Interesting thread on the Guardian’s ‘Comment Is Free’ site today.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/08/which-b...
The Hawking Index is named, of course, after Stephen Hawking’s bestselling ‘A Brief History Of Time’, a book that is supposed to be notoriously difficult to finish.
Which books have you started but given up on? What made you stop reading?
Which books have you finished but wished you hadn’t?
Which books have you always meant to read but never quite got round to starting?
I’ll chip in with my own choices when I’ve had a bit more time to think about them. In the meantime, here’s how much of ‘Lord Of The Rings’ my late father managed: 16 words. Apparently it was ‘eleventy-first’ that did for him.
Comments
LotR
I can't say the same about my reading of LotR. I have read it the equivalant of once a year since 1973 when I (at 12 years old) was first given a copy of the LotR in a 3 volume boxed set. I read it so much that I totally wore out the books and had to replace it with a single volume "Red Book of Westernesse" version.
Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake.
One'd think guven my wonts I'd flap in kensome rejoyce to these salady garblefests but as yet the words of paragraph one for each swim in one eye and out my udders.
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Moby Dick. Hawaii. Great
Moby Dick. Hawaii. Great Expectations. Gave up on all three (and many, many others just like them) because I just couldn't handle the filler-to-plot ratio. School engendered a rabid anti-Dickens (and Hardy/Dostoyevski/Tolstoy) reflex in me.
I had to start "A Brief History of Time" twice. And I still don't understand it all.
If I finish a book, I wanted to. I'll close a book and walk away, right up to the second-last page, if it feels like a waste of time to go on.
(My Dad never read a page of LOTR, but he bought me the trilogy for Christmas when he saw how much I enjoyed The Hobbit. His style was more Louis L'amour.)
Arrrgh! Thomas Hardy!
I slogged through "Far From The Madding Crowd" in high school, detested it, and indeed could not tell you to this day what the book was about. Unlike you, however, the same period instilled in me a love of Dickens. And "Great Expectations" is one of his best. That said, I bought "Oliver Twist" years ago, but have never actually read it (I find I largely prefer Kindle books to the paper variety these days. I satisfy my computer addiction, and can stop reading for a moment and look something up pertaining to the book if I choose). I'll likely have to go to Project Gutenberg and read it there.
I'm with you when it comes to the overwhelming amount of ornate prose in Dickens' and Hardy's works, but Dickens' characters are so colorful and fascinating that it's well worth the effort.
"1984" is perhaps the only classic novel I went absolutely insane for, however, and thus have resolved to read Orwell's "Animal Farm", as it seems to me to be something of a companion piece to the other book. But so far I haven't done so. As yet I've only seen movie adaptations.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
my first thought
on your title was, a spitting contest rules. there was a Ursula K. Le Guin book I just could not get into, I heard good things about her but the over the top level of tree hugging etc. is what I remember turning me off. and i'm pro environmental good practices.
Hmmmm
I had great expectations about 'Great Expectations' but they we're dashed.
I'd never mock a killing bird, but I doubt I'll ever read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.
My history includes a brief time when I read MOST of 'A Brief History of Time'.
I read mostly science fiction and fantasy - it allows me to escape into a world where I don't have to be me.
with love,
HER
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
Me too!!!
I feel the same way about those three books, though I did finish Dr. Hawking's book. What threw me for a loop was reading Michiu Kaku's Hyperspace.
I read a lot of sf and f. I write mostly sf and f.
:)
~And so it goes...
I tried several times to read
I tried several times to read "The world as I see It" by Albert Einstein but could never go past page 3. I was so boring that I would fall asleep before the third page.
Digital Fortress
Or anything by Dan Brown, really. Not only does his style set my teeth on edge but his inaccuracy about how spy agencies work annoys me. I put down DF after fifteen pages and commented to a friend, "Well, he's seen the NSA building in Bethesda but he has no idea what the NSA actually does or just chooses to make stuff up."
I finished Stephen Donaldson's Thomas the Unbeliever tetralogy and felt so dissatisfied I've never read anything else by him. He can write but I felt cheated when his big-bad was defeated in the end by a trivial trick.
