I’ve had Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy sitting beside my bed for a couple of months now. I’m convinced that I’ll like it, but it sure starts off slow. I’m a dozen or so chapters in, and it’s still the first day of Titus’ life. I know that a lot of people compare Peake to Tolkien for quality of fantasy writing, and a lot of people think The Lord of the Rings drags in the beginning, so I think it’s worth the effort to get into this story.
I loved the Dark Tower books as well. I’m working on The Confusion (Stephenson) right now but I would not call it slogging. Slogging, to me, is what I am doing with The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake. I’ve been at it, off and on, for several years now. If I hated it, I would have given it up by now. If it was just bad writing (it’s not…it’s wonderful), I would have burned it by now. Instead, it just happens to be one of those books I can only take in small doses. I will keep slogging at it. Shoot, that book is one of the longest relationships of my life! :eek:
Wow, Saltire …freaking me out over here. 
I’m working my way through Les Miserables right now. While I don’t consider it a quagmire just yet, the main reason I can’t get through it is that I have about 15 minutes a week I can read. There have been times already that I felt as if I was wearing cement boots in quicksand though.
Presently I’m trying to get through Neal Stephenson’s System of the World. I loved the first two books (Quicksilver and The Confusion) but this one is just dragging on and on. I refuse to give up on it, however.
(For those slogging through Confusion, stick with it. The ending is fantastic.)
Most of the books I slog through are for my book club. Lovely women, I enjoy talking to them and spending time with them. Sadly, their taste in books is atrocious. This weekend will be another book for that.
The other book I’m in right now is the Iliad. Which is great, when I pick it up and read it. But it’s an easy book to not pick up.
I read during “fun” stuff during the week and on Sunday mornings I read “deep” stuff. I am now reading The Science Of Mind on Sunday mornings and slogging is an accurate description of my progress.
It is full of circular logic and I am having trouble getting through. However, there are parts that show a glimmer and I keep hoping it will get better.
I read the first two books of the Baroque cycle and, while I loved them, there were parts in the middle of both where the going got a little slow, especially when the writing suddently went from one of the action characters (basically Jack) to one of the characters who were sitting around writing letters to each other for a hundred pages (Eliza and Leibnitz, for example). Still well worth getting through though, as they are very fun books and I’m looking forward to when I have enough time to slog through the next one.
I’ve been reading Rememberance of Things Past by Proust off and on for several years. I know it’s a seminal novel, and a must-read if you really want to understand the modern novel, but damn!
Try the musical version:
“Proust in his first book wrote about wrote about.
Proust in his first book wrote about…” bzzzzzzz times up
I agree with Twickster. Life’s too short to slog.
I used to finish every book I started, but the world is filled with fantastic books. Why should I waste my time on one unless I’m learning something, being entertained, or both? I’ve read all of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels, but The Teeth of the Tiger just left me cold. I made it about halfway and just gave up on it. I probably finish nine out of ten of the books I start, and I don’t feel bad about dumping that tenth one at all.
I’ve only recently started to break my habit of slogging through books that just aren’t working for me. Usually I’ll keep reading, telling myself that it’ll probably get better in a chapter or two, forgetting that this is rarely how things pan out. I recently quit on Difficulties With Girls by Kingsley Amis, a writer I generally like. The language just kept skating over me–I was reading every word, but none of it was sinking in at all–and I realized something was amiss when I began reading the page over and over again.
I’m busy with **Battlefields of England ** by Alfred Burne. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t reach out and grab me like other books.
Jeffery Deaver’s The Blue Nowhere. I am a big fan of his Lincoln Rhyme novels but this one was Lincoln-less and it was very obvious. About halfway through the book I was half-expecting and yearning for Rhyme to show up and tell the big dumb computer crimes cops how badly they were screwing things up. But alas, he did not appear and I slogged dutifully on until the end which was extremely unsatisifying and predictable.
On the other hand, I am carefully rationing out the final chapters of Storm of Swords (George R. R. Martin) because I know the next book in the series hasn’t been published yet and it’s going to be downright painful to read the last page of that book knowing I have to wait two or three more years to find out what happens next. So I alternate, a couple of chapters of Storm of Swords then a crappy quick read novel like The Blue Nowhere.
I slogged all of the way through A Confederacy of Dunces a few months back, even though I hated every stinking page. I kept hoping that it wouldn’t suck all of the way through, but I was wrong. Bleah.
Seems that this is one of those “love it or hate it” sorts of books…it seemed to pop up in those “What should I read?” threads, so I gave it a shot. Asking around afterwards, I found I’m not alone in my utter loathing.
I like China Miéville’s books, but about 2/3 of the way through Iron Council, I realized I had no idea what was going on. The middle section, which was a flashback, was clear enough, but the present story was just too baffling to grip.
I don’t slog, for the reasons everyone has already given, and for one more:
Let’s face it, I’m no genius, and I can’t make myself one by reading what others think I should be reading. If I force my eyes to touch every word of *Godel, Escher, Bach, * I’ll suffer and I won’t gain anything by it. I don’t mean you should never read anything challenging, but know your limitations! There are a lot of books out there that can do me some good, and I need to go read those first.
I used to finish just about everything, but the older I get the more vividly I realize how much good stuff is left out there to be read.
If it’s fiction and doesn’t grab me quick, it’s gone. And non-fiction had better be awfully good to get me to read every last page. Way too many books start saying the same thing over and over about halfway through.
I’m usually working on a half-dozen books at a time, though, so it’s not that much of a problem to put one down for a while and pick it up again later. Neal Stephenson is absolutely brilliant line by line and action by action, but I read Quicksilver as if it were six separate books because he never knew when to quit and start something new.
Recent semi-slogs:
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Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements by David Nasaw. A little dry for what should be an entertaining (so to speak) topic.
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Extraordinary popular delusions & the madness of crowds by Charles MacKay. Was due back at the library - so only got to skim about 1/2 of it. Rather dry & more pedantic than what I was looking for.
Recent fiction reads have been a bit more snappy.
I’m slowly learning that it’s OK to abandon a book; again, I do so more with non-fiction than fiction.
Recent abandons:
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The Skeptic’s Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions by Robert Todd Carroll. Written in dictionary format & a bit more dry than I’d like it to be. Probably better as a reference tool.
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Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously - David Bianculli. Picked off bookshelf; as a contrast to Postman’s Amused to Death & The Glass Teat. I guess I got a bit burned out on the subject after reading Ellison. Will give it another try some other time.
LOVED - Confederacy of Dunces - 15-20 years ago? havent owned it since , keep buying it and giving it to friends.
LOVED - Gormenghast trilogy - my son’s 12 and half way through Gormanghast.
Ready to now read the Dark Tower books - wanted to wait til they were finished.
Most recent (and perhaps only ever) slog;
(Drum roll) The DaVinci Code. What a pile. Loads of ideas - no writing. “Tonight, asleep, she is awoken by blah blah”
I was on holiday in a town with no bookshop and for the only time in my life, left the book for someone else to have. There seemingly no shortage of people wanting to read it.
Boy what a stinker.