Books You've Never Been Able to Get into or Finish

[ZroSkeerd]

Yeah, i gave up when it was clear each book was about 800 pages of traveling, irrelevant conversations and 90's sitcom wife exasperated eyerolls (every female character in a Jordan book) and 100 pages of actual plot and relevant stakes.

I'm on Book Two now and I'm really starting to feel this. I enjoy the world, the mythology, and a few of the characters, but nothing really happens. I gave the first book a pass on that because it's the first book. I figured there were kinks to work out but the pacing would get better.
Now I'm on page 186 of The Great Hunt. Nothing. Has. Happened.
Is this seriously an ongoing issue with the series? I'm not just dead sure I can push through if there's just more of this on the way.

 

[Peppa]

Absolutely hated this book from the get go

I think I'm the only person in the world who's read Mists of Avalon all the way through! But of course it was a very difficult task.

Huzzah!

I agree with that entirely. I tried to get into it, as I'd read and enjoyed the other three Chinese megaclassics (Outlaws of the Marsh, Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West). But those are all full of excitement and combat.

Story of the Stone just bored me. I don't care about a Chinese noble house trying to hold onto their prestige. I want mad axemen and incredibly violent monks, irritable monkeys, and sly political scheming punctuated by massive battles.

I have read this book and I even liked it. But I just like history, so I am always interested in reading classic books. So it wasn't a problem for me to read this book.

But if you like Outlaws of the Marsh and Three Kingdoms, you might also like Seven Heroes and Five Gallants. It's very similar to Outlaws of the Marsh, but there are no gruesome scenes like the old woman being eaten by tigers or the little boy getting his head split in two by Li Kui and so on. It's a story about noble robbers being hunted by an even nobler judge named Bao Zheng.

Luo Guanzhong, who wrote Three Kingdoms, also wrote two other books. One of them is about a family of shape-shifting foxes. The main protagonist is like a dark female version of Zhuge Liang. She's a great sorceress and strategist, but she's a very naughty girl and rebels against the emperor.

Another book tells the adventures of a man who was originally the son of a barbarian chieftain, but then became a prince and tried to save the Tang Dynasty from its sad end. His name was Li Keyong and he was a real historical person, just like the characters in Three Kingdoms. This book is mostly about political intrigue and battles, and there's almost no magic. Well, sometimes the main protagonist talks to his horse, but otherwise it's even more realistic than Three Kingdoms.

I got to book 4 in that series.

Is there anyone who's read this to the end?

The only book I've yet to get through is Gardens of the Moon. The first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. I will try a 3rd time soon.

I gave up on this series by the second or third book. It's really weird because it has everything I usually like. There's good world-building, great characters I might like (for example, Anomander Rake), and interesting races and peoples. But these books are like a dish that's made with high quality and healthy ingredients, but without any salt or spices. I can't tell you exactly what the missing spice is, but I really can't eat it.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Is there anyone who's read this to the end?

Quite a few of us, with many of us having read them more than once!

 

[AE35Unit]

Moby Dick. Too much information too early about varies whale species.

I've tried to read that book twice, and twice I've failed. Just not engaging enough and I just kept wanting to shout WHALES AREN'T FISH!

 

[Peppa]

Quite a few of us, with many of us having read them more than once!

I stopped reading this when I got to Knife of Dreams.

 

[Rodders]

Most of the books i couldn't get into are great authors whose work is outside of a series that i really enjoyed.

Iain M. Banks - I loved the Culture books, but really struggled with his non-Culture work. I did listen to the audio books recently and thoroughly enjoyed them. RIP Iain.

I adore Frank Herbert's Dune, but couldn't find traction in the sequels. I intend to listen to the audio books later in the year though. (Certainly the the first three.)

Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space books are a favourite of mine, but i have only read Century Rain from his other works and thought it to be fairly average. I don't find myself overly interested in his other books except perhaps, Terminal World.

As a child of the 70's, i was always led to believe that L. Ron Hubbard was one of the greats. I tried Battlefield Earth but stopped reading half way through.

I recently tried to read more in the sense of classical SF and tried to read H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. I only got one, or two pages in before i put it down. Not for any reason than it felt like i had to translate everything into moderen English which felt clumsy. I'll probably try again in a few years.

 

[Pyan]

Most of the books i couldn't get into are great authors whose work is outside of a series that i really enjoyed.

Yes! I love Lois McMaster Bujold's SF Vorkosigan books, but really can't get into her Chalion/World of the Five Gods fantasy series.

 

[ablackenedrose]

I've never gotten into Bakker's Second Apocalypse. I like some of the concepts in the series and some of the prose is excellent, but it overall felt very slow and so dark as to be unintentionally hilarious. There's also its handling of the themes of sexual assault, which goes way past the point of being gratuitous for me.

 

[BAYLOR]

I was told if I could get past the pages and pages about bananas in Gravity's Rainbow, that it would be worth it. The bananas won. Same thing with Moby Dick. Too much information too early about varies whale species.

