Books that you just could not get through

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

For me, it was Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I started strong with it, then petered out in the last half.

I carried it in the trunk of my Toyota (pbui) for 12 years. Never got through it.

.... The idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.... i came, i tried, i 'epic' failed!!!!

Well, titan ... maybe, with the slight elements of autobiography, you found you knew too much of the story?
;-)

Anything by Henry James, which isn't to say I failed to actually finish reading those of his books I've read, I just switched off about half way through despite having physically read them.

He's pretty tortuous for readers today, I think.
But at his best, he was pretty sublime.
(Very good critic, James ... very very fair.)

I find myself at the point of tearing my own flesh whenever I encounter modern writers doing homage to The Master.

Not quite on topic, but you should try Colm Toibin's The Master. It's about James, but written much more leanly.

I had that problem with The Golden Bowl and The Wings of the Dove, both of which I tried to read---more than once in the former case---but which I found simply suffocating.

On the other hand, I love The Ambassadors (which was written in the same period) and have read it twice, as well as several of James's earlier novels and stories.

The Ambassadors was great. Hard to tell why it's more successful because it too has that narcissistic my-consciousness-ain't-it-gorgeous unwillingness to get to the point. But it seems to work.
Washington Square, a fairly early novel, is very clear and straightforward ... but then it doesn't seem representative of James.
When he's really being himself, he's opaque.
(That's probably a bit unfair; his early, clear stuff is as much him, I suppose, as anything else.)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Attempted to read it 3 times but always lost interest after 30 pages or so.

Earl, can't agree. I really enjoyed it. But to each his own, I guess.

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
A Canadian novel about jews who servived WW2. Its prose read as dense poetry and I just couldn't read it. It won lots of awards.

Exactly. Poetic prose. Can't stand the stuff.
(I can ... but not at book length.)
How she received so many honours for that book, I'll never know.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson.
Being a voracious reader I suffered bitterly through the first chapter before I flung it down in disgust.
It sucks the biggest suck that ever sucked a suck.

My reaction was different.
I don't say it's well written ... I mean, you can look at any particular page and see nothing impressive ... but I found it extraordinarily readable over many pages.
I read 400 pages of it one day.
Can't say the last time I did that.

My own books:
I've been trying to get through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
I loved it at the beginning, it's full of energy, and Wallace can give you an aha! experience while describing so many things that you've never encountered in print.
But his shtick needs to come with an oxygen tent, and doesn't.
Too high a pitch, over too long a time, eventually becomes reeeeal boring. A book should be like landscape ... fascinating vistas, charming little vales, sure ... but also points here and there that are just backdrop, points of rest for the eye. Otherwise, there's no overall shape.

No one has mentioned James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
I wonder if there's another novel in literary history that has been so often purchased and so seldom finished.
People say they get into it ... and I have no reason to doubt that they do.
And I probably could get through it, reading three paragraphs at a time.
But who would want to?

Maybe I'm just bamboozled and mind-pHhucked by the Interwebz.

 

[Calboner]

Another comes to mind, although this is another case in which I did not make an all-out effort: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I found the prose unbearably phony and pretentious. Mind you, this is coming from someone who rather liked the movie!

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

Another comes to mind, although this is another case in which I did not make an all-out effort: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I found the prose unbearably phony and pretentious. Mind you, this is coming from someone who rather liked the movie!

I know what you mean.
There's no there there.

 

[accemb]

Have to also agree with Calboner on the Tolkien stuff: I tried, I really tried, but I just couldn't do it.

 

[Calboner]

No one has mentioned James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
I wonder if there's another novel in literary history that has been so often purchased and so seldom finished.
People say they get into it ... and I have no reason to doubt that they do.
And I probably could get through it, reading three paragraphs at a time.
But who would want to?

Maybe I'm just bamboozled and mind-pHhucked by the Interwebz.

I don't think that Finnegans Wake (so spelled by the author) is likely to be a "book I just couldn't get through" for many people, because almost anyone who merely looks at the first page will decide then and there that it can't possibly be worth the trouble of trying to read. Not many people would start out with the idea that they could get through it and then conclude halfway through it that in fact they can't.

