Books you've deliberately stopped reading?

[fuzzpig]

(Apologies if I'm repeating a subject here, MN search function not behaving ATM!)

I have unintentionally stopped reading many books over the years, sometimes I've found them too hard to get into and/or just put them down somewhere and forgotten to pick them back up . Any of these, I'd like to think one day I'll start them again and finish them.

But I've only ONCE deliberately closed a book never to open it again. It was Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. I don't think of myself as a prude, but it was just... yuck.

Straw - you've just put me off my dinner :o I tried listening to his The History Boys recently - gave up after about 10 mins. Was all fuck this, wank that. Switched it off - could not care less if I tried. Odd, because I've read some of his other stuff and liked it.

Wuthering Heights. I have tried and tried and fucking tried with this book and cannot do it. I have finally admitted defeat and in fact it is very liberating. Hello my name is Hearts and I am never going to read Wuthering Heights

Heartstrumpsdimonds I so agree.

I hated Room.

The character of the child was really unlikeable. Which is wrong. The reader should get you to like the child, surely?

I also thought that book was completely unrealistic.
I mean, when the child escaped, he had NEVER seen the outdoors before, and yet,
the author had him being completely un-amazed by it all.
(that wouldn't happen in reality)

Meant to say - The author should get your to like

Uuf, a Jeffrey Archer novel. I can read any old rubbish, but this was beyond the pale.

Catch 22. Utterly hated it.

Lots but recently

The Slap. All those characters in the first few chapters. And who cares about any of them???

A Fine Balance. Lots of people love it but I was soooo depressed by page 200 (out of 600), kept going and then read the review that described it as lively and evocative but bleak and depressing in the last 200 pages - ie it was about to get much much worse!

Then there was 100 years of solitude - now one of my favourite books, but first time I only got through about 30 years of solitude . Very, very glad that I went back though.

(Book I wished I had stopped reading - The Goldfinch. Enjoyed the first couple of chapters. Got through the middle and enjoyed the last chapter, but really can't see why the reviewers were getting soooo excited about it. A modern classic putting Pratt alongside Steinbeck . . .really ???)

I think Jeffry Archer novels are amazing compared to some of the drivel that's written at the moment.

Fifty Shades of Grey
The Da Vinci Code

Utter banality, both of them. Few books made me wish I'd never learned to read, but these two? Sheesh. One was a 'Secret Santa' present, the other loaned to me by MIL. Glad I didn't spend good money on either of them.

Ulysses. Life seemed too short to make sense of it.

sweetnessandlite I had actually read at least one other than wasn't bad as rubbish books go, but this one, can't remember the title was about a rich girl who is incredibly intelligent and beautiful, goes to the right school and ends up being president of the US. Honestly couldn't see where the dilemna was.

A Discovery of Witches. I so wanted it to be good but it was a big pile of poo.

Life if Pi. The first part droned on and on about animal behaviour zzzzzzz.

Also Wolf Hall. I couldn't get on with the present tense.

Brighton Rock - too depressing.

50 shades, - got to page 12 ('ll never get that time back)
time travellers wife - tedious.
jed someone - the interprettion of Murder. I finished the book - I did, so you don't need to.

I'm so pleased that my two are both here. Cloud Atlas and Wuthering Heights.

Oh forgot about Cloud Atlas deliberately now that was an utter load of shit.

I liked Wolf Hall but it really does bring home that one in three men of that time were called Thomas.

Titus Groan
Labyrinth - Kate Mosse. Fucking awful.
Shikasta - Doris Lessing. Got quite far in, too.
Disgrace - JM Coetzee
Lord of the Rings
Fear and Loathing in LAs Vegas (was heavily pregnant and just wished they'd all grow the fuck up.)

I'm usually quite disciplined and will plough through utter shite in the hope that it may improve, but just couldn't do it with that lot. Can't think of many others.

Maybe we should also do 'books we should have ditched early on'. But that may be too long.

Sight

I have somehow found myself in the unfortunate position of purchasing and reading all three of Mosse's Langeduoc based books.

I so wanted them to be good. They weren't. They were all shit. And I've helped fill her bank account, I resent that.

Capture the Castle.

It was given to me for my birthday by my best friend. She died before I finished it.

I don't want to read the last chapters because I can't talk to her about it

DH got me a novel once about the artist Richard Dadd. Think it was translated from the French. It was first person, stream of consciousness, about him worshipping a fly god or something, then segued seamlessly into graphic descriptions of him performing oral sex. I'm not a prude, I just couldn't understand a word of it. Think I got to chapter two. I wish I still had that book now, though, just to see if it was as bad as I remember.

Dickens - Our Mutual Friend (it was thrown against the wall, across the room, at the carpet, until I decided that even though it was a set text, I was never going to finish it. Still passed English A Level, though)
JG Ballard - Crash (just boring, more than anything)

There have been others, but they have slipped my mind. Little Women almost joined them in the past week or so, but I managed to plough to the end. God, it was DULL.

tired, you missed nothing by giving up on The Time Traveller's Wife. It got worse, rather than better.

Oh Moomin!