Oh, yeah, I couldn’t do it either.
I received no less than 3 copies of “Godel, Escher, Bach” so I figured they must really think I’ll like this. I had the same experience…twice, about the 2/3 point.
More recently, I started “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (hmm, maybe it has something to do with the format of the title ? 
and thought the points he was making were interesting, but the “proofs” - all the evidence and how it was presented - were excruciating. I didn’t make it halfway.
Moby-Dick. I start reading it, then I realize I really want some clam chowder. End of story.
Another Gravity’s Rainbow failure here
Also The Pope’s Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk
The writing sucks you in, but eventually a little bell at the back of the head starts ringing and thoughts arise along the lines of ‘where are we going with this?’ . No answers are forthcoming and interest wanes.
Perhaps I should stick with reruns of The Clangers, now available on DVD.
The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison is the one that always stands out in my mind. I must have got a couple chapters in on at least a half dozen occasions in my teens, only to falter then abandon it.
Great Expectations was required in high school & a British Novels course in college. Cliff notes worked for me! And the professor mostly wanted to hear what he’d said about it. (I read the others–Vanity Fair was great & I liked The Magus–even though Fowles came out with another edition later & admitted he’d just dumped in some stuff that sounded good.)
The Silmarillion & Gravity’s Rainbow? No problem! I got through Catcher in the Rye because I read fast & it’s not that long. Afterwards, though, I wondered what was so great about it.
Got bogged down in Volume II of The Baroque Cycle; will probably start again from page 1 (of that Volume.) Things do get dull waiting for Jack Shaftoe (played by Johnny Depp) to appear again.
Also got bogged down in one of the Gabaldon books–don’t think I’ll be returning to that particular bog…
I’ve read the Hobbit dozens of times but haven’t managed to get more than halfway through FOTR.
For some reason I haven’t been able to get all the way through Good Omens yet.
The Idiot - tried several times, once got about 2/3 of the way through…then just…didn’t finish.
Vineland - didn’t hold my interest, but I’m planning on trying again.
Soul Mountain - got about 1/2way through and just kind of stopped.
I have also gotten two pages or less into: The Last of the Mohicans, Song of Solomon, and The Difference Engine. The first was like trying to read a foreign language, and the other two I just changed my mind about what I wanted to read next.
“Lisey’s Story.” Smuck, smuck, smuck.
I forgot about that one.
Also forgot about Little, Big, and that makes me feel guilty because the book was a gift, and it’s a really nice edition. I’ve tried twice and it puts me to sleep every time.
Never made it through any Tolkien beyond Fellowship of the Ring. Couldn’t stand the writing, no matter how good the story was. Same goes for H.P. Lovecraft. Terrible writers.
Just put down Catch 22 recently. I stopped giving a damn about any of the characters and got fed up with the overblown wackiness of all of them. Plus the anachronisms made me grind my teeth a few times.
Never made it more than a few pages into anything by Ayn Rand either.
I note that a lot of the “put down” Heinleins are the same. For those folks I would recommend trying some of his shorter books like Citizen of the Galaxy or Time For the Stars. Less of the social weirdness, more good science fiction.
I’m 400 pages into War and Peace, its was going pretty good, I just don’t have time.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Too twee by half.
Not too many others as I have a sort of rule if I start it, I finish it. I avoid trouble by re-reading many old favourites.
I read James Joyce’s Ulysses twice because the first time I thought, “Jeez, that was pretty boring and awful, I must have missed something” so I read it again and it was still boring and awful. Likewise War and Peace. Can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
I also, I am ashamed to admit, read *The Bridges of Madison County *twice. Why? Well, it was such a huge hit and I thought, well, there must be something to it. And guess what? There wasn’t. 
The only other book I ever read that was as bad as The Bridges of Madison County was The Horse Whisperer. The Horse Whisperer was so unremittingly awful, so dreckily ghastly, so puerile and inane, so completely dreadful, that I think the man who wrote it, along with the people who published it, should be make to personally, on their knees in a sleet storm, be required to reforest the area where the trees grew that made the paper that pile of crap was printed on.
The latest book I gave up on two weeks ago was by Heinlein. “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls”. The opening two chapters of cutesy repartee by the protagonist and his love interest were too much for me. I don’t care if he is one of the four greatest SF writers of all time, I just don’t have the patience anymore to get through that to get to the story. I might not ever pick up another one of his.
Ah yes, and Dune.
However, I did manage to get through all ten books in Hubbard’s Mission Earth dekology in one summer and even enjoyed it.
Another vote for Moby-Dick. Ballsachingly dull, and I love sea stories. A Tale Of Two Cities started too slow, so I’ve no idea whether it picks up. And The Executioner’s Song had me tossing the book aside about halfway wishing they’d get on and shoot him, already.
I second Swann’s Way. I’m on my second attempt at it. There’s nothing bad about the writing except that it lacks any kind of forward momentum. It’s as if it’s all a sort of “remembrance.”
Same here. Half way thru, not even a smile, chucked it.
Last night I quit reading Sherlock Holmes and the Rune Stone Mystery. It was dull, and even though I live in Minnesota, the local references did not make up for the fact that the mystery wasn’t interesting and the style is nothing like Doyle. Forget it.
The other recent one is Brideshead Revisited, although I am not sure why. It was fine, I just have not gone back to it.
I think I’ve given up on Heinlein for good, and one of the reasons is his dialogue. I can’t stand it. No one in real life talks like that. Which is odd, because dialogue is one of the things he’s praised for.
I’d recommend sticking it out with A Tale Of Two Cities. I can’t recall distinctly whether I found the beginning slow, but the story does become quite gripping, enough that I found myself staying up late to finish it. One of my favorite novels.
The Old Man and the Sea. Both my Mom and I could not get through it, despite its relatively short length.