We all know there are some novels that just about everybody is supposed to enjoy. But a lot of times when reading a classic I have to try so hard to see what people liked so much about it. Two times especially I disliked a book so much that I just couldn’t get through it, despite its appeal:
-I spent an entire afternoon reading *Grapes of Wrath*, but by the end I was just so bored by the book that I never picked it up again. I just had absolutely no desire to read it. Strangely, Steinbeck's *East of Eden* had me hooked, I finished it in just a few days.
-After reading (and sort of enjoying) *The Fountainhead* I tried to pick up Ayn Rand's most famous work. I soon realized that *Atlas Shrugged* was the exact same book. The discription of one of protagonist sounded the same as Howard Roark, and I could tell from the start which characters would be "good" and which would be "bad." I didn't get to that rediculous monologue before dropping it and forgetting about it.
I tried to get through East of Eden, I really did, but it was tough, boring and dense. By the end I was just skimming. Likewise Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. YMMV.
Usually, if a book hasn’t hooked me in the first 50 pages, I set it aside guilt-free. Before I adopted that rule I forced myself to read all the way through far too many books that just weren’t worth it.
Oooo. Loved Bonfire of the Vanities! Try it again if you’re in a particularly snarky mood.
Anyway, Heart of Darkness for me. I was told by someone I respect that it’s his favorite book, so I’d figured it would be at least readable. Blergh. I skipped to the end just so I could read the “The Horror!” part and get half the jokes made about it.
I can’t read The Sound and the Fury. Can’t. Can’t. I cannot make my eyes stay on the page, nor transmit meaningful information to my brain. I’ve tried numerous times over the years and I cannot do it!
I also tried And the Ladies of the Club after hearing (here, I think) how marvelous it was. Gah! I kept wondering when it would start having a point.
Never even attempted Atlas Shrugged, though I pick it up off the shelf and look at it every once in a while and hold it in my hand, as though I could gauge its digestibility that way.
Moby Dick - it has a chapter about white, Chapter 42 The Whiteness of the Whale. A guy at work was reading it - for many, many weeks; bringing it to work each day. I used to pick it up mid morning and read from it, everyone except the owner of the book would laugh at the turgid, boring crap.
I tossed Lord Jim back into the library return last night. If Marlow was telling me this story in real life, I’d have kept interrupting him with “excuse me, you were telling me about this guy who abandoned ship, not the necktie worn by the first mate of the guy who commited suicide soon after sitting on the board of inquiry.”
I’m fairly well educated. I have an attention span that is longer than 10 minutes. Gravity’s Rainbow is one of the books I feel like I should be able to read.
I cannot do it. I get a splitting headache and it becomes a war between me and Pynchon. He wins every time.
I actually faired better with Finnegan’s Wake but it took me about a year to make it through (and that was with a concordance and skipping some fairly big sections that were just completely undecipherable).
Tom Jones. The only book I was ever assigned to read for class that I did not finish. I actually quit halfway through and bought the Cliff’s Notes, something I’d never, ever done for any book. Not even Tess of the D’Urbervilles or Daisy Miller.
Lord, that book was boring, and it managed to be annoyingly boring.
Thank og I’m not the only one. I tried to read this and just couldn’t get into it. Didn’t help that there were some many characters that I couldn’t keep them straight.
I hate to admit this, but I’ve tried a few times to read the Lord of the Rings straight through, and the farthest I’ve been able to get is about 1/3 of the way into The Fellowship.
Charles Dickens. I may have spoiled myself on his works by trying to read one too early but his plodding style drove me nuts. Hell I couldn’t get past how dead Marley was and how dead a doornail actually is. It makes sense that he was paid by the word.
Look Homeward, Angel. I couldn’t make it through the first chapter. I live in Thomas Wolfe’s hometown, so I really felt obliged to read it, but damn. Life’s too short, you know?
I intend to finish reading Moby Dick eventually. It didn’t bore me to tears or anything, I just lost interest or got busy somewhere near the middle. I could never get more than a few pages into The Fountainhead, though, and since I think Rand is a psycho - I got the book as a college gift and wasn’t familiar with her at the time - I don’t think I’ll bother making another effort.
I usually finish books even if I don’t like them. I think the toughest slog I’ve made in the last few years was An American Tragedy. Pretty damn boring for the first 500 pages, although to my surprise it did pick up at the end.
