There was recently published a list of books people couldn't finish, and I was suprised to find a few in that that I actually loved - not so surprised to find some that I couldn't as well never finish.

Here are the books I could never finish reading - couldn't even get through page 15 in some of them x.X;;;

*Ulysses , by James Joyce - What can I say, I wanted to try x.X; I was intrigued at the beginning, I must admit, but as I went through it, I couldn't understand anything at all, so I quit XD;

*In Search of Lost Time - by Marcel Proust - I don't even know why I tried in the first place. I didn't even finish the first novel.

*The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann. I bought it because a teacher mentioned it at gawd knows which of my art classes, probably vanguard art, and I was curious about it. Quit when Mann went on and on explaining for like 4 pages about the feelings of lighting a cigarette.

Books which didn't appear in the list that I couldn't finish :

*The Ingenous hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha , by Miguel de Cervantes. As a spaniard I was forced to read or attempted to read this book at an early teen stage and I just couldn't take it, I hate Cervanted X.x;

*The Unbereable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera .. Okay, I know many people actually adore Kundera but I just kept getting lost on the thread of characters in this novel XD;

Books which appeared in the list and I actually finished :

*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , by J.K Rowling .. Okay, the survey was done on adults but still .. WHY? Oh well, I guess it's a matter of taste but still. I am an adult too and I never had trouble with any of Rowling's books x.X;

*Crime And Punishement by Fiodor Dostoyevski .. OKay, I just loooove this book. It's probably my favourite book of all times but I can understand why some people could not finish it. It depresses you and it makes you feel in such an odd ... state. Genious, though.

*The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I was actually given this book by a friend of mine when I wasn't feeling alright and he thought that might help me or something. I didn't quite like it or didn't help me in anyways but still not that bad.

I don't remember anymore books but if any of you do let me know ^^

I will probably be adding reviews on books I like or just mentioning books I want to actually read ^^

Reserved for future usage XD :D

A game of Thrones

The Iliad.... and I actually can't recall any other that just annoyed me or bored me to much to finish ^_^'

although it took me a very long tome to get through a book called the Outlanders, it was just a strange Sci-Fi... I kept on having to put it down and read something else for a bit before I could go back to it

Ehhhhh I forgot to mention the Iliad lol. I will sometime later but yeah, I recall having to read it since I am a former student of History of Art and I needed to know - by heart - tons of myths & what not. But I gave up and bought a dictionary on greek and roman mythology - which is pretty good and if anyone's interested I can give details on it ^^

I have never heard of the rest ^^

books i've never finished...

well there's teh harry potter fourth book~ i started on that one... and didn't get past the first chapter. Really couldn't stand it. Didn't read any of theother books in the series either.

Another book is the hobbit and the lord of the rings books. Maybe i just don't have the patience... who knows XD There's other books... i just can't think of anymore at the moment ~

oh a game of thrones... my friend was recommending me that book. I think it's that one >>" It's about a bunch of thieves that are experts in stealing but have no clue what to do with the built up riches or something right~?

edit: shoot i'm confusing myself XD a song of ice and fire~~~
the thief one is another book he was recommending XD

So Soullzie is one of those adults who didn't like 4th book haha - and none of the others either but those weren't on the list :3 It's pretty ironice, 4th was my fave HP book until 5th came out .. Then 5th was my fave until I read 6th book ^^ Now I am assuming I will love 7th book XD

I loved Lord of the Rings, but isn't it funny? I never like The Hobbit :o

Originally Posted by Sherezade

Then 5th was my fave until I read 6th book ^^ Now I am assuming I will love 7th book XD

I loved Lord of the Rings, but isn't it funny? I never like The Hobbit :o

>.> <.< pre-ordered XP
and I will not even try the hobbit, not even interested at all ^_^'

my sister and cousins were great fans of the harry potter books... bought them all up to the 5th book i think~

not sure about what happened to te 6th and such~

Originally Posted by Sherezade

So Soullzie is one of those adults who didn't like 4th book haha - and none of the others either but those weren't on the list :3 It's pretty ironice, 4th was my fave HP book until 5th came out .. Then 5th was my fave until I read 6th book ^^ Now I am assuming I will love 7th book XD

I loved Lord of the Rings, but isn't it funny? I never like The Hobbit :o

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are absolute favs of both my mom and dad... and they read both to me as a bed-time-story when i was just a little kid o.O;;

Gotta say now tho that I do love Lord of the Rings... a lot more so than The Hobbit. But that one isn't so bad.

I have a lot of books that I couldn't finish or I had to literally force myself to finish it.

I read Don Quixote for Uni English class... it wasn't too bad.

