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Books I Gave Up Reading

edited April 2006 in - Reading
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  • For Whom The Bell Tolls - too many 'ands'. War And Peace - too many characters with names that were too difficult.
  • Hi
    Enduring Love by Ian Mcewan, have tried so many times, but have now seen the film so it doesn't seem to matter so much...
    Isabel Allende - just can't make it through any of her books, although she is a wonderful writer.
    I don't struggle with books, I read for pleasure, not pain!
    Lizzie
  • "But Exceedingly Sure; the Saga of a White Warrior Squaw" (can't remember who it's by.)

    Allow me to demonstrate precisely why I stopped reading it:
    "He sighed... So the conception he had plotted and planned for had turned out insignificant after all... furtively well-organized, but going nowhere. It didn't occur to him, or anyone else, that the elemental powers of the Domain of Darkness had organized a most significant conception, an embryo to be fashioned further, protected, empowered... and taken far."

    Wonderful Dorothy Parker quote: "This is not a book to be tossed away lightly. It should be thrown with great force".
  • 'Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub' by John Williams.  Groovy cover, but inside it was written in Street Language - I ploughed through about half of it, then got bored.  I just didn't care about any of the characters, and that's vital.
  • Then I have to join you in that category nena, I tried The Hobbit, in fact I read about two pages. There was no way I could have continued to read it, so I'm not going to try Lord of the Rings. I saw the first film on TV and seriously had to ask, what was so great that would make me want to read the book too?
  • I took "Teach Yourself Japanese" out of the library. I turned to the first page. It said that one word, with exactly the same spelling, could be pronounced in five different ways to give five different meanings.

    I closed the book and took it back to the library!
  • I'm with Nenastew5, Carol and Jany - I have tried many times to read Lord of the Rings and just can't get into it.  On the other hand, I love War and Peace and have read it several times. 
  • I loved yours Jenny. Anybody who picks up a book called 'Teach Yourself Japanese' has to be totally mad or exceedingly brave!!

    I'm going to be very unpopular indeed, because I cannot bring myself to read any book that whiffs of vanity/self publishing - even though I know the two things are not quite the same.

    I don't know whether any of you remember the late Arthur Marshall (Wonderful writer. 'Call my Bluff' on TV etc.). But he once started a list of the very worst books anyone had ever read and asked people to submit examples. Almost all of them were self published.
  • I tend to either adore a book and read it several times, or give up very quickly. Recent failures include The Electric Michelangelo and the Shadow of the Wind. I have never enjoyed Tolkein or any fantasy book but my son devours them. I loved Middlemarch when I read it many moons ago but I think I'll save War and Peace for retirement!
  • I was surprised, Dorothyd, to see DH Lawrence in your list of horrors. 'Sons and Lovers' - a wonderful read. Give it another go!
  • I ploughed through The Hobbit (is it really a children's book?), and decided not to bother with The Lord of the Rings. Did people really read LotR, or was it voted for in The Big Read just because of the film?
  • I've read the Hobbit twice and enjoyed it. I read the first of Lord of the Rings books but couldn't get into the second. A friend gave me a copy of his self-pubished non-fiction (religious) book but I got bored half-way through. A magazine invited me to review it - I said 'no'. The friend might read the review and get upset!
  • Neil - I remember Arthur Marshall - he was very funny and always worth listening to!

    If I'd learnt all the languages contained in the teach yourself books we have, I'd be fluent in almost everything from Afrikaans to Welsh! (Are there any that begin with Y or Z?) The variation in the world's languages is fascinating - and so are the similarities.

    Guess who's been given a "six figure deal" for his autobiography - Thingy Khan, the 19 year old boxer. That's likely to be a riveting read, isn't it?
  • *LOL*  Oh, yeah - fascinating...
  • How many pages do you think there'll be?!!
  • The Catcher in The Rye, detective novels by HRF Keating, for some reason I couldn't get into them. I can't think of anymore.
  • Sorry to say (?) I gave up chicklit all together. There's just so much around these days!
  • I've just given up on a crime/gardening novel. I started off by skipping great chunks of it and eventually gave up and just read the last chapter to see who did what to who and why.

    It was written by a "garden expert" and had far too much horticultural information and quasi poetic description in it. He used too many adjectives - some of them hyphenated - which might be acceptable in poetry but not in a crime novel.

    Judging by his acknowledgements, he'd used a lot of information from The Lost Gardens of Heligan and other published work, most of which appeared as long pieces of narrative, occasionally disguised as dialogue. It slowed the pace of the book and often made it sound more like an article in a gardening magazine.

    The basic crime plot was very good and he would have done better to concentrate on that, even though it would have been a shorter book.

    And he'd based the hero on himself! That was easy to tell because the physical description matched the photograph of the writer on the dust jacket!!
  • Hi Jenny,

    Can't think of anything starting with Z, but there's always Yiddish!
  • Thanks for the Y and Z - Yiddish and Zulu could be a useful combination in certain circumstances (no idea which though!!!)

