Some books seem promising then you start reading and just can't read it because you either don't like the style, it's boring, it's crap.... etc.
Name of book:
How far you got:
Why you stopped reading:
When We Were Orphans
About three quarters of the way?
Whyyyyy are you so naive? Why can't you see beyond your fantasy world? I'm sure it's a very good book and I do like Kazuo Ishiguro's style, but I just could not put up with the narrator in this one.
Name of book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (something like that)
How far you got: a few chapters I guess... make it a few dozen pages. The guy lost his horse or something.
Why you stopped reading: Boring. Read the few I have read in two sessions, then dropped it somewhere. Found it 2 years later while moving out, it was stuck behind my bedhead. Don't know where it is now.
Cold Mountain
3/4 done
That book is soul-numbingly boring.
"Oh, I'm going to farm." "Can I help?" "For the sake of the plot, yes." "Cool."
Mercy Among the Children
Chapter two.
AAAAAUUUGH!! "I'm a guilt ridden guy who won't forgive himself for saving the life of a scumbag. Would you like to hear about my depressing grandmother? How about my creepy uncle? Or my schizophrenic and morbidly obese sister? How about my suicidal neighbor? Or my...?"
STOP TRYING TO BE DEPRESSING SIMPLY FOR SHOCK VALUE!!!
How to lose friends and alienate people
The prologue
''Oh god I couldn't care less that you couldn't get into that stupid fucking party or all the celebrities that were there and your terrible attempts at humor just annoy me oh god just shut up you pathetic little bald man.'' Or something to that extent.
Redwall, back when all my friends were into it quite a few years ago (this probably betrays my age, but whatever)
I think I got to maybe chapter 4. Maybe. Don't remember exactly, but it was boring as crap. Something about talking mice or somesuch.
>>7 Actually liked that series...more like the first book. The rest just goes on and on without the main characters. Bah.
Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny
Fifth book?
Ten books in one--not such a shabby idea. Completing all those books--hard to concentrate.
1984
i cant even count the number of times i have tried to read this book before
and for some rason i just cant get though it, i get a couple of chapters farther each time but my brain just shuts off, which sucks cause this genre of book are my favorite
>>9
I thought it was interesting. I read it before the year I read it in classes because of pure interest. Also, I'd like to note interesting parallels between 1984 and Scientology. Some parts of Scientology organization sound very similar to how the Party is set up.
Hearts in Atlantis
Hearts in Atlantis (half to mid-way through that story)
I stopped reading through it for a couple of weeks and just lost interest.
So this is like an anti-recommendation thread, right?
I, Claudius.
Left at page 250 something
Coping with Titus, Claudius, Urgulanila, Urgulania, Tiberius, Augustus, Agrippa, Livia, Messalina, Agrippinilla, Sejanus, Nero, Caligula, Drussilla, Narcissus, Pallas (there are more, but those are the FEW I can remember) and all of their personal problems ad schemes...
Pride and Prejudice
Not really far. First book I ever fell asleep reading. Once I fell asleep I never read it again.
I don't get why it's so famous. I mean how many people have actually read this thing? Long and boring.
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Five times in my life, I've slogged through half of it, at which point I had to admit that I had no idea of what the hell was happening anymore.
Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. I can't get past the five paragraphs on the first page that describe a table.
>>15
Ha, i understand you (lack of) pain. I had to read it for a grade here in college, and honestly i preferred to get a horrible mark instead of ending the damn book.
>>14
I had to read P&P for English class, and I rather liked it. It took me a while to get used to the English Austen used, but after that it wasn't bad at all. Took too long for stuff to happen, though.
Jack Kerouac. On the road and Dharma Bums.
Got about 50 pages into each. Stopped because I couldn't effing follow them and I was confused. And yet, I can't help but find beauty in the writing.
Some crap book called "Like Dandelion Dust"... was so freaking BORING. I read for several chapters hoping it would pick up and something interesting would happen. but it just went on and on like that, boring as hell.
