Ship of Fools: Books You Can't Get Into

Thread: Books You Can't Get Into Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

I am just finishing 1965 Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows The Don, which had always been on my list of books I had to read eventually, but which I only actually started because my daughter-in-law’s father gave it to me.

However, there remains a long list of other books which, as I lie on my deathbed, I will probably feel guilty about never having got around to reading – Moby Dick, for example, and A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu.

Then there is my inability to face up to Jane Austen (Mansfield Park was enough), and failure to get past the first few pages of Joyce’s Ulysses.

On the other hand, I revel in Dickens, who regularly appears on lists of writers whom readers can’t abide – "de gustibus…… "

Recently the Spectator ran an article in which a number of famous people ‘fessed up to books and authors which they should have read, but couldn’t – I was faintly relieved to find that Barry Humphries found Moby Dick beyond him.

Any one else game to publicly bare their philistine literary blind-spots?

(This is about fiction, so it does not apply to all those unopened copies of Hawking’s Short History Of Time, or to Christians who wistfully wonder whether they should have a go at Aquinas’s Summa, Calvin’s Institutes or Barth’s Dogmatics – FWIW, I have read the Institutes, but not the other two!)

[jj, kind Heaven host being helpful]

[ 30. March 2013, 15:21: Message edited by: jedijudy ]

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

**raises trotter in the air**

Tolkien. Couldn't get past page 2 of The Hobbit.

Also Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: I got part of the way through it and despite it being set in a period which would normally have me utterly riveted, it just didn't. Then I read an article about her in the Telegraph and someone in the "comments" section said that he found her habit of referring to her characters as "he" or "she" rather than by name confusing and annoying, and I understood why I'd found it so heavy-going.

IIRC I bought it at the book-stall at the Cathedral sale; it'll be going back there at the next one. [Big Grin]

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

Bugger!

Would some kind editor remove the redundant accent in recherche in the OP?

Thank you.

Posted by Lothlorien (# 4927) on :

I've read most of Patrick White's output but have never been able to finish Voss or The Aunt's Story.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

I thoroughly enjoyed most of Dickens, but then I got around to Bleak House. Since then I haven't even been able to manage Great Expectations, which I tried to re-read after trying-but-failing to follow an imported BBC series made from it (I had read GE back in middle school and adored it; maybe it helps to be 12 to get into that one; it certainly helps to be a kiddo when reading Oliver Twist).

Possibily I shouldn't have tried to read Bleak House (or the Book of Job, for that matter) during a New England February, when I'm usually struggling with mild bouts of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Starting Austen with Mansfield Park is probably a mistake. Either Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice would make a better introduction.

I've never been able to manage Lolita.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lothlorien:
I've read most of Patrick White's output but have never been able to finish Voss or The Aunt's Story.

Yeah, White's another one.

Just as small children have an ESP that tells them they don't like a food they've never tasted, so I know that White is deadly boring without ever having read a single word of him.

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

Secret Garden. Most of my friends loved it. I was bored. Read it again ten years ago to see why friends still call it a favorite book of their youth. I was still bored.

Lord of the Rings. I liked Hobbit - not a favorite, but pleasant. But LOTR, couldn't get into it, dull and plodding.

Plato's Republic. Was assigned in college. Put me to sleep so I never read it. Would I like it now? Is that the one where that envisions women "held in common" by all men? I wouldn't like it.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

Eldest Cnihtlet recently enjoyed the Secret Garden. To give it it's due, LOTR does pick up the pace after the first half-book of describing hedgerows.

I've never been able to stick anything by Tolstoy. I keep having a go - I think I've tried War and Peace twice, and Anna Karenina three times, and always give up because I've fallen asleep too often. In translation, of course, because I don't read Russian.

ETA: I've enjoyed most of Dickens, but probably because I started on a long and boring train journey with only The Pickwick Papers for company. Had I had anything else to do, I don't think I'd have persevered.

[ 28. March 2013, 04:21: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]

Posted by Ariston (# 10894) on :

I've yet to meet anyone with legit nerd cred who's finished Tolkien's The Silmarillion—even my boss, who has a limited edition print of the lands of The Hobbit hanging on his office wall and, according to Megaboss, Silmarillion pajamas. I mean, I know there are issues stemming from Christopher Tolkien having to sort out the mess after his father died, but still!

Books of Lost Tales are your friend here, as is the very ample secondary/fan literature. Trust me on this one. There are enough serious academics who study Tolkien that there's no shame in reading what people have written about him, rather than what he wrote himself.

However, I've accepted the fact that I keep my copy of Ulysses around mostly just to have a book I don't read on principle with me, and my copy of Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death by my bedside just to mock me. I never read it as an undergrad when it was assigned to me, now I can never get more than halfway through the varieties of despair without putting it down, 10 pages past the last place I stopped a year ago.

I think that book exists just to mock me. Kierkegaard, no doubt, would enjoy that.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
I've yet to meet anyone with legit nerd cred who's finished Tolkien's The Silmarillion

I have

I quite enjoyed it, actually. I could never get into the lost tales, though - they just didn't seem all that interesting.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

However, there remains a long list of other books which, as I lie on my deathbed, I will probably feel guilty about never having got around to reading – Moby Dick, for example...

Erk, erk, erk! That and anything by that low-grade moron WIlliam Faulkner and his idiot writing in dumb-shite dialect!

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
I've yet to meet anyone with legit nerd cred who's finished Tolkien's The Silmarillion
I have

I quite enjoyed it, actually.

Us too!

Posted by Snags (# 15351) on :

I can claim success on The Silmarillion, but only because I view it a point of honour to finish what I start (when it comes to reading).

Books that have dishonoured me: Ulysses, read just enough to handle my finals; Gormenghast, stalled early in book two. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence, but I don't count that, because he cheated by turning shit part way through. I think that's it, but there are many more I haven't even started simply to avoid defeat.

When we moved house the cat pissed on Ulysses, saving me from any further attempts. I think the cat is wiser than he lets on.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

Lord of the Rings. It was page 30.

I quite love Dickens, and have read his entire works although I only kept 4.

Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :

Another one for whom both Ulysses and War and Peace have failed to make the mark - but I have decided the failings are in the books rather than in me!

[Big Grin]

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

I dutifully ploughed through "The Silmarillion" as I was given it as a birthday present. It put me off Tolkien for a while: I felt that too much time and energy had gone into creating this incredibly detailed history of places and people that didn't exist. And I've never liked faux archaic speak.

I couldn't get on with Trollope's books, or enjoy Terry Pratchett's.

I am a Dickens fan and have read just about everything of his I could get my hands on - despite some of his more repulsive characters like Little Nell and Dora Copperfield.

One way forward for people who want to try to enjoy his books might be to start with "Pickwick Papers", the other would be to get hold of one of the televised versions (the BBC does a very good run of these) and use them as an intro. "Our Mutual Friend" with Paul McGann is particularly well done, "Little Dorrit" with Derek Jacobi is another, "Bleak House" with Gillian Anderson as an English lady is a third well worth watching, and the recent production of "the Mystery of Edwin Drood" a fourth. They make great and compelling costume dramas and might help to ease the way into the novels.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
**raises trotter in the air**

Tolkien. Couldn't get past page 2 of The Hobbit.

Also Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: I got part of the way through it and despite it being set in a period which would normally have me utterly riveted, it just didn't. Then I read an article about her in the Telegraph and someone in the "comments" section said that he found her habit of referring to her characters as "he" or "she" rather than by name confusing and annoying, and I understood why I'd found it so heavy-going.

IIRC I bought it at the book-stall at the Cathedral sale; it'll be going back there at the next one.

Me too! TRIED very hard to read LOTR just before the movies came out - couldn't do it. I did finish Wolf Hall, and you know, it was ok. Enigmatic but ok. Why it won a major prize is wholly beyond me though. It must be utterly, utterly incomprehensible to people unfamiliar with the period.

In response to things others have posted, I quite enjoyed Plato's Republic, couldn't even finish what was meant to be a non-heavy-going James Joyce book, and have never attempted Moby Dick. I had a project once to read all of Thomas Hardy's works - I stopped after attempting 'The Return of the Native' - totally incomprehensible. I haven't read anything which really qualifies as 'literature' for a couple of years now - just things I can pick up and put down as the fancy takes me (code for: can be read and comprehended in amongst near-continuous interruptions by small whiny people).

Posted by Sparrow (# 2458) on :

Me neither for Lord of the Rings. I think it was my first encounter with Tom Bombadil that made me throw the book across the room.

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :

I usually love Dickens - even Bleak House - but I have twice got halfway through David Copperfield and then stalled utterly. I just don't like the whiny kid enough to persevere.

I have also stalled twice on Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. Likewise, I have read and enjoyed other James novels, but he was so clearly in love with his heroine in this one, whereas I just found her intensely annoying. Nothing brings quicker death to a book than the author being in love with the main character.

I've only stalled once on Moby Dick, and must give it at least one more try. It struck me as a big homoerotic romp at the time, with lots of penises and semen and men sharing beds. Frankly, as a delicate female (ahem!), it was a bit TMI at times. [Biased]

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
I've yet to meet anyone with legit nerd cred who's finished Tolkien's The Silmarillion
I have

I quite enjoyed it, actually. I could never get into the lost tales, though - they just didn't seem all that interesting.

I've read it too, and loved it [Smile]

I was supposed to read Dickens' Hard Times during my degree and hated it and just read the commentary instead [Hot and Hormonal]

it was so depressing, and more boring than the landscape scenes in Hardy's novels (I had to study Hardy's poetry in college, talk about bleak).

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

Most of mine have already been mentioned despite me being one of those people who usually finish whatever I start, even when I don't get on with it.

I never finished Moby Dick either.

One of my favourite quotes is this:

quote:
La vie est trop courte et Proust est trop long.*
(Anatole France)

I am also currently attempting to read Lillith by George MacDonald. I probably will finish it on the basis that it's very rare for me not to finish books, but it really hasn't grabbed me and I am pretty much dutifully ploughing on.

*Life is too short and Proust is too long.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I am also currently attempting to read Lillith by George MacDonald. I probably will finish it on the basis that it's very rare for me not to finish books, but it really hasn't grabbed me and I am pretty much dutifully ploughing on.

Not his best. Macdonald can be a bit twee at times and "The Little Ones" put me off. "Phantastes" is a better novel.

