A book you wanted to like but couldn't finish

Cold Mountain. I couldn't get through the first chapter.

Dick & Jane

THE DA VINCI CODE

Twenty years ago, it was a bestseller worldwide and everyone and their mother was raving about it, including my own.

But I prefer to read non-fiction and couldn't get into it, so I ended up putting it down and researching the actual Knights Templar instead.

A Little Life.

Recently, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. I read maybe 100 pages, waiting for the plot to start. It didn't. Good thing I'm not a Booker judge!

I think of DaVinci Code as a book I wanted to hate but then could not put down!

Game of Thrones.

Two friends told me I’d love the series.

I got through about 100 pages of the first book before I’d had sufficient.

Cold Mountain is one of my favorite books. It did start slowly though.

And R4, you missed nothing by giving up on A Little Life. Awful book.

My answer is Dune. So many people love it. After a few pages, I knew it wasn’t for me.

Mein Kampf

In other words, dislikable books you stopped reading.

Goodnight Moon.

I kept falling asleep.

A Confederacy of Dunces. Drivel.

This year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Night Watch” by Jayne Phillips. I was excited to read it and then it’s all bogged down in cutesy dialects and too much Civil War.

Also, another Pulitzer winner, “The Sympathizer” almost put me to sleep.

Everybody Poops.

Underworld by Don DeLillo. I'm a huge admirer of his, but this one was just too much for me.

^ Also, The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt. Just nope.

Happens regularly with books written by my friends. AWKWARD.

The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen. So prolix. So humorless. Good God, man, can you give it a lift?

Second vote for The Corrections. The World According to Garp. Love the movie .

[quote] In other words, dislikable books you stopped reading.

No, that's not the same.

A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens.

Noam Chomsky. Forgot which book.

Tried to read The Corrections, as well.

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison. (I did read Jazz, though.)

Under the Dome - Stephen King

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

^ A Visit From the Goon Squad ( sorry)

R20 it's exactly the same.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin. I wanted to like it because I love magical realism and NYC. I couldn't get past the extremely shallow characters and the sense that the author thought she was really clever.

I loved "The Hours," so I ran right out to get something else by Michael Cunningham and came home with "Flesh and Blood." About 50 pages in, I'd had enough, but I went to put it on my bookshelf anyway -- makes me look well-read, dontcha know -- and found the copy I purchased (and given up on) a couple of years earlier.

Well I'm giving away my age here. Always an avid reader from 1st grade. Well I'd heard what a magical and wonderful read "The Secret Garden" was. Finally got ahold of it in third grade. Someone was full of horsefeathers. Nothing happened. Read it again because I thought I'd missed something. Still nothing.

Any book by Stephen King that’s over 300 pages.

Anything by China Mieville

Demon Copperfield. It started off strong, but I had to cut bait halfway through for my own sanity. Became a total repetitive slog.

Lord of the Rings

Stephen King's Insomnia (I enjoy most of the other books of his that I've read)

Dostoyevski's Notes from the Underground (I absolutely love Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov)

Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell

Most recently, The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt. Loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but this one fell flat for me. Too much boring name-dropping and a lack of focus.

R33 I loved At Swim Two Boys but completely agree on the other two.

I can understand the praise but could just not tap into either story.

Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, and anything written by Jennifer Egan.

The first book in Anne Rice's Vampire series. Threw it across the room at 50 pages. I didn't bother with the rest.

Girl on a Train

The Poisonwood Bible

100 Days of Solitude

Those fucking panem katniss books.

R12 I second that.

A Confederacy of Dunces came highly recommended by a couple of friends as one of the funniest books they've ever read. But I just don't get it. I've tried reading it three times, and Ignatius J. Reilly just isn't funny to me at all, he's just an unlikable fat slob. Woo woo.

A Little Life and The Goldfinch SUCKED SATAN'S BALLS!!!!!

A Little Life was straight up TORTURE PORN- just a vicious and manipulative book-

The Goldfinch- Fucking hell- It went nowhere. The only part that reeled me in was the part that most hated- Las Vegas- LOVED that part.

I was so angry that the booked sucked so bad (and was so long) I did see it through to the end just to see if it got any better. It did not.

My current one I cannot get through is the biography of Sylvia Plath- Red Comet-

It is so meticulously detailed that it is a slog so far - And this book is HUGE and heavy, so its tough to read in bed- I have faith this one is worth it-

Unbroken. A coworker loaned me the book at the start of spring and I have read 100 pages so far. He told me that I could hold onto the book until I finished it but I feel terrible about it. Maybe I should get the Kindle edition.

I’ve never finished a Jennifer Egan novel. Tried many times and just don’t see the why they’re so hyped. Garth Greenwall I just find depressing and predictable, I don’t understand why someone would write those stories. Toni Morrison I find too rich, like the prose is over ripe.

