Books highly prized you couldn't finish

DarthPanda

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I've never read Harry Potter. Gods and JKR forgive me, I tried so many times and just couldn't get into it. And I love magicky kids fantasy stuff. I think I have a weird recessive gene or something, like those people who can't taste propylthiouracil. :(

I even got the audiobook, but Stephen Fry puts me right to sleep with his marvelous soothing voice and I never make it more than ten minutes in.
 

Emermouse

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Oh, I am so going to look like a philistine. I could not finish:

Brave New World - Huxley
Moby Dick - Melville
Things Fall Apart - Achebe
On the Road - Keroac
Look Homeward Angel - Wolfe
The Host - Stephanie Meyer (okay, not finishing that one probably redeems me)


Don't worry, I'll distract them by making myself look even more like a Philistine.

I hate most so-called "literary" or "classic" fiction. Why? Because both categories seem to be synonymous with pretentious and boring-as-hell, not to mention depressing. Is it so much for one of them to not make you wanna slit your wrists after reading it? I suppose I am making broad generalizations, because I did like Cormac McCarthy's The Road and that book's unrelentingly grim.
 

AEFerreira

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I love literary fiction, but I just have not been able to finish a David Mitchell book yet. Count me in as another philistine.

Cloud Atlas I gave up on after about 5 pages. I'm sure it's an awesome work of art. But - no, not for me.

The thousand autumns...of whatever. I was getting into but then it just got too weird, in a way that seemed out of place in the book.


With GRRM's series, I've decided to stop reading the books and just watch the HBO TV adaption, because I find the show SO much better than the books.
 

kendallina

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The Shipping News...I tried, I really tried, but when I find myself delaying going to bed because I just don't want to go near the book I'm reading, then it's time to give up.

Also, We Need to Talk about Kevin. I really disliked the way it was told, through the mother writing a series of letters. I really liked the story, but hated the way it was told. Enjoyed the movie very much.
 

WriterInChains

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The Hunger Games is the latest in a long list of popular books I just couldn't get into.

I had to mark my place halfway through Chapter 2 for an acupuncture appointment & just never opened it again. Was going to see the movie instead, but as a rule I don't watch whitewashed flicks if I know about it ahead of time.
 

measure_in_love

escaping the evil queen's curse
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Cannot stand Great Expectations. While I acknowledge Dickens as a great writer, (I loved Oliver Twist), I couldn't stand this one.
I've tried reading Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice, and just couldn't seem to get into it. I really wanted to like it because I loved the concept, and I kept hearing how amazing Rice is, but just couldn't get into it.
And then there's the Game of Throwns series. I also really wanted to like this one. I'm a big fantasy fan, but it was just too dense for me, and mostly all about chopping people's heads off. I'm not one for blood and gore.
 

Lunabird

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I hated The Death of Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy had a rather arrogant view of his fellow human beings, and it bleeds right through his characters. His descriptions are exquisite though.
 

DarkSongofErrin

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I read all the HP potter books up until the last couple of chapters of the final book.
I have no idea why I never finished it. It still sits on my shelf with the bookmark in it, must of been a couple of years now.
 

PrincessofPersia

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I read a page of Twilight before putting that down. I don't know how prized Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol is, but I couldn't finish it.

There are many "classics" that I couldn't get through. Anything by James Joyce. He's so tedious. Ugh.

I don't get the whole struggling through thing though. With the exception of things I'm reading for instruction or the like, I read for entertainment. The second a book is no longer entertaining, I move on. I do the same thing with movies. I'm not wasting my time reading a book I don't enjoy. That seems like madness to me.
 

Emermouse

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I'm the same way, PrincessofPersia. Unless I have to read it for school or something, if a book doesn't entertain me, I don't read it. Life's too short to struggle through something you hate.
 

Putputt

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I'm about 65% of the way through Justin Cronin's THE PASSAGE...and I'm really tempted to give up. It's not boring, not exactly, but it's so rambly. Someone tell me it'll get better soon!
 

gingerwoman

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Oh I love Great Expectations. lol I love Harry Potter but the first few times I tried to read the first book I put it down because it seemed too cutesy. But I got past that reading the series to my oldest boy. The book I couldn't finish or didn't want to was Twilight. I hated how repetitive it was and then when the vampires started playing baseball that's when I gave up on it.
 

davidh219

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I've tried reading Stephen King several times, and I never get very far before throwing the book down in boredom. Even with his more famous works like Misery. I just don't think he's that great a writer, and the dude writes way too many books for his own good. You can't write a bajillion books a year and not have all of them suck. That's just a fact.