Life is too short to spend it reading books you don't enjoy. [Biased]

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

Arnold Bennett. In theory, the sort of traditional novelist, writing about a time and milieu I find interesting - but all the appeal of a wet Wednesday in November.

Even driecher, Conrad.

HenryJames I somehow, elusive and undefinable as the feeling - shall we say shadow of the ineffable? cannot bring myself even to the penumbra of regard.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I am also currently attempting to read Lillith by George MacDonald. I probably will finish it on the basis that it's very rare for me not to finish books, but it really hasn't grabbed me and I am pretty much dutifully ploughing on.

I must be one of countless readers who tried MacDonald on C.S. Lewis's recommendation and found him unreadable.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

My most shameful failure has been The Brothers Karamazov.

I persisted to the end, but it was bloody hard work.

And its not as if I can't cope with Russian classics - I've read all three of Anna Karenina, War And Peace and Crime And Punishment twice (in English, I hasten to add).

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
My most shameful failure has been The Brothers Karamazov.

I persisted to the end, but it was bloody hard work.

And its not as if I can't cope with Russian classics - I've read all three of Anna Karenina, War And Peace and Crime And Punishment twice (in English, I hasten to add).

I've tried Karamazov twice now - failed both times. Last time I made it to about 200 pages in, and realised that if I wanted a constantly bickering family with a beastly dad, I might as well just watch Eastenders. But I sailed through Crime and Punishment - one of my top novels of all time. Maybe the top.

I had three false starts at Iris Murdoch's The Bell before I finally made it. Each time I only managed the first handful of pages. I think the problem was adjusting to Murdoch's beautiful, terse style.

Loved LOTR when I was 17. Not so much now. Never managed The Silmarillion, and finally gave my copy to a charity bookshop last month.

Posted by Caissa (# 16710) on :

I'm having trouble with Suetonius' Twelve Caesars. Despite reading it on and off for the last two months, I have only progressed to the third caesar.

Posted by Hilda of Whitby (# 7341) on :

LOTR and The Hobbit--fuggedaboutit

In Search of Lost Time (Proust)--have started it innumerable times but cannot get much farther than 1/3 of the way into the second book. I like 'Swann;s Way', though.

Don Quijote--no, no, no, and again, NO!

Ulysses--maybe if I were in a class with a professor who could explain what the heck was going on. On my own, though, no go.

Henry James--have finished several of his books, but the Golden Bowl defeats me

David Foster Wallace--ain't happening

Jonathan Franzen--see above

Joyce Carol Oates--'Them' and 'We were the Mulvaneys' are the only books of hers I have read, and both times it was because I was trapped in an airplane for long periods of time. I have no desire to read anything else she has written.

I could go on and on ...

In my opinion, life is too short to spend on books that don't grab you. I have zero qualms about shit-canning books that I can't get into ... and I'm a librarian.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Hobbit for me, too. Tried it a couple of times when i was a kid, never got on with it, never felt any inclination to go back to it. Far too twee. Never felt any inclination to read any other Tolkien, either.

Posted by cheesymarzipan (# 9442) on :

I used to be good at finishing books, but now I have the kindle it's too easy to just give up reading half way and forget all about it...
Books I've started on my kindle include
Ulysses
Les Miserables (in English)
Catch-22

I've just noticed that I have The Voyage of the Beagle on there too, which I started reading in paper version (I think I'm stuck somewhere in Patagonia)

It's not just books that I dislike that I fail to finish, either, but just ones that I forget about (and because there's not an actual book lying about it's pretty easy to forget!), together with not realising how long the books are in real life...

I did read War & Peace (in English) a few years ago - it took me about as long to wade through the second epilogue as it took me to read the rest of the book!
Never had much of a problem with Tolkien (though having read the Silmarillion once I haven't managed to re-read it)

I'm not too good at reading Dickens, though A Tale of Two Cities went down quite easily the other summer.
As for the Wheel of Time books, I gave up after about book 5.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

When it comes to those big Russian doorstops, I think the translation makes a huge difference. The Penguin translation of Karamazov, for example (IMHO) is crap. I still love the book (I've read it twice) but spend a lot of time sighing over what a better translator could have done with it.

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

These are the ones that have beaten me:

Salman Rushdie, 'Midnight's Children'.

Henry James, 'The Europeans'

Victor Hugo, 'Notre-Dame de Paris'

Alexander Solzhenisyn, 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'.

At some point I'll definitely retry the Victor Hugo, as I've been told it gets better once you pass the beginning section. Maybe 'Midnight's Children' too.

I've never had any problems with Dickens, though I still have a few left to read. Tolkein is fine, but I have no intention of trying his background material!

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

Like many, I've tried reading the bible. Cannot get through Leviticus, Chronicles, Revelation. With several others, where I read the words, don't get the point, and brain glazes.

The Golden Bough by James Frazer is impenetrable to me, and people talk about, and I wonder, how they got through it. I've never gotten through anything by James Joyce.

All of these, Bible, Golden Bough, Ulysses etc make me feel that I have a learning disability.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

I am another who gave up on Robert Jordan several books ago when I couldn't tell whether it was ever going to finish. And I lost track of which book I'd last read when they all became the same.

These days I'm more distractible from books than I used to be. So rather than give up on a book, I start on a new one. There are also quite a few books that I started on train journeys and then decided were too big to carry around on the bus.

I've read and enjoyed many of the books listed above. I think the book I'm least likely ever to take up again is Vanity Fair.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

I gave up on Crime and Punishment at least twice before I found the Pevear & Volokonsky translation and breezed through it. So I suggest for translated works people try different translations (and for Russian works in particular, P&V are fabulous).

For the Bible, for me it's the effing Proverbs. Half of them are demonstrably false, and 67% of the other half are smug, and the remainder read like off-brand fortune cookie fortunes. And in the Deuts, Sirach, which is just Proverbs on Barry Bonds™ brand steroids.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Belle Ringer wrote about Plato's Republic:

quote:
Put me to sleep so I never read it. Would I like it now? Is that the one where that envisions women "held in common" by all men? I wouldn't like it.

I don't think so.

From what I recall of Book V, Socrates argues that men and women are essentially equal, apart from women being somewhat weaker physically. He compares this to bald men vs. hairy-headed men, ie. a minor difference that has little bearing on overall ability.

Thus, he thinks that women should do most of the same things that men do in the Republic, including rising to positions of high leadership. If I remember correctly, he does not advocate a system of common-ownership of women by men, but does argue that marriage should be abolished among the elite. For purposes of reproduction, men and women would be paired off for conjugal relations, via a lottery system, at regular intervals.

Somewhere near the beginning of the passage, Socrates does use the phrase "community of women", but within the context of speculating about how his proposals might be misunderstood.

It's been a while since I read The Republic, and I do believe there is some ambiguuty about what exactly Plato was advocating in that chapter.

[ 28. March 2013, 15:43: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Ariston (# 10894) on :

I feel almost guilty, like I didn't have a proper college experience, because I actually finished Plato's Republic. Judging by the highlighting left by the three previous owners, two of whom stopped in Book I, the other who stopped halfway through Book III and became pretty sporadic long before then, I'm the first one to ever reach the end of that particular copy.

As for books that take too damn long to read and make you question your literacy: Gravity's Rainbow took me six months. Granted, I was in grad school, reading Kant during the day, etc., but still.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

SparksNotes on The Republic

Sparks says that Plato advocated "spouses" be held in common, which would be egalitarian. I can't quite recall what terminology Plato used in the book itself.

Sparks also says that Plato thought that, while a woman from an upper class would be superior to a man from a lower class, she would still be inferior to men in her own class. I honestly don't recall that from the book, but I'll assume they're not lying.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Hilda of Whitby:
Ulysses--maybe if I were in a class with a professor who could explain what the heck was going on.

That would be hard to do since there isn't anything. I got about 1/3 of the way in, then I realized what he was doing, and knew that I could do it just as well or perhaps better. They say that inside every fat book is a skinny book dying to get out, but I'm not sure that's true of Ulysses. If you cut out all the fat you wouldn't have more than a bone or two left, and those not even capable of being fitted together.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cheesymarzipan:
I used to be good at finishing books, but now I have the kindle it's too easy to just give up reading half way and forget all about it...

I've said this before and I will say it again, I find that the Kindle is actually the best way to approach a doorstop book. Less intimidating when you don't have to actually look at the insignificant physical process you have made after a few days, and if you blow up the font and shrink the margin, you can really feel like you are blasting through pages.

Unfortunately, I let my wife use the Kindle once, and I haven't been able to use it again for almost two years now. She tends to be of the read half way and give up school.

At some point in the last few years, I finally acknowledged that it is OK to read what you want, and that a life in which you never get around to reading Ulysses can still be fulfilling. Although there is definitely a copy of that one on my shelf taunting me.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

I read Slughterhouse Five in my early twenties, and found it to be rather misanthropic, but in a folksy, cracker-barrel sort of a way.

A few years later, I started reading Cat's Cradle, but got about two pages into it and figured I was gonna be in for more of the same. So I put it aside and never went back to Vonnegut again.

But I will say that the film of Slaughterhouse Five is one of my all-time favorites, as a visual experience. Especially the parts in Dresden. Mother Night is okay as well, but other Vonnegut films I've seen can't seem to transcend his sophmoric humour.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
I've yet to meet anyone with legit nerd cred who's finished Tolkien's The Silmarillion
I have

I quite enjoyed it, actually. I could never get into the lost tales, though - they just didn't seem all that interesting.

Me too. "Lost Tales" is a study in the development of the myths rather than of literary interest itself. The Silmarillion I've read through several times and I've never understood what the issue is; the prose is generally quite simple and straightforward.

Dickens on the other hand I find quite impenetrable, as indeed I do the vast majority of fiction. Most of my reading material is non-fiction because I seldom find a novel I can get into.

Posted by The Intrepid Mrs S (# 17002) on :

Years ago Master S. had to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles for his GCSE and was reading it on holiday (Crete if I remember aright). I tried to read it, but it made me so bl**dy furious I had to stop for the sake of my blood pressure. Everyone says he loves his heroine so much - then why can't he give the poor girl a break even once in a while!

I said to Master S in a joyful way 'Oh, Cedric*, whatever do people do who don't read for pleasure?' and he replied in his most despondent tones 'They read Tess of the d'Urbervilles'.
[Killing me]

Mrs S, still simmering - that poor girl!

*Luckily for Master S, he is not called Cedric.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If you cut out all the fat you wouldn't have more than a bone or two left, and those not even capable of being fitted together.

