Most long and boring book ever written

[Siwi]

Done Proust. Done Nelson Mandela autobiography etc.

Isn't James Joyce the one who wrote the dirty letters to Nora?

A suitable boy. The only book I have never finished.

Ha, Movember, I was about to suggest The Idiot. Crime and Punishment was very readable in comparison.

Oh and The Silmarillion. Even duller than the dull bits of LoTR.

I've just realised there's no 'y' in the middle of Dostoevsky, I wonder if I got it right in my essays 30 years ago.

Another vote for Ulysses, I am currently reading it (reached page 621) and it's the most boring book I've ever read.

Don Quixote is a very funny book not at all boring.

What about Milton 'Paradise Lost' ? Very boring after Satan leaves the scene.

I think The Idiot might have been the one that finished me off Irene. There was definitely one that I ended up reading the summary and notes for as I couldn't finish the book itself.

Joseph Conrad is also long and dull. I remember being in hospital with pleurisy and one of my colleagues said that she was coming to visit and would bring a book. It was Heart of Darkness. I would have cried but sobbing hurt too much.

1984- George Orwell .... Hated it , couldn't finish it

Nobody's mentioned Spenser?!

Or maybe they did and I just glazed over it out of mental self-protection.

Second Proust, and would add anything by Michel Foucault or Salman Rushdie.

Bleak house

I found Wolf Hall interminable too, but some people find it gripping

Well of Loneliness

On the Origin of Species

Creeping, yup. Joyce was quite the horndog. Obsessed with underwear, didn't like Nora to be too well-washed, astonishingly frank, and at least one letter is about how erotic he found it when Nora farted during sex.

Discipline and Punish isn't too bad as Foucault goes. It's got that description of being hung, drawn and quartered at the start.

The Order of Things and the Archaeology of Knowledge on the other hand...

I really want to like Salman Rushdie. I'm obsessed with India and the marketing blurb for his novels makes them sound really interesting. But I've started about four of his novels now and failed to finish any of them.

Cold Comfort Farm- not long but feels it!

How on earth is this supposed to be 'funny'?

The problem I have with Wolf Hall and other historical fiction is that one knows what happens at the end and, in fact, most of the way through. Really kills the tension!

Some brilliant suggestions here.

YY to A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (you can have my copy ), bloody Middlemarch, The Well of Loneliness.

I'd also add Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace). And possibly Tony Blair's autobiography.

Cold Comfort Farm is both short and hilarious! Catch 22 (mentioned earlier) is also hysterically funny.

I see A Suitable Boy has been mentioned a few times. That would be my ultimate book for being So. Long. And. So. So. Boring.

Asimov's Foundation compendium is probably the stuff of hell for many people.

I would say I managed a wry smile once or twice when reading Catch 22 but I certainly never LoLed.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Yawn!

Middlemarch is amazeballs! As is Cloud Atlas! In fact I think most of my top ten has been mentioned here

I liked Ulysses... Adored dubliners. Didn't mind war and peace/crime and punishment

Middle bloody march. I only finished it as I didn't want to be defeated by it.

Noooooooo Liney I ADORE Foundation.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent etc.