Which books have you decided not to finish and why?

[Fiddlesticks1]

Are there any books you decided not to continue reading and why?
For me two books.
The Plague Dogs- just found it too upsetting
and in the days of devouring books by Russian authors I gave up on Dostoyevsky because I found them depressing.

Prodigal Summer also my fave. Have you listened to the audiobook read by Kingsolver? Magical.

Prodigal Summer also my fave. Have you listened to the audiobook read by Kingsolver? Magical.

No, that sounds interesting, although I don't generally 'do' audiobooks.

It’s beautiful @AlwaysExtraHot I just close my eyes and am transported to the Appalachians.

Maybe get a free book with audible?

Butter
Yellowface
Demon Copperhead
Midnight's Children
Milkman
Lord of the Rings

I forced myself to get to the end of Piranesi and The Miniaturist and Salt Path because they were book club reads, but dear god, all unreadable in their own way.

I was deeply disappointed by Sorrow And Bliss and struggled to get to the halfway mark before I gave up.

Agreed! I couldn’t finish it 🤷‍♀️

Yes, good idea. I've never heard her speaking voice, actually.

I disliked the Housemaids books, I read two of them and found them predictable.

This will be an unpopular opinion on here, but k found The Fingersmith boring too.

I finished it and wished I hadn’t wasted all those hours doing so!
As others have mentioned I found the life of Pi dull.
I did finish A little life (I was in hospital at the time, so was limited with entertainment options). I had to keep putting it down when it got too much, but I somehow felt obligated to finish it for some reason. It was incredibly written, but I’d never recommend it to anyone, or ever read it again.

I think some books need to be read in large chunks to be appreciated. If you are only reading a a couple of chapters a night, it can be hard to keep track of the story and characters.

I started reading The Snow Girl years ago but couldn't devote much time to reading it. I gave up on it. A couple of years later I started it again and read it in about three sessions. It is one of the best books I have ever read. Similarly Piranesi and The Time Travellers wife.

I still have A Little Life on my TBR list. I think I will have to be in the right frame of mind to read it.

This is in my top ten favourite books! 😂

Loved Cloud Atlas, The Woman in White, Secret History/Little Friend, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Life After Life, Wuthering Heights
Oops maybe I've got odd taste

Couldn't finish The Hare with Amber Eyes, Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, We are all completely beside ourselves.
All awful or boring or both.

Picked up Lord of the Rings once. Read the blurb, then 'nope' so it qualifies as didn't even try 🤔
I know people who love LOTR though

Elena Ferranti's My Brilliant Friend. Tedious and populated entirely by unpleasant characters. Can't understand the fuss. One one-star review on amazon said, 'I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream reading this.' I agree!

Hated that book, but I did finish it.

I abandon stuff much more readily these days. Last couple were E Nesbit The Lark, which was the Slightly Dated choice a couple of months ago, and RF Kuang's Babel

A Little Life was the first book I gave up reading. I felt life was just too short to read miserable things about people I couldn't care less about.

I'm quite enjoying not finishing things now. So many books I've finished because I've started but haven't enjoyed. I used to feel that if you haven't finished it, you can't have a solid opinion. Then, I recognised that no one really wants my opinions on books that much anyway.

I went through a phase of trying to read massively popular authors like Stephen King and Ken Follet which I had prejudged as things I wouldn't like. Turns out I was a good judge of my own taste. Pillars of the Earth? My God. Dull writing, under developed characters, repeated and seriously dodgy rape scenes. No thanks. I quite liked the bits about how to build a church though not enough to make me persevere.

@MerylSqueak “A Little Life was the first book I gave up reading. I felt life was just too short to read miserable things about people I couldn't care less about.”

The sheer volume of horrific abuse Jude suffers from childhood through adulthood feels statistically and emotionally implausible.

People don’t go around adopting 30 year old men!! It’s an absurd book!

I gave up on an Anne Tyler novel - I see that she is really prolific and I can't remember the title. A woman goes to a shop in the US ..... I would usually persevere but I did not find it at all compelling.

All Anne Tyler novels (and there are bloody loads of them) can be summarised as 'a middle aged person from Baltimore has a random friendship'. And I still wait for next one to come out with baited breath.

I can understand why they are not for everyone.

One Day... honestly, one day out of my life I can never get back. I'm all for an anti-hero but a book where you dislike everyone?! Gimmicky (15 July trope)... boring and drawn out... deliberately 'shocking' ending that you could see a mile off. Stupid people making stupid decisions. And massive gaps where there could be story if Nicholls had bothered to write it. Not for me. Had to read the Confederacy of Dunces as a palate cleanser...

Another vote for the life of pi, I gave up when I kept having to start the page again because I'd forgotten what (hadn't) happend by the time I got to the bottom.
Vanity fair, tried on numerous occasions at various ages. Won't bother again, really dislike the character and even if something awful happens to her in the other half of the book I don't have any enthusiasm for it and will never find out. It's the book that taught me that my life is important and that I don't have to finish everything.

Gravity's Rainbow - gave up after getting through 300 pages of endless rambling paragraphs that go nowhere coupled with a ridiculous number of poorly drawn different characters. Subsequently read a guide to it that advised it gets better age the first 400 pages - they're setting the scene for the main plot to develop... Really?! Who has time for that...?!

American Psycho was one I got through but wish I hadn't bothered-it seemed to me to be a poorly written rehash of The Great Gatsby with pointless added violence. Money is bad. The 80s were souless. We get it already...