Book Group Online - What famous novel couldn't you finish?

My Friend Jack

20th January 2005, 09:15 AM

Lord of the Rings!

I have read dozens of fantasy sagas, and probably read more of that genre than any other, but I have never been able to make it to the end of the first book, having first tried in 1977!

I do have a recently acquired copy of the full work, and it's on the shelf awaiting its turn...

Couldn't get on with Joseph Heller's Catch 22, either.

happyfriday

20th January 2005, 09:19 AM

Ulysses by James Joyce, have started it at least 5 times and never get very far, i'm thinking as i get older i might have more look, fingers crossed anyhow!! :o Someday i WILL finish it!!

Claire

20th January 2005, 09:22 AM

Also Moby Dick - I actually really enjoyed the first half, but just competely ran out of steam half way through, and never got going again.

Never even caught sight of the actual Whale :rolleyes: Anyone know if they got it in the end?

Plus anything by Dickens. I just grind to a halt somewhere in the first chapter. Great Expectations is the only one I've managed to finish.

Rootytootytoo

20th January 2005, 09:29 AM

Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy.

I was bought it years ago by my Dad... who still expresses disappointment that I can't get into it. No amount of 'Loooooook its about a bygone pastoral age - lovely!' seems to encourage me.

Jassie

20th January 2005, 09:30 AM

'The Mysteries of Udolpho' by Ann Radcliffe. I was looking forward to reading it and getting into all its period gothic atmosphere of a damsel in distress but absolutely nothing happens and I gave up a quarter of the way through. So now it sits all 700 pages of it on the shelf berating me for my lack of will power.

Harriet

20th January 2005, 01:48 PM

Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings and To Kill A Mockingbird. I will read them someday.......

Lady Lazarus

20th January 2005, 02:04 PM

Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings and To Kill A Mockingbird. I will read them someday.......

Aah the first two I have started a few times and couldn't finish... have yet to try with To Kill A Mockingbird!

Sara

20th January 2005, 02:05 PM

I tried but I could never finish Jane Eyre.

Opal

20th January 2005, 02:58 PM

Dune by Frank Herbert. Its exactly the type of book I usually love, but for some reason I just can't get into it. Or I get halfway in and get distracted by something else!

And almost any classic. I like the stories (I've seen most tv adaptations, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Oliver, Sense and Sensibility...) but the style of writing just seems to be too much for me. I had to read a few at school, but always ended up skim-reading and writing essays from the crib notes! :o

Aixelsyd

20th January 2005, 04:42 PM

I never finished 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. What I read was ok, but I was reading 4 other books at the time.

Aixelsyd

20th January 2005, 04:44 PM

Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings and To Kill A Mockingbird. I will read them someday.......Just to let you know, there is a shorter film/play script version. We read it in my English/Drama class.

Deinonychus

20th January 2005, 06:16 PM

What happyfriday said. I'll crack it afore I go, though, just watch me...

Darkstar

20th January 2005, 06:54 PM

The Satanic Verses, Crime and Punishment, Captain Correlli's Mandolin.

Slowreader

20th January 2005, 09:24 PM

Well at school one of the set books was Austen's 'Emma' which I just could not plough all the way through, and more recently I failed to get much past the opening third of Nelson Mandela's autobiography. I might have another bash at the latter, but Austen, no way!

Just RY

20th January 2005, 10:55 PM

Lord of the Rings!

......
......

Couldn't get on with Joseph Heller's Catch 22, either.

I would also put both of those at the top of my couldn't finish list. Just couldn't get into either of them. Perhaps I may give Catch 22 another go, but as for LOTR, sorry that will have to stay unread.

Grammath

4th February 2005, 01:51 PM

Slowreader, you are a person after my own heart, I can't get on with Austen at all to the point of phobia.

Generally, I'm the kind of person who ploughs on in the hope that it will pick up. There are many great books with very slow starts - "Catch-22" is a prime example, I'd urge those of you who abandoned it to have another go.

