"Books I just couldn't finish" Topic

For me, it's Turtledove's GIVE ME BACK MY LEGIONS. I've generally liked his history novels. But the man has spent to much time on alternate history and can no longer write a historical novel.

The characters are flat. Arminius hates Rome. We are told this every time Arminius is in the chapter. His father hates Rome. We are told this every time he's in the chapter. Varus hates Germany. We are told THAT every time we see Varus. Varus' pedisequus hates Germany and Germans. blah blah blah.

This book is a series of the same short story repeated seemingly endlessly. And it actually started out rather well. The description of Rome at the start has a few not well known facts about the Empire. But as soon as it reaches Germany it is a repetition of the same scene played out again and again.
At 223 pages of struggle I gave up.

AMAZON, GIVE ME BACK MY 19.95.

So what did you get partway through and throw down in disgust.

Thomas Covenant. I bought the first three books back in the 70s.

I got about 30 pages into the first one before chucking it up the garden…

Same for me with Thomas Covenant I kept those books for a long time hoping they would get better and they never did.

Peshawar Lancers – I went and actually BOUGHT this a few months back when the library couldn't get it.

Doug

I think it is called "1634 – The Bavarian Crisis", it is one of the latest in the Ring of Fire series and the whole thing has devolved in a wandering, mind-numbing, minutae fest devoid of any readability.

I could never finish "The Satanic Verses" or "Thus Spake Zarathustra". What twaddle.

SMc.

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." My girlfriend at the time insisted that I read it.

Wyatt

Never Finished War and Peace.

I like this sort of thing. This is the sort of thing I like. I should like this.

Page 50 is my record.

Pat

I never finished War and Peace, or The Iliad.

I did finish Atlas Shrugged (liked it, then hated it) and the original Thomas Covenant series (slow start, gets better but never really good).

Frankenstein. I have tried and tried. I even bouth the book on CD and could not finish it.

I finished Atlas Shrugged. Liked the premise, hated all of the characters. Only managed to finish it because I was hoping they'd all get killed off.

As with some others here, I've never managed to finish War and Peace or The Iliad.

I've also never been able to get all the way through Geoffrey of Monmouth's book, House of the Seven Gables, Pride and Prejudice, or anything by Dickens.

The Iliad
The Man in the Iron Mask, as I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on in the beginning.

Something by Paul Hamilton… all I recall is that in the first chapter I'm getting a graphic description of the hero's male organ, and that ended the book for me. I prefer my science fiction without the porn, thanks.

Startide Rising and The Uplift War. The first one quickly became predictable. I skimmed/read it to the end, and then skimmed The Uplift War (I had checked out an omnibus edition). Mainly I was skimming to find out what they learned the alien corpse was… only they never found out!!!! I'm done with David Brin. :-P

I've never finished von Clausewitz's On War either, nor The Federalist Papers.

This list is in danger of becoming really long, the more I think about it…

highlandcatfrog

Now, that's good writing. While reading Hawaii, everytime that preacher at the beginning started his pompous knee-jerking, I'd throw the book across the room. One of my favorites, and I read a lot.

Turtledove in his novel about reptilian invasion of Earth.
I can't read him, because he has a preconceived notion of where he's going to force the narrative to go.

I've read three different quotes by authors who said they had an idea of where the book was going to go but that the book forced them to take it in another direction.

Read about two pages of Satanic Verses.
Another vote for von Clausewitz.
The famous Asian warlord's work. Tzu Sun?
The Iliad.
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
David Copperfield
El Cid
Don Quixote

JW

As mentioned, "Sword of Shanana." I go to the rape scene, dropped it and never went back.
I like Turtledove but I quit the reptile invasion and alternate WW I mid series as I just didn't like where they were going.

The first Shannara book I could get through, bad as it was. The second became unreadable by about page 50. Never went back.

I'll second Thomas Covenant. Repugnant AND badly written? 20 pages in, I stopped. Thankfully that was a library loan, so I didn't have to put up with having it on my bookshelf.

I can handle most of the looney libertarianism of L. Niel Smith, but his book about a space pirate is out there in the painfully stilted speech and circuitous writing category. I may have gotten about a third of the way in before giving up.

Anything by L. Ron Cultist. His mega-series was coming out when I was in high school/college. Several friends said they loved it, I forced myself through the first book and then got new friends.

I could never finish the Worm Oroboros. I was reading it and in the middle of it I had a bad break up and never got back to it.