James Paterson is another writer I cannot read while admitting that he can write, he just cannot hold my interest for more than a few pages. Simple declarative sentences do not make everyone a Hemingway.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Thomas Covenant...
I've never believed you could make a rapist into a sympathetic character. I still don't. I won't go into having sex with your own daughter, grown up or not.
But with that said... Years ago, before the first book of the third set came out, at World Fantasy in Washington DC, I saw the reading room get packed to capacity because word had spread that Stephen Donaldson was going to read from a new Covenant story. When I say packed, I mean people standing in the back, every seat filled, seats brought in were filled, and people sitting on the floor. And then he read a passage from a legal pad. He does all of his first drafts by hand on legal pads. It was neat seeing the pages of the legal pad. There were things scribbled out, lines pointing from one thing to another, lots of margin notes in another color.
I'm not a Patterson fan, but I respect him tremendously, as mysteries are hard work. I would love to be able to write something with the skill of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Heck, I'd even love to be able to write something akin to Mike Stackpole's Merlin Bloodstone stories.
~And so it goes...
Patterson
I've read almost all of James Patterson's books. One thing that has to be noted about him is that, in an interview about how he writes, he has admitted that he deliberately writes short chapters. He said he hated to be interrupted during a chapter by the phone, dinner, the doorbell or whatever as he then has to review where he was on the page in order to get back into it. His short chapters give you ample, reasonable breakpoints if you need to stop quickly and come back later.
In another vein, James A. Michener's style is heavy in history up front but makes the rest of the book easier to read and more understandable. I never liked history in school but it was reading "Hawaii" that got me to really like, and look for, historically accurate books. That isn't to say it wasn't difficult. I think I started that book three or four times before I even got to the true "story" part of it. It was once I understood the first, I think, 2/3 to 3/4 of the introductory treatise that I finally couldn't put the book down. After that I was able to enjoy "Texas" as well. Then got into King, Patterson, Baldacci, Cornwell and others.
Hugs,
Erica
Yay for Short Chapters!
No, seriously.
I like using scenes as Chapters. If I'm going to change POV, done. New chapter.
Oh, and let's be honest here. Short chapters help make books into page-turners.
~And so it goes...
Donaldson
He WAS a good writer, if wordy, but he is now so up his own arse with a thesaurus that he is unreadable. I got partway into the second book of the last trilogy, and then end-read it. Life is too short, I decided, to read this crap. It is the literary equivalent of the drum solo. Followed by the bass solo. Followed by the triangle....
As for Dan Brown, I'd rather microwave my eyeballs.
I wrote a while ago that good prose should either astonish the reader with its beauty and art, or suck them in seamlessly so that they don't notice the skill of the author. Neither of these apply to the two authors mentioned.
not too many
I probably read a page or two of 'Finnegan's Wake', very difficult for a young person (I couldn't have been 20). I read the first 2 volumes of Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel, the third needs more of a ground in economics to understand.
From Russia With Confusion
I've given up trying to read anything by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. Each male character seems to have three or four names which are used at random, so that after a few pages you haven't a clue who's said what to whom.
Staying in the 19th century, I finished Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and couldn't believe how bad the writing was.
My neglect of American authors - with the exception of Raymond Chandler - shames me. I still haven't read 'Bonfire Of The Vanities', 'East Of Eden' or 'For Whom The Bell Tolls'. Other titles will no doubt occur to me after I've pressed SAVE.
Currently reading Ned Beauman's 'The Teleportation Accident'. No chance of me not finishing it. The guy can write!
Off-topic postscript (well, it is my blog)
Brazil 1 Germany 7 (SEVEN)
Never imagined I'd say this, but well done Germany.
Germany
I was completely enthralled watching that game. After the amount of poor sportsmanship Brazil had shown against Colombia I was thinking I'd see the same type of game.
Fifty-four fouls in one match, by one team. That's almost a foul a minute for two/thirds of the game.
When Germany scored four goals in six minutes I was dancing. Okay. As close to it as I could.
