Donate to Remove ads

Got a credit card? use our Credit Card & Finance Calculators

Thanks to johnstevens77,Bhoddhisatva,scotia,Anonymous,Cornytiv34, for Donating to support the site

Books you have been unable to finish

Reviews, favourites and suggestions
CommissarJones
Lemon Slice
Posts: 367
Joined: November 10th, 2016, 9:15 pm
Been thanked: 103 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#48001

Postby CommissarJones » April 23rd, 2017, 5:13 pm

Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War by Peter H. Wilson. I might return to it, but it was starting to feel as though completing the book would take 30 years. Well, 30 months, at least.

Halicarnassus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 343
Joined: February 22nd, 2017, 1:23 am
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#48061

Postby Halicarnassus » April 24th, 2017, 4:51 am

CommissarJones wrote:Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War by Peter H. Wilson. I might return to it, but it was starting to feel as though completing the book would take 30 years. Well, 30 months, at least.


Ryan Holidays's reading list hit my inbox this morning and made me think a little...

Allow me to begin this recommendation email with a slight rant about the trend of speedreading and audiobook speedreading: It's stupid and you're missing the point. As I wrote in my article earlier this month: Reading is not the thing you squeeze in with your other important tasks, it is the important task. It, not unlike meditation or sex, isn't meant to be rushed through. It's enjoyable. You're supposed to take your time. That's how you get the most out of it. If you want to read more, make more time for reading. Don't look for hacks and shortcuts. Cut crap from your life and you'll have plenty of room more books than you know what to do with (hopefully some of these recommended ones from this month will be among them). I try to remind myself: You don't get a prize at the end of your life for reading the most books. The prize is the books you got to read and what you managed to get out of them.

UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10690
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#50259

Postby UncleEbenezer » May 1st, 2017, 8:30 am

TedSwippet wrote:The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It is consistently highly rated and features on many "Best. Books. Ever!" lists, but for some reason I wasn't able to get more than about a quarter of the way through. The issue wasn't lack of time. I just found it turgid and not engaging.

Thanks mostly to project Gutenberg I have read plenty of 19th century novels in e-book form, including Crime and Punishment by the same author and which I rate very highly indeed, so I don't know why this one failed to capture me.

Perhaps that's down to the translations, with one being engaging and the other turgid (unless you were reading the original русский)?
I expect Google could help with finding out whether a particular translation, as opposed to the novel itself, is well-liked.

UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10690
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#50260

Postby UncleEbenezer » May 1st, 2017, 8:34 am

Gaggsy wrote: His review? "Nothing Happened".

As a fan of Waiting for Godot, I'd say that sounds like a positive review. ;) Though I've never heard of the book in question.

TedSwippet
Lemon Slice
Posts: 577
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 12:57 pm
Has thanked: 134 times
Been thanked: 299 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#50419

Postby TedSwippet » May 1st, 2017, 5:47 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:Perhaps that's down to the translations, with one being engaging and the other turgid ...

Hmmm, I hadn't considered this. Thanks for suggesting it.

Gutenberg's The Brothers Karamazov is the Constance Garnett translation. From what I can find it is generally well regarded, albeit with some detractors and a feeling of it somehow being a bit 'old hat' since it's been around for a while. She also translated the Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment editions that I read, so it seems like I generally get along okay with her style.

War and Peace was Louise and Aylmer Maude. While I found it entirely approachable, Anglicization of some of the character's names grated slightly; Andrew rather than Andrei, for example. It didn't spoil the book, but it did seem to be an unnecessary loss of a bit of Russian-ness.

I don't have a problem not finishing books in general, but given the praise The Brothers Karamazov regularly garners I can't shake the nagging feeling that I'm missing out by not persisting with it.

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8064
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2846 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#50537

Postby bungeejumper » May 2nd, 2017, 8:48 am

Any novel will get the chuck-away treatment if I get as far as page seventy and decide that I really don't care about any of the characters. I'd hate to tell you how many of those I've read. :(

I went through a phase of reading John Irving's novels (Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany etc), but after three or four I found that I could guess the outcome by the time I'd read a third of the book, just by watching the rhythm. (Quite a thing, since Irving's plots tend toward the bizarre.) So A Widow For One Year never got past the seventy page mark either.

