# Famous novels you just couldn't get through **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 29, 2008, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027 "2008-05-29T16:23:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/81 "2008-05-29T23:32:20Z")
I don’t think I could have made it through _The Master and Margarita_ without keeping a notebook with me to keep track of characters’ names. Because I did that, though, the characters didn’t confuse me and I loved the book. I wonder if some of the other Russian-name-based books would be the same way? I couldn’t get through _The Name of the Rose_. I had to write a 9 page paper on it so I read a lot of it, but I read a detailed plot summary which allowed me to know what parts were plot-critical and what parts were skimmable. I feel like it should have been a more enjoyable book, but… I dunno. Tolkien is another… man his stuff is annoying to read. Great stories, horrible writing. I think I’ve made it through most if not all of LOTR and I know I’ve read _The Hobbit_ but I’ve never made it very far into them on attempted re-reads. It’s just not worth it. Regarding _The Count of Monte Cristo_ I think it probably is going to depend a lot on what translation you have. I borrowed this from **Edward the Head** and I loved it, but it took probably 100 pages for me to get past the language. It was a contemporary translation, so it’s comparable to reading something written in English in the mid 1800s. Very flowery and verbose. Once I got used to it I was able to enjoy the book, but it may have been easier to get into with a more modern (and slim) translation. I don’t know if I can claim to have finished _Atlas Shrugged_ or not. I was at the point where I didn’t care anymore and just wanted to be done with it, and when it came to that radio speech… well… I got about 2 pages in and skipped the rest. So that’s probably…50 pages? that I didn’t read. Awful crap, that book. How did she get famous?? ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2008, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/82 "2008-05-29T23:55:16Z")
**Foucalt’s Pendulum.** I think I got my eyes to look at all the pages of _Name of the Rose_, but couldn’t get off the starting line on FP. I am relieved to hear at least 2 other people didn’t like _Confederacy of Dunces_. I honestly was beginning to think I was the only one. I picked it up again recently and was able to begin to see why it was supposed to be funny, but it stil wasn’t so I stopped about a third of the way in. Life’s too short. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/83 "2008-05-30T00:10:59Z")
[QUOTE=WormTheRed] **Malthus** , does Gormenghast get any better once Whatshisname grows up or is it more of the same? By which I mean, should I give it another chance? [/QUOTE] I say stick with just the first of the trilogy, maybe the second book if you are stuck in a waiting room, the final book only if you develop that form of insomnia that you can never sleep and will die from stress in 2 weeks if you cant manage to get sedated. Honestly, I dont mind turgid prose, and the first book is fascinating. The second one is ok but the third one sucks. Might I suggest you actually netflix/rent the BBC series Gormenghast [I just returned it so it is available now=)] and watch it. It covers much of the first 2 books, and being able to put a face to the characters sort of helps when reading the books. ---
**Author:** ![ryobserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b2d939/32.png) [@ryobserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryobserver)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/84 "2008-05-30T00:18:01Z")
I generally finish the famous novels I actually read; I just don’t start the ones I don’t think I’ll be able to finish. I can say I finished _The Scarlet Letter_ and \*The Old Man and the Sea \*for one reason only: They were class assignments. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered. The last novel I actually abandoned wasn’t famous; it was _A Voyage to Arcturus_, a deservedly obscure early science fiction “classic”. The last novel I had a real struggle to finish was _The Last of the Mohicans_; I kept reading mostly in the hope that Hawkeye would get killed. I’m another one who enjoyed _Moby Dick_, though as a bio major I couldn’t stop mentally correcting it; an awful lot of what it says about whale biology is wrong. I was 40 when I started it, though, and I suspect age makes a difference in appreciating it. If I had read it when I was in college I might well have abandoned it out of sheer impatience with the digressions. ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_C.Semone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@Ronald\_C.Semone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronald_C.Semone)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/85 "2008-05-30T00:27:29Z")