The Iliad I read in high school and have read every 2-3 years since. Same with Atlas Shrugged, except I listen to that and it is more like every 4 years.

I never made it more than a couple dozen pages into Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Absolute crap.

Another one sharing the love for Thomas Covenant here…
Ditto Turtledove. I forget which one I picked up and then put down again, there are so many. But just let me reiterate my thoughts about Turtledove. Very good plots, with totally uninteresting and unlikeable characters.
I may have finally cured myself of buying his boks that I can't be bothered to read.

Considering how much I love the Flashman books, and the MacAuslan stories, I have never finished GM Fraser's "Pyrates". It's too over the top, with "Yo ho hos"s, Arrrrgh!s and thigh thwacking on every page.

I have a hard time with classic "Best Sellers", like Rob Roy, Last of the Mohicans, Three Musketeers, etc.

There have been a fair few, but mostly I don't remember the author or titles.

There was a Tad Williams fantasy series – never finished the first book. I did slog through the first book of the Wheel of Time series, but avoided the rest of the series like the plague. That last pattern is the more common one for me – finish the one book, and then drop the series if it doesn't grab me.

I liked some of Turtledove's early fantasy books – the Lost (not) Legion series, for one – but I gave up on him some years ago.

I'm giving up on Flint's 16XX series. He's allowed the fanfic to take it into obscure corners where you need a degree in Renaissance studies to know what he's talking about.

I do wish he would finish his "rivers of war" series. That was getting interesting.

I dumped Ringo's "Ghost" in the middle of it. I couldn't stomach the kinky sex scenes. Perverted and not relevant to what was a good story. Makes me wonder how well his head is screwed on.

Also dumped smstirling's Draka series for the same reason. I'm not into perverted.

There really haven't been many for me. I've always grimly persevered. However I've recently come to the conclusion that life is too short to waste on books I'm not enjoying – and I have way too many to get through.
So the author I've most recently ditched (probably to the horror of many) is Alan Furst. Love the subjects and time frame, and so want to like them, but somehow they just don't spark with me. Got a third of the way through three seperate books.

Caleb Carr's 'The Italian Secretary'.

It's one of many Sherlock Holmes books written by people who have tried really, really hard to get the Conan Doyle tone right, together with all sorts of facts about the Victorian world. Carr does okay at that.

He just forgot that he needed an actual story.

Or, at least, he didn't have one by page 100, when I gave up.

I found both Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses (the Joyce version of course, not Homer) to be pretty much unreadable, so didn't finish.

I did finish Umberto Eco's 'Foucant's Pendulum', but wish I hadn't.

Holy crap I was just thinking of "Foucault's Pendulum"! I didn't get very far in before realizing it wasn't for me.

I also failed completely in getting through Hardy's "The Return of the Native".

Wish I could have put down Hardy's "Native". Unfortunately it was an assigned reading book in high school.

Wow! I actually finished Thomas Covenant (unless there were more than three, been a looong time ago and I must confess that I remember almost nothing at all about the plot or characters).

What I could never get into was Ender's Game: three tries, each bogged at c. mid-point. I always knew what was going to happen next, and it was boring: too many scifi and fantasy stories under my belt by that time, I suppose. If I had tried Thomas Covenant then, and Ender's Game first, I would have likely finished all the Ender's books and pitched Thomas Covenant after the first chapter.

Shanara, ditto that: by volume three I was reading the first line of each (travel log) paragraph, until we got some action, then I would read everything until it got dull again (travel log resumed), and back to reading the first line of each paragraph again.

Once I start a book I tend to finish it, no matter what, even if it takes years, which it usually does (I bore easily). Unless I forget, of course, that I once started that book, which I tend to do more often these days (perhaps a self preservation technique?)….

Wish I could have put down Hardy's "Native". Unfortunately it was an assigned reading book in high school.

It was for me too. I used Cliff Notes, my brother's work from two years prior, and a girl who had a crush on me to get that paper written.

Unfortunately I did finish reading Battlefield Earth. I mean, it had to get better, didn't it? Well, it didn't. I still have it in my collection less it fall into someone else's grasp and cause irreperable harm.

There was the recent Turrtledove "Darkness" series that was a World War but set on a different world and fought with Dragons, giant sea lizards and magical sticks that could be recharged from dying people. I got through the first book but not the second.

Almost as dull is Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series. Endless pages of family bickering.

David S.

