What's the most boring book you've ever read?

[Kenbo Slice]

Have you ever read a book that you just had to force yourself through, whether it be for school or to see what the big deal behind the book is? If so, what was it?

Mine would have to be The Great Gatsby. I hate, hate, hate that book. It's boring and uninteresting. I didn't care for the characters at all. Thank goodness it was a short book because after a while I couldn't take it anymore.

 

[shrekfan246]

The Odyssey.

I like the plot, but epic poetry has never been my thing and in long-form like that it really just became tedious and bland.

Of course, I didn't actually read the whole thing. I don't think I even read more than half of it... still got almost perfect marks on most of the tests about it. English was always my best course.

 

[shogunblade]

In college, I had to read The Jungle, and I never finished it.

It was a sad and boring book about an immigrant who comes to the United States with his family and is constantly shat on throughout the book. I couldn't finish the book, sad to say. It is, to date, the book that I did not like.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman, I read it for English literature in school and it was just terribly paced, he'd build a pile of suspense and never deliver, and generally there was just never any hook to keep you reading or get you invested in the story, then plotlines would crop up out of nowhere and it just devolved into a loose mess by the end.

2nd worst is Twilight by Meyer (It gets some slack for not attempting to be high literature or serious like R.I.T.S., also for it's glorious 'so bad it's good' quality. But while the technical writing of the book is definitely worse than R.I.T.S. The lighter, simpler story and plot make it easier to follow than Pullmans book.)
3rd Richard II by Shakespeare (barring the awesome defence soliloquy about Bolingbroke's sin versus the King's sin, nothing ever happened in it. It was just dreadful to read through.)

 

[krazykidd]

Twilight . I saw the first movie with my (now) ex-girldfriend . It was terrible , but i thought it had potential . So in my mind i thought i was a poor adaptation of the book . Turns out i was word , the movie is exactly the same as the book , long , boring and nothing happens . But since i started it , i needed to finish the entire series . I'm never being curious ever again.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I was bored to tears by Ender's Game when I read it over a decade ago. I found the writing dry.

 

[Shadowstar38]

Fellowship of the Ring. The movie does not prepare you for all the extra shit.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Dante's Commedia. Everybody remembers the Inferno bit, but they forget that's just a third of the book (or that there's no narrative per se, in that, while events SUCCEED each other, there's no TRANSFORMATION of any curvature, just a long description of the stuff Dante and Virgil pass along). The other two thirds are Purgatorio and Paradiso, which manage to be even more boring than Inferno by not having any interesting sightseeing features to talk about. You may know some of the personalities in Inferno (all the pre-Christian philosophers, Cleopatra, Odysseus, etc.) but you'll recognize none of those featured in Purgatorio, which is compromised mostly of 1300's Italian hot shots. Paradiso isn't even a PHYSICAL realm, so good bye to awesome landscapes as well, and is comprised of more 1300's Italian hot shots and an endless list of saints.

 

[Elfgore]

I love the Lord of the Rings movies and lore so much, but god damnit the main trilogy is the biggest chore to read. The books are pretty much Tolkien describing landscapes and family lineages for a couple hundred pages. The dialogue is so impersonal and boring it feels like a story is not happening at all. I applaud Jackson's ability to turn these boring books into hit movies.

 

[game-lover]

A couple.

There are two Agatha Christie novels that I had to force myself to finish. But one of them is more boring than the other.

I forget the name but it was part of her Miss Marple series. God... it was torture. The other one is "And Then There Were None" and it's only saved because there was murder going on. But not even good murder.

 

[Glongpre]

Life of Pi. I can't even explain what happens except that there was a tiger. And he was on a boat...

 

[Vegosiux]

Madame Bovary, hands down.

I mean, seriously, that was just so...tedious, argh. Perfectionism gone horribly right.

Honorable mention to The Old Man and the Sea.

 

[Zhukov]

I once read a very boring biography of Ho Chi Minh.

Yeah, I sometimes read non-fiction. Come at me.

Let's see, what else... oh, I recently gave up on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. It's like War and Peace without the war. It did have some good scenes though. I could tell that the author had attended a few deathbeds in his time from how honest his descriptions are.

 

[Miss G.]

My 9th grade Chemistry book. On the plus side, it literally cured me of my insomnia better than any pill.

Twilight: I only read it so whenever I said it sucked, my Twi-hard sister couldn't use the old, 'you haven't even (X), how could you know?!' defense. Thankfully Das Mervin and her friend made the process both easier and funnier by actually having serious and extensive literary and English (for grammatical mistakes etc) analysis done on the books on their livejournal so I got some learning in there as well. As for the actual books, 4 pages in and (trying really, really hard to ignore the rampant stench of Mary-Sue) I was bored to tears over all the nothing that was going on. The sad part about it is, when in a good/competent fan-fic writer's hands (they have links on their site as well), these characters and/or this story actually become quite enjoyable and thought-provoking in a good way. Weird. Just shows why they need to tighten up on the garbage that gets professionally published.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

The Plague by Camus, anything by Jane Austen (I have a particularly strong dislike of Pride and Prejudice). These are books designed to make people dislike literature.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The Glass Menagerie. The main character and narrator, Tom, spends the entire book/play going on and on about how boring his life is, and how he can't stand the banality of his existence. This is all that happens. It's an entire book of a guy whining about being bored, while his sister whines about not having a husband. I hate this book with a passion, and it is the worst thing I had to read in high school.

 

[Jamieson 90]

Fellowship of the Ring. The movie does not prepare you for all the extra shit.

I love the Lord of the Rings movies and lore so much, but god damnit the main trilogy is the biggest chore to read. The books are pretty much Tolkien describing landscapes and family lineages for a couple hundred pages. The dialogue is so impersonal and boring it feels like a story is not happening at all. I applaud Jackson's ability to turn these boring books into hit movies.

This! This so much! I have a copy of the LOTR trilogy and have attempted to read it no fewer than four times, and every time I've failed since the writing is so just so dry and boring. I mean sure I appreciate descriptions quite a bit, but not on the level that Tolkien operates at; he'll describe a landscape that incorporates a tree, then he'll tell you what type of tree it is, then he'll go into even further detail and tell you about a specif leaf, and then the bug that happens to be on said leaf, I mean seriously get on with the plot and stop with the useless filler......

 

[Tayh]

Starship Troopers.
Man, I never expected to find a case where the movie was way better than the book.
It's just a lot of talking, politics and boring patrols. There's not even a single battle against the arachnids!

 

[NeutralDrow]

Not counting certain textbooks (not all, I actually like reading textbooks)...Moby Dick. I got eleven chapters in and simply couldn't continue. There's admirable dedication to background and philosophy (I love Tolkien, for instance), and then there's devoting an entire chapter to the symbolism of the color white.

 

[Terraniux]

The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy. It's nothing but politics and jargon for about 900 or so pages, then about 50 of 'action,' and then another 50 of something else. I don't remember. It's been a while, but not so long as for me to forget that it sucked. I don't even know how I managed to finish it, but I probably wouldn't be too far off if I said I sleep-read half the book.