Among the few I have abandoned one that stands out is "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James, very boring.

I also stopped reading Martin Amis's "Money" because John Self was so loathsome, which I guess was the point. I want to have another stab at that, though, I like the other Amis I have read.

omega

9th February 2005, 02:36 PM

Harriet, please dont even mention To Kill A Mockingbird in the same sentence as Lord of the Rings! :( I encourage you and anyone else to pick up this beautiful slim volume. One of my favourite books, it is a concise work that resounds on so many levels. It's about so many things : how children filter the world around them to their own level, it's about families, death, rape, racism, courage, mental illness, community and LOVE in its many guises. :D
The writing is so spare and simple, it puts the weighty prose of other writers to shame. Like a masterclass of the perfect novel.

However!!

To answer the question, I cannot get past the first 3 pages of Mrs Dalloway, by V Woolf. Nicholas Nickelby by Dickens, was like reading a goulish pantomime with too many characters, and I couldn't get into it.

Magwitch

12th February 2005, 12:18 AM

My god, I am stunned at some of these books that people don't finish!

Jane Austen I can understand - I was in my 30's before I really appreciated them. (And concluded that the woman was a particularly nasty misanthrope. But funny, so all is forgiven).

No matter how badly written a book is, if it has some half-way decent plot I just have to finish it. The only books I abandon are the ones that fail to grasp me on any level whatsoever. The last one I didn't finish was.....um...South American writer(?)...about a shepherd looking for 'treasure'...hailed as a book that would change your life....orange cover....help, can't remember at all. Pretentious nonsense (IMO), anyway.

I'm currently struggling with A L Kennedy's 'So I Said'.

doesn't say much

12th February 2005, 10:30 AM

Magwitch - I think that might be a Paolo Coelho (sp?). Seen it around, but I've never read it.

Most of the books I haven't finished were things we had to read at school, I can think of Jane Eyre and The Hobbit for starters. Nowadays I finish almost everything I start - even forced myself all the way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy - took about 3 months, a real endurance test. But one book I really couldn't finish, and it's not even that big, was Vernon God Little. Just could not get into it.

Ian

30th April 2007, 08:34 PM

I'd have to agree with Doesn't Say Much, but my book was Oliver Twist

Reading because you are told to is never a good thing. Reading because you want to is so much more pleasurable.

chuntzy

1st May 2007, 12:37 PM

I couldn't finish Crime and Punishment, Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves, and Catch 22

dumpling

1st May 2007, 05:40 PM

More votes here for Catch-22 and LOTR. Ugh.

SlowRain

2nd May 2007, 05:08 AM

The Age of Innocence
Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice
The Cider House Rules
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Small Death in Lisbon
The English Patient

Momo

2nd May 2007, 11:55 AM

Wuthering HeightsI do undertand that - but:Pride and Prejudice :yikes:

Red Fox

2nd May 2007, 12:38 PM

It took me a few attempts to finish Wuthering Heights, but I nailed it in the end.

I read Middlemarch years ago and decided to read it again after watching the tv dramatisation (again, years ago) but somehow on the second read I couldn't get into it and gave up. If I hadn't read it before, though, I think I would have been more determined to stick with it.

Momo

2nd May 2007, 02:32 PM

I recommended Middlemarch to my book group and we are going to discuss it next month. Will have to re-read it by then and hope that our members will like it. I did finish Wuthering Heights but I always thought something more must come out of this. Well, it didn't and I was quite disappointed.

FirelightSpirit

2nd May 2007, 03:15 PM

Minxminnie

2nd May 2007, 04:10 PM

I tried reading Wuthering Heights years ago (early teens), but couldn't get beyond the first few pages. I'm going to the library tomorrow and hoping to pick up a copy then so I will finally get to read it. :)

I read Wuthering heights while on holiday in Switzerland, having been unable to get into it before. I'm sure the mountains helped!

