Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

Tempted to with 'To The Lighthouse' but once I start a book I have to finish it. I even finished The Portrait of a Lady which was LONG and PAINFUL.

david copperfield

put me off dickens forever.

Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

disappointing ... that is actually a good book

heaps! Farewell to Arms, The Road, Cloud Atlas, Finnegan's Wake, How to Stop Smoking the Easy Way...

''One Hundred Years Of Solitude''

amazing book. can't believe you couldn't finish it - i couldn't put it down.

despite my interest in it, i never finished the memoirs of richard m. nixon. the guy who owned it took it back when he moved out of my house. anyone got a copy?

In the Name of the Rose. It is still sitting there in my bookcase with a bookmark in it. Cursing me out.

hopscotch by julio cortazar

i read about 20 pages but it was painfully pretentious and i had to put it down

didn't finish foucault's pendulum because it was shit.

more recently i don't think i'll finish automated alice (jeff noon), although i like other books of his.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

you really should finish this, it's wonderful.

didn't finish foucault's pendulum because it was shit.

i wholeheartedly disagree.

tried to read a bunch of stuff by james joyce in my teens, put me right off it.

I second ''One Hundred Years Of Solitude'', gave me the shits.

Oh, and The Turn of the Screw. Dunno why, just got a bit bored. It's not even very long.

i have started and not got through dirt music and jane eyre.

a couple of times for both.

i'll get there one day.

I didn't finish In The Name of the Rose, either Fe. I also didn't finish Pride and Prejudice, the first Harry Potter book (or start any of the others), Special Topics In Calamity Physics (although might come back to this one day), the Autograph Man, The Brothers Karamazov, and stacks more. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for the book and sometimes the book is just not my bag.

Yeah, I just got the movie out. Christian Slater rules. Hehehehehe.

Swann's Way, about 80 pages in. Ugh.
One day I'll give it another shot, but there's a pile of 6 books I'm far more inclined to read right now.

Tim Winton! God what a hack.

NEUROMANCER!

Although, less than one chapter in isn't exactly 'halfway through'.

The fact that so many of my favourite books I've ever read have been mentioned in this thread makes me worry.

I will happily post you my copy, KevinArnold.

its alright. I have my hands tied up with some non-fiction books.

I'm reading the ''Road to 911'' to discover why all muslims are bad people and are to blame for the world's wrongs.

Naked lunch

but its so much fun!

The film was shit and was not even an attempt at an adaption of the novel

I could never finish Great Expectations. Dickens is just too dry. It's not the time period either because I like a lot of Romantic and Victorian literature.

Oh yeah, I couldn't get into the Dickens that our literature teacher raved about (we had to study Hard Times). I also hated The Importance of Being Earnest... to me, comedy genius is Tom Stoppard, not Oscar fucking Wilde.

never read Dickens, but the BBC series of his works are just brill

e.g. Bleak House, Little Dorrit

I got 1/3 into Anna Karenina then stalled. Fully intend to resume and finish though. Great thus far, just not the right weather.

Underworld. Abandoned a quarter in.

Was meant to be the great American novel but i just thought it was a boring book about a lost baseball

love during the time of cholera. sometimes i could eat up pages like it's nobody's business, other times i would have trouble finishing a paragraph. decided to take robin cherbotsky's advice ''more like love in the time of don't bother-a.''

Underworld got really stupid towards the end. Just became (more) random vignettes. I don't really think ''novels'' should be stuff and leftovers.

Pynchon - Against The Day

About 8 books and counting I have read since putting this down 600 pages in. I just don't know if it is worth it. Might have to start getting stoned again or something.

Books I was forced to read for school, but valiantly declined to:
Wuthering Heights (most awful tripe ever)
The Scarlet Letter (why give that to a bunch of schoolboys? Horrible)

I hated Heart of Darkness when I first tried readign it, but my Mum made me keep going, and I did end up appreciating it.

so many great books listed here. you all should be more persistent.

I agree, a lot of the books mentioned are really great.

100 years of solitude especially. the last page makes it all worth it.

The Slap. Sorry, Christos.

Also abandoned Underworld, for the record.

I remember coming across a sample chapter of that in *The Monthly *or something and throwing the magazine across the room. At the time I couldn't tell if he was being ironic but either way it made me feel really ill. I know that's the point. I don't like feeling ill. I'll read it maybe when I can do so without yelling.

Just started Cosmopolis and it seems promising but I can definitely see how it might be a bit (lots) too much.

I put books down halfway through all the time but the only book I've abandoned recently is As I Lay Dying. I loved *The Light in August *and I love the idea of this book but it seems unreadable to me. Even though I really want to finish reading it. This usually means I'll wind-up falling in love with it in about three years.

I didn't finish *Crime & Punishment *either. I'm sure it's a great book in Russian but in translation it hit me as an exercise in padding. Tolstoy is extremely readable but it's been almost ten years and I still haven't progressed past the second third of Anna Karenina.

I think this is why I liked that movie The Guard so much.

Anyway, yeah! Don't lose hope! I finished The Count of Monte Cristo last year after being off and on with it since high school. I know it's long and silly and at-times awkwardly structured, but without all that the last chapter would just be another platitude.

Shoplifting From American Apparel. it is as bad as it sounds. only 100 pages long and I still couldn't get through it...

Oh and Catch-22. Couldn't get into it at all.