Books highly prized you couldn't finish

abbie in wonderland

off with their heads!
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I tried several times to get into the historian. I cant even pinpoint why.
 

ExitTheKing

New Fish; Learning About Thick Skin
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The main character reminded me of too many people I've met and known that I can't STAND to be around any longer so I had to quit. This was about four years ago and I'm not compelled to pick it up again ever.

I think that had a lot to do with why I couldn't get into it. I just couldn't stand the character.
 

ohthatmomagain

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Twilight? I read the first chapter and had to stop when my brain cells threatened to mutiny.

The Bible. I tried. Multiple times. Apparently normal people don't just start at the Old Testament and go forward, but I didn't know that at the time, and now I just don't care.

I'm going to finish the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson, but I feel like the little engine that could, chugging my way up a steep, steep hill. I want to know what happens, but I am starting to glaze over during descriptions of the landscape. Badly.

I also barely finished Mistborn. It's about a third longer than it has to be. I liked the story, but still...

There have been others, including many classics (I HATE Jane Austen!) but none I can think of at the moment.

I read the Bible in 90 days through an online program. It was cover to cover. I loved it better that way (I used the New Living Translation so I could actually understand it lol.) To me, it was more of a story that way-- things made sense in later chapters when I read it straight through. Now 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles were a bit hard seeing as they repeat the same history, but they told different stories so I liked that.

I couldn't read the Historian. I wanted too-- but I failed. I also couldn't get into Frankenstein. There is one fairly new YA book that I couldn't get passed the second page (I should have read farther in the bookstore lol)
 

Raventongue

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I'm going to stick to SF/F titles because that's practically all I ever read.

While I finished individual books, I didn't bother to crack open the third volume of the Lord of the Rings series. <blasphemy> I think Tolkien is quite overrated as both a storyteller and a world-builder.</blasphemy>

Couldn't finish the first book of The Wheel of Time series. The author's detestable personality just shone through every passage and I wanted to gouge his liver out with my fingernails. Ditto Eragon.

Didn't finish the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire either. I probably could have done, but I felt the time was better spent elsewhere.

Anything by David Eddings, Jim Butcher, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Garth Nix.

There's probably more. Seems like I'm the most ornery genre fan ever.
 

AshAragon

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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Normally I give books at least eighty pages to win me over, but I just could not muscle through more than forty pages of this monster.

Mantel only uses the third-person pronoun "he." Always and forever, everyone is "he." No proper nouns. So even when she switches characters and points of view, sometimes multiple times on a page, we never know which "he" we're reading about. A completely useless literary gimmick, in my opinion. If you're going have some weird construct in your book or flout convention, at least choose a device that doesn't completely irritate the reader in every paragraph.

This tome won the Booker. I subsequently concluded the Booker Prize is a giant conspiracy of a bunch of pranksters trying to see just how far they can go before someone figures out what they're up to. I heard that "What's Your Poo Telling You?" is on the shortlist this year. They may have finally gone too far.
 

AshAragon

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Two old nemeses are, respectively: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. One day I will conquer them both! :tongue
Or possibly I will just admit that books with lots of big words and names defeat me....and I should perhaps stop putting literary masterpieces on my library list. ;) - Lifes too short!

Yes. I've often said that the title of the book One Hundred Years of Solitude quite accurately reflects what it feels like to read it.
 

AshAragon

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Heh I love Jane Austen.

I haven't finished Moll Flanders or Vanity Fair although I keep telling myself I should - being one who likes literature and all.

I've started Wicked, I think I should like Wicked, and am reading Wicked because - well - I should like it; but I hate it. There it's out in the open. This book is boring and there is something about it that makes me feel like it's not right. I heard once that people don't like animated movies that are extremely lifelike because something feels wrong about it - like it looks alive but they know in their core that it's fake. That's how I feel about Wicked.

Yes! Got three-quarters of the way through Wicked and finally just couldn't do it any more. Way too long. Drags ass forever.
 

WildScribe

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Yes! Got three-quarters of the way through Wicked and finally just couldn't do it any more. Way too long. Drags ass forever.

I read the entire book, but only because I was completely and utterly confused as to why anyone would like it, and I kept waiting for it to redeem itself. One of the worst things I have ever finished.

I'm going to stick to SF/F titles because that's practically all I ever read.

While I finished individual books, I didn't bother to crack open the third volume of the Lord of the Rings series. <blasphemy> I think Tolkien is quite overrated as both a storyteller and a world-builder.</blasphemy>

Couldn't finish the first book of The Wheel of Time series. The author's detestable personality just shone through every passage and I wanted to gouge his liver out with my fingernails. Ditto Eragon.

Didn't finish the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire either. I probably could have done, but I felt the time was better spent elsewhere.

Anything by David Eddings, Jim Butcher, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Garth Nix.

There's probably more. Seems like I'm the most ornery genre fan ever.

However taste is obviously subjective, since Jim Butcher, Robert Jordan, and Tolkien are some of my favorites. I agree that Marion is boring, and I am giving Eddings another try, but he did sort of lose me a while back.
 

AshAragon

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I read the entire book, but only because I was completely and utterly confused as to why anyone would like it, and I kept waiting for it to redeem itself. One of the worst things I have ever finished.

Hahahahaha. I had the same sense of wonder while reading Wicked. Like, when does this become amazing? I feel for you, slogging all the way to the end. I did that the other day with a book called The Weird Sisters. I kept waiting for the magic to happen. Then the book ended. I was robbed.
 

LJD

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Hahahahaha. I had the same sense of wonder while reading Wicked. Like, when does this become amazing? I feel for you, slogging all the way to the end. I did that the other day with a book called The Weird Sisters. I kept waiting for the magic to happen. Then the book ended. I was robbed.

I felt the same way about Wicked.
I read The Weird Sisters recently, and while I didn't love it, I didn't mind it, despite the strange omniscient first-person plural or whatever it was.
 

AshAragon

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I felt the same way about Wicked.
I read The Weird Sisters recently, and while I didn't love it, I didn't mind it, despite the strange omniscient first-person plural or whatever it was.

That narration was strange. For some reason, that book got on my bad side in a jiffy. From there, it was just a battle -- me reading every page to find more things I didn't like about it. Unfair? Probably.

That said, I didn't find the sister relationships credible at all. Or, to be more specific, they were quite different than my experience of sisterhood. The characters (specifically, the sisters) were also pretty unlikable for me. It was like we all started off on the wrong foot and there was no going back.

Maybe I just got spoiled by reading so much Babysitters Club as a kid. Now THOSE were some good books.
 

GiantRampagingPencil

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"Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons. Supposedly a horror classic. It just went on and on and on.

About the only King novel I've read cover to cover is "Salem's Lot", most I just end up skimming.

The Song of Fire and Ice died quickly.
 

KAM_writer

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100 Years in Solitude. I have tried to read that book at least 10 times now. SOME day I will get through it, but as of now, I haven't been able to.
 

Allynegirl

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The Once and Future King by T.H. White - I was about halfway through when my husband asked why I was reading it. "I mean, every time you pick it up, you have a disgusted look on your face and sigh. You have stacks of books next to the bed, move on."

I recently listened to To The Lighthouse by Virginia Wolfe and realized, if I had actually tried to read it, I wouldn't have finished.
 

blacbird

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Moo, by Jane Smiley. I believe it was published after her Pulitzer-winner A Thousand Acres. It was supposed to be funny. It wasn't. It was just plain awful. Didn't help any that I was intimately familiar with the setting.

caw
 

blacbird

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I'm going to stick to SF/F titles because that's practically all I ever read.

While I finished individual books, I didn't bother to crack open the third volume of the Lord of the Rings series. <blasphemy> I think Tolkien is quite overrated as both a storyteller and a world-builder.</blasphemy>

Couldn't finish the first book of The Wheel of Time series. The author's detestable personality just shone through every passage and I wanted to gouge his liver out with my fingernails. Ditto Eragon.

Didn't finish the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire either. I probably could have done, but I felt the time was better spent elsewhere.

Anything by David Eddings, Jim Butcher, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Garth Nix.

There's probably more. Seems like I'm the most ornery genre fan ever.

What do you like?

Or maybe, rephrased: Perhaps you should read something other than SF/F for a change.

caw
 

benbradley

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Foucault's Pendulum. Maybe because it's in first person, I'm not sure, but I made myself read the first dozen or so pages.
 

rebekahmichel

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Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Angela's Ashes bored me, I just couldn't get into it. Million Little Pieces was extremely distracting because Frey didn't bother to indent his paragraphs or put spaces between them so it was one long, never ending story. I still don't understand why Oprah picked it, I've enjoyed many of her other picks though.
 

bearilou

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What do you like?

Or maybe, rephrased: Perhaps you should read something other than SF/F for a change.

caw

There are other writers in the SF/F genre than those listed. It's possible to not read any of those authors and still have quite a bit of reading available.
 

Rizdrah

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Crime and Punishment. I actually quite enjoyed it, but for some reason put it down halfway through and never picked it back up. I might give it another go soon.
 

MrZiggles

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Balthazar - the second book in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria series.
 

Anninyn

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I couldn't finish Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell either, and that's weird. I should have loved it, and even the slow pace and hefty size aren't problems for me. Neither is the prose - if I could read Wuthering Heights and like it, I shouldn't have had a problem.

But I just couldn't finish it. I read it slower and slower and finally, around a quarter of the way in I just stopped.

Weirdly, I loved the collection of short stories she wrote set in the same world.

And I hate Kraken. Everyone told me it was brilliant, intelligent, beautifully written and all that... but I loathed it. I finished it through pure spite. The narrative voice wound me up. It felt like he was showing off in his narration, it was all 'mum look at me! I'm clever! look at me, mum! look!'
 

aruna

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Mantel only uses the third-person pronoun "he." Always and forever, everyone is "he." No proper nouns. So even when she switches characters and points of view, sometimes multiple times on a page, we never know which "he" we're reading about. A completely useless literary gimmick, in my opinion. If you're going have some weird construct in your book or flout convention, at least choose a device that doesn't completely irritate the reader in every paragraph.
.

Really??? Not even a she? Are there no females in the book? :Jaw:

Yes. I've often said that the title of the book One Hundred Years of Solitude quite accurately reflects what it feels like to read it.

This is one book I truly gave up on, for the very same reason.

I'd like to contribute Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry to the list. Although it's not quite appropriate -- it got a lot of very bad reviews, so I don't know if "highly praised" is the right description. Oh, and I did finish it, but only with a terrible headache.
 

aruna

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Catcher in the Rye - I know, I know....it's supposedly a 'classic'.....but I tried and tried, and, for the life of me...I just don't get it.........it's poorly written, and just.....stupid.....

Me too. Add to that The Sun Never Rises. Oh, and Wuthering Heights.

A Confederacy of Dunces. I really wanted to like the book, but I just was never able to finish the thing. Everyone kept telling me how great a book it was, but I had to stop about halfway through. Granted, this was when I was eighth grade, and I've been thinking about going back and tackling it again.

I read a page of this and got stuck. It's still on my bookshelf. Changed homes with me several times. I;ve had it for years, and maybe one day I will read it, as it comes highly recommended from someone whose taste in books I really respect. Maybe when I'm in my 90's.