Books you couldn't finish.

Funny, I've tried this one a few times and failed each time. It's been 25 years since the last time I tried it so maybe I'll have another go.

I'm in the process of going back to the books I couldn't get through in high school and giving them another try. I recently read Frankenstein (I liked it as a student but got bogged down during the long middle part and monster narration). Next on the list is All Quiet on the Western Front.

VG

 

There were a few books I had to read back in high school that I never finished. The one that stands out the most was The Sound and the Fury. I didn't really understand what was going on, so I relied on SparkNotes a lot.

 

Fifty Shades of Grey. I know it's meant to be a fantastic book, and I wish I had the intelligence to read it, but I just couldn't do it. I feel like a failure.

Okay, back to the real world. Actually, I couldn't finish The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. It's highly praised and has reviews raving over how amazing it was, but I couldn't get past the first quarter. It was too zany for me; weird, but not wonderful. It was so confusing that I didn't want to continue reading to piece the puzzle together. But obviously that's just me.

 

The Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I got to the middle of the book twice but had to stop because I got so bored of the political parts of the book. It is an excellent read if you are enjoy politics. I enjoyed the characters that I found and I also think it would make an very good movie if someone wanted to me it to that level.

 

Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden). After the first two thirds of the book it became so predictable and slow that I just couldn't suffer through it anymore.

 

Inferno.

I keep trying because all the others by this author had me hooked to the point of reading them all more than once, but this one is just not doing it for me and I keep putting it down.

 

Inferno by whom? I just checked Amazon and there are at least six books with that title, and probably many more.

 

Probably not Dante Alighieri, The Inferno was the best one.

 

I do have Dante's Inferno (currently on page three of that) but the one giving me trouble is Dan Brown's Inferno. Loved, loved, LOVED his other five so I'm finding this one really disappointing!

 

I tried reading Neil Gaiman's novel "American Gods." I wanted to like it but I just couldn't continue past the part where (SPOILER) the main character's (ex?) girlfriend comes to him as a ghost in the hotel and then we find out that the leprechaun man is getting it on with a hotel staff member. Oh Puppy, I'm sooo sorry!

 

I couldn't finish either Battlefield Earth or The Da Vinci Code.

The first just seemed to drag on...I quit at about page 350. With the Da Vinci Code, while there was some interesting things going on, my interest in what was happening and why waned.

Usually I finish books, but these, I just couldn't manage.

 

I've read All quiet on the Western Front..now that was an excellent read. Enjoy..

 

A brazilian book, A Batalha do Apocalipse from Eduardo Spohr. I heard every day that this book is amazing, but I can't pass the second chapter. It's boooring, too wordy, too long sentences and paragraphs that say nothing. But it's an amazing book and I'm wrong :/ (it's what my "friends" say to me)

 

I made it through the first page of Jane Austen's book Pride and Prejudice but found the older English too hard to read. My brain felt like it was rotting after I read the line about how a single rich man must be in want of a good wife (or something like that). I never returned an e-book faster than I returned that one.

 

And here that it is my favorite book EVER!

While I enjoyed The Hobbit some 15 years ago, I could not get into LOTR as an adult at all. Maybe it's because I'd seen the films first and I usually struggle through books that I know the ending to or have a visual already to skew my own interpretation/imagination. I also tried The Grapes of Wrath more than once and failed every time. Oh, and IT - but that was more because I got creeped out when I was younger and never picked it back up, lol.

 

You know, me too! And I adore 'Jane Eyre' it's possibly my favourite book ever. There was just something stuffy and verbose about that first page of Pride and Prejudice an even though it's still in my Kindle library, I still haven't read it.

Another book that bored me to tears and I ended up skipping through huge sections is LOTR. Ulysses (the weirdest thing just happened, as I typed 'Ulysses' a character in a show which is on Tv in the background just said Ulysses too , creepy!)

 

John Steinbeck had read Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur when he was a child and was fascinated by the English of 1485 it was written in. He understood that many modern readers would be turned off by that language, so he started writing a modern-English version, called The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights. Steinbeck died before completing that work, but I began reading it (because it was in my dad's bookshelf) and was immediately drawn to the original. I now have my own beautiful hardbound copy of Malory, and, while it's hard to read, I take in a few pages now and then. The language is amazing. One of these days I'll finish it.

 

I couldn't make it past the first 40 pages of 50 Shades of Grey. :/ It was just so....bad. lol I skipped ahead to some of the sexy parts, or what people told me were the sexy parts and laughed. Torture dungeon. C'mon seriously?

 

I don't think I should admit this but having read the vast majority of Kerouac's On the Road in my late teens/early twenties, I didn't actually finish it. I just remember thinking it was getting very repetitive and I would pick it up at some point later and finish it, though I never did. Must dig it out and finish the job.

 

I couldn't get far in the first book of the LOTR series (I got to the part where he puts on the ring at his 111th birthday party). The 2nd and 3rd books went totally unread. I ended up donating all 3 books to a used book store. I tried to read Ulysses because it placed so high on a book list. I couldn't get through it either. That is creepy about the Ulysses TV thing.

 

I wanted to like Pride and Prejudice. I heard it was very funny...maybe I should give it another chance and read a bit further. I was able to read all of The Hobbit but only read the first 50 or 100 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring. I loved the LOTR films though. I read a lot of the Grapes of Wrath but stopped reading after the grandmother died. I found the accents very hard to read.

 

After my grandfather died, I found these great antique leather bound Leatherstocking Tales. I couldn't even begin to begin is how close I got to finishing those books.

 

I tried to finish the "Kama Sutra" but I got a cramp and had to stop.