The point of Ulysses is the fat. You may or may not like the idea of a chapter written in the style of the history of English prose, and another chapter written in the style of bad women's magazines. If you do, then you'll like Ulysses.

Posted by lilyswinburne (# 12934) on :

I definitely have not been able to finish the Bible, despite starting several times. I keep getting disgusted and tossing it aside.

Same with "The Essential Writings of the Christian Mystics" by Bernard McGinn. Kept thinking that what those people needed was a good meal!

Patrick O'Brian - too much writing about rigging, not enough about the plot. He was definitely a gear head.

Loved LOTR. Read it over and over again as a teenager.

Loved Proust. Read him over and over again in my 20s.

Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :

Karamazov for me as well I'm ashamed to say. Other books I have flung to the wall in disgust or boredom have been Wuthering Heights (I loved Jane Eyre and hoped for something similar), Seven Pillars of Wisdom (loved the film, couldn't be bothered with the book) and Harry Potter.

I have read through the Bible several times, mainly because at school we got squillions of house points for doing so. We could get a month out of uniform every year given three or four dedicated bible-readers per form.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

Add me to the list of people who have read "The Silmarillion". (At least twice, in fact.)

I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.

Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :

Another Karamazov giver-upper here (three very brave and honest attempts).

Am currently facing the challenge of my reading life with having to eat my way (for a research project I foolishly agreed on participating in [brick wall]

) through the original version of Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'. It. is. hard. work.

And difficult language (German is my mother tongue, but not this kind of German) aside, I just cannot 'link up' with it... A pure, dry, and so far deeply uninspiring academic exercise.

As I read it, my mind either switches off or continuously counter-argues and bickers with what the eyes read. With the result that I'm utterly exhausted and angry after five pages.

My nightly consumption of silly Bollywood-DVDs has increased dramatically since I embarked on this project [Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by SonOfAPreacherLad (# 17617) on :

Again, Plato's Republic. Tried to read it the summer before last before I went off to University (conscientious student - where did THAT go?!) but haven't managed to pick it up again... considering I study Ancient and Medieval History, I should probably rectify that [Big Grin]

Managed Tolkien's stuff, including the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales... enjoyed those very much!

One book I absolutely hate is Wuthering Heights. I cannot stand that book...

Has anyone had any joy with Barchester Towers? I'm trying to plough through that at the minute [Roll Eyes]

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

Atonement.

about page 12 I lost my will to live.

Posted by AngloCatholicGirl (# 16435) on :

I had no trouble getting through Moby Dick, I was quite young when I first read it and I think all the symbolism passed me by and I just enjoyed it as an action yarn.

Wilkie Collins and the Woman in White however, I've never been able to finish, the whole story just seems interminable to me. Slaughterhouse 5 is also on my kindle, making me feel guilty every time I skim past looking for something to read.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up. To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk. For the long suffering Russian doorstops, perhaps you have to be cold with a vodka hangover and suicidal. Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up. To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk. For the long suffering Russian doorstops, perhaps you have to be cold with a vodka hangover and suicidal. Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

Have a paper due.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Snags:

Books that have dishonoured me: Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence, but I don't count that, because he cheated by turning shit part way through. I think that's it, but there are many more I haven't even started simply to avoid defeat.

Did not read them, but Pat, my brother-in-law and Z, my wife, both loved them! By the way, Pat is a published author of supense/espionage novels: he wrote two books for the Ludlum estate.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up. To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk. For the long suffering Russian doorstops, perhaps you have to be cold with a vodka hangover and suicidal. Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.
Have a paper due.

Even that didn't do it for me, but well done.

My smartest English professor was working on his PhD at Princeton in 1970 when Anthony Burgess was a visiting professor. At the request of some students, Mr. Burgess headed up a Finnegans Wake reading group at a local cafe. He was apparently the ideal guide, as he grew up in Catholic Manchester in the 20s and 30s, and actually understood the slang and cultural references. Even with that help, my professor admits that he dropped out after a few weeks. So I think we don't have to feel too bad.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

I don't regret finishing Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to re-read them one day and get a lot more out of them the second time.

It ain't going to happen.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Another person who struggled with Lord of the Rings. I did finish it, eventually, but it took months as I kept taking breaks to read other, more rivetting books, including War and Peace.

I have never finished a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Although I have climbed his monument.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.

That's another book that I feel semi-literate for never having read, but I console myself with a vague recollection that I read it as a child in comic form - I think they were called Classics Illustrated.

Dumas' (Dumas's?) The Count Of Monte Cristo is pretty cool - and readable.

[ 28. March 2013, 20:00: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Paradise Lost

That's the one! I knew there was a book (poem rather) that I have been assigned to read several times and never made it through.

My high school had an advanced English class in which students studied both "Paradise Lost" and "The Wasteland," along with other works. In a conversation with a classmate years later, we determined that you were either a "Paradise Lost" person or a "Wasteland" person. The classmate thought The Wasteland was impossible to get through, and completely bought into Milton's claim that he would explain good and evil. I love everything Eliot, but Milton puts me to sleep.

Posted by Tree Bee (# 4033) on :

I struggled through the first third of Captain Corelli's Mandolin by De Bernieres before giving up.
I believe life's too short to read a book you're not enjoying.
Most books that I read are borrowed from the library so at least I haven't wasted any money.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
In a conversation with a classmate years later, we determined that you were either a "Paradise Lost" person or a "Wasteland" person.

I read somewhere a classification of children into those who liked the sensible and responsible Swallows And Amazons books (Arthur Ransome) and those (like me) who preferred the anarchic William books (Richmal Crompton).

Posted by Pearl B4 Swine (# 11451) on :

I was always afraid to mention that I had never read the Tolkien books. I tried ever-so-hard.

Same with Wuthering Heights. (I adore Jane Eyre & re-read it regularly)

The Scarlet Letter. I know about it, but have never been able to finish it.

Terry Prachett's books: Every now & then there's a glimmer of enjoyment, but then the fade sets in. Can't finish any.

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

I confess to loving both Swallows and Amazons and Just William!
I also refuse to feel bad about not being able to finish certain books when there are so many other good ones out there that I want to read (I have a shelf full of books I want to read which should take me a couple of years to get through as it stands at the moment!)
So I won't be tempted to try any of the Russian authors - I tried War and Peace once and after three pages I couldn't keep track of all the different names for the same people. Likewise, the Worm Ouroboros by Eddison (which I always think of as Our Rob or Ross from the Red Dwarf joke), which threw about three different languages - without translation - into the first three pages.
As far as Virginia Woolf is concerned - look, just go to the Lighthouse, for heaven's sake! And pull yourself together, Madame Bovary!
Thomas Hardy is depressing, and Jane Austen's plots move at a glacial pace, and all I can remember of Lady Chatterley's Lover is a rainy garden (there was a CJ Cherryh fantasy I tried to read once where I slogged through three chapters of mud and cold rain and finally gave up, too).

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Pearl B4 Swine:

Terry Prachett's books: Every now & then there's a glimmer of enjoyment, but then the fade sets in. Can't finish any.

I find the first few much harder to read. They get much more readable somewhere around Small Gods.

Posted by hanginginthere (# 17541) on :

I used to make myself finish any book I started but now life's too short. I abandoned White Teeth and The Line of Beauty because I couldn't make myself care about any of the characters or even (in the case of WT) work out what was going on. Can't abide Hardy - his characters make me want to shout 'Get a grip!' My greatest book marathon boast is Richardson's Clarissa, all 4 vols of it. Someone complained that Jane Austen's plots move at glacial pace (I don't agree, BTW) but Clarissa makes JA look like greased lightning. I loved it, though, it became sort of addictive after a while.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eigon:
As far as Virginia Woolf is concerned - look, just go to the Lighthouse, for heaven's sake!

I quite like Woolf in small, infrequent doses, but I cherish a student resposne to my suggestion that one of her stream-of- conscioiusness passages was "exciting writing". He said

quote:
I can quite see it may have been exciting to write ... however, that does not necessarily make it exciting to read.

But, Eigon - are you seriously telling me you never like Hardy? Not even in your angst-ridden teens? Golly.

Me, I could never get on with The Time-Traveller's Wife but I recently enjoyed the film.

[ 28. March 2013, 20:59: Message edited by: QLib ]

Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :

I'd second Hard Times. Apparently you're supposed to read each set English Lit A level text at least 4 times for a good pass. Don't believe it.

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things was a struggle, still not sure why. Nothing wrong with the plot, the characters are interesting and/or sympathetic and I made it to the end, but it took 4 years on and off. Some marriages don't last that long.

Does anyone else sometimes have a problem finishing books they're really enjoying? I have a nasty habit of reading more than one book at a time, then if another priority comes up it's toomuch to finish one book so I may leave them to languish, completing them months or years later.

Posted by Keren-Happuch (# 9818) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:

Does anyone else sometimes have a problem finishing books they're really enjoying? I have a nasty habit of reading more than one book at a time, then if another priority comes up it's toomuch to finish one book so I may leave them to languish, completing them months or years later.

Yes. I never used to on either count but now I'm finding it much harder to just read a book from beginning to end.

The two I always mention as having given up on halfway through were Philip Hensher's The Mulberry Empire and Mann's The Magic Mountain. With both of them, I got about halfway in and then realised I didn't care a hoot about any of the characters or what happened to them. What on earth's meant to be magic about that mountain I'll never know.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

You aren't the only one who struggles through enjoyable books from time to time. I am loving LeCarre's The Honorable Schoolboy, but I am having a hard time getting through it. Long chapters make it hard to get much effective reading done in the bedtime window, and it is about twice as long as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so even though I have read almost 300 pages, the plot is really still developing. The Queen of Bashan is out of town next weekend, so I should have a chance to really get a good chunk done.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

Decades ago, when I used to read to my kids at bed-time, I tackled Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies with them.

Talk about pushing shit uphill!

At least it sent them to sleep.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Og wrote:

quote:
At the request of some students, Mr. Burgess headed up a Finnegans Wake reading group at a local cafe. He was apparently the ideal guide, as he grew up in Catholic Manchester in the 20s and 30s, and actually understood the slang and cultural references. Even with that help, my professor admits that he dropped out after a few weeks. So I think we don't have to feel too bad.

When I read the trashing of Ulysses on this thread, I immediately thought of an interview I saw with Burgess, in which he said that when he sits down to write, he does so knowing that he will never be able to come up with anything remotely approximating the greatness of that book. Never having read it myself, I can't really take sides in the argument.