~And so it goes...
Russiann novels are all like that.
I gave up on Dr Zhivago but enjoyed it once I'd seen the film and worked out who was who.
A friend I used to give a lift to creative writing classes bought me a hardback Stephen King novel. I heard of him but never read any before and when all turned into 'things' coming out of toilet bowls I realised it was rubbish and gave up. I know he's popular but it's not for me.
Robi
The Twilight series
I couldn't get beyond the first chapter because this girl was so whinny. I've read the Hunger Games series too although I honestly wish I'd left the last two alone. You die, the girl dies, everyone dies... well almost.
After that, I've given up on this latest crop of young adult writers.
Grover
Harry Twilight Games
I loved the Twilight and the Hunger games series. Juvenile but entertaining. But I couldn't get even a chapter into Harry Potter. Loved the movies, the book was like cold porridge.
0.4
Have you read Mike Lancaster's '0.4'?
In the future, an audio tape is found containing a 15 year old boy's account of events that took place after his friend's attempt to hypnotise him at a village talent show went disastrously wrong. If what he relates is true, it means that everything about this future society is based on a lie. Nothing, not even the people themselves, are what they seem.
Few novels written for young adults make you question the very nature of reality. This one will.
Two words
Sparkly vampires.
(Insert lots of harsh foul invective here about the ridiculousness of sparkly vampires)
~And so it goes...
Dhalgren
A world gone literally insane from the view point of a mentally ill main character. It made my brain itch.
Webster's Dictionary
It was so fragmentary and devoid of plot that I had to give up about halfway thru Chapter D and just skip to the end. SPOILER: The zygote did it.
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Awwwww.....
...and I had already gotten to 'Q'...thanks a lot!!!!
Love, Andrea Lena
It's posts like this that
It's posts like this that make me wish I could give Kudos for them.
My Biggest Disappointment
and one of the books that still leave a sour taste in my mouth every time I think about it is Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz. A friend of mine recommended it, and I thought the book was alright up until the end, when it basically pulled the kind of twist that makes me absolutely loathe it. It was just... needless, and it hurt me to think I'd read through this entire book for... THAT.
Melanie E.
Two not finished, off the top of my head.
I can only come up with two that I remember deciding it wasn't worth the effort.
The first was, Heinlein's Future History. It dragged and was very unimaginative.
The second, Frank E. Peretti's Piercing the Darkness. Tried three times and couldn't get past chapter three. Don't know what I ever did with the book.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Not a book but...
While it isn't a book, I have a fairly humorous running joke/problem with the movie Willow. I have never managed to watch the whole thing through from beginning to end. Something always happens... I arrive and its fifteen minutes into it, or the tape dies ten minutes from the end. I've had to stop because of a house on fire. Taken someone to the hospital to get their stomache pumped. Two tapes and DVD have failed. The cable lines were cut by a neighbor. And those are just the times I still remember.
I'm afraid that if I ever try to watch it via streaming internet... I'll crash the world economy or something.
The Goldfinch
I've tried to read this story from time to time and just can't get into it. I'm about half way through the novel, but all it is, is about getting loaded on drugs and worrying that his theft will be discovered. Sorry but I just can't read it, what a waste of money, Arecee
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, every time I tried to read it, I fell asleep about 30 minutes in.
David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef, he mangled the spelling of names so much, I spent too much time translating them into normal English that it distracted from actually reading the story.
I did always mean to read The Castle by Kafka.
The Silmarillian
Why publish it? After a couple of pages I decided life was too short and I never re-read LotR again after that either.
Also tried and failed with several Russian authors because I couldn't remember the names. That puts our Drea diMaggio (The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of....) up there with Boris Pasternak (Dr Zhivago) because as much as I enjoy her writing my head hurt trying to follow the Maltese Falcon plot names
Rhona McCloud
So you missed the bit where
So you missed the bit where Luthien Tinuviel became a vampire and her boyfriend Beren became a werewolf in order to infiltrate the first Dark Lord's stronghold?
