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

[tacotiklah]

Mein Kampf. I honestly tried reading it from a historical context and was so bored and disgusted with Hitler's ego that I really just had to stop. Everything about him screamed "I'm trying too hard", and really it was a red flag (even in the first few chapters I read) that the dude was seriously fucked up.

 

[ilyti]

^ Maybe try Arnold Schwarzeneggar's autobiography. Hitler's ego has nothing on his..

I've had a lot of trouble getting through Moby Dick. Its a great story, great atmosphere, but crap is it hard to read.

In a way, it is my white whale. Oh irony.

I'm reading that right now. Yeah, it's difficult, but I'm enjoying it. I thought the first part of the story was much better because it was funny, how he meets the cannibal.

 

[MFB]

I've bought Moby Dick like, 3 different time yet never gotten too far into it I'll probably try and re-read it during the summer but I'm 2/3 of the way through Wind Through the Keyhole now that I've got a physical copy and haven't even started Duma Key yet. House of Leaves would be nice to revisit but it's doubtful.

 

[skeels]

Being and Nothingness.

Sartre.No, sorry, Bertrand Russell.

Loved it. Had to keep re-reading.

Couldn't finish it.

It's a telephone book too.

Haha! Went to pick it up again - it was Sartre.
Dont know why I thought Russell ...although he's no Plato either.

I looked at it and it just screamed "Read me, you philosophical philistine! "
And so I screamed back "You go back to the place from which you came - keeping my couch with the missing leg from slanting all lop-sided, you bitter, selfish book!"


I'm going to re-read The Hitch-hiker's Guide to The Galaxy, an exceedingly friendly volume.

Don't Panic!

 

[K3V1N SHR3DZ]

I've had the toughest time getting through
"The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" by Ray Kurzweil. It's a great concept, the way he organizes the different tiers of evolution is wonderful. It is of course stunningly naive with his future time tables. Human greed and aggression sill not allow some of his predictions to happen while I'm still alive.

"Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time" by Carroll Quigley is another wonderful book that just cannot hold my attention long enough to finish it. It also requires a week's worth of research to really understand each chapter, as he covers so much so quickly and I hated history in school (too much regurgitating name/date/place, no focus on concepts, commerce, propaganda, and the HUMAN aspect of history).

I just can't seem to find time, what with guitars to play and refinish, Star Trek and/or Battlestar Galactica to watch, working 40hrs/week, watching the GOP and their corporate overlords rape my country to death, cats to pet, etc... Oh yeah, and there's also this thing called pussy.


Also a fun quote on Ayn Rand you guys may like:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

 

[tacotiklah]

^ Maybe try Arnold Schwarzeneggar's autobiography. Hitler's ego has nothing on his..



I'm reading that right now. Yeah, it's difficult, but I'm enjoying it. I thought the first part of the story was much better because it was funny, how he meets the cannibal.

Well I haven't read Arnie's autobiography, but here's a pretty good preview of how Hitler wrote....

Instead of saying something like "I walked over to the window", he writes this:
"The boy, filled with great confidence looked around the room, his pride swelling. Without much given thought, he put one foot in front of the other repetitiously, until he found himself sitting next to the windowsill. For a few moments he pondered as to what prompted him to do such a thing, but then readily dismissed it as the cool breeze blew in. There were birds, great and beautiful song birds chirping their saccharin melodies in the nearby tree."

It goes on and on like this. It took all of that just to say he went over to a window.
(note that this is hypothetical and not an exact excerpt; it's intention is merely to show how bad his style is)

 

[Vairocarnal]

The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka.

While I understand and appreciate the metaphors and allegories used the pacing is drivel, the context is sh!te, and the delivery is poor at best. Did I mention the pacing sucked?

 

[ElRay]

As much as I love (the original series) Dune, I have not been able to finish anything else by Frank Herbert. I've started "The Jesus Incident" (Tick. The ship went tick. ...) four times, and "The White Plague" twice, but could never get far.

I've read Atlas Shrugged several times, but I've never read the John Galt speech past the 2nd page or so.

Anton Checkov's "The Cherry Trees" -- I've had to read that play too, too many times. I even had to write an essay on the sources of comedy in the play. The opening paragraph was: "The first time I read Anton Checkov's "The Cherry Trees", it was not funny. The second time I read Anton Checkov's "The Cherry Trees", it was not funny. The third time I read Anton Checkov's "The Cherry Trees", it was not funny. On the fourth reading, I finally understood the humor." My TA looked at the essay when I turned it in (He had a habit of doing so as I was the only Engineer in the class), shook his head and put it on the table.

Kafka I liked, but "The Trial" made me mad and I couldn't believe that the main character allowed everything to happen.

"Moby Dick" and "The Silmarillion" were also struggles.

Ray

 

[gunshow86de]

After 4 attempts, I have not made it all the way through the Brothers Karamzov. It's not that I don't enjoy the book, quite the contrary. It's just such a slow, arduous read that I usually start reading a different book somewhere in the middle, then don't pick up the Brothers K for several months. This usually means I have to start over.

 

[SirMyghin]

To contrast a lot of folks, I enjoyed the Silmarillion, it might be my favourite Tolkien work. AFTER the first 2 chapters that is with the whole singing into creation stuff.

 

[Devyn Eclipse Nav]

As much as I love (the original series) Dune, I have not been able to finish anything else by Frank Herbert. I've started "The Jesus Incident" (Tick. The ship went tick. ...) four times, and "The White Plague" twice, but could never get far.

I actually enjoyed the WorShip trilogy (The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, The Ascension Factor) more than the Dune series. But maybe his son's books just left a bad taste in my mouth. He did a good job on The Hunters of Dune and The Sandworms of Dune, though.

