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Failure to Launch


Frosty

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Altherion(?) by eddings. i gave it a chance and got to where he has a bunch of powerful friends and the bad guys have powerful allies and they attempt to wage imaginative war. too much to stomach after that

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The One Kingdom, by Sean Russell. I just found it dull and uninspiring.

Stopped after third chapter.

Also put me down for Gardens of the Moon.

Battlefield Earth, what a piece of shit, but not as bad the movie.

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The second book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra just irked me too much, and from reading spoilers about the rest of the series, I knew that there would be no end to her surviving dire situation after dire situation because she happened to be the villains' daughter and they didn't want her harmed.

I forced myself to read the first LotR book but I couldn't bear to read more than a few pages of the second one. Too boring. Yes, I know I've just uttered geek blasphemy. :P

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I also have the curse of needing to finish a book I start just in case it gets better so I can only think of four books I never finished:

Moby Dick - I got halfway through it when I was a kid and then it needed to go back to the library.

Crime and Punishment - I've started this twice and it seemed good, but it's one of those bad timing things. Both times I've started it has been right before a college semester started, and then I got busy and didn't have time to finish it and then forgot what was happening and didn't want to start all over again.

Snow Crash - I just couldn't get into that one after hearing so much for so long about how wonderful it was. Probably would have finished it eventually, but I had borrowed it from a friend and she wanted it back before I was done.

The Gilded Chain - That one I actually have no excuse for other than just losing interest. It didn't seem bad or anything, but there were other books and there was some expression in it that was overused that I found annoying - can't remember what now, though.

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Call me stupid, but I'm pretty tough when it comes to reading book all the way through. I always hope that the author will somehow save the novel with the ending, so I soldier on. It seldom works, of course, but I keep doing it anyway! :P

One that I had to put down was Terry Goodkind's The Pillars of Creation. After going through Faith of the Fallen the year before, there was no way I was plodding through that shit again! ;)

Patrick

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-The Darkness that comes before by Bakker. I don't remember what made me stop, but I doubt I'll pick it up again.

-Assassin's Quest by Hobb. Couldn't stand the main character.

-The Silmarillion by Tolkien. Migraine guaranteed.

-Lies of Locke Lamora

SPOILER: TLLL
My favorite characters died dammit!!!
And I really didn't feel like going into another 7-book long series. Asoiaf is enough, thank you very much.

-The Stone of Farewell by Williams. Painful. (The fact that the elves dye their hair cracked me up!!)

Oh yes, and The time traveler's wife for me too. Monotonous.

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Individual Books:

Sword of Shannara or whatever it was. just not good

The Dragonbone Chair by Williams - just couldn't get past the half-way point.

The Brothers Karamazov. I will finish this one at some point. Just don't know when.

Series:

Goodkind. lulled into stupidty for a while with this one, but the Statue of Philosopy or whatever the hell it was brought me to my senses. Don't even remember the name of that last book I read.

The Erickson series. Read Gardens of the Moon, waiting and waiting for it to get better. It ended before that happend, as did my interest in the series.

Wheel of Time. Technically I haven't stopped, as I will probably read the last book to see what happens, but I'm far past caring

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I usually finish what I start (including shite like Wizard's First Rule and Rhapsody and snooze-inducing-but-good tomes like Moby Dick), but one book that I simply did not care about putting down and not resuming was Catch-22. I can't remember why, except that I found it boring and not particularly funny or insightful...only made it 50 pages, though, so I can't comment much upon it.

I started Midnght Tides a couple weeks ago and am unsure whether I'll continue (only managed around 40 pages). I like SE's world but the plot is rather uncompelling, to say the least.

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If I have started a book, I never stop reading it until I've finished. I'm not sure why, but it feels like such a vaste of time reading only half a book, then you can't brag about having read it. =p

But still, there's some I've stopped reading:

First book in the "Sword of Shannara"-series for obvious reasons. It's just the worst thing I've ever read (and I read this at a time where I actually thought David Eddings was a good writer, so hating that book already at that stage says a great deal about it). It isn't even worthy being called literature.

