Books wot you have given up on 'cos they are shit.

[brixtonvilla]

Chariots of the Gods, by Eric von Daniken. A shit sandwich with an extra serving of shit, hold the bread please.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Gogol's funnier.

Maybe, but that's really setting the bar high.

Curiously enough, just last week I was having a conversation on the Tube with our library assistant, who's reading Catch-22 at the moment, and Dead Souls came up. I was saying that I coudn't quite remember how Milo Minderbinder could buy eggs for seven cents, sell them for five and make a profit, which reminded me that I couldn't remember why the bloke in Gogol was buying up the dead souls either.

 

[Stigmata]

Maybe, but that's really setting the bar high.

Curiously enough, just last week I was having a conversation on the Tube with our library assistant, who's reading Catch-22 at the moment, and Dead Souls came up. I was saying that I coudn't quite remember how Milo Minderbinder could buy eggs for seven cents, sell them for five and make a profit, which reminded me that I couldn't remember why the bloke in Gogol was buying up the dead souls either.

Um, because wealth in Russia was measured in how many serfs you had, legally called 'souls' in your possession. Or something like that. The dead ones are a liability to the landowners because tax is determined by how many souls a landlord is responsible for... and i forget the rest.

 

[WasGeri]

I am currently about halfway thorugh Roddy Doyle's The woman who walked into doors. I have to say that's it's extremely dull and I'm not sure if I'll bother to finish it.

 

[jms]

The craptacular "olympiad" by Tom Holt

I gave up after the author biography on the first page

 

[herman]

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - utter pants.

 

[Orangesanlemons]

I finished Fever Pitch because I like footie and was young when it came out but that fucking High fidelity thing was flung across the room.

Funnily enough I did exactly the same thing - the first and only time i've lobbed a book at the wall (although I came close with 'The Beach' and that first David Baddiel abomination).

Past Caring: 'Immortality' I struggled with, but got through in the end. I love Kundera, but his earlier work was better. It was depressing, characterless, world-weary (even for him), and very, very, long...

 

[Oxpecker]

Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle". It was part of my course work, but I still couldn't finish it. I must have felt guilty for, ooh, all of 5 minutes.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - utter pants.

Unless your parents' marriage broke up when you were young, in which case it's rather better than that.

 

[treefrog]

Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle". It was part of my course work, but I still couldn't finish it. I must have felt guilty for, ooh, all of 5 minutes.

That was my holiday reading this year- loved it!

Unable to finish 100 Years of Solitude, Brick Lane by Monica Ali and All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye by Chris Brookmyre. The latter worries me as i've loved all his other stuff, but this book just left me cold. Only got a couple of chapters in...

 

[8ball]

Anything by Charles Dickens. So. Many. Adjectives.

Also, The Return of The King. Gritted my teeth through 'The Two Towers', having been told that things really picked up in the third one, then found IT WAS AS BORING AS THE SECOND BOOK IF NOT MORE!!!!

I was about 15 at the time so the attention span wasn't great but I doubt I'd make it through them now either, in fact I'd probably give up 50 pages into the second book.

Loved the films, though.

 

[laptop]

Norman O Brown, Life Against Death - pseudo-post-Freudianism, badly expressed.

D.H. Lawrence, The White Peacock - I was on a bit of an "ought-to-read-these" thing, and was so pissed off when two-thirds of the way through I realised that that was the point where I'd given up in disgust before - and then clearly found it utterly unmemorable.

 

[tastebud]

i gave up on the dirty havana trilogy a few weeks back.
i enjoyed the filth for a while, but it draaaaaaaagged onnnnnnn & did get a little tiresome.
i may return to it if i see it second hand somewhere, or in a library.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I have never got into "Catch 22". I find the style quite irritating. Have never understood the vast appeal this book seems to have...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon

Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce

 

[8ball]

I have never got into "Catch 22". I find the style quite irritating. Have never understood the vast appeal this book seems to have...

Yeah, that seems to happen to about every one in five people.

Fortunately I'm not one of the 'one in fives', so it's one of my faves.

This doesn't really count cos I finished it (it was quite short), but I read this Dean Koontz book once. Screamingly awful. Really. Like you wouldn't believe. Almost a parody of a precocious 8-year-old's scribblings.

I was on a miserable holiday in a caravan with my parents - of COURSE I read the whole thing!!

 

[Sorry.]

I read the introduction of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man the other day. It's sat on my bed since and I don't think the prospects of it getting picked up again are great.

 

[sheothebudworths]

So far the only book ive put down without finishing in my adult life is '100 Years Of Solitude'. I really dont see what the fuss was about, i get the concept but i found it unreadable. Very little structure, a thin plot, little or no character development with people coming and going constantly with the same names, few descriptions of location. It just moved so fast i felt completely unattached to it, I know thats part of the theme of solitude but it had nothing I value in literature.

Snap!

 

[Red Faction]

the worst book i ever read- Catcher in the Rye
i gave up on it about 20 times it was so shit
but unfortunately- my GCSE english teacher made life so hard for me for not reading it
i eventually had to
JD Salinger should be shot for having written such bollocks!

catch 22
also pants!

 

[jacobs steel]

The bible for the millionth time

 

[sunflower]

I was staying at my mum's house a few years ago and picked up her copy of 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith and started reading it. I was hooked within a couple of pages and thought it was one of the freshest, most original books id found in years. BUT it all started going wrong about halfway through the book where I began skipping entire chapters - never a good sign

In the end i didnt finish it because it had turned into a mind numbingly boring, tedious yarn so much that i didnt care what happened to anyone and had lost the will to live.

Still think the beginning of the book is exceptionally funny though

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I read the introduction of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man the other day. It's sat on my bed since and I don't think the prospects of it getting picked up again are great.

Do you not clean your room then?

 

[LJo]

I never finished Catch-22 either. The humour and cleverness just didn't make up for the lack of narrative drive for me.

I finished White Teeth, but only out of a sense of vague obligation cos everyone was going on about it so much.

 

[Ms T]

Totally agree about White Teeth -- goes seriously downhill in the second half. Her new book is meant to be good though.

I normally finish books once I've started them, but I absolutely loathed London Fields by Martin Amis and gave up halfway through. Also defeated by Tristam Shandy and Possession by AS Byatt (might give that another go at some point though).

This thread has reminded me that I really need to read Catch 22!

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I gave up Hard Times, which is funny in a way because it's one of Dickens' shortest.

 

[jms]

I normally finish books once I've started them, but I absolutely loathed London Fields by Martin Amis and gave up halfway through.

Tell me about it. Money is ok if you can be arsed, I'd say, but lots of people don't like that one either.

 

[MysteryGuest]

Norman O Brown, Life Against Death - pseudo-post-Freudianism, badly expressed.

*chortle* I got through nearly one chapter of that one.

 

[mentalchik]

Have tired to read American Psycho three times, just can't get on with it at all, and its not coz i think its shit !

 

[felixthecat]

Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce

Couldn't make my way thru 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' or 'Ulysses' either - I tried, but find him a stultifyingly boring writer.

 

[Virtual Blue]

Times Arrow - Martin Amis.

Bought it after reading 'Money' and was so disappointed I have not picked up another Amis book since.

But NOTHING beats The girl who played go by Shan Sa. I don't know how crap it really is as I can't get past page 30.