Books you stopped reading . . .

I liked it. I've read all three of those books.

Patrick White - Voss.

The only book I've ever stopped reading and never gone back to (and I don't ever intend to.) Awful and awfully boring. I've no idea why it was so lauded.

Just my opinion, but I think The Magus is a bad example here. Most of the way through, the tension was building and building, and it felt like something was going to happen, but in the end it never really resolved the way I had hoped. I found the ending rather disappointing and a little rushed. Considering it had taken him so many pages to get to that point, to end it so quickly was a complete cop out. I was fairly irritated that I had persisted with it for so little payoff.

Whoever it was in here who said House of Leaves is boring just didn't understand it. Incredibly layered and with almost unlimited re-readability potential. So very worth the page count.

Diary, Haunted, The Tommyknockers, Trainspotting.

I try to finish, it pains me not to, but with the above I allowed myself to put them down without the worry of having to pick them up again.

Actually, the shorts in Haunted are brilliant, but the other stuff holding them together just got on my nerves. So now I've got tags, leading me to the shorts.

I stopped reading The Host by Stephenie Meyer on page 370ish. I was expecting something to happen, but nothing really did. The protagonist was extremely annoying as well. In short, it was a huge bore.

i couldn't make it through I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan....i'll have to revisit it because i absolutely LOVE the concept of it, but the speaker digresses too much...

I tried reading it twice but only got ten pages in each time. I hated the narrator.

I made it through all of I, Lucifer and then wrote a better book about Satan.

In Any case, if you still have the book somewhere in your house, there is still a chance to get back to it.
Anyone want a copy of Cell, by Stephen King. I need it out of here.

i'm glad i wasn't the only one...like i said, the idea of the book was awesome...maybe i should read the end

1982, Janine. It's awesome, I'm gonna start reading again in a minute.

One Second After by William Fortschen. I was expecting a somewhat scientific analysis of the various consequences of an EMP attack, and the novel seemed to focus on a father and his frantic worry over his daughters. I grew very bored within the first few chapters. I'm quite sure I'll give it another go sometime in the future when I run out of reading material.

I am surprised by all of the Catch-22 dislike here. That ranks on my top ten.

the next book i'm going to stop reading is Emma by Austen. i just picked it up today.

Watch Out (Sorry Chris, Sorry God--oops, i mean Suglia).

seriously though, this is one of the worst things i have read in so long. how it got published i will never know--did he vanity publish? seems like something he would do. the guy loves himself, and it shines through in his narrative, if you could call it that.

fuck-up No.1: he opens the novel with the word "Suddenly". fuck. you shouldn't ever use that retarded word anyway, let alone open your damn book with it.

fuck-up No.2: basically each sentence in the opening chapter is a fucking paragraph of its own. and it doesn't need to be. it's distracting and annoying.

and don't even ge me started on the voice and the language. it's immature and trying to so hard to be trangressive and edgy, and just comes off as "look at me look at me! i'm cool. trust. i am. look at me swearing and being gross!"

UGH!

seriously though, sorry, Chris. i feel bad because the book was a gift from Caligula for the may exchange, but i honestly couldn't let this slide. never buy it ever. it's kindling material, at best.

Richard Yates by Tao Lin.

Couldn't even make it past 20 pages. At least it was free.

i knew that was going to be horrendous. that dude is a fucking wang. i don't think i'll read any of his books, but i'll certainly continue uninformly hating on him and his work. meh.

I didn't finish "The Raw Shark Texts'. I read 230 pages because I really wanted to like it.

but seriously, Watch Out was fucking disgraceful. You've read it, haven't you, Brandon?

Yep, but there's nothing to say that hasn't already been said.

Ever read a train-wreck novel just to get the ego boost of being better than that?

Or does it just irritate you that they're published and you aren't?

the second one. but if you want a boost of confidence, i'll send you watch out. it is truly terrible.

I stopped reading A Million Little Pieces one fourth through because I found out that Fray eventually finds God.

i stopped reading it when i heard that it wasn't true

Either way I really liked the book A Million Little Pieces!

