The Books You've Never Finished...

[J-Sun]

I followed the link in the Sutherland article to the Hornby article about ditching "work" novels and I have to agree. Specifically, regarding kids, there has to be some middle ground, such as producing a large list of descriptions of diverse books and letting kids choose from them or something. Kids should be exposed to a variety of "great books" that they might not come across on their own but shouldn't be assigned the chore of reading stuff that will repel them, particularly at the time. There's no more sense in assigning some books to kids than there is giving them nursing home brochures.

I was assigned Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and presumably flunked the report as I never finished it and have never read Dickens at all since.

Sutherland makes it almost sound like the only reason to quit a book is because it's too "hard" and makes him feel "dumb" but I don't experience that in fiction, or at least, I'm bored or annoyed before such questions even come up because the fictional or interest-grabbing elements are already lacking.

I threw aside Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren with distaste a few pages in.

Sometimes I get bogged down in a book that may be fine and I intend to get back to it.

I got about halfway through Robert Reed's Marrow and then got distracted by something. I intend to get back to it. For the book I might have been reading now, even, I read a few pages of Stross' Neptune's Brood after not exactly flying through a re-read of Saturn's Children (which took forever to read the first time) but switched to another book. I'm now not expecting to like it but I'm still willing to try again soon - it just didn't hit me right at the moment. For an example of actually doing this, I got stuck over a hundred pages into Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space but tried again and finished it. Reading Redemption Ark went much better, though I still haven't felt like getting into Absolution Gap yet.

The thread title says "books" but, other than paranoid marvin's Paradise Lost, everything else in and around the thread is about novels. Wonder where the equation of books and novels comes from? I see it everywhere. There are a couple of philosophy books I haven't finished but, like some of the novels, I intend to. As one of the large group of compulsive finishers, there's not much I don't.

But I have battled the disease - I am forgetting things because the Dickens might have been the only book in my life I didn't finish until relatively recently and it does seem like I've been able to drop a few in that time. I dropped Tanith Lee's Birthgrave series mid-novel or at least mid-series. I think I skipped the last couple of Phil Farmer's Riverworld titles despite having picked up the whole remainder of the set years after reading the first one (which I still like). That sort of thing.

 

[The Bluestocking]

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

I actually wondered if that book would've been served better if they had simply made it a duology.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I got about halfway through Robert Reed's Marrow and then got distracted by something.

Keep on with it. Great book.

 

[Kylara]

I am a compulsive finisher of books. However at last count I had 13 books 'on the go' one of which I haven't touched in over a year (I'm not entirely sure where it is actually!) but there is only one book I have actually given up on - it was a book by kevin j anderson, it has a ship on the cover. A friend bought it for me to see if I could get further than she did. I did, about 150 pages in I think and just couldn't work out why I was still reading it. It is also in a pile somewhere and knowing me I will pick it up again and try to finish it I can finish some pretty terrible books, but I won't re-read them I am also proud to say that I have read the dictionary (my OED is chunky but not massive massive) cover to cover. Some good words in there my favourite at the moment would be mellifluous, although I am probly due another reread

 

[Mouse]

We've had this thread a few times now and I always say The Lies of Locke Lamora. Then someone'll come along and tell me it gets better and I should've stuck with it. If it had been good from the start I would've done!!! I shouldn't have to wade through pages and pages of yawnsville crap while I wait for it to get good.

Also, JV Jones's A Sword from Red Ice. That's the third one in the series. Just as with A Dance With Dragons, this took so long to come out that by the time it did, I'd lost all interest in epic fantasy.

There's a couple of Chrons author books I've yet to finish, but I always said I plan to get back to them.

Oh, and the first Amber book by Roger Zelazny. Seemed like a decent story but unfortunately, the MC was an arsehat.