Deseret Daughter wrote:

quote:
Am currently facing the challenge of my reading life with having to eat my way (for a research project I foolishly agreed on participating in ) through the original version of Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'. It. is. hard. work.

I read his shorter ethical treatise, The Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals, for a philosophy class, and actually found it a fairly breezy read. His use of concrete examples(eg. the fishmonger who is ethical just because it's good for business) helped a bit.

No Prophet wrote:

quote:
I sort of gather that to properly appreciate Slaughterhouse Five you need to be in the 1970s and smoked up.

It's one of those books that's used in popular media as a synechdoche for "stuff you would see on a hipster's bookshelf", along with guys like Sartre and Camus.

But ironically, I think one of the reasons I didn't like it was because I had recently read Sartre for the first time, and was enchanted with his idea of absolute human freedom. Whereas Vonnegut takes the polar opposite view, stating that freedom is just an illusion that silly humans have cooked up(again, that cracker-barrel misanthropy).

quote:
Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

First, come from a background of being raised on Schoolhouse Rock style propaganda about how great democracy is. This sets you up to be absolutely blown away when you encounter a renowned thinker who disagrees with that.

Secondly, buy into the notion that YOU are the type of reader that Plato had in mind, ie. the fabled philosopher king, able to understand his esoteric arguments in favour of elite rule. Thus, when you encounter arguments along the lines of "We don't take a vote on how to cure a sick horse, we go to a vet, so why should we take a vote on how to run a government?", you will be disinclined to admit to yourself just how dubious they really are.

Posted by basso (# 4228) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
I usually love Dickens - even Bleak House - but I have twice got halfway through David Copperfield and then stalled utterly. I just don't like the whiny kid enough to persevere.

Holden Caulfield, anyone? I shudder at the thought of trying that again.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by basso:
Holden Caulfield, anyone? I shudder at the thought of trying that again.

I read Catcher in the Rye because the alternative was staring at the wall in a railway station waiting room. I had to wait three hours for the train, and there was no one else waiting.

It was marginally better than staring at the wall.

Moo

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
I couldn't get on with Trollope's books

Male grossness alert.

I was distracted when reading Barchester Towers by the question of why Obadiah Slope was lusting after a woman who was apparently paralysed from the waist down.

Posted by Jigsaw (# 11433) on :

How about some non-fiction?
For Christmas I was given Neil Young's "Waging Heavy Peace" which now lies abandoned half-way through. Too skittish, jumping around from one topic to another, musicians mentioned in passing early in the book and then popping up again some time later so you have to search back to see who they were. I love Neil Young's music, but the book was too much hard work. The photos are great, though - and maybe that's all you need to look at. (Not a possibility in fiction, I guess)

Posted by Ariston (# 10894) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

Deseret Daughter wrote:

quote:
Am currently facing the challenge of my reading life with having to eat my way (for a research project I foolishly agreed on participating in ) through the original version of Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'. It. is. hard. work.

I read his shorter ethical treatise, The Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals, for a philosophy class, and actually found it a fairly breezy read. His use of concrete examples(eg. the fishmonger who is ethical just because it's good for business) helped a bit.

quote:
Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

First, come from a background of being raised on Schoolhouse Rock style propaganda about how great democracy is. This sets you up to be absolutely blown away when you encounter a renowned thinker who disagrees with that.

Secondly, buy into the notion that YOU are the type of reader that Plato had in mind, ie. the fabled philosopher king, able to understand his esoteric arguments in favour of elite rule. Thus, when you encounter arguments along the lines of "We don't take a vote on how to cure a sick horse, we go to a vet, so why should we take a vote on how to run a government?", you will be disinclined to admit to yourself just how dubious they really are.

The Groundwork is NOT even close to Metaphysics of Morals in abstraction or Kantspeak. And then there's the Transcendental Deduction from the Critique of Pure Reason, about which people are still writing real and fruitful new interpretations...mostly because the thing's so damn opaque nobody really quite knows what Kant's really going on about. In the words of my Kant professor, Kant's not really writing for you, and doesn't actually care if you get it or not.

As for Plato...well, everybody thinks they might be Guardian (or at least auxiliary) material. Except for the Strausians, but they think all of Plato's really just an Aristophanic farce anyway (seriously women ruling the city? No Greek would be able to say that with a straight face), so they don't count.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

Portnoy's Complaint.

289 pages of some dildo whining like a power drill.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Oh gosh, Clarissa. Made it through that by sheer pigheadedness and then collapsed on Pamela. Just why?

And Henry James was born to mock me. I'll read Leviticus rather, any day of the week.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I don't regret finishing Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to re-read them one day and get a lot more out of them the second time.

It ain't going to happen.

I re-read Paradise lost very couple of years, at least. Never fail to get some different insight into what Milton's talking about each time.

Two books I gave up on, because I was getting nowhere:

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch. It was just getting more and more convoluted and I could not be bothered finding out how it was all gong to be resolved.

The Four-Gated City by Doris Lessing. I had enjoyed the earlier books in the Martha Quest series, but once Lessing started her very idiosyncratic mysticism, I just gave up.

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by SonOfAPreacherLad:
Has anyone had any joy with Barchester Towers? I'm trying to plough through that at the minute

I never even made it through The Warden. I think I remember getting as far as chapter 4. It's a pity, because the tv adaptation back in the 80s was brilliant.

I am not one of those who enjoy curling up in bed with a good Trollope.

Welcome aboard, by the way!

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

I liked The Silmarillion . I think a problem many have is to read it through, whereas it is a seres of very loosely collected accounts and may be better read over 2 or 3 months.

Posted by hanginginthere (# 17541) on :

I can't read Henry James either. Years ago when Mr hanging and I visited Lamb House in Rye the guide rabbited on about HJ until we said that we were really more interested in EF Benson, who had also lived there. At which the guide almost hugged us and said she was too and would much rather talk about him than HJ. [Smile]

Posted by Smudgie (# 2716) on :

Our book club at work started with The Time Traveller's Wife and we decided to postpone discussing it until everybody had read it. It would have been fine, except that I really really couldn't get into it. Eventually I locked myself in the en suite on holiday (I had to read in there as I was sharing a room with my two sleeping sons who needed supervising until they were well and truly in the land of Nod) and simply stayed there until I'd made my way through the whole book... not really getting much out of reading it at any stage. I then rang my colleagues to break the good news - only to be told that they'd lost interest as it was now so long since they'd read it!

Not a book I'd bother to read again, despite wide acclaim.

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

quote:
Originally posted by piglet:

Tolkien. Couldn't get past page 2 of The Hobbit.

Me also + James Joyce

Had to read a compendium of “20th Century Short Stories” for “O” level. Eight(?) stories – the first was Conrad; ISTM turgid and pointless and took up some 40% of the pages. Never read Conrad since – but then I’ve never tried to read anything that people say I should – left me free to discover the writers I enjoy instead.

Possibly my attitude stems from being sufficiently self-confident that I'm intolerant of opinion based on authority/tradition/conformity - or maybe because I think that my reading, like the rest of my life, should be fun.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

I fail on Moby Dick, Clarissa, Voyage of the Beagle and Barchester Towers. But I do like Virginia Wolfe, especially Mrs Dalloway which I had to study, and Jane Austen.
I've never been inclined to attempt Ulysses or Anna Karenina. My other half loves Russian novels though and I have forced myself through most of Dostoyevsky's works.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Portnoy's Complaint.

289 pages of some dildo whining like a power drill.

Yes. If he's going to get up to this kind of stuff, the least he could do is enjoy it. I got so tired of the moaning.

Moo

Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
I liked The Silmarillion . I think a problem many have is to read it through, whereas it is a seres of very loosely collected accounts and may be better read over 2 or 3 months.

Seconded, it also takes some use in getting the perspectives.

Some Dicken's I find ok (Oliver Twist rolls along quite quickly in Kindle, and I was surprised at how unoriginal the funny bits in the Muppets/Pantaloons version is), "Two cities" though I had to read from both ends (you just didn't care about anyone in the middle otherwise)

Austen I finished a couple, (and really quite like Northanger and the little ones) but found P&P,S&S and MA, hard to recognise as parody/satire.

I'm going to need someone to give a compelling reason before I start Joyce or Wolff though, you get a definite 'emperors new clothes' vibe from peoples comments.

[oh and on the Russian's, tried "The Trial" and "The Idiot" found them very heavy going and gave up. War and Peace at least has some structure, and I was ill, Crime and Punishment I recognised what was going on]

[ 29. March 2013, 13:34: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

I'm a Barchester fan - I first came across The Warden as the radio version, and then read that and Barchester Towers and a couple of others before I ran out of steam with the one where the vicar signs some sort of promissory note and gets hopelessly into debt.

And, Qlib - in my angst ridden teens I was reading my way through Mary Stewart's mystery romances, and Victoria Holt's historical romances, and Georgette Hayer, and Mary Renault's ancient Greek novels. The only reason Hardy came up on my radar was because my sister was studying Tess of the D'Urbervilles at school and hating it!

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

I believe I read all of "The Republic" until Socrates actually produced the definition of justice--the proclaimed purpose of the whole dialogue--and I never did finish the rest of it.

(Enough of PLato--read Xenophon's memoir of Socrates
and his version of the Symposium.)

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Like many, I've tried reading the bible. Cannot get through Leviticus, Chronicles, Revelation. With several others, where I read the words, don't get the point, and brain glazes.

I had problems with Revelation too.

One version that helped me read the Bible all the way through is the 'Cover to Cover Complete Bible', (eds. Selwyn Hughes and Trevor J. Partridge) which is a 1 yr chronological reading plan based on the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I don't know how it rates as a translation, but I found the page layout, the plentiful subheadings and the chronological re-ordering very helpful. You're given a bird's eye view of each book of the Bible at the bottom of the relevant section, and there are timelines for all the big events(but no attempt to 'date' the Creation, thankfully). It did take me longer than a year, but I stayed on track! Each day's reading ends with a short paragraph 'for thought and contemplation', some of which are more worthwhile than others, depending on your own theological perspective.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Portnoy's Complaint.

289 pages of some dildo whining like a power drill.
Yes. If he's going to get up to this kind of stuff, the least he could do is enjoy it. I got so tired of the moaning.

Moo

For real! Give me Valmont any day!

Posted by cheesymarzipan (# 9442) on :

quote:
Originally posted by comet:
Atonement.

about page 12 I lost my will to live.

