Most boring/difficult books you've ever read.

[Red Right Hand]

SNIP

It's annoying to read, but understandable for me. I had a hard time reading Sunset Song mostly because we were reading it as a class, so I couldn't just stop and check the glossary for each and every one of the many Scots words the author used which I had never heard in my life. Later that year we read To Kill a Mockingbird which I did enjoy, but that was the exception to the rule that books you are forced to read seem terrible.

I tried to read LotR because I thought they'd be good, but I found it to be unbearably boring, which was dissapointing because I enjoyed the movies so much.

I do understand most of it, because I am Scottish, it's just that i'm not used to reading it but rather hearing it. So it makes it very difficult because I takes longer to process each sentence, that meant I never could really get into it properly. It kind of frustrated me I suppose.

 

[CK76]

The Scarlet Letter. Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne, but I don't want an eleven page description of a woman walking through a door.

There it is! A good story butchered by excessive descriptions. It's just so much padding.

 

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[CK76]

Brave New World sounds interesting, my older brother read it and told me a little about it, was interesting but then again he's a really good story teller.

Huxley was blasted at the time for thinking humanity would ever reach a state that it would be controlled by self inflicted distractions. He's been proven right over Orwell's vision in the modern era. As another author I like put it...

"Big Brother isn?t watching. He?s singing and dancing. He?s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother?s busy holding your attention every moment you?re awake. He?s making sure you?re always distracted. He?s making sure you?re fully absorbed."
? Chuck Palahniuk

 

[Kenbo Slice]

Pretty much anything by Shakespeare. I get what's going on, but it's just...so boring. My friend was all you just don't get and I told him I get that it's boring.

 

[littlebunnyfifi]

Hmm. The Giver really sucked. And Catherine Called Birdy.

 

[the Dept of Science]

Thing is, about 90% of the books on this list are books I feel that I probably should read at some point in my life (or have already). I try and mix up/balance reading for pleasure and reading for personal development/cultural importance. I think that if you ignore either then you are really missing out. The Bible may be one of the least enjoyable things to read ever, on the other hand, even in the small amounts of it that I have read, I feel I have learned an incredible amount about some of the big issues in both history and the present day.

War and Peace
Lord of the Rings
Ulysses
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Complete works of Shakespeare
Atlas Shrugged

 

[Jimson]

In my school we had this Super reader program or something, and our English classes had to use it, well, you would get an A for meeting a certain number of points, and each book gave different amounts of points, needless to say, War and Peace was one of the few books to give you an instant A, needless to say I hate that book.

 

[Talshere]

If I read a book that I was meh about on buying, and bought it more cos I had nothing to do than it actually looked good and cant get into it in the first few chapters AT ALL (maybe 25% of the book) I put it down. If I read a book that looked like it had promise when I bought it or came on a recommendation, I give it till about 50% then if it hasn't caught me I put it down.

Bad books aren't worth reading. I honestly cant tell you the name of a book I've read that is genuinely bed because I stop reading them long before I ever get to the point I feel like I've wasted time. Tell a lie, one book, "Storm Glass". I bought it cos the back made it look ok, got about 3 pages in and the writing style was doing my NUT! Couldn't read it. At all. 2 maybe 3 pages of largish text in a small paperback and I just couldnt do it.

 

[helldragonX]

A Tale of Two Cities....god I hate that book.

 

[Ask]

To kill a Mockingbird. I slept through the book AND the movie.

Not to be offensive, but I fear for you.

Hahahaha. No offense taken. Well some books/book films appeal and some don't. This just happens to be a don't for me.

 

[Ask]

To kill a Mockingbird. I slept through the book AND the movie.

I despised that book. I can't understand why everyone loved it so much. I know I probably shouldn't admit to this, but out of all the books that we were to read my freshman year, I only actually read three of them and they were all awful. I still despise Romeo & Juliet.

And more recently, Ethan Frome. Awful awful awful book. We were to choose from a list of three books and it was only about 100 pages long so I just thought why not and decided to read it. It was torture. The book was seriously only 100 pages long but I had to do anything to keep myself from getting distracted by my walls. I could only read one chapter at a time and even that was a struggle.

Alas the sad thing is and has always been that, high school will never have reading material you care about or find yourself jumping up and down for. Its not that the material isn't good, its just they often pick the worst example of prominent writers to drill into your head. That's why college English and literary courses were so much more engaging. A lot of authors I hadn't liked in high school, I really appreciated when I got a broader spectrum of their work. I know high school teachers don't have all the time in the world but, perhaps choosing different works from time to time would make their student body more interested. Like you said, I can't count how many time I've read Romeo and Juliet, or the Odyssey. (Both were good, but some new examples of work would be nice)

 

[SovietSecrets]

War and Peace. My mom made me read that during Freshman year. Just the sheer size of it scared me.

 

[chainer1216]

i think the most boring book i ever read ws the catcher in the rye, i hated every second i spent with that book.

the hardest to read was a huge King Arthur and the knights of the round table, book that was completely written in ye olde english. during the time i was reading the book i would sometimes slip into that way of speaking without realizing it, most of the time it was funny, other times it was quite embarrassing.

 

[LogicNProportion]

When Things Fall Apart pissed me off so much.

I'm an avid reader, and stick to any story to the end, and so I did. I think I counted the word 'yams' 67 times in that book...

 

[Asparagus Brown]

Without looking at this thread, I can accurately predict most of the responses:

Response Type 1: Books you were forced to read as a student and never tried to actually enjoy, rather you were forced to study and analyze them. (IE Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath)

Response Type 2: Books that literary critics have labeled as 'classics' that you wanted to read just so you can say that you did, but you couldn't finish them because you were never really interested in the premise in the first place. (IE The Great Gatsby)

Response Type 3: "Important" books that were relevant and changed society at the time of publishing, but the language use and situations do not translate well to modernity so you have no idea why people think highly of them. (IE anything by Jane Austen)

Response Type 4: Books that heavily influenced or created genre fiction. Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Horror are all about pushing boundaries, and the boundaries of 100 years ago aren't as scintillating to today's reader. (IE Dracula, Frankenstein, Lovecraft)

Response Type 5: Literary fags raging about today's reader not enjoying classic works of fiction in their own context.

That seems about right. If I were to post on topic, I'd probably be "Response Type 5." Then I'd list some kind of book that's considered difficult even by "literary fag" standards just to reinforce my unwarranted feeling of superiority.

ULYSSES! Do I win?

EDIT: No, even better: Finnegan's Wake.

Close with Ulysses! It's on my "to read" list! No, I was actually going to say Tristram Shandy! It's very funny, but I can certainly see why even my grandmother, a poet and English teacher, couldn't finish it.

 

[Jekken6]

Gotta be The first 2 Bourne books for me. Absolutely fucking piss poor pacing and too much focus on things that aren't the main story.

 

[TheKagestar]

The Bible. It was quite boring to read. But I did read the whole thing.

 

[Lionsfan]

Brave New World sounds interesting, my older brother read it and told me a little about it, was interesting but then again he's a really good story teller.

I don't really remember it too well, I had to read it in High School but I remember just kinda struggling through it. I might revisit it, who knows? But it seems like one of those interesting concepts but that just couldn't deliver.

 

[HerrBobo]

The Republic by Plato. Not hard to read, and not really that dull. Fully of a load of bullshit ideas though. Philosophers sould rule, eh? Well, THATS convenient!