What did you start and just couldn't force yourself to finish?

[grumpypants]

I was reading The Seven Secrets of Happiness and it was so dire I couldn't make myself finish (knew who wd end up with who/ 'messages' blindingly obvious etc) - what shd I avoid next

I thought that Cloud Atlas was very clever-even though hard going. I admit that I missed out the middle chapter-I started it several times but couldn't manage it.

I skipped the first chapter! And a few others.

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy.

Dire - I just could not get into it.

The Time Traveller's Wife
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Cloud Atlas
Atonement
Great Expectations
No Country For Old Men
Anything by Hemingway
The fecking Hobbit
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
White Teeth
Brick Lane

God, that looks bad, doesn't it?

Labyrinth.

Also Dr criminale by malcolm Bradbury. Dire.

The Ukrainian Tractor one

Wuthering Heights. I keep trying, but it has never grabbed me

Midnights children....

I can add another one, Empty World by John Christopher, was to terrifying to finish (I was a child at the time)

The Tenderness of Wolves- I have tried so many times because I have been told I will love it but just can't get into it.

I loved the Book Thief but did struggle with 'Kevin' and 'Correlli'even though I fninshed them.

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Just could not place it in time; is it 70's, 80's, today? Plus found it tedious and self indulgent. It was rumoured to be auto-biographical but she denied this but the little girl seemed Awfully similar to DT. Such a disappointment after Secret History.

Anything by Louis de Bernieres. That man clearly flicks through his Thesaurus every morning looking for long, obscure words thinking this will make him an intellectual. Wrong.

White Teeth

Finnigans Wake

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

SchrodingersSexKitten, I agree about The Little Friend and what hard going it was. I did get to the end, but it was a great disappointment after The secret History, and I think that was the case for everyone. By the way, if you want something like the Secret History, you can't do worse than the recommendation I was given: Carol Goodman's the Lake of Dead Languages.

Your point about Louis de Bernieres ("That man clearly flicks through his Thesaurus every morning looking for long, obscure words thinking this will make him an intellectual.") was very , very true. After all, didn't Anne of Green Gables get over this very fault as she grew up?!

cloud atlas by david mitchell. it was really, really dull

lol at 'anything my mum lends me'. Same here. She can rave about something, 3 men in a boat by Jerome K Jerome, and she is laughing, remembering something in it and I can't get past page 7. I lent her STeve TOlz' a fraction of the whole and she thought it was weird.

Kaloki, The Empty World sounds a bit like Surviors. Is it? I really liked his Tripods series; that was great.

Sorry, everyone, for talking about something enjoyable for a moment!

Couldn't do Lord of the Rings - kept trying and thinking I ought to, but then naaah life's too short.

Gave up on Labyrinthe, and Girl with a pearl Ear ring, and Rings of Saturn. I'm much less tolerant with books than I used to be - if they don't grab me by about 100 pages in, they've blown their chance

Maggie I'm with your mum, -I love Three men in a Boat.

Labyrinth (a couple of chapters and thought "what?")

Lord of the Rings

The English Patient (just die...)

Loved the Time Traveller's Wife and Captain Corelli though.

I finished Labyrinth and wondered why i bothered- nothing ever happened!

We need to talk about Kevin

Then We Came to The End (ironically )

A Prayer for Owen Meany

Massive cliche, but War and Peace has defeated me many times, and I actually studied the works of Tolstoy at university

Anything by Jodie Picoult - what a load of tosh that woman writes

Lord of the Rings (yawn)

Dante's Inferno (ditto)

Dross Books lent to me by the MILs (I have two; lucky me!)
eg
The Alchemist
The Return
The Celestine Prophecy.

I've never finished Zen and the Art.... either. Tried soooo many times.

So many that I can't remember . SIL lent me Brick lane and I only read one page!

the third book about salander

Catch 22, I just couldn't get into it at all, sure I must be missing something.

The Line of Beauty, struggled on for ages but eventually decided to pack it in, there was no enjoyment in it at all.

Cloud Atlas, didn't get past the first few pages.

War & Peace, was loving it but then got tired of all the war stuff. I've still got my page marked.

The House at Riverton, just absolute drivel.

wolf hall
the children's hour

i love zola, send me your debacle chilly.

We need to talk about Kevin. I just couldn't get into it.

Catch-22. Tried it about 10years ago and can't remember anything about it so I can't have read it all!

Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolf. Fantasy book from BIL which I just found really weird. I may go back to it as my DH loved it.