Which book did you almost give up on but are glad you kept reading?

[cariadlet]

Inspired (or shameless ripping off) another thread (https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5568805-which-books-have-you-decided-not-to-finish-and-why?page=1) I started to think about books that I hated when I started reading them, decided to persist for a while and was so glad not to have given up.

For me, the book that best falls into this category is Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. It has a first person narrator and the protagonist is a teenage boy, growing up in poverty in a small town in the deep South of the US whose friend commits a school shooting.

I struggled so much at first because it's written in dialect. I couldn't get into it because of the language and almost gave up. I decided to give it a couple more chapters and was so glad that I kept reading it because once I'd got into the dialect, I absolutely loved it.

I confess I skipped/skimmed the pop culture chapters!

The Brothers Karamazov, many years ago. European literature of that period was so different that I took a few chapters to engage with it. I ended up hooked by the narrative even though I couldn't have understood much of the culture or the symbolism.

More recently, Atonement. It seemed to drag (and I'd ploughed through another very dull book of the same author's) but then picked up.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when I was little - floods of tears and refused to read any further when Aslan died. My parents had to persuade me to carry on as it would all be ok!

This is one I wish I had given up on!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - I was reading it aloud and ... suburban streets with wizards wandering around ..... And then the letter came, and more letters and .... The child I was reading to laughed out loud - they read the next one themself, then the next and passed them all on to me to read after.