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Books that have defeated you

201 replies

Queenoftheharpies · 25/05/2009 16:25

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?

OP posts:
lottiejenkins · 27/05/2009 15:35

Wild Swans by Jung Chang........... I tried, i really did...........several times! Just couldnt get into it!

baskingseals · 27/05/2009 16:11

I really cheated with the Secret Scripture,only finished it through desperation - either that or the Danielle Steele DH bought me for my birhtday - knows me so well..............

IcantbelieveImForty · 27/05/2009 18:41

Wild Swans for me too - i was put off by all the long names so bought the audio version. I stalled at the binding feet part (at the begining) had a hiccup at the starving peasants with their stomachs full of straw & then the blood fountains (cracking their heads open) was it. Anyway one want to borrow it before it goes to the charity shop ?

lottiejenkins · 27/05/2009 18:48

The foot binding made me feel very ill as well. I didnt get to the other bits thankfully. I am reluctant to give my copy away as it was a present from my late dh!

8oreighty · 27/05/2009 18:48

Foucault's Pendulum...tried and tried...when met my dh he told me he'd read it, so I knew he must be smarter than me.

DuchessOfAvon · 27/05/2009 19:03

Underworld - Don Delillo
Ulysses - James Joyce
Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
This Charming Man - Marian Keyes

The first three were genuinely unreadable and the fourth was just tosh.

The first three are among DH's all time favourite books so I rely on him for the Dummy's Guide to Blokes' Books.

nevergonnapost · 27/05/2009 19:14

so sorry about your husband lottiejenkins hope you are coping ok

TheBreastmilksOnMe · 27/05/2009 19:18

Anything by Charles Dickens.

Middlesex.

monkeytrousers · 27/05/2009 19:19

Sense and Sensibility. Really disliked the Dashwoods

ILikeToMoveItMoveIt · 27/05/2009 19:20

Captain Corelli - and yes I did try, I read well over half way but just got bored.

Cold Comfort Farm - I found it dull and just didn't get the humour.

PollyEster · 27/05/2009 19:47

Lord of the Rings - couldn't get into it at all. It's dh's favourite book - one of our dcs is even named after one of the characters I fell asleep in the cinema during the first film & couldn't for the life of me see the point in all that trudging & fighting. The beginning & ending were the only good bits.

Didn't read Captain Corelli but went to see a dramatisation of it. We thought we were going to see a play but it turned out to be a guy telling the story with a few props - it was brilliant. The film wasn't so good though as they changed the ending

Molesworth · 27/05/2009 19:56

Good thread!

Agree with lots already mentioned: Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Lawrence and Tolkien just too dull for words

On the other hand, love Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Ian McEwan.

HaventSleptForAYear · 27/05/2009 19:58

Another vote for Life of Pi here.

I think I got 3/4 way through Captain Corelli and gave up.

Have currently abandoned "The Inheritance of Loss" but I might get into it.

I would say "Cloud Atlas" was really really worth perservering for.

NEVER read any Jane Austen

Molesworth · 27/05/2009 20:00

I enjoyed Life of Pi, but couldn't be doing with Captain Corelli. Have never managed to plough through anything by Umberto Eco or Will Self either.

FuriousGeorge · 27/05/2009 20:06

VintageGardenia-me too!

I read excerpts of TSOMW in a newspaper,read the reviews and got very over excited when I found it in the library.I was looking forward to reading it so much,but it was as dry as old farts.
Other unreadables are
Wild Swans
LOTR
Ulysess
Catch 22
Tess of the Durbervilles
Heart of Darkness

mutti21 · 27/05/2009 20:15

I LOVE Ian Mcewen... especially SATURDAY (presumably the one before 'Sunday' that some of you couldn't finish?! )

I wish i could but i just can't get on with Will Self's novels. I'm pretty sure they're the literary equivalent of some really pretty questionable class A drugs. The type of drugs carried into the country by feckless students up their jacksies...

milkycuntalinasgone · 27/05/2009 20:16

Captain Corelli comes up again and again on these threads, and I take people's point about it; but it is a beautiful book in the end, I absolutely loved it.

MrsHappy · 27/05/2009 20:22

Underworld by Don Delilo. Three hundred pages in none of the main characters had met and I lost the will to live.

everymum · 27/05/2009 20:23

Great thread.

Midnight's Children - about four times
War and Peace
Catch 22
Anything by Dickens, although I've loved the TV adaptations

8oreighty · 27/05/2009 20:36

MrsHappy, my dh read that one too! He loved it...very annoying as he is supposedly dyslexic and I did English lit...

4paws · 27/05/2009 20:50

Proust - Remembrance of things past.

The ONLY book that has ever defeated me and I've waded through many a boring one (see above posts!)

perhaps it's better in French....?

PoppyField · 27/05/2009 20:57

Totally agree Infin on Time Traveller's Wife - couldn't read it, couldn't stand it - despite people I know and love telling me it was brilliant and even made them cry. It was so ikky I felt like desperately brushing it off as if someone was sneezing snot on me. Devotees said it would get better after 'the first 80 pages or so'. I still resent the waste of my life I spent trying to get through it.

Also, London Fields - the odious central character was too like a boyfriend I had just broken up with. If it was satire it wasn't satire enough for me.

MrsHappy · 27/05/2009 21:00

8oreighty I never thought anyone (other than a critic or someone else paid to do so) would have actually read the thing. Crap. Now I am going to have to have another go...

MumOfAPickle · 27/05/2009 21:34

I used to be one of those people who could never give up on a book and as such have limped to the end of a couple which I wish I hadn't, like American Psycho (I did completely skip pages and pages describing various shite 80's albums) and The Alchemist (which was complete and utter tosh).

Then I had my DS and since then I've given up on: Lolita, The Shark Diaries, The Vesuvius Club, The Little Friend...I'm sure there's more. I'm currently ignoring reading The Pupil by Caro Fraser and I'm just not sure I care enough - should I give up? The next one on my pile is Revolutionary Road...should I swap?

FWIW, Catch 22 is brill, love LOTR and Captain Correlli was quite nice. Oh and whoever gave up on Cloud Atlas should try again because I thought it was an amazing, unique book

8oreighty · 27/05/2009 22:36

Yep Mrs Happy, just told dh about this thread and he was shocked no one else loved Underworld, he thoroughly enjoyed it...Pickle - SO true about the Alchemist, what a load of crap!!!! My best friend and I (she's brazilian they are really into that book) have agreed we don't trust anyone who liked it....I liked Captain Correlli too...hmm will try cloud atlas now, wasn't sure about it.