The Bible is one of mine. I'm an utter heathen, but I got a KJV to read as literature, but I don't think I got past "In the beginning..." before I got bored and stopped.
I simply adore Pride and Prejudice, the book and the Firth/Ehle miniseries, but every other Austen novel I've tried to read makes me go cold, and I stop after a few pages.
9 comments:
Harry Potter.
I've read all books but the last one I stopped half-way through and have never finished it. Don't know why - other than I fear I didn't want the story to end.
The Magic Mountain
Middlemarch
Beloved
"A Tale of Two Cities."
I've made it through almost every Dickens except that one.
I am still working on Rebecca West's Black Lamb, Grey Falcon after 25 years! Also the Chinese classic novel (5 vols) as translated by David Hawkes: The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber). I have purposely left unread several Sherlock Holmes stories and several in the Decameron. Saving them for difficult times.
I gave up on Virgil's Aeneid. Tried reading it several times and even listening to it on audiobook. If it is possible to hate a book, I hate the Aeneid. It is a bad book. Bombastic triumphalism! Classic be damned!
If I cannot make it through a tough book, I try to find it on audiobook. Good way to read some books.
To be fair the Bible is a bunch of books, you may have read one whole one without realizing.
Of books I could not finish: Dianetics - unutterably awful, pedantic and profoundly stupid, pretentious while simultaneously completely classless, humorless and duller than I had thought it possible for anything to be. Rather disappointing as it's the nexus of so much stupid evil. I suppose I was expecting more evil and less stupid. Of course I know and knew the backstory, all public knowledge on clambake.org but I was expecting something more, or something less.
Atlas Shrugged - similar to Dianetics, but denser in texture and content. Simply awful and worse, uninteresting. Though The Fountainhead, the movie, was very fun to watch while drinking, as a comedy.
Anne Rice's The Mummy - I started it and then got so pissed at it I went and read the last page to spite it. I liked all her other books I'd read by then, the deliberate strange style of The Mummy just didn't go down well.
The second half of Stephen Hawking's Brief (LOL) History of Time just couldn't get through because everything was a declarative 'that's how it is' - the math is just too complicated - never explaining how the math ever got to such fanciful and absurd places. I prefer fictional fiction. Though oddly I get a headache if I read anything by Robert Asprin anymore. Overdose.
The Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card began to be annoying when simple blacksmithing skills were misrepresented. Now of course I can't read a thing by him because he's such a whackadoodle. Likewise I am sure I would not like any more than five of the Dune "trilogy" (as it was when I started it) because I have no interest in mutated worms. Like those.
Most books I start I can finish, because of the initial interest factor. It's so rare that any I start I can't finish - great topic, thanks and thanks to Tor. There are plenty of authors I know I cannot read, but I have interest, so they don't count, I would never begin one of theirs. I am still BTW working on Bertrand Russell and when finished up for a trade of pictures, LOL but also serious.
Len: I'm a total weirdo, because I only read two of them in the middle. I liked them, but I never felt the urge to read any of the others. Strange.
Tom: Dickens = UGH to me. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations in high school was enough for me.
Slyder: 25 years! I think maybe it's time to accept defeat. Dream of the Red Chamber I can see, though; it's a biggie.
I read some of The Decameron for a class in college. I kept the book to read more at some point, though I haven't gotten to it yet.
If you can believe it, I've ever read one Sherlock Holmes story for a Victorian literature class. I don't know, Conan Doyle just isn't my cup of tea.
JamesR: I'm so glad you're sticking with Russell! As I said in my review, he takes a while even when you've got time.
Will not accept defeat on the Rebecca West. The book is a masterpiece. The pb also makes a great doorstop! I am still reading on it. I take it anytime I might need to wait a long time. Her prose is magnificent and the Introduction will make a strong man weep. Book really helps to understand the Balkans today. Of course my reading of the book is almost taking as long as Yugoslavia existed!
Not like Sherlock Holmes? I am horrified and shocked. How can you NOT like the sainted Holmes? That, Frank, is a hole in your education that must be remedied! Forget that Doyle fellow. He was merely the amanuensis to whom the Sherlockian Canon was dictated by a divine being. I have never met a nerd who did not know the stories almost by heart! Makes me wonder if you are the real Frank or an imposter left in his place by aliens!
It is rather strange, slyder, though I assure you, I'm no imposter.
I believe you, Frank. I was a little hard on you and I apologize. As a librarian I follow Ranganathan's Four Laws of Librarianship and need to be constantly reminded of the first two: Every reader his book. Every book its reader. Not every book is for everyone.
I confess to having given up on Doris Kerns Goodwin's Team of Rivals. I had to get through the last three-quarters of it via audiobook. I listened to it as I drove and went home at night to look at the scholarly apparatus in the hardback that does not appear on the audiobook. I believe that is the best work of history of the first decade of the 21st century.
You have inspired me to pull down the Rebecca West mentioned earlier and get on with it.
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