Thomas Pynchon
I’ve tried to read Gravity’s Rainbow and it never fails that I end up with a splitting headache.
Ever single Super Bowl Sunday for the past twenty years, I’ve tried to finish Bloody Sunday (Thomas Harris’s pre-hannibal Lechter tome). I have yet to make it though the book.
One of my friends is wild about Tom Clancy, and he tried to turn me into a Clancy fan. Auggh. I read three Jack Ryan books, and finishing them was an ordeal that I endured only because my friend was so adamant about Clancy being so great. I refuse to read any more Tom Clancy. No friendship is worth that kind of suffering.
Joseph Conrad.
It was a superhuman effort for me to finish Heart of Darkness. I had the feeling throughout that this story was written by a machine. I’ve read techincal manuals that better held my attention.
I don’t much care for Tom and Huck, either, despite Huckleberry Finn supposedly being The Great American Novel.
try reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthhur’s Court. Or Life on the Mississippi, or The Innocents Abroad (or his other travel books), or The Diary of Adam and Eve. Something where his wit shines through, and he’s not trying to recreate the South of his boyhood. Great stuff.
Also, possibly “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg”
It’s interesting…I liked Huck Finn, but many people in a survey class with me didn’t, and many of them commented that they did enjoy the story even if they didn’t like other Twain stories.
Also, to agree with CalMeacham again, Henry James…
I’m in a Great American Authors class, completely about Henry James. It included Portrait of a Lady, which I absolutely hated. I mucked through it, passed my midterm on it (well, basically on it and a few travel writings)
I will say his redeeming quality is his travel writings, mostly because they are about places I find interesting, but other than that, nah - I’m just not a fan. I do like the parody called The Darkest James (I think) - I only read part of it but the author did a good job of pointing out how James talks too much about nothing, and in ambiguous terms…
Brendon Small
I hated that book when I had to read it in freshman English, but I got an A on the paper about why I hated it, which almost made reading it worthwhile.
You’re lucky. I read them in middle school (the appropriate time for such things, IMHO) and everybody I’ve ever met who’s read them comes to the point where, halfway through, they realize they’ve already read that one.
They added more ?? !!! Thank you so much for the update ! (running to Amazon…)
You nailed it for me as well. So many of my friends are die-hard Pterry fans, and I’ve read several of his books. They were OK, I guess, but not good enough for me to seek out his every written word.
My favorite Mark Twain novel is Puddinhead Wilson.
I’m struggling with The Color of Magic, but I think I’ll go ahead and skip forward a bunch of books. In other thread, someone told me which one to start with.
I really can’t get into Saul Bellow. I tried to read Humboldt’s gift, but it seems to be about an old fart wanker who is constantly mourning about his breakup with his big titted stupid ex-girlfriend. I can’t seem to make it through Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum either.
Someone once posted a link to his evisceration of James Fenimore Cooper – that has to be one of the funniest essays I’ve ever read in my life. I was literally shrieking with laughter at some sections. Ah, here it is.
I can’t get into Ian McEwan. I really, really want to read “Atonement” – its premise sounds fabulous, it involves nursing in WWII which has long been an interest of mine, it won all kinds of awards…but I’ve tried no less than four times to read it and have never gotten past page 50. I just can’t do it. I’ve failed to read “Saturday,” too, and only got through “The Cement Garden” by promising myself chocolate if I made it to the end (and, blecccch, chocolate wasn’t compensation enough for that supreme moment of ickiness in the final pages). For the life of me, I don’t understand what people see in this author.
Ayn Rand. I gather this is rather common.
We had to read The Old Man And The Sea for school. One of my classmates reflected our general opinion so beautifully that we stood and applauded:
“I never thought a book so thin could be so damn slow!”
I lilke Pterry, but that’s because I got lucky and my first book of his was Guards, Guards. And like everybody, he does have his off days (translation: there’s later books of his which sound like his brain was on “replay” mode).
Didn’t like Tom Sawyer, so much so that I never even tried Huck Finn, but I love “A Yankee…” and it has a chapter on how to compare salaries from different countries which should be compulsory reading for Business, Economics and Journalism students.
I can’t stand Dune. Sorry!
There’s others, but thankfully I can’t even remember their names most of the time. I do remember in time to avoid buying their books, which is enough for me.
Well, if you can’t get through Atonement, you might as well give up on McEwan. Try to force yourself to at least page 150. If you’re not hooked by then, give up. And there’s not an awful lot of WWII nursing in the novel. It’s all in the second half, and for my money, it’s not the best part of the novel.
But hardly universal.
Wow. I love his writing. A friend who is often mistakingly assumed to be homosexual, eggs people on by proclaiming how much he loves Dick. 
My personal contribution is the recently deceased Robert Anton Wilson. Back in the day, I read everything he wrote. Mostly because I kept thinking that it would all come together and make sense if I would give it enough effort. Never happened.
I’ll throw in with you, here. I’ve tried three or four, and while they’re not bad, they just don’t hold my interest; Adams is witty and insightful, Pratchett just seems…lacking.
I can’t get Iain Banks going, either. The Culture sounds interesting, in theory, but he drones on and on about what his characters are wearing, and their sexual deprivations, and the indistinguishable from magic technology, et cetera and never seems to get around to telling a damned story.
Hemmingway is pretty intolerable at novel length, especially when dealing with female characters, about which he clearly knows nothing. He cranked out some good short fiction, though.
I find Neal Stephenson quite readable, but I usually regret it at the end; after developing all of these disparate plots and characters that are starting to become intertwined, he just lets it drop and goes for a quick ending that doesn’t resolve, or even satisfactorially give continuation to hanging plot threads. As a chess player he’d have an interesting opening, a long and energetically convoluted midgame, and would totally lose it and collapse in the end. I keep swearing that I’m not going to read another one of his books, and then I do. Stupid.
Stranger
This is really directed at a book, not an author (although I’ll admit that I’ve never read anything else that she’s written), but I detest Wuthering Heights. I read it, thinking, “these characters are all so idiotic and unpleasant that I hope they all burn in hell.” Then they do. But I don’t even feel satisfied at the end - it just seems pointless.
I have the same complaint about Greg Bear.