I couldn't finish Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. I'll admit, the prose is pretty clean, so it should have been a breeze to get through, but it's so damn long and tedious. (Plus, I had to return it to the library, which cut the time I had to read through it.)

I never finished the original scroll version of On The Road, either - that one was an aimless ramble I couldn't stick with. I got a fancy copy of it and everything, so I'm disappointed about that.

fountain head, the idiot, and white-knuckled the five people you meet in heaven.

i cant believe they still sell it ..Oprah should be shot not lethally just like with a tranq, I mean at least for white oleander!!(gay gay gay of the von gay gays shit was gaaaaayyyyyyyyyy)

Hopi: how to kill a thread in 10 ways.

I loved The Idiot by Dostoevsky!

the plot is sardonic and the main character I certainly do identify with, but honestly it was the names , I kept losing track, I' ll pick it up again ..eventually.

True - That's the one problem I do have with Dostoevsky. All of those long ass Russian names. And he uses first and last names. I get mixed up with them too.

i didn't read it. i did hear about before and after the truth came out. i think it's neat you still liked it anyway.

I read My Friend Leonard too which is also by James Frey. I thought that one was pretty good too.

I like that kind of writing though.

I also stopped reading American Psycho. I will eventually read it. But it just didn't put me in a reading mood when I began it.

I also stopped reading Crash by J.G. Ballard. And not because it wasn't interesting. Extremely interesting and I do like it, but all of sudden I lost all desire to read and just stopped.

Also stopped reading Honey For The Bears by Anthony Burgess. I stopped reading it before I stopped reading crash. Again what I read was good, but I just got into an I don't want to read funk. And then when I did want to read again, I started Crash instead. I need to finish those ones.

I think it's because I am all kinds of sad these days, and I love to read, so I don't like reading when I am sad. Takes away from the book.

A book that has to be read. AMAZING!

I do not take your opinion seriously. You stopped reading Crash AND American Psycho...

Did you read my reason for stopping. It doesn't have to do with the books being bad. It has to do with me not wanting to read. I have to be able to enjoy a book while I am reading it. If I am not in the mood to enjoy it, then I will stop reading it.

I started reading it before it came out he lied, and I was still reading it when that happened. I thought no big deal. Either it was a good memoir, or a good piece of fiction. I really liked it.

A friend of mine calls that "reader's block."

i struggled, at times, through American Psycho. i've said this a million times here already so i won't go on, but it was all the damn product placement and rants about fashion and hi-fi systems and whitney housten. ugh. the thing is, i appreciated it all, and understood exactly why it was there and for what reason, but at times i skimmed whole paragraphs of this dude was wearing this and this and this and ordered this etc.

and as for Crash, well, i just couldn't finish it, even though it's only a small book. it was fucking boring and didn't feel like it was going any where interesting. it was hard to read and the prose was pretty dull, really.

I gave up on that after about 300 pages.

I am currently reading "The Raw Shark Texts". I actually was ready to put it down around page 50, but then I got to the letters he wrote to himself and was hooked. If I would have gotten to page 230 and still didn't like it, I would have forced myself to finish it since I flipped through the book and noticed that 30+ pages are pictures of the Ludovician swimming. Of course, as I am almost finished with the book, I can agree with some reviews I have read that have said that the last quarter of the book is basically the end of the movie Jaws. Assuming you've seen Jaws, probably not missing out on much.

I was also going to comment on Crash by J.G. Ballad, but then remembered I read Concrete Island by him, not Crash, and that left such a vile taste in my memory that I will never read anything by him. I only forged through that book because it was short.

i was reading it when i found out it was not true, and it kind of messed me up...i agree it was good either way...maybe i should try it again

quote quote quote!

what the hell book are you talking about ms. lie?

see? and i knew that too...my bad...it was that book a million little pieces...

Just remembered that I never read the last 100 pages of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.

i thought you must've meant Raw Shark Texts, and then i thought 'geeee, imagine thinking that shit was real!'.

i just laughed out loud, and had my cat look at me funny

cats can be so judgmental, the little prudes.

totally off subject, but my husband just said "how old am i, 43?" and he was being totally serious...the bad thing is, he's only 36