Datepalm Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Datepalm, basically books you read that were so bad, the reading experience bordered on being painful. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's not interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wise Fool Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Datepalm, basically books you read that were so bad, the reading experience bordered on being painful. The book doesn't have to be bad. The experience can be almost painful if you just don't find the text interesting and you're just sort of forcing yourself to trudge through it. At least that's how it is for the Eye of the World. I can't say the book is at all bad, just that it's a bit of a chore to read and so far, for me, hasn't provided much in the way to appreciate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaminsod Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 Datepalm, seems a bit overly dismissive to me... Wise Fool, Eye of the World is rather slow, but the pace improves in the next 5 books, and then slows to a crawl again for a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Datepalm, seems a bit overly dismissive to me... Sorry, no offense intended, I was just trying to be funny. (I should probably stop.) This is just about, well, really bad books. That's a very common question, actually*. The question of books that are good but hurtful to read...that is an interesting, complicated, personal question and I don't remember talking about it before either. Oh well, different thread. * The answer is still David Farland's Runelords. It is always Runelords. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaminsod Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 Sorry, no offense intended, I was just trying to be funny. (I should probably stop.) This is just about, well, really bad books. That's a very common question, actually*. The question of books that are good but hurtful to read...that is an interesting, complicated, personal question and I don't remember talking about it before either. Oh well, different thread. * The answer is still David Farland's Runelords. It is always Runelords. Oh i see, no problems then, i myself often come off the wrong way trying to be funny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 i'm at nemesis status on steppenwolf. notes from the underground and the stranger are tied for almost-nemesis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 ASoIaF and TWoT are my favorite series. With both I had a hard time getting into on the first try. But I was probably just not in the mood at the time. One that comes to mind is The Song of Roland. I actually read it fast because it was required, but about a month later I probably forgot every single word from it. Really difficult to comprehend. Trying to read Dune when I was 12-13 was a bad idea. Tried again in college, and greatly enjoyed it. And lastly, but not the least, Romanian literature is mostly shit, and I could not read anything more than short stories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saltovergray Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Trying to read Dune when I was 12-13 was a bad idea. Tried again in college, and greatly enjoyed it. I tried to convince a friend to read Dune recently, as it's my favorite science fiction novel. He read the first few pages and dropped it, telling me how he couldn't understand how anybody could read something so dense. Going back to my sophomore year of high school, I still put ​The Scarlet Letter as the book I had the most difficulty reading. I didn't particularly enjoy it either, although I imagine I would have enjoyed it more so if it weren't for Hawthorne's atrocious (in my opinion) writing style. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Oh, if I have a nemesis book, its Outlander. Just typing that name...urge to kill...rising...msut..control Ahem.. And there's a FUCKING TV SERIES COMING OUT. *flips desk* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arch-MaesterPhilip Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Catch-22. It was probably intentional but that book is so damn frustrating and annoying. Still glad I read it but it wasn't pleasurably for the most part.I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red snow Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. There's sort of a point at the end but I can see why it took a while to "catch on" as I think a lot of people gave up on it before getting anywhere near the conclusion. It's word of mouth that it's good that forces you through. I can still see why it's a great book - it just isn't for me. I know the thread is apparently about awful books but I was mentioning books that are just really had work. My first two attempts at Fellowship of the Ring as a kid fit that category and everything before they leave Tom Bombadil still feels like a test to me. Cloud Atlas was also a massive slog through the first half (particularly the one about the old guy in the present) - yet the second half is amazing and I'd still say it's one of the best books I've read even if it's nowhere near the most enjoyable books I've read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckwheat Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 I understand the most painful/difficult reads in this topic as those I was bored to death with them, and struggled with even bringing myself to read them, and did not care about the plot or any of the characters at all. Most of those for me were assigned reading at any given level of education:Dostojevski: Crime and PunishmentGoethe: The Sorrows of Young WertherThose come to mind first, but there were surely more. A bunch of Slovene books too, but I do not suppose those titles would mean anything here. ;) I also could not bring myself to read more LOTR than just Fellowship, and even suffered through that one. If the painful/difficult reads are understood as those that made such an impression that you actually felt hurt by it ... Camus: The Stranger comes to mind. I just could not keep reading more than two chapters. Terrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
First of My Name Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 In terms of glacial pace of reading because I can't bring myself to remotely enjoy it: LOTR trilogy and Star Wars: Jedi Trial. Former took me half a year, IIRC. Latter is one of the very, very few books I didn't finish, even at my second attempt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candre Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Faust Part Two by Goethe still haunts me to this day. In Germany, there is a kind of subculture in the upper-mid class and aboves that emphasizes the need to learn humanist knowledge, especially greek and roman mythology. Therefore every social upstart like myself has to learn some basics to get arround. Of course this knowledge is absolutely worthless and not actually needed in your job. Faust Part Two was probably my journeyman´s piece. It is truely and utterly horrible and its meaning has to be decoded sentence by sentence. Faust Part One is brilliant however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
End of Disc One Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Crossroads of Twilight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEvilKing Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 There's lots of books I've dropped due to them just being crap, so I'm going to treat this topic as if it were about books that are actually probably good. Glad I'm not the only one that struggled with Catch-22. I'll give it another go at some point, when I'm actually in the mood to read something like that. The first chapter of Alan Moore's The Voice of the Fire is a good example. The first chapter is written from the first person POV of a mentally disabled young caveman. A sample: I is with dry-meat in I's mouth, that many of I's sayins is she make I more whiles say, more good for glean. Say I of walk, and pigs as come to logs, and say I now of shagfoal. She is shake head fore and back, for sign that she is glean of they. I think I forced myself through 2-3 pages a day. It's also, at 60 pages, the longest chapter in the book. Excellent book though and worth the slog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Red Badge of Courage Hobbit Blood Meridian None of those was were bad but each felt like a slog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winter's Knight Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. I read it from end to end and had no idea what the book was supposed to be about. I have no memory of the book apart from the main character having an obsession with Jews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEvilKing Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Blood Meridian I'll second that. I suffered through The Road and thought maybe he just wrote like that because of the futile, post apocalyptic setting, so I gave the much loved Blood Meridian a shot. I can't stand Cormac McCarthy's prose, it's turgid. Which is a shame, because a dark, brutal Western sounds like the kind of thing I'd really enjoy, otherwise. Another one I'll throw in the hat is 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I really wanted to like it, and I don't even mind that it doesn't have an overarcing plot if there were interesting characters, but the whole thing just felt overly long, nonsensical and pointless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Red Badge of Courage Hobbit Blood Meridian None of those was were bad but each felt like a slog. Huh, I can see Blood Meridian being a slog for sure. But I remember flying through Red Badge back in the day. Like DP I thought this thread was different than what it turned into when I opened it. But to keep it to a book i struggled through without just listing bad books I will say The Emperor's Knife. I could see a lot to like about it but I found myself doing ANYTHING to keep from reading it, so eventually I dropped it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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