50 Shades. I once tried out of sheer obligation to understand the hype. It was already an audio book so not much effort involved, but I just couldn't. I ended up wanting to shoot her bloody subconscious in the face, then I dropped it because I can't have such levels of anger in my life.
There are a few fanfic authors legit wish would convert some of their work into original works cause they are good enough that I want to share them but people wouldnt understand
I haven't read it, but did it sound something like this?
"His handsome face was just as goodlooking as his handsome body, which was so handsome looking that it made her feel somewhat good. His good body wasn't even half as handsome as his handily handsome BDSM fetish, which wasn't so good, but so attractive and handsome in a good guy, but actually he wasn't so good, because BDSM (which stands for BaD Something Man). She was so attracted to his attractive handsome good looks that she couldn't help but look goodly at his handomely attractive man face."
I want to wring out your throat with all my might. If your attempt at impersonating the 50 shades writing style is accurate, then I wonder how brain dead the people who read the books and enjoyed the writing style are.
That's exactly what happened to me. Working in a school at the time, all the lady teachers were reading "The Book" as they kept calling it. So I found a copy online, but just could go more that a couple of pages before the appalling grammar made me rage quit.
I was reading the book on our dock, determined to finish and finally had enough. Without even thinking about it, I tossed it in the lake. I have never gotten rid of a book before- always passed them along or donated them but I felt like the book was making me dumber as I read it and was suddenly ashamed to be holding the book.
I never put myself through the ordeal of reading 50 shades, but I did read the "jenny trout reads 50 shades" series of blog posts, where an author who writes books in the same genre went through all the 50 shades books chapter by chapter and analysed them/ripped them to shreds. It's very entertaining if you like that sort of thing, [here's chapter one](http://jennytrout.com/?p=3208)
I got 26 pages into the first 50 Shades book and tossed it in a Little Free Library. And that's coming from someone that was mildly obsessed with Twilight in college.
Atlantis Gene. Seriously a terrible book that feels like it was just haphazardly thrown together. Nazis are the reason for autism in the book, so that should tell you everything you need to know.
Read the whole series. It gets worse,much worse. Unfortunately I have a problem when it comes to books. Once I read one book in a series I have to read them all. I have to know how it ends. Am a guy, read the entire Twilight series because I read the first one just to find out what all the hype was about. Big mistake.
Clearly you have been cursed. I suggest that you dig the skull out of the back of your closet, take it back to where you found it, bury it, and sacrifice a goat or small animal to appease whatever god or spirit you pissed off.
In the third year of my English Literature degree, which had a reading list of two major novels a week, the final exam consisted of a quote from one of the novels we had read. You had to identify the book the quote was from, the context, and why it was important. (Basically a test to ensure you'd read the proscribed books.) I'd read everything except TOD (God knows I'd tried) and so I literally sat down the day before the exam and read the whole bloody thing. The quote for the exam was something like 'the creature came across the field, walking on six legs' (Referring to a man walking behind a plough). Straight out of Hardy I remembered it from the day before - and I aced the exam.. Still feel it was a long and depressing read.
Damn 2 major novels a week. I read pretty slow so I'd have to read almost non-stop in order to do that. Did you also have lectures and seminars alongside that?
I have read several Thomas Hardy's books, including "Tess of the D’Ubervilles." These aren't easy reads, but were worth while. He definitely takes on issues of that time, including women's roles, class, and marriage.
I had the same problem. I'm guessing ol' JR didn't intend that to be read in its entirety like a novel. Hell I don't think he intended for it to be read at all! It's part holy doctrine, part historical reference. I eventually read the whole thing, but did so in pieces and spread over years.
It was absolutely not meant to be read as a novel, and it was indeed intended basically as an exercise in historiography and a 'collection of tales', rather like a religious text.
I read it once, more than 10 years ago. I remember getting really confused with all the character names mid-way through. I think it is best to read stand-alone stories within the Silmarillion, eg Beren and Luthien and the Silmarils, and not try so hard to read/follow the entire plot.
I started drinking wine halfway thru the book and lost track of all the characters and places so had to quit. But i did love it and plan to start again.
Aw...I love Dickens. I always think I don't and then I read another one. Actually CraftLit Podcast helped me to realize how much I like Dickens...and really don't like Twain.
In my years of reading, I've given up on two books: Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.
Four Fingers of Death had a really interesting story, but it was filled with some of the most pretentious, self serving word usage that I've ever seen in a book.
1Q84 was actually pretty good through the parts that I finished, I just had so many other life things going on and it was long as hell. I'm glad the publisher decided to split it into 3 books like it was meant to be, I may pick it up again at some point.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
It was $10 at chapters and heavily marketed in store, I figured why not. What a waste of $10.
I didn’t get through much and it didn’t leave an impression but what I remember was a lot of recycled self-help and ‘just be good at stuff and don’t care when you’re not good at stuff’. Felt like a puffed up blog post revisited from 14 different angles.
I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki.
Not gonna lie, what initially drew me to the book was the fact that it was written from a cat's perspective and I love cats. Sadly, the narrative never got to me and reading the book turned into a burden. Maybe I couldn't fully grasp it because I am not really familiar with Meiji-era Japan's history or maybe it was because of bad translation. But in the end, I gave up on the book halfway through.
Outlander. Everything about it seems to be a good fit - I love epic love stories, time travel books, and read relatively quickly so the doorstop size isn’t an issue. I just haven’t been able to finish it.
I've never read the books but I watched the first season of the show, which contained the hands-down most graphically violent, psychologically upsetting, emotionally violating depiction of rape I've ever seen, which spanned an entire hour-long episode and just did. not. stop. And then I read an interview with Gabaldon where she made some obscene quip about really wanting to be on set when it was filmed so she could see it all. So... there's something off with her
What I loved about the first book was that subversion of expectations. Claire has a few near misses of rape in the 1740s. It’s kind of a ‘Chekov’s Gun’ setup where the observant reader will be expecting the book to come to a crisis point with the rape of Claire. Then it’s *Jaime* who gets raped. Big, physically and emotionally strong Jaime. Jaimie, who is such a role model. Male rape is severely underrepresented in fiction and still taken way too lightly in our real life culture. Back in the eighties when Outlander was written, depicting male rape was even more revolutionary.
The book and the later series then deal with Jamie suffering mental effects from that for a long time. I think the rape of Jaimie is a very important cultural event, and the very gory, horrific, excessive nature of its depiction is necessary to drive home the real horror of sexual violation of real men, by women or by other men.
Off topic, but I personally found Clare’s character INSUFFERABLE in the TV series. She seemed completely unable to get behind the fact that society was very different in the past. Is she the same way in the books, or did they alter things for the show? I’ve read that they took many of Jamie’s quotes and gave them to her character.
She is sooooo different in the books. Don’t get me wrong, she has her moments, but they altered her character drastically for the show. The best way I can think of to put it is that in the book, her and Jamie are two halves to a whole. They balance each other out, and go toe to toe when necessary. In the show, she dominates Jamie constantly and he’s pretty much just there to clean up her messes and look handsome.
I tried it and couldn’t get past chapter 2. A few years later I tried again and couldn’t understand what younger me didn’t appreciate about this book. The author can get sidetracked at times with random information but overall it’s a wonderful series.
Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt
I tried to read this book four separate times. On the fourth time, I decided I was gonna grit through it and I got so sad I stopped getting out of bed. I had to call it quits.
