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Remember how I made a thread about "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"? Oh, about three weeks back?

Well I quit the shit out of that book last night. What a disaster. Could not stand Eggers writing style and his endless stream of consciousness, run on sentences, is this a run on? Is this a run on? This is a good sentence. OK it is. Is it? It is. Right? Yeah.

Take a hike guy.

That was a book I have always been meaning to check out. Maybe now I won't.

Yeah it wasn't for me. I couldn't get over how much attention he drew to his style of writing.

I don't remember the last time I quit a book. "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" was tough though...I started 2 others while I was reading that one. Took me well over a month to finally finish. Lots of rambling, only to never really go anywhere.

just started we need to talk about kevin, but it's not really drawing me in... the narrator is about a pretentious as it gets...

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“I fear the man of one book.” St. Thomas Aquinas

What about this one? Kind of intrigued since it takes place in NOLA during Katrina.
Anyone read it?

The Price of Politics - Bob Woodward

I can see that. I was bored most of the time. I've read a few of Egger's books and I would always wonder why I finished them. Such an underwhelming author.

Les mis

Fucking painful

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"You need a real man to make you some real ribs. You know, someone who is willing to put the time in to make sure you're fully satisfied and not just stuffed."

The closest I came was by one of formerly favorite authors Dan Simmons

I felt compelled to review his last book



A lot of others agreed with me

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Older than anyone in this thread.

I'd rethink Zeitoun, since what has come out about him recently. He was convicted of beating his wife and is now on trial for hiring hitman to kill his wife.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/201 ... ina_f.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/us/ce ... .html?_r=0

stewart copeland biography. need to pick it up again.

Life of Pi. Really wanted to read it for quite some time and didn't make it half way.

Felt like it was written for high schoolers and college freshmen to have deep thoughts about religion and life, and the writing was way too flowery for me. I know I'm in the minority.

Well allrightee then.
Didn't realize it was a true story, not knowing anything about the book just thought it was a work of fiction. Wondered if that helped or hurt his sales on that one.

It was definitely written for a younger audience, but it's still an awesome book.

also gave up on A Heartbreaking Work...hated that shit. picked up on a rec from a girl i was seeing at the time.

last book i gave up on was Infinite Jest. But I haven't given up on it for good.

I agree, it's awful (though I finished it).

I quit on David Foster Wallace's Pale King for the second time. Infinite Jest is my favorite book of all time, but PK just couldn't hook me, and I didn't read any 'don't worry it gets amazing' comments as motivation.

House of Leaves.

got 150 pages in...i'm sure it had potential but what the hell was that

Infinite Jest.

Have not abandoned it completely, but its going to be a while until I go back.

I randomly bought "Lost in a Good Book," a Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde at the used book store here, seemed like a fun sort of page-turner, futuristic literary mystery something something.

well i fucking quit that book. shit was fucking stupid.

It was some trash fiction book. A real right-wing, pro-Christian, Tom Clancy-style military/political fiction all about fighting tyranny (liberalism) and globalism while reaffirming faith in God. It was free right after I got my Kindle so I grabbed it. Made it about two chapters in before I got hit in the face with the full force of the pro-God bit. It was awful.

I've almost given up on Cryptonomicon a few times, but I pushed through and am finally down to the last hundred or so pages. I like the book, but the pacing is just horrible and makes it hard to stay interested.

I try not to feel bad about quitting a book after a hundred pages or so. Life's too short to read shit you don't like.

I agree, it's kind of like eating a meal to me. If I try something brand new and it turns out I hate it, I'm not going to force myself to eat it. It's the same with beer, or books. I used to really beat myself up over it. As long as I give it a shot, I no longer feel guilty about it.

The Bible. While I was in jail.

Grapes of Wrath, second time putting it down (first time was in high school). I liked East of Eden and Winter of our Discontent but Grapes is pretty painful.

120 pgs into Grapes and we have one halfway developed character (Tom Joad) and a really good grasp of dustbowl/depression of the American South. If you're interested in that time period i could see how it might be better. Steinbeck's prose is mediocre to boring and the dialogue was painfully cheesy.

Just bought this, mostly out of curiosity. It sure is...big.