 

[Vertigo]

I generally hate not finishing a book, it makes me feel almost betrayed somehow (I know that's unjust; nobody makes me choose a book to read but that's still how I end up feeling ). However more recently - maybe partly because of how big my TBR has got - I will not persist in reading a book that is giving me nothing back. From the last three years:

Orcs - Stan Nicholls - just unbelievably dreadful
The Steel Remains - Richard K Morgan - too distasteful for me
Radix - Attanasio - new age hogwash
The Mongoliad and Reamde - Stephenson - I guess Stephenson's just not my style
Wetware / Ware tetralogy - Rudy Rucker - I quite enjoyed the first book - Software - but this second one was dreadful; I actually read 150 out of 200 pages and still couldn't bring myself to finish the last 50!

I have tried Dickens several times and just can't get on with him.

 

[HareBrain]

I actually read 150 out of 200 pages and still couldn't bring myself to finish the last 50!

I ditched Terry Pratchett's Moving Pictures less than twenty pages from the end, I was so bored. Not one of his better ones.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Lord of The Rings, Perfume, Mayor of Casterbridge and another one for Catcher in the Rye - the latter I read to the end but skipping huge chunks if it hadn't been for school I wouldn't have done that.

 

[The Judge]

The Steel Remains - Richard K Morgan - too distasteful for me

Glad I'm not the only one.

So far this year there have been four fiction, so in addition to the Morgan:
A Plague on Both Your Houses -- Susanna Gregory -- poorly written historical info-dump
Stormbird -- Conn Iggulden -- ditto
Nights of Villjamur -- Mark Charan Newton -- unbelievably bad

Last year a total of five fiction:
Hyddenworld -- William Horwood -- written for adults, but presumably only those with a mental age of ten
Cloud Atlas -- David Mitchell -- for me, too clever by half
The Rapture of the Nerds -- Doctorow/Stross -- too inane and in-joky by a lot more than half
Fugue for a Darkening Island -- Christopher Priest -- couldn't get into it
War with the Newts -- Karel Capek -- ditto

 

[Toby Frost]

Mouse, I think that's a valid criticism re Locke Lamora. I've enjoyed the two books I've read, but they would be better if they were thinned down by about a quarter. Taking out all the bits where Locke and Jean either tell each other how much they love one another or swear revenge on someone at great length would probably do it. And then there are the flashbacks.

Well, I gave up on A Turn of Light by Julie Czernada earlier this week. It felt very twee, even before the romantic subplot turned up. While it was nice to get away from descriptions of armies and dull pseudo-medieval households, nothing much really happened in the village. It felt more like a description of a Renaissance Fayre event than an actual place, which is odd given the amount of research that seemed to have gone into it. This might be because the heroine was The Prettiest Girl In The Village and, while technically an apprentice, seemed just to flounce about in the hills like Elphine from Cold Comfort Farm. Anyway, it wasn't for me.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I seem to have a pretty high tolerance for most authors that are considered "difficult," but I often avoid their longer works in the future after I have experienced one. I'm not very fond of the longer works of Henry James, and I won't seek out any more of his novels after getting through Portrait of a Lady, but I quite like the novella "Daisy Miller." I got through Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, and I won't be picking up any novels by him, but I admire "A Rose for Emily." Even an abridged version of Silas Marner in high school turned me off George Eliot completely, and probably makes me prejudiced against the Victorian novelists in general. I like Dubliners but I have no intention of attempting Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake. Lukewarm on Dickens.

Among books already mentioned, I am madly in love with Moby Dick and I greatly enjoyed If on a winter's night a traveler. I managed to get through Gravity's Rainbow without getting much out of it. I liked Orlando and Cloud Atlas and War with the Newts.

Within "category" SF/F, I got through Dhalgren with a shrug (but I greatly like most of Delany's other stuff) and I liked the infamous plotless novel Report on Probability A by Brian Aldiss. In general, I don't demand lots of plot as long as the writing is very stylish.

On the flip side, I can't read more than a page or two of E. E. "Doc" Smith. The writing style is so poor that it defeats me utterly. I can read A. E. van Vogt, but I get nothing out of his work. Most Lovecraft leaves me unimpressed.

 

[Toby Frost]

I really liked Report on Probability A, although I remember absolutely nothing happening. It was remarkably sinister given that, as you say, it had no plot at all.

