didn't do much for me at all (and he is one of my favorite authors). I managed to get through it - but yes, probably the most boring book I started...and finished!

Great topic but deadly writing. Took me like a year and a half to read. I had to keep taking breaks to read more interesting books.

I was huge into buying books after I graduated high school, and I would look for series of sci-fi or fantasy novels which looked interesting and buy the entire series in one fell swoop.

I was never disappointed with my choices until I started reading this shit. It's like every book had to have about 40 pages of characters using nearly 1,000 words to greet each other or say goodbye. That, and the protagonist was the world's biggest nimrod.

They just sucked. I tried to get through the first trilogy three times and would just lose interest by the beginning of the second book.

I read three of those I think, then gave up.

Edit: had much blather about the leperous "white gold ring wielder" or something like that, and his magical ability to somehow prevent Lord Foul's Bane's evil plans to rule the universe.

Better to just read A. A. Merritt or some of those guys.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=a.%20a.%20merritt&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CGEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arthursbookshelf.com%2Fsci-fi%2Fmerritt%2Fa.%2520e.%2520merritt%2520-%2520the%2520ship%2520of%2520ishtar.pdf&ei=1lzoT6-1DIPg2gWEnYD8AQ&usg=AFQjCNGclEfKoswNQ0izApXXtDAV7tzclA&cad=rja

People must start reading them and go "fuck this shit!".

and after I found out she died taking SS payments....she was not only the worst writer in recent American history, she was also one of the biggest hypocrites.....

it wasn't at the top for boring------well, unless you are only talking about Galt's 100 page speech (or at least it seemed to be 100 pages, but since I kept daydreaming through it, who knows).

Last edited Sun Jun 28, 2015, 11:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Had to read it in high school, and I couldn't stop thinking, "This is supposed to be an example of great literature?"

P.S. Woody Allen wrote a story about a wartime dentist who had to read Dreiser to his patients when he ran out of painkillers!


rocktivity

I just bought that book at the library book sale and it is in my pile to read.

Read it and enjoyed it 20 years later. YMMV--even within your own lifetime, I find.

William Faulkner. I don't care for Hemmingway, Henry or Fitzgerald either. I'm pretty much a dud where serious literature is involved. But I love Whitman and Bronte and Dickenson and London and various and sundry other authors.

So my answer is, sadly, anything by Faulkner.

Faulkner is unreadable, and Hemingway leaves me cold

southerner, you might just turn out to be a huge fan. I listened to Light in August on tape and fell in love with Wm. Faulkner. Can't remember who read it, but it was mesmerizing.

Thanks-I'll serious look into it (we live only 2 blocks from a library). I'm sure I could find something there. I feel like such a traitor for being inable to "get" my state's foremost author.

"The Sound and the Fury" is my favorite by Faulkner, but "Light in August" is written beautifully and is a much easier read than many of Faulkner's other works.

one of my three greatest authors...sentence length irritates many, Light in August is a master work.

Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and Cryptonomicon.

Let the pelting with rotten fruit commence.

wasted. But LOTR? Dragged on and on and on and on and on and on and on and skip a chapter and on and on and skip another chapter and on and on and skip a couple more and still hanging about and look at the end to see who survived...done!

Lord of the Rings. I couldn't get more than two chapters into The Hobbit, which everyone said was a great way to start, so I've never even tried the real thing.

I no longer even consider finishing books I'm not liking. I'll give it fifty pages or so, and that's it.

Finishing a book that's reasonably interesting, but not liking it for some reason or another is a different story. I have learned the hard way that if a novel is hugely praised, I'm probably not going to like it. Couldn't get more than a third of the way through The Road. Couldn't get past the first paragraph of A Million Little Pieces or whatever that stupid book is called, because it starts out with him coming to on board an airplane and bleeding profusely. I'm a former airline employee, and I can tell you we would never board a passenger in that kind of condition.

