Ever read a book so bad that you actaully stopped reading?

[Lekonua]

Twilight. I tried to read it because I don't like making fun of things I haven't experienced firsthand. I don't think I got more than 1/3 through.



Also Lord of the Rings, but in my defense I was in third grade when I tried reading it for the first time. I tried again in high school and actually got through them all. So...yeah...

 

[retyopy]

The Bible. Too unbelievable and stupid even for a sci-fi/fantasy fan

Yeah, its odd that it became a classic. Guess people would read anything bcak in the day.

 

[peruvianskys]

I've never stopped reading a book because it was bad, but I've read two that I should have stopped reading because they were bad. One was Absolom, Absolom by William Faulkner - absolutely horrendous. He spends four pages describing the house in which one character will tell the other characters a story that doesn't happen in that house. The house itself is never mentioned again, but he spends four pages making sure we know exactly what it looks like. Why is this man revered?

*tear shed*

I absolutely love that book! But you're right that he goes on for a while in spots. But he's a regionalist so it makes sense that he really tries to get a sense of place going in the beginning.

EDIT: Oh sorry I forgot the topic. I remember reading The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinksi and not being able to finish it. It was just awkwardly written. Also a lot of science fiction. The standards there seem to just be really low and sometimes it's unbearable.

 

[Manji187]

The first book, I forgot the name, of the Wheel of Time series.

I actually FINISHED "The Eye of the World" and decided to refrain from purchasing/ reading the rest of the series. It kinda reminded me of the standard JRPG plot. Teenagers on an epic quest to save the world from evil. Lots of traveling, fighting, running away and so on.

OP: I still haven't finished Metro 2033 (the book). The English translation is like walking barefoot on shattered glass; a jarring, painful lack of elegance/ variety in writing.

 

[Kadoodle]

I will probably catch a lot of shit for this, but Lord of the Rings.

No shit sent to you, good sir. I got about halfway through the first book before I couldn't take it anymore.

It was like a rehash of the Hobbit, except more serious and less interesting.


OT: I finished Lord of the Flies, but I was so irritated by Golding's writing style (the way you've never sure what's happening, and how he sucks at giving a decent description of the boy's surroundings) that I missed a lot of the messages.

I later re-read it when I was 15, and loved it.

 

[Ti0k0]

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov; it's about the devil coming to earth, but after a while the story just stops being interesting...

I'm going to guess that it may have had something to do with the chapters that travel back to Biblical times. They're not my favorite, but the book as a whole is easily in my top 10.

That could be quite possible, haven't finished it, I cam as far as the News from Yalta chapter, I'll try to read it again sometimes!

 

[jasperjohns]

I'm a voracious reader so I've ran into a few books. As far as the titles that people would consider classics the only ones are:

Moby Dick (Herman Melville) - I made it to chapter 54 and just quit, quite a chore to get that far.

The Sound and the Fury (William Falkner) - I made it past the hard to follow first part, and quit.

Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) - Only read a chapter or two, I may have just simply not been in the mood.

JR (William Gaddis) - My brain bled from trying to read this. If you're a masochist give it a shot.

As far as contemporary books go:

From a Buick 8 (Stephen King) - For me King's worst work, made it about half way through and lost interest.

Next (Micheal Crichton) - IMO, his worst. I finished it but wish I hadn't wasted my time on it.

Any of the more political books by Tom Clancy. They may have had more action later on, but the build up was boring.

 

[Kadoodle]

Christ Jesus in holy heaven. Dianetics, Atlas Shrugged... I'm pretty left wing, but I feel like I should at least know my enemy, right? God, couldn't even get past the first couple pages.

The Time Machine! Oh God! The Time Machine! I did actually finish it, because it was for school, but I hated that piece of pretentious shit.

Oh I LOVED the Time Machine, and I can't understand why you hate it. It was short but sweet, and didn't overstay its welcome. Excellent science fiction. Had a neat underlying message about class; there was a great irony throughout if you noticed it.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I read a book where the beginning was so bad I couldn't force my self to get to the "allegedly" good parts.

Slaughter House 5.

