Once you’ve made the decision to start reading something, how long will you stick with it before casting it aside?
What goes into your decision to stop reading something you’ve started?
And what are some recent examples of your aborted reading attempts? How fickle are you towards your choice of reading material?
As for me, I find myself 97 pages into A Confederacy of Dunces, and I just don’t know whether I can slog it out for another 265. And I can’t think of a good reason to test my endurance. Nearly 100 pages in and I don’t give a damn about a single one of the main characters. I couldn’t care less what happens to them on the next page – barring a fatal group streetcar accident. But I’ve read this thing before and I fear that won’t happen.
Oh well, I guess I’m no judge of fine literature. Couldn’t make it past the Oxen of the Sun either. They gored me out of Ulysses two times running.
I find it very difficult to pick up works of fiction, I find non-fiction so much more interesting and satisfying. My tastes have changed over the years as I used to be a voracious reader of the latest novel by the hot writer. But I simply find true stories to be infinitely more interesting than “made up” ones. Maybe I am missing out, but I find myself in the non-fiction and biography sections of the bookstores exclusively these days.
Recently I got half way through Comfort Me With Apples , but got tired of the narrator sleeping with and falling in love with every man she met. She didn’t seem to be an interesting enough character to live vicariously through.
Cannot read Wuthering Heights. Have got about 80 or so pages in each time. Can’t stand any of the characters. Just want them to go away and sort themselves out.
If something is clearly crap, I’ll either not read it at all or if it’s not demanding, non-sequentially skim-read it. A bit from the middle, a bit from the beginning, a bit from the end: got the measure of that. Next, please!
I could not get into A Confederacy of Dunces either after hearing rave reviews. About 5 pages. I am one of the few people who could not read the Hobbit and LOTR books. I loved the movie. Maybe I could try again. It’s been a long time. A friend gave me Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume, but about 6 pages later and that was it. Maybe I should try again. Then of course there’s Genesis from the Bible!
beleave it or not, i just can’t seem to get through The Catcher in the Rye. i’ve tried twice. once in highschool and oncejust a year ago. I just don’t like it
This isn’t the first thread I’ve seen Bronte dissed in, and I have to agree. Unlike Tansu, I find I have to read sequentially, and once I start a novel, have to finish no matter how terrible it is.
[Barely Relevant Aside] Stephen King advocates this practice in his excellent On Writing[/Barely Relevant Aside] However, Bronte (WH, specifically) in hardcover put me to sleep more surely than bourbon and orgasms. I tried; really I did.
Then, about 15 years ago, I had a long commute to work and started listening to books on cassette. I started with the highbrow attitude of listening to classics I’d missed in college. I knocked down one after another, and decided Bronte would be much easier to get through in this more passive medium. So I located Wuthering Heights in audio and gave it my best shot. I ran off the road 3 times from falling asleep at the wheel. Again broke my rule of not completing a book.
Lest this become a total rant, I’m wondering if there are any Bronte fans out there that can point to the error of my ways. I’ve read a decent sampling of the english-language classics, and never had the narcoleptic response Bronte brings on in me. I’d write it off to my own lack of class, except for similar responses by other, coolerDopers. Is, say, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre or anything by the other sisters any better?
I never got through A Confederacy of Dunces either, but in my case it was because I was identifying too strongly with the main character, who (for those who haven’t read it) is a pathetic loser with no friends and a personality like nails on a chalkboard. God, that was depressing. After a hundred pages or so, I had to either stop or take my own life.
Recently, I failed to read Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before. I love Eco (Focault’s Pendulum is one of my favorite books) and I was already three quarters finished, but I just found myself unable to pick it up again and polish it off.
I used to be able to read anything, no matter how schlocky. I read Star Wars novelizations, Dungeons and Dragons books, the complete works of Tom Clancy, the whole nine yards. I could count the number of books I’d started and never finished on one hand, and still have a spare thumb left over. Now, I just don’t have the patience. If I’m not interested by the end of chapter one, I seldom bother with chapter two.
When I was around 11 or 12 I bought a big huge book on the life of Napoleon. The book was aptly titled Napoleon Bonaparte .The book is somewhere between 600 and 800 pages (i cant remember, its lost right now, and amazon didnt have it). So probely about once a year I try and tackle it but I just give up after about 30 pages or so. Its just…boring.
Another book I failed on is a great book called Taiko. Taiko is a very good book by Eiji Yoshikawa. Its about three men who raise above the rest in 16th century Japan and manage pull all of Japan under one rule. The book is very good and anyone who has read Musashi knows that Eiji Yoshikawa is an amazing story teller. The book is 944 pages long and I got about halfway through it when… another order from amazon.com came in. So I got sidetracked by all these other books and took a break from Taiko. Big mistake, by the time I decided to finish Taiko my page marker had run away and I had no clue where I was in the book. Since I had read all these other books I forgot where I was so I decided I would just have to start over some other time. Well, I still havent decided to start over.
I have never finished a book by Phillip K Dick. I get within a few pages of the end, decide that the book would be improved if every character were to be run over by a truck, realize that, were that to happen, I still wouldn’t care, and put the book down.
