A Popular Or Well-Respected Book You Just Didn't Catch On To...

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  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 6
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    Ulysses by James Joyce. Just could not get into the rythm of it at all.

    Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books just depressed me.

    Also The Stand by Stephen King. I mean, I like a lot of his other books and some are brilliant, but I never liked that one. I really don't get why so many love it so much.
  • barbelerbarbeler Posts: 23,827
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    The Death Of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave. Just seems to plod along. I loved And The Ass Saw The Angel though, although the first page or two nearly put me off with his style of writing in dialect.
  • TyeverasTyeveras Posts: 61
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    "The Castle" - Franz Kafka. I gave up when it became obvious the main character was never going to get into the castle. Or indeed anywhere. I checked with a friend who likes Kafka. I was right. He never did. Saved myself some tedious hours there!
  • SmartTIIamSmartTIIam Posts: 453
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    A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

    I wouldn't bother but I studied quantum physics and quantum mechanics at University (I don't think I ever really "got it" the quantum topics - should have stuck to applied physics) and I got to chapter three and gave up. Did anybody ever actually read that book, or did it just sit pretentiously on peoples' bookshelves? Does anybody admit to not really understanding it?

    No problem with special theory of relativity. That's two sides of trig.
  • LibrarywitchLibrarywitch Posts: 258
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    I read I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith last year because people told me that it was fabulous and I was missing a treat but I just didn't get the love for it at all. It was OK I guess but I found it really slow and I just didn't like any of the characters at all, I didn't care about them one bit.

    One that I loathed was Snow Falling on Cedars which I tried to read for a readers group. I couldn't get past half way as I was so bored by it and I gave up. Yet the rest of the group raved about it. I very rarely give up on a book and don't finish it but that was one of the few!
  • sarahj1986sarahj1986 Posts: 11,305
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    1984 (just couldnt get into it)
    Artemis Fowl (Started reading it at 14, heard it was meant to be good but found it boring)
  • VeriVeri Posts: 96,996
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    colin23 wrote: »
    Yes Tolkien's The Hobbit was another one I couldn't get into. I couldn't get over Bilbo Baggins' "eleventy first" birthday.. Twee nonsense i reckon. But perhaps I have been spoilt by reading the Stephen Donaldson Thomas Covenant books..

    Well, The Hobbit is for children.

    I'm a bit :eek: :confused: at the idea of someone being spoilt bu the Thomas Covenant books. I think they're nearly the worse fantasy novels I've ever read, and the names he produces for characters, such as Saltheart Foamfollower, make be cringe. They're far, far, FAR worse than "eleventy first".
  • VeriVeri Posts: 96,996
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    Really? I think that although Mantel's style is somewhat poetic, it flows very naturally. We get a great insight into Cromwell's inner world due to her technique of saying 'he' instead of 'Cromwell'. It reduces the distance between the reader and character so we feel more sympathy for him. Wolf Hall is much more of a page-turner than I thought it would be but each to their own.

    How does saying "he" give us any more insight into his inner world than saying "Cromwell"? :confused:

    I can see how writing in the first person would seem to give insight into that character's inner world, or the author reporting what the character was thinking or blending into the character's thinking in "free indirect" style -- but how can using "he" rather than the character's name give us any more insight?

    It just seems a stylistic affectation.
    SheShe wrote: »
    I was much the same! I asked for this for Christmas along with Bring Up The Bodies. I just couldn't finish WH. I hated her use of the present tense; hated her strange punctuation style whereby you could never be sure who was speaking; just couldn't cope with it at all. Imo not a patch on the CJ Sansom 'Shardlake' books, which I adore.

    I am slowly plodding through BUTB!

    It was the "he" nonsense that made it unreadable for me, and though I don't mind present tense (and usually stop noticing it), the way she used it did not work for me at all. I was always conscious of it, and annoyed by it.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 26,853
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    Recently.

    Life of Pi

    Cloud Atlas
  • RAINBOWGIRL22RAINBOWGIRL22 Posts: 24,459
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    My fave book of all time is Nineteen Eighty Four so it just goes to show it's horses for courses.I also loved The Kite Runner,The Time Travelers Wife and Love In the Time of Cholera (all have been mentioned here)

    However I do agree with some mentioned - Atonement was a pile of cack. LOTR was insufferable to me and I just cannot get on with most Dickens I have tried?? I am not sure why!

    The Lovely Bones was another book that I wanted to burn after reading... it was horrid!

    I'd nominate The Five People You Meet in Heaven (OMFG that was hard work!) I was so angry I wasted any of my precious free time reading that drivel.
  • FearFactorFearFactor Posts: 2,547
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    Lizzy11268 wrote: »
    Recently.