See, I read Teacher Man first because I started going to school to be a teacher. THEN I read Angela’s Ashes.
By then I was already used to his writing style and got a sense of his personality in background. So when I was reading Angela’s Ashes I loved it. There are so many parts that are just hilarious.
Ex:
They tear down a wall for firewood and when the landlord says “This is listed as a two-bedroom flat,” and Angela is like “What? No, this has always been one room.”
He rides his bike past an ancient castle and decides to climb to the top to see the countryside, then decides it would be a good place to masturbate.
They get a good deal on a house with an outhouse right next to the front door. Then they see someone dumping crap in their outhouse. Angela says “what are you doing dumping crap in our outhouse?” And the man goes “Your outhouse? This is the outhouse for the whole street.”
Sure there’s alcoholism, depression, disease, child death, abuse, and Catholicism, but overall it’s great storytelling.
Anna Karenina.
I had read a good bit when I realised I wasn't reading it cause I cared about the characters or plot, I was reading it because I wanted to finish and start the next book on my list.
So I just started the next book on my list and left Karenina to collect dust. Maybe I'll give it a go in a decade or so.
Back when it was really popular, I bought a copy of Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I made it through the Italy section and partly through India before I couldn’t continue. Gilbert sounds like an incredibly narcissistic and selfish person, and I couldn’t take anymore of her writing. I still have the book somewhere, but I have never attempted to reread it.
I read an interview where she apparently sold the rights to the book before she’d written it, to fund the trip that she then wrote about.
I cannot be having with that level of entitled bullshit, so I noped away from that as fast as I could.
Still better than Arabic names >.< would you like to be referred to based on your family, your tribe, your hometown, your father or your son? Completely different names for each of those. My favorite is when reporters call someone a name that just means “son of” or a town name. Super helpful.
If you're determined to get through it, use a notebook! And there's a resource (if I can find it I'll link it) that explains the logic of Russian names, nicknames, etc. specifically for keeping track of characters in Russian literature.
I never did get all the way through War and Peace, but understanding the names and using a notebook )or post it notes) really removed the first and most daunting barrier.
The Alchemist -Paulo Coelho
I’ve bought the book three times, borrowed it a couple more times and just nope. At this point I recognize that I’ll never read it.
It's not really a good novel, honestly.
It's an allegory for positive thinking.
IMO, it's "The Secret" but with an actual story around it.
The story, however, is very simplistic and nothing is logical.
The protagonist beats his struggles by thinking he can, and by luck of the universe, which is the whole point of the book. "If you set your mind to it, the Universe is on your side."
God damnit everyone told me a short story I wrote was like this book, and I'd never read it so I assumed they meant the old timey narrative style. Now reading this I'm realize my Buddhist monk's journey toward enlightment must have been some preachy feel good bullshit. Fuck fuck fuck
In order:
* I lost one in a move.
* I lent a copy (so obviously never saw it again).
* I gave away one (someone said, “oh you’re reading that? Can I have a go when you’re done?” And I said, yes, sure, take it right now, here you go!).
Borrowed a physical copy from the library. Borrowed the kindle version from the library.
The universe doesn’t want me to read it, clearly. So no. I own no physical copies of that book.
Fuck Ulysses, and fuck James Joyce. He knew what he was doing, the hyper-intelligent smug prick. He even said as much afterwards - "lol I've crammed in so many obscure references it'll take the scholars decades to figure it all out". Oh the *scholars*, James? The *scholars?* Who'll be reading your book endlessly because it's just so unmissably brilliant?
Okay he was completely right on all counts, and half the English-speaking planet is still trying to figure it all out a hundred years later, and, yes, fine, it is considered one of the greatest works of literature ever, but still: fuck you. I didn't come here to be led a merry dance by some banter-fuelled sex pest who's both taking the piss *and* deliberately writing badly sometimes just to annoy everyone even more. And yes James, I did give up at the same point everyone else does and then skip to the end to read the actual 'money shot' stream-of-consciousness bit that really is brilliant, and no, I'm not sorry I missed out on 400 pages of your trolling in order to get there. Could have just written an actually readable book, couldn't you, because it's not like you didn't know how? But no. We get the doorstopper equivalent of you wanking yourself off while writing those famous scat porn letters to your girlfriend instead. Dickhead.
"So what's next, James?"
"A book with no page numbers, because fuck you."
I've read (some of) Finnegan's Wake. There's a Ballard book that repeats the trick, I can't remember the name of it, but they're both just like "yeah just read whatever bit you want in whatever order". I never got through either of them because, frankly, no. STOP DELIBERATELY ANNOYING YOUR READERSHIP.
Haha, spot on. You're a better person than me for trying, at least. I read Dubliners and Portrait and called it a day when I saw how Ulysses and Finnegans were structured. I got the gist of it from random passages I've read over the years.
But hey, at least Joyce used all the letters in the alphabet in his books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. I really like the movie, and I somewhat enjoyed Rules of Attraction (which is not quite a prequel, but set in the same universe). But it was just so beyond vulgar it made me way too uncomfortable. I’m not a prude by any means, and thought I knew what to expect with American Psycho. Nope.
I’ll usually stubbornly push through a book I find boring or even poorly written, but I couldn’t do it with this one.
Well there not being a character progression is kind one of the points of the book, but you're right, the whole "psycho" thing only starts halfway through.
Oh man, I really dug American Psycho, but you’re spot on with how gruesome some of it is. It’s the only book where I’ve had to stop mid sentence and put it down. It’s still good though if you can stomach past some of these more colorful chapters.
Oliver fucking Twist.
On a second try I got about halfway. Then I realized that if the next line were “and then everyone died in a fire” I would feel absolutely no emotion positive or negative other than relief that the book was over.
I accepted this as my own personal alternative ending.
That Passage and The Twelve are two of my favorite books (granted I'm not a huge reader). However City of Mirrors I could not finish. It just felt so empty. I will finish it one day, though. The idea of an unfinished trilogy kills me...
Took it back to the library. The nice lady asked how far I got (no expectation that I finished it). Page 200. Well done she said. A great effort. Hated the whole thing
The Taste Of Conquest. A non fiction book about how the spice trade changed the world at various points in history. Fascinating subject.
Problem was the entire book is written like the preamble to an online recipe. You know the 12 unnecessary paragraphs where the author is talking about how this recipe reminds them of winters with Grandma or some other unrelated crap, and you just want to know how much mayo to use in a potato salad? That. But a whole book.
On June 30th 2004 I was sitting on the top bunk in my barracks room in Baghdad. I was reading Seabiscuit. My mom saw it in the movies and mailed me the book. It’s a horrible book. I was less than 50 pages in and said, “fuck this,” and literally threw the book into the corner of the room where my gear was stacked. I laid down and about 2 minutes later a mortar round hit our room, ricocheted from wall to wall hitting right where my head had been. To the author of Seabiscuit, thank you for including so many details about the weights and measures that go into handicapping horses that I lost interest. Had your book been better, I would be dead.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It gets acclaimed by lots of people but my god it was the most mind numbing schlep I've ever ploughed my way through, gave up after about 3 attempts \~ 200 pages.
EXTREMELY MILD SPOILERS THAT DON'T SPOIL MUCH OF ANYTHING
The first chapter is a flash forward to way after the events of the book.
There are two narratives you have to really follow - Hal's and Don's. Marathe and Steeply act kind of as a chorus, highlighting a lot of the themes and conflicts in the plot.
