# What books have you started but never finished?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 30, 2008, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288 "2008-10-30T18:29:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@PeskiPiksi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PeskiPiksi)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/41 "2008-10-30T22:36:57Z")
> [@rucciface](#):
>
> _Pride and Prejudice._
>
> My boss walked by and saw me reading it and said, “What do ya think?”
>
> I thought for a second, and I realized, “This is the most boring book ever written. Not a single thing has happened in it.” Didn’t bother to finish it.
Blasphemy!!
😉
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/42 "2008-10-30T22:39:29Z")
**The Catcher In The Rye**
I hated it from the first two or three pages so didn’t keep reading it.
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### Author:  [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/43 "2008-10-30T22:45:47Z")
**Tristram Shandy**. Thought it was going to be right up my alley; I don’t think I made it past thirty pages.
Years ago I stopped reading John Crowley’s **Little, Big** halfway through. I guess it just wasn’t the right time, or the book wasn’t what I thought it would be. I’m just now getting back to it, reading it slowly, and enjoying it greatly.
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### Author:  [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/44 "2008-10-30T22:49:57Z")
> [@Kythereia](#):
>
> _War and Peace_. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t do it. _cowers_
+1 on that one. The names, the names! They all have the same names!\*
And Gormenghast. It did not manage to pull me in at all!
\*But I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that in another thread like this.
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### Author:  [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/45 "2008-10-30T22:59:20Z")
> [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#):
>
> …
> …
>
> I gave up on Anne Rice midway through one of the later books, I think it was **The Vampire Armand**. Never picked up another one. I understand she eventually tied the Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witch books together, but I didn’t feel like wading through any more 300 page flashbacks from yet another newly introduced character that’s immortal, bi, and depressed just to find out what happened.
For me it was _Memnoch the Devil_. I gave up halfway through it.
I couldn’t get past the first few pages of _Atlas Shrugged_. A friend raved about it but I kept trying to read it on a graveyard shift and it kept putting me to sleep. I gave up.
I forced myself to finish a couple Heinlein books, _Stranger in a Strange Land_ and _Number of the Beast._ I gave up on Heinlein after those.
I also forced myself to finish King’s Insomnia which also convinced me to never to read another one of his books.
I also haven’t finished reading Salmon of Doubt, but the reason for this is that once I finish it, that’s it, I will have read everything Douglas Adams has written and there won’t be anymore.
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### Author:  [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/46 "2008-10-30T23:03:23Z")
Swann’s Way, though I will finish it next year. I hope. Stranger in a strange land bored me to tears and Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, while very interesting still sits on the shelf with my train ticket as a book mark. Anna Karenina is also a book battleground casualty.
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### Author:  [@Southern\_Yankee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southern_Yankee)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/47 "2008-10-30T23:25:06Z")
> [@FriarTed](#):
>
> The Simarillion by some guy
>
> Dante’s Divine Comedy
>
> Milton’s Paradise Lost
>
> Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra
>
> Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and have never attempted We The Living
>
> and yet I’ve read Atlas Shrugged a half-dozen times
I didn’t have any trouble with _The Fountainhead_, but could not get through _Atlas Shrugged_ on two different attempts.
Also, _War and Peace_. The names threw me off and I couldn’t keep track of what was happening.
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### Author:  [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/48 "2008-10-30T23:43:25Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#):
>
> **The Catcher In The Rye**
>
> I hated it from the first two or three pages so didn’t keep reading it.
That was the first that came to mind for me too.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2008, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/49 "2008-10-30T23:50:45Z")
Shogun and Musashi.
Both are very long books, and after the first 700 pages my stamina starts to ebb.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/50 "2008-10-31T00:15:31Z")
Many. When I was young and had more time and less money, I finished everything I bought. Now that I have less time and more money, I won’t read past the first 1/4 or 1/3 if it sucks.
The one that most recently comes to mind is _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_
There was another that I mentioned in this month’s or last’s reading thread, but it doesn’t register in my brain and I’m too lazy to look for it.
