I recently started this very interesting book, just up my alley, about what I thought was a kind of adventure/outdoorsy thriller about a mountain-climbing expedition gone bad. It was a little confusing at first, because each of the first three or four chapters contains a vignette about a separate individual encountering something horrifying. When the author pulled it all together, it was just the most stupid, unbelievable pile of steaming crap ever that I felt myself getting resentful and angry at being deceived, and I don’t want to finish the book now. And it was really a good book up to that point - well, not THAT good, but fun and readable. Now that he’s revealed that it’s all about an unknown race of people living in obscurity for eons, I’m like :rolleyes: - please, I’m not 12 anymore. Jeez.
Oh yes.
One of the last Robert Heinlein novels (I think it was “The Cat Who Walked Through Walls”).
Started out decently and then a character arrived on the scene that made the whole thing a piece of shit.
I won’t name the character in case some poor soul is about to read this book.
Come to thinkof it - Heinlein’s “Number of the Beast” followed a similar pattern!
…that book for me would be Hannibal, by Thomas Harris. I was a huge fan of the first couple of Hanibal books, and looked forward to reading the third… you could almost predict the ending about a hundred pages to the end… in fact I remember that I skim read the last 50 pages because I had to get to the end of the book to see if Harris had done what I thought he was going to do…
SPOILERS
…and he had… 
ANCIENT EVENINGS by Norman Mailer. The first 100 pages of the novel narrates the story of a family as they journey down the Nile in nervous anticipation of an audience with the Pharaoh and is absolutely brilliant and gripping. Then it turns into a weird tale about Egyptian reincarnation and anal sex. That’s Norman, for ya.
For me, it’s ‘Wicked’. Can’t remember the author. Starts out a very interresting tale about the Wicked Witch of the West, and why she is as she is… And then it just goes south. Couldn’t finish it at all.
On the flipside of this is Stephenson’s ‘Cryptonomicon’. I found the first few hundred pages painfully dull, but after that, I couldn’t put it down.
I’ve had that happen at least twice, and it was enough to sour me on reading for quite a while.
The first was after really enjoying Thomas Tryon’s The Other and Harvest Home and starting into Lady. I threw it in the trash! More boring than the Hong Kong phone book.
The next was Stephen King’s The Shining. I eventually saw the movie and didn’t hate it as bad as the book. But the book’s 175-degree turn into a totally different tone and mood caused me to say “fuck this” and set the book aside.
There have been other books I’ve started and never picked back up after the first session of reading them. Many are just never good to start with. Others are too much like other things.
But those two specific cases are the only major disappointments I can name offhand.
Oh Yes! Intensity by Dean Kuntz. The book just unraveled the story into the ridiculous zone!
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled soured exactly on p. 96 for me. It started out well, though with a clearly Kafkaesque style and tone. By that point, it was clear that the whole thing was going to be a nonsensical dream (at least with Kafka you have the vague sense it might be going somewhere), which it was for almost the remainder of the book.
Have you ever gotten halfway through a book and only then realize that you had read it before?
Oh good lord. Yes. Once. The scary thing is, I don’t remember what book it was, so I’m likely doomed to do it again!
BrotherCadfael, that happened to me about 3 times with The Man in the High Castle. I guess I have a hard time associating the title with the contents.
I agree, but for me “Hannibal” was loathsome almost from the start. I’d also like to add Stephen King’s “Dream Catcher.” Oh, and Ira Levin’s “Son of Rosemary,” the sequel to “Rosemary’s Baby” took a huge U-turn into the stupid.
If ever a book was meant to hit the wall…
The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch. The first 90 pages are about a retired theatre person living alone in rural tranquility, reminiscing about his life and reflecting on various philosophical topics. Then a bunch of idiotic characters roll up and the improbable plot commences.
Just about every book by Michael Crighton. Interesting enough idea (dinosaur genes in amber, space borne bacteria), set up fairly well, then dissolves into a keystone cops frenzy of a finish.
Odd, I loved The Descent. I wanted it to last forever.
For me the book that sprang to mind was called The Walkers or some such, about the dead walking around (not eating the living, just walking around in circles and stuff). Then in chapter 3 we are introduced to a character of a warlock (or male witch, or whatever) who uses his magic to -of all things -give abortions to teens, for which he is constantly harried by mobs of rednecks. It’s the only book I just decided to put down and never read again.
That’s actually probably the best thing about Crichton. He’s absolutely reliable. If you hate one of his books, never read him again, but go ahead and buy the collection if you really like one.
You guessed it - $64,000 for you! I just can’t see switching gears on this, since there are so many good books to read, and I just would feel like I’m wasting my time because 1. I read relatively slowly; and 2. I don’t really get much into those really out there kinds of books. I mean, I thought it was a book about supernatural gargoyles who menace a group of mountain-climbers or something, which is out there but kind of fun. This whole thing about a race with this kind of natural infrastructure, and these massive caves and tunnels all over the Earth and they are flying around like a Van Eyck painting - my disbelief became unsuspended. Despite that “outlandishness”, the characters and the dynamics of how they relate to each other seems very hackneyed and cliched to me.
It’s probably me - I’m getting old and can’t stretch my imagination anymore. 
The first part of Smilla’s Sense of Snow was fantastic–an intricate, unusual murder mystery set in Copenhagen. You saw all these hints and clues and stuff everywhere; the payoff looked to be fabulous!
Part II takes this very promising beginning and runs it into the ground with some reject X-Files nonsense.
Bah.
I read about 200 pages into “Number of the Beast” before dropping it out of boredom/anger. It’s odd because I was a really big fan of Heinlein at the time. I enjoyed all his books (even “The Cat Who Walked Through Walls”) until I got to “Number of the Beast”. I was so disappointed that I was actually angry. That was the last Heinlein book I’ve read and probably the last one I’ll ever read.
BwanaBob, which character are you refering to in “The Cat Who Walked Through Walls”? I liked the book so I might not have noticed this character you’re talking about. Was it Lazarus or Jubal? Maybe Dracula?
Underworld, by Don De Lillo.