not so much. This is, however, true of the Schroedinger’s Cat trilogy by one of the Illuminatus authors.
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Every time a thread like this pops up, I have to post and mention it, because it’s still sitting by my bed, taunting me. I’ve been trying to read it for years, and I’m only about 100 pages from the end, but I just. Can’t. DO IT.
I fucking loved Crime and Punishment – it’s on my top 10 books ever read – and I love Russian history, Dostoevsky’s style, his themes, and so on. I should love this book.
It has moments of brilliance – Ippolit’s long “explanation” is totally enthralling, I loved Nastasya’s letters to the Prince, I loved moments like the Prince seeing Holbein’s painting in Rogozhin’s house and the description of what it was like just before an epileptic fit. Brilliant moments in literature, all of them. But the rest! I swear to God, no one acts like a human being. Every Epanchin female is an extreme manic depressive – one moment they’re furious, and then the very next line has them laughing in delight, and then they’re storming off in tears by the next two sentences. What the hell is going on? Why do they act like that? Why does the Prince put up with this bullshit? I can’t deal with it.
And the real reason I don’t just gird my loins and read the last 100 pages is that I know I’d have to re-read the first 500 just to remember who everyone was, and I’d rather eat the book than do that.
Little, Big
Animals in Translation by Temple Gardin
Foucault’s Pendulum (though I’ve read other books by Eco and finished them quite easily)
The Dante Club: This one time? At Harvard? I ate some sushi? And it was good? JFC, my bf and a bevy of friends went there, I already have too much “This one time? At Harvard?” in my life as it is.