The Books You've Never Finished...

[The Bluestocking]

I stumbled across this entertaining article today about one's "Top Ten Unfinishable Novels":

http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/oct/08/my-top-10-unfinishable-novels

What are the novels that you've never been able to finish?

I must confess that I never quite made it through Moby Dick and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Those are just 2 books of a select heap of doorstops/series I just gave up on because I couldn't get stuck in.

Sacrilege, I know.

 

[Venusian Broon]

The only book in my entire life that I've started but never finished, is full of stories but not a novel in the modern sense, and is the Bible.

I suppose some might think that is truly sacrilege.

Interesting that you put series in - does it count as 'being unable to finish' if you get to the end of book one of three and decide "this is utter gank, I'm not going further."? Question to the room, rather to you alone Blue!

It doesn't help me as I'm also a series 'completionist' as well...

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Great thread, TBS! Just have a moment but two leap right to mind, one I lament never finishing, and the other...not so much. First, I read through approx. 150 pages of Bleak House, but then never finished...someday. And then I got through about 200 pages of Atlas Shrugged, and just could not go any further. Looking forward to reading the other responses! CC

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Jonathon Strange for me, too. I couldn't get into it at all. Catcher in the Rye as well. As I've got older I'm more inclined to set something down if it doesn't work for me.

 

[The Bluestocking]

Interesting that you put series in - does it count as 'being unable to finish' if you get to the end of book one of three and decide "this is utter gank, I'm not going further."? Question to the room, rather to you alone Blue!

Yes, it counts because a series is essentially one really REALLY long story.

I am still dithering about starting A Song Of Ice and Fire. Not sure I want to start something knowing that there's loads of grimdark stuff in it and I'll end up having to hurl it across the room (as Dorothy Parker was wont to do when she got irritated at a book haha!)

I made it through LOTR and am currently wading my way through the Outlander series of ever-growing doorstop-sized books though, so it's not that I can't get through large tomes - they just have to be able to hold my interest.

Anything too waffly, going-nowhere, baroque, or grimdark will inevitably get put down by me, I suppose.

 

[Rodders]

I started but never got around to finishing The Lord Of The Rings and Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Spring. I don't think that they're bad books, but they just weren't for me.

I also struggled with the third Rendezvouz with Rama by the late, great Arthur C. Clarke. Eon by Greg Bear i didn't finish either.

 

[Venusian Broon]

While I think your generally correct TBS on a lot of published trilogies, I suppose I'm thinking that not all trilogies are the same. And therefore I can be more lenient with people on certain authors.

To give some concrete examples (I'm coming from the Science fiction/Space Opera side of things)

Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy is definitely just a mammoth story, cut into three books (by sabres or chainsaws by the editors it seems ) So giving up after The Reality Dysfunction is giving up full stop.

But Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space novels although having a trilogy (At least there is a story thread that directly links three books) I think could be abandoned after the first. They are all, more or less, structured as standalone novels. Although of course if you were to pick up Absolution Gap first you would probably be doing a lot of head scratching (And perhaps, like me, disappointment in the ending. But that's probably another thread.)

M. John Harrison's Kefahuchi tract trilogy is the same - even more dispersed and different.

I suppose what I am saying is that there is a difference between a series of books either cut up into or deliberate planned over a sequence, and a trilogy of standalone sequels.

Anyway I'm going off topic...I'll get my coat.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I also couldn't finish Jonathan Strange - not because it was poor, but because it was just too long. (I enjoyed the first half...)

 

[farntfar]

I have never finished the 3rd book of the last chronicles of Thomas Covenant, due to not really caring anymore, and despite loving the rest.

On the other hand it took me several goes to read The Day of the Triffids, getting bored by the opening chapters each time, until I eventual got there and understood why everyone said it was Wyndham's best. (I still prefer Trouble with Lichen but never mind)

 

[Lord Soth]

Another vote for Jonathan Strange, really couldn't get into it.

Also like the above posters as I have got older I am much more inclined to put down a book if its not doing it for me, I have done it 3 times in the last 3 months now...

 

[Vince W]

Most recently the abysmal Leviathan Wakes.

I still haven't finished Wheel of Time series (last 3 books) or Dances with Dragons either.

 

[Extollager]

By the customary count, Dickens wrote 14 novels.* I have read all but two of them -- several of them more than once (e.g. Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, etc.). I've not attempted yet to read Dombey and Son, so that doesn't count, but, to my regret, I cannot seem to finish The Pickwick Papers. Arthur Machen professed to read it every year or every few years. Uff da, as we used to say in the Upper Midwest.

I've read all of George MacDonald's fantasy multiple times, and a number of his Victorian novels, but for some reason What's Mine's Mine defeats me.

Couldn't stick with Dick's Galactic Pot-Healer.

Or 14 1/2-- counting The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

 

[Venusian Broon]

By the customary count, Dickens wrote 14 novels.* I have read all but two of them -- several of them more than once (e.g. Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, etc.). I've not attempted yet to read Dombey and Son, so that doesn't count, but, to my regret, I cannot seem to finish The Pickwick Papers.

Having read it I can understand why it might be a problem. It's essentially a charming collection of comic escapades, and being Dicken's first novel he was perhaps just getting into warmed up on writing novels.

It was the first Dickens I ever read, so perhaps approaching it with no preconceptions from reading his other works, helped me through it. I do prefer the darker novels, Bleak House especially.

 

[Fried Egg]

I don't like to leave books unfinished but, I'm not a masochist; I will give up if it gets too bad. Focusing just on this year, so far I've abandoned these books unfinished:

"Orlando" by Virginia Wolf - I was expecting SF but it certainly wasn't even remotely SF. Besides that it was just dull, dull, dull.

"Shikasta" by Dorris Lessing - No plot, no characters, nothing of any interest whatsoever. Just pointless misanthropy and that doesn't do it for me I'm afraid.

"Viriconium" by M. John Harrison - An omnibus that started out well but went down hill fast. A case of style over substance by the time I stopped reading.

 

[The Bluestocking]

Great thread, TBS! CC

Thanks, CC!

 

[Chris Guillory]

Read the Eye of the World but could NOT get through Great Hunt. And that's as far as I got as far as the Wheel of Time series!

 

[Randy M.]

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Dense prose for no discernible purpose.

The Bible: I've read bits and pieces, but when I tried to navigate cover to cover was sunk by the the begats.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens: About 100 pages in I noticed I wasn't recalling what had happened in the previous 100 pages and was putting off reading rather than picking it up enthusiastically. I'm not sure if it was the book or the timing. I've noticed that sometimes it's me, not the book (i.e.: Thomas Mann's The Confessions of Felix Krull; first try 50 pages and dropped it but on second try read it straight through and loved it).


Randy M.

 

[psikeyhackr]

1984

The Bible I died somewhere in the Book of Samuel but I don't recall if it was 1 or 2.

psik

 

[Maximillian]

Sorry to say David Brin's "Earth."

(Don't tell him, he'll drop me on fB. =}

 

[paranoid marvin]

I almost dropped Covenant on several occasions but persevered; for all depressing , downbeat stuff there's usually something good around the next corner.

The book that was incompletable for me was Paradise Lost. I started it, got completely lost after a couple of pages and put it down; I'll never attempt it again.