Similarly with me. I bought it at a train station when the film came out, and I couldn't get past the first chapter (I can't remember what I did on the train instead of reading it, perhaps I had another book with me)

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I don't regret finishing Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, and I keep telling myself that I'm going to re-read them one day and get a lot more out of them the second time.

It ain't going to happen.

I got both of those a couple of years ago, and I got through the inferno but I lost track somewhere on the boat to heaven. Paradise lost I couldn't get into at all, perhaps because my copy had really odd line breaks (or do all the versions have that? I forget)
Another one who can't get through the Bible. Perhaps I need less other books to distract me.
Most of the rest of the books mentioned on this thread I've not even started reading (though I do like to read the concise OED every so often, I've not managed to get through it all yet)

Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :

It doesn't have to be lengthy or complicated to be difficult to read. Some 'friend' tried to tell me that Kathy Lette's book Silly Cows was funny. It's the only book I've ever thrown across a room; didn't get to chapter 3.

quote:
Originally posted by cheesymarzipan:
Paradise lost I couldn't get into at all, perhaps because my copy had really odd line breaks

I wonder if typesetting plays more of a part in reading comfort than we think. I've not long finished The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore. It had huge margins making focusing and speedy reading hard, especially for such a simple text.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
I wonder if typesetting plays more of a part in reading comfort than we think.

Quite a lot more - well, for me anyway. I borrowed a recipe book from a friend once and couldn't get on with it, even though some of the recipes were great: it was presented in one of those "handwriting" fonts all the way throughout.

It's one of the more extreme examples but I do notice fonts and these days, particularly type size, and what I don't want is some gimmicky font that looks so distracting that you can't concentrate on the text. Save it for headings.

Text design is another thing that can make or break a book. The same content can be presented so differently that a good text design can make it either a book you want to keep, or a poor one makes it something you struggle to read, keep for a while and then end up donating to a charity shop.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

To me, the Mount Everest of significant but unreadable books is Das Kapital.

Anyone conquered it?

Posted by Tea (# 16619) on :

I've found that well annotated editions can be indispensable for making sense of some of the works mentioned above. So when I read Moby Dick some years ago, I found the notes in the Penguin Classics edition most helpful; similarly, I've always been glad of the annotations and glosses in Penguin Classics and OUP World's Classics editions of Walter Scott, as I fear that otherwise my ignorance of Scottish dialect and history would make Scott unreadable for me.

Works that many have found daunting or unreadable can be cracked with the aid of suitable preparatory reading and vade mecums. For example, readers might be best advised not to attempt Ulysses if they have not already read - and enjoyed - Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Nobody should feel ashamed about using something like SparkNotes to help make sense of the action of Ulysses. It really is worth the trouble, by the way; as Dafyd noted, the fat is the book, and the satire, pastiche, and web of allusion help make Ulysses a thoroughly engaging read.

I don't feel guilty or ashamed of not having read Finnegans Wake;it's defeated some of the best literary minds I know.

Now for my list of shame...

On the Road
It's short, it's easy, it's important, so why haven't I done it yet? Part of me feels like the forty year old virgin, and another part of me suspects that I am now too old to enjoy it anyway.
Proust
My French is good enough to allow me to feel ashamed of reaching for an English language translation of Proust while not being quite strong enough to let me feel confident that I would finish the original before the year/decade/century is out.
Atlas Shrugged
I've read enough of and about Ayn Rand to be pretty sure that this is an absolute stinker - one thousand plus pages of ideological toxicity in a poorly organized, overwritten "novel of ideas"; you don't have to put a turd in your mouth to know it would taste nasty, yes? Yet part of me wants to have that first hand reading knowledge so that I can talk without a sense of bluff or hypocrisy to the young enthusiasts I encounter.
News from Nowhere
I wanted so much to like and learn from this. Instead, I gave up half way with the literary equivalent of the dry mouth, lock jaw sensation that accompanies the attempt to eat a packet of crackers in one go with no liquid. It's not just a problem with Utopian literature as a genre, because I managed to get through the notoriously tedious A Traveler from Altruria and the almost as dreadful Looking Backward - Morris wrote NfN in response to the latter.
Perhaps my powers of reading endurance are declining with age.
Paradise Lost
I'm supposed to be well educated, and here I am confessing that I have not read a single line of this epic. The shame of it...
Almost all contemporary fiction
My work involves a great deal of reading, so I tell myself that I shouldn't feel too bad about not having read Junot Diaz or Hilary Mantel. Yet I sometimes wonder if I deliberately do not make time for contemporary fiction for contemptible reasons: first, that I in fact lack sufficent confidence in my own taste and judgement to form an opinion on a work that has not already been canonized; second, that a Leonard Bast like part of me is stricken with anxiety about not having read enough of "the classics", which is, of course, a task without end.
All contemporary poetry
Here I am so clueless I do not even know of any names to bat about. Any suggestions?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Tea:
[*]Proust
My French is good enough to allow me to feel ashamed of reaching for an English language translation of Proust while not being quite strong enough to let me feel confident that I would finish the original before the year/decade/century is out.

You could try telling yourself that the Scott-Moncrieff/Kilmartin version is one of those translations that almost qualify as classics in their own right, if that helps?

Posted by hanginginthere (# 17541) on :

Re the Bible, in my previous life (only just ended) as a proofreader, I had to proofread the Bible several times. I used to lose the will to live round about 1 Kings, but had no choice but to continue to the last syllable of recorded time - sorry, I mean of Revelation.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Tea wrote:

quote:
Atlas Shrugged
I've read enough of and about Ayn Rand to be pretty sure that this is an absolute stinker - one thousand plus pages of ideological toxicity in a poorly organized, overwritten "novel of ideas"; you don't have to put a turd in your mouth to know it would taste nasty, yes? Yet part of me wants to have that first hand reading knowledge so that I can talk without a sense of bluff or hypocrisy to the young enthusiasts I encounter.

I've managed to become adequately conversant in Ayn Rand by reading Anthem, a pamphlet-sized novella that encapsulates her basic ideas, and leafing through a few of her other books(none of them novels) at the bookstore over the years. It's basically a re-hash of laissez-faire liberalism, with a veneer of bombastic romanticism added on.

She also hates Kant, but you probably don't need to know the ins and outs of her objections to get through a conversation with her followers. Just use "Kant" and "altruism" in the same sentence a few times, and they'll be impressed.

I suspect if you were to read a summary of Atlas Shrugged on wikipedia, or watch the recent movie, you'd know enough to discuss the novel itself with her followers. I'd imagine it's just am epic extension of a few simple ideas.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Ariston wrote:

quote:
As for Plato...well, everybody thinks they might be Guardian (or at least auxiliary) material. Except for the Strausians, but they think all of Plato's really just an Aristophanic farce anyway (seriously women ruling the city? No Greek would be able to say that with a straight face), so they don't count.

The Straussian re-reading of Plato, whatever its absurdities, is nothing compared to the claim I've heard that Socrates was put to death for luring the youth of Athens into homosexuality(because, like, what else could "corrupting the youth" mean, right?)

Funny thing is, I've heard that howler repeated both by gay activists and by homophobes, to advance polar opposite agendas.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

I remember vividly the first book I never finished, even though I started it maybe a dozen times. I was an avid reader when I was young, reading my assigned books, and those of the other classes just because they sounded interesting. But "The House of the Seven Gables" just made my brain hurt. Don't know why, and I remember very few of those books I finished so long ago.

It felt like a horrible personal failing that I finally got rid of the book, probably at a church sale.

I am also one of those who read, and enjoyed, "The Silmarillion" It's just that next time, I'll create a spread sheet while reading it! [Biased]

Posted by Kyzyl (# 374) on :

The whole Games of Thrones (Fire & Ice, wahtever...) series, ugh. Just couldn't do it. Could not keep track of who was who and where. More importantly, just didn't care about any of the characters.

Posted by Sighthound (# 15185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kyzyl:
The whole Games of Thrones (Fire & Ice, wahtever...) series, ugh. Just couldn't do it. Could not keep track of who was who and where. More importantly, just didn't care about any of the characters.

Snap. Mind you, it is fantasy and I really struggle with fantasy as in some ways I have a prosaic mind.

Also War and Peace. And King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett. I usually like Dunnett, but this one I tried three times, including once on a really boring train journey, but I couldn't get past page 100. And that was a struggle.

[ 31. March 2013, 16:04: Message edited by: Sighthound ]

Posted by Kyzyl (# 374) on :

I'm OK with fantasy but George R.R. Martin is just nowhere near my cup of tea or coffee.

Posted by infinite_monkey (# 11333) on :

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was neither.

Posted by Egeria (# 4517) on :

I guess I didn't get the Jane Austen gene; I've never been able to stay awake past about page 30 of Pride and Prejudice . A long time ago, I got through Sense and Sensibility , but I don't remember it at all.

Somehow, I did finish Moby Dick when I was in high school--I had to pick something from American literature for a particularly loathsome class, and I had always loved biology...

Gone with the Wind is another one I didn't finish--and I'm not going to try it again, either. Life is too short to spend with creeps like Scarlett and Rhett.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

I feel such an ignorant scrote. The only books appearing in these lists that I've ever read are the Tolkien and Pratchett ones.

Posted by Gextvedde (# 11084) on :

I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't get on with Tolkien. It certainly wasn't for want of trying. I managed to get through the fellowship and halfway through the Two Towers but had to give up due to lack of interest.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eigon:
I'm a Barchester fan - I first came across The Warden as the radio version, and then read that and Barchester Towers and a couple of others before I ran out of steam with the one where the vicar signs some sort of promissory note and gets hopelessly into debt.

Tangent: why does any charcter in a Victorian novel ever put their name to some else's promissory note? About, oh, a third of Victorian literature seems to be about the trouble that people get into when they do this: so you'd think that anyone in ther C19 who'd ever read any fiction at all would know that this is one thing you should never do! it's a bit like the way that TV soap characters never seem to watch TV soaps, I suppose.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

Tea wrote:

quote:
On the Road
It's short, it's easy, it's important, so why haven't I done it yet? Part of me feels like the forty year old virgin, and another part of me suspects that I am now too old to enjoy it anyway.

I feel the same way. A friend of mine organized a reading a few years ago, with a local collector of jazz on vinyl providing a hard bop soundtrack. Maybe I would be able to make it through something like that.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
When it comes to those big Russian doorstops, I think the translation makes a huge difference. The Penguin translation of Karamazov, for example (IMHO) is crap. I still love the book (I've read it twice) but spend a lot of time sighing over what a better translator could have done with it.

