h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know Huw does not rate Lord of the Rings on the basis of terminal tedium.

I got half way through Anna Karennina and gave up - she was just a very boring middle-class woman. (Loved War and Peace though).

I didnt even get that far through Emma Bovary, which struck me as being a wet-dream fantasy. And not good as pornography.

So - which classics failed to do it for you - and why?

agcB

Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
Birdsong.
The Bible.
The complete works of Beatrix Potter.

"Zen and the art of motorcycle mechanics". You could die of boredome wiping your backside with that one.
"Angela's ashes". Life was hard and it got better when I wrote about how hard life was.

Don Quixote just goes on and on. You can tell no one has read it all, as the famous bit (tilting at windmills) is in the first third. I gave up when all the characters sat down in a pub and told each other novel length stories.
Oh, I also could never finish Nevil Shute's On the Beach, but that is because it gave me nightmares

One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Well, I would have thrown it away in disgust if I hadn't had to study it for my English course.

oh too many to mention... but i will mention some disappointments

my kind of fun - Will Self - just too clever for its own good.
the three musketeers - dumas
anything by Dotstoevesky (sp?)
or anything great, worthy, long or European oh
and the LOTR series.

Have to say War and Peace for me. I think I got to page 23 and never went back - just not into it

For me it has to be stuff like Piers Plowman (medieval allegory spanning loads of deeply self-involved middle English verse), that I read the first chapter and then gave up. I can remember having a seminar as part of my degree on Bleak House, when I'd only read the back cover and part of the introduction!

More contemporary stuff that I bailed out of reading are John Brunner's 'Stand on Zanzibar' (good book, but the structure is so irritating that it's practically unreadable) and David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' (possibly the fattest book I own, I've only ever read a hundred pages of it because every other word leads to a 3-page long footnote that you have to look up, so when the footnotes start leading to footnotes of their own, you know it's time to give up. Plus it's *way* too clever for its own good).

Spot the English Graduate.

Hello,

As Dorothy Parker once said in a review, "This is not a book that should be taken lightly. Instead it should be thrown across the room with great force."

For me, it's anything by Dickens. I just can't be bothered to care about any of his characters. I also never got through the bible, as there was too much begatting going on for me to keep up.

On a related note, there was a somewhat recent novel where a bunch of professors play a game where they admit a book they haven't read that everybody else has read. The more people who have read it, the more points you get. I think the guy who wins admits to never having read Hamlet and soon loses his faculty position afterwards.

Yours,
Jake

Hello,

As Dorothy Parker once said in a review, "This is not a book that should be taken lightly. Instead it should be thrown across the room with great force."

For me, it's anything by Dickens. I just can't be bothered to care about any of his characters. I also never got through the bible, as there was too much begatting going on for me to keep up.

On a related note, there was a somewhat recent novel where a bunch of professors play a game where they admit a book they haven't read that everybody else has read. The more people who have read it, the more points you get. I think the guy who wins admits to never having read Hamlet and soon loses his faculty position afterwards.

Yours,
Jake

I think flung aside in disgust is a bit strong but here goes ....

Lord of The Rings - started in April 1997, reached page 1003 by Aug 1998 have not progressed into those last 60 pages since.

The Bible - started reading in October 1998, managed up to Genesis Chapter 25.

Catch 22 - about halfway through since last April. Actually its good, I've just been distracted.

Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance - completed, but it is dull.

A Brief History of Time - forced my way through it in 1997, boy is it tough going.

I think BH of T was part of the boredom triumvirate from the late 1980s along with Spycatcher and The Satanic Verses.

More reviews later,
BBS

For me it was "Women who run with wolves", it was supposed to show me how a woman's mind works. I gave up after the 7th chapter. I decided to go with something easier, quantum mechanics.

Mostly Harmless

P.S. I loved Lord of the Rings, Brief History of Time, Beowulf, HHGTTG series, the Dirk Gentry series, Sherlock Holmes by Sir A.C.D.

OK, nuff LOTR slagging off .
This may not be considered a Classic but am I the only fantasy reader who thinks David Eddings' books are utter tosh?

I read the Belgariad (OKish) but its sequel (The Malloreon) is painful, full of horrible in-jokiness amongst the characters that made me feel . His other (better) series The Elenium (and its sequel) also suffer from this. Also, I prefer not knowing what's going to happen when I read a new book. David Eddings redefines the limits of predictability.

Sorry Orc

Lord of the Rings.
The Fountainhead.
The Book of Mormon.
Windows 98

I'm usually careful not to start books I can't finish but I got the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie because I just had to find out what all the fuss was about. I tried to force myself on but after only a few pages I gave up in disgust. What a load of rubbish! I don't believe the people who wanted it banned could've read it either otherwise they would've adopted it as an implement to torture their enemies.

More LOTR poo pooing

Reminds me of a poll I saw in my university magazine a couple of years ago when the band Radiohead got voted both Best and Worst group of the year in the same poll.

Guess it must a love it or hate it thing.

Ah, Lord of the Rings. Loved it when I was young. Must've read it half a dozen times. Couldn't seem to get into it again when I was older though.

Never have got through the Silmarillion. I've probably read through most of it by now, but I just can't get through it in one sitting. Read LOTR plenty of times though.
Oh, and the Wheel of Time series (Robert Jordan). I gave up at book 8. If he ever finishes it I might give it a go again, but...
On the other hand, I got through the Night's Dawn trilogy (Peter F Hamilton) OK. Other people seem to have major problems with this one though - why?

As someone who reads the back of cornflake packets when desperate, the one book I have flung across the room & packed off to the charity shop at the first opportunity was Dear Me by Peter Ustinov. I thought the title was an exclamation instead it was an egotistical waste of paper.

I always feel a compulsion to finish every book I start reading but have to admit that I could not get past volume 5 of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust - what a boring snob that man was!
Am rather disturbed that I have read and enjoyed or even loved some of the books mentioned so far on this thread but maybe that was just a case of 'right time, right place' e.g. Zen and the Art ...., and Satanic Verses.