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### Author:  [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/51 "2008-10-31T01:24:58Z")
> [@Ponch8](#):
>
> I just started _The Idiot_ two nights ago. I hope I have better luck with it than you, but there are already a million things going on in the first 35 pages. In the past couple of years, I’ve given up on Hugo’s _Les Miserables_ and Dickens’ _The Pickwick Papers._
I found that the translation makes all the difference – I tried reading the Garnett translation 3-4 times and never got past page 100, but the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation is much, much better and it carried me into the 500s. (I’ve stalled out during a lengthy dinner party with the Epanchins, whom I loathe.)
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### Author:  [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/52 "2008-10-31T01:42:06Z")
_Anansi Boys_. I hated what _American Gods_ became at the end but I thought I’d give the sequel a chance. I got five chapters in, decided I hated all the characters and hoped they’d all die in a fire, and vowed I will never again pick up anything of Gaiman’s set in the _AG_ universe.
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### Author:  [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/53 "2008-10-31T01:53:28Z")
_Tom Jones_, by Henry Fielding. The only assigned book I never finished. My English teacher said it was the first true novel and that Fielding knew he was doing something new. So every other chapter was an essay about what he was doing. I gave up halfway through.
_Moonwise_, by Greer Gilman. Trust me, don’t bother.
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### Author:  [@chocolatefrog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chocolatefrog)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/54 "2008-10-31T08:56:32Z")
I’ve been halfway through Kafka’s \*The Castle \* for about half a year now. It’s meandering, frustrating and depressing. But I suppose that’s the point of the entire thing. :smack: Oh and what’s with the Garnett translations? I can’t ever seem to finish her translation of \*The Brothers Karamazov. \*
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### Author:  [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/55 "2008-10-31T09:10:59Z")
Countless books have been abandoned after the first chapter or two, but two books stand out as unfinished and regretted…
_The Silmarillion_ - I’m a great Tolkien fan, but I just can’t get into it… I’ve tried at least a dozen times and failed on each occasion.
\*[Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godel_Escher_Bach) \* is an intriguing, stimulating and challenging masterpiece, and yet I get half to two-thirds of the way through and my brain simply cannot cope anymore and implodes.
One day I will try them both again…
Grim
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### Author:  [@jali](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jali)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/56 "2008-10-31T13:43:17Z")
\*\*The Oldest Living Conferderate Widow Tells All. \*\*
I looked forward to reading this and I really tried - I just got tired of the story one day and quit. I’ve felt pretty guilty about doing this.
I’ve been struggling to read **Mansfield Park**. I still haven’t quit - It’s next to my bed - well sort of under my bed right now.
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/57 "2008-10-31T14:23:35Z")
> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#):
>
> _Gravity’s Rainbow_ about five times.
Oh yeah, this too.
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### Author:  [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/58 "2008-10-31T14:32:15Z")
Most of them seem to be R Heinlein books. I liked “Stranger in a Strange Land”, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Starship Troopers”. But I just couldn’t finish “Time Enough for Love”, “The Number of the Beast” and at least one of his short story collections (I did get those titles correct didn’t I?).
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### Author:  [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/59 "2008-10-31T14:43:36Z")
**Stranger in a Strange Land** - I just didn’t fucking care about any of the characters or ideas enough to read it. I’ve had the same experience with other Heinlein books as well.
**Harry Potter** - I tried reading the first one. After a couple pages of the relentlessly chirpy tone, I couldn’t bear another moment.
**The non-Puzo Godfather novels** - they both suck like dredgepumps.
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### Author:  [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2008, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-have-you-started-but-never-finished/470288/60 "2008-10-31T14:55:53Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> The one that most recently comes to mind is _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_
I couldn’t finish that either.
Most recently I couldn’t finish Matter by Iain M. Banks, even though I normally love Culture novels I hated this one.
I managed to finish the Silmarillion, but it took me about 4 attempts and then I wondered why I’d bothered.
Other unfinished books include:
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, sadly I did finish the Da Vinci Code, but vowed to never read one of his books again.
The Count of Monte Christo, after over 700 pages I gave up caring what happened to Edmond.
The Bible
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