Token post for Dumb Post Day (Friday) - World's Most Boring Book
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I found Great Expectations to be dry and tedious, but it was forced on me in the 8th grade, and that may have been a little early. In any case, I found the character of Miss Havisham to be a lot more fascinating than the character of Pip, and was miffed that the story wasn't about her instead.
As for my "most boring book", I'm cheating, because I didn't read this all the way to the end, but my benchmark for driest book ever written is L²-Invariants: Theory and Applications to Geometry and K-Theory, by Wolfgang Lück. Had it for a class in Fall 2005, and dropped the class.
Its biggest flaw is that it starts with an outrageous presumption of expertise in the area -- the number of people who actually have the expertise needed to understand the book is probably in the single digits or low teens. It's a vanity book intended to demonstrate the author's superiority.
Here, for example, are the first four sentences of the very first paragraph from the section labeled, "Introduction" -- snootily, "Introduction" is Chapter Zero, not Chapter One:
The bibliography at the back of the book lists 535 sources.
As for my "most boring book", I'm cheating, because I didn't read this all the way to the end, but my benchmark for driest book ever written is L²-Invariants: Theory and Applications to Geometry and K-Theory, by Wolfgang Lück. Had it for a class in Fall 2005, and dropped the class.
Its biggest flaw is that it starts with an outrageous presumption of expertise in the area -- the number of people who actually have the expertise needed to understand the book is probably in the single digits or low teens. It's a vanity book intended to demonstrate the author's superiority.
Here, for example, are the first four sentences of the very first paragraph from the section labeled, "Introduction" -- snootily, "Introduction" is Chapter Zero, not Chapter One:
The bibliography at the back of the book lists 535 sources.
It's dangerous when the boring guys flock together, or call for backup from their boring friends.
I thought at first that Graff's Wave Motions in Elastic Solids would count as boring, but it was at least competent. And not really all that boring, for a textbook. Not every textbook writer can manage the cliff-hanging excitement of Goldstein's Classical Mechanics (which I am trying to find cheap - I like to read through that stuff every decade or so. OK, so I have a weakness for the Hamiltonian energy integral, go ahead and call me a weirdo.)
The 1947 Classics Illustrated version of Great Expectations was pretty good (if you like Henry C. Kiefer artwork) but it was only 56 pages. Maybe even that was too close to the edge of the boredom chasm for most, as Gilberton later cut it down to 48 pages. Not only does 48 pages give scant room for the exercise of Dickens's mastery of 19th century tedium, but it had to delete some of the story, such as the surprise fact that it was the evil convict Compeyson who had, in his earlier days, left Miss Havisham at the altar. I suppose if one finds that stuff exciting, one should find another hobby.
Which reminds me - I don't read all that much modern fiction. I wait to see if a book is still around after 50 or 100 years - there's nothing like old Chronos to filter out the dross for us mere mortals. But I did actually start to read Foucalt's Pendulum. The writing (all right, translation from Italian) wasn't too bad, but Ecco can absolutely waste ten pages leading up to a joke which hardly rates a sentence. It's a brick made of tofu; there's nothing there but two glossy covers with a spacer in between. But I couldn't list it here as I didn't finish. I gave up when I realized that Ecco hadn't the slightest idea of the physical significance of the Foucault pendulum. So far as I could make out, he had it exactly backwards. Fair enough, inertial space is perhaps a difficult concept to grasp in the abstract, but he did pick it as the title, so he has a special responsibility to know what he's talking about. Well, I wasn't about to slog through the rest of the persiflage to see what else Ecco didn't understand. Phooey, I could spend my time better by reading old copies of Newsweek.
Heather LouAnna
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Heather LouAnna
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I found Of Mice and Men painfully boring, every page just seemed so dry and arduous to read, actually mirroring the work they were doing as a job 
John Steinbeck covered a lot of territory - novels, plays, travelogues, news.
His dispatches from Europe during WW2 were outstanding, and much more interesting (or perhaps merely more literary) than Ernie Pyle's. Pyle is nowadays held up as an example of what a war reporter should be, in contrast to the feeble and amateurish efforts of today's reporters in modern war zones. I don't know why Steinbeck's reports aren't more widely appreciated. Perhaps it's because Pyle was killed in 1945 by Japanese gunfire, but Steinbeck survived to be a correspondent in Vietnam. That perhaps didn't reflect well on his reputation as a war correspondent, as he as castigated for failing to live up to his earlier liberal (at that time, anti-war) credentials. I suppose after Grapes of Wrath, anyone would be marked as a liberal (and bear in mind that in those days, circa 1936, "liberal" as almost indistinguishable from "communist" - not quite what the word commonly meant thirty years later).
