Which book/books have you really tried hard to read,but failed ?

[Mirage]

Mine are;
Ulysses(sp)
Wild Swans

cloud Atlas...blardyell...i did sort of finish it over about 2 years but still don't know why i bothered.
Untill i find you..J. Irving...keep trying, keep failing

If you liked "Norwegian Wood", please tell me why. There must be something I am missing! I thought the narrator was appalling, the women only defined by which of then he was sticking his dick into at the time, and the endless, endless drivelling on about... I can't even remember... STUFF... gaah!! And the almost forensic detailing of what they ate and drank. It was all like this: "Naoko and I went to a restaurant. We ate noodles and fish and rice and vegetables. We drank wine. We went to a bar. We drank whisky. Then we drank more whisky. Then she said 'I want to have sex with you.' I said 'OK, let's have sex then.' We went back to mine and had sex. I like having sex with her."

ahhh 'the I novel'; I think you summed it up pretty well. I was living in Japan at the time of first reading which probably helped, and reading a whole load of Japanese literature - all of which was pretty much like that!

Ah, 'the God of small things' -
very painful at times but
ultimately satisfying.

'Brick Lane' is another one:
98% pain, 2% elation.

Brick Lane
Hated it. Got halfway throught but grew to loathe every single character so much that I lost the will to live.

Midnight's Children
Catch 22
Tried it several times but had to admit in the end I would never like it.

I love Brick Lane! The whole story just clicked with my real life experience of interacting with Bangladeshi women.

Saturday by Iain Banks: Tedious, long-winded, unbelievable. Others I decided life was too short to finish: Charlotte Gray, Foundation books by AC Clarke, LOTR...

Oops, Saturday is by Iain McEwan, IBanks has written at least one book I enjoyed (Wasp Factory).

at Flack. Nice underlining, full pedant points there, but you lost them all by attributing the Foundation books to the wrong old white American SF author. They're Asimov, not Clarke. They do suck ass, though, you're right about that.

I didn't spot the Banks/McEwan error ...

I'm with you all on 'the little friend' - loved the cover with the little cut-out (yes,i'm that shallow, that's all it takes to make me want a book)hated the contents. Currently boring myself rigid with no 1 ladies detective agency - but the penguin classic cocktail bible is holding my interest, strangely.

loved time travellers wife made me cry
Couldnt finish

woman in white

I'm amazed at how many others out there have the same issues as me with certain books!

Mine are:

Pride and Prejudice
The Little Friend
The Blind Assassin (despite being a huge Atwood fan)
Sophie's World
Charlotte Gray

Had to persevere with TTW and Captain Corelli - but it really paid off as I thought they were fantastic!

Message withdrawn

Nostromo
Midnight's Children
Crime and Punishment

I could not finish Cosmopolis by Don deLillo. Loved Underworld though.

Paradise Lost

Forgot that. Never got beyond the first 12 lines.

I hate giving up on books, it seems so wrong.
but I tried 'to the lighthouse' by virginia woolf and never got beyond page 5 or so. so so tedious.
have tried some james joyce (dubliners, portrait of artist as young man) and really struggled-only sheer stubbornness got me through. didn't enjoy at all.
Tried Brief History of Time and didn't get far as my brain hurt.
agree with dior (was it dior?) re kate mosse Labyrinth-finished it but no idea why, it was one of the biggest piles of nonsense i've ever read.
and though I love Zadie Smith, White Teeth is just not that great- she seemed to be trying way too hard to be clever and it was quite annoying. finished it though (stubbornness again!)

am with all of those who can't finish tolkein

franca -finish crime and punishment - it wil change your life

I got to the end of Paradise Lost, didn't enjoy it but had to read it fot A Level so no choice!

I wrote quite a lengthy essay on Paradise Lost. It took me a whole year before I worked out that it wasn't actually necessary to read the text in order to write about it.

Paradise Lost rocks big time IMO.

Does anyone else get bored, flip to the end, re-awaken their interest, return to the middle, then feel fervent resentment at your own inability to read the damn thing properly in the first place? (As examples, I quote Anil's Ghost, Prozac Nation and The Lovely Bones, all of which I utterly ruined for myself by reading entirely out of the order in which they were printed!)

anything by Martin Amis

Harry Potter and the Order of the phoinex

Just can focus for long enough, will catch the film instead.

Oh and On the Road...nope, wen t straight past me that one

No just couldn't pssible do that. Don't know why but I am struggling with The Lovely Bones, not with teh writing of the book just the whole subject of the book. I have been told to finish it as the endiong will wrap it all up and it will no longer disturb me.