Sad thing is, the woman who wrote it is like a best-selling author or something. Just think of all the true artists who hardly have room for their rejection letters, and some hideous waste of precious paper like that is published and on the shelves in bulk. Makes me want to cry.
Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Everything is divided in little random stories about nothing. It's not terrible, but not really enjoyable. Also i guess i read about 1/3 of the book.
Tracking Time by Leslie Glass.
Actually, I haven't stopped trying. It's been over a year since I started reading and I'm up to chapter 23. I just can't seem to get into it... It's a translated version, too, so that makes it worse. I like reading books in the language they were originally written in (if possible).
Is a history textbook from school cited under "book" or "encyclopedia"?
sorry if this is the wrong place to put a thread, but I didn't see where else :D
DN: Another Note.. read three chapters or something..
maybe it's because I read it after Murakami but it seemed for me to be amateurishly written..
Nineteen Eighty-Four, I'm afraid. I read a couple chapters, but just couldn't get into it.
Wuthering Heights. I didn't get past the first few pages. Still managed to do just fine on the test and seminars though.
Light in August
FUCK YOU Faulkner.
Twice now I've tried and failed to finish Patrick Chamoiseau's critically-acclaimed, award-winning Texaco. By all rights, I feel like I should have enjoyed it, but I found his style (in the original, a near-patois of High French and Martinican Creolisms--in English translation, a free-flowing, almost-stream of-consciousness mess with many French and Creole terms, footnotes, and a glossary) excessively dense and meandering. It was also written with a loose chronology, skipping around in time, so I really had a hard time understanding what was going on.
I'm now fighting my way through Romance of Three Kingdoms. It's fun, but there are so many characters to try to follow, I'm pretty much lost. Also, if I was to try to say anyone's name aloud in front of anyone who speaks mandarin, they'd stab me in the neck.
Atlas Shrugged. Who is John Galt? Who the fuck cares? Fuck you, Ayn Rand, and fuck your stupid story.
Ulysses,James Joyce
just 50-60 pages.....i just can't get it! this book is way over my league T_T
I loved 1984 but I can see why it'd be tough to get through. I had to drag myself through many parts my first time too.
For me the big unfinished book is The Silmarillion. I enjoy it quite a bit, but I had other books for school and when I came back to it I forgot who everyone was. Far too many elves have F names. I plan on starting it again sometime though.
Also Heretics of Dune. Honestly I'm impressed with myself that I got all the way to the fifth book.
Also forgot Singularity Sky by a Charles Stross. Got halfway through that book in 2005 and couldn't continue. 90% of that book was fake jargon and every time I tried to read it I'd get a headache. And that's why I forgot about it.
Dream of Fair to Middling Women by Samuel Beckett
can't stand this pretentious modernist shit
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Less than halfway.
Too many words I don't know.
Necromancer, stopped 40 pages in because I couldn't understand a single fucking word anyone was saying. And it wasn't kawaii enough
>>33
Hah yeah, Heretics of Dune. It was weird though. While I was reading the book and in the world inside the book, the book was interesting and exciting. But when I take a break and later think about the book, it seems boring and inconsiquential.
The memory keeper's daughter
chapter 4
Durrrr i am a nurse and i stole a kid with downs. durr life is so hard. durr durrrrr woman in 1960.
At the Mountains of Madness
probably about 50 pages in.
Fucking boring. I thoroughly enjoyed Lovecraft's short stories. I just couldn't get into it. I think there was too much description, not enough advancement.
I can somewhat attest to this. I tried to read it a few years back and just couldn't get into it. Like you, probably, I got bogged down in the specifics of the universe and just couldn't continue.
Still, I gave it another shot somewhat recently (was it last year, or the year before that?) and was finally able to appreciate it.
Really, the book is just about the author slinging together a bunch of semi-practical science fiction concepts, and trying to figure out how they would effect societies.
As for the book that I had to put down:
Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson,
I made it close to halfway through.
I don't know why I dropped this one, to be honest. It's cyberpunk! It's got AIs! It's got secret organizations! It even has a little girl! All the makings of interesting science fiction, and yet...
I just had to return it.