Hazel

2nd May 2007, 05:56 PM

I'll stick up for Wuthering Heights - it's one of my all time favourites.

Jen

2nd May 2007, 09:11 PM

I did finish Wuthering Heights but I always thought something more must come out of this. Well, it didn't and I was quite disappointed.
I've read it (in full) twice but never 'got it'. Too much symbolism for my simple mind, I fear.

Momo

2nd May 2007, 09:30 PM

I read Wuthering heights while on holiday in Switzerland, having been unable to get into it before. I'm sure the mountains helped!http://www.cheesebuerger.de/images/more/schilder/n018.gifYou really made my day. I never really thought about the Yorkshire Alps. :D

SlowRain

3rd May 2007, 05:38 AM

Pride and Prejudice
:yikes:
Actually, you may be able to help me with that book.

My main problem wasn't so much Austen's narrative, it was her structure. I admit I didn't get too far into it, but I felt she glossed over two very important scenes: the first meeting between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, and I can't recall the other one just now. I usually have difficulty when the author stacks the deck like that: a tactic often used by low-grade mystery writers, and then readers exclaim that they never saw the end coming, not realizing it was because the author denied them access to the information rather than any particular brilliance on the part of the writer.

I usually don't mind unreliable narrative, but I don't think that's what Austen was going for in this book–maybe I'm wrong there. I wanted to see their first meeting at the party to decide for myself how Mr. Darcy acted; I wanted to see how Austen presented it. I felt cheated when she denied the reader that crucial moment and then expected us to take Elizabeth's account at face value. From that point on, everything, and I mean everything that Elizabeth says becomes suspect, even the ending, for how can we ever trust her again (I also had the same problem with the movie The Usual Suspects). It may be Austen's way of discussing gossip and second hand information, I don't know, but it felt cheap.

I really like the 2005 movie starring Keira Knightley, so I know there's a very good story in there (the movie showed their first meeting). I just need a little literary motivation to try the novel again. I need to know there was a reason, other than a cheap trick, why Austen denied the reader that first meeting.

katrina

3rd May 2007, 06:42 AM

I always wish I could cut Wuthering Heights in half, the first halfs great the second half was a huge disappointment.
I would say that I was unable to finish Moby Dick no matter how much I stuck at it and The Odesssy I always seem to get half way through then somehow get distracted and don't go back to it.

David

3rd May 2007, 10:34 AM

I always wish I could cut Wuthering Heights in half, the first halfs great the second half was a huge disappointment.
I know what you mean, Katrina. The first half with Cathy and Heathcliff is the best part of the novel, but I didn't find the second half a huge disappointment, just not quite so brilliant as the first. I'm sorry and not a little surprised that so many people couldn't get on with it. It remains one of my favourite books and is a quite staggering achievement on Emily Bronte's part.

Momo

3rd May 2007, 12:44 PM

Actually, you may be able to help me with that book.I have moved your question to our Pride & Prejudice thread here (http://www.bookgrouponline.com/forum/showthread.html?p=34413&posted=1#post34413) .

oneofthesedays

8th May 2007, 11:23 AM

tagesmann

14th May 2007, 06:12 AM

when I was 18 I tried War And Peace but gave up after two attempts - it wasnt the length it was because thre were so many characters it was impossible to keep track, for me. Some years on maybe I should try it again...I would if I were you. I've read it a couple of times and really enjoyed it. I think it helps to find a translation that you are comfortable with.
I couldn't complete Anna Karenina and I think it was because I just didn't care about the characters enough.

megustaleer

14th May 2007, 07:37 AM

...War And Peace ... it wasnt the length it was because thre were so many characters it was impossible to keep track... Some years on maybe I should try it again...

oneofthesedays - what an appropriate username for this thread! :D

Welcome to BGO, I hope you enjoy the time spent here, and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts in the various threads.
How about paying a visit to Central library, and telling us a bit about yourself in the introductions thread?