    Now, what about X ......... ?!!
  • The Portrait of a Lady. Nothing had happened by page 230 or so, so I gave up.
  • I'm afraid 'Catch 22' proved to be my nemesis. Otherwise I usually grit my teeth and plough through anything just to note the writing style etc. Mostly I just love reading. I even run after people just to read their t-shirts :0
  • X is for Xhosa, another African language.
  • I agree with Dorothy about D H Lawrence - with the single exception of Sons and Lovers, Neil.

    At the Literary Criticsm class I took in the sixth form at school, we would all pan Lawrence - one of the teacher's favourite authors. He would make us review something by him singly so we couldn't collude; we'd pan it singly. He gave us Lawrence anonymously; we'd pan the anonymous writer. He made us read Lady Chatterley's Lover (recently unbanned) in the hope that the controversy would add spice. We met after the weekend and wondered, 'How do we tell him?'

    We decided that the only thing we learnt in that course was that we didn't like Lawrence. (Funnily, he never suggested we read Sons and Lovers, though; maybe he didn't think it was any good.)
  • I know it's not a book, but I thought the film Citizen Kane was dreadful - and it's always voted as the best film since the creation of the universe!
  • I usually give up on most books by page fifty.  Maybe I have read too many, and I know the formulas.  What really drives me mad is childish and bland writing that is predictable.

    I adore Middlemarch, it's fascinating reading about Victorian society and how they viewed art, religion and science.  When I read, I need something to challenge me intellectually.
  • I tried reading a magic realism novel at bedtime and had to give up because I had the most peculiar dreams!
  • Most things written by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Which is odd really, because I usually love anything to do with ancient Greek and Roman history/mythology. I just can't do with his writing style, perhaps it loses something in the translation from Italian.

    Also, 'Last of the Amazons' by Steven Pressfield. I've tried to read it about three times and have given up every time. Again this is odd, considering I loved his book 'Gates of Fire', and have re-read it several times, and still cry, even though I already knew what the outcome of the battle of Thermopylae was. 
  • Whenever I read a disappointing novel by an author whose work I've previously enjoyed, I wonder whether the same person wrote all the books.
  • Even normally good writers can have off days, and if your publisher has a deadline for you, then you have to do your best-even if it isn't.
  • The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble - too many characters. A friend told me she read it with a list of names and a bit of info. about each character and was then able to follow it. Sounded too much like hard work to me.
  • David Lodge was my final year tutor at University. He was far too busy writing to bother about us poor stressed students. I didn't like him at all and then I found out that he had a handicapped child and realised that he had reason to be stressed himself. Still don't like his books though.
  • Trudi Canavan's interminably freakin' boring Black Magician trilogy. I struggled, I fought, I even made it to book three, but then I just gave in completely and stopped. It was causing me sincere heartfelt agony to read that gobshite, and her new book seems to be... exactly the same story, just with all the names changed.

    I keep thinking I should stop reading Banner of Souls by Liz Williams, but at least things are happening in it, I just don't give two hoots about all the deeply uninteresting characters in it.

    Funnily enough I found Japanese quite easy to get to grips with ;)
  • I can't read Daniel Easterman or Matthew Reilly. Both supposed to be writers of exciting adventure/thrillers. Absolute c...p. Long winded rubbish.
  • Actually, thinking about it, I also gave up on Grave Peril, the third Harry Dresden book by Jim Butcher. I loved the first two, but just couldn't get into the third and ground to a halt.
  • It's fascinating to see how different and contrasting people's tastes can be;I think this individuality is what makes the world so interesting. Think how boring it would be if we all liked the same things.
  • Master And Commander by the much-praised Patrick O'Brian. ' Just above the foretop you'll see the collar of the maintopmast stay, which supports this topmast just above us. Then come the topmast trestletrees and crosstrees...then the topgallant mast. It is swayed up...' 'Nuff said?
  • I've read Atlas Shrugged as well. It was a struggle, a friend had lent it to me, and I was going to finish it, no matter what.
  • I have to say that Trudi Canavan's books were a great read. Kate Elliot's books 'Crown of the stars Trilogy' were great when they started but they go on sooo long.. now I'm bored of them and they're hidden under my bed
  • 'The Time Traveller's Wife' - I could not get my head round it, must admit I only read a few chapters...
  • Unreadable books - fascinating topic.
    First, take a step back. Why do you - why does anyone - read books? To learn something? To be entertained? Because there's nothing on the box? Most people, I would suggest, read books - and I'm here talking about novels - to be entertained in some way.
    When you've started a particular book, do you hate putting it down, and look forward to the moment when you can start reading it again? If that's the case, it's a good book, irrespective of the genre and whether it's commercial or literary fiction. But if you're reading it almost as a kind of duty, because you feel you 'ought' to, it will be hard work and any book that's hard work is, in my view, a bad book, again irrespective of genre.
    As a typical example, I defy anyone to actually enjoy reading 'Ulysses' - it's bloody hard work and I know, because years ago I tried it.
    Unfortunately, most literary fiction and almost all 'Booker' novels, I think, fall very firmly into the 'hard work' category, not because these books are badly written - many of them are beautifully written - but simply because nothing ever happens. In many cases, there simply is no discernable plot, and I want things to happen to the characters I'm reading about.
    My agent holds somewhat heretical views about this subject. He firmly believes it's actually harder to write commercial fiction than the literary variety. His view is that in literary fiction you have to write evocatively about characters and locations, so that the reader can picture the scene. In commercial fiction you still have to do that, but also create a plot that grabs the reader and hauls him or her along with it.
    No doubt many people, and certainly the book reviewers for the broadsheets, would violently disagree with this suggestion.
    So, a list, but of authors, not books:
    Dan Brown. Despite his astonishing commercial success, the reality is that he has no clue about writing. He tells a good story, more or less, but the actual writing is dire at best.
    Matthew Reilly. Unbelievable action, with the emphasis very firmly on the word
    'unbelievable'. I managed to finish one of his books once, and wondered why I'd bothered.
    Geoffrey Archer (the other one).
    Colin Forbes.
    Ted Bell.
    Stuart Woods.
    Jane Jensen.
    Ian Caldwell.
    Any novels written by a Russian.
    Most novels translated from French, Spanish or German (they have a different mind-set on the Continent!)
  • I did actually finish this one, but only because I was sure something was just about to happen. It never did. The book? The Remains of the Day.
  • James, French books are definitely worth reading, but preferably in the original, not as a translation.  French is a very literary language, beautifully set out.  It seems a shame to write French books off simply because of bad translations.

