Books you never finish

[crustychick]

On first reading this I was frustrated by the first two chapters but having got through them I loved the book. It is beautiful. A good book despite it's popularity iyswim.

maybe one day I will return to ti then

Kevin on the other hand I persevered with - I hated the self-indulgent whiny tone throughout.... and it didn't even end with some kind of twist.... didn't really like it...

 

[mrs quoad]

maybe you should just skip to the last few then?
seriously i know it goes on a bit but this book seriously grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
i have always known i wanted kids but this book made me stop and think and actuallly freaked me out to the extent that its got me re-thinking a bit.

I think I would rather die choking slowly on rabid dog vomit.

But thank you

 

[foamy]

I think I would rather die choking slowly on rabid dog vomit.

But thank you

another happy customer.
you're welcome.

 

[foamy]

and it didn't even end with some kind of twist....

it does have a twist - the fact the letters she have been writing to her husband are not going to her husband is the twist, that's it, surely?

(i hope this makes sense as i dont want to give too much away)

 

[tastebud]

Lolita?! WTF? It's an absolutely beautifully written book! The best!

 

[mrs quoad]

another happy customer.
you're welcome.

Hahaha! Absolutely nowt to do with you, Foamy - everything to do with Lionel Shriver Is it relevant that she's childless? Probably isn't. Didn't get far enough to know, meh.

I've never known a writing style that made my skin and mind crawl to such an extent. It felt like reading a minging speed comedown in book form. I get nowt but absolute horror at the sheer pretentious wallowyness of it.

I'll probably love her second book though

 

[crustychick]

it does have a twist - the fact the letters she have been writing to her husband are not going to her husband is the twist, that's it, surely?

(i hope this makes sense as i dont want to give too much away)

oh, well, no, really? i thought that was kind of obvious....

perhaps I have forgotten the ending... or maybe I'm just too cynical

 

[Slow Hands]

I didn't finish "No easy walk to freedom" by Nelson Mandela - can anyone tell me what happened in the end?

Why do you think people stop reading books like Cpt Correlli's mandolin or Harry Potter, is it cos the film has come out by then?

 

[jbob]

Lolita?! WTF? It's an absolutely beautifully written book! The best!

Absolutely! Complete genius, as is all of Nabokov's work. I think I actually prefer Pale Fire...

 

[foamy]

Why do you think people stop reading books like Cpt Correlli's mandolin

cpt correlli's is like walking up a huge mountain, it's really hard to start with but when you get to the top its amazing views and an easy descent

 

[jbob]

Cpt Correlli is not a 'difficult' book, it is quite detailed, though.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Ulysses and/or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - I just can't get into Joyce at all.

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie's writing is sh!te. If he was just no-name author, non-member of the literati, no one would read his crap.

 

[foamy]

lots of people find it hard to start with, perhaps because of the amount of detail.
i think what most people dont realise is its worth persisting with for the humour

 

[Winkybag]

Another vote for Ulysses.
Oh, and Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance. Like wading through glue.

 

[manifold]

Ulysses, Don Quixote, The Brothers Karamazov of the classics. Plenty of crap sci-fi and trashy fiction.

I tend to have about 6-7 different books at once though, so it's less a case of giving up and more a case of forgetting I'm reading them. It all started when I fell in love with Borges' short stories and my attention span went from all-day reading to 15-30 minutes. :/

 

[bluestreak]

i cant believe how many people say catch-22. it's such a good book!

the only book that i've given up on cos it was hard work (rather than shit) is ulysses. three times now i've started and each time i get a bit further. i'm about two thirds of the way through and waiting for being rich enough to afford a holiday so i can lie on a beach and really work on it.

 

[Orang Utan]

I'm very surprised by some of the answers. Catch 22 is ace - who needs a plot? And Kevin is one of the best written books I've had the pleasure to read. The fact that the narrator isn't particularly likeable is the whole point. Mrs Q seems to be reacting to the character rather than the writer - I certainly don't find it pretentious. Many of the reasons people have said they don't like these books are precisely the same reasons I like them just

 

[foamy]

i abandoned catch 22 not because i didnt like it but because it fried my brain and i had lost track of who was who - will read it on my next beach holiday

 

[tastebud]

oh yeah totally, i have an almost brand new copy. i fully intend to apply myself to it in its entirety one day, i just never managed to finish it, thus far.
incidentally, i love 'something happened'.

 

[Fez909]

I've started but not finished:

Thomas de Quincy - Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonecrinomincon
Che Guevarra - Guerilla Warfare

I will go back to the de Quincy one, one day, but not the others.

 

[jbob]

Ulysses and/or Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - I just can't get into Joyce at all.

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie's writing is sh!te. If he was just no-name author, non-member of the literati, no one would read his crap.

Dubliners and Portrait are quite straightforward, really (the former more than the latter).

You're talking nonsense about Rushdie. Midnight's Children is fantastic, Satanic Verses is still okay, some of recent stuff is a bit of a slog, mind. Wonderful short story writer, too. There are reasons why writers become 'members of the literati' (whatever that is), and it's normally to do with the quality of their work, not just some random choice based on some indefinable measurment. Rushdie is certainly one the most important post-colonial writers, but his work moves beyond that narrow bracketing.

 

[Poot]

I thought We Need to Talk About Kevin was mediocre and I struggled but then about half the way in it was utterly compelling and I realised I couldn't put it down, and I'm glad I continued with it. I don't think either myself or a herd of wild horses could persuade mrs q of that, though!

For me, I thought The English Patient was the most tedious thing ever written and I read it all the way through so that I didn't feel it had got the better of me and now realise I should have spent the time sticking pins into my eyes instead.

 

[bluestreak]

You're talking nonsense about Rushdie. Midnight's Children is fantastic, Satanic Verses is still okay, some of recent stuff is a bit of a slog, mind. Wonderful short story writer, too. There are reasons why writers become 'members of the literati' (whatever that is), and it's normally to do with the quality of their work, not just some random choice based on some indefinable measurment. Rushdie is certainly one the most important post-colonial writers, but his work moves beyond that narrow bracketing.

totally agree, rushdie is important because he's a fucking literary genius.

 

[Final]

I will go back to the de Quincy one, one day, but not the others.

I'd forgotten about that book.
That was on the 1st year reading list when I was at uni - as a geography text.

 

[quimcunx]

Midnight's Children was dull, dull dull. I managed about half.
I did quite enjoy The Grimus but not enough to try any more.

 

[quimcunx]

I didn't finish "No easy walk to freedom" by Nelson Mandela - can anyone tell me what happened in the end?

I think he was freed.

I haven't finished it either, not because I didn't find it interesting, but I can rarely be bothered carrying around such big books so it got sidelined for a more handbag sized one...

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? I read the first page and cursed the money I'd spent on it.

 

[Fez909]

I'd forgotten about that book.
That was on the 1st year reading list when I was at uni - as a geography text.

Wierd! Was it any good?

 

[foamy]

we were told to read Moby Dick as part of our Sculpture course. I think the reasoning is because it was about 'something big'

 

[bluestreak]

Midnight's Children was dull, dull dull. I managed about half.

and to think i coplimented you on your pants *shakes fist*

 

[Get Involved]

Another one who didn't finish Catch 22 here, although I was a lot younger at the time, will give it another go one day.

Recently I didn't finish A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - because it was shit. But then I see it won loads of awards