I can’t get that far into any Stephen King book. Damn, the degree to which that boy can’t write is astonishing.
I too didn’t get but a dozen or so pages into A Confederacy of Dunces. I’ve been told time and time agian that the main character is SUPPOSED to be despicable, but that doesn’t make it any better.
I attempted thrice to read the first book in the Wheel of Time series, never got past page 50. And now I am very glad. Even my friends who did slog through them are wincing from the latest ones.
I read A Confederacy of Dunces just last month. I liked it.
The only book I can think of off-hand that I never finished was Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, when I was 16. After about 200 pages of nothing happening but pretentious talk about poetry and some explicit-but-still-bland sex, I threw in the towel. The impatience of youth, perhaps?
Charlotte Bronte is one of my heroes. I adore Jane Eyre. I’ve also read Charlotte’s other books Shirley, Villette, and The Professor and enjoyed them as well. OTOH, I don’t think I’ve ever made it through Wuthering Heights.
To me anyway, the difference comes down to the characterizations, particularly the characterizations of women. Jane Eyre in particular is a real woman. In spite of the differences in historical period, social status, etc., I recognize myself in her. The same holds true to a certain extent of Charlotte’s other women. I’ve always had the feeling that if I could have met Charlotte Bronte, we would have been friends. Across more than a century, she grasps some essential truths about human interaction.
The same does not hold true for Wuthering Heights. I really don’t “get” Heathcliff and Cathy. You just want to ask, “What is WRONG with these people?” Of course some people love Wuthering Heights for its theme of mystical, spiritual love. But unlike Charlotte’s novels, Wuthering Heights is not grounded in reality. I think that makes it a lot less accessible.
I recommend that you check out Jane Eyre even if you never get through Wuthering Heights. In spite of the fact that they were written by sisters, they are very different books.
To return to the OP, the books currently on my “maybe I’ll try again later” shelf are:
Mr Vertigo by Paul Auster Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (what is it with that book? I’ve made it through a good chunk of Dickens, including Bleak House, and yet Pickwick Papers is my nemesis.)
I also never managed to make it through Tolkein’s Silmarillion.
I didn’t give Ulysses more time than glancing at a few pages while standing in the bookstore. I knew its reputation, of course, for rambling incoherently, and just had to read a page to see that’s about all it was.
Henry James and Somerset Maughm I did hope to like however, especially after seeing some plays and movie versions. But both were insufferable and maddening stylists, and I never finished a book by either one. Perhaps got 1/4 through.
The last book I’ve not managed to finish is Dune Messiah. It seems like Herbert only had one book in him… Dune was excellent, and I couldn’t put it down, but if Messiah is typical of the rest of the series, it’s just not worth bothering.
I have tried 3 or 4 times to read Lord of the Flies by William Golding but I can’t do it. I’ve read other disturbing books before, I’m not sure why I can’t do this one.
I have a bizarre, persistent failure to finish books by Middle Eastern or Indian authors. God knows I try! I have good intentions! I got half way through “A Suitable Boy” (a monster book, over 1000 pages) before giving up. I couldn’t get past about 10 pages of “The God of Small Things.” Now I’m failing to get through “A Map of Love” by an Egyptian author. Sigh.
99% of what I read is non-fiction and I try to get through everything. The most recent book I didn’t finish was one of my rare fiction forays: At Swim Two Birds. My brother recommended this so highly, and about 30 pages into it I realised I couldn’t even remember what I’d read, so uninteresting was I finding it. I mentioned this to my brother and he advised that if I wasn’t into it by that point I probably never would be, so I gave up.
I have tried 3 or 4 times to read The Silmarillion but have nevet been able to get very far. I’d like to read it; I enjoyed Lord of the Rings very much.
There are a few books that I believe, if I could red them all the way through, would make me a better, more intelligent, more widely-loved, more successful person, but that some character flaw deep inside of me prevents me from reading them all the way through.
The Brother Kamazov: About 100~150 pages in, one of the brothers tells this other brother this story about Christ returning and getting killed again. I’ve tried 4, maybe 5 times, to get through that. I can’t. I’m sorry. I just miss the point.
The Satanic Verses: Do they ever stop falling? No, seriously. Ever?
Foucault’s Pendulum: I get to within the last 20 pages, and quit caring. Great book, but I don’t know what the protagonist sees in the museum. I’ve tried two or three times.
Anything by Joyce: Never more than 30 pages.
I finish most of the books that I read more than 15 pages of, but those stand out in my mind as the big defeats.
Got thirty pages into Thomas McGuane’s *92 in the Shade *today, and decided to quit. I fear McGuane is not for me.
Nobody…NOBODY talks like that.
I could have taken the nonexisistant plot, and even the Worship of Men Who Fish (which I learned early to despise by reading Hemingway), but the DIALOGUE pissed me off enough to set this one aside.
.The book is somewhere between 600 and 800 pages (i cant remember, its lost right now, and amazon didnt have it). So probely about once a year I try and tackle it but I just give up after about 30 pages or so. Its just…boring.
Since I had read all these other books I forgot where I was so I decided I would just have to start over some other time. Well, I still havent decided to start over.