Ulysses is another matter. I probably could never have gotten through it if I had not taken a university course on it, but I did read the whole thing, and pretty attentively.

Evelyn Waugh in an interview said (as I very approximately recall) that Joyce showed great talent in his early fiction, began to get rather eccentric in Ulysses, and then (and this phrase I seem to recall distinctly), in Finnegans Wake, "you can see him going mad with vanity."

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

I don't think that Finnegans Wake (so spelled by the author) is likely to be a "book I just couldn't get through" for many people, because almost anyone who merely looks at the first page will decide then and there that it can't possibly be worth the trouble of trying to read. Not many people would start out with the idea that they could get through it and then conclude halfway through it that in fact they can't.

I think a lot of people have thought they could bull through ... and perhaps find the music that some people speak of.

Ulysses is another matter. I probably could never have gotten through it if I had not taken a university course on it, but I did read the whole thing, and pretty attentively.

Well, it's much more readable. It sorta makes sense. You have images all the time.
In Finnegans [!] Wake, you have only fog.

Evelyn Waugh in an interview said (as I very approximately recall) that Joyce showed great talent in his early fiction, began to get rather eccentric in Ulysses, and then (and this phrase I seem to recall distinctly), in Finnegans Wake, "you can see him going mad with vanity."

That sounds about right. Dubliners is wonderfully direct. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man probably begins to leave a few readers behind. And then he sort of starts to leave the Earth.

 

[JTalbain]

:crying::crying::crying:

As someone who loves Tolkien's work, especially the Hobbit and LoTR, i need to ask, do you have an interest in fantasy at all? Is it just Tolkein or does that type of book/movie normally bore you.

I can't believe that anybody could find it boring unless they had a disinterest of fantasy.
I'm shocked.

I like fantasy, (I even play D&D occassionally) but I could not get through the Lord of the Rings. I got about 100 pages into Fellowship and couldn't continue. It was just too boring. I thought it was kinda weird, because I've read The Hobbit about six times. I think it's just a better book.

 

[Enid]

Additionally:

I did not finish Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard but I tried with effort twice. I should try again. The concept is interesting to me.

I also could not finish The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by JT LeRoy because I thought the events in the book were real. Later I found out they were not. I still never went back and picked it up. I hear it was made into a movie with Asia Argento, daughter of Dario Argento. I haven't seen it, maybe one day I will.

 

[B_subgirrl]

I like fantasy, (I even play D&D occassionally) but I could not get through the Lord of the Rings. I got about 100 pages into Fellowship and couldn't continue. It was just too boring. I thought it was kinda weird, because I've read The Hobbit about six times. I think it's just a better book.

I've read all of LotR, several (many?) times, but I do agree with you somewhat. The Hobbit is much easier to read (for me anyway) - LotR can be a lot of hard work. The basic storyline of LotR is great, and it has great characters. The beginning and end are fantastic. But the middle of LotR is just a whole lot of scenery, battles and walking. For me, LotR is one of the best fantasy stories ever written, AND one of the most utterly boring fantasy stories ever written.

 

[Nekoman]

Three books I try time and again to read but never get through...

Magic Mountain

Moby Dick

Joyce's Ulysses

 

[Zeuhl34]

Two immediately spring to mind.

The Catcher in the Rye was required reading for me one summer in high school. I got about halfway through and just gave up. It was just page after page of some whiny little bitch. The character was impossible to like, it seemed to be going nowhere, and I just did not see any redeeming qualities in that steaming pile of literary shit. I've never talked to anyone in my generation with a positive opinion of that book.

Atlas Shrugged was recommended to me by my mother, and I decided to give it a go. I didn't know anything of Rand's politics at the time, and I wound up simply hating the book on its writing style. I disagree with Rand's political views for the most part, but I only managed to get less than 100 pages in. The book was so painfully dull, long-winded, and tedious I could not stomach the thought of reading another 1000 pages, so I put it down and haven't even considered picking it up since.

 

[noirman]

I don't think that Finnegans Wake (so spelled by the author) is likely to be a "book I just couldn't get through" for many people, because almost anyone who merely looks at the first page will decide then and there that it can't possibly be worth the trouble of trying to read. Not many people would start out with the idea that they could get through it and then conclude halfway through it that in fact they can't.