To say nothing of the best sentence Tolkien ever wrote.
And of the love of Thingol and Melian there came into the world the fairest of all the Children of Iluvatar that was or shall ever be.
How about one you don't recall the beginning of as you finish?
Anyone else struggle painfully through Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography"?
Persephone
Non sum qualis eram
The Hawking Index...
Well I once tried both of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey and died out very early on with those. I tried to get into the L. Ron Hubbard sci-fi decology, 'Mission Earth' but that fell by the wayside shortly into the first novel. I managed to finish his 'Battlefield Earth' but it was rough going and not worth the effort.
I have enjoyed a multitude of the older Sci-fi author's books however. I always loved anything by H. Beam Piper, his suicide when he was just beginning to be appreciated was tragic! Most of Harry Turtledove's alter-histories would keep me deeply involved as well. Jack Chalker's "The Identity Matrix" is an old friend that I've read many times and was my introduction to trans-gender fiction. John Steakley's "Armor" is another that I've read several time. All of Clive Cussler's original NUMA series of off-beat adventures, I lost interest once he changed story lines to his 'Oregon Files' and such. Lot's of Heinlein's work, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was one of my favorites of his. Joe Haldeman's 'The Forever War' series of novels also. Wow, so many good author's and books out there. Thinking of all the great novels I've read over the years now makes me want to go back and read a number of them again!!
Blossom
Cussler...
I loved the old Dirk Pitt novels, before he started writing them with his son, which meant that he plotted the book and his son wrote it.
However, I did like the Isaac Bell stories. They're really quite good.
Armor. Wonderful book. It's so sad that John Steakley died while writing the sequel.
~And so it goes...
I couldn't get into
The Da Vinci Code, tried it three times, loved the film. I did enjoy Angels and Demons, though like lots of thrillers so far fetched as to be ludicrous. I recently read the Shakespeare Secret although at times some of the phrases seemed a bit tautological - 'a blind darkness' is one that stuck in my mind. Again a silly plot but I signed up for book two.
Many of the Victorian heavyweights bored me rigid, especially Dickens and Hardy who I'm sure were paid by the word, hence the reams of unnecessary description. Didn't like Dostoevsky much either. Although the genera of who dunnits tends to be classed as literature lite, I've enjoyed many exponents of it from Conan Doyle to Donna Leon, but then I don't consider myself an intellectual. Proven by the fact that Deborah Harkness' 'John Dee's Conversations with angels' sent me to sleep in two pages, although the subject is one I usually find interesting. I haven't tried her vampire/witchy stuff doesn't attract me at all although Annie G loves it, but then she likes my writing which says it all - not so much literature lite as literature absent.
Angharad
Changing tastes
As a child, I read the whole of the C.S. Lewis 'The Space Trilogy'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trilogy
I tried to read them again a few years back and gave up after the first chapter.
Dune by Frank Herbert was an effort but I raised the white flag with Dragonslayer (Anne McCaffery)
That has put me off pretty well anything by classic SF but even some of the more recent stuff is really hard going.
The last book I put down and said 'Enough' is 'A Thousand Pardons' by Jonathan Dee. If this guy can be a Pulitzer finalist then I'm a monkeys uncle.(not really but IMHO, it is ****)
Dan Brown is an author I just avoid, as is Edward Rutherfurd. I found Sarum just turgid dross.
Samantha
I can honestly say that I've never finished
reading a book once I'd started reading it. That said, there are literally thousands of books I never started reading because they didn't interest me. While I pay little attention to critics, sometimes the blurbs on the back cover or inside he book just turn me off.
okay, I lied. There WAS one book I never finished. The Silmarillion. I have found that, while I enjoyed the Lord Od The Rings movies, the book just moved too slowly and actually bored me after a few chapters.
As for getting paid by the word... One of my all time favorite writers is E. E. Doc Smith. He who never allowed a sentence to do where a paragraph would suffice. Doc got paid by the word and his writing shows it, but DAMN, I loved the Lensman books!
Catherine Linda Michel (Lensman in training. LOL)
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.