I agree with r41 that the Las Vegas sequence in the Goldfinch was the best part. There was a whole book in there somewhere. Like what Grenwall is trying to do, but not quite hitting.

R5 I finally through out my copy of the Lumineers. Sitting there gathering dust after trying to read it a couple of times. Just so boring.

I just finished Babel by RF Kuang which I loved…..

Wicked. Saw the musical, decided to do a book club with a friend and read the novel. OMG what a snoozer. I'm sure it was a fine book but I prefer the real deal, L. Frank Baum original series. Wicked is so non-canon that for me it only works as a jazzy lightweight Broadway spectacle, not as actual literature.

There’s a certain breed of gay writer that likes to slather it on.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The title alone made me want to love it, but I’ve picked it up multiple times over the past quarter century, and I’ve never been able to get past a few chapters.

I’ve finished a number of books listed above, though.

R45 is a homophobic ass who likes to sneak in absurd hate speech.

Unless she's referring to dear Henry James and his tendency to, let us say, get all the details precisely right, in his terms.

Goldfinch. Couldn’t.

[quote] 100 Days of Solitude

I think you meant 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Anyway, I would add "Love in the Time of Cholera" by the same author. I think I read that first page three times ("the scent of bitter almonds").

IIRC, Stephen King, in his memoir ("On Writing"), said that he pays a ton of attention to the first sentence of a book. I'm surprised at how many book authors don't go full blast on that first sentence, first paragraph, first page.

Barbra’s autobiography -

Not enough anecdotes about appearing in Funny Girl.

Too many anecdotes about what coor sweater she wore on a rainy Tuesday afteroon.

I am glad my mom died. It had such promise, even listening to the audiobook was a drag to listen to.

Ulysses by James Joyce.

More votes for Little Life and Goldfinch.

War and peace

White Noise by Don DeLillo. Not a genius. Sloppy and pretentious.

"History of Violence" by Edouard Louis. I read his first memoir, the book he wrote about his father, the two books about his mother, and the latest installment in his series of (fictionalized) memoirs, but I had to put aside this one, in which he (a young gay Frenchman) describes the aftermath of the sexual assault he endures at the hands of a young man he picks up and brings home with him on Christmas Eve. His empathy and maturity for his age are astonishing, but I couldn't make it to the end (not least because he develops sympathy for his rapist and explains that violence begets violence and why his rapist is a "victim of the system"). I may pick it up again one day when I'm in the right frame of mind.

[quote]Also, another Pulitzer winner, “The Sympathizer” almost put me to sleep.

Hey R13, what did you not like about this book? It has been on my books-to-read list for a few years.

I thought Tara Westover's book, Educated, was torture porn. I am reading a fiction book about the AIDS crisis of the 80s (not really, it is more about addiction) by Tim Murphy, Christodora, and I am determined to finish. Why? I am stubborn. That said, the characters are a bunch of annoying hipsters and the dialogue reads like chick lit. But hell, what do I know...it has a lot of fans.

"Finnegan's Wake"

There comes a point where an author's point is well made but it doesn't mean I've got the patience to look him in face about it.

*Finnegans (no apostrophe)

Of course, R59. Thank you.

The lovely autocorrect and my not looking.

But "You Liseeze" IS my favorite novel.

Too many to list!

Another vote for 100 Years of Solitude. I've tried, good lord, I've tried.

R62- That one is sitting on my shelf. Just the vibe it gives me has turned me off since I bought it 6 years ago. I knew it was widely regarded as a classic, but it oozes BORING. I shall leave it there.

R44, how much of the L Frank Baum Oz series did you read?

About four books in, it gets pretty rough. I started this thread not long ago. I need to push myself through at least one more book to offer an update.

Dune. Just couldn't deal with a book needing dictionaries and maps to follow the plot.

I’m currently stuck here: The Road to Oz. Now everyone can listen and not enjoy since it’s fallen into public domain.

Dorothy is traveling with a creepy old hobo named Shaggy Man who carries a “love magnet” and an apparently mentally retarded boy whose head had been transformed into a fox head.

It is plodding and stiflingly episodic, not unlike the book that preceded it, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, which I think was even worse, but my stamina at this point has been worn down.

But I’m not giving up!

Yet. - r64, in Oz limbo

I didn’t like this Side Of Paradise but I finished it.

A whole lot of celebrity biographies

The Shack and The Horse Whisperer

Angels And Demons me too

I don't mind big fat novels, but I have tried to read Oates's A Bloodsmoor Romance foe years and failed. I've read the others in her Gothic saga, but I just can't stick this one.

Maybe before I die ....

Some of these are funny.

Though I don’t recommend it, The Corrections is just like a soap opera.

Less is just like an Armistead Maupin book.

Too bad, R51, about the Jennette McCurdy. She’s a terrific writer and the audiobook is incredibly powerful. Maybe you were hoping for some iCarly fan service. It is a gut puncher.

