Ever read a book so bad that you actaully stopped reading?

[DeamonSadist]

if you think "american gods" was weird, try "neverwhere". It's better...even more bizar. Or if you want some REALLY WEIRD SHIT, try Brian Lumley's "Necroscope" series. Truly F@##@ up stuff there in the later works.

 

[Nouw]

Moby Dick is a good book but it was a bit too boring for my liking.

 

[trouble_gum]

Yeah this peace of crap right here.

http://www.amazon.com/Wizards-First-Rule-Sword-Truth/dp/0812548051

People tell me the later books are great, and they very well may be right... again.

They're not.

I quite enjoyed 'Wizards First Rule,' and the SoT series up to about...'Temple of The Winds.' They're not bad in a sort of sub-David Eddings kind of way. However, Goodkind gets massively, massively bogged down with Emperor Jagang, and when you consider how quickly the conflict versus Darken Rahl was resolved, Jagang coems in as the major antagonist and is still there five wearying books later as Richard and Kahlan angst for their country (both literally and figuratively). So, the later books most assuredly do not, get better. They just get longer and spend more time moralizing. Seriously, when you introduce an antagonist in Book Two and you're still dealing with him ten books later, after spending only one book to deal with the original prime villain...eh, you're just spinning things out. 'Faith of the Fallen' is, essentially, an entire novel devoted to Richard building a statue.

The Sword of Truth series is a lot like most Western PC RPGs. There's a main quest out there, but the heroes would far rather fanny about on a whole mess of side-quests.

The only book I can remember actually putting down because it was bad was Terry Brooks' 'Sword of Shannara.' I'd gotten it out of my local library and some past reader had neatly pencilled a message for future generations on one of the frontispages which ran something along the lines of "This book is a badly written rip off of the Lord of The Rings and I heartily recommend you not bother with it." It had been erased by the librarians, but was still just about legible.

I started out and gave up shortly after the first chapter. Because it was just a mishmash of other fantasy novels I'd read.

 

[VondeVon]

And Harry Potter, book 7.

YES. Although I actually managed to finish it, the first half or so of the book is just so goddamn boring.
YES Rowling, I get that they're in a forest. PLEASE MOVE ON.
But no, more forests, more doing absolutely goddamn nothing.
Oh and angst. That was there too.

But after

Spoiler

Ron dealt with his angst and came back to save the day

the book actually becomes worthwhile and enjoyable. Too bad though that everything leading up to it is just so.. dull. I know quite a few people who quit reading the book for that same reason.

Yes I spoiler tagged that part but if you haven't read the book already you deserve to be tied to a mast and flogged.

Totally.

Though, to be honest, it really started with Book 6 for me. I finished the book out of a determined belief that it would stop sucking any second, only to finish it and feel cheated out of a few hours of my life. :S

I can only believe that Ms Rowling was stressed out by publisher deadlines, forced to finish the the story ahead of where her creative desires would have it. There's surely no other reason for such widespread character deformity and predictable plot lines.

I am utterly convinced that the tacked-on future where everyone marries out of high school and names their kids after people they know is her quiet revenge against us all.

 

[Kernalgohd]

Inkspell. Nothing but filler, mind-numbingly boring. (sad because inkheart was really good)

 

[Divided by Zero]

Twilight... I just had to see what the fuss was about, and after 20 pages I realised... ^^

 

[Thyunda]

I hate to jump on a bandwagon, but genuinely Twilight. I needed to use the toilet, and I needed something to read. So I raided my girlfriend's bookshelf, and Twilight was the first thing there. I gave it a shot, but after I was finished in the bathroom, I never touched it again.

 

[Reaper195]

I will probably catch a lot of shit for this, but Lord of the Rings.

This. I found the books to be incredibly dull and drawn out. Maybe it's just not my kind of book (I don't usually enjoy epic fantasies...although I did love the Dark Tower series), or it's age or whatever...but I stopped reading midway through Fellowship.

 

[lRookiel]

/Prepares Flameshield!

Harry potter, got bored on like the 5th chapter of the 1st book and never touched it again.

Its not the genre either because I've read others from the fantasy genre that I loved, the hobbit, the Darren shan books (Vampire and Demonata), the "Spook" books from Joseph Delaney, oh and the Skullduggery pleasant books.

so yeah, I just found it So slow, I never really liked the films either (1st and 3rd are only ones I Truely enjoyed).

