It might be a terrific thriller; I don’t know. I just meant that a recent bestseller, popular but not exactly taught in literature classes, might not qualify for the purposes of the OP.
Confederacy of Dunces is a terrific book and a quick read.
Is Ancient Evenings famous enough for the list? I think I made it through three pages before deciding that no story could be made interesting enough to justify the work involved in matching names to characters.
I’m with ya. It’s charmingly dated now, but I’m surprised to see it being slammed so here.
Are you sure? I could have sworn it was 800,000 pages long. But that may just be my perception of it.
Yes, it really is short. The version I read was something like 120 pages long and the text wasn’t fine either.
I agree that the first two books alone are worth reading (the third was written when the authour was dying and it shows - plus the first two really form a complete story arc, the third is wholly unconnected to the first two and has a diffrent setting).
Disagree that the second is only “ok”. I thought it contained some of the best stuff …
Riverside Cemetery, 53 Birch St. in the Montford neighborhood. Give it a kick for me, too.
Oh, good pick! Invisible Man is a horrible pile of crap. As far as African-American lit in general, though, I loved Native Son (though I realize Wright wasn’t one of the Harlem Renaissance writers).
Another vote for War and Peace. I think I’ve read the first chapter at least five times, and never been able to get past it.
Does Zadie Smith count? She’s been getting so much critical acclaim, but her book On Beauty was one of the few books I’ve never been able to finish. I hated all the characters by the second chapter.
Ditto for A Heartbreaking Work.
D’oh. That makes sense now and I do feel like a dunce. 
I read Moby Dick for the first time in fourth grade. I was sea-mad, and whale-mad, and it was okay. Not greatly enjoyable, and I agree it was a slog at times. But over-all I liked it. Even re-read it a few times before being assigned it in HS.
A few years later I had to read at least 200 pages of some Russian novel. I chose War and Peace. I had intended to finish the book, but… I only did an extra 50 pages or so.
I could not get into A Confederacy of Dunces.
Dickens both bores me, and frustrates me.
As others have said, the Thomas Covenant books annoyed the hell out of me. Anaamika called it exactly for me, too - I want to have likable protagonists. Even if they’re technically villains.
Silas Marner, I started. But I never had any intention of finishing it. My mother had always greeted my complaints about any book assigned from school with a chorus of, “at least it’s not Silas Marner.” So I figured I’d open it up, and see whether she was doing the “walked to school in snow, uphill both ways” thing. She wasn’t.
I liked White Teeth, but I had much the same reaction to the characters in On Beauty. (I did finish the book, though.) Bunch of solipsistic, asshole academics.
James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen. Why did anybody like this thing?
Thank you. I shall wear steel-toed boots for the occasion.
All of you who hate Moby-Dick, give In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex a try. It’s the true story M-D was based on and a very enthralling read.
Atlas Shrugged. A friend went on and on about it so I gave it a try. Couldn’t get through a chapter.
Stranger in a Strange Land. I did finish it though by forcing myself to read it. It took me two weeks to finish the last half of the book. This was at a time of my life when it took me about 3 days to get through a book.
One of Anne Rice’s books, I think it was Memnoch, the Devil. After reading most of her previous books this one just lost me. I think I gave up half way through and haven’t attempted another Rice book since.
I think I attempted to read A Tale of Two Cities once. Also did not get past the first chapter. It was mostly the worst of times.
Neither was Ellison. The Harlem Rennaissance period was from the late teens to the early 1930s, when Ellison would have been a child/teenager. * Invisible Man* was published in the 1950s.
Despite being required for a class, I couldn’t get through Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady. I just faked it through the questions about it on the exam. The same goes for James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie, but I think a lot of people find Cooper unreadable.
On the less literary side, I abandoned “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” in the ladies’ room at work, after reading a few chapters. A fitting disposal, since the character Stella thinks that public ladies’ rooms stink because most women don’t deal with that “not so fresh feeling” adequately.
A college teacher that I had a tremendous amount of respect for once told me that he bought this book on a whim while he was out of town, staying in a hotel. He picked it up to read a few pages before falling asleep and ended up staying awake until sunrise and finishing the book. He raved about how good and funny it was. So I picked it up and read the first ~150 pages; nothing happened, nothing was funny, nothing was clever. It wasn’t bad like a lot of books I’ve given up on - it was just unbelievably bland and completely free of form or substance. It was like reading air. I never had the heart to tell him I even tried.
