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

[Noswad]

Never got through the whole thing, but early modern religious intolerance and general xenophobic ranting starts fun but gets old after a while and at a grand total of twelve books long John Foxe's Act and Monuments goes on a while. Had to read it for my dissertation.

and seriously what is with these advert that won't shut up, i don't mind them normally, but i can't mute these and if a pause it a new on rises to take it's place.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

"Robinson Crusoe". Oh ... My ... Sweet ... Lord. Such tedium. So boring that I feel I must have fallen asleep while reading it and accidentally put the bookmark at the end. So little buccaneering and high seas adventure, and so much praise of God and chores and good ol' English solidness of character. As soon as the possibility of cannibals appears I was willing them to land and eat Crusoe so we could move on.

Honorable mention to "Moby-Dick", which at least had the decency to ...

Spoiler

... end with the Whale crushing the entire ship and killing most everyone.

 

[kordo]

Just finished the novelization of 'Dawn of the Dead'.

Stick to the movie because the book is shit.

 

[Gentleman_Reptile]

"Waiting for Godot" was something we had to read for drama class and it was excruciatingly boring.

Now if you want an interesting book, track down "The Man Eaters of Tsavo and other African Adventures" by Colonel Henry Patterson.

 

[spplmj]

The Great Gatsby. I had to read it Junior year of high school. If you asked me to tell you what happens in it I honestly couldn't other than the very end. People say its one of the greatest American novels ever but I could care less about it.

 

[Scarim Coral]

This autobiography book "Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead". It was super cheap in this discounted book store and I needed to read more autobiography books for my English class. Seriously I read it and I copuldn't make sense at it despite rereading it a few times.

 

[soren7550]

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

Life of Pi is wonderful... ;___;

OT: "Night", by Elie Wiesel.

Don't get me wrong, it's a very important book. It's written competently, it's interesting (in the same way as a train wreck), and its subject, an unflinching stare at the atrocities of the Holocaust, is a very tragic and important one indeed.

But I felt sick reading it, had to force myself to finish, and I will never read it again.

Everyone should read it once... and only once.

OP asked about boring books that we've read start to finish, not books that made us uncomfortable/sick/whatever.

I'm not so masochistic that I've ever finished a book that bored me, so I had to go with the next best thing.

Fair enough.

Oddly enough, my brother that hates reading loves that book.

 

[KB13]

War and Peace got half way through it before a proffesor found me snoozing under a table.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck seems to be writing his books solely to show just how bitter and morose about the world he is, because this entire story and some of his other books are all about the main character just getting beaten up by life. This poor pearl diver tries to sell a large pearl to pay for his son's medical treatment, but then the pearl is essentially cursed and causes all kinds of shit to go down in the life of this innocent guy. He didn't do anything wrong. He just wanted his son to live. And at the end, he chucks the pearl, his son is dead, his wife has basically screwed him over, and he still has no money. WTF Steinbeck.

 

[Miyenne]

Grapes of Wrath.

I had to read it in high school. All I remember is reading several pages of a description of a field. Several pages describing one fucking field.

The second half of the book is okay though, I just kept picturing James Dean.

 

[Teoes]

The amount of swearing in this thread has amused me greatly and I'm not entirely sure why..

I've not read a book in years that I didn't enjoy. I can remember trying many times when younger to read Steven King's It, but just could never get anywhere with it. Bored the snot out of me. I liked The Shining well enough and that's the only other King book I tried.

 

[AndrlCh]

I've read a lot of boring books, considering I was an English major with a Lit. emphasis, but the one book that I could never force myself to read past the first ten, grueling, soul sucking pages was The Poisonwood Bible. It has used as a spacer between my couch and the wall for the past seven years while all my other books are kept dusted and well maintained on my bookshelves.
Most boring that I've finished would probably be The Sun Also Rises. I've just never been able to quite enjoy Hemingway's writing style.

 

[Loki J]

The Silmarillion by Tolkien. Read like a really boring history book, though it was admittedly unfinished by Tolkien himself and released much later by his son, who appears to have merely checked for spelling and added some punctuation to a long list of point-form notes.

Ringworld by Larry Niven takes a close second. That guy is like George Lucas; awesome ideas, great big-picture concepts, but needs a screenwriter. I struggled through every page past the 1/3rd mark and did not care about the fates of any of the almost-but-not-quite-interesting characters in that book. It ended in the middle of a conversation; the next line was just not there.

 

[gunny1993]

Any book I was forced to read as a teenager.

Conversely i've gone back to those books i.e. Frankenstein's monster, Of mice and men and To kill a mocking Bird and I love them all. Probably because I've grown up and gained a lot more appreciation for subtlety in writing.


Oh but for modern books ... Anything by Dan Brown the formulaic butcher of prose.

To give you an idea of my tastes by favorite books are, in no particular order:

The wheel of time series
Crime and Punishment : Dostoevsky
Hyperion : Dan Simmons (seriously a SF masterwork)
Thud : Terry Pratchett (My favourite auther)
The Stars my destination: (anther great SF)
Player of games: Ian M Banks (Best SF auther)

 

[Laser Priest]

Just so as to get an idea of your tastes, what are 5 books you've enjoyed?

Contrary to most of this thread, I actually quite enjoyed The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. I can't place exactly what it was about them that kept me interested, and I will not argue that they were probably slower than necessary, but I still enjoyed reading them. Good Omens is a silly book, but it is still one of my favourites.

And to be honest, those are the only books that come to mind. I've read a few other books at people's recommendations (read Mort and some other Pratchett books, started reading the Song of Ice and Fire or whatever it is called, a few others I forget) but while I've enjoyed what I have finished, I don't get into reading them as much. I start books and then abandon them for months at a time. I'm probably much more harsh with books than any other form of entertainment, to be honest.