A bigger disappointment was Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, an account of a (genuine) 19th century child-murder from around these parts, which I enjoyed as a TV adaptation but really couldn't manage as a book. Every character in turn was delivering their account of the murder as if they were presenting a police statement, and after 100 pages or so it just became too heavy and stilted. Fortunately, by that stage I'd worked out whodunnit, so a quick flip to the back pages for confirmation and I was left feeling that I'd saved myself two wasted days.

There, that's a confession off my chest. I feel better now!

BJ

AleisterCrowley
Lemon Half
Posts: 6381
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 11:35 am
Has thanked: 1880 times
Been thanked: 2026 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#50547

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 2nd, 2017, 9:36 am

I get most of my books from charity shops, so quite happy to 'recycle' ...
I'll give it 100 pages max then off it goes.
The last one to get this treatment was 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' - which was well reviewed and apparently adapted for TV , but I just couldn't get into it.

dealtn
Lemon Half
Posts: 6072
Joined: November 21st, 2016, 4:26 pm
Has thanked: 441 times
Been thanked: 2324 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51210

Postby dealtn » May 4th, 2017, 12:54 pm

It's very rare for me not to complete a book that I started, although some, perhaps, I feel I finish as much as an achievement as an enjoyment.

The only two that come to mind are Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (I had no problem with Pride and Prejudice, though it has put me off poor Emma which has sat on the, admittedly very crowded, unread shelf for a few years now), and Iain M Bank's Consider Phlebas (I have read some of his non science fiction and felt I would tackle his other genre, but it just didn't work. My minor ocd affliction meant I had to tackle his "first" first, which has led me to speculate on a number of occasions what might have happened if I had chosen an alternative).

Both books, and authors are widely admired so I don't know why I "failed" with them. With an unread, but purchased, pile exceeding 100 books it's unlikely I will ever return to attempt these works again though.

DiamondEcho
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 3131
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 3:39 pm
Has thanked: 3060 times
Been thanked: 554 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51226

Postby DiamondEcho » May 4th, 2017, 2:18 pm

AleisterCrowley wrote:Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand


Yes yes and 1,000 times yes! :)
Gawd what a book that is, perhaps you might call it a Marmite book? You either love it or hate it. For those you haven't read it the author was Russian and had emigrated to the US where she presumably found the politics more agreeable. IIRC in many ways the 'manifesto' behind the story is about why libertarianism is so much more efficient and successful than the 'socially good' ideals of socialism/communism etc. But the point is made over and over and..., it is relentless. I got to the stage of thinking 'For Christ's sake I got the point you're making on the other 100 times you've already made it! :evil: '. I got the point, and already agreed broadly with the views before reading the book.

On the flipside, the person who gave it to me had read it three times! She seemed to revere it as if it were a theological masterpiece that spoke directly to her. Most odd.

The copy I was given was over 1,000 pages long. I very rarely give up on books, but I did that one, after about 700 or 800 pages, the repetitiveness was beyond just completely silly at that point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged

I also initially found Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment extremely hard going at first. That's another pretty chunky book. I had to take a break from that for a couple of months but returned to it, finished it, and was pretty wowed. The author takes you on a journey [IIRC] into the insanity of a man living a life of near destitution in Moscow. You really do feel like you're being dragged through his mire - ohhhh it's bleak! But if you can deal with adjusting to that it's a very well and cleverly written book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment

DiamondEcho
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 3131
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 3:39 pm
Has thanked: 3060 times
Been thanked: 554 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51234

Postby DiamondEcho » May 4th, 2017, 2:42 pm

Per the Wiki entry on Atlas Shrugged; this gives an idea how polarising it is:

'Contemporary reviews
Despite being a popular success, Atlas Shrugged was generally disliked by critics. Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein later wrote that when the novel was released, "reviewers seemed to vie with each other in a contest to devise the cleverest put-downs"; one called it "execrable claptrap", while another said it showed "remorseless hectoring and prolixity".[47] Author Gore Vidal described its philosophy as "nearly perfect in its immorality".[9] In the Saturday Review, Helen Beal Woodward said that the novel was written with "dazzling virtuosity" but was "shot through with hatred".[48] This was echoed by Granville Hicks in The New York Times Book Review, who stated that the book was "written out of hate".[49] The reviewer for Time magazine asked: "Is it a novel? Is it a nightmare? Is it Superman – in the comic strip or the Nietzschean version?"[50] In the National Review, Whittaker Chambers called Atlas Shrugged "sophomoric" and "remarkably silly", and said it "can be called a novel only by devaluing the term".[51] Chambers argued against the novel's implicit endorsement of atheism, whereby "Randian man, like Marxian man is made the center of a godless world".[51] Chambers wrote that the implicit message of the novel is akin to "Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism": "To a gas chamber—go!".[51]
'