Moby Dick... now THAT was torturous reading @.@;;

Also the Faerie Queen... i could barely understand it... @.@;;

there's a lot more but i foget ^^

There's only one book I started and never finished (at least in my memory) and that was The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersen (or something like that). I started it and got about 50 pages in and tossed it very literally aside for something else I'd been aching to read ... I want to say it was a new Chuck Palahniuk book, but I'm not certain. Anyhow, when I tossed the book aside, I inadvertantly tossed it into my trunk, whereupon it was crushed under funnels and bottles of water and the like and was eventually recovered crusted in dried transmission fluid while I was cleaning out my car for a road trip about a year later. I've since repurchased it and plan to finish it at some point in the future.

There are a couple books for my literature classes that I skimmed, rather than read, in the interest of time. "The Faerie Queen", as mentioned above, was rather a pain in the ass. I'm all for allegory, but man was that laying it on thick. I have no real interest in rereading that one. The other one I skimmed was "Paradise Lost", which I really liked and am planning on rereading it. "Beowolf", ironically, was the one piece we were only supposed to read the good parts (the battles) and I read the whole thing xD

But yeah, usually I'll plow through any book, but there have been more than a few I've been tempted to hurl against the wall. I actually did that with the unabridged version of Les Miserables. I forget which part. I think it was when Hugo was giving background on a character (Fantine's lover/Cosette birth father) that Hugo states right off the bat has nothing to do with the main story. To be fair, I was in a foul mood (bad vacation) and needed some light reading instead of some deep introspective literature. And don't boo and hiss me. I picked up an abridged version that only cut out the really unnecessary stuff (basically, it was edited. Hugo was notorious for refusing any editorial advice) such as the whole chapter on Parisian street slang and the chapter on the history of the sewers and I ended up loving it and it's now one of my favorites. But trying to read about the miserable ones when you're stuck in an underfurnished hotel room that's leaking water and feeling claustrophobic in a city of 3 million people is not the time to read it. That's when you pick up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and have a few beers.

I could never finish the lord of the rings series. I bought the compilation and I got I believe halfway through the second book but it was like boring homework to me.

@Soullzie .. Well, I guess it's all a matter of choice X3

@Elie .. Wow, cool. I don't even recall what my parents used to read me when I was a kid. Most likely nothing >.< I didn't even like reading in that early stage of my life ^^; I didn't think the Hobbit was bad, I just kept comparing it to Lord of the Rings since I read it afterwards and that's always a bad idea =)

On a side note, I didn't use to toss books aside when they were tedious. I used to read them all, until I realised reading was my pleasure so why make it a torture with stories or topics that just don't appeal to me? x.X;

Don Quixote .. well, it's the kind of book nearly all spaniards hate, since we're forced to believe it's awesome from early stages of education - I guess all cultures have this kind of situation which I rather think is wrong.

Never read Moby Dick =) And I've never heard about that Faerie Queen, I'll check it out on the internet because now you've all gotten me curious ^^

@Victor Von Doom .. Nice nick haha. I might have missed a few books that I actually skipped. I didn't even mention the ones I skimmed - that I can now remember, Anna Karenina, but don't ask me which parts, I read it more than 10 years ago XD; - ...

Beowolf .. wasn't that made into an ( aweful ) film? It does ring a bell. The others don't XD - read about cultures, can't we all just study universal literature?.

Eck. Les Miserables. I've also read that, a crapload of ages ago. Pure torture, I don't know how could I even go through it - I didn't enjoy it and that disappointed me deeply, since I had reaaally been forward to reading it.

Or Bukowski's Pulp, which was a nice surprise. I never thought I would like this book but I did, I enjoyed and laughed like a maniac.

@Jennger .. Where you forced to read it or something?

@Victor Von Doom .. Nice nick haha. I might have missed a few books that I actually skipped. I didn't even mention the ones I skimmed - that I can now remember, Anna Karenina, but don't ask me which parts, I read it more than 10 years ago XD; - ...

Beowolf .. wasn't that made into an ( aweful ) film? It does ring a bell. The others don't XD - read about cultures, can't we all just study universal literature?.

Eck. Les Miserables. I've also read that, a crapload of ages ago. Pure torture, I don't know how could I even go through it - I didn't enjoy it and that disappointed me deeply, since I had reaaally been forward to reading it.

Beowulf has been made into a number of movies, some good, some bad. They're supposed to be making into a CGI movie for this summer sometime, so that should be amazing if done right. I just loved to story. I can't wait to read Grendel.

Les Miserables is indeed a chore and the plot is not the best paced, but almost every word he writes serves some rammificaion to the story as whole. The whole 80 pages at the beginning with Bishop Myriel seems superfluous, but it actually shows the character of a man capable of the extraordinary benevolence that would allow him to forgive such a man as Valjean was and, in such a time, touch a miserable man like Valjean so that it affects his entire life. In fact the whole plot is so tight, it's like a Mobius strip. My only complaint, apart for the editing, lies with the translations .... Hugo writes casually about events that were common knowledge for his time, but without a lesson in French history, the story suffers. They really should have extensive notes as to the historcal resonance.