Don't leave it too long before trying W&P again, or you may find that your ability to remember multiple characters is worse than it was at 18 :rolleyes:

Minxminnie

14th May 2007, 04:29 PM

Getting to back on topic when I was 18 I tried War And Peace but gave up after two attempts - it wasnt the length it was because thre were so many characters it was impossible to keep track, for me. Some years on maybe I should try it again...

This reminds me of an episode of Father Ted, when he pretends to have read Crime and Punishment to impress a visiting female author. He claims to have enjoyed the Crime bit, but thought it waned a bit when it got to the Punishment part!
I have avoided War and Peace, despite the apparently very good new translation, because I hear that it does have "War" and "Peace" bits. Great chunks of military action don't appeal. Am I judging it too harshly?
(Maybe I should PM Top Cat - if he can still remember it all!)

Momo

14th May 2007, 09:21 PM

If you have ever seen Mr. Hobbs takes a vacation (it's a very funny old movie with James Stewart, he takes War and Peace on holiday and tries to read it there. He doesn't get very far and neither does the girl he meets on the beach. It's just hilarious how they talk about it. Just the type of conversation you expect someone like that to have. He is a bank director and wants to read to relax while on holidays, this girl on the beach is just a dumb blonde (no other word for it) who says something like "up to now the book seems to be just like the movie" :rolleyes: http://www.cheesebuerger.de/images/smilie/froehlich/g035.gif

JuneHawk

21st June 2007, 11:59 AM

"The Scarlet Letter" I tried, I really did. I had about a quarter of the book left to read when I just couldn't do it anymore so I abandoned it. Same goes for "Utopia" (although not a novel) and "The Time Traveler's Wife".

June

Viccie

21st June 2007, 04:33 PM

I have avoided War and Peace, despite the apparently very good new translation, because I hear that it does have "War" and "Peace" bits. Great chunks of military action don't appeal. Am I judging it too harshly?

If you don't enjoy reading lots of military history and you're one of those readers who has to read every word, then no. I have no compunction about skimming boring bits in books - not skipping - so I can just check I'm not missing something vital which is what I did with the battle scenes in W & P. There's a lot about masonic ritual too, I seem to remember.

If that sounds off putting don't be because the story is so good and charecters in W & P are so vivid, so alive that they make any effort well worth it. I was so entranced by it that I read it in a week - while I was revising for my mocks. (I did much better than anyone expected too!)

Minxminnie

21st June 2007, 06:53 PM

If you don't enjoy reading lots of military history and you're one of those readers who has to read every word, then no. I have no compunction about skimming boring bits in books - not skipping - so I can just check I'm not missing something vital which is what I did with the battle scenes in W & P. There's a lot about masonic ritual too, I seem to remember.

Thanks. I do find it difficult to miss out chunks, tho I have done it at times. Maybe one day.

gg106

21st June 2007, 07:24 PM

Read the first two pages of Middlemarch then decided life was too short...
The funny thing was I was reading it for a tutorial at university which ended up revolving round the reasons why I coud not get passed chapter one. :naughty:

Toothbrush1984

22nd June 2007, 11:59 PM

The Bible...

On a more serious note, 'One Flew Over the Cucko's Nest'. Great movie, just haven't been able to finish the book yet. :o

Mytly

23rd June 2007, 08:46 PM

Read the first two pages of Middlemarch then decided life was too short... Me too ... though I think I managed to reach page 11 or 12 (quite an achievement, I think ;)).

Momo

24th June 2007, 10:40 PM

... and "The Time Traveler's Wife"Don't worry, you haven't missed much there. ;)

Colinj

25th June 2007, 05:55 PM

Tolstoy's War and Peace, have to be in the right frame of mind for that one.

Revony

25th June 2007, 06:52 PM

Not exactly the Most Famous book but...James Herbert- The Magic Cottage...or..
Stig of the Dump.

sean76

25th June 2007, 07:36 PM

its 'A Tale Of Two Cities' by Dickens. got about half way through but just couldnt pull myself out the other side. keep telling myself I have to go back for Round 2!