I finished the Hobbit through punishment.

and that's even more vaunted. Strangely I'm fine with most literary so-called masterpieces of all eras, but those two writers do nothing for me. Bartleby was ok I guess but that's as far as I go. Rushdie is the other way round for instance. I love his stuff (except the bloody silly Grimus) but often hear others call him tedious.

for tedium to set in.

I couldn't seem to get past twenty pages.

I had to read it for an English class where the prof had used it in his thesis for his PhD. It is a fascinating book, there is so much going on there. I wasn't getting much out of it in the class at first but to humor the professor I kept going back and rereading various parts that made me pause and wonder why they were written that way. When I did that I started getting alot more out of it. It's the book that taught me how to really "read".

by Richard Russo. I finished it because it was our book club selection a few years ago. I loved Empire Falls but this one just dragged and dragged.

I'm sure I've read others but usually if a book doesn't grab me in the first 50 pages, I give it up.

I am always most disappointed when a book that I love makes me read another by that same author, and that one sucks.

I learn things from them, but OMG all those words to do it!

"The Old Man and The Sea" is also a snoozer.

women optional.

The only times I can remember a woman even in the book, she is window dressing for a man. I mean, a man cannot go to the opera without being accompanied. But I don't remember any dialogue with females. LOL. So besides being boring as hell, he didn't think much of women....what a surprise!

Its a book with exactly one million dots in it.

There was a reason "John Carter" was a box office flop, because the books are a bore, too. Same with Tarzan.

Yes meanings change over time but ol' Edgar really should have thrown in the occasional "yelled" or "exclaimed" from time to time...

I can't believe what people had to settle for as porn in the early 60s

Instead, I simply put it down and don't go back.

I suppose, to answer the question, The Descent by Jeff Long.

Lots of raves about it on Amazon, and it's the type of genre I like so I bought. The very first chapter is really good, but amazingly, it becomes a jumbled mess right after that, almost as if someone else wrote the first chapter.

The man has a lot of wonderful ideas, but his writing is as dry as dust.

Yes, I know what I am saying is sacrilegious but I had to force myself to get through "Great Expectations" in my junior year of high school for English literature. It was just very hard to get through. One of my teacher's essay questions concerned something about social guilt, and I NEVER did learn what social guilt was! I received my poorest grade of the entire year from those essay questions.
I've read other Dickens books since then and enjoyed them.

By Melissa Gilbert

Also, I was trying to make my way through Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast(due to high praise on listverse.com), but now I keep looking at it on the shelf and getting the "shoulds" since I got about a quarter through but was just soooo bored. LOTR is a great concept, but long stretches, particularly in The Two Towers, just drag and drag. Cryptonomicon is the same way. I never did get out of the desert of setup and into the meat of story. Weird about Tolkien. I've read through the Silmarillion many times and never get bored with it. I'd recommend Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East for a fantasy story that moves fast. I've read a little Andre Norton and can recommend Voorloper. The Eight by Katherine Neville is a good techno-type thriller that dosen't bore(though it's actually about chess).

rich people arranging seating for dinner parties...again, one of Time's top 100 novels and the best reason to question that list...sleep inducing blather.

By the way...nothing actually happens...they never even make it to that lighthouse.

something by Rudyard Kipling. Can't recall what, but it was excruciatingly dull. No other assigned literature was ever as awful.

And anything I read on my own, if I find it doesn't hold my interesting after a reasonable try (say 50 pages) then I just put it down. The Reading Police have never arrested me for this.

There are some that I couldn't finish.

Ulysses - by James Joyce

Kalevala - Old Finnish Tale.
The problem with the Kalevala is that it is LONG and written in verse.
Then, add to the fact that most of the names are about 6-8 syllables, like Vonaimoinen or some such.
Then, you struggle to figure out what they are saying for each verse. Then the other, then having to go back to figure out if you actually understood what they were saying.

Yeah, I had a headache by the 30th page.

put me to sleep on numerous occasions.