    In fact, I've read a book that was originally written in Chinese, translated into English and then from the English into French - different mindset or no, the translation was very faithful.  (The book is by Xinran and is called 'The Good Women of China' - in French, 'Chinoises'.)

    There's a book by Jean-Bedoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, called 'Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong - What makes the French so French?'  My other half, who was born and bred in Strasbourg, assures me it's a very insightful (and accurate) account.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1402200455/qid=1154885539/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_18_2/202-0602662-7780662
  • Sorry, but I find French difficult enough when I'm speaking it, and I've no desire to start trying to read it again!
    Here in Andorra the official language is Catalan, but most people speak French and Spanish as well, and frequently use all three languages in the same sentence. If they don't know the Catalan word, they shove in the French or Spanish equivalent. Strangely enough, most people understand it!
    For 'A' Level I studied French and the two set-books were 'Crime Passionelle' and 'Le Rouge et le Noir'. The former was incomprehensible, the latter tedious in the extreme, and I've no doubt that coloured my judgement.
    This is an extremely subjective topic, and my personal view is that there are so many good (meaning enjoyable to read) books written in English that I'll never have time to read them all. If I miss something brilliant written in another language, it really doesn't bother me.
  • Continuing with the drift, I liked Bel-Ami by Maupassant; and Il Gattopardo by Tomasi di Lampedusa. The latter was one I said I'd choose as one of my desert island books.
  • Only In America by Dominic Holland.

    I took this book out of the library because on the back it said *How does a film script by an unknown writer get to be read by a Hollywood studio boss? What happens if he loves it? And what do his people do if they have no idea who wrote it?*

    Obviously a lightweight story, but probably entertaining? Wrong.

    By the time I stopped reading it (on page 23), he had already insulted the following nationalities by caricaturing them:

    Turkish. Puerto Rican, Japanese. American. West Indian.

    Milly (the heroine) works in a hotel where the manager is Turkish. The Puerto Ricans are bellboys. The Japanese and Americans are guests. The West Indians are her neighbours.

    Any 21st century writer who takes the childish route to humour (at least, that's what he thought he was writing) by being offensive about other nationalities shouldn't be published. The writing wasn't up to much in other respects either.

    If anyone has read this book to its conclusion and reckons I have missed the point by not finishing it, please let me know!!

    Now I've had a look at the end. It looks like Milly not only finds success in Hollywood - she also finds a boyfriend who's an LA movie executive. Convenient or what?!!!

    There are quotes from media reviews on the back which include the following:

    - The characterisation is warm, dialogue is witty ...
    - Laugh out loud and I couldn't put it down are two cliches that for Only in America really do apply.
    - This book is so charming and funny. A genuine page turner. I read it on holiday and missed big chunks of Venice (that was Sandy Toksvig)
    - A hilarious modern day fairytale. (Is that a euphemism for trash?)

    Did these people read the book?
  • I expect you'll have realised that I didn't much like it!!!
  • You could well be right, Dorothy, as far as the media is concerned.

    Sometimes - so I've heard! - one writer will praise another because they share an agent or publisher.
  • No, Jenny, that can't be true surely!! gasps in absolute horror.
  • Flick - one has to be extremely careful how one phrases any criticism in our current litigious society!
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