Cassandra_Mortmain

26th June 2007, 10:09 AM

Great Expectations, I can't get past the graveyard scene - is very annoying!

I'm about 300 pages into War and Peace but haven't picked it up in ages.

Not exactly the most famous book.. but Captain Corelli's Mandolin - I must have read the first chapter a dozen times and can't get past Mussolini's rant.

David

26th June 2007, 10:26 AM

Great Expectations, I can't get past the graveyard scene - is very annoying!
Gosh! You really ought to give it another go! It's genuinely worth it.

I'd have to say the same for A Tale of Two Cities, Sean76. The first true 'classic' that I read and it opened my eyes as to what literature could achieve.

Minxminnie

26th June 2007, 04:28 PM

Not exactly the most famous book.. but Captain Corelli's Mandolin - I must have read the first chapter a dozen times and can't get past Mussolini's rant.

Just miss it out. I can't see that it's essential to the story, and it stops so many people from going on with an enjoyable book. Could his editor not have pointed that out?

FirelightSpirit

27th June 2007, 08:42 AM

I am determined not to let War and Peace get the better of me. After several weeks, during one of which I didn't read anything, I am 200 pages in and determined to persevere.

Copy-and-Paste Philosophy

27th June 2007, 10:01 AM

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. I wanted to get into the Russian classics a little more, but I got a few chapters in and... my brain just shut down (why would you DO this to me?! sort of deal). I'm hoping it was just my mind-state at that point in time (sudden and unexpected attack of ADD?), as I really would like to see what all the fuss is about.

kimchi

27th June 2007, 05:04 PM

Huckleberry Finn. It was required reading in high school and college and I disliked it both times. For some reason, I tried reading it again a few weeks ago thinking maybe I’m missing something. Got through five chapters and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I have yet to get through a Dickens or a Virginia Woolf. I lose interest in Dickens and I can never garner any for Woolf.

Cassandra_Mortmain

28th June 2007, 11:46 AM

I have yet to get through a Dickens or a Virginia Woolf. I lose interest in Dickens and I can never garner any for Woolf.

I know exactly what you mean Kimchi - I can never get past the first chapter of Great Expectations and only managed 36 pages of Mrs Dalloway! Will have to try and get back to them this summer!

Grammath

28th June 2007, 11:54 AM

Huckleberry Finn. It was required reading in high school and college and I disliked it both times. For some reason, I tried reading it again a few weeks ago thinking maybe I’m missing something. Got through five chapters and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Interesting. I still remember from the tutorial I had on it during my degree course where there was a very clear gender split in terms of opinions on the novel. The chaps liked it, I guess because of the boys' own adventure story side of the raft trip, but the female members of the group without exception hated it with a passion. In all the various book discussion groups I've been a member of over the years, I can't remember another book that did this quite so clearly.

gg106

28th June 2007, 05:23 PM

Interesting. I still remember from the tutorial I had on it during my degree course where there was a very clear gender split in terms of opinions on the novel. The chaps liked it, I guess because of the boys' own adventure story side of the raft trip, but the female members of the group without exception hated it with a passion. In all the various book discussion groups I've been a member of over the years, I can't remember another book that did this quite so clearly.

mmmm must check my gender. I really enjoyed it....

angel

28th June 2007, 06:25 PM

Huckleberry Finn
mmmm must check my gender. I really enjoyed it....
Me too - but then I was only 8 years old - perhaps a better stage for rafts and pranks than high school or college. Our primary school teacher read it to us in weekly installments and we all loved it.

Momo

28th June 2007, 10:28 PM

mmmm must check my gender. I really enjoyed it....http://www.cheesebuerger.de/images/smilie/frech/a020.gif I have always been a tomboy (tomgirl?), maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much?

Grammath

29th June 2007, 11:06 AM

Guess "Huckleberry Finn" one of those books where your judgement of it is also coloured by the age at which you read it.

