The books you didn't finish

[carl2norberg]

Stranger in the mirror.

[stelok]

James Clavell books are hard to grasp. I couldn't finish any of them.

[Nico Olvia]

Oh, cold thread. 12-03-2010, nice.

Anyway, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, don't know why but i always have a hard time to finish cyberpunk books. Happened to me also with Hardwired for example.

Some times with Stephen King books too. Not a big fan of the way he often talks, talks and talks about stuff not really all that interesting concerning secondary (or even the main ones) characters.

[Kieran_Frost]

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien - tried reading this a while ago, I can't recall if it was before or after the first movie, but it bored me out of my skull. I got about 100 pages in, or to about where Tom Bombadil shows up, and decided I had better things to do. I periodically consider revisiting this, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

American Gods by. Neil Gaiman - I don't know why I just can't finish it. I have heard nothing but good things about it and yet I cannot stay focused. I feel as if it moves extremely slow and the characters don't really know what they are doing. I also feel when I'm reading it that its set 40 years ago, when in actuality its supposed to be current.

1. Frankenstein by Shelley. This book, in my opinion, should have been a short story. While the subject matter is, of course, interesting, the innumerable passages in which the monster is seen to be "brooding" make for one of the most laboured reads I have ever experienced. That this is loved by so many is a complete mystery to me.

These three are the ones that stick in my mind most, as three classic books I couldn't finish. I so rarely can't finish a book, even if I don't enjoy it, I'm determined to finish it.

the Aeneid: Wasn't very captivating.

Maybe I'm just conditioned by modern fiction, but I had the same problem with The Aeneid that I did with Iliad and Odyssey (though I finished all 3); the hero doesn't seem to do much. He's mostly just a chess piece moved around by gods, and his main task seems to be just praising those gods constantly and very very hard so they decide to move him some place nice and give him what he needs.

What I loved about the Aeneid was the combination of the Odyssey and the Iliad in one book; split into three sections. I studied it for A-level, so lots of the "reasons" for certain sections (esp. Tartarus) made a lot more sense, and therefore had more power. Unlike the Odyssey (which I didn't enjoy), I loved reading the Aeneid, because it constantly changed. I do agree the hero doesn't do much, but truthfully it's not about him. It's about Dido, the Games and then Turnus.

[Bafflement]

I never got around to finishing Heart of Darkness. Something about the writing style just put me off. It's still sitting on my bookshelf taunting me to go back to it.

[Shellhead]

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - A friend loaned me this in 1995, after hearing me make some favorable comments about Notes from Underground. I read maybe 50 pages and gave up. Came across this book recently while going through some old boxes in storage. The friend never asked for the book back.

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson - I enjoyed Snow Crash, and I liked both The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. But I was defeated by Quicksilver. The pacing was slow and there were these unbearably long lectures about minutiae, so I just gave up, on both Quicksilver and Stephenson.

[Brain Scourgery]

American Gods for me as well.
Dark Tower book 2 - I liked the first one, and couldn't get through the midpoint of this one.
One of the Ellroy books, forget which one it was that I started.

[Addams]

Divergent by Veronica Ross.

A girl in a boot camp, doing...stuff like training and paint ball. I don't know, it just bored me so much that i stop reading it around the middle.

And this factions thing is so simplistic and silly really. A society like that wouldn't even hold for a day.

[Rawhide Kid]

The Hobbit: tried twice, stopped twice at the same moment, the scene with the trolls (or another monsters) around a firecamp. So boring.

Storm front (Dresden's Files 1) : Chapter 8 (or 10 ?) with the talking skull was just too stupid for me to continue. And it was awfully written.

Dark Tower 1: the novel is very short but I'm bored out of my mind at page 11.

Le petit prince: can't pass the first chapter. Boring.

[Ood Omega]

I think I'm too OCD to not finish a book once I started reading it, I mean it would have to be really bad. Sometimes I might stop reading a book but I will usually come back to it later. Like the first time I picked up Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities I couldn't get into the writing but I eventually came back too it. I still think its kinda boring until the French Revolution comes along and the start chopping off peoples' heads. Another books was John Milton's Paradise Lost could not get into that style of writing the first time I picked it up.

[Moriarty]

i finished The Fellowship of the Ring but quit The Two Towers about halfway through. i tried to read The Three Musketeers this year. i only got about ten or twenty pages in.

[Tobias March]

[B]

Storm front (Dresden's Files 1) : Chapter 8 (or 10 ?) with the talking skull was just too stupid for me to continue. And it was awfully written.

Oh thank god....I thought it was just me.

[SuperCooper]

The Fellowship of the Ring: Read The Hobbit and loved it, and the movies made me all the more excited to get to the original source material....which turned out to be about 30-some pages of the hobbits trolloping through a forest looking for mushrooms. I wish I could've outlasted and I may return to it but that first part of the novel killed whatever excitement and interst I had.

The Boat Who Wouldn't Float: Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Mowat fan, Never Cry Wolf being one of my favourite books. But something about this one, a retelling of Mowat's time in Newfoundland with a troublesome two-person ship, just made me put it down about half way through. My bookmark is still tucked in there, and it's sitting on my shelf mocking me.

[aNamored]

Lord of the Rings 13 years ago. I barely got through them 20 years prior but they are rough.

There are so many more, but I don't remember right now.

[Rawhide Kid]

i tried to read The Three Musketeers this year. i only got about ten or twenty pages in.

I forgot about this one. Couldn't pass the arrival of d'Artagnan in Paris, just wanted to slap the b%§$ !

Oh thank god....I thought it was just me.

It is sad but he just can't write. I've tried to read the comic-book Welcome to the jungle and it was still awfull.
(but I'm having a good time playing the paper RPG sets in his universe)