Although I still stand by my first post that Silas Marner is one of the worst things I've ever read, and in an entirely boring way. I find Twilight to be bad in an entertaining way, although the movies seem to be more hilariously bad than the books.

 

[Blow_Pop]

See, as I like reading and read for my enjoyment, once a book bores me I put it down.

So I can say hardest book I've ever had to read for school is a toss up between Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. The first I voluntarily read for a book report in 7th or 8th grade (for those of you across the pond 13/14 years old ish) mostly because my teacher told me there was no way I'd be able to ever finish it or write a proper book report on it. Proved them wrong. But I should have waited at least 2 more years to read it just from the usage of bigger words and such(if I'm recalling correctly as it's been almost 20 years since I last read it). And the second I had to read for my senior year of high school (18 for those across the pond) and had a teacher who expected us to immediately understand it without too much explanation on her part. However I have bought that book and read it about 5 or more times since and understand it a little better but still don't understand it well. But it's at least enjoyable at this point.

I've hated having to read any book. However, a good portion of books I had to read in high school and middle school I've bought since and have enjoyed reading on my own time and not having to analyse every minute detail.

Books I've recently read that were boring:

Game of Thrones - by George R.R. Martin I don't know why. I like fantasy. But I couldn't even get past the first actual chapter. The prologue took me almost a month to read. It had a few enjoyable moments but then the first chapter started and I couldn't get past the second page of it. And to even get that far, I had to force myself into it.

Misery - by Stephen King I have a special level of hatred for SK. A lot of his books I just can't get into. I find them dull and repetitive. This one I couldn't make it halfway through before I wanted to tear the book in half and set fire to it. I stopped reading and gave it back to my mum as it is her book. Don't get me wrong. I love From a Buick 8, Pet Semetary, and Salem's Lot. But the movie for Misery was better than the book for me. And that might have been my problem is seeing the movie first.

And there was a Michael Moore book that I had to read once and it was terrible. I have it somewhere. I had to read it for a college class before I wound up dropping out of college. It was the most entitled piece of garbage I've ever had the displeasure of reading. And I've vowed never to read any of his books ever again.

Also, a lot of the books people are listing I've really enjoyed such as The Odyssey (own it as well as The Iliad and read it from time to time), The Great Gatsby(own it), The LotR trilogy(I also have and enjoy The Hobbit), The Life of Pi, Pride and Prejudice with Zombies (made me crack up and now need to obtain my own copy of it), Night(own it), Catcher in the Rye (also own), and The Divine Comedy (I own two copies of this though one is on loan and I adore it). There's others but I choose not to go through and list every single book I have.

 

[william12123]

While I will certainly be blasted for this, I have to say the Game of thrones series. Boring might not be the right word, but I certainly found it to be one of the least engaging reads in a while. Each time an interesting character appears, they get killed. You know who survives? The bland, uninteresting characters. I forced myself to read the first book, but by the end I was like "Why would I care about Westeros or any of these people?" and just stopped.

Otherwise, I've got few complaints. I know what to stay away from for me not to be engaged/bored, so it's generally not an issue. GoT was a snake in the grass I guess.

Edit: I find it funny someone mentionned GoT as I was writing up my post.

 

[ForumSafari]

The box set of Server 2008r2 administration books I forced myself through were pretty damn terrible but I suspect you mean more fiction, if that's the case I nominate A Dance with Dragons.

 

[kyuzo3567]

I think around the 7th grade I had to read The Giver
No. Nonononononononono I could not stand the writing, I could not stand the plot, I could not stand the characters, the setting, the tone, and the worse part was the audio book that my English teacher played to go with it cause I guess he found a way to make the book an even worse experience. I. TOOK. MY. SHIRT. OFF. AND. THE. OLD. MAN. PLACED. HIS. HAND. ON. MY. BACK. And he groveled at then end of each word. ONeeeeegghhh. MYeeeeegggh. BACKeeeeeggggghhh.

Also the ending where our "touched by an old man" protagonist left the utopia only to maybe die was so vague and disappointing I complained about it for a week, I wasn't the only one (Yay for shared hatred! Brings friends together).

Yeah, This was going to be my answer easily, then someone mentioned To Kill A Mockingbird and I suddenly had two answers to give.

God damn I hated these books in school, I didn't care at all about the storyline for TKAM and I found the Giver repetitive and boring and was so emotionally uninvolved with the characters that I couldn't even muster up some anger at the crappy-ass ending (which was a type that would normally piss me off)

It seems to me that the most boring books to read are the award winning novels the teachers choose for you in school. They're not interesting, or modern, or relevant to kids in any way. Even my old principle agrees with me on that, we're de-motivating kids from learning (especially boys whose reading rate has dropped significantly in the past decade) because our award winning novels we're forced to read are just dry and boring and not appropriate for how we think as kids.

And just in case someone tries to call me out (it's happened before) I am an avid reader, I have a huge collection of books at home and I've probably read them all so much I could re-write them from memory alone.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

By the way, did anyone else think that was a romeo and juliet referance

It is. R is Romeo and his best friend is M for Mercutio. Julie is obviously Juliet. Perry is Paris. Nora is the nurse. There is even a balcony scene where R finds Julie; and she ponders "I mean, isn't zombie just a silly name we came up with for a state of being we don't understand? What is in a name?"

Its not really references so much as basically stealing Romeo and Juliet and then adapting it with zombies. Which in the grand scheme of things isn't really a big deal considering R&J is just an adapted copy of Pyramus and Thisbe anyways.