Name the book you left in the middle and couldn’t complete.Would love to hear the reason too.
Name the book you left in the middle and couldn’t complete.Would love to hear the reason too.
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Boswells life of Johnson… Found it too tedious
Pride and Prejudice. I think Jane Austen mastered the art of the run-on sentence.
It’s a slog, right? Thank you LOL
Try again ? I almost gave up to but at some point it got interesting ?
On the other hand, I’ve read Jane Eyre 9 times and love it!
I’d stick with this one. Someone spent some time explaining the tone, society’s expectations and social norms and it made a lot more sense to me. Not a favourite, but not awful either.
The run on sentence is a staple in Victorian literature. ?
As a moderator of a Jane Austen Book Club, I have discovered Austen is much more enjoyable on multiple readings. I’m currently reading Emma for the third time. The first two times I absolutely hated the book. This time I am absolutely loving it! Go figure!
Also, as much as I love Austen, she’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
The Prisoner also translated as The Captive by Marcel Proust. His writing is too complicated and boring for me.?
Th name of the Rose, cause i think Eco’ s tendency to describe everything in such detail didn t fit with my age at that point. I was getting too anxious.
In my tbr list
I read this earlier this year and I felt the same. I finished it but it didn’t live up to its hype
Loved this – it’s one I’d be taking to my desert island.
@Helen I had heard a lot of people say this about it but just wasn’t for me
@Sean And that’s fine – if we all responded the same way the world would be a very dull place. 🙂
@Helen very true ?
Ulysses. Too many untranslated foreign phrases. Since I didn’t speak the languages, it just left a big hole in the dialogue.
Exactly
I’m really struggling with Anna Karenina. Am more than halfway through the book but I find it annoying sometimes and I’m just about ready to give up?
I read this earlier this year. Took a lot of discipline to finish it, but feels worth it to have done so.
The writing got so painfully tedious that I just couldn’t stand it anymore.
I love Henry James–the greatest novelist of them all. I like What Maisie Knew OK, but it’s not one of my favorites of his.
Possession by A.S. Byatt. The writing and the storyline were sooooo boring.
I got through it (yes, even the long poems! ? ) and it was worth it!
I dont recall the name but it was a “sequel” to Pride and Predjudice. I have liked a lot of Jane Austen world fiction but this one was all about how Elizabeth was disappointed in Darcy in bed….. it was just tampering with one of my favorite books and characters in a way that felt icky.
Do tell when you remember the name?
@Zunni I got rid of the book. Lol. I just looked online to see if I could find it. I think maybe it might be Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife because the cover looks familiar, but I’m not sure. I didnt get very far in the book. It was kind of a 50 shades meets Jane Austen thing. All I remember is her complaining he was too vigorous in the bed chamber and me almost losing my lunch. I wasn’t a fan and threw it in the donate pile after getting through maybe 50 pages.
Yikes?thank you for taking effort for me.I am never gonna read it,never ever
The Memory Keepers Daughter. Bad writing and boring for me.
Independence Day by Richard Ford. I made it through this book but hated it. And it won the Pulitzer. It’s about how the protagonist spends the Fourth of July weekend from friday to sunday. He is a realtor so 1/3 is about him trying to sell a house. One of the most boring books I’ve ever read. It picks up a little when he picks up his son for a road trip (I love road trip books) but does not last long until it sinks even lower. One of the worst books I have ever read.
There are many books I have had to force myself to finish. Almost none I had to just stop reading.
I’m still working on Silmarillon by JRR Tolkien, I’m kind of bored by descriptions of battles
I gave up half way through Great Expectations. It was very slow and I hated the way Pip was treated. I had been reading on my iPad.
About a year after I ditched it, I was at a doctor appointment. The nurse came out and said he was running an hour late and did I want to wait or reschedule appointment. I decided to wait but the ONLY downloaded book on my iPad was Great Expectations!!! So I moved the cursor 1/2 way and just started reading for the next hour. AND I LOVED IT! The story totally captured me. I told all of this to my doctor when I got into his office and we had a big laugh. ?
Gone with the wind…I just could not stand the main character.
It is one of my favorite book
Loved Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell was brilliant.
@Joan the problem was with me. I see why this is a good book, I just had a difficulty in reading a book when I wanted to hit Scarlett every few pages. I just hated her.
lol.. I can see why you would feel that way.. The story is about Scarlet O’Hara who wanted to be like her Mother but was more like her Father. She loves a man that does not love her, while he loves a woman that Scarlet would like to be and can’t. She watches Atlanta burn and her home destroyed. She makes a vow to herself ..As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again. She is determined to survive and does so by picking cotton, running her plantation, running a business and even killing a man. She changes from a spoiled teenager to hard working widow to wealthy opportunist. She symbolizes the Old South and the New. Ashley is the Old South that she clings to and Rhett is the New that she adapts to….. I’m from the South and women from the South would love to be refined ladies, but can rise to the occasion when called to be strong. Scarlet did whatever was needed for the survival and well being of her family. I read the sequel but did not like it.
Huckleberry Finn. The story is really great and absolutely worth experiencing, but I became so irritated due to the way Mark Twain wrote it. I just can’t stand having 60 double negatives in every sentence, I’m sorry :))
Of Human Bondage, more than half of the novel, finished when I saw the movie with Bettie Page; lol, just reminded me of a bad relationship I once had.
Ulysses–and I tried twice. I didn’t like any of the characters and spent a lot of time confused. I decided life was too short.
Vanity fair. I guess I’m not a fan of 19th century English society. Probably why I also gave up on Pride and Prejudice.
The Idiot, by Dostoyevsky ? I tried reading it three times..page 50 is the farthest I could get no matter how hard I tried. I think it’s because there were too many characters I couldn’t quite understand and it all got a bit too confusing, plus I didn’t see where the story was going to. I do absolutely love two of his other novels, so I did read his books before.
For me, a lot depends on the translator. I always look for Constance Garnett translations. “Constance Clara Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature. Garnett was one of the first English translators of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Anton Chekhov and introduced them on a wide basis to the English-speaking public.” – Wikipedia [I also compared the first page of her translation of Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” to several others, and hers was the only one that made immediate sense.]
@Chris I don’t actually know who the translator was, but will look it up again. I completely agree though that a good translation is immensely important in how a story is conveyed. Thanks a lot.
Martin Chuzzlewit. probably because of the length and the fact that I just couldn’t find a character to connect with. I’ve read the beginning so many times because I keep trying to get myself into it, but I can never make it past the first 1/3 of the book.
The Watchers – Dean Koontz
It just was not grabbing me….
Moby Dick…knowing how it ends before you start it…only so much ‘whaling’ this reader could take.
Me too! ? maybe I’ll finish it one day.
i am still working on Maximum City about life in India some history, the life of Hindus , Moslems and all the other religious groups
and their interaction. Also tells of the criminal class their influence and structure.I have to keep going back to reread.
Catch 22. Don’t know why
I hate to say this because it was so long ago when I was a teen (I am 65 now) but, “Little Women”. This past Summer I picked it up and started rereading from the start and finished it! Loved the ending. Glad I did finish!
I read “Little Men” first and found it so tedious that I haven’t been able to force myself to try “Little Women” yet.
I must have thought the same back when I was a teen. Of course, my patience was’nt as high as it is now…
Try also “Jo’s Boys.”
The Bell jar… still planning to finish. It was so far a depressing read.