Books you can't finish

[TheHoodedClaw]

why do you skim read? it's utterly pointless. READ EVERY WORD or don't bother.

Not speaking for anyone else obviously, but I've spent the last 20 years or so reading complex technical specifications and even more complex code, and I can do so very quickly and identify the critical points of say the equivalent of a 10pt wall of text on A4 at first sight in just a few seconds. It has however hurt my ability to slow down enough to read literature properly, having always been a very fast reader in any case. It doesn't matter so much when reading the latest Chris Brookmyre or Iain Banks or whatever, but it's not ideal when struggling through Swann's Way where there is an order and structure to the words that is vital.

It's hard to describe what I really mean here - I see the page instantly as a whole and then sort of read backwards up the page stopping at crucial bits to see if there's anything needs more thinking about, which is great for looking at a screenful of code. Lots of novels don't require much more than this, those that do I have to will myself to read in a fashion that is tiring and no longer normal for me, sadly. Top left to bottom right, reading every word. *sigh*

 

[El Jefe]

I thought that the whole opening sequence at the baseball game was one of the most vivid and impressive things I'd ever read (still do) and was so looking forward to the rest of it. Couldn't do it - the book fails really badly shortly afterwards.

have to agree.. by the end of the first chapter I was convinced that I was holding in my hands the greatest novel of the 20th century or something.. then managed about another 40 pages before giving up in disgust

As for Ian McEwen's Saturday - about 50 pages of that, but jesus has he lost it. Some of the worst writing - and exposition - I've ever come across. It reads like Dan Brown

 

[DotCommunist]

I can't finish Naked Lunch or Satanic Verses...Don't know why, just can't have tried many times.

tbh Moors Last Sigh and Ground Beneath Her feet are the better Rushdie novels. And even those descend into seemingly plotless prose poetical writing

 

[Riklet]

My dad's an author and he hated Saturday, or rather found it so awful he was compelled to read all of it. Or something. He was moaning about it for a while anyway....

I used to work in a book shop and it was always popular as hell though, considering how zzz-worthy it seemed. Well, I thought that about most of the books I sold tbh! Mills n Boon eat your heart out!

 

[miss minnie]

Iain Sinclair's Lights Out For The Territory.

Luvvie spends a day not getting taxis. I put it down when he boarded a bus for the first time.

 

[Serotonin]

Catch 22.

 

[Treacle Toes]

I'm not surprised. Probably ruined words for you for years.

But I still love it...

 

[pboi]

blind watchmaker

 

[chazegee]

Crime and punishment third time lucky.

 

[llion]

Am struggling a bit with David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' at the moment. I started off like a bullet train and read the first hundred pages no problem, but I've since been derailed by the fact that the print is insanely small, there are hardly any paragraphs and its extremely dense in terms of both content and style! Think this is definitely my problem though not the author's as it's brilliantly written, its just that it requires a level of concentration that I can't quite reach at the moment!

 

[Obnoxiousness]

I actually finished "Wormwood" by GP Taylor, which is the book I posted at the beginning of this thread. Not a complicated book, but the prose was like an obstacle course. Took me ages to read it.

Tbh, it was a shit ending to a shit book. But at least I now know how the whole sorry saga ended.

And apparently this author got the sum of £6million for the movie rights?!?!?

 

[temper_tantrum]

Glad it's not just me with the Peter Ackroyd problem.

 

[Iguana]

As for Ian McEwen's Saturday - about 50 pages of that, but jesus has he lost it. Some of the worst writing - and exposition - I've ever come across.

I've found that with any McEwan book I've tried. I just can't get into it. The last book I stopped reading was Phillipa Gregory's The Other Queen about Mary Queen of Scots. It's cack, I read about 2/3s of it and could take it no longer once I realised it was only covering about 3 years of her life and not the most interesting of years by any means.

 

[El Jefe]

I've found that with any McEwan book I've tried. I just can't get into it.
.

I liked his earlier, darker stuff - Cement Garden, Kindness of Strangers and the like.

 

[The Octagon]

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 

[Chairman Meow]

Another vote for Catch 22, yes yes, I get it already and its not that clever or funny.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Ulysses, James Joyce

 

[Sam Spud]

couldnt finish Cloud Atlas ..... found it too clever for its own good , and didnt feel anything for any of the characters in it .

 

[8den]

Any mentioned "Infinite Jest?" Mainly because the book is so thick it's now being using as a temporary weight supporting wall on a dodgy extension to my house.

 

[ChrisC]

Any Peter F. Hamilton book. They are far to hefty.

 

[nightowl]

i've got a massive history of anarchism book i keep wanting to get through but never seem to