I've yet to try his Dark Tower series, but if that doesn't work for me I'm just going to have to resign myself to the fact that I hate Stephen King. I think I can live with that.

Also, I hate Harry Potter. I've tried reading them so many times, and they just do nothing for me. Even if I was more interested in the story and world I don't think I could put up with Rowling's terrible writing at this point in my life. I remember flipping to a page once and seeing this:
"Sniffed angrily"
"Said impatiently"
"Said gently"
"Said irritably"

On one page. Never have I seen a more torrid love-affair with adverbs. Yuck.
 
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names

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I had to put down the Man of the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick even though it was rated highly on locus magazine as belonging to the list of all time favorite books.
 

Satori1977

Listening to the Voices In My Head
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I love Stephen King and enjoy fantasy, but could not get into the Dark Tower series. Read maybe 20 pages of the first book (after buying it), and didn't understand what the heck was going on.

Tried reading All the Pretty Horses years ago. The lack of quotation marks bugged the crap out of me. And the writing? Just awful.

I picked up The Historian about 3 times, really wanting to like it, but it was so boring!

I am sure there are more, but those are off the top of my head.
 

Alpha Echo

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The Twilight Series - didn't even try after reading a few pages on Amazon

Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I tried, I really did.

There's one I can't think of...but it was awful. So boring. Made into a movie.

ETA: David Copperfield. Not because I don't like it, but because new and exciting fiction is created every day. I can't stay IN it, then I go back and have to start all over.
 
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blacbird

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I had to put down the Man of the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick even though it was rated highly on locus magazine as belonging to the list of all time favorite books.

I'm a big fan of PKD, but oddly, High Castle, which is nearly always esteemed by critics as among his very best work, just leaves me flat, too. I can't really identify why that is. But I've read nearly all of his novels, including some of the non-SF ones, and Castle just doesn't do it for me.

As for King's Dark Tower series, I found the first novel, The Gunslinger, hypnotic and riveting. After that, it all bogged down. I got about halfway through the second book, decided life was too short, and went on to read something else.

caw
 

Lady MacBeth

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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I wanted to like it, but after about three chapters I grew so frustrated with her style of writing. She used "he" too often and did not identify the speaker.
 

Lidiya

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I've tried reading Stephen King several times, and I never get very far before throwing the book down in boredom. Even with his more famous works like Misery. I just don't think he's that great a writer, and the dude writes way too many books for his own good. You can't write a bajillion books a year and not have all of them suck. That's just a fact.

I've yet to try his Dark Tower series, but if that doesn't work for me I'm just going to have to resign myself to the fact that I hate Stephen King. I think I can live with that.

Also, I hate Harry Potter. I've tried reading them so many times, and they just do nothing for me. Even if I was more interested in the story and world I don't think I could put up with Rowling's terrible writing at this point in my life. I remember flipping to a page once and seeing this:
"Sniffed angrily"
"Said impatiently"
"Said gently"
"Said irritably"

On one page. Never have I seen a more torrid love-affair with adverbs. Yuck.

Oh, God. Now you've mentioned it I'll never be able to finish reading the HP books!
 

SJNew

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Not sure how much this counts, but I never finished the His Dark Materials trilogy. I don't even know why. I actually own and have read the first two but never got around to reading the last one. It's not that i didn't enjoy the first two, but it was more that they were just alright, they didn't wow me and make me anxious to read the final one. I keep telling myself that I will read the full trilogy one day but I just can't make myself care if I ever do this or not.
 

pattycat

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I went on a long streak of finishing every book that I started and it was Anthropology of an American Girl that finally broke it. Everyone was raving about it at the time. Individual paragraphs in that book were so gorgeous you could frame them, but the book as a whole was a mess.
 

Hiroko

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I started A Canticle for Leibowitz but had to return it to the library before I could finish. I'll pick it up again when I am less busy.