*Dear mods, I wasn't sure where to put this thread so please feel free to move it if necessary! *

Hi, all. I'm half-way through a very looooooong book at the mo (The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton) and it's dragging somewhat so I'm in two minds whether or not to finish it - after all, my life is finite and there are many. many more books out there! However, I tend to feel a bit guilty if I give up on a book!

Anyway, it got me thinking about other books I couldn't wait to put down! A few of them include:

The Antipope, by Robert Rankin
Silas Marner, by George Eliot (don't get me wrong - I love the classics, just not this one for some reason!)
The Silmarillion, by Tolkein (I love Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but could barely get through the first few pages of The Silmarillion)
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake

So which books have any of you detested with a passion, or just found a bit dull. Do you make yourselves finish a book out of a feeling of duty?

Mandy

I've been quizzing Mr Quietgirl on this topic and he agrees with me re the Titus series and The Silmarillion. Also, All the Colours of Darkness, by Peter Robinson (he loves all the other Peter Robinsons, though!). He also mentions his loathing of The Tin Drum, by Gunther Grass, and A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking (I agree with him on the last one - I reckon that's the "most bought, least read" book in publishing history! ).

Mandy

Being & Time - Heidegger

I've started it soooooooooo many times.

May give it another bash this summer!

Finegan's Wake,
Canterbury tales,
Any Shakespeare

dubmeup wrote: ah i saw this thread title, i thought fuckin shakespeare. what a task that is to read to find out theres no tits, no dragons, no wizards, no explosions.

Lord of the Rings....I've tried, really tried to get into it but can never make it past about page 12

quietgirl wrote: dawnbreak wrote:
I struggled with Tolkien too, i got through Lord of the Rings but gave up on the Silmarilion and The Hobbit.
The book that did my head in the most was the Bible, I tried to read it cause I thought I should but never got past Numbers.

Catcher in the Rye!

Managed to read it, struggled to find a reason to.

Mein Kampf!

Longest summer ever!

martg wrote:
I found it virtually impossible to read the Bible from beginning to end! Numbers defeated me too. The best way to approach the Bible (for me, anyway), is to read it in short, manageable chunks with a concordance to hand. Study notes are useful too, if you really want to get into it!

Mandy

dawnbreak wrote:
I found LOTR hard-going at first too - it doesn't really take off, IMO, until about a third of the way through the first book. Once I got past page 100 or so, though, I couldn't put it down!

Mandy

quietgirl wrote:
Now this! Many people have dropped LOTR at page 20 because it's so slow to read, and the story doesn't seem to evolve in first 50 pages at all... It's a good book anyway, worth a read or twenty...

Not sure the following are counted as "books" or not but I can't make it past the first few pages of:
The bible (any version, although I did make it past page five of the Muslim book),
School textbooks, especially history books as I always found them to be contradictory and full of lies and the teacher never wanted to hear it for some reason.

I basically know what I like and steer clear of books I know I wont be able to finish because I don't like not finishing what I start. But sometimes I will pick up a book that I think I may have no interest in (like 'The breaking of Ezra Riley' by John Moore) and am surprised sometimes, and other times I have to read 2 or 3 other books at the same time to finish the one I decided to give a try.

Wasn't Finnegan's Wake the pits! I mean...

I made myself read War And Peace. I'm not sure why I did that. It took me almost three years to finish and my hand used to shake when I forced myself to pick the thing up. I threw it away (yes, in the bin) the moment I'd finished the last page - and, today, I couldn't name one of the chracters or really tell you what happened. What a waste of life that was.

cantata wrote:
Leo Tolstoi? Jeez... I've stayed far away from that guys books... Dry and heavy could be some words to describe his style i think.

I read The catcher in the Rye (at shchool) but thought it was shit......I really can't see what all the fuss was about

Also Sunset Song ..didn't get the fuss about that one either

I was such a pretentious git as a child as far as books were concerned - at eight I brought 'the brothers karamazov' into school as my 'storybook' - my teacher did not believe that I was actually reading it - but I was. It was dire. Next up was les miserables - having seen the musical I wanted to read the book - that again was hard going - a lot of writers from that period are hard going imho a bit joyless but many worth the read. I used to love reading the bible - it was the first real book I ever owned - it was a good news bible so easier to read - I used to skip past the 'begating' bits though I found that particular prose made my eyes swim.

As an adult I don't tend to give up on books the longest one has lingered unfinished is a few weeks - I hate not knowing the ending.

It was pretentiousness for me too, thoreau... and I paid heavily for it!

Hex - Tolstoy, Gogal, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov.... fekkin load of twaddle. They couldn't crack a joke between them.

On a different level, has anyone tried to read the "Scruffy Teddy" children's books more than once? O. M. G. What are some of them putting out for our children? Even at 18 months old, my daughter was saying, "no, not that one mummy". Kill Scruffy Teddy, I say - and that sniping little mouse on every page!!!!

I ended up having to write stories for her.

cantata wrote:
I've just begun this phase although mine are recitals that are fine tuned each time I tell the same bloody one...again!

cantata .....that's also like loads of fairytales ...very dark but good usually wins

cantata wrote:
I went through a bit of a "Russian writer" phase when I was younger! I liked One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn (probably because it's short!), and Anna Karenina was, I thought, a brilliant story, but as for the rest of them, well, life's just too short!

Mandy