But I disgress. I'd recommend finding the most adridged version you can find. I found one that was only 350 pages and considering the original text is somewhere around 1300 pages, that's rather abridged! I skimmed it, you basically get the bare-bones plot. Try that, or watch one of the movie adaptations. Maybe that will help. For me, I found it to be a very trying, but uplifting anf fulfilling novel. Apart from A Prayer for Owen Meany if there was a novel that could make me a spiritual person, Les Mis is it.

I'm a little upset about the smack talk against Don Quixote. I've not read it , and I understand it is a rather daunting novel, but it's basically the first modern novel, beloved by the writers we've grown to belove ourselves. I think it was Hugo who read Quixote once a year. It's an important part of literary history, but I do agree it shouldn't be something forced upon students, except those going for an English degree.

My version is actually 1300 pages XD Well, it's over that actually ^^; I've also seen movie adaptations of it but I didn't like those.

And well, it might be the first modern novel, but that doesn't mean we have to adore the book. The character himself is just idiotic, not to mention Sancho Panza <.<;;

And we study it here since we're kids, and forced to read it when we are teens. And we never got to reach Universal literature because in all my life literature courses my teachers spent way too much time talking about spanish literature - fine, we're spanish but so what? We *did* study Universal History. I would have rather preferred, at some point, being given the chance to study Russian writers, for example.

Frank Herbert's Dune, I read up to page five and quit. My sister actually fell asleep on the first page when she tried this. :wink:

"The Shadow Rising"
"Last of the Mohicans"
"The Silmarillion"
"Gardens of the Moon"
"1984"

Well, I most of the times finish everything I pick up since I hate wasting time on starting one. :3

These are the ones I haven't finished but plan to in the future..;__;'' Hopefully.
-=Is stoned for only liking old novels/classics=-

Sophocles - Halfway through
War and peace - Pg. 400 something..
Sense and Sensibility
Metamorphosis
The Brothers Karamazov
Main Street <--Got boring.

The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Boy.
All The Pretty Horses.

Both of those I stopped reading because both authors decided they didn't need to use punctuation for spoken quotations, and I just could NOT get past it. I like my dialogue differentiated from my prose, thank you very much.

No one kill me or anything, but, although I have tried, I have never been able to finish any of the Lord of the Rings books. x__x;;

Originally Posted by Sammi

No one kill me or anything, but, although I have tried, I have never been able to finish any of the Lord of the Rings books. x__x;;

I won't kill you. XD Mainly because I haven't read the books in their entirety either. ^^;; I skipped two chapters at a time, in some instances.

Lord of the Rings
hahahahahaha
Geesh
everytime i see them sitting in my bookshelf
i will be like damm i got to finish that book!!
but i always only ending up reading one page before i give up >.>
Maybe its the edition?
I find it extremely reader-unfriendly...

A Tale of Two Cities...However, on the third try [and this time, I was FORCED to, since my mum was irked, and we have a test on it at school] I've finally finished it, including afterword and all. I was proud of myself, and started to bounce all over the place ^o^

As well as Lord of the Rings 3....I've read all the other books, I just can't seem to focus on this one, singular novel. And the worst part about this is, I suppose, the tendency of mine to not watch a movie based on a book unless I read the book. So, I've watched only the first two movies =_=

Originally Posted by Sammi

No one kill me or anything, but, although I have tried, I have never been able to finish any of the Lord of the Rings books. x__x;;

We are the same kind!!
hahahahhahaha
maybe i shdn't have started with the main series?
and should have gotten the side one volumes to read instead...

I guess when i was a little kid, my dad figured i'd be better able to understand The Hobbit rather than go straight to Lord of the Rings.

Sammi, lol don't worry no one is gonna kill you! I just have strange parents... tis all o.o;;

Dad used to read to me a lot when I was little. When I was like 3 I could recite "Horton Hears a Who" from memory and be so good at it that I could make people think I was actually reading from a random page o.O;;

Like hell if I tried to memorize that thing now. It's looooong for a children's book!

Ah I get now why Siri doesn't like Don Quixote... XD Generally tho I do like "classics" and I'll even read them for fun. Unless they are really horrible or give you a headache when reading >.<;;

And yush The Faerie Queen was just evil. I googled it back up and copy-paste some quotes...

"LO I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far vnfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses hauing slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.
Helpe then, ô holy Virgin chiefe of nine,
Thy weaker Nouice to performe thy will,
Lay forth out of thine euerlasting scryne
The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still,
Of Faerie knights and fairest Tanaquill,
Whom that most noble Briton Prince so long
Sought through the world, and suffered so much ill,
That I must rue his vndeserued wrong:
O helpe thou my weake wit, and sharpen my dull tong."

Might I add that the u and v are sometimes swapped o___O;;

also note that i didn't put them in a [ quote] thingy cuz i loose gold ^^;;


I did like Beowulf tho strangely XD


omg i remember a book now! Lord Jim. Gawd I couldn't get past the first couple pages! And I had to read it for English because it was too late to change your selection. >.<;;;;;;