"Gone With the Wind". I read the first 800 pages before I had to return it to the library... I should have burned it instead!

Roughly translated; "The Tale of the Norwegian Kings" by Snorre Sturlason... Written some time before year 1400 (not sure which century), it's really heavy stuff. I'll take it up again soon though, as I have a thing for Norwegian history.

And finally "Divinia Commedia" by Dante. I was like 14 or 15 when I tried to read it, so no wonder I found it boring. I'll try to read that again soon as well.

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"The Darkness that Came Before". I wanted to finish this book soooo much as I'd heard many good things about it. I found it boring and illogical, using about an hour's worth of reading to describe one seemingly meaningless scene. I devoted many hours to the book, hoping things would come together, before finally giving up. These are just my reactions, I understand many people loved the book.

Earlier someone mentioned on that I finished - The Crimson Petal and the White". I could hardly put that one down. I read all approximately 1000 pages. In spite of the fact that it was written in present tense. I always find books written in present tense more difficult to read.

""Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". I surprised myself by givin up on this one. I found the first half so witty and engaging. But I felt that Ms. Clarke became bogged down in detail that did not interest me, plus, it began to turn into a horror book, rather than fantasy. A book has to be very special to interest me as a horror book.

"Trading for a Living". Supposedly the best book about trading stocks ever written. Ah well...

"The Call of the Wild". Yep, I got bored.

I've also never been able to finish a Tad Williams book, in spite of hours of trying. He was an utterly brilliant man when I met him, I thought.

edit: Wow, I just saw that somone quit on "The Pillars of the Earth". No offense because there is no disputing matters of taste, but I had thought of that as one of the few books that would hook a reader, almost with certainty. That will teach me to assume things.

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God, I WISH I'd quit reading Moby Dick. Alas, I had to give a presentation on it, so I slogged through.

I THINK I read all the way through the second trilogy of Sara Douglass' Wayfarer Redemption series, but I hardly remember anything. The series lost its luster after the grandfather is anally raped by demons from outer space freshly arrived in Tencendor from (where else?) planet Earth. (Yes, you read every word of that correctly. Grandfather. Rape. Demons. Outer space.)

I only got a few chapters into The Brothers Karamozov, but I do mean to finish it someday. I enjoyed the part I did read, I just picked a bad time to start it.

RE: the Bible. If you're reading a version that has the word "begat" in it, I can see why you wouldn't want to finish. They make 'em without the archaic language now.

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Min -- WTF are you doing reading Left Behind? :o

No kidding. I actually did read a few of these in high school, but gave up on them when I realized how many there were going to be, and that they were going to get progressively suckier (kinda like Goodkind. Except I'm determined to finish Goodkind.)

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Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Gave up after less than five pages. Too many strange, foreign (made up?) words.

John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. The narrative technique was just too novel for me.

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I THINK I read all the way through the second trilogy of Sara Douglass' Wayfarer Redemption series, but I hardly remember anything. The series lost its luster after the grandfather is anally raped by demons from outer space freshly arrived in Tencendor from (where else?) planet Earth. (Yes, you read every word of that correctly. Grandfather. Rape. Demons. Outer space.)

Yep, that about covers it. I liked the first three (its one series if you're reading it in America - I have the Aussie versions, so it's all good), but man do those last three books suck. I did read them all, but the ending left a bad taste in my mouth.

I've actually read every book I've started, although I'm pretty sure it has caused some massive mental damage. (Pillars of Creation, Touched by Venom (forget authors name), and Nelson DeMilles (sp?) Nightfall) The only one I actually ever did stop entirely was Julian May's Conqueror's Moon, but I picked it up again a couple of months later and liked it. It was just a bit much to get used to at first.

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