The first 50 pages bored me into a coma

 

[Grayjack]

I read Siddhartha last year. We were only supposed to read a specific chapter and report on it, but I decided to read a bit more. My God, that book is boring.

 

[Seagoon]

I just did. But I'm not telling you what it was, because I'm afraid you might go out and read it.

I'm not that cruel.

But you guys are! I guess!

Erm... Just share a few awful books.

You ever read 'Feed'.. don't... its a terrible, terrible book... can you recommend any good zombie books?

 

[jurnag12]

Had some trouble getting through Brisingr, because I read all 3 books back to back and the complete lack of anything original was beginning to outweigh the guilty pleasure I get from their badness.
The same with A Dance of Dragons, although not nearly as much as Feast for Crows. I really hope those 2 are just that way due to being the middle-point of a long series.
And Twilight.
It may be that everything I heard about it before I picked it up influenced me, but when i started reading it, I found Bella's viewpoint drowning in so much whiny teenage angst that I threw the book against the wall after about 20 pages.

EDIT:
There was also one we had to read for English at school (I'm Dutch, so pretty much all books we need to read for English are 70-page heaps of Meh, this one was different.) that was apparently the life story of some Irish-American that immigrated to Ireland. it lacked most sorts of proper punctuation, was written in the most boring way possible, and managed to make me yawn during a part where the protagonist's baby brother died.
Also the Bible, although I will freely admit that that is probably due to me not being very open to Religion. Still, I tried.

 

[IPunchWithMyFists]

A read a book SO TERRIBLE that I finished it.

A Demon In My View by Amelia At-water Rhodes. It was so bad. I read it when I was 16. I wanted to finish it just to say I did. I said to myself SHIT I COULD WRITE A BOOK BETTER THAN THIS. Then the realization came.

5 years later, I'm almost done with my first book.

 

[erto101]

I will probably catch a lot of shit for this, but Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings for me too. It was just so dull!

 

[LadyTiamat]

chakra the Zulu - It.Read.Like.It.Was.Written.By.A.5.Year.Old.

The shack - I skipped the middle part of the book........I thought it would be an interesting muder mystery with some religious overtones but noooooooooooooooooooooo it was a preachy story who's ultimate message was 'everything will be alright' which is ok but how it was presented made me go 'really?'

Twilight - I read it thinking 'its not that bad a lot of people like it'
It was worse, 5 chapers in i was hating the characters of how they were presented, bored as hell and threw it out the window at how this book had such a large following for being such a poor book. i swiftly went to read Lovecraft and fogot the whole thing!


The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
H. P. Lovecraft

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

probably the lost symbol, i rather liked the 1st book and deception point, but this was a huge disappointment to me, clunking with one of the most predictable plot twists apart from wheres babyswap maternity ward drollness...

 

[Xannidel]

The Wheel of Time series, the first book was ok but the action was sorta slow and it got boring but then I tried the Prequel (I never knew there was one until I saw it in a bookstore) and I got roughly half way done and was fed up with it, zero action, some back story but that was it. they were looking for some kid and that was all it was about from what I remember (it was like a year ago that I gave up on it so my memory is probably warping it a little)

 

[Batou667]

I read Lord of The Rings all the way through - not for pleasure, for the most part, but just so I could tick it off my list. It's really quite badly-written - humourless prose, sterile description, twee and irritating dialogue. The Peter Jackson films are an improvement, and I rarely say that about films-of-books.

I'm usually quite fond of Clive Cussler's novels when I want some light dumb-fun heroics, but I remember one Dirk Pitt book (I forget the title) that went off on such a sickenly patriotc tangent that I just couldn't read it. I think I got to the passage "..born on th 4th of July, a true son of Uncle Sam" and I just shook my head and closed the book.

I also stopped reading Bless the Child by Cathy Cash Spellman about quarter of the way through. Just really didn't get into it at all, and it's such a big book I didn't want to inflict it on myself.

In general though, I try to finish any book I start, even if I'm not loving it.

 

[Alar]

The third installment of the War of the Ancients trilogy by Richard Knaak. The editing and writing style was already kind of mediocre, but it turned to shit in the third book... absolutely horrible.