Well, even David McDuff's tin ear is an improvement over Constance Garnett. (shudder)

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

The first time I tried to read Foucault's The Order of Things, I just. Could. Not. Get through it.

The second time I succeeded, through sheer bloody-mindedness if nothing else. What an irritating chore that book was, and how frustrating in general Foucault is to read; for each glimmer of intelligibility you have to wade through 10 pages of impenetrable nonsense.

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

Hemingway.

Not the full books, The Old Man and the Sea has to be The. Best. Book. Ever.

But the short stories that make the collection The Snows of Kilimanjaro, I couldn't get into them. For me Hemingway needs something longer to get going.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

"Even Homer nods" - I read the unreadable Till We Have Faces only because C.S. Lewis wrote it.

Posted by angelica37 (# 8478) on :

Several books I never finished have been mentioned on here already. Ulysses, was hopeless and just didn't make sense to me, though I have loved Lord of the Rings for years the Silmarillion was too much like the Old Testament (which I also never finished)
I did make it through 'War and Peace' one Christmas holiday when the weather was bad and quite enjoyed it but the author I really can't get into at all is Thomas Hardy, we had to read 'Tess' at school and I still never finished it.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

The Charlie Brown New Years TV Special involves a subplot where Charlie Brown is assigned "War and Peace" as a homework assignment over Christmas break. Glad to hear that someone actually enjoyed that task. (He ends up falling asleep while trying to read it on New Years Eve, misses the little red haired girl at the New Years dance, and almost fails after writing his report based on what he got out of the plot summery on the dust jacket.)

Posted by Bax (# 16572) on :

Wuthering Heights: I've tried twice but gave up twice.

Wolf Hall: Just could not get interested in it after about 50 pages.....

Lord of the Rings, admittedly it was a while since I tried, but not tempted to try again....

I always feel guilty about not finishing a book and somehow can never quite get around to disposing of them (to the latest jumble sale or whatever). One of the reasons I tend to always get books from library nowadays!

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Secret Garden. Most of my friends loved it. I was bored. Read it again ten years ago to see why friends still call it a favorite book of their youth. I was still bored.

Lord of the Rings. I liked Hobbit - not a favorite, but pleasant. But LOTR, couldn't get into it, dull and plodding.

Plato's Republic. Was assigned in college. Put me to sleep so I never read it. Would I like it now? Is that the one where that envisions women "held in common" by all men? I wouldn't like it.

I read "Secret Garden" for the first time last year and... oh, God, the Cockney "accent" or manner of speaking just put me off entirely. I couldn't understand a word they said and the damn book seemed to go on and on. I also tried to read some of the Oz books but just got bored. I read some Carson McCullers book about a diner and the people who are regulars there... the title escapes me at the moment... it was a thoroughly depressing book and I really felt suicidal after I read it! Well, it didn't help that we were horrendously poor last month and the day I read the McCullers book we hadn't eaten in two days... never read depressing books when you haven't eaten in a few days and are really poor! [Killing me]

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.
That's another book that I feel semi-literate for never having read, but I console myself with a vague recollection that I read it as a child in comic form - I think they were called Classics Illustrated.

Dumas' (Dumas's?) The Count Of Monte Cristo is pretty cool - and readable.

Oh, mercy! "The Three Musketeers" is a f*cking hilarious book! I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago and took it home. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so witty and well-written.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago

Wow, you live in a literate neighbourhood!

About the only reading matter I ever find discarded on public transport are out-of-date racing form guides.

(Edited to fix code)

[ 04. April 2013, 06:56: Message edited by: Firenze ]

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago
Wow, you live in a literate neighbourhood!

About the only reading matter I ever find discarded on public transport are out-of-date racing form guides.

(Edited to fix code)

Down-market scud mags as well, surely? Or is that just around here?

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

I tried to read "Three men in a boat" because it was reputed to be funny.

Yawnarama. I got about half way through.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

'Three Men in a Boat' was hilarious when I was 10 years old and it was read out loud to us, in instalments, by our teacher. Not sure that I'd want to read it now, as an adult.

I sometimes try to read children's stories to see what all the fuss is about. 'The boy in the blue pyjamas', for example, was epic. However, I tried, but really couldn't get into, the first Harry Potter book. I'm too old for Wizard Stories, even those that 'everyone' is supposed to read.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

'The boy in the blue pyjamas' - do you mean 'striped'. Good read but totally implausible.

Posted by M. (# 3291) on :

I don't think anyone's mentioned Philip Pullman yet - I've tried several times to read 'Northern Lights' but always grind to a halt after a few pages. I've decided life's too short and have given up.

M.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Chorister mentioned Harry Potter. My sister* gave me the first two for a birthday a few years ago, and not being averse to the odd kids' book, I read the first one. Light, entertaining, derivative of course ('Hogwarts' from the St Custard's, human chess from The Prisoner), but well done. Then started the second one and realised that I couldn't care less about any of this. But then I suppose I was a good 25 years older than the presumed target readership.

*She went through a phase of giving me fashionable books that I couldn't stand. Gave me that tedious one about the dog that impaled itself on the garden fork because it could no longer stand (a) living in Swindon (b) living over the road from that tiresome autistic kid. By the time I'd read it I was looking at the garden fork too.

Posted by Polly Plummer (# 13354) on :

5th Mary, if you thought the people in The Secret Garden were Cockney, you definitely missed the finer points of the book!

Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :

Re: Harry Potter. I was given all 7 books by a well meaning friend, and my mother who not-so-secretly wanted to read them herself. The first two (the shortest) were a struggle, the next two a little better, then I saw the size of book 5. It's the size of a phone book; you could kill someone with it. It remains unread taking up space on the bookcase better used for better books.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I never quite finished "The Three Musketeers", but I hope to do so.
That's another book that I feel semi-literate for never having read, but I console myself with a vague recollection that I read it as a child in comic form - I think they were called Classics Illustrated.

Dumas' (Dumas's?) The Count Of Monte Cristo is pretty cool - and readable.
Oh, mercy! "The Three Musketeers" is a f*cking hilarious book! I found a torn up copy of it on the bus a few years ago and took it home. I couldn't stop laughing, it was so witty and well-written.

I was a little surprised to see someone consider themselves less literary for never having read "The Three Musketeers." It's a great yarn, and definitely worth a read, but hardly high literature.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Might not be "high literature" but it is bloody long.

Same's true for The Count of Monte Cristo. I read or reread it a few years ago and I was surprised to find the bit about Edmond Dantes being the best hash dealer in Europe.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
I was a little surprised to see someone consider themselves less literary for never having read "The Three Musketeers." It's a great yarn, and definitely worth a read, but hardly high literature.

My term was literate (semi-literate, actually), not literary.

No, I suppose it's not "high literature", but then I was not suggesting that it was, only that it has a more or less recognised place in the Western canon.

Posted by chive (# 208) on :

As part of the mental I have strict rules about my life and one of them is that if I start a book I have to finish it no matter how rotten it is. That meant that I managed to read the complete works of Tolstoy last year which is something I never thought I'd manage. It does mean that I do read some crap though.

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

I got through the first Game of Thrones book and there were only two characters I cared about. I've been lent the second one and really can't get into it, although my son in law assures me it's brilliant.

I never managed to get into Jane Austen either and I've had several goes as I'm sure I must be missing something and my mum, God rest her, used to read and reread them. I got through an entire English degree without reading Austen... and even wrote an essay on her work... not something I'm proud of.

Nen - wondering if she's going to regret her own honesty.

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

quote:
Originally posted by M.:
I don't think anyone's mentioned Philip Pullman yet - I've tried several times to read 'Northern Lights' but always grind to a halt after a few pages. I've decided life's too short and have given up.

M.

I had a box set of His Dark Materials and managed to read through the trilogy eventually - the first was ok, the second not bad (my preferred book of the three), but I had to force myself to get through the last book, it was so tedious and preachy. I put the box set on the secondhand book stall that we had at a street festival outside our church, and I was quite touched when a young boy bought it eagerly and went away very happily clutching it tightly. I do hope he enjoyed it more than I did.

I am another who can't get through Tolkien. An ex-boyfriend tried reading The Hobbit to me several times, but I kept falling asleep after a few pages.

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:

I never managed to get into Jane Austen either and I've had several goes as I'm sure I must be missing something and my mum, God rest her, used to read and reread them. I got through an entire English degree without reading Austen... and even wrote an essay on her work... not something I'm proud of.

Nen - wondering if she's going to regret her own honesty.

I seriously doubt there's a person anywhere with an English degree who's never written a paper on a book they didn't finish, or just skimmed. Well, maybe there are lots of them and it's just you and me that are the slackers. I was a master of this kind of paper in my undergrad years, I'm sorry to say. And this was before the Internet when you couldn't even google a plot summary. But seriously, Pamela? Life's too friggin short.

[ 05. April 2013, 13:50: Message edited by: Trudy Scrumptious ]

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
To read Ulysses, you need to be in the 1930s and rather drunk... Not sure what you need to do to read Plato.

When I read Ulysses one summer, I was sitting in a very comfy chair in the living room with some music on low.

When I read Plato at UC San Diego in 1972, I found what you need is a long summer by the sea and a good professor: both conditions were fulfilled as the university had a world-class department of philosophy including one professor who was famous at the time.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

Jane Austen - she's the third member of the Victorian trinity: Dickens, the Brontes, Austen. Can't stay awake after the first two pages of any of 'em.

How someone who can read those can't read Tolkien I really, really don't get. At least it's obvious what he's on about.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

What's Victorian about Austen? [Confused]

And she's a much easier read than Dickens. Shorter books containing shorter sentences made up of shorter words.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Yup. And real people rather than caricatures (fond though I am of Dickens). And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.

Posted by Boadicea Trott (# 9621) on :

Wolf Hall.
I found it boring, tendentious, prosy and thoroughly incoherent in parts, and I failed to finish it. [Disappointed]

I would prefer to be locked in a lift with my crazy ex-sister-in-law for eight hours than ever have to read a Hilary Mantel historical book again.

To be fair, her "Fludd" was *much* better written, though she should still not have bothered to write it IMO.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
What's Victorian about Austen?

My mistake. Fact remains I fell asleep before I got interested enough to find her actual dates.

