Books you try to read but can't

[SandyV]

Moby Dick.

The book is cursed. We chose it as the group read for a group holiday.  As we began reading it, bad things happened, cars crashed, luggage was lost, people got ill. We all stopped reading the book and things went back to normal. We all agreed to never try read the book again, and left our copies in the farmhouse we were staying in. So if you find 5 copies of Moby Dick in a French farmhouse, back away, they be evil!

I agree about Moby Dick although for me it was just hard going rather than cursed.

Also Catch 22.

[Mr Larrington]

Just thought of another one: The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer.  What is known in Ye Shedde as PISIP.

[barakta]

I'll read most things, I read very fast and have even finished a Dan Brown or two (although they were pretty dire).

I have read the sodding Hobbit - twice.  Once by myself cos my older (cool) sister's mates were HUGE Tolkein nerds and then bloody school foisted it onto us in English.  Hated it both times.  I got about 3 pages into Silmarillion before giving up on that. I probably tried LOTR but had already decided I hated Tolkein.  I don't like the films either.  Deeply Tedious Pretentious Crap.

I can't get into Pratchett's books either, I keep retrying because most of my friends love him and I like the ideas and concepts and the films have been enjoyable but in written form it doesn't speak to me.

I don't like Dickens, I have got through two I think and while I see it's supposed to be good the experience is like eating dry crackers with no water. 

I enjoyed War and Peace, I was named after a character in it and I spent 2 weeks of lurgy reading it on a Palm IIIc in bed which was ideal.   I think there is something to be said for getting 200p into Russian authors' books for the tone to get into your head and into the zone.

I don't think I finished Zen and motorcycle maintenance, I got bored.

George Elliot is an acquired taste I believe, if you don't mind being depressed horribly by her books *shudder*.

[Peter]

Barakta, you're not the first person on here to have had trouble with Dickens!  While there is no shortage of good stuff to read instead, I hope you'll try him again sometime.  I'd start with the "Christmas Books", which are novellas, really, then maybe Little Dorrit, A  Tale Of Two Cities or Nicholas Nickleby.  The latter is incredibly gripping, and while it is brutal in places, it's also very funny in others.  It's easy to lose patience with Dickens but I think it helps to remember that most of his work was written as instalments for his magazine, so he had to keep churning.  You've certainly got enough staying power if you've read "War and Peace", which I also loved.  How about Anna Karenina?

Peter

[Wowbagger]

I thought Catch-22 was absolutely brilliant. I enjoyed Catcher in the Rye as well.

Sorry, strayed off-topic.

[Canardly]

Prize winners usually

[citoyen]

I've struggled with Dickens in the past but last year I made a concerted effort to read the Pickwick Papers and finished it. God, it was tedious. Very funny in places but not enough to really sustain the interest for 900-odd pages.

I think I like Dickens as a storyteller more than as a writer, though he has his moments - the opening passage of Bleak House is magnificent (maybe I'll read the rest of that one day).

d.

[Morrisette]

I hated Captain Correlli's Mandolin, though I did finish it. Everyone in it is really stupid.

The book I have read least of before deciding it was crap was the first one of the many Shanarra (Shanaharana? Sha-something) whatever, by Terry Brookes. God it was bad. I read one and a half chapters.

[her_welshness]

Well I loved 'The Silmarillion' 

'Song of Stone' by Iain Banks was pretentious shit and ghastly.

'The Museum of Innocence' by Orhan Pamuk, none of our Reading Group could finish it. The newest one which they could not finish was 'NW' by Zadie Smith.

[Mrs Pingu]

The Dice Man. I need solitary time to get through it and I won't get that till easter.

I wouldn't bother if I were you!

[Mrs Pingu]

How To Teach Quantum Physics To Your Dog.
I can only read a few pages at a time and then end up leaving it for weeks, by which time I've forgotten what little I understood.
Plus it makes my brain hurt and feels too much like being at work.

[RJ]

Thanks Mrs P - that reminds me:

A Brief History of Time; and Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind

Just the wrong kind of abstract for me, I think 

[slohill]

Many years ago,  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence.
I eventually realised that I just couldn't be arsed.

Took me a couple of attempts---but eventually read all of it including the philosophy sections at the end.
However, in spite of several attempts, could not get more than about 50 pages through the follow up---Lila.
In fact there is a potential interesting thread here---books you liked with follow ups you hated.  Catch 22 (I think it is brilliant) is a good example.  I did read all the follow up as an exercise in gritty determination (early mental training for Audax!?!)  which I seem to remember was something "Gold"; it was truly DIRE!!!!

[barakta]

Thanks Peter I may shove some of those onto my ebook readers for times I may consider reading those.

I also loved Anna Karenina, I've read it at least twice as I have a lovely old twin book set copy as well as electronic ones. 

[Nuncio]

So everyone's happy with Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad (except for bikenrrd with The Secret Agent)?

I find Hardy a breeze, though felt completely wrung out emotionally after Tess and Jude; and Conrad's writing dense but rewarding.

[andrewc]

I did read the Silmarillion when I was 14, it was just a phase..... though I've read LOTR multiple times.

I've not touched Hardy since having to read "Far from the madding crowd" for my GCE,  "Love in the time of cholera" was left on a railway bench when I had to change platforms and I couldn't be arsed going back for it.