 

[Timba]

I only have one, the first book in the Malazan series. Complete mystery to me how this became a hit with so many people.

 

[Bick]

I don't think it counts as "unfinished" if you didn't read all of a whole series of books. If you finished a book in the series, that's fine and I think you can hold your head up high. Otherwise I'm in trouble, as I've failed to finish nearly every series I've started (esp. fantasy).

On single novels I've really struggled with: only Deepness in the Sky comes to mind for SF - though I do intend to plow through the last 350 pages at some point. For non-genre: I never finished More Die of Heartbreak by Bellow, and I found both Silas Marner and Doctor Zhivago difficult and didn't finish them. I'll tackle Silas again sometime, I quite enjoyed it but got bogged down somehow.

Extollagor - I always fancied reading Dombey and Son! I've only read 4-5 Dickens but that was the next up for me. If I do give it a go, I'll let you know my thoughts.

 

[The Bluestocking]

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.

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.

All of what you said is quite true. Not all trilogies (or series of more than 3 books) are the same.

I do tend to read authors who write series of more than 3 books - Cassandra Clare, Charlaine Harris, JK Rowling, Naomi Novik, Diana Gabaldon etc because I enjoy the worlds that they have built so beautifully - but equally enjoy authors like Robin Hobb who seem to specialise in the classic story arc-across-a-trilogy sequence.

I must admit that I've never read a trilogy of standalone sequels (or at least, not I can think of off the top of my head)...

 

[J-Sun]

I don't think it counts as "unfinished" if you didn't read all of a whole series of books. If you finished a book in the series, that's fine and I think you can hold your head up high. Otherwise I'm in trouble, as I've failed to finish nearly every series I've started (esp. fantasy).

A couple of folks have given their takes on whether series count now, and I agree with that generally - there are very few series I've "finished" either. But I do - for myself - count it when I flat out refuse to read further, especially when I've already bought later books in the series rather than just kind of stopping and not happening to pick up any more volumes. IOW, I took the thread topic to be books/series I would not finish vs. just did not. "Unfinishable" rather than just "unfinished".

 

[Idoru]

I couldn't finish Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and I won't be finishing the Wheel of Time series any time soon. I found Jonathan Strange really hard to get through, but worth it in the end. The Silmarillion, on the other hand, was also really hard to get through and so not worth the effort.

 

[wam]

I always used to finish whatever I started no matter how awful. Some I gave up on from a quick look through (Bleak House got onto that list when I noticed one chapter was in there twice - word for word? ). Others I should probably have given up on (Ash - Mary Gentle, It - Stephen King) and gained nothing for the effort. A lot I completed and have totally forgotten. There are also a load that I mean to get to some day.
About the only book I can think of that I started, stopped and mean to come back to some day is Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. It looked interesting but something came up and then it got damp (several pages are now stuck together). Someday...

 

[Rafellin]

So many! I usually get one unfinishable every couple of months. I'm reading away and I reach a point where something breaks my engagement beyond 'coffee break'. I don't care what happens to the characters or the resolution of the plot.

Recent example would be Ann Leckie's Ancilliary Justice. The AI concept used is beyond wonderful. But the pacing of the tale just lost me.

The oldest one is the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Didn't like the protagonist, didn't like the story. Tried three times before I accepted that some 'classic' works were going to be forever beyond my grasp.

 

[Extollager]

Extollagor - I always fancied reading Dombey and Son! I've only read 4-5 Dickens but that was the next up for me. If I do give it a go, I'll let you know my thoughts.

Yes -- I would expect to read Dombey eventually. I've had a copy for years. It was just Pickwick that, to my regret, has stumped me.

Have you read Little Dorrit? I thought that, in that one, Dickens was perhaps trying to write outside what had come to be seen as his norm. It's ten years or so since I read it, but it seemed to me that he deliberately avoided his customary extravagance of character invention. It seems to me he worked against his own "norm" too in Our Mutual Friend, where, for example, Headstone, the hardworking headmaster without social advantages, is a villain and his opposite number, the lazy, comfortable, snobbish Eugene Wrayburn, is one of the heroes.