I am not sure what this says about me or the other posters, but so far ten books have been listed as unreadable that I would include on my list of the 25 most enjoyable books I have ever read (including four I would place in the top ten\*): The Grapes of Wrath\*, Moby Dick\*, The Hunchback of Notre Dame\*, Dracula\*, Catch 22, East of Eden, Bonfire of the Vanities, 1984, Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead. They were enjoyable for a variety of different reasons, eg. they were thought-provoking, exciting, enthralling, beautifully written, etc. Can anyone beat 10? ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/86 "2008-05-30T00:36:09Z")
**Tropic of Cancer**. I’d heard how revolutionary it was, so I gave it a try and got about 50 pages into it before giving up. Useless boring dumbasses doing useless boring dumbassed shit. Oh, and they cursed a lot, which back in the day was pretty revolutionary, but now it’s about as edgy as my lava lamp. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/87 "2008-05-30T00:48:38Z")
I’m still reading the greatest Dicken’s novel, _Bleak House_, after six years. One of these days I’m going to finish the first page. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/88 "2008-05-30T00:50:49Z")
[QUOTE=InappropriateHumor] Oh yeah, I forgot to mention _A Tale of Two Cities_. The opening pages bored the shiite out of me and I didn’t have the old gung-ho spirit for that one. Thankfully it was a library book, so I wasn’t guilted into slogging my way through the whole thing. Or, to play devil’s advocate, maybe by the second chapter it was awesome. [/QUOTE] It is! It’s AWESOME! Maybe catch the movie first. The 1935 version, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Gorgon\_Heap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f475e1/32.png) [@Gorgon\_Heap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorgon_Heap)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/89 "2008-05-30T00:57:38Z")
Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”. It was horribly boring and loaded with even more brain-killing monotonous crud than “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. “The Picture of Dorian Grey” This I tried. Really. For more than three months. I just couldn’t do it. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/90 "2008-05-30T01:03:25Z")
[QUOTE=Loach] 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. [/QUOTE] I’m with you Loach, I’ve really tried to enjoy Dickens and I just can’t. I even asked this board for suggestions on a Dickens book that I might be able to get through and it didn’t work. I just bounce off of him. On the other hand I had no trouble with Moby Dick. I found it fascinating reading as a window to a completely alien society that is long gone. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/91 "2008-05-30T01:44:58Z")
Another vote for Foucault’s Pendulum. I tried to read parts of it on a plane ride to Paris, and just…could…not…focus…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I’ve tried several times since then - I get about halfway through and then realize I should have been taking notes and now I have to go back and re-read that one part and…zzzzzzzzzzzzzz ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/92 "2008-05-30T02:10:07Z")
I once had a teacher who opined that _The Jungle_ may have been an important book but it was not a well written one. After giving it a shot, I have to agree with my instructor. Never made it past the first third of it. I’ll second _Tropic of Cancer_. I borrowed it from my girlfriend at the time and found it dull as hell and finally just started skipping around. I feel vindicated though knowing that she never really read it either and just kept it on her shelf because she was a moody college student who thought it looked deep sitting there. ---
**Author:** ![Marlitharn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@Marlitharn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marlitharn)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/93 "2008-05-30T03:14:53Z")
I read almost all of _War and Peace_, up to the last 40 pages or so. At that point I was so well and truly fed up with all the characters and with Tolstoy himself that I wished they’d all just go die in war and leave me in peace, and I hated myself for stopping so close to the end when I’d already slogged through 9,000 pages of incomprehensible Russian names and coma-inducing Napoleonic history, but I just couldn’t make myself pick that damn book back up for the final leg. I read enough to get an A on the final, anyway. I actually finished _Confederacy of Dunces_, and then spent some time wondering why I bothered, because the only emotion any of the characters were able to inspire in me was contempt and loathing. The only one I feel kind of guilty about never finishing is _Middlemarch_. I mean, I like Jane Austen, and _Jane Eyre_ is one of my top 5 favorite books, and I re-read _Wuthering Heights_ whenever I think I can risk doing so without drowning in all that Atmosphere, and _Middlemarch_ is along the same lines as those books, so I should enjoy it, right? Wrong. Try as I might, I just can’t get past Dorothea’s marriage to Casaba-melon. Once a year or so I get it out and vow to finish it (like I should have done in that long-ago lit class) but I always lose interest at the same spot and wander away to find something enjoyable to read. Like knitting patterns. ---