Ulysses is another matter. I probably could never have gotten through it if I had not taken a university course on it, but I did read the whole thing, and pretty attentively."

I loved Portrait and Ulysses but tried -- unsuccessfully -- three times to make it all the way through Finnegans Wake; just too damn abstruse to enjoy.

 

[798686]

I also tried to read LOTR but could not. I'm not into fantasy though.

I read it as a kid, but gave up when Gandalf 'died' cos I felt betrayed, lol.
Finished it about 15 years later.

Another comes to mind, although this is another case in which I did not make an all-out effort: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I found the prose unbearably phony and pretentious. Mind you, this is coming from someone who rather liked the movie!

I liked the film too - especially all the sweeping views of the desert.
A book which is as good as the film (imo), is Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally.

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

He's pretty tortuous for readers today, I think.
But at his best, he was pretty sublime.
(Very good critic, James ... very very fair.)


Not quite on topic, but you should try Colm Toibin's The Master. It's about James, but written much more leanly.


The Ambassadors was great. Hard to tell why it's more successful because it too has that narcissistic my-consciousness-ain't-it-gorgeous unwillingness to get to the point. But it seems to work.
Washington Square, a fairly early novel, is very clear and straightforward ... but then it doesn't seem representative of James.
When he's really being himself, he's opaque.
(That's probably a bit unfair; his early, clear stuff is as much him, I suppose, as anything else.)

Yeah "The Master" is in the enormous pile of books next to my bed which never seems to get any smaller, of books I must read. I'll get round to it soon, it was highly recommended to me by a couple of friends and I love Toibín anyway.

I'll admit Henry James' style seems to have been at its best in The Ambassadors and that it's the only one of his High era novels which IMO works (The Bostonians is probably nearly as successful), but it was just as loathesome as Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove etc really.

I'll admit Washington Square was less prolix, but I found it no more engrossing.

He was an excellent critic though.

 

[Bbucko]

Adding another, which came highly recommended, is Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe. I'd get about 1/3 through before hitting a brick wall; I finally just got rid of it at a used book store, using the credit to get something on architectural criticism, no doubt.

 

[601900]

I've tried and tried but i just cannot get through Little Dorrit.

Bleak House is another one and then there's Thomas Hardy's Desperate Remedies.

I will try again though.

 

[midlifebear]

Henry James? Love him. No problem. But try as I might I could not finish Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. Her short stories, however, are hysterical; ranging from modern tall tale to making the mistake of moving back home to Wyoming only to find you've accidentally rented a 1960's trailer planted next to the bully who beat you up every day after high school until you dropped out. Those little bits of cold wind blasting under the door and through the cracks I can stand -- not The Shipping News.

Finnegan's Wake ain't so bad once you learn the trick to breaking the code. The novel is written like a Rolodex without a beginning or and end. Plus, you have to stick with it, reading it aloud for about a week until the dialect begins to make sense. And an occasional snort of Jameson doesn't hurt.

 

[curioustitan]

"Well, titan ... maybe, with the slight elements of autobiography, you found you knew too much of the story?
;-)"


Cheeky 'ol sod!
Don't make me confiscate your zimmer frame...:wink:

BTW, when can i expect those manuscripts for the "life and times of Hhuck"...i'll be sure to give an excoriating review... the Richard Blackwell, nay, Joan Rivers of critquing.:biggrin1:

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

Cheeky 'ol sod!
Don't make me confiscate your zimmer frame...:wink:

Not to draw you forward ... but I'm back to a cane.

:twak: :spank:

 

[Mickactual]

The Catcher in the Rye was required reading for me one summer in high school. I got about halfway through and just gave up. It was just page after page of some whiny little bitch. The character was impossible to like, it seemed to be going nowhere, and I just did not see any redeeming qualities in that steaming pile of literary shit. I've never talked to anyone in my generation with a positive opinion of that book.

I'll second that one on all counts, even though I know it's literary blasphemy to voice said opinion. I just couldn't stick with it.
Then again, I'm a man who prefers The Monkees to Bruce Springsteen - so take it from where it comes. :tongue: