Books You Just Couldn't Finish (or had to sludge through)

[fps]

I have picked up two-page short stories that were hard/impossible to get through. For me, bad writing is bad writing, regardless of length. If interest is not established, or if prose is rambling and disjointed, or even if plot seems secondary to literary-masturbation, finishing is a fictional concept.

In translation, bad writing can be bad translation, would be the first point. Second, writing is far more of a two-way relationship than any other art form, it is more difficult to establish just what it is a reader is getting or not getting from a story or book than from a TV show or movie or album. So I was asking questions relating to these things.

 

[All_¥our_Bass]

J.R. Tolkien's 'The Silmarillion'

Great book and I love it, but it's a very epic, 'heavy' reading book, soooo good, but very rich(to use a food metaphor), a little at a time is all I can read.

 

[Dan_Vacant]

I'm not alone my book I can't finish is Atlas Shrugged, I actualy got shit for reading it in school but it was from people who don't read saying "there is a naked dude on the front WTF" and I said "nope it is a titan named Atlas."
the principle asked me about the book though, and my dad finds it odd that I haven't finished it cause he read it five times.

 

[Tang]

I'm not alone my book I can't finish is Atlas Shrugged, I actualy got shit for reading it in school but it was from people who don't read saying "there is a naked dude on the front WTF" and I said "nope it is a titan named Atlas."
the principle asked me about the book though, and my dad finds it odd that I haven't finished it cause he read it five times.

Is your dad Ron Paul?

 

[Dan_Vacant]

Is your dad Ron Paul?

Nope just a very bored man.

 

[signalgrey]

I read the first two books in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra Space Trilogy, but they moved so slowly, it was a real chore. Fascinating concept that blends creationism and sci fi. In this mythology, Earth isn't the only place the devil has tried to corrupt the natural way of life - it already happened on Mars (yes, Mars), and is about to happen on Venus (because people live there!) unless some dude sent in a spacecraft from Earth can persuade Venus Eve not to listen to the "serpent." I'd see a film version, but it will never happen because he wrote these books before anyone knew really that Venus is a boiling greenhouse and Mars a frozen wasteland.

just read the first in the series. I love his writing style, but this was a bit slow. The bit near the end with all the god stuff was a bit of a turn off for me actually.

 

[Tang]

I'll go ahead and mention East of Eden. I finished it eventually, but it was pretty grueling.

Also the bible.

 

[Mprinsje]

kaas

for all non dutch here (and even dutch ppl who have never read this), it was something on the book list for dutch class, and almost everyone read it because it was only 80 pages or something. but my god, i read through all lotr+the hobbit+silmarillion before i finished that. freaking boring

 

[ilyti]

I'm not alone my book I can't finish is Atlas Shrugged, I actualy got shit for reading it in school but it was from people who don't read saying "there is a naked dude on the front WTF" and I said "nope it is a titan named Atlas."
the principle asked me about the book though, and my dad finds it odd that I haven't finished it cause he read it five times.

I guess that book is either you love it or you hate it. Which reminds me, no one in here has mentioned Catcher in the Rye. I absolutely LOVE that book, but I was the minority in my class that did. I just wonder if anyone here hated it as much as my classmates. I've read it all the way or in part about 10 times.

 

[Osiris]

^Also the Bible
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Scarlet Letter
Little House on the Prairie
The Devil's Horsemen- I had to write a paper about it and it was pretty good but took forrrrrrever to read. About the Mongol Empire almost conquering Europe.
never got past Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein kicked ass then has a bad spot when you realize how much of a vagina the scientist is. Then the ending is cool.
I feel like The Scarlet Letter is objectively one of the worst books of all time.

 

[hairychris]

Hmm...

Stephen Donaldson - Chron. of Thomas Covenant. One of the few books I haven't finished.
Pretty much any poetry - It annoys me. My g/f likes having Paradise Lost read to her though.
Umberto Eco -Island of the Day Before. I usually like his stuff (In the Name of The Rose, etc) but this was dull.
The Bible - Managed until the minor prophets in NIV OT but that took me years due to boredom, started the KJV NT last week to see if it was any better. It isn't. You'd have thought that god would have a better editor.
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time. I just gave up after about book 4.

Moby Dick I enjoyed. Chaucer is painful unless you read it out to yourself. Sounds crazy but the language works far better phonetically.

I haven't tried any Rand yet, may do one day for the lulz. I'll do that once I finish the Bible, Quran, and other religious stuff I already have kicking around.

 

[fps]

Hmm...

Stephen Donaldson - Chron. of Thomas Covenant. One of the few books I haven't finished.
Pretty much any poetry - It annoys me. My g/f likes having Paradise Lost read to her though.
Umberto Eco -Island of the Day Before. I usually like his stuff (In the Name of The Rose, etc) but this was dull.
The Bible - Managed until the minor prophets in NIV OT but that took me years due to boredom, started the KJV NT last week to see if it was any better. It isn't. You'd have thought that god would have a better editor.
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time. I just gave up after about book 4.

Moby Dick I enjoyed. Chaucer is painful unless you read it out to yourself. Sounds crazy but the language works far better phonetically.

I haven't tried any Rand yet, may do one day for the lulz. I'll do that once I finish the Bible, Quran, and other religious stuff I already have kicking around.

Moby Dick's terrific, not sure what is not to like about it. The Bible's best bit is Revelations by far.

 

[espman]

Hobbes Leviathan - made it about halfway through and found that it made better use as a sleeping aid than anything else

Lovecrafts Necronomicon/Eldritch Tales - Now, don't get me wrong, I love the weirdness of Lovecraft (which is why I got both of them), but there are some parts that seemed to drag on for so long that I just skipped over them. I've only actually read just over half of either of them

 

[Furtive Glance]

Carl Hiassen's Tourist Season. My sister loves his books and I struggled my way through HOOT or whatever it was called (younger adult book), but I could NOT STAND the characters in this one. I actually hated everyone in it. There was not one person I was interested in seeing complete whatever they were going for. I got about 75% of the way through and just said "fuck it".

 

[flint757]

Young adult books targeted for girls are typically bad at least from a males perspective in my experience.

 

[MFB]

Young adult books targeted for girls are typically bad at least from a males perspective in my experience.

For more on this subject of bad YA books directed at girls, see: Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and (from what I've heard) The Hunger Games

 

[flint757]

FWIW I didn't think hunger games was all that bad. The reading level for it is pretty rudimentary and it is short so it can be read in like no time. I think it could have been worse...the violence helped subdue my gag reflex through the romantic BS which again could have been worse.

 

[Pav]

The only reading that sticks in my mind for negative reasons is Faulkner. Tried reading As I Lay Dying for an AP Literature class back in high school and...I just couldn't do it. The man was wordy as all fuck and I must've missed the class on how that indicates genius writing.

 

[SenorDingDong]

For more on this subject of bad YA books directed at girls, see: Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and (from what I've heard) The Hunger Games

I found The Hunger Games (book one and most of book two) enjoyable

Granted, there wasn't much literary value, and I did run into a few gaping plot holes, but they were entertaining.

The third book was terrible, though. And I hate this whole "love triangle" thing being put in every book nowadays. That part of the series was unbearable, but luckily didn't get started until everything good that would happen did happen.


I don't think that Grey book is for YA audiences; at least, not from what Gilbert Gottfried read

 

[flint757]

No, 50 shades isn't for kids, but many are reading it and it is also written at a rudimentary level.

As for your assessment of Hunger Games Trilogy, verbatim how I feel about it. Liked the first and the second up till the end and probably excluding the beginning as well and hated the third entirely. I don't understand why women authors feel this strong desire to write these stupid love triangles.