Easier to read than Dickens is damning with faint praise.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I read "Secret Garden" for the first time last year and... oh, God, the Cockney "accent" or manner of speaking just put me off entirely. I couldn't understand a word they said and the damn book seemed to go on and on.

Cockney? You mean The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett? I can't remember any cockneys in it! Most of the characters are speaking rather standard turn-of-the century upper-middle-class English Some of them are written in a sort of stage Yorkshire, though very mild. (Wuthering Heights goes a lot further.) I'm not sure there are any cockneys at all. Or do you mean another book?

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup. And real people rather than caricatures (fond though I am of Dickens). And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.

No, it hasn't. I find limiting characters to humans so, well, limiting [Biased]

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I read "Secret Garden" for the first time last year and... oh, God, the Cockney "accent" or manner of speaking just put me off entirely. I couldn't understand a word they said and the damn book seemed to go on and on.
Cockney? You mean The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett? I can't remember any cockneys in it! Most of the characters are speaking rather standard turn-of-the century upper-middle-class English Some of them are written in a sort of stage Yorkshire, though very mild. (Wuthering Heights goes a lot further.) I'm not sure there are any cockneys at all. Or do you mean another book?

I think Dickon speaks Yorkshire - and I guess if one's idea of Cockney is Dick Van Dyke Mockney, getting it mixed up with some other regional accent would be an easy enough mistake to make.

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yup. And real people rather than caricatures (fond though I am of Dickens). And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.

Some of us love elves. [Axe murder]

Thank you for what you said, Trudy. No one I was at university with would have admitted to writing essays without reading the texts, but maybe we were all at it and simply not saying so.

Nen - feeling slightly less of a fraud.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Jane Austen - she's the third member of the Victorian trinity: Dickens, the Brontes, Austen. Can't stay awake after the first two pages of any of 'em.

I would say the third member of the trinity is Trollope. I like most of the Palliser novels. I am currently re-reading Can You Forgive Her?.

Moo

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

George Eliot is the one I've not yet been moved to read.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Jane Austen died before Queen Victoria was even born.

She is absolutely wonderful.

As is Dickens - I'm thinking of taking Bleak House with me into hospital - I've just begun re-reading it this evening, and it is inspiring enough to make me forget an upcoming operation.

Trollope is eminently Victorian and a bit of a bore: costume soap opera.

There's lots of things that leave me cold, but obviously other people enjoy them.

PS - Can't say I like the Brontes, but then you're either a Bronte person or an Austen person. George Eliot is a bit on the worthy side. The Victorians themselves would have thought one of their greatest novelists was Thackery.

[ 05. April 2013, 21:39: Message edited by: venbede ]

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:

quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:

I never managed to get into Jane Austen either and I've had several goes as I'm sure I must be missing something and my mum, God rest her, used to read and reread them. I got through an entire English degree without reading Austen... and even wrote an essay on her work... not something I'm proud of.

Nen - wondering if she's going to regret her own honesty.
I seriously doubt there's a person anywhere with an English degree who's never written a paper on a book they didn't finish, or just skimmed. Well, maybe there are lots of them and it's just you and me that are the slackers. I was a master of this kind of paper in my undergrad years, I'm sorry to say. And this was before the Internet when you couldn't even google a plot summary. But seriously, Pamela? Life's too friggin short.

Also guilty as charged. Although I will note that my grades went up significantly in my third and fourth year when I actually started reading the assigned reading most of the time. I can actually identify the week when I discovered that- I had to read Frankenstein for a Romanticism class, and Walker Percy's Lancelot for the final semester of the two year Humanities seminar. I couldn't put either of those books down, and like that, the reading bug that had gone away at some point in middle school when we had to read lots of dreary angst-ridden young adult fiction was back.

It still didn't get me through the House of the Seven Gables a year later, but at least I was able to write the paper on something else that I had read.

Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
George Eliot is the one I've not yet been moved to read.

Give her a go, Ken, do! She is unsurpassed as a plotter of plots, and writes the most beautiful, measured prose. She is in many ways the heir of Austen, and is as far from the Brontes as she could be. Where her contemporary Dickens relies heavily on mad coincidences to drive his plots along, Eliot scorns any such trick. Everything for her is character-driven, and every success and/or catastrophe is the result of a beautifully worked out chain of cause and effect. You couldn't find a more intelligent writer.

Plunge in and start with Middlemarch. It is sheer soap opera. Not one, not two, but three love stories to get thoroughly caught up in, and a host of fascinating supporting characters. I read it in my final year at school, and once alarmed my friends by throwing open the door of the sixth year common room and announcing excitedly, "Rosamund has got engaged to XXX!" (I won't give it away!) Other beauties are Silas Marner and Felix Holt, the Radical - and she has some wickedly clever short stories too.

Just avoid The Mill on the Floss. 'Depressing' doesn't begin to describe it. I never could get through that one.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

I'm less of a George Eliot fan than Cottontail and I won't point out where I disagree.

She was an earnest young evangelical who lost her faith early, but in each of her books religion (a different sort of religion in each book - she was a good liberal) plays an important part.

You might be interested in Adam Bede where a principal character is a woman Methodist preacher.

I'm interested that when male Victorian authors bring in religion, it is embarrassing and there's the thought they are playing to their audience.

When women Victorian authors deal with religion, they take it seriously, George Eliot in particular.

(There is some very moving religious imagery in Dickens, but the trite sentimentality is round the corner.)

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:

Can't say I like the Brontes, but then you're either a Bronte person or an Austen person.

Yes. I am most definitely a Bronte person. I've tried reading Jane, and managed to get through one of hers, and I can't even remember now the title. Dickens is another I've tried and can't get through, except A Christmas Carol. I'm going to try George Eliot one day, as Mr Marten has several titles, but she will have to join the growing number of books 'to be read' on the shelves.

Has anyone come across The Secret of the Kingdom and The Roman by Mika Waltari? Set in the 1st century they are not high literature, but are a damn good read.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Try Silas Marner, pine marten. It's quite short (which is the great thing about A Christmas Carol. And I find very moving.

Just to show I can be flawed by books, I've not got past the first canto of Spenser's The Faerie Queen. You have to read poetry out loud to yourself, unlike novels which I skim.

But I'll get the b****r some day. (Long books are just a challenge to me. Can't help it. That's the way I am.)

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

Ha! I remember doing The Faerie Queen for A level - long sunny days listening to Miss B reading aloud about the Bower of Bliss...

Yes, thanks, I might try Mr Marten's copy of Silas Marner, which I know he enjoyed very much.

But for sheer passion, wildness and downright cruelty, you can't beat a good dollop of Wuthering Heights [Biased]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I'm less of a George Eliot fan than Cottontail and I won't point out where I disagree.

She was an earnest young evangelical who lost her faith early, but in each of her books religion (a different sort of religion in each book - she was a good liberal) plays an important part.

I read about a long conversation someone had with her where she said that it was impossible to believe in religion, and that duty was sacred.

This intrigued me because my sense of duty comes from my religion.

Moo

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

I'm more of a Bronte person than Austen - not that I've read them all but I revisit "Jane Eyre" on a regular basis and keep meaning to reread "Wuthering Heights."

I love some of Thomas Hardy too - particularly once I learned that he thought of himself as a poet and so excelled in description but didn't necessarily paint people too well. Couldn't get into "The Return of the Native" though. Life really is too short.

I agree with cottontail about George Eliot - dive into "Middlemarch" and don't be put off by the length. I studied it for A level and we all enjoyed the love affairs. Mind you, it was an all girls' school and we had to take that kind of excitement where we could find it.

Nen - Prince Hal, anyone? [Biased]

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I'm less of a George Eliot fan than Cottontail and I won't point out where I disagree.

She was an earnest young evangelical who lost her faith early, but in each of her books religion (a different sort of religion in each book - she was a good liberal) plays an important part.
I read about a long conversation someone had with her where she said that it was impossible to believe in religion, and that duty was sacred.

This intrigued me because my sense of duty comes from my religion.

Moo

I think the quote was something like "God, immortality, duty. How impossible to believe the first two, how impossible to ignore the third".

The opposite of having your cake and eating it.

The evangelical high mindedness remained when the belief had disappeared.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
She is in many ways the heir of Austen, and is as far from the Brontes as she could be. Where her contemporary Dickens relies heavily on mad coincidences to drive his plots along, Eliot scorns any such trick. Everything for her is character-driven, and every success and/or catastrophe is the result of a beautifully worked out chain of cause and effect.

Both Austen and Dickens are comic novelists. As is Trollope. Eliot has no doubt many worthy merits, but her comic talent isn't one of them.

Of course, Dickens relies on mad coincidences to drive his plots along. That's the sort of book he's writing. It's like objecting to Shakespeare on the grounds that people would notice that the supposed boy was actually a woman.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
I'm more of a Bronte person than Austen - not that I've read them all but I revisit "Jane Eyre" on a regular basis and keep meaning to reread "Wuthering Heights."

I love some of Thomas Hardy too - particularly once I learned that he thought of himself as a poet and so excelled in description but didn't necessarily paint people too well. Couldn't get into "The Return of the Native" though. Life really is too short.

I agree with cottontail about George Eliot - dive into "Middlemarch" and don't be put off by the length. I studied it for A level and we all enjoyed the love affairs. Mind you, it was an all girls' school and we had to take that kind of excitement where we could find it.

I could have just about written that post, Nenya, although I love The Return of the Native. I'm so glad your class read Middlemarch. I think it should be required reading for girls because it continues on where Austen and Bronte usually stop -- on the wedding day. With Elliot we get to see some of the real disappointment marriage can be once the glow begins to dim. Only Elliot and Tolstoy tell us about that.

I love Hardy though, and should include him with his glimpses of real marriage. He certainly gave us a tragic wedding night in "Tess."

I'm a Bronte person, at least I would put Charlotte and Anne above Austen but I like Austen very much, too.

On topic: I can't get into any Science Fiction. My real life exists in that century between 1810 and 1910.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Middlemarch is a wonderful book, but there are certainly coincidences for the sake of the plot.

Mary Ann Evans does do humour ("mellow" is the word that I suspect her Victorian admirers would have used) but it is a bit heavy handed.

Thank you Twilight for the point about marriage. I must re-read Daniel Deronda. In fact Austen's accounts of long married couples are not particularly rosy (Mr and Mrs Bennet being the prime examples.) No wonder she never married herself. (Mary Ann didn't marry until her old age: she knew earlier a loving, mutual relationship which didn't need to be regarded as merely socially respectable.)