Maybe it was the whiny rich woman? Maybe I felt like it wasn't going anywhere? I can't say. Maybe I'll give it another shot, one day.
Did you read the first two books in the trilogy, >>34? I loved the sprawl trilogy, and right now I'm starting Idoru in the bridge trilogy (already read Virtual Light). I think knowing the values of potentially hidden characters and the relationships between others who had already been exposed helped make the book a lot more interesting to get into. The little girl in Count Zero is a lot cooler, too.
The Iliad. I even had to get a notebook to keep with the names and the plot. I know it's supposed to be a epic poem, but god it was hard to read. Hell, it was not meant to be read! Besides, you need to be really adept at ancient greek culture to be able to just understand who is doing what. I dropped it around half of the book, and never, ever, touched to damn book again.
There are other books that are very famous and extensively read around here (Latin America), like Coehlo's books, and Cuatehmoc's books, but they are utter literary shit for depressed and easily influenced people.
Doors of Perception. Just boring beyond belief.
I've tried to read Eragon numerous times because people keep telling me how good it is. I think I finished two chapters once. It just reads like a bad fan-fiction.
The Trial by Kafka. Holy shit that thing is dense and only somewhat not boring.
Memory Keeper's Daughter. Hate it. Stupid 1960's drama crap. I don't even care. Got through half of it before I realized how stupid it is.
More than a few old sci-fi novels that sci-fi nerds recommended to me. Mainly by Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and a few other who write like that. I can't stand the boring style they write in.
Red, Green, Blue Mars by Kim Robinson. Eon by Greg Bear. Just really long. Probably will get around to it eventually.
The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. No, I'm not an idiot. I get the intrigue against the prince's good name, his sacred visions of transcendence, the fickleness of high society, the unfinished business with Filipnova and Rogozhin as a constant psychical backdrop, various critical perspectives on 19th century Russia... But, fuck, after Tolstoy I'm just jaded by the holistic, all-inclusive descriptiveness that leaves no word or behavior untouched.
>>48
Picked up Eon around a month and a half and ago. Yeah, it's pretty long for science fiction (Tony Daniel and Alistair Reynolds are the only other authors I've read who approach Bear's breadth), yet manages not to stagnate as interesting physics and technology are almost constantly introduced alongside a steady stream of new characters, with focus shifting evenly between science and human affairs.
>>49
True that. He really kept the story interesting with all the new science and technology. Even when I think that I would never want a society that is anything like that I am fascinated by the technologies and how they might influence people.
A Clockwork Orange. Read maybe a couple chapters.
Gave it up because trying to follow the weird dialect was a headache and there wasn't much up to the point I'd read to suggest that it was worth the effort.
Scott Pilgrim.
I like everything about it. I just stopped reading it and lost the motivation to continue. I don't know why, though...
I read A Clockwork Orange over a decade ago. Coincidentally, I was in my second year of Russian Language classes and thusly had no issue deciphering the slang. I recall really liking the book so I recommend finding a translation guide on the Internet and giving it another go. Or don't and just see the movie.
I've been dancing around reading a stack of GK Chesterton essays and articles for a long time. It seems more of a rainy day coffee table thing.
The Qur'an has been a good read so far (this coming from a Biblical Sciences studies major).
But honestly, some of the best things I haven't been able to finish have been a few graphic novels and comics my friend lent me: Batman Knightfall, V for Vendetta, Marvel Siege.
Name of book: New Moon
How far you got: 9 pages
Why you stopped reading: Boring, couldn't follow story
Name of book: Lolita
How far you got: 20 pages
Why you stopped reading: No time, will finish once holiday comes around
I didn't find Kafka boring at all, even the unfinished novels. Although the incompleteness is somewhat irksome.
However, some of the short stories went over my head...
Finally got through 1984!! It took 3 years and 4 different tried at reading it but I got through it and in the end really enjoyed it!
Life of Pi
1/4 of the way through
I know how much everyone loves this book, but I find it mind numbingly over descriptive in some parts, really I would get the point that you saw a bunch of animals when you left the zoo if you described 2 or 3, the 6 or 7 you used is overkill...