Tried twice to read Gravity Rainbow. I just could not get into it.

Moby Dick I actually enjoyed reading.

 

[kythe]

Moby Dick I actually enjoyed reading.

I don't know, I was bogged down by the 15 pages of description of sperm whales.

 

[Extollager]

It's my fault, but I haven't persisted with The Iliad (Fagles translation) despite two or three tries. If I'd had an extrinsic reason to persist, such as being enrolled in a college course taught by an instructor I liked, the outcome might have been different. This remark is more about my limitations than about this translation of Homer's poem.

 

[Extollager]

I've tried to read that book twice, and twice I've failed. Just not engaging enough and I just kept wanting to shout WHALES AREN'T FISH!

Were they "fish" in 1850? I wonder if the definition of "fish" has become more narrow since then. Or perhaps zoologists then didn't classify whales as fish, but the harpooneers did.

 

[Peppa]

I read that book, but I didn't pay attention to that.
However, many people still call mushrooms plants, although they are not really plants.

 

[Vertigo]

I don't know, I was bogged down by the 15 pages of description of sperm whales.

I think you have to remember the times when this was written. I remember being equally frustrated by Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and it's interminable descriptions of the aquatic sea life they witness. The thing to appreciate is that to most people at that time, without TV or even glossy colour magazines, all of these exotic creatures would have seemed as amazing and as strange as receiving our first alien visitors from space. In their day I suspect these lengthy wildlife descriptions would have been almost as big a selling point as the story itself. Though I confess, in TTLUTS I very much skim read them!

 

[ColGray]

I've never gotten into Bakker's Second Apocalypse. I like some of the concepts in the series and some of the prose is excellent, but it overall felt very slow and so dark as to be unintentionally hilarious. There's also its handling of the themes of sexual assault, which goes way past the point of being gratuitous for me.

The first three books are fantastic but dark AF and it has a slow-burn revelation that the hero isn't a hero. The second trilogy fell off a cliff in terms of quality, readability and interesting concepts.

But also, yes, sexual assault is the go-to device used for many characters. I remember reading it around the time i read GoT and was like, Are these two just trying to one up each other on being "gritty"?

 

[Peppa]

I think you have to remember the times when this was written. I remember being equally frustrated by Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and it's interminable descriptions of the aquatic sea life they witness. The thing to appreciate is that to most people at that time, without TV or even glossy colour magazines, all of these exotic creatures would have seemed as amazing and as strange as receiving our first alien visitors from space. In their day I suspect these lengthy wildlife descriptions would have been almost as big a selling point as the story itself. Though I confess, in TTLUTS I very much skim read them!

I suspect that the lack of magazines or television (not to mention planes and the internet) was the reason for the long descriptions of nature and many other things in other books of the XIX and early XX century. They already had cheap paper and lots of presses, but there was no internet or TV, and writers had to paint pictures with their words.
Still, I have nothing against long descriptions and the resulting images before my eyes. This is a particularly valuable quality in science fiction and fantasy books, which describe non-existent things that cannot be seen anywhere.

 

[BAYLOR]

I suspect that the lack of magazines or television (not to mention planes and the internet) was the reason for the long descriptions of nature and many other things in other books of the XIX and early XX century. They already had cheap paper and lots of presses, but there was no internet or TV, and writers had to paint pictures with their words.
Still, I have nothing against long descriptions and the resulting images before my eyes. This is a particularly valuable quality in science fiction and fantasy books, which describe non-existent things that cannot be seen anywhere.

Return to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore . Ive not read this on but it sounds interesting.

 

[Pyan]

I suspect that the lack of magazines or television (not to mention planes and the internet) was the reason for the long descriptions of nature and many other things in other books of the XIX and early XX century. They already had cheap paper and lots of presses, but there was no internet or TV, and writers had to paint pictures with their words.

And this is exactly why Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is so full of descriptive passages. I've lost count of the number of criticisms of the book because of the descriptions, mainly by people who have no idea what it was like before the torrent of tv, video and internet overwhelmed the idea of your own, guided imagination.

 

[Peppa]

And this is exactly why Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is so full of descriptive passages. I've lost count of the number of criticisms of the book because of the descriptions, mainly by people who have no idea what it was like before the torrent of tv, video and internet overwhelmed the idea of your own, guided imagination.

I'm a very fast reader, so long descriptions are not a problem for me. And in Lord of the Rings, those long descriptions really come in handy.
If I want to, it's no problem for me to see whales, their sperm or the bottom of the sea. But I'm unlikely to see the places Tolkien described. Sure, there are movies and TV series, but it will still be New Zealand or somewhere else. It's much more interesting to imagine it all for myself.

 

[Pliable Moose]

One book ive tried and failed to get into was Dahlgren by Samuel Delany . The furthest I ever got was 100 or so pages . I gave up because I couldn't make heads or tales of what the book was really about about.

Same for me, same book. I tried twice many years apart.