Most boring/difficult books you've ever read.

[saintchristopher]

I wanted so badly to like Moby Dick. People told me it was an epic meditation on madness and the toxicity of vengeance. I wouldn't even know.

What i do know, though, is the proper way in which 19th-century whalers skinned and rendered whale blubber for its myriad utilitarian purposes. Because Melville wrote it out. At length. FOR PAGES.

Want to experience the story of the white whale? Listen to Mastodon's Leviathan instead.

 

[Johanthemonster666]

War and Peace

I know it's one of longest works of literature (I couldn't finish it sadly)
It' beautifully written, but you have to be in the right mind set to read it which leaves most people falling asleep within the first few pages.

Tolstoy's other works were easier to get through because they're scope was smaller while "War and Peace" was so epic and yet so character driven that it's hard to keep up with or stay at attention throughout the book.

I have a long attention span (with boughts of ADD-like moods every now and then lol)so it takes a lot to bore me.

 

[EBHughsThe1st]

"The Power of Myth" was a hard one.
It was all about Joseph Campbell and his works.
Interesting, but very, very hard to chug through.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

War And Peace by Tolstoy. Most Russian literature from that time was pretty difficult. Like Dostoyevsky for example.

Holy text tend to bore me to tears.

 

[C95J]

I don't read them if they are boring

 

[MetaKnight19]

Not difficult, but most certainly boring for me was Harry Potter and the Philosiphers Stone. I never bothered to read the rest of the series if it was as boring as that.

 

[Betancore]

Heh, I like how a few people have already mentioned 'War and Peace.' I want to like that book. I want to be able to read it. I can't. Also, I found it really hard to get through 'Emma' by Jane Austen. It has no plot. It doesn't go anywhere.

 

[GreyFox389]

Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Mr. Dickens, this is a murder mystery. We don't need a page and a half describing somebody's goddamn medicine cabinet!

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Displaying my heresy here, I'll say ANYTHING BY TOLKIEN.

The Two Towers was by far the LONGEST...DAMNED...BOOK I have ever attempted to read. It just went on...and on...and on...It took me three tries to get through the entire thing!

 

[Kenko]

The Bible, that books story is as boring as it is retarded. Who came up with that shit anyways?

Religion teacher made me read it when I questioned everything he said during religion class as a child.

 

[Dango]

Brunelleschi's Dome is an extremely boring book to read, thank God it's only 165 pages.

 

[Twin Of Aphex]

Lord of the Flies along with Othello, Done them to death in English and by the end of the year I was happy to see them given away.

 

[esperandote]

Stephen King's Lisey's story, I can't explain why (Partially because I'm not a good reader).

 

[bubba145]

Great Expectations. dull man dull.
i like certain books. The Things They Carried was good a little weirdly paced but good.

 

[googleit6]

I found Wuthering Heights to be difficult to get through. The story seems to finish halfway through the book, and yet there's another half a book left to read! Plus, since everyone in a family seems to have the same name, I often found myself having to put the book down so I could figure out who was speaking.
Plus, the narrative is almost entirely another story. That didn't sit well with me. Mrs. Dean has an amazing memory, to put it lightly.
It took me around three tries to finish it, and I actually got into it, and liked it. But still, there were definitely issues.

 

[monstersquad]

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. Boy was that a slog, and ultimately unsatisfying.

I honestly can't see what makes that book a 'classic'.

Ok there's literally pages and pages of description of a turtle crossing a fucking road in that book. It sure is one hard slog of a piece of literature, that one.

For me, it's a toss-up between "Nostromo" by Joseph Conrad, it's just really hard to get into, because the middle goes so fucking slowly, and anything written by Stephen King AFTER his car accident. It just gets so dry and boring, and he doesn't have the instant rapport that his earlier works have.

Either those, or pretty much the entire last half of "The Wheel of Time" I read those books in high school, and just devoured the first few, then the plot started flowing like molasses, and I could not bring myself to finish the series.

 

[Mesca]

Finnegan's Wake.

Goddamn James Joyce. You don't get to just make up words. When you write the book in english, you obey the freaking grammar. The little of Ulysses I've read was much more bearable though.

Schools have a knack for assigning boring books. A couple of people mentioned Mockingbird. Honestly, I thought it was really good, it's just that most people read it in middle school, and it's not really a middle school book.

Umberto Eco is frustrating to read. It's brilliant stuff, it's just too brilliant. Not everyone is a trilingual, scholar of medieval history. (This goes for you as well, James Joyce) Focault's Pendulum was a great book, you just burned out reading it though. It's an overload.

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

Currently, all books. I used to be able to read entire Tom Clancy novels in three or four days, but now I simply don't have the patience for literature. My imagination doesn't do anything for me anymore.

 

[PunkRex]

"Catcher in the Rye", had to read it about six times in English. A boring book about a boring tosser. Offenssive? No. Contraversal? Nope. Different? I suppose, many other books are good. Another reason I allow South Park to dictate my choices in life.

 

[Gigano]

"Lærebog i Tinglysning" (i.e. Text book in registration law)...

As for more widespread books, "The God Delusion" was far to preachy for my liking, being quite uninteresting and boring even if it preached something akin to the view I hold on religion, and "Children of Hurin" was indeed quite dull in language form and story.