There are very few books I start that I don't finish (including the entire Thomas Covenant series, War & Peace at least three times and even Don Quixote). I did however find Philip Roths 'The Plot Against America' such unutterable bilge that I gave up halfway through, as subtle as a kick in the teeth and as interesting as a wet Sunday afternoon.

"Almost as dull is Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series. Endless pages of family bickering."

I remember those. I even got through the first two. The last bounced me for exactly the reason you cite.

I never finished Dune.

I did read all of the Darkness series and enjoyed them.

If there are only three, I did finish the Thomas Covenant books, but it was a struggle. I hated the way he seemed to finally come to terms with himself, only to instantly revert to "The Unbeliever". Not a series I would ever read again.

I liked Enders War as a short, but never got into the novels.

The Da Vinci Code- in fact I have never started it proper. I get to the page that says it all based on fact (Priory of Sion etc) then say 'what a load of crap', and put it back on the shelf.

Dan Browns 'books' (I hesitate to use the term) are all fairly dreadful, however I have soldiered on through a fair few of them. The best of the lot is 'Digital Fortress'.

The Iliad is on permanent hiatus at the moment. I also gave up on Steben Saylor's Roma before the city had even been founded, because nothing was happening.

Other than that, not much. I wrestled through The Silmarillion and the first 6 Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, although I should probably have given up on them.

Did finish: Iliad, Enders Game (and in fact the entire Ender-esque series of books), Atlas Shrugged, and for sheer entertainment, I love the whole Drizzt series by Salvatore.

I'm OK w/Turtledove's plodding alternative history, but when he delves into magic/fantasy – bleh! As much as I enjoyed Salvatore's AD&D fair, the other things he did (Seventh Son series, etc.) I could not get into, same w/OSC's Ender – liked them, but do not care for anything else he did.

Did not finish (and would never try to again): Satanic Verses (did not make it to page 50), Sword of Shannara, Battlefield Earth, Da Vinci Code.

I think it is called "1634 – The Bavarian Crisis", it is one of the latest in the Ring of Fire series and the whole thing has devolved in a wandering, mind-numbing, minutae fest devoid of any readability.

I TRIED to get through 1634 but couldn't. I like time/space travel-alternate what if dimensions, but this book was too political for me. The author came off as preachy and a little condescending. I love politics, but usually not in a SF novel.

Years ago, I read the "Lost Regiment" series, and though I was a little skeptical, I enjoyed most of them. There was a point in the series when I thought William Fortschen had exhausted the concept.

I think it is called "1634 – The Bavarian Crisis", it is one of the latest in the Ring of Fire series and the whole thing has devolved in a wandering, mind-numbing, minutae fest devoid of any readability.

I TRIED to get through 1634 but couldn't. I like time/space travel-alternate what if dimensions, but this book was too political for me. The author came off as preachy and a little condescending. I love politics, but usually not in a SF novel.

Years ago, I read the "Lost Regiment" series, and though I was a little skeptical, I enjoyed most of them. There was a point in the series when I thought William Fortschen had exhausted the concept.

I tried to get through Paul's post, but if felt like I had read it all before :)

I read the Videsos Cycle, all four (or is it five) novels, and enjoyed it okay: enough to buy the next printing years later: but I haven't been able to get myself to read them a second time.

I just remembered another one: I can't believe I ever finished the Iron Crown Trilogy: the most blatant Middle-earth type ripoff ever written: I think at the time I just couldn't believe how the author could get away with that, and kept reading right through to the end to see what-all he had cribbed so shamelessly….

Way too many to even remember them. But if its still around theres always a chance I'll pick it up again. I know of several in the fantasy genre and I dont think I ever finished any of my Caesar books. Another is Dragonriders of Pern.

"Another is Dragonriders of Pern."

Nah, that was easy (as a teenager) to rip through the whole cycle (which was only six short books at the time). Even the next four or five were readable. After that was when McCaffery started to get blatantly preachy in all of her writing, not just those, and I stopped. And never went back.

For my own examples of a book that others rave over but I never finished, I present two. The first of Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" cycle stopped being vaguely compelling at about page 200. I can read Martin's other works (yes, he has some), but not the "Swords & Soap Opera".

The other is Dan Abnett's 40k stuff. With glowing recommendations all around, I still put the first of the Gaunt's Ghosts books down at the first action break and haven't gone back. Its just gun porn, and not that good as gun porn goes either.

And yet I could read Adams' Horseclans books. Go figure.