Bah!!
This is also the 4th time I've tried to muscle through this book...
Eye of the World from the Wheel of Time series
3 chapters in
The premise was pretty great, and the characters well fleshed out, but its the over descriptive writing that makes it a pain to sludge through.
Theres no point in reading the Wheel of Time series, since the author died.
I Am Legend
I got half way through
It was fairly good but I got distracted, if there's a better book lying around that I want to read then that tends to take over...
Middlesex...started off pretty good, with good historical fiction, but I lost interest when they got to more modern times and the focus was shifting...moved on to other interests...
I'm fairly certain I was >>58 trying to troll, but in case >>58 is not me...
The last book is being ghost written. Apparently Robert Jordon gave his notes and stuff to the ghostwriter before he died.
That being said I dropped the Wheel of Time series on like book 4 or 5 because I just didn't have time to read 1000+ page books.
>>62 that's a good example of a series which lost it completely. Also liked it until book 4 or 5, but then was completely disgusted by the waste of time.
1000 clowns
I read the first page of the play
It had a cast of 100 children laughing in the background, put it back on the store's shelf.
Three men in a boat.
142p.
It's boring. I don't get this english humor.
Silence of the lambs
About a quarter through
Idk, kind of slows down after the beginning. Maybe my attention span is poo
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
about halfway through
destroyed it: please don't ask
The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari
almost 10 pages through
got suggested in a workshop, its a self book so thats enough reason for me to hate on it.
i havent read a book in a year
ive still managed to pass all of my comp lit classes and have two TA positions in my department
you can probably go through your whole adult life not reading any books. doesn't mean that you should
Naked Lunch
About one third in.
I can only stand so much graphic gay sex and semen splurging.
I've yet to properly stop, but rather put it on a kind of hiatus. Hoping to eventually forget about it lest my stubbornness dictates I get around to finishing it.
Infinite Jest. I keep trying to to read it again and again but I always give up after the first few chapters. Probably read the first two chapters 5 times now.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
1/3 of the way through
Couldn't connect with the story or the language.
Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari
I want to read it but it makes no sense to me.
Walden by Thoreau.
Given up for a second time, even after skipping the longwinded first section.
Heavy horrible prose. Sanctimonius sarcasm throughout.
3 Musketeers
I got around a third of the way through.
I wound up so lost and clueless about what the fuck was going on and didn't know where I should flip back to catch up. I also wasn't very interested in the first place, hence why I let my mind wander while reading.
Philip Mainländer's philosophy of redemption. I got into it for the cool hyper pessimism but after like 100 pages of convoluted ontology I dropped it. I knew all the juice stuff beforehand anyway. Now I read the original instead (Schopenhauer)
Logic of Sense by Deleuze. I read it after Difference and Repetition but it was a bit boring imo.
i am a heron. i ahev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans
Biological Exuberence. I started reading it for completely childish reasons(wanted to see how many gay birds there were) but got bored of the concept quite quickly.
Mein Kampf. Bought it when I was going through a childish edgelord phase and took it to high school to everyday to piss everyone off. I never managed to read it all because it’s boring as fuck, especially the biographical parts which are just whiny and annoying. It’s just a dude bitching about his life.
>>82
I’ve never been able to get through any of the books he co wrote with guattari, but his books on Spinoza, Foucault etc are a pretty good read
Ai no Kusabi
In my first attempt the first five page filtered me greatly with its cuckold + rape + bdsm combo.
In my second attempt it was the horrible prose, I could not tell what the hell was going on, who is who and why does what.
I think I read the first 10 pages.
The anime was ok.
>>76
Just be glad you got out before the second two thirds of the book, which consist entirely of the main character spiraling stream-of-consciousness style into catholic guilt.
150 days of sodom by marquis de sade. I couldn’t stop fapping and interrupt my reading.
The Man Who Knew Infinity
Page 80 or so
Found it kind of boring. Maybe I hadn't gotten to the more maths parts of the book, but it was dry and too autobiographical for me. I'll probably try and read it another time, but there are other books I would read before then.