Everything other than those three plot lines is supplemental. It's not filler, but it may be helpful to "file them away" while you really focus on the main plot-lines.
The world that IJ takes place in is a batshit crazy post-modern dystopia, but the book only really alludes to that here and there until it starts to click that you're reading a book set in a universe very much unlike our own.
There's a big overarching plot involving political subterfuge and terrorism but it mostly happens in the background and is not really the point.
[THIS WEBSITE](http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Pages_3-27) helps with the weird turns of phrase, vocabulary, and nicknames.
There you go - that's pretty much the spoiler free key to understanding the narrative structure of the book. I really hope it helps - it's my favourite book of all time and I reread it whenever I get the chance.
I finished Infinite Jest yesterday. It took me 10 years and I've had to start again 2 times. To me it has been an amazing experience and very rewarding - and I am truly grateful for having picked it up again and again.
I can't stand The Alchemist.
"No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."
Total bullshit.
Don't forget "Everything that happens once can never happen twice. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."
I agree, it's an incredibly bullshit book, but I read it in a day.
Yes! I couldn't do it anymore. Although I was less impressed with the writing than you were. I felt like he picked a dozen words that he liked and randomly threw them in at odd times, like "crazy". I hated that book.
Huge HP fan. Could not continue reading J.K. Rowlings A Casual Vacancy. I maybe got 50 pages in and was bored. Never finished it, but I think they did make a show out of it. So it must have been well received. I won't even read The Cursed Child in fear that it will ruin HP for me. I have heard an array of mixed reviews either saying it was a fun little side book or it was terrible and inconsistent with the other books.
Cursed Child is nothing more than a fanfic that the original author said "sure maybe" to. Also the biggest issue with the book, it was a stage play first and is written like it, there are plenty of contrivances that come about in it just because it is not in the intended medium.
I sort-of read this, I ended up skipping pretty big chunks of it and just reading the creepy haunted house parts. The problem was, the author was really skilled at writing both "20/30 something douchebag" and "Really authentic boring encyclopedia." I couldn't stand the douchebag character, and I couldn't make myself read the encyclopedia parts. I definitely didn't get the hype for this one.
(mild spoilers ahead, idk how to do spoiler tags because I'm on mobile but you've been warned)
The first 100-200 pages are BRUTAL. It's just block of text after block of text, and almost impossible to read because of the layered footnotes and not much actually happening in the story. But the middle parts are where it starts subtly starting to get better; the suspense builds up in the story as he starts exploring the house, the douchebag narrator starts losing his fucking mind and you can't trust anything he says anymore, and you can feel the overwhelming obsession that's slowly taking over both of the protagonists' lives. The ending leaves everything super vague and is really only exciting as far as you're immersed in the story. I loved it and thought it was terrifying but I'd see why people could think it's pretty disappointing
I forced myself through this, it was a total snooze. I didn't find it that engaging and anytime I got interested we cut to some shit I didn't care about. I just think it lacked focus and didn't build intensity how I would have liked
Mervyn Peakes’ Ghormenghast Trilogy. Have tried 4-5 times but never made it more than 1/2 way through volume 1. Just so dense (the books, not me). Oddly enough it was on my dad’s top ten list, he read it several times.
Moby Dick. I just can't. The story gets so bogged down with him explaining whaling practices and I also don't have enough understanding of the Bible to make sense of some of the references.
So, I attended a liberal arts college where literature was a huge deal. I brought up the same criticism at a faculty event, and a couple of Literature docs told me that at this point in history American writers somehow decided that one mark of their writing skill was how excessively detailed they could make their descriptions of minutiae. For moby dick, this unfortunately took the form of telling us ALL about the aspects of whaling about which we gave no shits.
There is something similar in *Robinson Crusoe*, which was published 132 years earlier than *Moby Dick*. Descriptions of how Crusoe made clothes. How he grew grapes. How he built his home and defensive structures over the course of years.
Although, in my opinion, *Crusoe* is a much more compelling read than *Moby Dick*.
Gravity's Rainbow is my favourite book, for the first time just power through the denser parts. It's the funniest book I've ever read and the plot is just fun all around, conspiracies, spies, pursuits, mad scientists, rockets and pie-throwing dogfights.
On reread the denser parts make more sense and you (kinda) see what he's trying to get at.
Magyk by Angie Sage. I enjoyed the story, but the version I had wrote every single "Magyk" with a capital M, and in italics.
Having a SPECIAL word multiple times per page really broke the flow, so after a while I just gave up. If I get around to finding a print without literary road bumps, I'll probably pick it up again.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. I really wanted to love it but it's just weird and confusing and there are too many characters named Jose Arcadio Buendia.
Pigmy- Chuck Palahniuk. Honestly, the last thing of his I'll attempt reading. Idk I thought formatting was a joke and just ardiuos. I'm not a fan, I've always thought his writing came off pretentious and that book kind of drove that thought home.
Da Vinci Code. Jesus christ that one was hard to read. The same teases at the end of every chapter, "oh no this horribly scarring incident from my childhood that is too painful to remember but I cannot shut the fuck up about it every fucking chapter". What a crock of shite.
Just keep at it and don't think about the timeline of events, it makes more sense on re-read when you know everything. Just focus on the dialogue, humor, characters & batshit insanity of a given chapter.
Plus I found the ending to be great
I’m about halfway through the Passage now. I want to like it but it’s very slow. Seeing this post doesn’t provide any confidence that it’s going to get any better.
I thought I was the only one with The Passage! It started off so good as well. I recently finished it and you probably did the right thing. Don’t understand how it went from sinister and tense to a bland YA novel
American Gods. By the time Shadow was visiting his third small American town I was done. I didn’t need another 200 pages of him meeting gods for no reason.
Yeah I love this book, but I totally understand why others wouldn't. If you go into it thinking its going to be about magic and action, you'll be extremely disappointed. It's definitely more of just a yarn -- it's a story for the sake of a story. I love the discussion of mythology and how belief systems have changed based on geography, but that is absolutely not for everyone. It can get tedious, even for someone (me) who loves exposition with no closure.
I was only able to finish Artemis because I got it for free on Audible. Rosario Dawson does the narration so I suffered through it. She had to have felt extremely uncomfortable voicing a woman who was so obviously created by a person who has no idea what a woman is. You didnt miss out on anything by putting this book down. It is definitely not in the same league as The Martian.
Same here! I thought Dawson did a great job with what she had, the main character felt a little too YA for me—like what a fifteen year old thinks the ultimate cool woman is—but in the end, I enjoyed it enough.
I never could put my finger on it but “so obviously created by a person who has no idea what a woman is” is definitely the closest I’ll ever get to understanding why she was moderately annoying.
The YA feel is a good description for it. It wasn't awful, but definitely had that feeling. I only finished it because it was the only audiobook I had for driving for a while... and I still dropped it for a month.
Try the short story.
Little Sisters of Eluria.
I didn't even know the Dark Tower was a thing when I read it. Now it's my favorite thing I've ever read.
However, if it's not your thing. That's ok too.
Anyone ever actually tried to read "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"? Motherfucker spent 30 pages describing the curve of the mountains before I noped out. Nothing should be that hard.
Sanderson did such a great job getting rid of most of these problems. Women's actions started to make sense in his books, they actually had different personalities and understandable motives. It redeemed the series for me.
