I used to never put a book down, no matter what - I’d slog through to the finish every time. Now I’m older and I figure I don’t want to die having wasted my time on shitty books. So I gave away The Pillars of the Earth after maybe two hundred pages or so because I’ve never, ever seen such an awful sense of presentism in a historical book that’s supposed to be good. Urgh. It was absolutely awful!
“G” is for Gumshoe. Whoever told Sue Grafton she could write was deranged.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s such an outstanding example of a book an ordinary person just can’t finish - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke. 800 pages, half of them tiny tiny ‘footnotes’. The thing is, I really enjoyed much of it and made major headway when I was home sick for a week. But dang! it was long, and complex, and though I wanted to find out how it ended, I just couldn’t read one. more. word.
Same with the first couple of Harry Potter books, I tried but just sort of lost interest after a while. I ADORE the movies, though.
I’ve read and re-read LOTR umpteen times and always seem to find something, not exactly new, but something I hadn’t really grasped the first few times around. I love the movies, but though I didn’t ‘give up on them’ and walk out of the theater, my butt was getting numb from sitting so long!
I have to jump on the LOTR book bandwagon too.
The book Mystic River. Not only could I not get through that book, but I was so sure I would never read that book again that it was my choice when I decided to make a hollowed out book hiding-place. 
Hopefully none of you will break into my house because if you do that book contains… nothing.
The only movie I can think of that I walked out in the middle of was Inspector Gadget with Matthew Broderick.
Movies:
Many of them. Now that I can watch movies on DVD that I rent for very little I often watch a little and decide that I have better things to do. Real, paid for movies, sitting in a cinema - I left during Prizzi’s Honor, the only time ever I think. I have never seen Citizen Kane in its entirety, although I have seen it all. Every time I have tried to watch it I have given up and lost interest.
Books:
Too many to mention. It used to be a point of honor with me that any book I started I read all the way through. Then at some point I started to skim to the end of books I didn’t particularly like. Eventually I learned to just throw the book away and forget about it.
I always figure that if a book isn’t doing anything for me, there’s no point in suffering through it. Maybe I’ll even try again later, but if I’m not ready for it now, I’m moving along.
The last time I broke that rule and tried to push on through a bad book, I read way more than necessary of a horror novel called House, by Ted Dekker. I found out later it was meant to be a Christian horror novel, which didn’t help (or even make sense).
My movie contribution is Donnie Darko. What the… no, wait, I don’t care.
Shogun is an impossible book for about the first half. It is hard to read and boring and slow. Then it hits this point in the middle, and it takes off and you’re flying. By the end it had rocketed to top of my list of “best books ever read” - truly amazing.
I can’t read the Silmarillion, like others. And after the movies I can no longer read the books. They were never my favorite, and the movies supplanted them completely. I love the fantasy genre but I don’t love Tolkien’s wordiness.
I never could get through Hunt for Red October, chiefly because of the impossible names.
I read I, Claudius, but didn’t really absorb any, for the above reason. But the BBC TV series was amazing.
Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice (really any Jane Austen I have tried them all and got sick of them.
And I could never read any of the Sherlock Holmes. Holmes can be a real jerkass and that just doesn’t interest me.
But as others have said, I could sit here all day listing the books I have not finished.
Movies: In recent times, from my Netflix list, I stopped watching Jodhaa Akbar, The Rules of the Game, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Big Trouble in Little China. Some for boring, and Big Trouble in Little China might have gotten better but it felt to have too much of that casual 80s racism which I didn’t love.
That was Thomas Wolfe.
Not recommended to walk out on an in-flight movie !
That reminds me, I also bailed on Pulp Fiction…not my cup of tea.
Wheel of Time. Yup. I read the first one, and apart form being too long I wans’t really broed by it. So I continued. I hit the fifth, and in each one not only was less happenning but I was less interested in it. The characters were trite, I honestly just wanted to have all of the females and half the guys die, and almost everyone they met was such a pointless bastard I could hardly undertsand how this world functioned. it didn’t help thst the “Dark One” had vague goals, was constantly refereed to, but with no personality.
I’m on the list of “gave up on the LOTR” books.
I kind of petered out on Infinite Jest, but I liked it and intend to finish it someday. Just requires more concentration than I’ve been able to muster so far this year.
I don’t recall too many movies I’ve given up on, because I tend not to watch many movies generally, and so the ones I do pick tend to be ones that I’m strongly pre-disposed to liking. I do remember never making it through Braveheart, though at the time I was trying to watch it, it was the first time meeting my future ex-wife, we were in our late teens, and well. We got distracted.
I’ve completed Ulysses, The Satanic Verses, and a couple of Pynchons (The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland).
But, get this: I’m currently struggling - for the second time, no less - at around page 50 of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Go figure.
mmm
Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Whoever got through it and turned it into a hit movie/musical was a genius.
I watched about 30 minutes of the first NARNIA movie before I decided I was too bored to continue.
I checked out of the second PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie after a similar period.
I stuck all the way through RETURN OF THE KING, which was not entirely a mistake; there are wonderfully beautiful scenes stuck in randomly among the dreck.
I checked out of WARLOCK when Julian Sands made the tongue-omelet, the Stephen King incestuous shapeshifter movie when the younger shapeshifter ripped the cop’s hand off, and THE CROW during the gang rape.
What’s with the apologies. I always hated all Lord of the Rings movies and books. Don’t be shy, hate on!
I forgot to mention that I’m growing tired of the Ringworld series. I’m currently kindasorta reading The Ringworld Throne. But I’ve been “reading” it for about five months, now. I enjoyed the first book quite a bit, and I thought the second was interesting, but this one has completely failed to capture my attention, and I’m guessing I won’t go on beyond this book. I’ve got a five-hour flight coming up next week, though, so maybe I’ll at least finish this one.
I agree on Citizen Kane–I find it one of the Most Overrated Movies Ever.
I’m a huge fan of Salman Rushdie, and I finished The Satanic Verses, but I would consider it one of his worse books. It’s unfortunate that it’s also his most famous, for obvious reasons. I highly recommend Midnight’s Children and The Moor’s Last Sigh, both of which are really brilliant. (Although I lent my copy of Midnight’s Children to a friend and she couldn’t get through it either. Oh well.)
I gave up on Ulysses on page 400. I put my bookmark in it one night and never picked it up again. The realization that I didn’t actually have to finish it was very freeing.
I’ve quit two movies before finishing that I can think of: Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, which came to me highly recommended but was just REALLY BORING, and Breaking the Waves, which seemed very good from what I saw, but was so depressing I couldn’t handle it any more.
ETA: Oh, and I gave up on Wheel of Time a long time ago too. Eh.
I had completely forgotten about this movie, and still mostly do, except that I remember once, a cousin was babysitting my younger brother and I… kid had to be like maybe 5 or 6. And I remember he had nightmares about this movie for the longest time. It wasn’t the tongue part though, that’s just a memory trigger for me.
Thus ends the random aside.