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.