Which book has defeated you?

[xsquared]

Inspired by the top 100 thread, I thought I'd start a thread about books that you've tried reading, perhaps more than once, but given up on.

For me it's bloody Middlemarch! I'm 39 now and I started reading it around 15 hopefully in time to do an English essay about women's roles in 18th century literature, which was met with a "whoo" from my teacher at the time. She was right though.

Tried reading it again in my early 20s but was distracted with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
Tried again at least twice more, probably on holiday somewhere and I think I've got to admit defeat. I don't seem to get much further than shortly after Dorothea marries Casauban.

I got half way through War and Peace when it was televised but lost interest when the series finished. I may try it again this year!

I have attempted Catch 22 approx once every five years since roughly 1996.

Gave up on Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Slogged through On The Road coerced by a college friend - I thought it was a bag of self inulgent, arrogant twaddle. Friend was gutted when I said I'd hated it.

Read about 20 pages of Dan Brown and had to put it down because the inaccuracies were so fucking irritating.

Took a few goes to get through War and Peace once I decided it was like neighbours, the soap I watched at the time, I managed it in half hour chunks.
Nothing got me through pilgrims progress.
Umbrella by Will Self is still only half read.

So far...
John Milton’s Paradise Lost
James Joyce’s Ulysses
Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native
Robert Tomb’s The English and their History
Will try again in the future but defeated at present.

The Handmaids Tale....i just can't bear the flow of it. Love the show but the book annoys me

The Romanovs - and I love History. It's beautiful, substantial doorstop though!

I read Harry Potter, mind blown

Moby Dick almost foiled me. I had to stop halfway and read In The Heart of the Sea to give a crap about them.

War and Peace defeated me multiple times. I love turgid, slow, Russian stuff! I think it's the names. Everyone seems to have three times, used interchangeably, very similar to other people's names. If someone could go through and rename everyone Bob, Fred and Sally I think I could finish.

I have finished quite a lot of these, mostly in my late teens and early twenties when I had more stamina, but The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey has been taking up space on my shelf for years, and I can’t get more than a few chapters in every time I try. I’m currently reading another of his and if it wasn’t for the fact I’m reading it for book group I would have abandoned it by now. I did finish his Oscar and Lucinda though way back in the day, although I couldn’t tell you anything about it except there was a glass church.

I came on to say Catch 22, I can't get past page 36. I finished the Hobbit through gritted teeth but the rest of LOTR can get fucked. I did mange to finish Ulysses by taking it inter-railing (before the days of kindles and smart phones), but its an easy read compared with Finnegan's Wake. I remember my old English tutor telling me to read it properly you need to be fluent in seven languages including Sanskrit. . I also quite enjoyed Middlemarch and Captain Corelli. I've totally given up trying to read any magical realism, anything with goblins or orcs, and anything by Paul Coelho or Virginia Woolf.

Catch 22
Cloud Atlas
I’ve tried Captain Corelli’s Mandolin twice but just can’t get into it. Determined to get there though.
I’ve been “reading” War & Peace for the past year (got about a quarter through and haven’t picked it up since April)

Somehow finished On The Road by skim reading the last quarter. Worst book I’ve ever read.

I loved the Goldfinch and the Miniaturist though

The Elena Ferrante books. So boring.

Love Catcher in the Rye

A suitable boy by Vikram Seth - it put me in such a bad mood, I had to stop

Being Mortal (Gawande). So frigging depressing and blinkered. Usually I love non-fiction.

It got thru many of the fiction examples mentioned here (eg., Moby Dick & AK), but when I was much younger. I'm not so patient now. LOTR book 2+ & Life of Pi I gave up on; life is too short.

Ulysseus, too: My parents had to read it in university & shuddered about it 18 yrs later.

You need cheat sheets for tracking characters in Russian books! Eg., Anna Karenina.

As a child I loved Anna Karenina and read it several times ( young teen ). And j really loved Middlemarch.
But I tried to read The Mill On The Floss by George Elliott a couple of years ago and just couldn't stick at it. I was bored rigid! Maybe I need teenage angst to cope with the classics!

@bananapeanutbutterandtoast me too 🙋🏼‍♀️ so annoying as it was an airport pick up as I don't read so much these days & has been looking for an easier read. I keep thinking she wouldn't have got good marks for English at school writing like that!!

Have tried a few of Henry James especially The Wings of the Dove but find them unreadable. It's a shame because there are several great film adaptations of his work.
Also could never get into LOTR and only managed the first couple of chapters of The Hobbit even (and I think that one's supposed to be for kids?).

However based on pps comments I do feel proud that I enjoyed Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. 😉 George Eliot throws in a lot of moralising etc and references which are very obscure nowadays but she does tell a cracking story. She would probably have hated anyone to say that though!

Frankenstein
Crime and Punishment

I actually really enjoyed middlemarch. Gave up the mill on the floss and catch 22.

Loved goldfinch. Also found Anna karanin extremely moving and amazing but did skip chunks of the agricultural bits

Bleak House
Crime and Punishment
The Silmarillion (loved LOTR, so this one surprised me)

Heart of Darkness and Ulysses. Ugh. Absolute shite, both of them.

Life of Pi

But funnily enough I love some of the books on here that others struggle with. We just must have certain styles of writing we warm to.

mimibunz! The Heart of Darkness is my favourite book, ever! I also love Tolstoy - Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I don’t like much of Dickens, though. I don’t need to know every single detail about a character’s appearance, etc. Sometimes less is more, but Dickens clearly didn’t subscribe to that notion!

Game of Thrones.
I think it's because there's too many things happening to too many people, in too many different places.
I enjoyed what I was reading, but just couldn't keep it up. I try again every year!

Harry Potter. I tried three times to read Philosopher’s Stone, thinking I must be missing something as everyone was raving about it so much. Nope. Just couldn’t get into it. Then again,I think it must be JK Rowling’s writing style because I don’t like the Cormorant Strike books either and I usually love a good crime novel.