**Author:** ![Gail](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Gail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gail)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/94 "2008-05-30T03:54:00Z")
I couldn’t read anything by Jane Austin anything by Tolkein _Confederacy of Dunces_–bleh Upton Sinclair’s _The Jungle_…I got about halfway through…I found it luridly interesting, but I just couldn’t take it anymore…I got the point…it didn’t need to be that long. _Moby Dick_ too wordy What do I love? Almost anything by John Steinbeck _Little Women_ _Catcher in the Rye_ Dickens _Christmas Carol_ You know, in the 90’s they had a kid’s show on PBS called _Wishbone_ where they used a Jack Russell terrier to tell some of these famous stories and make them actually entertaining and relevant…I showed a lot of these episodes to my students…it saved me a lot of reading. ---
**Author:** ![Crocodiles\_And\_Boulevards](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Crocodiles\_And\_Boulevards](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crocodiles_And_Boulevards)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/95 "2008-05-30T05:08:58Z")
[QUOTE=Kid\_A] Me too. Also, I couldn’t finish Wuthering Heights. I got about 100 pages in, lost all of my interest in it, and quit. Both books were required reading in high school. Needless to say, I didn’t do too well on those tests. [/QUOTE] Aw, _Wuthering Heights_ is just about one of my favorite novels in the world! The ones I couldn’t get through: **Robinson Crusoe** (I actually enjoyed this book up to the part where he suddenly discovers the signs of other people on his island.) **The Scarlet Letter** ---
**Author:** ![DadWagonDriver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@DadWagonDriver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DadWagonDriver)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/96 "2008-05-30T05:49:30Z")
I suck at reading African-American lit. _Invisible Man_ made me want to slam my head into a wall repeatedly until I gave up about 15 pages in. Toni Morrison’s _Jazz_ is the same kind of experience for me, although I love, love, love _Paradise_. Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston both bore me to tears as well. I blame Ellison for this; I was assigned _Invisible Man_ back in my senior year of high school, and gave up on it within those opening pages because it sucked so bad. Ever since then, I cringe whenever I hear “Harlem Renaissance”. He ruined an entire genre of novels for me. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@The\_Tof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tof)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/97 "2008-05-30T09:07:13Z")
I would like to put another vote in for Lord of the Rings. More specifically The Return of the King. Which is to say that I slogged my way through Fellowship and Two Towers. All the while, people would tell me that the books do, in fact, pick up and get better etc. so on and so forth. Finally about a third of the way through Return- I thought to myself, “Why am I doing this? I’m not enjoying it. I didn’t like either of the other two books. This one is NOT ANY DIFFERENT! My friends are all liars and pricks for making me go through this. I shall plot my revenge.” I then gave myself the safe word, placed the book down and have never picked it up again. ---
**Author:** ![cactus\_waltz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/98 "2008-05-30T11:39:42Z")
I too, didn’t enjoy Heart of Darkness that much. But the book is _really short_, so it was easy to plow through it still. > [@](#): > > Also never could get through any Tolstoy; I tried Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov Sorry for the nitpick, but The Brothers Karamazov is a Dostoevsky piece. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/99 "2008-05-30T12:11:18Z")
[QUOTE=Just Some Guy] I’m with you Loach, I’ve really tried to enjoy Dickens and I just can’t. I even asked this board for suggestions on a Dickens book that I might be able to get through and it didn’t work. I just bounce off of him. [/QUOTE] I’ve never cared for Dickens’ books, but I’ve found his newspaper work very readable. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2008, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027/100 "2008-05-30T12:18:11Z")
**Harry Potter.** I tried twice to read the first one. It was just too…chirpy. All I could hear inside my head was Julie Andrews reading it in her Mary Poppins voice. Never made it more than a few pages before tossing it aside. I blew off the whole series, despite its rave reviews, as a result. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/famous-novels-you-just-couldnt-get-through/451027.md?page=6)