Books you don't "get"

[Arwen]

[b]The World According to Garp.[/b] I loved all John Irvings other books, but tried twice to read this one and just could not get interested.

[b]The Children of Hurin[/b]. Sorry. Loved LOTR and the Silmarillion, but Children I just could not plough through. I know there are whole threads devoted to discussion, suffice to say there was no (interesting) story and way too many characters and places with confusing names.

Also never understood all the fuss over [b]Catcher in the Rye [/b]either.

[Arwen]

[quote name='Chataya de Venoge' post='1423827' date='Jul 1 2008, 20.07']I had such a hard time with Colleen McCullough. She takes an incredibly intreresting historical period, and makes it dry as dust except for a few bright scenes (the motes of sunlight on the dust, I suppose).

And she DROOLS over Caesar. He's [i]dead[/i], lady!!![/quote]
if you're into mysteries she wrote one called On, Off that is really terrific. Might be different from her historical style.

[sparky]

[quote name='Arwen' post='1425180' date='Jul 2 2008, 16.14'][b]The World According to Garp.[/b] I loved all John Irvings other books, but tried twice to read this one and just could not get interested.[/quote]

Garp is one of those books that NEEDED to be made into a movie for the simple reason that the movie ended up MUCH better than the book - and that doesn't happen all that often.

[sparky]

[quote name='Vestrit' post='1424452' date='Jul 2 2008, 09.52'][i]Underworld[/i] by Don De Lillo

In fact, pretty much anything by De Lillo that I’ve read. Nicely written and I’m sure he’s making an awesome point somewhere, but buggered if I can work out what he’s trying to say.[/quote]

I don't think DeLillo is all that complicated (certainly not like a Pynchon or somesuch), but his complete emotional detachment from his characters is both odd and cold. You have to be in the mood for him, for sure, and with a slog like Underworld, you better be in the mood for him A LOT.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I just couldn't get the love for Daniel Abraham's [i]A Shadow in Summer[/i]. I really wanted to enjoy this one, but I found that I couldn't care about the characters and the prose felt clumsy to me. I only read it to the end due to the setting. I have enjoyed all of GRRM recommedations but this one didn't work for me some reason. :dunno:

[Mr. X]

[quote name='Vestrit' post='1424452' date='Jul 2 2008, 09.52']The prologue to [i]Underworld[/i] is one of the most awesome bits of writing I’ve ever read.[/quote]
Hell, yeah! I absolutely love the prologue. They published it as a standalone entitled "Pafko at the Wall", which I own. The rest of [i]Underworld[/i] had its moments, but was sort of meh overall.

[Relic]

[quote name='Guinevere Seaworth' post='1425603' date='Jul 2 2008, 21.16']I just couldn't get the love for Daniel Abraham's [i]A Shadow in Summer[/i]. I really wanted to enjoy this one, but I found that I couldn't care about the characters and the prose felt clumsy to me. I only read it to the end due to the setting. I have enjoyed all of GRRM recommedations but this one didn't work for me some reason. :dunno:[/quote]


i found that too. i dislike overly naive characters (I should ask Perin about women, he knows ALL about women), which most of the young people REALLY seemed to be.

[GoN]

Its because most young people are pretty naive. You should know that now that you are an old man. :P

I can't get into Erikson. I've been trying to read Gardens of the Moon for two years. I'm on page 149. I really did try though :(

[add-on]

[quote name='cyrano' post='1423907' date='Jul 1 2008, 20.57']But I also feel I shouldnt [i]work[/i] to enjoy a book, know what I mean?[/quote]
No

[IheartTesla]

Nothing profound.....my day job is fairly intellectually stimulating by itself. Not that books are always a form of escapism for me but I would prefer not to have to struggle through one.

[i]Gravity's Rainbow[/i] and the Eco book....what was it..... [i]Foucault's Pendulum[/i] are prime examples.

[Mme Erzulie]

[quote name='Dylanfanatic' post='1376304' date='May 30 2008, 06.15']To be honest, when there's a well-regarded book that I don't engage with well, I question first if [b]I am[/b] the one at fault, not the author.[/quote]

Well said.

Now for the unapologetic extrapolated condemnation:

Jane Eyre. Seriously. Worst book I ever tried finishing.

Catcher In The Rye. Didn't think it was horrible or anything, just didn't see what all the fuss was about. I'd heard that this was a book commonly found with famous murderers, so I was expecting some sinister twist or sickening scenes, but it was only this dude who was a bit self-involved.

