Most boring/difficult books you've ever read.

[dex-dex]

the bible (for school mind you)
and of mice and men so short but so boring it feels like a 1200 page book.

 

[Jessica Dunlap]

Worst book ever? Bartleby, the Scrivener- a novella by Herman Melville about a copyist who refuses to do his job. ?I would prefer not to? read this horrible drivel ever again!

 

[Breaker deGodot]

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

Not to be offensive, but I fear for you.

Why? From what I understand about the book its pretty boring. I imagine the films is pretty much the same.

Because, To Kill a Mockingbird is both one of my favorite books, and one of my favorite movies. There isn't much of a story to it, but for me it's all about the interactions between the characters. Also, I think it made a big difference for me to see the movie first.

Well then. That's your opinion on it/them. To fear for someone would suggest that not liking it makes you some form of human reject.

His opinion was that the book and film are boring. That's nothing to hold someone in contempt for.

Yeah, I was pretty harsh.

 

[9NineBreaker9]

This. I couldn't make it through the whole book as I was so damn bored and tired of the whole thing. That class also introduced me to two other books which I despise: The Great Gatsby and Ethan Frome.

THE PICKLE DISH. OH GOD THE PICKLE DISH.

Fuck that Pickle Dish and everything about it. Did you ever see the movie?

OT: Probably Ethan Frome and anything by Ayn Rand. Brave New World was pretty bad too

The movie made it somewhat bearable, if only because the opening scene set the mood of the entire film for our class: "OMG ZOMBIE!" We also plan on visiting that teacher (who retired that year) one day with a red pickle dish of cookies.

Also, I've attempted to read Atlas Shrugged three times now, and I've only made it to the second part on one occasion. xD

 

[Firetaffer]

The Cay. Bleagh

 

[Pocotron]

Its probably been said, but we've started The Scarlet Letter. 10 PAGES TO EXPLAIN WHY SHE SOWS. HOLY SHIT! Just tell me who the dad is! Everything in it is totally out of the way and way too detailed. Not to mention it is boring as all hell. I can only read three pages before dozing off...

 

[Beffudled Sheep]

Catcher in the Rye. I know its a really short book and uses simple language but it was just terrible. I finished both Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov twice before I was able to get through Catcher. I Hated that book with such a passion that I burned a few copies once.

 

[Geekosaurus]

Wuthering Heights. I just can't read it. Doesn't bode well for my upcoming English Literature degree.

 

[skywalkerlion]

I personally enjoyed the Children of Hurin but I suppose it's not for everyone

OT: I found the first chapters of the silmarrilion incredibly hard to get into but it does ease up as the book progresses

What he said. Children of Hurin was awesome, and the only thing by Tolkien I didn't find impossible to read

And after countless hours of asking myself "Why the hell am I reading this", I have finished The Fellowship of the Ring and it was fucking awful. I would read pages and then ask myself "What happened on page 245?" and my mind would be blank. Atleast in most pieces of literature I can remember what happened a few pages before.

Silmarilion: I read about 20 pages and I couldn't read anymore.

 

[YouBecame]

I tried reading the Iliad and I just couldnt manage it. Oddly enough though, the Oddyssey was a really good read!

 

[Yoseph]

Tale of two cities was hard but good

 

[Yoseph]

Tale of two cities was hard but good

 

[Thedayrecker]

I don't read books that bore me, but the hardest to read? It's a tie between the Republic by Plato and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

 

[stormtrooper9091]

Ex Ponto. God that was agonising

 

[DanDeFool]

Being a college student, I have read quite a lot of boring and difficult textbooks, so I think it carries a lot of weight when I say that the most boring and difficult book I've ever read is Modern Control Systems by Dorf and Bishop. It is, by far, the most obtuse and least helpful textbook I've ever read.

It's like D+B made a point of skipping 80% of the necessary steps in all their examples, and virtually all of the homework problems, particularly those in the first couple of chapters (go figure), seem to be under the impression that you have already finished the course and that you are able to tap into the cosmic source of clairvoyant wisdom from beyond the bounds of time and space.

Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but Modern Control Systems is the one textbook that virtually all of my student colleagues can agree is the worst textbook evar. This is the problem with letting Ph.D.'s write instructional textbooks: most Ph.D.s are people that are smart enough and have enough breadth of knowledge in their field to be able to pick up a textbook like MCS and get a lot of information out of it. They don't bother to think to themselves; "Hmm, I might not have given these students enough information to complete this problem" or "Maybe I should expand this example on simplifying block diagrams just to make sure that people get the concept. This is going to be used in an introductory course, after all."

In short, the problem with MCS is that it is written as a reference and not as an educational tool, in spite of the fact that it was INTENDED TO BE USED AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL!

 

[The Overmatt]

Man I've got a couple of these.

Lord of the Rings

As much as I love the books and everything to come from them, the whole thing is a real drag sometimes. I have a friend who tries to re-read them every year, gets to the same point in Two Towers and just can't make it past it due to sheer boredom.

Brave New World

I liked the ideas the book presented but couldn't stand the story or characters. I remember reading a criticsm of the book from one of Huxley's peers that basically said it felt like he took a speculative essay and gave it a plot, and that's honestly how I felt while reading it.

The worst though? I read the first two Twilight books because my then-girlfriend thought I would like them. I've never been so bored/dumbfounded in my life.

EDIT: How the hell did I forget Atlas Shrugged? Most pretentious and unenjoyable thing I've ever read.

 

[Demon_Cow]

Just be glad you didn't have to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's almost literally 300 pages of nothing but going down the Missouri River on a raft. I think the only reason they made us read it anyway was because the author was from my home state.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

To Kill a Mockingbird. Forced to read it in English, boring as shit. Also pretty much anything else that was assigned reading in school, somehow they always manage to pick the dullest most boring books.

quoted for truth. i have no idea how but the most boring people on the planet read and analyzed every book in the world and picked the most boring books ever written and decided it was a requirement for us to read them. Fuck all those books and their boring ass morals and symbolism.

 

[Anachronism]

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

No, thats perfectly understandable. I've tried reading Fellowship of the Ring at least 5 times, I've never made it more than 100 pages in without trying something else.

This is why, much though I enjoy The Lord of the Rings, I'm very reluctant to defend it when people say they don't enjoy it. As an exercise in world building, it's without equal; as a novel in its own right, it's lacking. The main issue is that, as you've said, it takes 100 pages to get good; it has absolutely crippling pacing issues.

Ayn Rand is a difficult author to read. I still have as of yet to finish Atlas Shrugged. It's good, but difficult.

Atlas Shrugged is probably the most painful book I've read. 1160 pages of "Socialism is teh Evals RAAAARGH!" It's very difficult not to fling the bloody thing at the wall when one of the characters gives a 90-page long speech about why capitalism is awesome. I actually agree with some of her ideas, but Atlas Shrugged is a complete failure as a novel; a novel ought to convey its themes and ideas naturally, by the way its characters act, not by having one of them recite a fucking thesis on the matter. "Show, don't tell" is a very basic rule in fiction, and Ayn Rand seems unable to grasp it.

 

[eggy32]

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck bored me. Saw the plot twist coming. Might have been better if I was part of the target audience and ad some connection to "The American Dream" business rather than being a 15 year old Irish boy at the time.

Also Macbeth wasn't that good. Was fine enough until the end, which can only be summarised with the word "cop-out."

Why can't schools give us something decent to read, or at least let the class choose what book to read?