• Welcome to BookAndReader!

    We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!

    Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.

Putting a book down

Told you it was irritating! :p No, I'm sure many people love this story, but it just wasn't my cup of tea at all. :)
 
I've given up on LOTR three times now and feel particularly bad about it because my twelve year old stepson has read it and he thinks it's great. Also given up on the English Patient and the Barchester books more times than I can count. However, Anne of Green Gables and Wuthering Heights I've read so many times I barely have to bother with the books anymore, I know them so well.
 
cajunmama said:
I ocaissionally put a book down, but not very often. I have a very ecclectic taste in literature so for me to find something too dull is rare. But it has happened.
Click to expand...
Me too. Normally meticulous about my choices but have been disappointed. Inflicting a dull book to my senses is too unnecessary a purgatory.
 
Two recently come to mind:

Coupland's "Generation X". I really, really tried to like this book because I was impressed with his other work, and persevered as long as I could with it. I made it to about 50 pages from the end and gave up when I realised I didn't actually care what happened to these people.

The other one was Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint". There were some good moments in it but there's only so much ranting from one man I could take ;)

I may go back and try and finish the latter - the former, I don't think I'll pick up again. Neither experience has put me off exploring other works from the authors, though.

Life is just way too short to spend time reading stuff that doesn't float your boat...
 
starchild42 said:
Two recently come to mind:

Coupland's "Generation X". I really, really tried to like this book because I was impressed with his other work, and persevered as long as I could with it. I made it to about 50 pages from the end and gave up when I realised I didn't actually care what happened to these people.
Click to expand...

I remember reading that... really boring but I made it all the way through. I was determined to get all the way through... looking back I don't think it was worth it. :eek: :p
 
tartan_skirt said:
I remember reading that... really boring but I made it all the way through. I was determined to get all the way through... looking back I don't think it was worth it. :eek: :p
Click to expand...
I'm tempted to ask you how it ends, but I'm not sure I really want to know :D

I can't quite put my finger on what I disliked so much about this book, it started off well enough, but I started having doubts when the green astronauts made their appearance...I'm all for a dose of "suspension of disbelief" occasionally, but that was just stretching it a wee bit far, I thought. And I generally have little time for weak characters, especially those so weak that they have to sit around telling each other stories to flesh themselves out...I don't know. Maybe it's just me - I can be a bit picky - I've heard other folks speak very well of it.

I guess he's developed a bit as a writer since and I'm reliably informed that his newest ("Eleanor Rigby") is pretty good stuff.

L2
 
I don't so much 'put books down' - deliberately at least - as get distracted by other books. I often read more than one book at a time and sometimes one can drag on for ages while others get finished and I move on to new things.

I did once stop reading I don't know how she does it because I was quite busy and 'stressed' at the time and every time I picked up that book I started tensing up. So I left it until I was on holidays and more relaxed and finished it without any problems!
 
starchild42 said:
I'm tempted to ask you how it ends, but I'm not sure I really want to know :D
Click to expand...

You could ask and I wouldn't know. It only read it a few months ago but the end was so boring I forgot... :eek:
 
tartan_skirt said:
You could ask and I wouldn't know. It only read it a few months ago but the end was so boring I forgot... :eek:
Click to expand...

Wow, must've been good then ;)

hatter said:
I don't so much 'put books down' - deliberately at least - as get distracted by other books. I often read more than one book at a time and sometimes one can drag on for ages while others get finished and I move on to new things.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I do, Hatter. Did it recently with a TC Boyle - "The Tortilla Curtain". I guess it just wasn't holding my attention enough to keep me reading, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily bad - it's probably filed under "go back and take another look sometime".

I have a bit of a bad habit of picking up new things and being too impatient to give them a whirl, consequently things that aren't really grabbing me get pushed down the pile for a time. On the subject of "deliberately putting a book down" - if something's not drawing me in, I try and give it the benefit of the doubt for 100 pages or so, if it hasn't done the job by then it's adios.
 
I simply cannot stop reading once I've started. It just eats at me that I dont know how it ends. But a couple have come close. Dune: The Butlerian Jihad was beyond dull. The Handmaids Tale I just could not get into at all. It was the style more than the story. The first person I could handle, but using the present tense just made my brain shut down.
 
honeydevil said:
I passed this depression (put a book down) only once in my life!! I know people will hate me, but it was IT by STEPHEN KING. I just couldn't figure out, how long he needs to come to the main theme in the book, when he needs about 4 to 5 pages to describe how a little boy plays with his papership.
bye
Click to expand...
that is my favorite book of ALL TIME, that book NEVER got boring, though, I havent read a book from another author than King in over a year (except for EB Hintons Outsiders, a school requirment) but Cujo, I found very boring, which is very uncommon for a king book, and the ultimate stopper, the Tommyknockers by Stephen King, that was SOOO boring
 
I agree! The Tommyknckers was a boring boring book! I didn't so much like The Dark Half either although I know most don't agree. By and large King is a fantastic writer! I love him but I had to put Insomnia down 3 times before I finsihed it.

Another book. I have been reading Imajica by Clive Barker for about 9 years! The story is easy to pick up but not easy to stay in, I found.
 
I got two pages into Interview With A Vampire by Anne Rice and put the book down but I came back like 6 months later and enjoyed it very much. I also put down Moby Dick 3 chapters in-I don't know why I just can't seem to get into it!
 
That same thing happened to me...!

Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" didn't quite grab me by the you know what :rolleyes: ... I started reading it, got to page 13 or 14, put it down - then after a few months picked it up again... It happened again, until one day I told myself I would get to page 50 and if it was still boring, I would let it go...

At page 50 it got interesting and I read the whole book through!


Ron.
 
I loooove Stephen King, but after the first story, I couldn't stand "Hearts In Atlantis"... But I don't like having "unfinished business", so I moved on to something else and eventually finished it. I usually do that. Sometimes it depends on my mood. But I really try not to just give up on a book.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top