    Life of Pi

    Cloud Atlas
    My fave book of all time is Nineteen Eighty Four so it just goes to show it's horses for courses.I also loved The Kite Runner,The Time Travelers Wife and Love In the Time of Cholera (all have been mentioned here)

    However I do agree with some mentioned - Atonement was a pile of cack. LOTR was insufferable to me and I just cannot get on with most Dickens I have tried?? I am not sure why!

    The Lovely Bones was another book that I wanted to burn after reading... it was horrid!

    I'd nominate The Five People You Meet in Heaven (OMFG that was hard work!) I was so angry I wasted any of my precious free time reading that drivel.

    Most of the ones you've mentioned there are some of my favourites (particularly TFPYMIH and Dickens's stuff). But I totally agree with you re LOTR, never wanted to try Atonement, and can't abide anything by Dan Brown. I've also never managed to muster any interest for Harry Potter or 50 shades of shite.
  • strictmachinestrictmachine Posts: 3,099
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    Cloud atlas: possibly the worst book ive ever stuck with to the end
    Moby dick: im not sure what part of an epic novel about hunting a whale i thought i would enjoy.
    Life of Pi: only the ending made it bearable
    LOTR: made it half way through the fifth book. Thoroughly bored, confused by who people were and just gave up
    Lord of the flies: Its possibly because i studied it for school, but found it a poorly written, uninteresting book. Would be slightly tempted to give it another go to see if it was just my surging hormones caused me to hate it so much. Also in literature in school that i hated: Macbeth, call my brother back, Juno and the paycock, war poems, tess of the d'urbeyvilles, the silver sword. Is it obvious i didnt like english literature in school?

    I gave up on Cloud Atlas fairly early and got so bored with Life of Pi I gave up on it near the end.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 5,219
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    I quite liked some of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but I have no desire to read the others in the trilogy, which says quite a lot.

    I also agree about Catcher in the Rye. Someone told me that Holden Caulfield only makes sense if you've ever been a teenage boy, so maybe that's why I didn't click with the book.

    About the only book I've never finished is Lady Chatterley's Lover. The characters are nasty and Mellors is so unattractive and horrible that it ruins the book.

    I wish I had never finished Thomas Pynchon's Against The Day- the ending is quite poetic but makes no sense, and all of the most interesting storylines are left dangling. Pynchon's editor must be scared of him. I have considered trying other Pynchon novels, but have so far resisted.
  • Madonna38Madonna38 Posts: 2,078
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    Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I want to love it. I want to be able to read it all but I just can't. I've attempted so many times but I never get far. Virginia Woolf fascinates me so much but I think her writing may not be for me.

    I've mentioned this before but I didn't like the lovely bones. I got to the end though so that's something I guess.

    EDIT The Time Travellers wife too. And Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I did get into it on the way to London though and ended up forgetting about it when I got off the train so perhaps I should give it another go.
  • cinnamon girlcinnamon girl Posts: 814
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    The lovely bones was terrible. Didnt get the fuss about it whatsoever. To me it was more like she was spying on her family, rather than watching.

    I did not like it at all. I thought it was a weird mix - a horrible, brutal murder, then a load of sickly sentimentality topped off with a ridiculous ending.

    Heart of Darkness just dragged for me, and it's not really a very long book. :o

    I first read Catch 22 as a teen and thought it was really boring, but I read it about 10 years later and it just seemed to 'click' for me and I actually find it funny now.
  • TeddybleadsTeddybleads Posts: 6,814
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    I did not like it at all. I thought it was a weird mix - a horrible, brutal murder, then a load of sickly sentimentality topped off with a ridiculous ending.

    Heart of Darkness just dragged for me, and it's not really a very long book. :o

    I first read Catch 22 as a teen and thought it was really boring, but I read it about 10 years later and it just seemed to 'click' for me and I actually find it funny now.

    I liked Heart Of Darkness but I never understood why it has become such a bastion of literature. I don't think it's Conrad's best work by any stretch of the imagination.
  • Sifter22Sifter22 Posts: 12,054
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    The Naked Lunch - I loved Junky by Burroughs but couldn't get into this one at all. I know it's meant to be random and stuff but didn't want to skip any as I hate doing that with books My mind kept drifting off and was reading lines over and over in the end so gave up.
  • Stan MarinoStan Marino Posts: 29
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    Cloud Atlas

    Praised to the skies for apparently melding six stories and three genres into a mind-expanding epic across time.

    In reality it's a contrived stitching-together of six stories that aren't good enough to stand by themselves, and only two of which are any good at all. Nothing that interesting in most of the stories. It's got a reputation because it's a literary fiction writer trying his hand at genre fiction, but each genre he's dabbling in has many much better work in it by better writers, who aren't afraid to admit they are genre writers.
  • trinity2002trinity2002 Posts: 16,059
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    Catch 22
    Catcher in the Rye
    Cold Comfort Farm
    Wuthering Heights
    The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    Lord of the Rings
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