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??
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