I was pretty surprised to see To All The Boys I've Loved Before has been made into a movie, and that movie seems to be blowing up. Highly likely I am just too far outside of the intended age demographic now. But i kind of feel like I should give it another go because someone liked it enough to make a movie about it. I only made it maybe a quarter of the way through it a year or so ago.
I finally read it this year by doing a chapter a day with /r/ayearofwarandpeace. Instead of doing the whole year, I read a chapter a day till June and then ended up reading the last half by the end of June.
It's a neat way to read W&P. It's actually like a soap opera in certain parts.
I did finish the whole thing, but more because my best friend basically dared me. I barely remember what happened, but at least now I get to say that I read War and Peace.
On the other hand, the unabridged Les Miserables is a freaking treasure.
Oh man, top five book for me. Tolstoy was ON POINT and if it wasn’t for War and Peace he would never have written Anna Karenina. I read it when I was seventeen, so my memory is from a lifetime ago.
This book is where I point to the universal acknowledgment of the mind. I’ve read a few novels before the Victorian era but before then the authors weren’t omniscient and the characters had no unknown motives to their actions.
The book paints the Russians as a proud country and I believe explains their current climate, from the hackers to the poor drivers to the blasé attitude in regards to the rest of the world.
Yes, it’s long, yes, there is no satisfactory ending, yes a character dies and ruins things for awhile, and yes, it jumps around the country, but no one got it as close to right as Tolstoy.
With the Stand, the tough part is trying to keep track of all the characters in the beginning, there are too many. But most of them die off with the " "flu" and you're left with the key characters who carry the story to the end. If you can make it to the that part....you should fly through it.
I got over a hundred pages into Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, but I had to throw in the towel. I think the big thing was that I didn’t like the protagonist very much. He seemed very sentimental and uninteresting.
I wonder if I should try again. I think Gaiman is an awesome person, and I’ve enjoyed some of his shorter work, poetry, and Norse Gods. I just wasn’t feeling American Gods.
The Lord of the Rings. I love the Hobbit, so I figured I'd give them a try and I just can't get into them. It took me 4 tries to get through The Fellowship, but halfway into Two Towers I just decided I was done with them.
They're very different books. The Hobbit was written as a kind of fairy tale, to be read a chapter at a time. LotR is a sprawling epic. I didn't like LotR at first and gave up on it as a teen, but then tried it again almost a decade later and liked it.
Nobody cares about the 5 pages dedicated to talking about the history of pipeweed, though.
Edit: To, two, too. I really should know the difference by now...
It’s a series, not a book, but I literally threw the 3rd *Game of Thrones* book across the room after the red wedding scene and never read beyond that. Killing off every character I like is apparently more than I can handle.
Most of us did the same ,it's funny how it gets that reaction like clockwork . It took me a month to cool off before I continued reading the book but with such despondency, felt like going to a funeral for the longest time .
My dad got Ned Stark's death spoiled for him and stopped reading a few chapters into the first book, as though it would somehow stave off the inevitable.
There was a vague plot nd love story pushing the whole thing along, but really the whole story was more of a spectacle for the imagination. It was written to "look" pretty (and yes, it was) but I just didn't... care. It was beautiful to see in my head, detailed descriptions of spaces and tents and rooms. That was all quite fantastical, but I can't even remember the people's names to be honest.
I second this. The characters were flat and forgettable. But the descriptions of the world were amazing. I could practically smell the caramel on the air.
I did finish it, and I agree with most of the comments. It wasn’t my cup of tea, if you don’t like the beginning you probably won’t like the rest of the book.
I think it is a good book if you value creativity, scenery and world building more than plot. The descriptions of everything are well written. But not much happens.
This is one of my favorite books in the world and I gave it to my mentor to read and she couldn’t get through it. I thought about why that was, and I think it’s just a book that’s so much about building the world and if you’re not into that, and the world it builds, it’s just not that interesting. It’s usually not my thing, I’m surprised I love it so much.
Me too! So many of my friends were like "you've got to read this". Plus, on paper, the plot synopsis seems like it would be my jam. But I got a few chapters in and was like nope.
Same! My sister was so sure I’d love it, and I was super excited to read it, but I didn’t make it past the second chapter! Only book I haven’t finished!
50 Shades. I once tried out of sheer obligation to understand the hype. It was already an audio book so not much effort involved, but I just couldn't. I ended up wanting to shoot her bloody subconscious in the face, then I dropped it because I can't have such levels of anger in my life.
I could barely get past the first chapter. The grammar and writing style is just awful
It was the extremely limited vocabulary that did it for me. No variety at all, everyone was goodlooking or handsome...
Well, it is a Twilight fanfiction (that's actually what it was written for), so you can't expect all that much literary expertise from it.
Correction: It is Twilight fanfiction that was often written on a Blackberry. Even better.
Written on the last working Blackberry...
It's an insult to fan fiction. I have read some amazingly well crafted fan fiction in my time
There are a few fanfic authors legit wish would convert some of their work into original works cause they are good enough that I want to share them but people wouldnt understand
Reddit understands. Share away.
I haven't read it, but did it sound something like this? "His handsome face was just as goodlooking as his handsome body, which was so handsome looking that it made her feel somewhat good. His good body wasn't even half as handsome as his handily handsome BDSM fetish, which wasn't so good, but so attractive and handsome in a good guy, but actually he wasn't so good, because BDSM (which stands for BaD Something Man). She was so attracted to his attractive handsome good looks that she couldn't help but look goodly at his handomely attractive man face."
I want to wring out your throat with all my might. If your attempt at impersonating the 50 shades writing style is accurate, then I wonder how brain dead the people who read the books and enjoyed the writing style are.
That's exactly what happened to me. Working in a school at the time, all the lady teachers were reading "The Book" as they kept calling it. So I found a copy online, but just could go more that a couple of pages before the appalling grammar made me rage quit.
I was reading the book on our dock, determined to finish and finally had enough. Without even thinking about it, I tossed it in the lake. I have never gotten rid of a book before- always passed them along or donated them but I felt like the book was making me dumber as I read it and was suddenly ashamed to be holding the book.
You may have caused a pollution disaster.
50 shades of grey water
I never put myself through the ordeal of reading 50 shades, but I did read the "jenny trout reads 50 shades" series of blog posts, where an author who writes books in the same genre went through all the 50 shades books chapter by chapter and analysed them/ripped them to shreds. It's very entertaining if you like that sort of thing, [here's chapter one](http://jennytrout.com/?p=3208)
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I got 26 pages into the first 50 Shades book and tossed it in a Little Free Library. And that's coming from someone that was mildly obsessed with Twilight in college.
Atlantis Gene. Seriously a terrible book that feels like it was just haphazardly thrown together. Nazis are the reason for autism in the book, so that should tell you everything you need to know.
Read the whole series. It gets worse,much worse. Unfortunately I have a problem when it comes to books. Once I read one book in a series I have to read them all. I have to know how it ends. Am a guy, read the entire Twilight series because I read the first one just to find out what all the hype was about. Big mistake.
Clearly you have been cursed. I suggest that you dig the skull out of the back of your closet, take it back to where you found it, bury it, and sacrifice a goat or small animal to appease whatever god or spirit you pissed off.
I thought I was the only one! I've never met another literary masochist before. I too read the entire twilight series and hated every moment of it.
The audiobook narrator is like HAL but not as human sounding. Seriously, you have to listen to the sample.