:lol:

ps. Prolixity is a new word to me:> 'Extended to great, unnecessary, or tedious length; long and wordy. Origin of prolix. late Middle English.
Yep, that about sums it up!

midnightcatprowl
Lemon Slice
Posts: 419
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 1:07 pm
Has thanked: 338 times
Been thanked: 197 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51238

Postby midnightcatprowl » May 4th, 2017, 3:12 pm

Prolixity is a new word to me:> 'Extended to great, unnecessary, or tedious length; long and wordy. Origin of prolix. late Middle English


New to me too but I like it a lot and will adopt it into my book criticism vocabulary!

johnstevens77
Lemon Slice
Posts: 440
Joined: November 9th, 2016, 6:14 pm
Has thanked: 421 times
Been thanked: 147 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51309

Postby johnstevens77 » May 4th, 2017, 9:30 pm

TedSwippet wrote:The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It is consistently highly rated and features on many "Best. Books. Ever!" lists, but for some reason I wasn't able to get more than about a quarter of the way through. The issue wasn't lack of time. I just found it turgid and not engaging.
Anyway, this remains my one memorable failure. Is anyone prepared to convince me that it's worth another attempt at scaling it?


If I start on a book and find it hard going it is either returned to the library or the charity shop pronto. However, I did read The Brothers Karamazov many many years ago, I know that I finished it but have no recall of the content. I do remember enjoying "And Quiet Flows the Don" though. I recently finished "Une Vie", in French by Guy de Maupassant. That took over a year!

john

MistyMeena
Posts: 42
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 3:40 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 11 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51325

Postby MistyMeena » May 4th, 2017, 11:19 pm

Having just publically declared that I’ve begun War and Peace after giving up on it about ten years ago at page 250 I’m hopeful that I will get through it this time round. It really was just the size that made me stop last time and how lugging it around didn’t fit in with my life back then.

I was given the advice by a work colleague in my first job to give up if you’re not enjoying a book by page 100 but I think this is too far in and by that stage you can feel committed. I tend to think that 50 pages gives most books a decent chance. Saying that I have given up several within ten pages and occasionally within two pages. You might need to take a while to get used to style or to get involved in the plot but sometimes you just know that it isn’t for you so why waste time. Can’t remember most of the books that I’ve rejected, just random picks from the library.

Halicarnassus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 343
Joined: February 22nd, 2017, 1:23 am
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51358

Postby Halicarnassus » May 5th, 2017, 9:36 am

Well Sir Walter Scott was such a talented writer, in his day he was a superstar internationally, and he wrote the most lengthy of historical introductions to all his books, educating the reader to the cultural background to his story.

These days in our age of NOW QUICK FIX his books would seem unworkable. It's a travesty. They are the most imaginable lovable adventures ever written. But you can't book the book down at the beginning or you've missed the treasure.

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8064
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2846 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51402

Postby bungeejumper » May 5th, 2017, 12:17 pm

I got pretty close to giving up on Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled (535 pages), not because it was bad or boring but because his whole plot idea seemed to have been nicked from Kafka, who I've always adored. And I was just getting too cross about the unacknowledged debt to K. (Plot synopsis: "Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical – and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be....." You get my message?)

If that sounds hard to visualise, imagine your response if somebody had imitated Conrad's Heart of Darkness - theme, linguistic tricks and all. Still, I got my 535-page medal for finishing it in the end.

BJ

Watis
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 1403
Joined: November 5th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 352 times
Been thanked: 489 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51422

Postby Watis » May 5th, 2017, 2:13 pm

Two books come to mind:

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens. Perhaps because I was in my mid-teens when I tried to read it, and wasn't ready for it.

God Outside the Box - (Bishop) Richard Harries. Not so much a book I was unable to finish; more like a book I was unable to start! I don't think I reached the end of the (long) introduction before putting it aside. In a nutshell, I found it impenetrable.

