What is the most tedious book you have ever read?

[Figmentofmyimagination]

I am going out on a limb here for my first thread - I am struggling through The Well of Loneliness by Radcliffe hall. Aargh. I read it out of "historical interest" because I was interested by her boldness and by the obscenity trial etc but bloody hell she should have got herself an editor. The writing is truly dire. I am not sure I am actually going to make it to the end.

Another vote for the time travellers wife.

I love philosophy and i love motorbikes, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is soporific. It is the only book i have never been able to finish.

Oh, Velvet, me too ! It was the kind of book my teenage self should have loved, but no, I gave up as well.
Jack Kerouacs On the Road was also tedious, although I perservered and wondered why I bothered.
I read everything with bikes/musings in it.
I never finished Sons and Lovers, an A level text. Zzzzzzz. The rest of the class loved it.

Oh another vote for Moby Dick. Horrendous!
I also limped through the first 2 volumes of In Search of Lost Time and admitted defeat.

Loved Wolf Hall and The Goldfinch though (but not My Little Friend)

I read that after the success of The Secret History, Donna Tartt refused editors which is why her second 2 books are much longer and probably did need editing

I loved Wolf Hall, The Goldfinch and Middlemarch.

I ploughed through The 100 Year Old Man and The Luminaries as they were book group choices, but thought they were beyond boring.

I read Labyrinth and The Husbands Secret on the recommendation of friends and really regetted both. Dreadful books, and badly written.

Martha Quest by Doris Lessing.

I spent the entire book wanting to slap the main character for her complete and utter apathy and whinging attitude. Certainly not helped by my a-level bitch of a teacher raving on and bloody on as we read it about how amazing the book was.

So glad Moby Dick is up there. I read quickly and almost always finish books. I limped through that piece of nonsense, pausing halfway to read a book about the 'real' story.

Also, War and Peace which I didn't finished having started it, to date, 5 times.

Catch 22 - persevered with it (just) but it was a long, hard slog

Sophie's World - tried to read it about 3 times but just can't get into it

Time Travellers Wife - as above (find it way too complicated?!)

White Teeth - took me forever to read this & I didn't enjoy it at all

Catch 22 is my all time favourite book in the world, ever. I also love Middlemarch. Tristram Shandy is okay, Life of Pi is brilliant (at least, it starts brilliantly - had me in stitches!) Birdsong good. Room okay once you can get past the 'voice'.

My vote is for One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I think he died this year, so feel slightly bad, but my god. Tedious.

If we are talking most irritating book, rather than boring, it HAS to be Eat, Pray, Love. I can wax lyrical for months about Elizabeth self-obsessed-Gilbert.

I had the great misfortune of reading Paulo Coelho this year. I also had to give up on Zadie Smith books.
Caitlin Moran always writes the same thing over and over.

I love One hundred years of solitude.

The one with Anne Hathaway in the film version where they meet at Uni and bore on for several decades.

Sunset Song - Grassic Giibon.

Read it to help DS with his Highers when we lived in Scotland. God, it was dire.

I loved Wolf Hall - but it can't be read as a ten-mins-at-bedtime, type of book. It does demand that you sit down for an hour or so at a time.

Slug - The Museum of Innocenceby Orhan Pamuk is one of my favourite books.

Must admit to also finding most Dickens a bit turgid, but it's years since I've tried any.

And am not a Jane Austen fan, either.

If you think Dickens is turgid, try a bit of Elizabeth Gaskell...

I need a good run up to Lord of the Rings, otherwise I start reading other stuff and never go back to it. I enjoy it once I'm into it though.

Les Mis - the actual story is good, but I never needed nor wanted know that much about the sewer system in Paris.

"Death of a sales man"

Was literally the worst book/play I've ever read!

The Bone People by Keri Hulme.

But it may just have been a question of maturity. I might like it better if I read it now.

War and Peace - Couldnt get through the start seemed like it was never going to get going.

The wings of the dove. Loved the film so was looking to reading the novel but was completely different to the film.

pragmaticWench you're not from Grantham are you? Or is there more than one bitch of an English A level teacher who banged in and on about Martha Sodding Quest?!

Wolf Hall

There are some great 'real' Moby Dick books. 'Into the Heart of the Sea' by Nathaniel by Nathaniel Philbick and, 'The Sinking of the Whaleship Essex' by Owen Chase excellent. The latter is by the first mate of the ship.

Just remembered, 'The English Patient.' Some nice lines but...nothing...at...all...happens...all...the...way...through...the...damn...thing. So dull.

Astonished to see, 'Death of a Salesman' here though.

Slug - Because I think Pamuk writes so well, with the caveat that some of that is down to the translator (Maureen Freely). I haave read a Pamuk that was translated by someone else & it was dire & I then read the same book translated by Freely & it was like reading a different book.

I love it also because I think Turkey is an amazing & fascinating country & I think that Pamuk conveys all the angst of a society that is so torn between East & West.

Am also a bit shocked to see Death of a Salesman here. Was one of my A level set texts and loved it. Made me a bit of an Arthur Miller fan

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

We Are All Completely Bored to Tears, more like.