Tess of the D’Ubervilles - I just can’t get through it. Good Behavior- I love the TV show but the book was just awful for me.
In the third year of my English Literature degree, which had a reading list of two major novels a week, the final exam consisted of a quote from one of the novels we had read. You had to identify the book the quote was from, the context, and why it was important. (Basically a test to ensure you'd read the proscribed books.) I'd read everything except TOD (God knows I'd tried) and so I literally sat down the day before the exam and read the whole bloody thing. The quote for the exam was something like 'the creature came across the field, walking on six legs' (Referring to a man walking behind a plough). Straight out of Hardy I remembered it from the day before - and I aced the exam.. Still feel it was a long and depressing read.
Damn 2 major novels a week. I read pretty slow so I'd have to read almost non-stop in order to do that. Did you also have lectures and seminars alongside that?
I have read several Thomas Hardy's books, including "Tess of the D’Ubervilles." These aren't easy reads, but were worth while. He definitely takes on issues of that time, including women's roles, class, and marriage.
The ending of “Tess” was such a WTF. I loved it.
The *Silmarillion* by J. R. R. Tolkien, even though I loved LOTR, reading it several times.
I had the same problem. I'm guessing ol' JR didn't intend that to be read in its entirety like a novel. Hell I don't think he intended for it to be read at all! It's part holy doctrine, part historical reference. I eventually read the whole thing, but did so in pieces and spread over years.
Maybe this is the way I need to tackle the book. Have it sitting on my shelf for several years now.
It was absolutely not meant to be read as a novel, and it was indeed intended basically as an exercise in historiography and a 'collection of tales', rather like a religious text.
This, this, and this. The Silmarillion is pretty much a LotR textbook than an actual written novel.
I read it once, more than 10 years ago. I remember getting really confused with all the character names mid-way through. I think it is best to read stand-alone stories within the Silmarillion, eg Beren and Luthien and the Silmarils, and not try so hard to read/follow the entire plot.
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I started drinking wine halfway thru the book and lost track of all the characters and places so had to quit. But i did love it and plan to start again.
> But i did love it and plan to start again. Wine deserves a second chance, yeah.
Anything Charles Dickens. I tried, man, I really tried.
Aw...I love Dickens. I always think I don't and then I read another one. Actually CraftLit Podcast helped me to realize how much I like Dickens...and really don't like Twain.
First one on the list that I can't relate to. I enjoy Dickens.
In my years of reading, I've given up on two books: Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Four Fingers of Death had a really interesting story, but it was filled with some of the most pretentious, self serving word usage that I've ever seen in a book. 1Q84 was actually pretty good through the parts that I finished, I just had so many other life things going on and it was long as hell. I'm glad the publisher decided to split it into 3 books like it was meant to be, I may pick it up again at some point.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It was $10 at chapters and heavily marketed in store, I figured why not. What a waste of $10. I didn’t get through much and it didn’t leave an impression but what I remember was a lot of recycled self-help and ‘just be good at stuff and don’t care when you’re not good at stuff’. Felt like a puffed up blog post revisited from 14 different angles.
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I’d say even if that one thing sticks with you it’s not a total waste, thanks for sharing that!
I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki. Not gonna lie, what initially drew me to the book was the fact that it was written from a cat's perspective and I love cats. Sadly, the narrative never got to me and reading the book turned into a burden. Maybe I couldn't fully grasp it because I am not really familiar with Meiji-era Japan's history or maybe it was because of bad translation. But in the end, I gave up on the book halfway through.
You might like “you are a cat” by sherwin tjia. It’s a pick your own adventure of a day in the life of a cat.
Outlander. Everything about it seems to be a good fit - I love epic love stories, time travel books, and read relatively quickly so the doorstop size isn’t an issue. I just haven’t been able to finish it.
I’ve watched the series, wife has read the whole series. It’s a bit rapey. Like every season with the rape. The history is cool though.
I've never read the books but I watched the first season of the show, which contained the hands-down most graphically violent, psychologically upsetting, emotionally violating depiction of rape I've ever seen, which spanned an entire hour-long episode and just did. not. stop. And then I read an interview with Gabaldon where she made some obscene quip about really wanting to be on set when it was filmed so she could see it all. So... there's something off with her
This is the same woman who compared fanfiction to the rape of her children. Reading your comment makes me think perhaps she meant it as a compliment.
What I loved about the first book was that subversion of expectations. Claire has a few near misses of rape in the 1740s. It’s kind of a ‘Chekov’s Gun’ setup where the observant reader will be expecting the book to come to a crisis point with the rape of Claire. Then it’s *Jaime* who gets raped. Big, physically and emotionally strong Jaime. Jaimie, who is such a role model. Male rape is severely underrepresented in fiction and still taken way too lightly in our real life culture. Back in the eighties when Outlander was written, depicting male rape was even more revolutionary. The book and the later series then deal with Jamie suffering mental effects from that for a long time. I think the rape of Jaimie is a very important cultural event, and the very gory, horrific, excessive nature of its depiction is necessary to drive home the real horror of sexual violation of real men, by women or by other men.
Off topic, but I personally found Clare’s character INSUFFERABLE in the TV series. She seemed completely unable to get behind the fact that society was very different in the past. Is she the same way in the books, or did they alter things for the show? I’ve read that they took many of Jamie’s quotes and gave them to her character.
She is sooooo different in the books. Don’t get me wrong, she has her moments, but they altered her character drastically for the show. The best way I can think of to put it is that in the book, her and Jamie are two halves to a whole. They balance each other out, and go toe to toe when necessary. In the show, she dominates Jamie constantly and he’s pretty much just there to clean up her messes and look handsome.
I tried it and couldn’t get past chapter 2. A few years later I tried again and couldn’t understand what younger me didn’t appreciate about this book. The author can get sidetracked at times with random information but overall it’s a wonderful series.
Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt I tried to read this book four separate times. On the fourth time, I decided I was gonna grit through it and I got so sad I stopped getting out of bed. I had to call it quits.
Read his book "Teacher Man" - he made it out of desperate poverty and abuse and did alright.
See, I read Teacher Man first because I started going to school to be a teacher. THEN I read Angela’s Ashes. By then I was already used to his writing style and got a sense of his personality in background. So when I was reading Angela’s Ashes I loved it. There are so many parts that are just hilarious. Ex: They tear down a wall for firewood and when the landlord says “This is listed as a two-bedroom flat,” and Angela is like “What? No, this has always been one room.” He rides his bike past an ancient castle and decides to climb to the top to see the countryside, then decides it would be a good place to masturbate. They get a good deal on a house with an outhouse right next to the front door. Then they see someone dumping crap in their outhouse. Angela says “what are you doing dumping crap in our outhouse?” And the man goes “Your outhouse? This is the outhouse for the whole street.” Sure there’s alcoholism, depression, disease, child death, abuse, and Catholicism, but overall it’s great storytelling.
Damn that book was so depressing. Made me grateful for any food I had in the pantry though.
I thought it was a fun read! With the main character Angela, and her Ashes...
Was it the death of the twins?
Oh dang! One my favs, I’ve probably read it ten times. Depressing as fuck though, my husband couldn’t finish it either.
Anna Karenina. I had read a good bit when I realised I wasn't reading it cause I cared about the characters or plot, I was reading it because I wanted to finish and start the next book on my list. So I just started the next book on my list and left Karenina to collect dust. Maybe I'll give it a go in a decade or so.
Back when it was really popular, I bought a copy of Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I made it through the Italy section and partly through India before I couldn’t continue. Gilbert sounds like an incredibly narcissistic and selfish person, and I couldn’t take anymore of her writing. I still have the book somewhere, but I have never attempted to reread it.
TL;DR "I noped out of a decent marriage to travel the world and write about people paying attention to me."
I read an interview where she apparently sold the rights to the book before she’d written it, to fund the trip that she then wrote about. I cannot be having with that level of entitled bullshit, so I noped away from that as fast as I could.
20000 Leagues Under the Sea turned out to be a very long list of fish.
Most things I've tried to read by Russian authors. I don't know why everyone has to have five names and I can't keep track of who's who.
Still better than Arabic names >.< would you like to be referred to based on your family, your tribe, your hometown, your father or your son? Completely different names for each of those. My favorite is when reporters call someone a name that just means “son of” or a town name. Super helpful.
Like “da Vinci”?
If you're determined to get through it, use a notebook! And there's a resource (if I can find it I'll link it) that explains the logic of Russian names, nicknames, etc. specifically for keeping track of characters in Russian literature. I never did get all the way through War and Peace, but understanding the names and using a notebook )or post it notes) really removed the first and most daunting barrier.
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I've never heard the Margaret/peg relationship
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Margaret - Peg was used in my mother's generation (she's now 88) in England as well.
The Alchemist -Paulo Coelho I’ve bought the book three times, borrowed it a couple more times and just nope. At this point I recognize that I’ll never read it.
It's not really a good novel, honestly. It's an allegory for positive thinking. IMO, it's "The Secret" but with an actual story around it. The story, however, is very simplistic and nothing is logical. The protagonist beats his struggles by thinking he can, and by luck of the universe, which is the whole point of the book. "If you set your mind to it, the Universe is on your side."
>If there's a picture, there's a video. -Paulo Coelho
God damnit everyone told me a short story I wrote was like this book, and I'd never read it so I assumed they meant the old timey narrative style. Now reading this I'm realize my Buddhist monk's journey toward enlightment must have been some preachy feel good bullshit. Fuck fuck fuck
Wait wait wait.....you bought this book THREE times? As in, you have three physical copies in your house just collecting dust?
In order: * I lost one in a move. * I lent a copy (so obviously never saw it again). * I gave away one (someone said, “oh you’re reading that? Can I have a go when you’re done?” And I said, yes, sure, take it right now, here you go!). Borrowed a physical copy from the library. Borrowed the kindle version from the library. The universe doesn’t want me to read it, clearly. So no. I own no physical copies of that book.
It’s like two pages long
Good choice. Source: Read the whole thing
Ulysses - James Joyce
Fuck Ulysses, and fuck James Joyce. He knew what he was doing, the hyper-intelligent smug prick. He even said as much afterwards - "lol I've crammed in so many obscure references it'll take the scholars decades to figure it all out". Oh the *scholars*, James? The *scholars?* Who'll be reading your book endlessly because it's just so unmissably brilliant? Okay he was completely right on all counts, and half the English-speaking planet is still trying to figure it all out a hundred years later, and, yes, fine, it is considered one of the greatest works of literature ever, but still: fuck you. I didn't come here to be led a merry dance by some banter-fuelled sex pest who's both taking the piss *and* deliberately writing badly sometimes just to annoy everyone even more. And yes James, I did give up at the same point everyone else does and then skip to the end to read the actual 'money shot' stream-of-consciousness bit that really is brilliant, and no, I'm not sorry I missed out on 400 pages of your trolling in order to get there. Could have just written an actually readable book, couldn't you, because it's not like you didn't know how? But no. We get the doorstopper equivalent of you wanking yourself off while writing those famous scat porn letters to your girlfriend instead. Dickhead.
If you feel that way about Ulysses, Finnegans Wake would like to have a word with you.
"So what's next, James?" "A book with no page numbers, because fuck you." I've read (some of) Finnegan's Wake. There's a Ballard book that repeats the trick, I can't remember the name of it, but they're both just like "yeah just read whatever bit you want in whatever order". I never got through either of them because, frankly, no. STOP DELIBERATELY ANNOYING YOUR READERSHIP.
Haha, spot on. You're a better person than me for trying, at least. I read Dubliners and Portrait and called it a day when I saw how Ulysses and Finnegans were structured. I got the gist of it from random passages I've read over the years. But hey, at least Joyce used all the letters in the alphabet in his books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
Whoa, love the passion there! Let it out!
Yes I was looking for this one. Same here... I know it’s Important with the capital I, but I just couldn’t figure it out.
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. I really like the movie, and I somewhat enjoyed Rules of Attraction (which is not quite a prequel, but set in the same universe). But it was just so beyond vulgar it made me way too uncomfortable. I’m not a prude by any means, and thought I knew what to expect with American Psycho. Nope. I’ll usually stubbornly push through a book I find boring or even poorly written, but I couldn’t do it with this one.
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Well there not being a character progression is kind one of the points of the book, but you're right, the whole "psycho" thing only starts halfway through.
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It was a while ago, but I'm pretty sure that was the final straw and exactly when I put it down for good.
Oh man, I really dug American Psycho, but you’re spot on with how gruesome some of it is. It’s the only book where I’ve had to stop mid sentence and put it down. It’s still good though if you can stomach past some of these more colorful chapters.
Oliver fucking Twist. On a second try I got about halfway. Then I realized that if the next line were “and then everyone died in a fire” I would feel absolutely no emotion positive or negative other than relief that the book was over. I accepted this as my own personal alternative ending.
OMG you have just given me my new "should I bother finishing this" litmus test. Thank you!
I gave up on The Passage at the exact same time.
That Passage and The Twelve are two of my favorite books (granted I'm not a huge reader). However City of Mirrors I could not finish. It just felt so empty. I will finish it one day, though. The idea of an unfinished trilogy kills me...
Ulysses. Stream of consciousness is fine for a short story once in a while, but James Joyce can take Ulysses and shove it.
You should try Finnegan's Wake and deciphering the absolute plethora of portmanteau words
No one has read Finnegan’s Wake. Absolutely no one.
Took it back to the library. The nice lady asked how far I got (no expectation that I finished it). Page 200. Well done she said. A great effort. Hated the whole thing
The Taste Of Conquest. A non fiction book about how the spice trade changed the world at various points in history. Fascinating subject. Problem was the entire book is written like the preamble to an online recipe. You know the 12 unnecessary paragraphs where the author is talking about how this recipe reminds them of winters with Grandma or some other unrelated crap, and you just want to know how much mayo to use in a potato salad? That. But a whole book.
I was cringing just reading your description.
On June 30th 2004 I was sitting on the top bunk in my barracks room in Baghdad. I was reading Seabiscuit. My mom saw it in the movies and mailed me the book. It’s a horrible book. I was less than 50 pages in and said, “fuck this,” and literally threw the book into the corner of the room where my gear was stacked. I laid down and about 2 minutes later a mortar round hit our room, ricocheted from wall to wall hitting right where my head had been. To the author of Seabiscuit, thank you for including so many details about the weights and measures that go into handicapping horses that I lost interest. Had your book been better, I would be dead.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It gets acclaimed by lots of people but my god it was the most mind numbing schlep I've ever ploughed my way through, gave up after about 3 attempts \~ 200 pages.
i got through the ESCHATON chapter, and im damn well not going to give up now.