Samuel Delany's "Dhalgren" was stuffed back into the bag on a long flight. I must give it another go sometime. 

[redshift]

So everyone's happy with Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad (except for bikenrrd with The Secret Agent)?

No, I find most of the 'classic' authors to be tedious drivel.

A little like Kim, sometime in my mid 20's the switch got flipped.  More or less when I did the last batch of vaguely serious computer programming I did.  I stopped playing games and almost entirely stopped reading fiction.

Back in the day, I read the Hobbit, LOTR and the Silmarillion.  I think some people were trying to read the Silmarillion as a book, but it's really a potted episodic history.  Tolkien also said the LOTR is definitely not allegory: It's just a story, so I never found it pretentious as it wasn't pretending to be anything.  Looking for anything beyond the tale and the songs is a bit pointless.

When I came back to reading more fiction I tried a few of the 'classics' again.
Moby Dick seems to crop up a lot, but I enjoyed it.  I actually read it because (for reasons too tedious to explain) I was looking for a description on early whaling, and found a note on Wiki that the best was to be found in Melville's work.  Dickens - er, no thanks.  Khalil Gibran, Hardy, Lawrence, Joyce, Peake ditto. Erskine Childers ur-espionage tale the Riddle of the Sands was one I couldn't finish.  Somehow it should have pushed lots of buttons but didn't.

Some Virginia Woolf I can just about read.  Jeanette Winterson started well, but I drifted away when she wrote GUT Symmetries and haven't felt the need to drift back.

I read Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series more or less as it was published, then the second set, then... ... ignored him for twenty years, and when I tried to read them again, I gave them away because they were so unreadable.  As were all the other books of his that I've tried to read.

For as long as I can remember, the only author I've found consistently good is Alan Garner, but he doesn't provide light relief.  That usually ends up coming from Patrick O'Brian and Terry Pratchett.

The rest is non-fiction.  I think I may not finish the OS X server manuals though, and the SGI IRIX admin manuals are somewhat neglected these days.  Currently I'm also not managing to read VSM, Hydra and Signiant manuals, preferring instead the heady whiff of new cameras as I delve into the innards of Sony HDC2500s and Canon XJ27 Digi-Super box lens manuals.  They're not readable, but I have far more need to read them than read Jane Austen.

[andrewc]

Well I loved 'The Silmarillion' 

'Song of Stone' by Iain Banks was pretentious shit and ghastly.

Not his best. I thought it was his last attempt to write something different.  Since then he's been treading water & rehashing his old stuff.

I read ""The Dice Man" when I was about 11,  I think it corrupted me.........

[red marley]

With all this talk of Silmarillion (I never finished that one either) I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes (apparently a true story although it may have been Dyson not Lewis who uttered the famous words)...

While CS Lewis and Tolkien were at Oxford together they were formed a reading group where they would share their works by reading to each other. On reading yet another chapter from LoTR, Lewis lost patience interrupting him with Oh no! Not another fucking elf!

[Mr Larrington]

Many years ago,  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence.
I eventually realised that I just couldn't be arsed.

Took me a couple of attempts---but eventually read all of it including the philosophy sections at the end.
However, in spite of several attempts, could not get more than about 50 pages through the follow up---Lila.

I've read it a couple of times but it's hard going.  Especially as all the characters appear to be gits of the first order.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I must be odd. Read Moby Dick at about 13 and enjoyed it.

Read Lila - I didn't think the narrator was a git, just more than a bit pathetic.

ZatAoMM led me to my current profession, it mislead me that the job would be interesting.

[Efrogwr]

I can't get into Pratchett's books either, I keep retrying because most of my friends love him and I like the ideas and concepts ... but ...it doesn't speak to me.

I like Pratchett, but I fee exactly as above about Malcolm Pryce, Jasper fforde and Robert Rankin. I've read the first novel by each of them, enjoyed it, and been unable to read any of the subsequent ones.

[mattc]

Erskine Childers ur-espionage tale the Riddle of the Sands was one I couldn't finish.  Somehow it should have pushed lots of buttons but didn't.

+1. It wasn't bad, but incredibly slow and just ... you know ... boring.

Yet it came with so many trusted recommendations. I reeeeeally tried to finish that one.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

So everyone's happy with Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad (except for bikenrrd with The Secret Agent)?

I find Hardy a breeze, though felt completely wrung out emotionally after Tess and Jude; and Conrad's writing dense but rewarding.

Not a fan of Conrad. Not particularly fond of Hardy's novels but I do like his rhymes.

[Deano]

So everyone's happy with Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad (except for bikenrrd with The Secret Agent)?

I find Hardy a breeze, though felt completely wrung out emotionally after Tess and Jude; and Conrad's writing dense but rewarding.

I still haven't finished Nostromo, despite a couple of tries.

I think Conrad's a wonderful writer, but as you say, it's so dense that I need a decent run-up.

I read half of Heart of Darkness on a train journey once, but when I picked it up the next day I had to go back to the beginning.

I've always struggled with DH Lawrence. God, it's just so florid. Sons and Lovers, I gave up on when I was just too irritated by the characters. I thought his poetry was better.