His dispatches from Europe during WW2 were outstanding, and much more interesting (or perhaps merely more literary) than Ernie Pyle's. Pyle is nowadays held up as an example of what a war reporter should be, in contrast to the feeble and amateurish efforts of today's reporters in modern war zones. I don't know why Steinbeck's reports aren't more widely appreciated. Perhaps it's because Pyle was killed in 1945 by Japanese gunfire, but Steinbeck survived to be a correspondent in Vietnam. That perhaps didn't reflect well on his reputation as a war correspondent, as he as castigated for failing to live up to his earlier liberal (at that time, anti-war) credentials. I suppose after Grapes of Wrath, anyone would be marked as a liberal (and bear in mind that in those days, circa 1936, "liberal" as almost indistinguishable from "communist" - not quite what the word commonly meant thirty years later).
madame_zora
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One book I never even dared to lift off the library shelf was Orlando, because I made the wretched mistake of seeing the movie. Several hours of my life I'll never retrieve later, nothing of any remote interest had happened, but it made up for it by being tediously long.
Ayn Rand's writing runs the gamut from brutal to downright silly sometimes (especially when she's taking herself very serious), but I admit by being interested enough to see what she's going to say to read it. I've found her letters almost more interesting than her fiction-as-philosophy works. Like your objection to Foucalt's Pendulum, I get bored when an author can't just get to the fucking point. Overdo it on details, and my mind loses the ability (or at least the desire) to focus.
I'll admit I haven't slogged through any Rynd, though I have some around here, probably propping up a shelf (I actually make bookshelves out of other books - it's just disgraceful). I gather that some readers think she's sensible, others think she's totally whacked out, but nearly everyone agrees she's tedious.
madame_zora
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Haha@ you.
Yes, I'm certain The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged could both be considered tedious, but they would make for good shelving. Anthem is worth a read, if nothing more than as a pop-culture reference, and it only takes a couple hours. The story is interesting enough until she unleashes into bitch mode at the end, I know you'll roll your eyes at that- I nearly did myself. I'm sure she's even more tedious to those who share very few of her political or philosophical ideas, but I'd have to say I'm interested in at least half of her subject matter, which makes any writing more tolerable.
Yes, I'm certain The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged could both be considered tedious, but they would make for good shelving. Anthem is worth a read, if nothing more than as a pop-culture reference, and it only takes a couple hours. The story is interesting enough until she unleashes into bitch mode at the end, I know you'll roll your eyes at that- I nearly did myself. I'm sure she's even more tedious to those who share very few of her political or philosophical ideas, but I'd have to say I'm interested in at least half of her subject matter, which makes any writing more tolerable.
That's very peculiar; you're the only person I've heard express that sentiment. Have you recently suffered a head injury? :wink:
More to the point, I very much enjoy the works of Neal Stephenson (I'm a huge fan of the genre, too), but he can, at times, produce writings that are boring, to say the least. Snow Crash and Quicksilver were absolutely horrible. In these works, he frequently abandons the prime objective - which is simply to tell a good story - and delves into heavy 'technical babble' making it fell as though you are, say, studying for a MCSE certification, than actually trying to read a story. Also, Stephenson never actually succeeds at developing the characters in these two novels since their dialogue is the 'technical babble' I mentioned above, making them seem artificial and stilted. And, boy, that ain't good for 900+ page novel.
Generally speaking, he's a great writer - he's unique in the way that he can maintain a fast pace while remaining stylistically eloquent [something that most sci-fi genre writers can't do]. You don't have to be a tech-geek to understand and like his novels, although it would probably help. And to that end, I say the next time you find yourself in Barnes & Noble, be sure to pick up a copy of two of his other works: The Cryptonomicon and/or The System of the World. Youre money will be much better spent.
I admit to thoroughly enjoying Portrait.:redface:
OK, if Finnegan's Wake doesn't count, I'll go with For Whom the Bell Tolls.
JustAsking
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Loved Cryptomonicon, but I also loved Quicksilver. I can see your point about it, though. I am a sucker for reading anything about science during the Enlightenment, though. So, I won't dispute your issues with Quicksilver.
GoneA, I wish you and I were drinking buddies.
My contribution: Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. I loved it when I was in college. Reread it recently and found it to be really boring and contrived. I think it is a W.A.S.T.E. of time. My son liked it well enough to put a bumber sticker on his car that says, "My other car is a Pynchon novel."