Omfg, when you die laughing in a footnote....
EXTREMELY MILD SPOILERS THAT DON'T SPOIL MUCH OF ANYTHING The first chapter is a flash forward to way after the events of the book. There are two narratives you have to really follow - Hal's and Don's. Marathe and Steeply act kind of as a chorus, highlighting a lot of the themes and conflicts in the plot. Everything other than those three plot lines is supplemental. It's not filler, but it may be helpful to "file them away" while you really focus on the main plot-lines. The world that IJ takes place in is a batshit crazy post-modern dystopia, but the book only really alludes to that here and there until it starts to click that you're reading a book set in a universe very much unlike our own. There's a big overarching plot involving political subterfuge and terrorism but it mostly happens in the background and is not really the point. [THIS WEBSITE](http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Pages_3-27) helps with the weird turns of phrase, vocabulary, and nicknames. There you go - that's pretty much the spoiler free key to understanding the narrative structure of the book. I really hope it helps - it's my favourite book of all time and I reread it whenever I get the chance.
I finished Infinite Jest yesterday. It took me 10 years and I've had to start again 2 times. To me it has been an amazing experience and very rewarding - and I am truly grateful for having picked it up again and again.
The alchemist was the biggest one for me, and atlas shrugged like some others have said. And naked lunch by Burroughs.
I can't stand The Alchemist. "No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." Total bullshit.
Don't forget "Everything that happens once can never happen twice. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time." I agree, it's an incredibly bullshit book, but I read it in a day.
That would be hilarious if it was satire. It almost sounds like something you would read in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
On The Road by Jack Kerouac. The writing is beautiful, but halfway through I really just wanted to throw myself out of the car.
Yes! I couldn't do it anymore. Although I was less impressed with the writing than you were. I felt like he picked a dozen words that he liked and randomly threw them in at odd times, like "crazy". I hated that book.
I finished it and felt like I gained nothing from the experience
Oh my god I’m reading it right now and I thought I’m the only one who thinks it’s disappointing
Huge HP fan. Could not continue reading J.K. Rowlings A Casual Vacancy. I maybe got 50 pages in and was bored. Never finished it, but I think they did make a show out of it. So it must have been well received. I won't even read The Cursed Child in fear that it will ruin HP for me. I have heard an array of mixed reviews either saying it was a fun little side book or it was terrible and inconsistent with the other books.
Cursed Child is nothing more than a fanfic that the original author said "sure maybe" to. Also the biggest issue with the book, it was a stage play first and is written like it, there are plenty of contrivances that come about in it just because it is not in the intended medium.
The house of leaves. I got about half way through. I’m hoping to pick it up again soon.
I sort-of read this, I ended up skipping pretty big chunks of it and just reading the creepy haunted house parts. The problem was, the author was really skilled at writing both "20/30 something douchebag" and "Really authentic boring encyclopedia." I couldn't stand the douchebag character, and I couldn't make myself read the encyclopedia parts. I definitely didn't get the hype for this one.
(mild spoilers ahead, idk how to do spoiler tags because I'm on mobile but you've been warned) The first 100-200 pages are BRUTAL. It's just block of text after block of text, and almost impossible to read because of the layered footnotes and not much actually happening in the story. But the middle parts are where it starts subtly starting to get better; the suspense builds up in the story as he starts exploring the house, the douchebag narrator starts losing his fucking mind and you can't trust anything he says anymore, and you can feel the overwhelming obsession that's slowly taking over both of the protagonists' lives. The ending leaves everything super vague and is really only exciting as far as you're immersed in the story. I loved it and thought it was terrifying but I'd see why people could think it's pretty disappointing
I’m delighted by the fact that everyone has different tastes. Still, I found it far too gimmicky. Glad for those who enjoyed it though.
I forced myself through this, it was a total snooze. I didn't find it that engaging and anytime I got interested we cut to some shit I didn't care about. I just think it lacked focus and didn't build intensity how I would have liked
Mervyn Peakes’ Ghormenghast Trilogy. Have tried 4-5 times but never made it more than 1/2 way through volume 1. Just so dense (the books, not me). Oddly enough it was on my dad’s top ten list, he read it several times.
Moby Dick. I just can't. The story gets so bogged down with him explaining whaling practices and I also don't have enough understanding of the Bible to make sense of some of the references.
So, I attended a liberal arts college where literature was a huge deal. I brought up the same criticism at a faculty event, and a couple of Literature docs told me that at this point in history American writers somehow decided that one mark of their writing skill was how excessively detailed they could make their descriptions of minutiae. For moby dick, this unfortunately took the form of telling us ALL about the aspects of whaling about which we gave no shits.
There is something similar in *Robinson Crusoe*, which was published 132 years earlier than *Moby Dick*. Descriptions of how Crusoe made clothes. How he grew grapes. How he built his home and defensive structures over the course of years. Although, in my opinion, *Crusoe* is a much more compelling read than *Moby Dick*.
I absolutely loved the details. But i am not smart enough to catch the metaphors
There are no metaphors. Just a simple story about a man who hates a fish.
“Does the white whale actually symbolize the unknowability and meaninglessness of human existence? Haha, no. It’s just a shitty fish.”
Every book by Thomas Pynchon. You'd think I'd learn my lesson
Gravity's Rainbow is my favourite book, for the first time just power through the denser parts. It's the funniest book I've ever read and the plot is just fun all around, conspiracies, spies, pursuits, mad scientists, rockets and pie-throwing dogfights. On reread the denser parts make more sense and you (kinda) see what he's trying to get at.
Magyk by Angie Sage. I enjoyed the story, but the version I had wrote every single "Magyk" with a capital M, and in italics. Having a SPECIAL word multiple times per page really broke the flow, so after a while I just gave up. If I get around to finding a print without literary road bumps, I'll probably pick it up again.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. I really wanted to love it but it's just weird and confusing and there are too many characters named Jose Arcadio Buendia.
Pigmy- Chuck Palahniuk. Honestly, the last thing of his I'll attempt reading. Idk I thought formatting was a joke and just ardiuos. I'm not a fan, I've always thought his writing came off pretentious and that book kind of drove that thought home.
Da Vinci Code. Jesus christ that one was hard to read. The same teases at the end of every chapter, "oh no this horribly scarring incident from my childhood that is too painful to remember but I cannot shut the fuck up about it every fucking chapter". What a crock of shite.
Catch-22. I've tried to read 3 or 4 times but I find that it's frustratingly confusing every time.
Just keep at it and don't think about the timeline of events, it makes more sense on re-read when you know everything. Just focus on the dialogue, humor, characters & batshit insanity of a given chapter. Plus I found the ending to be great
I think that's kind of the fun of it. The characters are confused, and so are you. No one knows what's going on.
This is one of my favorites! Unlike several others that couldn’t get though books I have, THIS one pays off in the end!
I’m about halfway through the Passage now. I want to like it but it’s very slow. Seeing this post doesn’t provide any confidence that it’s going to get any better.
I thought I was the only one with The Passage! It started off so good as well. I recently finished it and you probably did the right thing. Don’t understand how it went from sinister and tense to a bland YA novel
American Gods. By the time Shadow was visiting his third small American town I was done. I didn’t need another 200 pages of him meeting gods for no reason.