TRUE STEEL, supposedly the definitive biography of Barbara Stanwyck…despite having a traumatic early life, the book just plods along and makes for a difficult read.

R57, I hope it gets better for you. I loved Christodora.

Heloise All Around The House

STEEL-TRUE only covers Stanwyck’s life to 1940. It was supposed to get a second volume but only God knows when.

Probably the best-known novel I started multiple times but could never bring myself to finish was Catcher in the Rye. Thought the whole thing was self-indulgent writerly trash and unbelievably overrated. J.D. Salinger was the real phony.

Is John J. Nance a good author? Ex-pilot who writes a lot of airplane thrillers. I don’t want to start something I can’t finish.

The Bible. Too preachy.

Remembrance of things past, so boring

I really loved Colm Toibin's BROOKLYN and its recent sequel LONG ISLAND so then tried to read NORA WEBSTER, one of his earlier novels that some classify as his masterpiece. Well, after 200+ pages I decided I just didn't care what happened to Nora and gave up.

As for the much-maligned THE GOLDFINCH, I guess I'm an outlier, but I loved all of it except for the Las Vegas portion, which I found intolerable. And I loved THE CORRECTIONS as well as Franzen's latest, CROSSROADS.

Totally agree on A LITTLE LIFE though. Gave up after about 300 pages.

Very disappointed in Zadie Smith's THE FRAUD, her latest, and gave up with only about 100 pages to go (after reading, what? 400 pages??). Just couldn't invest anymore time.

"Fredrick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom" by David Blight. It was well researched, full of details but every other page he was stopping to praise Douglass. He spent too much times on minute travel aspects, speculated too much on what people around Douglass though of him, and never made Douglass come alive. I stopped at p.100- highly disappointing.

I bailed early on THE GUNCLE after seeing all the rave reviews. Seemed a stereotypical mess to me.

I couldn't finish Alice McDermott's latest novel, Absolution, whose characters were mainly the wives of American diplomats in Vietnam in the days before the war. It's the first time I haven't loved one of her books.

I was excited to read it, but Nova Scotia by Charlie Porter was just a meandering stream-of-consciousness mess.

I'm using a copy of A Little Life as a doorstop right now. (It came with the apartment - I would never have purchased it.)

Devil in the White City. I am a huge narrative nonfiction fan, but I just can't get into this.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisen. I like magical realism but I thought it was smug and not nearly as clever as it thought it was.

Garth Greenwell writes the same book over and over. They’re all very thinly-veiled memoir.

Unbroken. Can’t get past the plane crash.

For those who couldn't abide The Luminaries (and I'm one) please consider reading Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood which was one of my favorite novels last year. Very propulsive fun plotting and nothing like her earlier book.

I loved The Corrections so much I reread it a few months ago and enjoyed it even more.

Loved James McBride's Heaven & Earth Grocery Store but haven't been able to get into any of his other books.

Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh yet The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Klay, Moonglow and Telegraph Avenue are 3 of my all-time favorite novels.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union was a bitter disappointment for me, especially coming right after the perfect Kavalier & Clay.

R31 If you meant Demon Copperhead, please give it another shot sometime, it's a wonderful book.

Middlemarch. It just went on and on and on and on and on. And on.

A Tale of Two Cities, but loved the rest of Dickens.

That Hideous Strength. It’s the third novel in CS Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The first two novels, Out of the Silent Planet (takes place on Mars) and Perelandra (on Venus) are great reads. The third book of the trilogy on Earth, the longest by far of the three books, drags a bit and gets a bit silly.

I've got three books I recently started and then put down:

"Tristram Shandy" - 19 chapters in and he hadn't even been born yet. What a snooze.

"The Man Without Qualities" - no dialogue, just endless text.

"Red, White and Royal Blue" - way too lightweight for my tastes.

Moby Dick. It was a college requirement.

Thank God for Cliffsnotes.

I started a thread already, but definitely that MISERABLE tale that will soon be proven to be an abominable LIE called The Salt Path. 20 or so pages and I was done..20 pages of abject misery that no "learning the TRUE meaning of life on The Salt Path" could ever salvage. Fuck that writer for scamming EVERYONE-

One that I fucking did sit through to the end was the interminable The Goldfinch- "Does it get better? It must get better!"

No -it DOES NOT!

and another one that was also interminable- A Little Life... That one was easier to sit through than The Goldfuck, but you feel dirtier and dirtier page by page as you are manipulated in this torture/grief porn soap opera by this overrated hack of a writer- AWFUL trash. I read that to the end.

I know I'll catch a lot of flack for this but I could not finish "Emperor of Gladness." After about a hundred pages, I decided to call it quits. I did, however, like Vuong's "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous," although I didn't love it as many others did.

Two pages of the insane verbosity that is the first "Harry Potter" book, and I had had it.

One Hundred Years of Solitude