Which books have you decided not to finish and why?

I am about to give up on 'skagboys' I think. About a quarter of a way through and the Scottish dialect in it is fascinating, but a bit too much like hard work!

I opened this the other night, read about 10 pages, closed it and will return to the library. Appallingly written rubbish. I was looking for a bit of fluff but no, that’s brain rot.

They’re currently showing Middlemarch on BBC4. I’m enjoying it.

I don't think I would have got through Daniel Deronda or Middlemarch if I had actually been reading them but I listened to the audio books instead which were much more enjoyable.

Never finished Middlemarch (plan to give it another try), every Henry James I have ever picked up, and Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.

I read Daniel Deronda a long time ago.

Loved The Group but agree with you about A Place of Greater Safety.

Daniel Deronda. The introduction was hard going enough but two chapters in and...nope. Ditto the Pickwick Papers. I am emphatically not a Dickens fan.

Is it wrong to throw them in the recycling?

A place of Greater Safety. Hillary Mantel. Too many characters and too long.
The Group by Mary McCarthey. Set in 1930s US about Waspie women striving for equality. Got about halfway through.

Oops guilty as charged 😬!

I also loved it. Agree it's a hard read at times but it has really stayed with me even though i read it nearly 10 years ago.

I got about halfway through Midnight's Children. It has some good bits but required too much concentration! I also gave up on The Stranger's Child, although I absolutely loved The Line of Beauty by the same author (Alan Hollinghurst).

I probably DNF more than I finish.
I However if you mean well known acclaimed books then Catch 22. I've started it three times but can't get through a couple of chapters.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, gave up 400 pages in as it was all just sex.
You will never see me again by Lesley Pearse, gave up half way when it unexpectedly turned supernatural.

Picked up Lord of the Rings once. Read the blurb, then 'nope' so it qualifies as didn't even try 🤔
I know people who love LOTR though

I do love it - bits of it - and I first read it at quite a young age, and then a few times after that. When I came to read it to my sons (separately, a few years apart) I realised I had skipped huge chunks, mostly the getting from one place to another and most of the stuff that didn't involve hobbits...I don't know if skipping large parts counts as not finishing - I did the same with War and Peace, skipped merrily over most of the war bits.

When the Moon Hatched, I think I got it as a 99p ebook. I found it so bad that not only was an easy decision to abandon, it's cured me of any curiosity I may have had about anything that could remotely be described as romantasy. OMG that was bad.The author believed that with any given word the best thing is to look it up in a thesaurus and substitute it with the most obscure synonym, even though sometimes it is a synonym for an entirely different meaning of the word. I find romantasy such a shame, the blurbs usually make me think "this is right up my street" then I start reading and - no. I actually did finish When the Moon Hatched, no idea why, but I didn't finish the dragony one that everyone raves about. Fourth Wing?

I believe The Ministry of Time started life as fanfiction for the TV Series (and book) The Terror, which I loved, and I actually quite liked it on that basis.

I'm drawn by some titles - I was intrigued by the two Marquez novels above but I've said I gave up on Cholera. A friend made a family tree when reading 100 Years - which helped. I found a copy of similar, that I had done decades ago, within my copy of Wuthering Heights - so many overlapping C, L and Es!

ETA Just noticed the two posts above say '100 Days' maybe that would have been less arduous 😀

I've got 100 Days of Solitude coning u as a Book Club read later this year. I will not finish it if I find it tedious but will go to the meeting with my reasons why I didn't continue. That is perfectly acceptable at my Book Club.

Another one who gave up on 100 Days of Solitude. I'm not sure why I started it after struggling to the end of Love in the Time of Cholera. I must have read the first few chapters several times then put it down and by the time I forced myself to pick it up again I'd have to start over. In the end I decided I was never going to finish it and donated it. It was like a weight had been lifted.

When the Moon Hatched, I think I got it as a 99p ebook. I found it so bad that not only was an easy decision to abandon, it's cured me of any curiosity I may have had about anything that could remotely be described as romantasy.

I can believe the Ministry of Time is being filmed! I finished it by it was oddly written and the ending came abruptly out of nowhere. I might watch just to see what they do with it.

Gravity's Rainbow - gave up after getting through 300 pages of endless rambling paragraphs that go nowhere coupled with a ridiculous number of poorly drawn different characters. Subsequently read a guide to it that advised it gets better age the first 400 pages - they're setting the scene for the main plot to develop... Really?! Who has time for that...?!

American Psycho was one I got through but wish I hadn't bothered-it seemed to me to be a poorly written rehash of The Great Gatsby with pointless added violence. Money is bad. The 80s were souless. We get it already...

Another vote for the life of pi, I gave up when I kept having to start the page again because I'd forgotten what (hadn't) happend by the time I got to the bottom.
Vanity fair, tried on numerous occasions at various ages. Won't bother again, really dislike the character and even if something awful happens to her in the other half of the book I don't have any enthusiasm for it and will never find out. It's the book that taught me that my life is important and that I don't have to finish everything.

One Day... honestly, one day out of my life I can never get back. I'm all for an anti-hero but a book where you dislike everyone?! Gimmicky (15 July trope)... boring and drawn out... deliberately 'shocking' ending that you could see a mile off. Stupid people making stupid decisions. And massive gaps where there could be story if Nicholls had bothered to write it. Not for me. Had to read the Confederacy of Dunces as a palate cleanser...

All Anne Tyler novels (and there are bloody loads of them) can be summarised as 'a middle aged person from Baltimore has a random friendship'. And I still wait for next one to come out with baited breath.

I can understand why they are not for everyone.

I gave up on an Anne Tyler novel - I see that she is really prolific and I can't remember the title. A woman goes to a shop in the US ..... I would usually persevere but I did not find it at all compelling.

@MerylSqueak “A Little Life was the first book I gave up reading. I felt life was just too short to read miserable things about people I couldn't care less about.”

The sheer volume of horrific abuse Jude suffers from childhood through adulthood feels statistically and emotionally implausible.

People don’t go around adopting 30 year old men!! It’s an absurd book!

A Little Life was the first book I gave up reading. I felt life was just too short to read miserable things about people I couldn't care less about.

I'm quite enjoying not finishing things now. So many books I've finished because I've started but haven't enjoyed. I used to feel that if you haven't finished it, you can't have a solid opinion. Then, I recognised that no one really wants my opinions on books that much anyway.

I went through a phase of trying to read massively popular authors like Stephen King and Ken Follet which I had prejudged as things I wouldn't like. Turns out I was a good judge of my own taste. Pillars of the Earth? My God. Dull writing, under developed characters, repeated and seriously dodgy rape scenes. No thanks. I quite liked the bits about how to build a church though not enough to make me persevere.

Hated that book, but I did finish it.

I abandon stuff much more readily these days. Last couple were E Nesbit The Lark, which was the Slightly Dated choice a couple of months ago, and RF Kuang's Babel

Elena Ferranti's My Brilliant Friend. Tedious and populated entirely by unpleasant characters. Can't understand the fuss. One one-star review on amazon said, 'I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream reading this.' I agree!