As for my least-favorite book, I'd go with Battlefield: Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. I got it for 50 cents at a garage sale when I was ten, based off the title alone. I thought it'd be some awesome Sci-Fi epic about a war for earth on a grand scale. I was dead fucking wrong

it's the year 3000, and 10 foot tall virus-based lifeforms (dah fuq) that are dumb as rocks and called Psychlos are mining earth for something that is either never mentioned or I missed, and humans have reverted to primitive tribes hiding from the aliens. A human "(Johnny Goodboy Tyler) goes to investigate the "City of the Gods" (Denver, Colorado) and to see one of the monsters of the legends (nobody's ever seen a Psychlo, and Psychlos have never seen humans. In 1000 fucking years. Sure.) He gets captured. Taken prisoner. Trained to mine by Terl (antagonist) as part of a scheme to get gold out of a cliff-face that psychlos can't go to as due to their "breathe-gas" exploding in the presence of uranium. Terl's planning a get rich quick scheme, and Johnny is planning to mine uranium to send to Planet Psychlo with Terl's smuggled gold to blow that shit up. They recruit a shit ton of Scotsmen, and do this. The end? Nope. This is page 500 or so, and there's 500 more to go. I'll keep it short - they deal with the rest of the Psychlos, then get attacked by a bunch of other aliens, have to deal with the universe's bankers going to foreclose them because they overthrew the mining company, therefore inherited their debts (Really?) They win, settle the debts, find out they destroyed Psychlo, and Johnny retires to the countryside with his girlfriend and her little sister, while the rest of humanity rebuilds.

They did all this with a total planet human population of 2,500. Fought off about 5 times that many aliens with that had superior tech, with a force of under 1000 soldiers, and lost very few people. I call bullshit.

Anyway, I tried reading that in 6th grade, gave up halfway through, and tried again last august. I finished it this time, but mostly because halfway through I used it for my english Independent reading assignment. And now Nevermore's This Godless Endeavor album is forever associated with that crime against literature.

Don't even get me started on the movie I could only watch a half hour, it was soooooo fucking bad,

 

[MFB]

Don't worry, I checked out Battlefield : Earth after the whole L. Ron/Scientology thing blew up during my Junior year of high school and even then we all fucking laughed at how stupid it was. Within the first 20 pages there's mention of a book that's a couple thousand pages thick yet made out of a totally light-weight material that allows for the creation of such books and it's just more and more ridiculous as it goes on.

 

[SenorDingDong]

I just ran into another book I couldn't finish.

Mary SanGiovanni - The Hollower

I tend to enjoy reading horror novels by authors who have reputation but I've never read before. Lately, though, I've run into a slew of bad writing.


Thing without face stalks former drug addicts and emotionally damaged people. That's all I took from the 80 pages of poor, creative writing class-style writing. She spent more time describing the sky than she did developing her boring, 1D characters. Introduces so many characters so quickly I list track of who was who.


And the thing that bothered me the most, and makes me put down any book after no more than 100 pages, is that she had no style whatsoever. Her writing was just so formulaic and bland, I couldn't stomach it. No dynamics in the sentence structure. Not a hint of a voice. Nothing unique.

 

[signalgrey]

Haruki Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicles.

I had no issues with the first 2/3's of the book. The last 1/3 was just so fucking slow and annoying and pedantic uuuugh. fuck you. Overrated writer anyway.

 

[Triple-J]

Both of H.W. Jeter's Bladerunner sequels.

I was real excited to get my hands on both of these books at first but pretty soon my excitement transformed into a mix of horror and boredom as both books are just a dull grind that cheaply retreads iconic scenes/characters from the film and drops them into a bunch of unbelievable situations that feel more like a Russ Meyer movie.

 

[fps]

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf. NOONE likes that book.

 

[fps]

The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka.

While I understand and appreciate the metaphors and allegories used the pacing is drivel, the context is sh!te, and the delivery is poor at best. Did I mention the pacing sucked?

The Metamorphosis is awesome, plus it's only about 50 pages long, so how is it difficult to get through? Also which translation did you read, as it makes a big difference.

 

[fps]

I wouldn't classify it as a stinker, but I've been "starting" Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow for about two years running. With long, challenging books there's always that fear that you'll have wasted a boatload of time committing to a book that you're not connecting with. Read the first few sections and it just wasn't happening. I suppose I'll get to it once I whittle-down my queue of other books I want to read.

Exactly how I felt. Worked backwards to Pynchon from David Foster Wallace and I can't get into that book either, no matter how hard I try. Might just have to grit teeth and plough through at some point, but you're right the size of the thing means I'm not sure I want to. He really should have made the first few chapters, not more action-packed, or easier to read or anything, just BETTER.

 

[SenorDingDong]

The Metamorphosis is awesome, plus it's only about 50 pages long, so how is it difficult to get through? Also which translation did you read, as it makes a big difference.

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.

 

[ilyti]

I forgot to mention, I bought a copy of Frankenstein 5 years ago and I finally just finished it a month ago. Brutally painful, with about 50 pages actually enjoyable. Who knew, the monster is freaking eloquent when he speaks! Boris Karloff screwed that right up.

Anyeay, I bought Mary Shelley's other book, The Last Man, and looking back on it, I have no idea why. The concept is interesting (humankind slowly wiped out by plague, one man remains), but I'm only 70 pages in, and it's not "modern" as it sounds. I love H.G. Wells predictions of the future in The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, and the Island of Dr Moreau. Those books were all great and I liked his writing style, it's very direct and to the point.

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.