Watis

UncleEbenezer
The full Lemon
Posts: 10690
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 8:17 pm
Has thanked: 1459 times
Been thanked: 2965 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51536

Postby UncleEbenezer » May 5th, 2017, 11:50 pm

Watis wrote:Great Expectations - Charles Dickens. Perhaps because I was in my mid-teens when I tried to read it, and wasn't ready for it.

For what it's worth, I came to that after reading and enjoying quite a few of Dickens's novels. I wasn't gripped, and I put it down fairly quickly. One day probably I'll return to it.

Halicarnassus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 343
Joined: February 22nd, 2017, 1:23 am
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51547

Postby Halicarnassus » May 6th, 2017, 2:41 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:
Watis wrote:Great Expectations - Charles Dickens. Perhaps because I was in my mid-teens when I tried to read it, and wasn't ready for it.

For what it's worth, I came to that after reading and enjoying quite a few of Dickens's novels. I wasn't gripped, and I put it down fairly quickly. One day probably I'll return to it.


I've read this a few times and enjoyed it. What I don't enjoy is the plethora of published pseudo literature that deems itself necessary to analyse the bones out of every story that is worthwhile reading. In my opinion the very worst are always marxist and feminist (sometimes combined) 'readings' of these classics.

bungeejumper
Lemon Half
Posts: 8064
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 2:30 pm
Has thanked: 2846 times
Been thanked: 3938 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51583

Postby bungeejumper » May 6th, 2017, 9:52 am

I think a lot of us grammar-school kids were dragged, yawning and protesting, through both Dickens and Shakespeare before we were even remotely old enough to be able to appreciate them. I didn't get much from either author until I was sixteen - Dickens's grammar and syntax were an instant turn-off for somebody raised on Dan Dare and Arthur Ransome, and iambic pentameters didn't exactly enthrall me either.

Unfortunately, sixteen was also the year when I discovered girls and motorbikes and rock music! So the literary greats took second place for a good while longer. Fifty years on, I still have a "really-ought-to-read" list that follows me everywhere like a shadow of guilt and shame. Most of Austen, most of Dickens. I'll get round to it one day, honest. :?

BJ

DiamondEcho
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 3131
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 3:39 pm
Has thanked: 3060 times
Been thanked: 554 times

Re: Books you have been unable to finish

#51638

Postby DiamondEcho » May 6th, 2017, 2:12 pm

bungeejumper wrote:I think a lot of us grammar-school kids were dragged, yawning and protesting, through both Dickens and Shakespeare before we were even remotely old enough to be able to appreciate them. I didn't get much from either author until I was sixteen - Dickens's grammar and syntax were an instant turn-off for somebody raised on Dan Dare and Arthur Ransome, and iambic pentameters didn't exactly enthrall me either.
Unfortunately, sixteen was also the year when I discovered girls and motorbikes and rock music! .... [edit] I'll get round to it one day, honest. BJ


Yes yes and thrice yes :)
For English-Lit O-level, which due to the timing of my birthday I sat and failed aged 15, we had what would now perhaps be considered an overly heavy reading list.

I remember enjoying 1984 and Farenheit 451, though I really doubt I got the message behind the story.
I don't recall much about Catcher in the Rye, perhaps that speaks for itself?
I managed to make some kind of connection with Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country.
Ditto Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, but again it's deeper meaning would have gone over my head.
I don't recall what I made of To Kill a Mockingbird.
I found Julius Caeser extremely hard going, sadly it did nothing for me.
Chaucer's Pilgrims Progress - OMTG! I was 14/15 when I had to read it, my mind boggles looking back, was this meant to encourage a passion for great literature?
Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I got the storyline, but it's deeper meaning would have been completely lost on me.
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. That can be read at multiple levels, and I enjoyed it as a 'spy book'.
There were others, but those are the ones I recall. I agree with BJ^, maybe it was partly because of such tasks at school that I veered off into rebellion by becoming a punk rocker.

In fact Greene is perhaps my favourite author. He was a master of setting a scene such that you could almost imagine you were there. His descriptions of the various characters involved was IMO equally as 'simple but forensic' such that you imagined you had the measure of them. It was only years later reading his obituaries that I came to learn the extent to which his own experiences are reflected within those books and characters. The broken marriages, the whole 'Catholic guilt' thing. That adds yet another dimension to the prism when I occasionally go back and read them again.


Return to “Books and Reading”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests