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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
.
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.
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.....
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.