The key to Moby Dick is to read every other chapter - these contain the actual story. The chapters in between are all about whaling: how to be a good whaler, how to secure the whale, what to do with blubber, and memorably, how to squick through the “sperm” of the sperm whale. Since I’m really not interested in ever becoming a whaler, I skimmed these, but they’re best just skipped. The story chapters are really quite good.
You sure you made it through the title?
Nitpick: the titular Sea Wolf is the captain, Wolf Larsen.
Heh heh. You said “titular.”
The first hundred or so pages are slow going, before the story really gets started, but I thought it was ultimately worth it. YMMV, and it’s not the same kind of story as The Talisman.
Oh, ugh. I tried to get through “Canticle” (and even in audiobook–I can get through almost anything in audiobook form) and I couldn’t do it. And I like postapocalyptic fiction. Way too long and wordy for me.
Didn’t like LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness,” either. Tried to read it in high school and all I can remember about it now, many years later, is how stupefyingly boring I found it.
Yet another vote for Ulysses.
As far as Hemingway–I never fail to finish one of his novels quite quickly. I’ve read The Old Man and the Sea probably 4 times, usually completing it in 3 or 4 hours.
Same with me. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings probably three times through, but I can’t make any headway with the Silmarillion.
Yes, AClockworkMelon. I tried to read them back in my stoner youth days when all my pals were reading them and telling me how terrific they were. Boring. Boring boring boring. Boring, too.
Now I’m a children’s librarian and I get parents who want copies of TLOTR to read to their children. Like 6 year olds. I ask them WHY? WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DELIBERATELY SUBJECT YOUR CHILDREN TO THAT? THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF GREAT CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND YOU WANT TO READ YOUR CHILDREN THAT? Yes, parents who want to read TLOTR to their little kids make me type in all caps.
The Hobbit. When I was in sixth grade, I checked this book out from the library. Everything was going fine, hobbit and dwarves leave home to slay the dragon, have many long-winded adventures, etc. up until the point that they get to the dragon’s lair and some guy we met just three pages before KILLS THE DRAGON! All that, and some random character just pops out of nowhere and fulfills the main character’s quest? Whah?! I stopped reading right there.
Many years later I am in college. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and found it pretty good (although this may have had something to do with living in Spain at the time and having limited access to English language books). I decide that I’ll give The Hobbit another try. Unfortunately, my memory of the plot had faded over the years, and when I got to THAT PART, it all came flooding back to me. So I stopped reading The Hobbit at the same place, ten years later.
I finished it. You know that magic that Douglas Adams had, to make such a bizarre, weird story so entertaining? Well, the new guy doesn’t have it.
Give him a shot for me, too. We studied “The Turn of the Screw” at one point (high school? university?), and it was just so stupid. I don’t recall what happened, but I do recall not being even a little bit entertained by the story (or really knowing what was going on).
Just the other day at the library I stood staring at a copy of A Deepness in the Sky, thinking, “I should give that a fourth shot.”
I like the parts I read the first 3 times, but can’t remember why i never finished it. Each time I got to the part where the spider things were coming out of hibernation, but then i stopped.
Something at that point trips me up and i put the book down and pretty soon have to return it.
Same for System of the World, which I started and had to take back twice already, but wish i could finish.
Thanks for the correction - a not inconsiderable point to get wrong. The schooner’s name was the Ghost. I had to look it up, as I hadn’t read it in years.
My favorite Venetian painter is Titian.
/know your audience