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Pride And fucking. Prejudice.

Dear god, Austen has no idea how to make an interesting book. I can see where Charlotte Bronte was coming from when she said Austen was a "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no chance of weeds or fresh air"

 

[Jedamethis]

Very recently, I got about halfway through Catcher In The Rye and just couldn't take it anymore.

I am fully aware that the book was written the better part of a century ago and that the language and social attitudes are relative to that time... But my god, nothing happens and the story doesn't seem to have progressed at all after the first couple of chapters where he leaves school.

The protagonist is annoying and often his mind will just wander off in between walking across the street and will spend a page and a half reminiscing on some distant, unrelated memory. Maybe I've missed something but I'm halfway through and as of yet there is no structure in terms of objectives and direction that I can see, other characters simply come and go, and I just don't have any reason to care about whatever the main character is doing, what will happen next or what will happen at the end.

Maybe it gets better, I don't know, but the book has failed to hook me in and gain my interest.

It doesn't. I wasted too long on that book...
Had to read it for English. There was an assortment of classic books and I picked it because it looked like a Pokeball. I regret that decisison. >.<

 

[Jonluw]

The world without end, I think it was called.
It wasn't bad: just horribly boring.
Couldn't bring myself to finish it.

 

[Radelaide]

Oh God.

The Story Of Tom Brennan. I had to read it as a uni assignment and got less than half way through. Still passed the book assignment with flying colours but the best thing I ever did to that book was this:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/5980_1103487860892_1037583464_251592_224151_n.jpg

It made good kindle.

 

[Craazhy]

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Honestly the only novel that ever really grabbed me and swept me through page after page was Harry Potter. My favorite author can't even get a firm, everlasting grasp on my attention span (Chuck Palahniuk). It is undoubtedly the era we live in.

 

[JokerCrowe]

several.. the problem is they were SO bad my brain just thought it would save the unnecessary space they were taking up, so it deleted the titles from my memory. :/
Which I guess works for me... it's just a little annoying when you get a thread like this. -.-

 

[Master-Jedi]

Fahrenheit 451. I tried to finish it for school but it just got really boring for me.
I would say catcher in the rye, but I eventually finished that one.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

Great Expectations. No other book has managed to put so much drivel on one page. There were insignificant details upon inconsequential observations upon the mind numbingly slow plot movement.
It felt like he put more useless information on one page than the entirety of the Guiness Record book.
I was assigned that book during High School, and it was the only book that I ever hated so much that I actually considered burning. I probably stopped at the third chapter, and just let myself fail that entire section of the class. Thankfully, there were enough other books to make up for me doing so.

Really?? I loved Great Expectations, I read it over the summer! Dickens' whimsical, almost musical writing style just tickles me I guess. probably why I'm such a fan of PG Wodehouse.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I am utterly convinced that the tacked-on future where everyone marries out of high school and names their kids after people they know is her quiet revenge against us all.

To be fair, they are wizards and witches who go to the only magical school in their country... I'm pretty certain everyone they could have married would have gone to Hogwarts, unless they all went for muggles of course. But yeah, the whole naming after special people thing was a bit stupid. I mean Albus Severus Potter? Seriously?

OT: There are plenty of books I start reading and put down, mostly because I have a very poor attention span of late! Harry Potter had me hooked the whole way though. Anything by Dan Brown is normally good, if not totally ridiculous. But his latest book, the Lost Symbol, was a total bore.

And the Silmarilion... oh my god. I read it though, dear god I did.

 

[LeeHarveyO]

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.... I had to read it for my english class, ony finished half of it then said fuck it.

 

[Retardinator]

LoTR. Why? The goal of a writer is to draw his audience into the world they're reading about. If your book is 300-400 pages long, you don't spend THE FIRST 150 PAGES doing it. Because that makes HALF OF THE BOOK YOU WROTE very slow, overly detailed and fucking boring.

I had to get that out. It's not the book itself, it's me liking a good story that doesn't require shitloading amounts of time and effort to get into. I can understand why a person might like LoTR's story, but I probably never will.

I'd say it's kinda similar to W40K's backstory. The wiki is the most atrociously big thing I've ever seen.