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

[Mirage]

Mine are;
Ulysses(sp)
Wild Swans

Catch 22
Cloud Atlas (only managed a few pages)
The Shipping News

Did finish Wild Swans after about twelve false starts. I couldn't pronounce the names properly, and kept confusing them. Took a friend's advice, to ignore the names. Found that some are irrelevant anyway. The ones you need to know will stick eventually. Fantastic book in the end.

Oh and add Tristam Shandy to that list although had the version I read been divided into chapters, life would have been much easier instead of trying to read continous prose! Still no excuse for not finishing it .

Your list very similar to mine Bookworm, although I failed the Paradise Lost hurdle. Maybe it wasn't a failure so much as a refusal.

War and Peace

Kazuo Ishiguro's latest - can't recall the name. I enjoyed a couple of his previous one's but just couldn't get into that one.

Catch 22 - after several attempts still couldn't finish it.

the poisonwood bible. and i really want to like it, all barbara kingsolver's other novels are fabulous. i have resolved to take it on holiday this year which will force me to read it.

Doris Lessing: Briefing for a Descent into Hell - I did finish it in the end through sheer doggedness, but my goodness, what hard work, and I've never tried another Doris Lessing book as I found it so off-putting. I also remember a ghastly Virginia Woolf one - may have been To The Lighthouse - & ditto, never tried any others of hers. And there speaks someone who did read Ulysses - and enjoy it, in a funny kind of way.

I've also ploughed through many a French and German novel (including endless ones about the 2 World Wars, & by people such as Kafka, whom I love - pretentious or wot??) as I studied these subjects at university & thought it was cheating to read them in translation.

I loved Wild Swans, Possession, Anna Karenina, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Spohie's World and am currently enjoying Music & Silence, which somehow I never read when it came out.

loved middlemarch, have read it twice!
loved cloud atlas too...

Perfume, but I haven't given up on it yet.
Kingdom for sale - which I think is Pratchett, tried it twice, get him but it just doesn't hold me.
A David Gemell, 2nd in the Polgara series that my sister was I couldn't finish - boring

I had to slog thru the first LOTR but it was better after the first half, and much better 2nd time round, and after the films.
I had to read the first DragonRiders book DragonFlight, a few times to get past the first chapter, but then I couldn't put any of the 16 or so of them down.
They are now my ultimate faves, closely followed by Harry Potter.

Hence the name

And am that anyone could not finish Pride & Prejudice. Mansfield Park , maybe, is more boring, but P&P is great.

Perfume was fab bom - it'll be worth it if you persist.

Anyone read Ridley Walker by Russel Hoban?

My friend goes on about this al the time, even says he is going to name his ds Ridley, he is obsessed!
I have tried and tried but I can't get past the first 20 pages or so as its written in a kind of made up olde english.

On my second attempt at Cloud Atlas - should I make the effort to carry on?
TTW - repetitive, repetitive, repetitive...

Ulysses (like Mirage) - however I was about 15 at the time so may at some point try again.

Lord Jim - tried it twice but to no avail!

Currently reading the Gormenghast Trilogy, which I was sure I would lose interest in before the end, but I'm two thirds of the way through the second book and still enjoying it!

Thought of another couple - Angels and Insects (Doris Lessing? or AS Byatt? Can't remember) - self important twaddle imo. Managed Sophie's World but couldn't finish Through a Glass Darkly, though my dad raved about it and couldn't put it down.

That's about it though. I am stubborn and tenacious and generally keep going to the bitter end - then think "why did I bother?" (Now that could be a long list )

Miaou-that reminds me, I read the first two of the Gormenghast trilogy but was utterly defeated by the third.
good luck!!

Ridley Walker - argh.

Never finished it. Same reason as I struggled through the middle section of Cloud Atlas, same reason I never finished Feersum Endjinn (Iain M Banks).

Donte liik nonn-stnndrd-Inglish naritivs.

I'm a fast and fluent reader, and I have problems with anything that slows me down.

Anna Karenina. Now in my 20th straight year of not managing to read it.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who sometimes reads the chapters backwards. It was the only way I got through History of God by Karen Armstrong, and Mao by Jung Chang and John Halliday, both interesting books but attacking from the front felt like repeatedly flinging myself at a climbing wall. Often the juicy revelations are near the end so you are inspired to keep going. And often childhood is so dull, why do people keep beginning books with it?

On the Road - you have to remember hardly anyone had a telly when that came out, hence the belief that it was interesting.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King. Boody awful.

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce. A gift from my dh, pff!

Oh yes, Moby Dick. How I hated it.
And Spenser's Faerie Queen, although admittedly I was not reading that out of choice.

Wendyweber - The NIght watch is AWFUL and only got those accolades because her previous books were really good (honest). I bought the night watch in hard back as was excited by new book by Sarah Waters and was seriously pissed off it was so rubbish - Affinity brilliant though...

war and peace - don't know why I bothered trying. Loved Anna Karenina though.

I can't read anything by Joanne Harris, or Isabelle Allende, even though people have boguht me them

Can't believe I used to read DH Lawrence and liked it as a younger person - must have been teenaged pretentiousness. He was obviously a complete wanker.

Satanic Verses