Books you’ve tried to read but just can’t get on with them

[GonnaGetGoingReturns]

I know this is subjective but what books have you read or tried to read but just can’t stomach them?

My recent ones are:-

Brother of the More Famous Jack - what a load of pompous affected twaddle! Can’t seem to see how it’s so lauded, got to page 17 and gave up.

Cold Comfort Farm - managed a bit better with this, about 4 chapters in, but still, affected pompous twaddle. Was told it was similar to the adorable I Capture The Castle but it’s not, at all! Gave it to SIL to read as she got I Cspture The Castle for me and she didn’t like it and when I asked DM if she’d read it when she was younger she said exactly the same about it as me.

Oh and if anyone sees K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary and thinks it looks interesting, it isn’t, it’s just weird!

He writes fantasy as well, but his ‘literary’ stuff is amazing. If you’ve not read The Book of Night Women, it’s one of the best novels I’ve read in the last decade, give it a crack, I had to pull it apart it for a course and read it about three times in succession, but would still read it again😛

Oooh thank you @Rinkydinkydoodle i love new writers (to me).

Me too, hope you like it, it’s daaark.

i've just looked it up @Rinkydinkydoodle and it looks great - going to download now!

Another Captain Corelli here....
Also Wolf Hall - but I'm due another try

I usually persevere no matter what - even the drivel - but two above have eluded me so far.

Another vote for Wolf Hall. Really wanted to get on with it, but I found the style got in the way.

Also another vote for Anna Karenina. I did finish it, but was glad when it was over. Far too much ponderous theorising about theories of agriculture from some tedious old bastard character whose name I forget.

Failed to finish Umbrella. Again, the style was too intrusive, which was a shame as I love Will Self’s other books.

Any Martin Amis after and including The Information. I keep giving him another go in the hope that he’ll write something good again, but after all these years it seems increasingly unlikely…

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney. Loathed all the characters. Loved Normal People though

Fab, have ordered it from Waterstones. I'm trying to think of who to recommend. If anyone is looking for a new author , Lucretia Grindle is amazing.

Oh god, Wuthering Heights.

I just couldn't get past the narrative conceit. Just give me a god's-eye narrator Emily ffs.

Wildfell Hall was bad enough and that only had one layer (note that the TV adaptation basically ignored the whole set-up).

I read part of LoTR when I was 11 and only realised 15 years later - listening to the radio adaptation - that I hadn't got to the end. Somewhere in the bleak grey stoniness of the bleak grey stones in the bleak grey stony landscape of bleak grey stony Mordor (MUM! It's about half a page!) I gave up.

I did eventually read Jane Eyre. After 30 years.

Mansfield Park... oh, just sit and read it out loud. Forget the story and don't think about whether you like or are infuriated by Fanny. The prose is A Ma Zing.

Not tried Wolf Hall. I discovered HM in the library in the mid-90s, a book called Fludd which I loved.

Anything by Gabriel garcia marquez

@gingerandsmall I don't expect you to be converted, but the full Eleanor Oliphant story might lead you to retract that "needlessly"

I read a post a week or so ago where someone derided Eleanor Oliphant as "basically a makeover story", and several people recommended it on a "feel-good" reads thread. I can't help thinking that an awful lot of people only read the first few chapters?

Time travellers wife
Wolf Hall
Captain Corelli's mandolin

Howard’s End disappointed me. It was just…dull. My favourite authors are mostly early 20th-century Brits (Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, etc), so I had high hopes for E M Forster. I also loved the film version of A Room with a View. Stephen Fry reveres him as well, and I trust Fry’s judgement (like Fry I love Wodehouse, Oscar Wilde, etc).

I didn’t hate it. His prose is smooth and fine, and the characters are likeable enough. It just didn’t grip or hold me. I rarely give up on a classic, but I’m afraid I packed it in on page 120.

Still, I’m going to try A Room with a View.

'Couldn't get into life after life by Kate Atkinson'

Me neither, found it so confusing and had to give up

I love Wuthering Heights (did it in school) but agree it's definitely not a romance!

Great thread!

I love so many hated on here!
Loved:
Wolf Hall & sequels
All the light we cannot see
The hare with Amber eyes
Dickens
Jane Austin
My Brilliant Friend & sequels
Normal people

Hated:
Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
Elinor Oliphant
Where the Crawdads sing

Priest Daddy. Why does she seem so proud of him? She's bright enough to know he's an arsehole. I just want to slap him.

Could not stand Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Had to give it 3 goes to get through it and this was during my teenage classic fever. Mystified as to why people love it so much. Absolutely love Hardy's poetry, though.

Shuggie Bain: agree with everything that's been said here

Philippa Gregory: diabolical

I have also struggled with everything that Donna Tartt has written apart from The Secret History, which I absolutely loved.

And... everything that James Joyce has written, apart from Dubliners, which is just gorgeous from start to finish. After that he just went too s-o-c for me. Ditto Beckett.

I couldn't finish the Alan Rickman book Madly, Deeply (diary excerpts).

I bought it because I thought that I liked him. I got half way through and decided I didn't like him.

Philippa Gregory is a joke. Especially as she pretends to be a serious historian. But I loved Wolf Hall-I loved the way Mantel seemed to get inside the head of a character so you were privy to his thoughts. Wonderful book.
I loved LOTR-I re-read it regularly-a PP said she knows it’s slow but loves to walk with the hobbits. Me too!
I never got on with the Cormorant Strike books. Cliche works well with kids books-but I found the adult ones cringe. Mousy heroine a rip off of early Jilly Cooper novels and a ridiculously cliched tragic protagonist. Girl on a Train had a drippy heroine who was intensely irritating.
Now I’m coming up to retirement, I really must give the classic Russian novels a try. But I’ll swerve Anna Karenina based on thIs thread!

God yes. I just found it really cringy and poorly written

'I couldn't finish the Alan Rickman book Madly, Deeply (diary excerpts).

I bought it because I thought that I liked him. I got half way through and decided I didn't like him.'

Oh no! Im dying to get the paperback version in July. What did you not like about him?

This was me too. I just can't imagine that he would have been ok with them being published. He name drops constantly- which is fair enough because it's mostly colleagues and friends he's talking about but it just feels really gratuitous. He also has something negative to say about EVERYBODY and almost every play/movie he saw. No director was up to scratch. His wife barely gets mentioned and I started to wonder if she published them for revenge! I know that lots and lots of people who knew him completely adored him and talk about his kindness and most people don't write a diary detailing their every act of kindness but he didn't come across well.

@Lottapianos

I just ended up thinking the exact opposite of what I thought about him before.

Made me disillusioned, disturbed and disappointed.

'I just ended up thinking the exact opposite of what I thought about him before.

Made me disillusioned, disturbed and disappointed.'

Oh gosh. I'm intrigued but slightly horrified!

I am Pilgrim. Tried to read it twice recently and didn't get past the first 100 pages. A friend gave it to me so I feel sort of obligated, plus loads of people seem to love it, but I just can't.

If it was shorter I'd skim read through but its about 700 pages, so much reading time to give to something I'm not enjoying!