I came in here to say The Silmarillion.
I picked it up and put it down about 5 years straight before finally finishing over about a 6 month span.
That was probably when I was 20. I no longer have the time nor inclination for such nonsense.
Aaargh! That book was ponderous! I started reading it in 1992. I stopped reading it a week later. If I ever need to induce a coma, I’ll pick it up again.
It was about as exciting as reading through all of the “begats” in the book of Genesis. Gah!
Even my brainstem was screaming for more substance.
Some of my youthful indescretions were proper youthful indescretions, you know, public urination, drunk driving.
Some of them were much stupider, such as trying to be a Tolkien Completist.
…indIscretions…
That’s hilarious. I kind of had the same idea. I felt I had to like The Simarillion. I put my foot down, held the book high above my head and declared
“No! I do not like this book! This book is a taint on British literature! Cast it away from me for I declare all of English writing to be witless and dry!”
Ok, so that really didn’t happen but I do leer at the damn thing every time I see it sitting so smugly on my bookshelf.
I don’t recall it ever taking me more than three days to finish a novel. Quite a few novels have reached that mark, but none have yet gone over it. The ones that last three days tend to be 1500+ page works. Part of this is because I don’t usually start long books unless I know I’ll have lots of uninterrupted reading time available. I generally read short books (around 200-300 pages) during the week and save the big ones for weekends.
As for nonfiction…each volume of Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming took me about a week to read the first time (and I’m still working on fully understanding them).
Ulysses is what I read when I’ve finished a book and don’t have another one ready to start. I almost always have three or four in the “next in line” pile, and haven’t opened Ulysses in a year or so. I’m only about 1/5 of the way through, but I seem to remember that I’m enjoying it. 
I, too, have tried nobly and often to slog through the Silmarillion (I spelled that right because I can see it on the shelf behind me) for the last 15 years or so, to no avail.
I started The Bellmaker in 5th grade (1995) and I am currently on page 131 out of 397. I pick it up every time I start a new school and read a bit but I have yet to actually take the time to finish it.
Same here. Each of the “Baroque Cycle” books took me about six or seven months to finish. Oddly enough, “Cryptonomicon” was probably one of my fastest reads (for a book of that size). I think I tore through it in about two weeks.
No matter how hard I try, I just cannot complete Godel, Escher, Bach, though I like Godel, Escher, and Bach. 
It’s not a case of “that guy is way smart” in regards to the author, it’s more “that guy is way smart in a way I’m not.”
Doh! Well that’s just embarassing. Not sure how I got that wrong.
Ken Keasey’s Sometimes a Great Notion.
Gawd, that was a book with promise but had some simply unbelieveably awful incidents. I remember reading it at University and throwing it into the wall with disgust. Picking it up half a year later and again finding a plot twist so asinine throwing it against the wall and then throwing it away so I wouldn’t do it again. I’ a read-a-holic and it’s a damn rare book I won’t finish sometime.
Fast forward a few years in the mid 80’s in China. I’m on a 3 day train trip by myself with exactly one English language book - yep, sometimes a great notion. So I finished it finally after a few years hiatus.
It could have been a great book but was horribly flawed. Keasey should have pulled a Harper Lee
I read the first two chapters of War and Peace about four years ago. Haven’t touched it since.
Twice. (On the other hand, I’ve read Moby Dick thrice. I don’t know if that says more about me or Ayn Rand.)
Well, I’ve still got time to beat you, then- I started it my senior year of high school and still haven’t finished it.
I think the longest I’ve taken on a book I have finished is the 12 to 18 month break I took during Under the Volcano. I didn’t like the thing, so I returned it to the library and forgot about it, but eventually I made myself take it back out and finish it.
I was one of many who attempted to read The Silmarillion over a multiyear period. It made my eyes dry up to even think about. The difference in thought that allowed me to finish it however, was not to treat it as a novel, or even a collection of short stories. Listen when I say this: It is a textbook. It is much more the equivalent of reading an American History textbook every night before bed than the latest Grisham.
I spent longer on Stranger in a Strange Land, however. I’ve been reading and rereading the first half since my dad first recommended it to me four years ago. I like it, it’s got some interesting ideas, but I just can’t make any progress. It gets taken out and then renewed from the library at least twice a year, but it’s definitely not a high priority that I finish.
I had this revelation the first time I tried to read it (it’s actually somewhere between a textbook and the bible). Then I realized I would never get through it because I’m not taking a class with The Silmarillion as a textbook. And I’m not willing to read a textbook that I’m not required to read.
Maybe two or three years ago I started Irons’s People’s History of the Supreme Court and still haven’t finished it.
Yes. I have.
I spent about a year reading “Remembrance of Things Past”, or “In Search of Lost Time,” depending on the title’s translation in whichever edition. That’s straight through without picking anything else up. It comes in six volumes, though, so does that still count as one book? Each title could be considered a separate book, I guess.
[QUOTE=fachverwirrt]
I read the first two chapters of War and Peace about four years ago. Haven’t touched it since.
QUOTE]
It did not take me all that long to read “War and Peace,” but what’s notable about it is that I read the vast majority of the book while riding around on Bangkok buses. Tolstoy would have been proud.