Some friends of mine were reading Lolita as a bedtime story (they are roommates, 20 years old) a few months ago (I’m not sure if they’re done yet.) and somehow we got talking about how awesome it would be if there was a Wishbone episode about it. what’s the story, Wish-bone?
Anyhoo- I couldn’t get through Foucault’s Pendulum, even though I loved Name of the Rose. I think it might be due to circumstances , though, I’ll pull it out again someday. I’ve tried to get through Ulysses about 4 times, the latest being in a college class, but I’ve punked out each time- I did get almost 2/3 of the way through for class, and read at least bits of each section, so that’s something. I like it while I’m reading, I just get fatigued after about 20 pages and then I get distracted by other, funner books (last time it was A Suitable Boy- longer, but I could read 200 pages in a sitting, rather than 20.) I ended up writing my final paper in that class about Suitable Boy, in fact, once I realized that (spoiler for Suitable Boy)Lata is Mrs. Dalloway -we also read Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse and a bunch of Yeats in that class, and it turned out to be quite serendipitous that the enormous book I’d been reading all semester (when I was supposed to be doing work for that class) is at least in part a love letter to the books I was supposed to be learning about!
I did get through the Hobbit and then Lord of the Rings (all 3) in about a week and a half a few summers ago, but that was only by bringing those books and nothing else with me to work 8-hour long shifts at the security desk. Bits were nice, but oof- so many words. Come to think of it, though, it may have been doing that that made Moby-Dick, which I read next, so palatable. It took me about 2 weeks to read that, but I was learning letterpress at the time and putting in 12-hour days in the print shop. I loved that book. I haven’t re-read the whole thing, but I keep a cheap paperback copy on the back of the terlet at home and read a chapter here and there.
I picked up the second Thomas Covenant book for free somewhere and tried it out since I see it recommended and referenced so much around here, but I couldn’t get more than 50 pages in. It wasn’t just that the character was unlikeable (I lovelovelove Lolita, after all) I just couldn’t find a way to give a crap about the “world” of the book, or any of the characters. I do wish I had read it when I was maybe 12 or 13, though- I probably would have liked it then.
Hmm- one more: Last winter I read about half of Bonfire of the Vanities while visiting my Dad- I always have trouble sleeping away from home, so I had lots of hours after everyone else was in bed to read. It was OK- lots of snark and satire, but by the time I was packing to go home, I was only halfway through (I think I was at the part where Sherman is considering wearing a wire) and I realized i just did not care one way or the other what happened to anybody in that book. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t care, and a lot of the satire just looks obvious from a present-day standpoint- I don’t doubt it was clever when it came out, but it hasn’t aged too well. So, I had my Dad tell me the ending (from what he remembered) and left the book behind.
Personally I don’t think Humbert and Thomas Covenant are remotely comparable. Which is more evil? That’s a tough one…Covenant raped while Humbert made it impossible for Lolita to do anything but submit. Non-consent vs. throw her down and rape her.
But there is evidence that Humbert loved Lolita, or at least what she represented. And more importantly to me, anyway, is Humburt was way more interesting to read. Once you accept the idea that he is egotistical and self-centered, his words are actually funny and he has a good wit. Whereas all Covenent do is get emo and whine about the bad hand life has dealt him, and refuse to try to look at anything resembling a bright side.
But that’s just me.
Very true. I think the thing that turned me off most about the Covenant book was his aggressive mopery- refusing to take any joy whatever in the “fantasy” world. Humbert is always grasping at joy- seeking out loveliness (however creepy or immoral his view of loveliness) and grasping it to him. He knows that his happiness is doomed, but that makes him do what he can to experience it while it lasts. Perverse, maybe, but as a worldview divorced from his actions, it is one I can admire.
I would say that Humbert’s treatment of Lolita is, to me, more reprehensible than Covenant’s crime. Granted, I haven’t actually read the book in which it (the rape) happens, but Humbert keeps Lolita a prisoner for years. He has absolute power over her, and the scenes in Beardsley where she is trying to break away (save up money, sneak out with boys) and he clamps down, are more disturbing than the sexual acts, to which she might be said to submit semi-willingly. Total hijack. sorry.