The only way to read this is to skim or completely skip whole sections. Anytime he starts talking about the socio-political atmosphere, or worse yet the French architecture, skip it. His focus was not Esmeralda and Quasimodo, it was everything else. You can just look for the parts on those two and the Priest.
Foucalt’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I made it 25 pages in before giving up.
Catch - 22 - made it through less than that.
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I got within mere pages of the end and just couldn’t stand to read another word.
Anything by Henry James
The Count of Monte Cristo
Yeah, there’s lots mentioned here that I can’t count because I forced myself to suffer all the way through, but then again, it hardly counts that I dragged my eyes across them because I don’t remember anything but the suffocating boredom. I don’t read shit that bores me anymore.
The worst thing I ever made myself read entirely? Doctor Zhivago.
I’m actually about halfway through Fellowship and I’m having the same problem… reading this is some hard slogging and I’m a person who read all of H. G. Wells’ science fiction works in the third grade. I don’t know what it is but Tolkein’s writing style is… difficult. It’s as if he wanted to be serious and “grown up” but subconciously couldn’t get over the fact that he was writing works that his professional contemporaries would dismiss as silly kid stuff. There’s something bizarrely “cutesy” about them that doesn’t do me any favors.
Thanks Anaamika, next time I do the old dust-off I’ll give this method a shot. It makes me feel guilty that I own a book I haven’t read.
I just barely made it through Moby Dick and I do not remember it fondly.
Gone with the Wind was forgettable, but I read it through.
War and Peace bored me to tears and I did not attempt to complete.
As to the Lord of the Rings, I think for every fan their is a reader who gave up on it. JohnT, it changes part way through the first book from the faerie story style of the Hobbit to a more Epic style. This will happen after “The knife in the Dark.” It becomes much more serious from that point on.
As to the Silmarillion, if you find the book hard to read or even incomprehensible, skip the AINULINDALË & VALAQUENTA and try it again with Chapter 1 Of the Beginning of Days. It will be slow at first but pick up by Chapter 13
Of the Return of the Noldor. Actually if you find Chapter 1 boring skip right to Chapter 13, though that might be confusing.
Jim
Another vote for Moby Dick. I wanted to poke my eyes out with pencils. God, I wanted to die.
Hey all you Moby Dick haters! Give Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel by Sena Jeter Naslund a try! Its style is an homage to 19th century literature, but its pacing and subject matter is more up-to-date.
I may have enjoyed it a tad more thoroughly because I slogged my way entirely through Moby Dick in my college American literature class … so reading this was a breath of fresh air. It’s entirely the story of Ahab’s wife, who got about a half-sentence mention from ol’ Herman in the original.
(I’ve recommended this book here before, so my apologies to anyone having deja vu.)
I feel this way about both Steinbeck and Hemingway. Giants of literature, blah blah blah - I still can’t stand their work. I’ve been forced to read enough of it to have a fully formed and educated dislike, though.*
I also agree with Anaamika about Thomas Covenant, even though my husband is a big fan and keeps attempting to induce me to try to read the goddamn things again. No.
*It wasn’t the being forced to read it part though - I’ve been forced to read any number of novels I actually enjoyed. My undergrad school required not one but two literature classes to graduate. Had to be different ones, too - so taking two classes about 19th Century novels (for example) only counted once.
Faster you say - I guess it deserves another try then. And yes, I agree that the fight was actually quite entertaining, I just want more like that 
THANK YOU! I got through something like 23 pages of that book, at which point my brain exploded and I put it down forever. And nope, I’ve never even tried to read another Tom Clancy book since.
So yeah, what Anaamika says
Another vote for The Fountainhead.
Also, I don’t really know if it’s famous, exactly, but Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. I should like it. Loved Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. But I keep on getting maybe 200 pages into it and just giving up. If I’ve got to go more than two hundred pages before caring the least little bit about any of the characters. . .it’s just not worth it. And I want to bitchslap his lack-of-an-editor.
We’re drifting, folks; Tom Clancy books don’t count as famous.
I’ve never gotten more than a few pages into House of the Seven Gables. Does anything happen?
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.
Man, I know it is popular to slam Clancy on this board, but Hunt for Red October was a good read, especially while the Cold War was still reality. I reread it a few years ago and I still enjoyed it. I did find it “Unputdownable”.
Jim
I have made multiple attempts at 1984 and Lord of the Flies, and one attempt each at Moby Dick and A Confederacy of Dunces. Just couldn’t do it. 1984 and A Confederacy of Dunces I just found interminably boring. Moby Dick and Lord of the Flies seem like books I should like, but I just haven’t been able to get into.
I’m going to give both of the latter books one more shot. I feel like I got far enough along in Moby Dick the first time around that I might be able to slog through to the end with one more attempt. I am actually thinking of simply skipping every other chapter so I can make it through the main narrative. Then maybe I’ll read the rest at another time.
It’s been a long time since I tried to read Lord of the Flies, and the first time was for school. It seems like the kind of story I could really get into; maybe I simply wasn’t mature enough for it the last couple of times I’ve tried.
Wow. This ranks up as one of my favorite stories. It’s the best revenge story of all time.
Recommendations, if you are so inclined to try it again: skip all of the Sinbad the Sailor parts. And skim - note the difference a lot of the “high society” type crap. In this book the payoff is more than worth it.
Patriot Games &* Clear and Present Danger* are much, much better. Not great, but Jack Ryan is a much more sympathetic character and they are interesting.
I slogged the entire way through Anna Karenina and, hand to God, it killed me nearly to death.
I took on Swanns Way for the third time, and for the third time wished I could piss directly in the eye of Proust before setting him on fire and rolling him off a cliff.
Stranger in a Strange Land made me think I was a chair on the set of Plan 9 from outer space. It was a plastic hell described in paperback.
Outside of that, I bought Finnegans Wake, it sat on the shelf for, oh, two years maybe, until I donated it to the humane society resale shop. I just can’t do it.
Wow. I love Pynchon, and I couldn’t finish that book. Reading Gravity’s Rainbow is like trying to break a rock with a bag full of cupcakes.