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Books You Can't Finish

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    #1

    Books You Can't Finish

    Does anyone else have trouble giving up on books? Whenever I start one, I feel like I have to finish it, no matter how much I don't enjoy it. That being said, there are a few books I totally gave up on over the years. These include:

    "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens. As much as he's a classic author, I just can't stand his writing.

    "Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe. I love Tom Wolfe, and this is a great book. I might pick it up again one day. However, it was really angry and cynical, and I couldn't get through it the first time I tried to read it. I was going through a bit of a stressful time and I needed to read something happier.

    I'm considering giving up on "Gardens of the Moon" by Steven Erikson. I want to like the book, and it was recommended to me by a friend. It's an interesting concept and has a lot of originality. However, it's so complex, it makes "A Song of Ice and Fire" look simple and straight forward. He does so much damn world building that I don't know what's going on and can't visualize anything. There are also so many characters that I can't get interested in any of them.
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    #2
    Re: Books You Can't Finish

    There are books that I wish I could've given up on. Grapes of Wrath is a torture device not a novel, regardless of what high school english teachers think. I did give up on the later Dune books. Not a knock against Herbert's writing, I'm just not thrilled with the setting.
    life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

    Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

    "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

    John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

    "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

    Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


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      #3
      Re: Books You Can't Finish

      I'm an English teacher, and I hates da' grapes. Be glad you weren't in my class. You'd a had da read Benito Cereno, by Melville. People die from trying to read that.

      Anything by Jane Austin. Talk about teacher torture!
      Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

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        #4
        Re: Books You Can't Finish

        It took me two tries to finish "Mansfield Park", and I enjoy Jane Austen most of the time. When I was done, I sort of felt like I hadn't gained anything. Fanny Price is so insufferable. I really try not to place my modern values on newer books, but all of Austen's other characters feel at least somewhat interesting to me as a modern woman. Elizabeth Bennett has a fire to her, Emma is kind of flakey and has to learn how to grow up, Elinor Dashwood is somewhat reserved but passionate on the inside, Marianne Dashwood is passionate on the outside but ends up finding happiness in a constant, etc. Fanny Price seems to just keep her head down and shy away from everything, and the moral seems to be that if you behave that way, good things will happen to you.

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          #5
          Re: Books You Can't Finish



          I'm sure you're right in your appraisal, but P&P would even put me straight out.

          P&P&Z's for that matter...

          Maybe it's a male/female thing.
          Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

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            #6
            Re: Books You Can't Finish

            The Wheel of Effing Time.

            I read the first NINE books. Ain't nobody got the time to listen to Rand Al'thor whine his way through another FOUR books.


            Mostly art.

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              #7
              Re: Books You Can't Finish

              Originally posted by volcaniclastic View Post
              The Wheel of Effing Time.

              I read the first NINE books. Ain't nobody got the time to listen to Rand Al'thor whine his way through another FOUR books.
              I won't let my hubby know that you said that, lol. He loves that series. He has all the books and started reading them from the beginning again since the series is now complete.
              �Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.�
              ― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
              Sneak Attack
              Avatar picture by the wonderful and talented TJSGrimm.

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                #8
                Re: Books You Can't Finish

                Originally posted by Juniper View Post
                I won't let my hubby know that you said that, lol. He loves that series. He has all the books and started reading them from the beginning again since the series is now complete.
                I really want to like them. And I did in the beginning, but...

                Why they gotta be so descriptive? The first three pages of every book are the same damned words.


                Mostly art.

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                  #9
                  Re: Books You Can't Finish

                  Originally posted by B. de Corbin View Post


                  I'm sure you're right in your appraisal, but P&P would even put me straight out.

                  P&P&Z's for that matter...

                  Maybe it's a male/female thing.
                  I think you might be right. I don't see a lot in Austen that's relatable to men. Also, most men I know hate the books.

                  For some people, it's also her style. It's very distinctive and pretty anachronistic, and the combination of the two doesn't click with a lot of people.

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                    #10
                    Re: Books You Can't Finish

                    I wish I had given up on Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints. By the time I got to the end of the book, I'd forgotten what it was about in the first place. I'm still not sure. The time period and subject are of interest to me (it's about post-Civil War life for the gens de couleur libres), because I have my dad's stories of Louisiana, but Rice just droned on & on... They made a mini-series and I caught a smidge of it, and the storyline in the mini-series didn't even connect the dots in the book for me. When I finished that snore-fest, I promised myself I would never force myself to read an entire book just to 'see if it eventually gets better'.

                    I've picked up & tried to read L. R. Hubbard's Dianetics so many times, but I just can't get more than 100 pages into it. It's not even that long of a book, it's just mind-numbingly ridiculous.
                    The forum member formerly known as perzephone. Or Perze. I've shed a skin.

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                      #11
                      Re: Books You Can't Finish

                      Originally posted by B. de Corbin View Post
                      I'm an English teacher, and I hates da' grapes. Be glad you weren't in my class. You'd a had da read Benito Cereno, by Melville. People die from trying to read that.

                      Anything by Jane Austin. Talk about teacher torture!
                      I'm sorry, anything by Melville is a bloody torture device.


                      Also, I don't care what anyone says, and even though the book is short and blah blah blah, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is just a sleep aid. I literally fell asleep every 2 pages or so, and never managed to get anything out of the dang book. Seriously, I can usually manage to force my way through a book, (I liked Paradise Lost,) but Frankenstein was just way too boring, and absolutely completely unrelatable...

                      But at least it doesn't destroy your mind like Melville, I can sleep after a page or two of Frankenstein, Melville just makes my head angry and in pain...
                      http://catcrowsnow.blogspot.com/

                      But they were doughnuts of darkness. Evil damned doughnuts, tainted by the spawn of darkness.... Which could obviously only be redeemed by passing through the fiery inferno of my digestive tract.
                      ~Jim Butcher

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                        #12
                        Re: Books You Can't Finish

                        Oooo Paradise Lost is another one I couldn't finish.

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                          #13
                          Re: Books You Can't Finish

                          Originally posted by DanieMarie View Post
                          Oooo Paradise Lost is another one I couldn't finish.
                          I honestly think I was the only person in the class who didn't hate it.
                          http://catcrowsnow.blogspot.com/

                          But they were doughnuts of darkness. Evil damned doughnuts, tainted by the spawn of darkness.... Which could obviously only be redeemed by passing through the fiery inferno of my digestive tract.
                          ~Jim Butcher

                          Comment

                            #14
                            Re: Books You Can't Finish

                            Originally posted by Juniper View Post
                            I won't let my hubby know that you said that, lol. He loves that series. He has all the books and started reading them from the beginning again since the series is now complete.

                            lol, my hubby feels like V about them...I've never bothered... I feel the same way about Terry Goodkind--I made it thru the first 8 or 9 and was like "I don't even care what happens to anyone anymore!" Neither of us made it thru the first Game of Thrones book--not worth the hype, IMO, and I've never bothered to finish Twilight is was that crappy (The hubby didn't even bother).
                            Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                              #15
                              Re: Books You Can't Finish

                              Twilight should be purged from the Earth for the crime of sparkling vampires. Its many other failures (glory to stalkers being high on the list) are just further condemnation.
                              life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

                              Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

                              "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun." Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. "At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else..."

                              John Rowlands, The Grey King by Susan Cooper

                              "You come from the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve", said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth; be content."

                              Aslan, Prince Caspian by CS Lewis


                              Comment

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