The books you could never finish somehow...

[Ruthful]

[noal]

Atlantis by David Gibbons.

I picked it up cheap and it is the only book i have never finished!
It got bogged down too much in technical details about equipment etc. Plus boring characters, bad dialogue and when I finally gave up I just couldn't care less about what was going to happen in the end.

Just truly awful.

[Mattrick]

The Dark Half...it just didn't do it for me. I tried picking it back up a few years later and I was like meh, fuck this. The weakest King book I've ever read.

[jhanic]

The more I think about it, the fact that there is one book I've never been able to finish--Moby Dick. As an English major and occasional English high school teacher, this book just is terrible!

John

[CRinVA]

Ah the only thing I was never able to complete was Paradise Lost by Milton.

yech!

I did have a hard time finishing My Pretty Pony!

Delores Claiborne was a tough read the first couple times I just couldn't get into the writing style. Then I listened to the audio book version and had no problem whatsoever! ????

[ESW]

I could never manage to slog through THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand...but then, judging by what I've heard from those who have, I may not have missed much.

[beam*seeker]

Before reading this thread, I would have said I always plow through a book, even when I wish I could put it down, but I have some books in common with other forumites here I have never been able to slosh through.

I have wanted to read Moby Dick, have read about why its such a great novel and I actually like the theme of the book and the back drop. Have not been able to get through 50 pages of it though. To be fair, I have not tried in a few years, maybe I should retry. I think I tried it as a teenager and the material was beyond my little experiences then.

I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged as a teen, and 2012 was pretty good also, but I have never been able to get into The Fountainhead. I have tried twice and at least one time I made it through 50 pages. Meh.

I loved the Dune movie, but never made it through the book. Guess that is another one to re-try. I don't think I followed the Brautigan rule and did not make it through 50 pages to be fair.

I was surprised to see dislike for The Scarlet Letter. I hated it when I had to read it for English lit, but I reread it another time and liked it. I loved The Crucible. I love anything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, and am surprised to see folks find him hard to read. Ditto for American Gods, I could not put that one down!

Books I made it through and wished I had not wasted my time: Sword Of Shennarah by Terry Goodkind? Waste of my life I will never get back. It was just suspenseful enough I kept thinking it would get good, but it was like a bad knock off of LoTR.

Another one was the damn Taltos by Anne Rice. I loved all her vampire stuff but the "walking babies" was just ridiculous. I was like, WTF? I was mad at myself for finishing that one--not worth the paper it was printed on, not even for Toilet paper or kindling.

[WeDealInLead]

There have been a two this year and I can't imagine I'll ever want to give them another try:

John Scalzi - Redshirts
Neal Stephenson - The Big U

I really wanted to like Redshirts but the language was just so corny. He kept trying to sound cool and have this quick and smart dialogue and it just felt phony. Scalzi is great at S.F., and his Old Man's War trilogy will be considered a classic years from now but this psedo-quirkiness isn't doing it for me.

The Big U has the same problem but at least it was funny. The problem was it felt like I was reading Catch 22. Seeing I've already read Catch 22, I dropped it and moved on to something new.

[Mattrick]

The scarlet letter rules, I've read it.twice.

[Melike]

I thought so hard to answer this question. There is no book I didn't/couldn't finish except my text books. This is too bad.