Books you’ve tried to read but just can’t get on with them

I can only imagine that a tv adaptation of Sons and Lovers would be a bit Monty Pythonish. All that sexual repression, misery and angst would just tip in to comedy. And the more straight-up they tried to make it, the more you’d laugh.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is utterly tedious for about the first 50 pages and then suddenly becomes absolutely brilliant. Very nearly gave up but glad I persevered.

Have tried and failed to get into Dickens on multiple occasions. But, with the exception of A Christmas Carol, I just find them unnecessarily long and meandering. I know he originally wrote for newspaper serials and was paid by the chapter, so I'm guessing that accounts for it.

Anyone finished Tom Jones? Bought 30 years ago and try once a year to get past chapter 3.
Other non-starters Wolf Hall, Middlemarch, Jude the Obscure.
Love Jane Austen and Cold Comfort Farm!

Oh and Gone Girl too!

I watched The Girl On The Train even though I didn't like the book. Glutton for punishment.

Currently reading Wolf Hall. Well actually farting around on MN to avoid reading it. It's the pronouns and the titles (which change) instead of the names of which there are only around a dozen that the characters share. If I didn't have an idea of the shape of the story, I'd be totally lost. I'm getting on with it a bit better since I decided to just read it without trying to understand every interaction, so I think I'll finish it.

100 years of solitude, I keep meaning to retry. I don't know why I even started it though. I didn't enjoy Love in the Time of Cholera (vile main character), though I did finish it.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin I only finished because I was stuck in a Travelodge with nothing else to do.

A Winter's Tale, didn't manage to finish at all. Felt bad until a friend told me about this dreadful book she was trying to read for her book club. Was able to commiserate with her.

100 year Old Man etc., stupid book, unlikeable characters.

I didn’t enjoy Crawdads and have no interest in watching the adaptation, I’ll only watch an adaptation of something I’ve already enjoyed (unless I’ve not read the book at all, in which case I’ll probably give the adaptation a try)

The Light Between Oceans, a bilgefest of misery.
The Shock of the Fall.

People saying things like Jane Austen, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Sons and Lovers, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Lovely Bones and anything else there is a film or TV series adaption, have you seen the film/TV versions and do you like these? Or do you avoid adaptions if you couldn’t get through the book? Or have you seen them and also dislike them? 😄

The Mirror and the Light went on far too long. It was as if she didn't want to write the inevitable ending.

Totally agree on Labyrinth- it just didn’t seem to go anywhere, just wittered on and on and didn’t seem to need to be so long, I didn’t finish it.

Agree on Crawdads, and the ending infuriates me to this day, went against every characterisation and place maker in the the entire book and felt ridiculously forced.

Rebecca.....

A brief history of 7 killings. I tried and tried, but couldn't hold it all in my head.

Is that Marlon James? I heard him recently on the radio and he sounded so interesting but then said his genre was fantasy and I was a bit disappointed as I really really don't get it.

Me too. I had seen the TV adaptation as well, but still thought it was dull.
I also found The Midnight Library dull and uninspiring.

Don't be put off Where the Crawdads Sing letthemeatcake. I loved it. We all have different tastes and it was a best seller for a reason.

I did manage Shuggie Bain, but it was hard going and so sad. I normally pass books on to my DM or DH to read, but I advised both of them not to read that one.

I failed at Midnight's Children. Tried more than once. Drifted off every time I tried as it was so wordy and nothing seemed to happen in the 100 pages or so I read.

I've been bought a few that have been mentioned in this thread that I haven't got round to yet - Crawdads and A Little Life being 2. I may not be in a rush to start them now!

I always say that about A Little Life 😂 there are many other books that I personally didn’t get on with but I see why other people like them and appreciate that they’re just not my taste. A Little Life is one of the only books that I think is objectively very very poor, and any time someone recommends it to me it makes me reevaluate them.

I'm with you in this

The girl on a bus …..so depressing! I was on holiday at the time and it was so negative.

A prayer for Owen meany- dear god it was booooring and unnecessarily long...

I've tried to read les miserable on several occasions and given up but finally read it last year after joining a online read along and trying a new translation. Was a slog at times to be fair when there is actually plot it is good when it's a chapter about the tactics at Waterloo when the only part relevant to the plot is one paragraph at the end or an essay about the sewers of Paris it is a struggle. Man needed a better editor!1

Two books I absolutely could not finish: The Midnight Library and Ullyses. TML what a load of old shite. Same review for Ullyses. Read Joyce at University and genuinely enjoyed all his other works but seriously Ullyses just no! Have to disagree about Hamnet though. Read it all in one traumatic, sobbing, heartbroken evening. Absolutely loved it.

If I had a pound for every time I tried to read Cloud Atlas and abandoned it I’d have £3

I read mill on the floss when I was 17. It made me cry.
Tried labyrinth but it just seemed like fluff. And I'd just read Rat Scabies Holy grail thing.
A brief history of 7 killings. I tried and tried, but couldn't hold it all in my head.

Awful. All that repression. Yawn.

A blockbuster from yesteryear by Kate Mosse called Labyrinth. Everybody read it at the time and I thought it was third rate. Genuinely seemed like emperor's new clothes.

Anything by Ian Fleming.

Mill on the Floss. Just couldn't like her.