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.

Dostoyevsky is the one I've struggled with.

Yep, me too, tried to read The Brothers Karamazov, got half a dozen chapters in, couldn't fathom picking it up again. Didn't like the language, nor the way it was written. There was something about the book that didn't gel with me.

Another one who can't stand 50 Shades of Shite - checked it out on Amazon, and just thought "No, no thank you". Had loads more fun reading the sarky critiques on it, though .

Another one for The Brothers Karamazov here. I just could not give a fig about the political position of the monasteries in C19th Russia. I'll plough on through a lot, but there's something about the Russians that just saps my will to read. I'm currently trying to pick up Crime and Punishment again, but the last thing I read he'd been wandering the streets for four pages thinking the same things OVER AND OVER AGAIN . . . it may go the same way.

Others which have not made it:

The Shadow Of The Wind (pretentious)
The Slap (incessant loathsome sex, incessant loathsome characters)
The Hundred Year Old Man Who etc. (like teenage creative writing exercise: 'And then he invented the atom bomb!')
The Pillars Of The Earth (people often try and lend this to me because I studied medieval history: it's tripe)
The Something-Or-Other Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (a new record at halfway down the first page)
Marx's 'Capital' (it was an error even to attempt this one)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (it got so intolerably sad 2/3rds of the way through that I actually couldn't handle it)
The Book Of Dave (decided it was a vile book at about the bit where someone gets burned alive, packed it in, felt better).

That's quite a lot now I look at it . . .

cheapskatesmum, you are absolutely right about The Lovely Bones. Don't do it. It is one of the most depressing books ever written.
Someone bought it me for Christmas once: I started it on Christmas Day, and it ruined the whole holiday for me. I was a lot younger then and didn't have the same confidence to assess a book and think 'Not for me', or put a book down before finishing it.

Nowadays I think I'd take one look at the back cover and think 'Huh. Another one for Oxfam', before having another bit of chocolate and heading off to watch whatever cheesy Christmas film was on, thus avoiding the festive season being ruined by images of rape, ghosts and raped ghosts.

Hated The Slap,

These days I almost always finish a book once I've started it. I'm careful to choose books I'm fairly sure I'll enjoy - the download a sample function on a Kindle is handy for this!

Years ago I got half way through The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. I really wanted to finish it but had to admit defeat.

As a Russian grad I obviously had to read a lot of Russian literature ....I have read War and Peace in Russian and English twice, and I do really love Dostoevsky, but it took me a while to get into Crime and Punishment. I loved the Brothers Karamazov - but perhaps because I read it in Russia, during the winter, a LOONG way from the 'civilisation' of Moscow, when it was -35 and dark at 2pm, and the onion domes of the town I was living in probably hadn't changed since the book was written!

Books that I haven't got past about page 20 include The Satanic Verses, God of Small Things, Catch 22, On the Road, any Proust and I would have burnt the Confederacy of Dunces but I had to read it for book club! I really dislike not finishing books, but life is too short...!

Catch 22 - tried many times, gave up
Ulysses - ditto
the second Game of Thrones book (can't remember the name). Got a bit bored. Am having a foot op in January so might watch the series instead!
The Slap - bleuggghhhh
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
David Copperfield - one of my English Lit A level texts. I only read the first two or three chapters and then gave up. Still passed though

A thousand splendid suns
Time travellers wife
Poisonwood bible
A short history of Tractors in Ukranian
One Day

But I have really enjoyed some of the books other posters have given up on. I'd stick with the Book Thief, for example, and all the Jane Austen books!

I think there are some books you regret giving up and some you don't. I regret the fact that I've never been able to get past the first three pages of Proust. On the other hand, I recently downloaded a free Philippa Gregory book and it was dreadful, so I gave it up willingly after two chapters.

The Stand by Steven king.

It's divided into three sections - after the second I just couldn't go on any more being harrowed by what was happening to these people. Just couldn't bear it.

Panicmode1. I've just started War and Peace again, this time with a pen and paper next to me so I can write down the names of the characters. I think it was this that phased me before. Losing track of who each character was. I do like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I liked One Day In the Life... and I've just finished August 1914. (I wrote down all the character's names).

Ann Marie McDonald's The Way the Crow Flies. She's a brilliant writer, beautifully written, believable 3 dimensional characters but it was just so overwhelmingly sad and unfair.

Her first Fall on Your Knees was the same although I did get to the end of it.

Might ruffle a few feathers but the game of thrones series. Loved book 1-2 poss 3 persisted to book to half way of book 6 then out of shear desperation skim read the rest in hopes of it redeeming its self. By the end off the last book was totally fed up and will definitely not bother with the next when it is published.

yes to Shantaram, BabC, This amazon review nails it:

www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0349117543/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

I took the Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine away on holiday recently as I wanted something easy and pulpy but I hated it. In one scene a man said yes he raped a woman but it as only technically rape as the used to live together. Time to give up for me.

Not stopped reading as such, but was really annoyed with the latest Shopaholic book by Sophie Kinsella. Normally her books are fab, but this one was just pretty bad and very badly ended just to make the reader buy the next one....

Shantaram
The Alchemist

I have just given up on A girl is a half formed thing by Eimear mcbride, it is painful to read.

I think I'm the only person on the planet that liked The Slap.

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien.

Modernism schmodernism. Unreadable.

(I loved The Slap too)

Tess of the D'urbevilles. Just can't read it and have tried at least ten times. I persevered to the end of Lord of the Rings and still wish I hadn't bothered. I loved Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies though.
Oh and can't read anything by James Joyce- it just annoys me immensely.