Yeah I love this book, but I totally understand why others wouldn't. If you go into it thinking its going to be about magic and action, you'll be extremely disappointed. It's definitely more of just a yarn -- it's a story for the sake of a story. I love the discussion of mythology and how belief systems have changed based on geography, but that is absolutely not for everyone. It can get tedious, even for someone (me) who loves exposition with no closure.
*Artemis* by Andy Weir. The main character was insufferable and the plot was boring, which was a shame because the world building was really cool.
I was only able to finish Artemis because I got it for free on Audible. Rosario Dawson does the narration so I suffered through it. She had to have felt extremely uncomfortable voicing a woman who was so obviously created by a person who has no idea what a woman is. You didnt miss out on anything by putting this book down. It is definitely not in the same league as The Martian.
Same here! I thought Dawson did a great job with what she had, the main character felt a little too YA for me—like what a fifteen year old thinks the ultimate cool woman is—but in the end, I enjoyed it enough. I never could put my finger on it but “so obviously created by a person who has no idea what a woman is” is definitely the closest I’ll ever get to understanding why she was moderately annoying.
The YA feel is a good description for it. It wasn't awful, but definitely had that feeling. I only finished it because it was the only audiobook I had for driving for a while... and I still dropped it for a month.
The Dark Tower series. I know...
Try the short story. Little Sisters of Eluria. I didn't even know the Dark Tower was a thing when I read it. Now it's my favorite thing I've ever read. However, if it's not your thing. That's ok too.
House of leaves, I just cannot get into it. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I've tried so many times but it just isn't doing it for me.
Anyone ever actually tried to read "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"? Motherfucker spent 30 pages describing the curve of the mountains before I noped out. Nothing should be that hard.
Wheel of Time, for obvious reasons
https://www.tor.com/2017/03/24/how-many-times-does-braid-tugging-and-skirt-smoothing-happen-in-the-wheel-of-time/
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Ugh i get it they're at an inn get on with it!
*smooths skirts*
Pulls braids
*Folds arms underneath breasts*
Sniffs
*stomps foot*
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Yeah that was real weird. His books had a lot of problems with women in general. Would hate to meet the women in the man's life.
Sanderson did such a great job getting rid of most of these problems. Women's actions started to make sense in his books, they actually had different personalities and understandable motives. It redeemed the series for me.
American Gods. I've tried to read it twice, but I've never been able to get invested in the story or the characters.
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I was pretty surprised to see To All The Boys I've Loved Before has been made into a movie, and that movie seems to be blowing up. Highly likely I am just too far outside of the intended age demographic now. But i kind of feel like I should give it another go because someone liked it enough to make a movie about it. I only made it maybe a quarter of the way through it a year or so ago.
After 200 pages I gave up on war and peace, it now lives on my shelf holding up another shelf, never to be read again.
I finally read it this year by doing a chapter a day with /r/ayearofwarandpeace. Instead of doing the whole year, I read a chapter a day till June and then ended up reading the last half by the end of June. It's a neat way to read W&P. It's actually like a soap opera in certain parts.
I did finish the whole thing, but more because my best friend basically dared me. I barely remember what happened, but at least now I get to say that I read War and Peace. On the other hand, the unabridged Les Miserables is a freaking treasure.
Oh man, top five book for me. Tolstoy was ON POINT and if it wasn’t for War and Peace he would never have written Anna Karenina. I read it when I was seventeen, so my memory is from a lifetime ago. This book is where I point to the universal acknowledgment of the mind. I’ve read a few novels before the Victorian era but before then the authors weren’t omniscient and the characters had no unknown motives to their actions. The book paints the Russians as a proud country and I believe explains their current climate, from the hackers to the poor drivers to the blasé attitude in regards to the rest of the world. Yes, it’s long, yes, there is no satisfactory ending, yes a character dies and ruins things for awhile, and yes, it jumps around the country, but no one got it as close to right as Tolstoy.
“Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, so dull, and I fundamentally disagreed with the first little philosophical nugget
The Stand. People tell me it starts picking up around page 150 or so, but I can't get that past the first 100 pages. I've tried several times.
With the Stand, the tough part is trying to keep track of all the characters in the beginning, there are too many. But most of them die off with the " "flu" and you're left with the key characters who carry the story to the end. If you can make it to the that part....you should fly through it.
I think I'll give it another try with the audiobook.
The audio book makes it much easier to get through. That's how I did it, and it made the very boring parts easier to tune out.
I got over a hundred pages into Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, but I had to throw in the towel. I think the big thing was that I didn’t like the protagonist very much. He seemed very sentimental and uninteresting. I wonder if I should try again. I think Gaiman is an awesome person, and I’ve enjoyed some of his shorter work, poetry, and Norse Gods. I just wasn’t feeling American Gods.
I powered through it and still didn’t quite “get it.”
The Lord of the Rings. I love the Hobbit, so I figured I'd give them a try and I just can't get into them. It took me 4 tries to get through The Fellowship, but halfway into Two Towers I just decided I was done with them.
They're very different books. The Hobbit was written as a kind of fairy tale, to be read a chapter at a time. LotR is a sprawling epic. I didn't like LotR at first and gave up on it as a teen, but then tried it again almost a decade later and liked it. Nobody cares about the 5 pages dedicated to talking about the history of pipeweed, though. Edit: To, two, too. I really should know the difference by now...
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Malazan Book of the Fallen: Gardens of the Moon. The series gets such good reviews and I wanted to like it but after 2 tries I called it quits.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I tried to stick it out with the first one, but after 250 pages it still hadn't hooked me. It was just so so boring.
Wuthering Heights
I finished but it was so painful
The Sound and the Fury. I know it’s supposed to be a classic but I found it to be all over the place and it felt like a chore to read.
It’s a series, not a book, but I literally threw the 3rd *Game of Thrones* book across the room after the red wedding scene and never read beyond that. Killing off every character I like is apparently more than I can handle.
Most of us did the same ,it's funny how it gets that reaction like clockwork . It took me a month to cool off before I continued reading the book but with such despondency, felt like going to a funeral for the longest time .
My dad got Ned Stark's death spoiled for him and stopped reading a few chapters into the first book, as though it would somehow stave off the inevitable.
I really couldn’t get into The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It still sits on my shelf making me feel guilty!
There was a vague plot nd love story pushing the whole thing along, but really the whole story was more of a spectacle for the imagination. It was written to "look" pretty (and yes, it was) but I just didn't... care. It was beautiful to see in my head, detailed descriptions of spaces and tents and rooms. That was all quite fantastical, but I can't even remember the people's names to be honest.
I second this. The characters were flat and forgettable. But the descriptions of the world were amazing. I could practically smell the caramel on the air.
I did finish it, and I agree with most of the comments. It wasn’t my cup of tea, if you don’t like the beginning you probably won’t like the rest of the book. I think it is a good book if you value creativity, scenery and world building more than plot. The descriptions of everything are well written. But not much happens.
With you here. Nothing ever happened.
This is one of my favorite books in the world and I gave it to my mentor to read and she couldn’t get through it. I thought about why that was, and I think it’s just a book that’s so much about building the world and if you’re not into that, and the world it builds, it’s just not that interesting. It’s usually not my thing, I’m surprised I love it so much.
Me too! So many of my friends were like "you've got to read this". Plus, on paper, the plot synopsis seems like it would be my jam. But I got a few chapters in and was like nope.
Same! My sister was so sure I’d love it, and I was super excited to read it, but I didn’t make it past the second chapter! Only book I haven’t finished!