Prince Of Nothing. On the Warrior Prophet now, and I'm struggling. I think my biggest problem with him is that there is a lot of tell and not so much of show. He tells us how everyone feels and how awesomely intelligent this dude is, but he doesn't really make me feel it. I think the concept has potential, and the characters could be good, but I feel like I am told how to relate to them instead of being allowed to make up my own mind, and it grates. And Benjuka is the most ridiculous game I have ever heard of, and I doubt very much that Bakker himself knows how the fuck to play that shit. It sounds like a very poorly fleshed-out idea. "Dude, imagine a game where you can [i]change the rules!!!![/i]". That really stood out and annoyed me.

[felice]

I haven't read Prince of Nothing yet and know nothing of Benjuka, but as for a game where you can change the rules: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic"]Nomic[/url]. And more disturbingly, [url="http://dunx.org/mornomic/"]Mornington Nomic[/url].

[poeticfantasy]

The proloque to Underworld was just so fucking bad ass. Pure bad assness. However the proloque to Lush Life was almost as good.

[Crazydog7]

I've got another one and i'm sure people are going to kill me for this one.
Atlas Shrugged

Don't get me wrong I like John Galt and his speech which is almost a book onto itself but the rest of the book excluding those 87 pages or so?

I don't get it. Maybe I just don't understand the so-called classics.

[Quoth]

[quote name='hadaad' post='1375439' date='May 29 2008, 15.06']Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. Everyone says how wonderful and lovely they are and I just felt dirty reading the first one. I gave it up before it was half-over.[/quote]
I, too, simply could not get into this. And I've tried several times. It just dragged along for me.

Likewise, "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco.

[Ouroboros]

Don't know if I've said this or not, but Gene Wolfe, anything by Gene Wolfe. I just can't stand his style. It does nothing for me. Whenever I say it though I feel like that one guy who doesn't like Hayao Miyazaki at an anime film festival, know what I mean?

[diabloblanco18]

[quote name='Ouroboros' post='1527112' date='Sep 22 2008, 09.40']Don't know if I've said this or not, but Gene Wolfe, anything by Gene Wolfe. I just can't stand his style. It does nothing for me. Whenever I say it though I feel like that one guy who doesn't like Hayao Miyazaki at an anime film festival, know what I mean?[/quote]

I'm with you, so that makes two of us, at least. I read and hated [i]The Wizard-Knight[/i], and recently struggled through most of [i]The Shadow of the Torturer[/i] before giving up altogether. I like the philosophy, and there are some damn good quotes just in the pages of the first book (of the New Sun), but the way he plots his stories is just utterly uninteresting to me. The protagonist runs off of his adventure, going from place to place, problem to problem, meeting all sorts of people along the way, but it comes off as a haphazard pastiche of plots-in-miniature, much like you'd get when reading something like Vance's [i]Tales of the Dying Earth[/i]. Except that Cugel's predicaments were absurd and hilarious, while Severian's are very serious.

[Vrana]

I'm doing a marvellous job at deluding myself into thinking that all you [i]1984[/i], [i]Infinite Jest[/i] and [i]Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell[/i] haters are all just supressing enourmous supplies of love and devotion for the books.

I'm interpreting this as a thread leaning more towards books you find overrated.

[i]Naomi Novik[/i], he read the LotR when she was young, your point being? She is as stated formulaic and mostly trying to sound eloquent when she's just irritating.

Dan Brown, although that's an obvious one. Burn.

Only read [i]Oliver Twist[/i] so far but I couldn't get past half of it and even though I'm not a official Dickens-nay-sayer (Dostoyevsky aka God liked him so I cannot give up just yet), I hope he has something to show for being so unimaginably loved by every single person I've met.

Cannot for the love of me see the 'charm' in [i]Alexander McCall Smith's [/i]novels either.

I've only read [i]The Trial [/i]By Kafka, safe to say it didn't blow me away. I'm giving him another go with [i]The Castle[/i] since Haruki Murakami (one of my favourite contemporary authors), pretty much worships him.

[Happy Ent]

[quote name='Crazydog7' post='1527072' date='Sep 22 2008, 18.11']Atlas Shrugged [...] I don't get it. Maybe I just don't understand the so-called classics.[/quote]
You’re kidding, right? [i]Atlas Shrugged[/i] is no more a classic than the [i]Da Vinci Code[/i] is. Ayn Rand is universally vilified both by the unwashed masses and academia. (And rightly so.) No mean feat, that! Only a small demographic of basement-dwelling masturbatory young neo-liberal males who can’t get laid have elevated it to their bible of wish-fulfilment, dreaming of a world in which (ironically) they’d be ripped in two by the next passing alpha male. (In fact, beta- and gamma-males will have Rand’s readers for lunch as well.) It fulfils the same urge away from complexity towards a simpler, better, cleaner place where [i]I[/i] am significant that makes adolescents love Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers.

[bodhi]

Malazan: bought the first two and never went beyond the first 100 pages, bad, bad , bad

The Book Thief: badly written & boring

from the more recent ones