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Living like a slave in a land of moneyseeking hipsters dorks

its only 400 pgs and like 100 of those pages are blank or just have a few words on them

Different editions? The one I picked up is full-color (which I think just means a few words are blue), larger pages sizes than a typical paperback, more like a textbook, and 700 or so pages. Yes, some of those pages have little going on.

I've read great things about it, some not so great, but it looks weird and interesting, so I'm hopeful.

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Living like a slave in a land of moneyseeking hipsters dorks

it takes a bit to get used to the oddity of the house of leaves, but i thought it was an excellent attempt at something a little different.

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“I fear the man of one book.” St. Thomas Aquinas

oops yeah you're right. 700, but a lot of white space. still not huge compared to IJ/War and peace/etc.

it looks neat

I read so infrequently, maybe 3 books a year, that I can stick to the classics and best-sellers.

I would hate to have to decide to quit on a book after you've invested several hours.

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MAXCHOLO HAS THE UPPERHAND!!!

Confederacy of Dunces

Meh.

After so many great reviews, I was extremely let down by this book. You're right, what the hell was that.

hell yeah cpj

Confederacy was a slog for sure. Needed more editing.

I don't know, some of my favorite stuff makes me go "what the hell was that?", at least at first. Just saw Primer for the first time this weekend, totally "what the hell was that?"-worthy...but I loved it, will watch again.

Best example: Phish. Friend's older brother in high school c. 1991 had a tape. First song I remember was some weird thing about a dog eating a cat in, like, 5/8 time. What the hell is this? Indeed.

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Living like a slave in a land of moneyseeking hipsters dorks

Yep, lots of funny parts, but a lot of dribble too.

Haven't quit a book in a long while but I did pull Resident Evil Retribution out of the Blu Ray player about 20 minutes into the movie last week.

I haven't quit yet, but I have drastically slowed down on this Lois Armstrong bio that I am reading. The last years of his life are just incredibly uninteresting to me at the moment, especially after reading about his childhood and early career.

Having a hard time finishing the book....

Doesn't happen often but I could not get through Anna Karenina about 2 yrs ago...I felt compelled to read it as it is routinely at or near the top of many "best book of all time" lists, but it lost me about 3/4 of the way through when they went to Italy (I think?).

That's why I thought on the road was better.

Much more Traveling

Back to Blood - Tom Wolfe

I had it out from the library. Hadn't finished when it was due and couldn't be bothered paying a few dollars in late fines to finish it. And I'm a big fan of Wolfe's. The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full are fantastic. But, somewhere around page 500 or so, with it due back, I realized I didn't give a shit about it or what happened.

The only one I've ever quit on was Gravity's Rainbow in 2010.

easily the most difficult book ive read. still not sure what its about but i liked it and it made me laugh

I gave up on Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon". I've enjoyed several of his other books - Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day, Vineland, another one I can't think of right now. For some reason, this one put me to sleep within 2 pages everytime I picked it up. Can someone tell me if I should try to keep going?

next on my Pynchon list and have really heard nothing but good things except the 1800s language can be difficult. also heard vineland is his "worst"

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.

It's a supposedly nonfiction account of one really annoyingly incompetent and co-dependent woman's laughable attempt to run away from her life, her problems, and her responsibilities under the guise of section hiking the PCT in the mid-1990s. The author is incredibly unlikeable in every conceivable way: she's a whiner, a cheater, a user, a self-pittying do-nothing who runs away from every problem or difficulty she faces...so she decides to "turn around" her life of avoidance by running away on the PCT. Everyone in the world is to blame for why she's a shitty human being: her mother for dying, her step father for moving on after her mother's death, her siblings for not wanting to dwell on her mother's death, her husband for not demanding she snap out of her depression, her friends for not calling her out on her compulsive cheating on her husband, a guy she slept with behind her husband's back for getting her started on a heroin habit and knocking her up, her husband again for not trying to see her affairs and pregnancy/abortion as cries for help and divorcing her. The list goes on.

Chapter after chapter is her bumbling through a trip she isn't prepared for in the least while pouring over why her current situation and state of mind is the direct fault of everyone else. I gave it a couple of hundred pages and then gave up.

Have you read Inherent Vice? It's PTA's next film.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a couple years back. I absolutely hated the writing and was not into the story at all. Honestly wanted to punch the kid every time he talked about his heavy boots.

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Inherent vice is the Pynchon book i couldn't think of. I remember liking that one.