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

I do doggedly finish any novel I begin nowadays and I even return to ones I haven't got ( Wuthering Heights, Portrait of a Lady) in the hope that I will see the point.

But in my early twenties/late teens I began Women in Love as it was on my reading list. I couldn't finish it and I never want to try it again.

My wife and servants can read Lady Chat as much as they like, but I won't bother.

PS I read Charlotte Bronte's Vilette years ago. I did finish it but found it deeply depressing.

[ 06. April 2013, 21:57: Message edited by: venbede ]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
In fact Austen's accounts of long married couples are not particularly rosy (Mr and Mrs Bennet being the prime examples.)

The very brief references to the Crofts' marriage in Persuasion are quite attractive. My favorite scene is where Admiral Croft is driving with Mrs. Croft beside him. Occasionally he gets distracted and the horses start to wander. Mrs. Croft reaches for the reins and corrects the situation. Anne Elliott, who witnesses this, thinks that probably their whole marriage is run this way.

Moo

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
And say what you like about Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens, there's not a single 'f*cking elf' ((c)CS Lewis) in any one of them. That has to be a bonus.

Hugo Dyson actually, not Lewis.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

Mention of Don Quixote up the thread reminds me of one of my first dates as a teenager.

I walked for miles to the girl’s house, took her to a film and back on the train, walked home for miles in the dark, prepared something to eat, and sat up reading Cervantes until the wee hours as some sort of compensation for not even getting to First Base in the process that leads to getting to First Base.

That was the time I was omnivorously devouring any writer or book that came to my notice with an energy and persistence which I think we lose after adolescence.

Along with Cervantes, some other examples I remember from that period are Andre Gide, Henry James and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, none of which or whom I have read since.

[ 07. April 2013, 07:01: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

That was the time I was omnivorously devouring any writer or book that came to my notice with an energy and persistence which I think we lose after adolescence.

I miss that. Someone up thread said she couldn't get into Joyce Carol Oates. I was early twenties when I first read her novel, Them. I got so into it that I did nothing but read, sleeping for very short periods, for three days until it was done. When I came up for air I realized I was running a fever. Back then, I didn't just read great books, I experienced them like comas.

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
I do doggedly finish any novel I begin nowadays and I even return to ones I haven't got ( Wuthering Heights, Portrait of a Lady) in the hope that I will see the point.

But in my early twenties/late teens I began Women in Love as it was on my reading list. I couldn't finish it and I never want to try it again.

My wife and servants can read Lady Chat as much as they like, but I won't bother.

My hat is off to you. [Overused]

I still feel bad if I don't finish a book (and sometimes flick through to the end reading two words from each page, just to say I've skimmed it) but feel more and more that the world is too full of books I do want to read to spend time on ones I'm not enjoying.

I was a child in the 60s but had teenage brothers and there was a copy of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" hanging around, which always fell open at a couple of very interesting places. [Eek!]

It completed my sex education when I was about 8.

Nen - always rather forward for her age.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
That was the time I was omnivorously devouring any writer or book that came to my notice with an energy and persistence which I think we lose after adolescence.

I miss that. Someone up thread said she couldn't get into Joyce Carol Oates. I was early twenties when I first read her novel, Them. I got so into it that I did nothing but read, sleeping for very short periods, for three days until it was done. When I came up for air I realized I was running a fever. Back then, I didn't just read great books, I experienced them like comas.

Interesting - I connect some of my most intense book-reading experiences with fever. I had pneumonia several times as a child - during one of those episodes, my mother brought me The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Even occasionally now, I can start a book in a fever and it's almost as though the completion of it, is part of the healing process.

I am trying to walk away from the "I've started, so I'll finish" book-reading syndrome, but it is very rare. About a year ago, I forced myself to finish the (deservedly) forgotten Wieland for my Real Life book group. I remind them of that, every time one of them complains about my choices (Catch-22 for example).

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

If I don't enjoy it, I don't finish it. Life is too short to waste it reading something you don't enjoy. Though I think the internet has killed my attention span.

[ 07. April 2013, 19:31: Message edited by: Ariel ]

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
In fact Austen's accounts of long married couples are not particularly rosy (Mr and Mrs Bennet being the prime examples.)
The very brief references to the Crofts' marriage in Persuasion are quite attractive. My favorite scene is where Admiral Croft is driving with Mrs. Croft beside him. Occasionally he gets distracted and the horses start to wander. Mrs. Croft reaches for the reins and corrects the situation. Anne Elliott, who witnesses this, thinks that probably their whole marriage is run this way.

Moo

Interesting discussion [Smile]

Her observations of Charlotte and Mr Collins suggest ways in which even new marriages might not be so rosy and how these disappointments might be managed.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

But Charlotte's marriage wtih Mr. Collins was not made for love, so there was never any question of disappointment, only of how it could be made bearable.

I agree about the Crofts, and think there are other successful marriages in Austen: John and Isabella Knightley, and the newly-wed Westons, in Emma; and the Gardiners in Pride and Prejudice. And don't you think we are meant to assume that Elinor and Marianne's parents' marriage had been successful in Sense and Sensibility?

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". [Hot and Hormonal]

I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind". [Big Grin]

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".

Every time I think of The Secret Garden, which did nothing for me, I contrast it with Philippa Pearce's 1950s children's classic Tom's Midnight Garden, which I still love.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I think it should be required reading for girls because it continues on where Austen and Bronte usually stop -- on the wedding day. With Elliot we get to see some of the real disappointment marriage can be once the glow begins to dim. Only Elliot and Tolstoy tell us about that.

There are a few weddings followed by unhappy marriages in Dickens, too - the Bumbles and the Lammles spring to mind.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

Kaplan Corday : I disagree with many things you say, but with Tom's Midnight Garden our hearts beat as one. A delightful, charming book which I read for the first time when I was 62!

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".

That's ok - I laughed like a drain! My daughter loved the book, and I remember us reading it together more than once at bedtime when she was little.

quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
Kaplan Corday : I disagree with many things you say, but with Tom's Midnight Garden our hearts beat as one. A delightful, charming book which I read for the first time when I was 62!

Oh yes, a wonderful book which I first read in 2009 when I was 59 - my heart beats along with you two!

Thinks to self: why are children's books often so much better than adults' books...?

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".
Every time I think of The Secret Garden, which did nothing for me, I contrast it with Philippa Pearce's 1950s children's classic Tom's Midnight Garden, which I still love.

same here

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
Sorry, everyone of the British Isles whom I insulted with my ignorance of the dialect spoken in "The Secret Garden". I suppose it's sort of akin to people thinking everyone in the Southern United States all speak with some sort of accent like they did in "Gone With The Wind".

No insult taken...

Though its more like thinking everyone in the Southern United States speaks like John F Kennedy. [Two face]

(Semi-seriously a Cockeny accent and a Boston accent are closer to each other than either are to a marked North Yorkshire accent)

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

I love both "Secret Garden" AND "Tom's Midnight Garden". Came across the latter as an adult.

My one problem with SG is the small section where the author briefly preaches directly to the reader: when Colin's dad is far away, and hears his late wife's voice (?), and comes to his senses. There's commentary to the effect that "he'd really screwed up on this, and should've done that"--but it wasn't him thinking that. A small blot on an otherwise magical book.

Speaking of which, one of my favorite passages in SG (and in all spiritually-oriented books) is when Colin asks Susan Sowerby if she believes in Magic. I won't get the dialect right, but Susan says something like "I never heard it called that before. But it's the Great, Good Thing, and it doesna' matter what tha calls it!"

[Yipee]

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
I love both "Secret Garden" AND "Tom's Midnight Garden". Came across the latter as an adult.

My one problem with SG is the small section where the author briefly preaches directly to the reader: when Colin's dad is far away, and hears his late wife's voice (?), and comes to his senses. There's commentary to the effect that "he'd really screwed up on this, and should've done that"--but it wasn't him thinking that. A small blot on an otherwise magical book.

Speaking of which, one of my favorite passages in SG (and in all spiritually-oriented books) is when Colin asks Susan Sowerby if she believes in Magic. I won't get the dialect right, but Susan says something like "I never heard it called that before. But it's the Great, Good Thing, and it doesna' matter what tha calls it!"

I agree with all of that; I read both as a child and found them enchanting.

If ever you feel tempted to read the sequel to "The Secret Garden" which is by Susan Moody and entitled "Misselthwaite" my advice is, don't. It's very poor, IMO, and rather ruins the original until you manage to forget it. Same goes for Susan Hill's sequel to "Rebecca" ("Mrs de Winter") which I read years ago and have fortunately managed to forget the details of.

I'm told the exception to the rule of sequels/prequels being a disappointment is "Wide Sargasso Sea" but I've never felt brave enough to try it. [Disappointed]

Nen - to whom treasured books are precious friends.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Wide Saragosso Sea is utterly different from Jane Eyre and can't really be called a prequel except in the technical sense. The Caribbean is a bit different from the Yorkshire Moors, and the books reflect that!

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

The Hobbitt - tried 3 times at ages 9, 17 and 30, failed every time. (You can imagine a birthday gift of The Lord of the Rings went down a storm).

Fanny Hill - oh God! repetitive and deeply dull.

To the Ends of the Earth - I thought I was a Golding fan till I tried this.

Anyone care to start another thread about unwatchable "classic/great" films?

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Wide Saragosso Sea is utterly different from Jane Eyre and can't really be called a prequel except in the technical sense. The Caribbean is a bit different from the Yorkshire Moors, and the books reflect that!

Happen I'd take a graidely fancy to it, then.

Nen - who loves accents. [Smile]

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

I think I read it when I went on a resort holiday to St Lucia. Come to think of it all three books I know that feature West Indian Islands (with no blacks) viz. Wide Saragosso Sea, Treasure Island, and Arthur Ransome's Peter Duck, all depict the islands as deeply depressing.

Peter Leigh Fermor's The Violins of St Jacques is wonderful, even though it depicts a whole island destroyed in a volcano.

I'm aware that all these books are from the white point of view.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Please people can we all remember to take the pills regularly?

PATRICK Leigh Fermor
Wide SARGASSO sea

(sorry, I'm just a pedant...) [Hot and Hormonal]

[ 10. April 2013, 15:55: Message edited by: L'organist ]

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Please people can we all remember to take the pills regularly?

PATRICK Leigh Fermor
Wide SARGASSO sea

(sorry, I'm just a pedant...)

Better a pedant than a piss-ant.

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