I couldn’t finish Phlebas either. I started it after reading his Algebraist, which is as good as any book I’ve ever read. I think Matter is part of the Culture series and it was pretty good.
Rant and Snuff (both by Chuck Palahniuk). I love Chuck Palahniuk’s earlier works, and had every single one of his novels on my bookshelf. Rant didn’t have nearly the same appeal that his previous novels had, but I figured it was a fluke and still got terribly excited when Snuff came out. That book was so horrible that I’ve just completely stopped reading Chuck Palahniuk. I’m amazed at how quickly he went from my favorite author to on my shit list.
I’m a conservative Christian and I rather liked His Dark Materials. He starts to get a bit too…“preachy?” if you can call it that in the final book, but I liked the story quite a bit.
I also have to say that while Dune is a bit difficult to read, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are excellent and easy to read.
Never been able to get past that, though.
Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. Tedious, undistinguished prose. I like his other stuff, though, generally.
Gaddis, JR. I love The Recognitions, but this is like listening to insane people jabbering away on acid while drinking pain[t] thinner in a maggot factory.
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Big fan of his better books. Not this one, so much.
Threads like this are invariably say far more about the posters than about the books they post about.
John Nichols’ New Mexico Trilogy was a disappointment. I loved The Milagro Beanfield War (the book that is, not the movie which was bad). Was looking foreward to reading the rest of the trilogy, but The Nirvana Blues was such a downer I barely got through it and never even tried The Magic Journey.
I’ve always been a big Steven King fan, but the whole Gunslinger/Dark Tower fantasy bit just left me cold.
Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums” came so highly recommended by so many people that I was sure I’d love it. It was a big disappointment.
Anything by Cormac McCarthy. I keep thinking I ought to love his books, and indeed each of them has a few pieces of really fine writing. But as a whole, I’ve always found them difficult to get through.
SS
God, yes, Snuff was HORRIBLE! My god, it was horrible! I was so disappointed.
I kept hearing about the Dark Tower fantasy, and I picked up the first graphic novel. Nope, not for me.
Yes! I’ve been trying on and off to read this, since I also love The Recognitions - pretty darn difficult, though. One of these days I’ll take the plunge - there’s a good website out there edited by Steven Moore that lays out the basics of what actually happens - but not now.
Do you mean JR is the difficult one? If so, that’s what I’d call it as well. But none of my friends have even made it through a smidgen of The Recognitions, because of all that furren speaking and weirdness. To me, it’s the strangeness of the English in JR that makes it so unsettling.
I guess this makes me a bad man, but even though I manfully and on oddoccasions jubilantly was ecstasied by Finnegan’s Wake, it’s not a book I treasure. I’m not exactly a plastic paddie, with a lot of family history on one side from Ireland, and some heavy political interests inherited and gathered for myself, but it’s too much for me.
A Confederacy of Dunces. I’d heard nothing but praise for this novel, and it’s set in New Orleans, so I reserved it at my library ($0.25 fee to hold a book).
Started reading on the commute to work, and eagerness quickly turned to puzzlement which morphed into irritation. I even flipped ahead to see if it got better, but no. Hated all the “quirky” characters and wanted them to die. I spent the rest of the ride staring out the bus window, which was more entertaining than the book.
My Name is Red - by Orhan Pamuk
Love the setting and the idea of it. I’m Ms Multicultural musically as well as literary. Finished it once. Didn’t do anything for me. Figured I must have missed something and tried again a few years later. Tellingly couldn’t remember anything from the first time. Gave up halfway through.
China Mieville books that aren’t Perdido Street Station or The Scar.
We’re talking thought you’d love. I still like most of Mieville’s output and I like it very well but Perdido is one my favourite books ever, re-read and recommended numerous times. I just haven’t been as excited by what he has written after The Scar.
I don’t get any of Banks either. He’s a cold fish IMO.
Re: Guns, Germs & Steel
First half of the 2000s, though I don’t recall exactly when. But by then it had already been tossed around as nearly gospel here on the SDMB for a while. I grabbed it mostly to see what the fuss was about and to fill in gaps in the broad theory. Also because I assumed I’d find it interesting reading… which is where I went wrong.
Bingo! I had this book avidly pressed into my hands during college (more than once), and I was barely able to finish it - not because of boredom, but because of irritation with the (yes) quirky characters and the obvious humor. At the time I was half-convinced that the pathos of the back story about the author was what made the book attractive, but in retrospect that was probably unfair…it was just a book that didn’t hit my sweet spot, but which somehow charmed my friends.