Books you just can't get into

[AE35Unit]

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Willhelm. I picked this up purely on the strength of it being part of the SF Masterclass series, but I got bored pretty quick.

 

[Bick]

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Willhelm. I picked this up purely on the strength of it being part of the SF Masterclass series, but I got bored pretty quick.

My antennae have always suggested to me I wouldn’t care for it either, so I’ve not tried to read it. I’ve read some Wilhelm short fiction here and there and none have appealed much, so I’m not inclined to delve deeper.

 

[Bick]

"Wretched" feels like a good description! What really irritated me about TMOC was that the story was just miserable because Hardy rigged it to be: I can understand a miserable book like 1984, where the misery is there to make a point. Hardy's setting was full of depressing events just because he seemed to find it satisfying to have his characters bashed into the ground by fate/hubris/the gods/authorial intervention.

We often seem to agree on books, Toby, but I can’t side with you on this one. I liked Casterbridge, and love Hardy’s work generally, though I rate Tess lower than many do - that’s my least favourite of his novels.

 

[asp3]

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

A shame, as i really wanted to read this. I struggled with it and gave up after a hundred pages or so. Not a bad book, at all. I just struggled with the use of pronouns as it made me unsure of which character i was reading.

I couldn't get into it either. For me the minutia of some of the relationships described bored me.

 

[dask]

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Willhelm. I picked this up purely on the strength of it being part of the SF Masterclass series, but I got bored pretty quick.

Well, I’d like to know which book your new avatar came from because that looks like a book which just might be worth getting into or at least checking out.

 

[AE35Unit]

Well, I’d like to know which book your new avatar came from because that looks like a book which just might be worth getting into or at least checking out.

Its Starswarm by Brian Aldiss (1964)

 

[dask]

Cool. Actually have it but not that edition. Going to have to fast track it.

The edition I have though not my copy:

 

[BAYLOR]

Its Starswarm by Brian Aldiss (1964)
View attachment 83610

Cool cover .

 

[JunkMonkey]

Glad I'm not the only one who didn't get on with The Worm Ouroboros which was sold to me on the idea it was a great engrossing piece of world building but was a puerile/adolescent pseudo-Wagnerian mess with cardboard cut-out characters from Demonland and Elfland and Inkydinkypoodleland (I may have made that last one up).

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay Hated the wanky self indulgent selfish whining protagonist.

most recently:

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith - in the first chapter the heroine tells us she's glad she's a goy because that makes her so much better than all her Jewish friends and I threw the book across the room.

 

[AllanR]

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith - in the first chapter the heroine tells us she's glad she's a goy because that makes her so much better than all her Jewish friends and I threw the book across the room.

from wikipedia --there is an early scene where the heroine expresses feelings and beliefs which she will later feel significant, although ambiguous, regret for. In Novel on Yellow Paper that belief is anti-Semitism, where she feels elation at being the "only Goy" at a Jewish party. This apparently throwaway scene acts as a timebomb, which detonates at the centre of the novel when Pompey visits Germany as the Nazis are gaining power.

Stevie Smith - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[JunkMonkey]

from wikipedia --there is an early scene where the heroine expresses feelings and beliefs which she will later feel significant, although ambiguous, regret for. In Novel on Yellow Paper that belief is anti-Semitism, where she feels elation at being the "only Goy" at a Jewish party. This apparently throwaway scene acts as a timebomb, which detonates at the centre of the novel when Pompey visits Germany as the Nazis are gaining power.

Stevie Smith - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks for that. I suspected (hoped?), given Stevie Smith's reputation as a poet and the fact that the book was published by Virago, that something like that was going to happen later in the book but I was so repulsed by the character that I couldn't spend the next couple of hundred pages watching her get to a place where I could bear to be in the same room as her.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley . I found this one quite disappointing and didn't even bother finishing it.

 

[Toby Frost]

The edition I have though not my copy:

Do you know who painted this cover? I only ask because Aldiss was a keen painter, and I wondered if it was one of his.

 

[AE35Unit]

:

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith - in the first chapter the heroine tells us she's glad she's a goy because that makes her so much better than all her Jewish friends and I threw the book across the room.

Kinda how I reacted to The Great Gatsby. What a heap of poo that was

 

[AE35Unit]

Do you know who painted this cover? I only ask because Aldiss was a keen painter, and I wondered if it was one of his.

Vincent di Fate, 1985

 

[dask]

Do you know who painted this cover? I only ask because Aldiss was a keen painter, and I wondered if it was one of his.

Fairly certain it isn't Charles Addams.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Kinda how I reacted to The Great Gatsby. What a heap of poo that was

Oh! I LOVE The Great Gatsby! I know they were horrible self indulgent nasty people. There's not a likeable character in the book but they are fascinatingly horrible all of them and brilliant writing!

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

That!

 

[AE35Unit]

Oh! I LOVE The Great Gatsby! I know they were horrible self indulgent nasty people. There's not a likeable character in the book but they are fascinatingly horrible all of them and brilliant writing!

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

That!

I just couldn't stand the female characters,all fawning over this guy. Swoon, oh my.
Bleh

 

[Eternity_TARO]

I love sci-fi / fantasy, I've been reading a book a week since I was 13 yrs old. And for the life of me, I can NOT get into Lord of the Rings.

I love the movies, but the books??? Dear god, the writing style is almost like reading the bible. So and so begot so and so who begot so and so... the exposition with details about things that just don't matter... I can't get passed page 75. I've tried 4 times in my life to read the book, telling myself if I can just push through the tedious parts it will get good... but no, I can't do it.

 

[hitmouse]

I love sci-fi / fantasy, I've been reading a book a week since I was 13 yrs old. And for the life of me, I can NOT get into Lord of the Rings.

I love the movies, but the books??? Dear god, the writing style is almost like reading the bible. So and so begot so and so who begot so and so... the exposition with details about things that just don't matter... I can't get passed page 75. I've tried 4 times in my life to read the book, telling myself if I can just push through the tedious parts it will get good... but no, I can't do it.

Which Bible are you reading??