Books you stopped reading (for whatever reason)

The best statement on God of Small Things was from a friend who said "She wrote a conventional novel and then hit the Randomize button on her computer."

Possession's neither that good nor that bad. My sister rereads it once a year. I made it through for a book group, but did so by saying "Oh -- clever pastiche of Robert Browning for the next fifteen pages -- duly noted. I'll come back if I've got time." All the old English majors did the same thing and finished. Dutiful people of other backgrounds tried to read the poems as they appeared and didn't finish.

"and pickwick papers."
This is one of the few times you need to stick it out -- Sam Weller doesn't show up until Chapter Five or so, and that's when it takes off. Huck Finn's got the same problem, of course -- the great book starts late and ends early, with dumb chapters in both directions. But then, he didn't know he was writing a Great Book.

Is this true? Did he have a cocaine addiction in the 80s?

in pynchon's defense, i tried to read "v" when i got back & made it only about 40 pages in before quitting because i had no idea what he was talking about (literally).

Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I loved loved loved the foreword and the theme flow chart, but the beginning wasn't that great. I'm all for squalor and description, but I wasn't digging his mom puking in a bucket. McSweeney's rocks, though.

Bright Lights, Big City. The book's still good, and I eventually finished it, but it doesn't live up to the promise of the first 20 pages

I was planning to read The Crimson Petal... but these comments make me think I'll save myself a heavy load coming back from the library after all.

Fante - Ask the Dust - I fear I may have lost my taste for Bukowski (and co.)

Gibson - Pattern Recognition. Read a line I think it was "the fridge was empty except for the smell of long-chain polymers." I laughed, stumbled on for a few more chapters and closed the book.

I recently gave up on the second vol of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because the pictures ran out ha. I have no concentration span these days. I used to never give up on books but now I sometimes get overcome by inertia before I even start them and before I know it they're due back.

Books started and not finished this year include George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones (too flatulent), Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair (appallingly written) and A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry (too Oirish). I've just finished Auster's City of Glass having failed to finish it the first time, despite its being no more than a novella. I'm not incapable of liking metaphyical novels, but I feel pretty lukewarm about Auster's work despite his impressive brain. Beckett did much the same thing even more cleverly without making me feel more of it would be a good thing.

100 Years isn't hard to get through in the sense that dense, difficult prose is hard to get through. It's more like a Country Time Lemonade with five extra sugars.

I tend to do this more often with nonfiction books than fiction. It's a natural litmus test to how interested I am in a particular subject. I may be interested enough to check out the book but not 800 pages interested.

One work of fiction I can specifically remember not finishing was The Stand. I saw the 8 hour miniseries when they aired it back in the early 90s, and the book seemed like a more drawn out screenplay of that series so I didn't bother.

i wish i was still a moderator here so i could change this thread title. i must have been drunk. and i didn't believe in the space bar in 2003 for some reason. all my posts do that. so annoying.

Recent unfinished books include

Ramsey Campbell "Hungry Moon" - profoundly boring. Couldn't keep the characters straight or bring myself to care about any of them.
Mick Wall "When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin" - Couldn't get over the sections written in second person.
Jack Ketchum "Peaceable Kingdom" - by the 3rd or 4th story there had just been too much rape

think I hit this last night with Nigel Smith's biography of Andrew Marvell. Love marvell, & smith knows an awful lot, but he's a terrible, terrible writer, shits out the worst sort of academic prose, no head for structuring his material. It made me quite angry.

It's not up to the level of most of the books mentioned ott, but I looked at the first page of James Hadley Chase's Blonde's Requiem, got up and pulled my copy of Red Harvest from the shelf, and confirmed that Chase had plagiarized a couple of Hammett's paragraphs from that novel's first page. That did not work for me.

James Sallis's Drive. Tries to have stylish writing but there are so many clear mistakes that it's laughable. For example: in the first chapter, the narrator repeatedly miscounts the number of dead bodies in the room. Another example: a car "somersaults twice" but somehow lands on its roof.

Yeah, tried to read that one too. His book about Chester Himes is good though. And he has a book or two about guitar players that are OK.