Most long and boring book ever written

[Siwi]

Done Proust. Done Nelson Mandela autobiography etc.

A prayer for Owen meany. Had to force myself to read a page a night, except for the last 3 chapters which are fantastic. Don't let them read those.

Oh yes, biographies! Michael Holroyd's biog of George Bernard Shaw started really well, but by the time Shaw was in his 60s and there was another 300 pages to go I started begging him to die. NOW. (Fucker lasted until 90-something.)

"The person who said Don Quixote is funny and not at all boring"

I wonder if they're confusing it with Monsignor Quixote, written by Graham Greene?

Hi there,

We're moving this thread over to our Adult Fiction topic now, at the OP's request.

I'm not sure how long NW by Zaidie Smith is, but it feeeeeeeeeels long.

Love A Suitable Boy! One of the few books I've re read for sheer pleasure.

I loved NW - wished it could be longer . I'd like to hear someone say that about Middlemarch .

I struggled to the end of Ulysses. I couldn't say it was a rip-roaring read, though I know people who love it.

I couldn't finish The Idiot by Dostoyevsky.

Surprised to see someone mention The Woman in White, though. I thought it was a page-turner from start to finish.

Dickens is mixed to my mind. I love Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend; not Dombey or Copperfield.

If you liked The Woman in White or The Moonstone or both try his less well-known masterpieces: Armadale, No Name, and Husband and Wife.

Cloud atlas

Chaucer, the cantenbury tales. You weep blood, it's that bad.
John Le Care. Anything. Painful.
I couldn't read Pamuk's Red and JK Rowlings' first novel after the HP (Tourist something. Good god)

If you buy somebody a boring book in revenge, do you have to keep enthusing about it and asking how much the recipient is enjoying the writer's style and what they think of particular plot points?

Otherwise isn't there a risk that they just don't bother to read it?

Get Labyrinth and The Time Traveller's Wife. That should do it.

The person who said Don Quixote is funny and not at all boring - is that the full 800 pages that you've read?

Yes all 900 pages. I read it last winter fully expecting it to be very boring, but it's satirical, ironic and very very funny. It's the sheer madness of Don Quixote and poor Sancho Panza who just has to work around it. If you have ever dealt with an obsessive or irrational person or had to be 'on message' at work and go along with a spin on reality that you disagree with, you can relate to Sancho.

Now, the persons claiming that Ulysses is fun or even just enjoyable to read, what exactly is fun or enjoyable about that book ? (I'm stuck in the middle of the Circe episode and losing the will to go on)

What kind of books do they enjoy reading, OP?

Just thinking, if they enjoy high brow stuff, they'd probably hate something like, say, the 50 Shades of Gray trilogy.....

My nominations are The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. Literally nothing happens. At. All. Closely followed by The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. The Stuart one mentioned upthread is also shite. The author is so far up his own arse that he only seems to reference his own work and his writing style is so bland. What was actually a really interesting period in British history becomes as dull as ditchwater.

Oh my god The Hare With the Amber Eyes. This should actually be the blurb for that book:

Here is a list of knick knacks and every thought I have ever had about them. By the way I am a potter and I only make white pots and I am very intense about pottery and can talk for a long time without stopping about different types of white pot and why it's really important that we spend a lot of time looking at pots.

They read stuff from prize short lists. Like the bone people. They have stamina.

No sex. They don't do sex. Ma refuses to have Private Eye in the house.
'Salacious!'

The Fountainhead ugh, just horrible dull.

So what would they do if presented with some doorstopper of a bonk buster?

Bravely solider through despite the sex, or chuck it out with an outraged declaration of "we're not reading that filth!"

Siwi, Mikhail Sholokov won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965 & the citation referred to the Don stories I suggested above.

If they're list=merit people.

Sounds like their worst nightmare would be something like a Jackie Collins or Harold Robbins
Some of the books mentioned here are my absolute favourites. War and Peace is long yes, but an amazing and captivating novel. It's the only book I've read multiple times. Similarly love Dostoevsky and one hundred years of solitude. Also really enjoyed Shantaram, have chatted with alot of people about it and have never met anyone who didn't like it
Jude the obscure may be a good choice and I've heard Magic mountain is insufferably long and boring!

I feel that Shanta-bloody-ram could backfire! There is a lot of "philosophy" in that book ....

The books that take the longest to read and are the most agonising are the ones that are dense and hard to read.

I give you "Lanark" by Alasdair Gray. Its a dystopian, surrealist depiction of his home town of Glasgow. Much of it is in a local dialect, making every word take longer - no skim reading possible.

I seem to specialise in books other people find hard work. If a book gets boring, I just see it as a challenge. Captain Corelli, One hundred years of solitude, even the Satanic Verses.

Lanark was given to me by my intellectual sis in law and it was so unusual for her to give me something like that that I took it as a personal recommendation of something she felt I must read.

I got 2/3 of the way through, after about 6 months of reading nothing else. I asked her what she'd thought of it, and it turned out she hadn't read it herself. I almost cried when I realised I wasn't required to finish it!

I only got about half way through the eye of the world which is the first of the Wheel of Time books. Having said that they are quite popular so it might backfire. Still if they enjoy it then there are 13 more books to keep them out your diary for a while.

I enjoyed The Hare with Amber Eyes, but Preminstrel's synopsis did make me laugh. There's more than a grain of truth in it.