Books you couldn't finish

[Anonymous]

I've tried to read Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea twice.

[Anonymous]

Lolita (too creepy)
Anna Karenina (didn't care what happened - quit about 400 pages in)
100 Years of Solitude (really tried, but I just didn't find it interesting - quit 50 pages before the end)

I finished the Goldfinch, but I skimmed A LOT of it. I feel like it could have been about 200 pages shorter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here are three of mine (I guess this isn't much more than a vent thread, but if I can save someone some time...)

Proof of Heaven - Struck me as complete and utter nonsense. I might have continued despite my disbelief if I hadn't been equally put-off by the pushy evangelicalism that seemed to emanate from the pages.

Love in the Time of Cholera - I read the first several chapters and enjoyed them immensely but I quit because I don't think I need that kind of sadness to enter my brain at this point in mu life. Does it ever stop being so tragic?

The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Stopped about 2/3 of the way through because I realized I just really didn't care at all about the characters and what might happen to them. It wasn't boring exactly, but just not compelling in any way.

I stopped reading Memory Keeper's Daughter about 100 pages in when I realized it was total overwritten English major crap. And I always finish books.

I have since vowed to never read a book entitled "The _______''s daughter/brother/sister/wife" etc...Seems like to many god-awful fiction books have some twee title like that. Come to think of I it, I mostly read nonfiction these days anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Infinite Jest.

It's excellent, but it's just so long and dense that life gets in the way.

Agreed - plus it was so darn heavy that I just couldn't stand having it in my lap in bed! Not even kidding. Someday I may try again since I can now get it on kindle.

[Anonymous]

Couldn't finish:Fifty Shades of Gray, The Sound and the Fury, The Hobbit

I too was bored with Love in the Time of Cholera, but loved his 100 Years of Solitude

Steinbeck's East of Eden is one of the greatest books ever

[Anonymous]

I'm currently limping my way toward the end of Marcel Proust's "Swann's Way." It's getting painful but I'm so close - at the same time I soooo want to start something else and I'm starting to feel like my life is too short for Proust.

[Anonymous]

"Eat, Pray, Love" -- just couldn't deal with the voice; but loved her next book "The Signature of All Things"
also "Love in the Time of Cholera" - tried twice
and one I was shocked to not get through, "March" -- I really expected to love it, as I like most of her work

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Infinite Jest.

It's excellent, but it's just so long and dense that life gets in the way.

Do you wonder what happened at the end? Or is it just not very plot-driven?

I'm halfway through the Pale King right now, and not sure I can continue!

[Anonymous]

My old book club, in the 90s, went through a phase of reading what had been classics in the 60s and 70s.

Stranger in a strange land. Ugh. It's the only book I finally quit with literally only pages left. I simply could not finish the last 10 pages or so. Horrible.

[Anonymous]

Beautiful ruins ... didn't grab me.

[Anonymous]

The English Patient.

Tried several times over several years. Even tried skipping around. Didn't work.

Finally made myself finish it a few years after I started. To this day, I can't really remember much of what this book is about. And I am the kind of reader who even got something out of Beowulf.

I imagine The English Patient is one of those rare books that the movie is so much better than the literature (not that I've seen the movie. The book was just too boring to entice me to see the movie).

[Anonymous]

"Precious"--just reading the first few pages made me sick.

Along those lines…something like 'writing down the bones" about some girl killed in a cellar omg.

Tangent based on some PPs posts: I also did read The Goldfinch and at first, after the plot change, I was very excited to be reading it, but after a while when the protagonist was in las vegas i started to dislike the book. I did finish it but never regained my like of it.

[Anonymous]

I tried many times with The Lord of the rings and just couldn't.
The memory keepers daughter- I just didn't care about the characters and their lives.

[Anonymous]

Gravity's Rainbow
Another vote for On the Roac

[Anonymous]

I am such a loser that I cannot get into Jane Austen. I have tried every book but I just find her annoying. I read good literature, good fiction and non-fiction but Jane just doesn't do it for me.