Books that have defeated you

[Queenoftheharpies]

Middlemarch.

I've tried reading it three times now, and enjoyed it right up to the point where Dorothea gets engaged to Casaubon. And then, for no reason hit a stumbling block.

It's always the same point in the story as well. I think it's when there's some protracted discussion of the corn laws / agricultural practice.

Has anyone else encountered this? A book you really want to finish but that just defeats you?

Recently, Post Birthday World and the most recent one by Zoe Heller - although both recommended to me

Ha, another 18th century unreadable. Yes Tristram Shandy is impossible. Really truly impossible.

Mansfield Park
Don Quixote (it's so bloody LONG)

The Hobbit - can't get beyond p1 and don't really care

(I did enjoy Dance to the Music of Time though)

Can confirm I fell at the first chapter/hurdle with both Corelli and Possession...

I also failed to finish Wuthering Heights , still managed to write an essay on it. Ditto Moll Flanders. Someone will be along to take my degree certificate soon

Mill on the bloody Floss.

Torture.

Loved Mill on the Floss, The Hobbit and The Travellers Wife. Am now feeling like I have some kind of reading defect

Not compulsary to finish books you hate anyway - made such a difference to my quality of life when I realised that

Life of Pi?

anything by ian mcewan esp sunday
Thomas hardy Tess
JJoyce Ulysses

Gormenghast.

Loved it, but stalled three times.

Donna Tartt - everything she's ever written.

The girl with the dragon tattoo - I flicked to the end, became bored of all the Nordic angst.

yama, I just can't seem to help myself, I keep trying and then when reading I start to think "yes, I remember why I don't like him now..." and then trudge on hoping it will be alright until I give up....

And then buy another.

Oh The Hobbit, I can remember trying to read that as a young teen - made it to about page 4 I recall.

I love Tess and Mansfield Park

The Silmarillion and The Illiad.

Persevere with LOTR and Tess, they're great.

Midnight's children.

Oh, also The Colour of Magic - read other Terry Pratchett books (many of them) but could never finish that one for some reason.

"Vanity Fair", "The Rainbow" and Middlemarch. Like the OP I have tried Middlemarch 3 times and stopped at roughly the same time, I have had similar struggles with "The Rainbow" and couldn't even get through the TV adaptation of "Vanity Fair"

I have read quite a few books mentioned here but 'London fields' defeated me just don't get Martin Amis

Anything by Henry James or Virginia Woolf. Sorry, I know its supposed to be great literature, but it's like an allergic reaction, my ability to give a damn about any of the characters justs gets completely swollen and useless.

am scared now SGB... the 2 books I've never been able to get more than a couple of pages into are Dune and Captain Corellis Mandolin... eek...

I have actually managed the whole of Moby Dick- was hard going, but I learned quite a lot.

Catch 22
Various Ian McEwan
Midight's Children
Life is too short and too full of wonderful books to persevere with any of these!

you could always read the cheat's way and look at the ending first, then decide if you can be bothered trawling through the rest of it. Not that I ever do that. Oh no.