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Books You Couldn't Finish


rubyist

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Dune - Because I'm an uncultured piece of shit.

Redemption of Athalus - Like many others, I loved Eddings in my younger years. I devoured The Elenium, Tamuli, Belgariad, Mallorean, and the Belgarath The Sorcerer book all in a relatively short period of time. I also read some of those a second time! But Athalus broke me. It was like rereading all of those other books.... just much, much worse. Same characters, same dialogue, some useless villains, same setup, just boring and annoying. I think I quit somewhere halfway through and never touched another Eddings book.

The Stand - The first half is pretty great but it settles into dull tedium somewhere in Boulder and I just lost all interest in finishing it.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - I actually didn't give this one much of chance, making it maybe a hundred pages in before losing interest. It's currently on my "give it another shot" list.

The Idiot - My Kindle bricked about 20% into this and I ended up losing my place and just never went back to try and finish it.

The Wheel of Time - I quit after Crossroads of Twilight due to the increased waits between books, the declining quality, and my ever expanding "to read" list. I actually planned on going back and finishing when the series was finished but I just never got around to it. I'm actually finally getting around to doing that now, but since I've forgotten so much about the series I'm in the process of a full reread. It's... more difficult that I imagined it would be.

Malazan - I unintentionally quit after The Bonehunters and the lukewarm reception of the subsequent two books put me off continuing. I actually quite liked The Bonehunters but, at this point, I just can't be arsed to continue on. Maybe sometime in the future.

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I can't for the love of me remember the title buy Jar Kriistopher-something had that YA series that was supposed to be "Japanese steampunk" where he admitted the only research he did for it was to read the wiki entry on japan and watch a few anime where people actually called their lords "sama". I read a preview of that on a website and couldn't finish the preview. Possibly one of the worst things I've ever read, and I read a lot of shit growing up(11 Goodkind books, for example). He has an adult SFF out now that I also read a sample of for shits and giggles and the man makes Robert Newcomb look like Gene Wolfe.

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5 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe. I liked it...sort of. I do plan on giving it another go, because I hear that it gets better as you go and that the end of the series has a huge pay off.

No, it does not really have a huge pay off. If you don't like the first book it is fairly unlikely that you will like 2-4 much better. It stays both fascinating and confusing. If you are not fascinated by the first book, better cut your losses and read something else.

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10 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I read Eddings when I was younger, well some of his stuff anyway. I have seen people say his stuff got progressively worse though ao you probably got the worst of a mediocre author's repitoire :P

 

 

Oh, I read all of Eddings up till that book. Apart from that one non-epic-fantasy thing he did. He was my fantasy gateway drug, as he was for many others. He'd been steadily deteriorating but even Althalus was readable. Dreamers was just poison though.


 

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I love the portions of that book that aren't on the Tyne's world.  The dog pack thing just does nothing for me.  If it was just the Universe set in the Beyond, I'd really enjoy it.  As it is I've never finished.


I kinda agree. I didn't find the dog pack thing as boring as you did, and did enjoy the book, but the wider universe was a lot more interesting. Part of why I haven't picked up the sequel.
The sorta-prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, is far better though and well worth trying even if you didn't finish the first one.

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3 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

:lol: Excellent point.  I can't wait for Darth Richard to come along and talk about his 500 books on his to be read pile.

If I had enough money there'd be way more. I'm terrible for buying dvds and not watching them as well though.

 

The anger and irritation some people have over this make me feel a bit wary of admitting not finishing books in future now lol. I've done it a LOT. But I don't count it as not finishing a book because it's usually because I'm depressed and I tell myself I'll get back to it and finish it at some point. I've probably read less than ten books this year not counting my stuff for uni:lol: I'm an IMPOSTER on this site 

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30 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 


 


I kinda agree. I didn't find the dog pack thing as boring as you did, and did enjoy the book, but the wider universe was a lot more interesting. Part of why I haven't picked up the sequel.
The sorta-prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, is far better though and well worth trying even if you didn't finish the first one.

I really like the Medieval Dogs haha I think they're great! And I love the the little tree things. Damn I need to pick the book up again and finish it - I was really loving it. I just got tired and put it down and now I don't know where it is probably in some backpack I haven't used in months at the back of the closet but yeah for me not finishing books is usually not because I don't like them but because I just get so low even reading is a bit too much for me lol 

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11 minutes ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I really like the Medieval Dogs haha I think they're great! And I love the the little tree things. Damn I need to pick the book up again and finish it - I was really loving it. I just got tired and put it down and now I don't know where it is probably in some backpack I haven't used in months at the back of the closet but yeah for me not finishing books is usually not because I don't like them but because I just get so low even reading is a bit too much for me lol 

 

  Nevermind, didn't read the post you quoted ...

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5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

as do the 10% of people i know who finish it. 

I'm among the 10%, I guess.

It's a great book IMO, though I can see why people wouldn't like it. It's almost like an encyclopedia more than anything else and the whole "this guy had X sons which in turn had Y sons, Z sons etc." can be quite confusing. When I read it for the first time I was 15 or so, and I remember flicking through pages to get back and see who's whose son and how is he connected to this one or that one. I guess Silmarillion prepared me for books with dozens (if not hundreds) of named characters. Most of my friends who never read Silmarillion quit Game of Thrones within first 100-200 pages, exactly because of a lot of characters being introduced and not being able to keep up with them.

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29 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Oh I think most of it (though I can only speak for myself) is just in good fun. I certainly don't feel genuine anger or irritation at anyone for not liking or finishing a book.

If anything this thread just shows that we've all been there with one book or another.

I'm not angry people didn't finish certain books.  People like what they like.  They dislike what they dislike.  Aesthetics is inherently subjective.  

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I don’t quit books. Even horrible ones. I quit series. I probably should learn to quit books.

Can think of Land fit for heroes and The demon cycle (or whatever Peter Brett’s series is called). Both utterly failed to interest me.

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