Books You Couldn't Finish

[Teng Ai Hui]

I personally have dropped a lot of books. The most memorable was Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. After one chapter, I could no stomach reading about all the disgusting things my forefathers did. Most recently was Seveneves. There was just too much explanation of high-level science principles for me. Please keep the plot moving, Sire.

[Little Valkyrie]

On 9/29/2017 at 4:15 PM, williamjm said:

I did like the Galactic Internet bits in the Beyond section, even if they were quite blatantly mid-90s Usenet Newsgroups In Space. The online misinformation campaign does seem sadly topical, and I'm sure we all know a Twirlip of the Mists.

I didn't struggle too much with most of our school reading, but I do remember being unable to finish Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song.

Having spent way, way too much time on Usenet back in the day, I adored the Usenet parts of the book so much.  And I've thought recently about how prescient they were...

 

I haven't managed to finish Crown for Cold Silver because the tone/genre mashup never gelled for me, and I found the Eighty Deadly Words (hah, speaking of Usenet) ("I don't care what happens to these people") creeping up.

[C.T. Phipps]

On 9/30/2017 at 5:37 PM, Myshkin said:

Fevvers is my spirit animal.

What?! Being gay was the defining feature of and sole driving force for Ringil. Morgan was so busy proving how cool he was with gay people that he plain forgot to give Ringil any other character traits. It was not handled well. 

Well, aside from being an incredibly rich and privileged sociopath with strong family ties both positive as well as negative.

Oh and being a warlock.

Yeah, he's very gay but that wasn't the most memorable scene with him for me. That was when he condemned a slaver to the same rape his cousin had suffered.

Which was...AWFUL.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah, I remember Morgan and someone else getting into a fight over that part on here.

[Cithrin's Ale]

I have yet to finish Prince of Thorns. Lawrence's prose isn't focused on specific details in the setting, so I have difficulty using my imagination to envision the story when I read it. It's not really a fault, though. Jorg doesn't seem like the type to spend much time describing the world around him.

Court of Broken Knives is another one I've dropped. The terse syntax wasn't to my liking. I'm going to pick it up again because some of the spoilers I know seem interesting.

I'm astonished that I finished Grace of Kings. Liu's characters speak in a super casual way that I found ridiculous. He completely broke my immersion when he used the phrase "mano a mano." It makes no sense for a Spanish idiom to make its way into the story! Mata Zyndu was entertaining enough for me to finish, I guess. That being said, Wall of Storms made me quit with its insanely slow pacing.

[Blank]

So many books. I've never seen the point of struggling on if you're not enjoying a book. Just reach for the next.

[redeagl]

On 9/29/2017 at 8:00 AM, RedEyedGhost said:

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

500 books is a big tbr list?  Lol. 

[RedEyedGhost]

7 hours ago, redeagl said:

500 books is a big tbr list?  Lol. 

He's just been talking about for at least the last five years.

[Corvinus85]

And who can forget Chuck Wending's adventure in the Star Wars universe, with what was probably supposed to be the most important canon book series to date. I can't believe I actually finished that first book, but have no intention of picking the sequels, even though I am interested in knowing the main events in the story.

[Darth Richard II]

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

And who can forget Chuck Wending's adventure in the Star Wars universe, with what was probably supposed to be the most important canon book series to date. I can't believe I actually finished that first book, but have no intention of picking the sequels, even though I am interested in knowing the main events in the story.

*vomits all over pc* ugh, i forgot about those

2 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

He's just been talking about for at least the last five years.

bitch i told ya, its down to 300ish!

[redeagl]

500 books TBR is casual. Duh.

[JGP]

Books I couldn't bring myself to finish in the last year:

i. James Barclay's Cry of the Newborn

ii. Ian Tregillis' Something More Than Night

iii. Ken Liu's Grace of Kings

iv. MD Ireman's The Axe and Throne

v. Andrzej Sapkowski's Tower of Swallows

vi. Kameron Hurely's Stars are Legion

vii. David Anthony Durham's The Risen

viii. Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Tiger and The Wolf

 

[Astromech]

1 hour ago, JEORDHl said:

 

vi. Kameron Hurely's Stars are Legion

 

 

Somehow I finished this one. I liked it less and less as it went on. It seemed Hurley spent all of her time on a concept and none on a story or characterization. It also did not help . .  .

Spoiler

that she gave away the reveal in the first chapter.

 

[Callan S.]

Grunts by Mary Gentle. I think it was the 'oh I'm so cool I'm satirising fantasy fiction by having halflings murder a family in their sleep' bit that finally did it for me, as she used the reader as kleenex for her masturbation.

I don't know why someone would think just parodying fantasy per se, with no actual social agenda in mind, is worth a fuck. Oh, right, masturbation - I said that already. Uhnnn uhhnnn uhnnnn - I'm such a good writteeaaahhhoooohhhhI'mreallymakingadifferenceahhhhhhAHHHooohh....

[Little Valkyrie]

12 hours ago, Astromech said:

Somehow I finished this one. I liked it less and less as it went on. It seemed Hurley spent all of her time on a concept and none on a story or characterization. It also did not help . .  .

  Reveal hidden contents

that she gave away the reveal in the first chapter.

 

I always like the background ideas/things that get hinted at in a Hurley book more than I like what the actual page space is spent on elaborating.  You'd think I'd learn, but I always go "Maybe THIS book will be different", no...

[The Prince of Newcastle]

I got halfway through the second Long Price Quartet book and just lost interest.

I am about to stop reading the Lies of Loche Lamora, mainly because I only have it as an audio book and I dont like the narrator.

I stopped Gardens of the Moon halfway through, picked it back up again about a year later and powered through it, but I didnt enjoy it at all.

I stopped reading the Black Company as well, I cant remember why. 

[Astromech]

1 hour ago, Little Valkyrie said:

I always like the background ideas/things that get hinted at in a Hurley book more than I like what the actual page space is spent on elaborating.  You'd think I'd learn, but I always go "Maybe THIS book will be different", no...

It was my first Hurley read and turned me off reading any of her other works.

[Andorion]

I did actually finish War and Peace, but only just. I was wondering, does anyone agree with me that the book started really well and then went off the rails gradually?

[Ordos]

I couldn't continue Stephen King's Pet Sematary because it was too scary. I've finished reading two of Kings other books however: Rose Madder and Needful Things. I started Misery but got bored or distracted by other books. However I'm considering to read it again.

I hated Tom Clancy's Against All Enemies and could not get past the first few chapters because the narration which was in third person, used too much crude language. Not that I was offended. It's just not enjoyable storytelling when the narrator and not the characters says things like 'son of a bitch'. Plus it did not come off as the character's chain of thought but that of the narrator's.

[baxus]

"Anna Karenina" was required reading material in our sophomore year in high school. I don't know if I was too young/immature to read it or what, but I found that such a drag to read. I plowed through it up until 100-ish pages before the end, but then I snapped and said that enough is enough and dropped it. I remember only basic stuff about it, and formed a serious dislike for Russian classic literature resulting in skipping "Crime and Punishment" when it came up in our high school senior year reading assignments list.

Other than that, most of you have probably never heard of Miloš Crnjanski, but I've stopped reading his book "Migrations" some 30 pages in. You guessed it, it was one of our reading assignments in high school. It is considered a classic of Serbian literature and all that, but I just had to force myself to read even those 30 pages and couldn't do it for another few hundred pages.