I also found it interesting as we examined its style. It was ground breaking in a couple of key ways, as it was the first popular American novel where the speech was written in dialect, and also that Jim was a black character who wasn't explicitly identified with slavery as those in novels such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had been.

Anyway, getting off topic.

Slim Jenkins

30th June 2007, 07:30 PM

Another 'vote' for 'Catch 22' here...tried it about twenty years ago and then last year...nope. The Thomas Pynchon biggies, as much as I want to 'get' them, I never can. But surely James Joyce is the king of 'Most Famous But Unread'? I've never tried 'War And Peace' (the sheer scale puts me off) but I have read, and loved 'Moby-Dick', which often crops up on people's 'Unread(able) Classics' lists.

Volvican

3rd July 2007, 08:16 AM

Anna Karenina for me. I even got quite far along in it so it was fairly stupid of me to stop. But stop I did. (Although if asked, I will lie and say I have read it as I was at least half-way through. :naughty: )

There aren't many others as it's not like me to leave a book unfinished no matter how bad or difficult.

FirelightSpirit

3rd July 2007, 10:22 AM

I think you're probably right about Joyce, Slim, though I am one of those who has read Ulysses. I can see why people wouldn't bother though!

John Self

3rd July 2007, 10:28 AM

Ho boy, where to begin?

Anything by Thomas Pynchon
Anything by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Several books by Salman Rushdie (but not Shalimar the Clown, which I read last week and loved!)
Ulysses of course
Don DeLillo's Underworld
And too many more to mention...

Colyngbourne

3rd July 2007, 10:29 AM

How famous is 'famous?

Charlotte Grey - Sebastian Faulks

Momo

3rd July 2007, 02:59 PM

Anna Karenina for me. I even got quite far along in it so it was fairly stupid of me to stop. But stop I did. (Although if asked, I will lie and say I have read it as I was at least half-way through. :naughty: )What a shame, it's a great novel. But I can understand if someone doesn't finish it, it's a lot to read and a lot to cope with.

Grammath

3rd July 2007, 04:01 PM

Anything by Thomas Pynchon

Not even "The Crying of Lot 49"? I could cope with about 150 odd pages (some of them very odd indeed) of Pynchon, and "Gravity's Rainbow" has been staring back at me from the shelves for several years daring me to give it a go. I haven't got up the nerve yet.

Don DeLillo's Underworld

I had been considering taking this away with me when I go to the US next month - I'd like to take something claiming to be a Great American Novel with me, and I've not tried DeLillo before - but perhaps I might reconsider.

As for me, I'm one of those who usually doggedly sticks with a book until the bitter end, but I don't think I finished the first "Rabbit" novel, and its put me off ever picking Updike up again.

Colinj

3rd July 2007, 06:19 PM

The Moor's Last Sigh Salman Rushdie and
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Billybob

3rd July 2007, 08:03 PM

The Moor's Last Sigh Salman Rushdie and
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
I couldn't finish A Suitable Boy either, just found it so boring. I see your reading The Great and Secret Show, how are you enjoying it?, I loved this book, Clive Barkers best.

Momo

3rd July 2007, 10:11 PM

I think the main reason people don't finish A Suitable Boy is its length. There is just soooo much in this novel. I loved it, though. And will read it again someday. :D

Barblue

4th July 2007, 07:23 AM

I am one of those who has read UlyssesMe too. :arms: I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, but Ulysses was one of the reasons I embarked on a degree course a few years back. I know it's a difficult book to read and understand, but having done so it is such a satisfying read - been through it twice now.

On the other hand, I have never finished Midnight's Children - read about half.

brightphoebus

4th July 2007, 10:06 AM

Ho boy, where to begin?

Anything by Thomas PynchonThis is another author who usually appeals only to men, so I'm relieved to find a committed male reader who finds him unreadable, as I do. I did try, honest, because I wanted to be one of the cool people. Several times. Any women out there who can tolerate him?

And too many more to mention...Please mention!