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

[Qage]

A year or two ago I was pressured into reading The Hunger Games trilogy. A short way into the first one and I was already starting to get bored and having to force myself through it. I kept wondering each time a character made a decision whether it was a decision I or any other rational person would make or a response that I would give and I just couldn't see it.
The sad part is that I actually quite liked the set up but I just don't think it was done all too well and could have been told from the point of view of a character with a much better, more likeable personality than the one it has.

 

[TheColdHeart]

Kevin Smith's My Boring Ass Life.
To be honest I know 'boring' is in the title but it's just endless diary/blog entries which 99% follow the same formula with the other 1% being mildly interesting build up and production of Clerks 2. I think it's the monotony of his life that makes it such a drag to read I got about 2/3 of the way through before I put it down.

I also found LoTR quite boring which was a shame because I really enjoy fantasy, I just couldn't engage with it.

 

[EvilRoy]

Oh god where do I begin?
Romeo and Juliet: I understand that it's better read as a tragedy than a love story. But the characters aren't making small mistakes and learning from them. They're doing absolutely stupid shit that makes things worse for everyone. Whatever hate-boner the families had for one another, it was dumb, that was likely the point. I guess I just wish I were more invested in the characters so the bigger message would be more effective to me.

Something I found that improved my opinion of R&J was learning a bit of the context for the story. Figuring out that Juliet was 13, but was providing the only real maturity or critical thinking throughout the story really helped my opinion of her, and the fact that Shakespeare seems to have shared your opinion of Romeo made the story in general a lot more bearable.

Everyone knows that the main characters (R&J, especially R) were supposed to be idiots, right? The moral of the story is essentially that impatient teenage romance is dumb.

But somehow everyone latched onto it as a "great love story" in an ironic twist that probably causes Shakespeare several revolutions/second.

Also, don't hold out for Great Expectations getting any better. It doesn't. You never even really get the satisfaction of what's-her-*****-face getting her comeuppance.

Part of the thing for me was the first time I read R&J I was under the impression that they were both about 15-16 years old, but on a later read when I was convinced to give it a second chance I realised that R was something like 20 and J was 13. It completely changed the tone of the story for me. Like from 'stupid teenagers in stupid love' to 'surprisingly competent 13 year old dealing with a poorly raised manchild.'.

And yeah I just said screw it to Great Expectations. I was just not enjoying it at all.

 

[Durgiun]

Blood Meridian. Oy, was it ever a chore to read. Last time I bought a book on reccomendation. And you know what, the book could have been good if McCarthy put in some more character moments, rather than descriptions of the desert and the Gang's trek through it.

 

[Collegeboy21]

Wuthering Heights. And the fact that I had to read it for school really didn't help. Nothing. freaking. HAPPENS!

Not to mention that none of the characters have any redeeming qualities. They just spend the entirety of the novel being absolutely horrible to each other. I really hate that book.

 

[nohorsetown]

I'm not absolutely sure, but off the top of my head? The Scarlet Letter. I couldn't stand the style. Flowery, adjective-packed run-on sentences everywhere. (I can't remember if they were technically run-on sentences, but they sure felt like it.) I've been told that kinda thing was all the rage back when it was written, tho.

 

[Artina89]

Wuthering heights is by far and away the most boring book I have ever read. To make matters worse, I had to read it to the very end because it was part of my English literature GCSE. Any other book I don't enjoy, I can just put it down and read something else, but I obviously couldn't do it in this case. I was so glad when I finished it and got my A* grade. I haven't picked it up since, but I might try and read it again to see if I enjoy it more when I am not forced to read it.

 

[Lightknight]

Man, this thread really is an insight into the tastes of the Escapist. Seems like a lot of people here aren't fans of Literary fiction. It's a shame. I thought The Great Gatsby was fucking great, as long as your read it for what it is: the tragedy of one man who has everything but never got what he wanted.

Naming a classic as something incredibly boring doesn't mean people aren't fans of literary fiction. It means they've at least been reading them for some reason or another. Some of my favorite works are The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and even more recent ones like The Fountainhead (as a story about a man who couldn't be bought, not selfishness as a virtue or that kind of stuff like Atlas Shrugged is steeped in). It's only the fact that I'm such an avid reader of the classics that some of my most boring reads are amongst them.

Unfortunately, I can't say for sure if the number of classics referenced is indicative of avid readers of the classics or just America's standard fare of classic literature on reading lists.

Also shocked to see so many people say Lord Of The Rings.

As it turns out, people generally love the LOTR style or hate it. I've seen people on both sides of the fence regularly. He's extremely wordy and that can get in some people's way. If you can catch the rythm of the tale you can get entirely engrossed in it which is probably what you've been able to do. But it isn't something everyone can just get into. Interestingly enough, it makes an amazing movie for everyone.

 

[Stryc9]

For me it would have to be The Hobbit, it took me over a month to finish reading it because I just couldn't be assed to pick it up more than about once a week if that. It wasn't a particularly bad book, it's just that it's so fucking boring. I don't need to have the entire landscape described to me in that level of detail, it makes it hard for me to imagine my own version of it in my head.

I used to read books rather quickly before I read The Hobbit. It took me quite a while to get through Game of Thrones and now I'm having similar challenges to with Clash of Kings even though they're easier to pay attention to. I blame Tolkien.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

There was this book in English class, I think it was called Strange Objects. Here is as much as I understood:

Kid goes on camp finds ring, keeps ring because people don't like him, starts having wet dreams about some Dutch chick like, 500 years ago, becomes obsessed, keeps doing weird shit like wrapping a small animal in wire and letting ants eat it down to a skeleton, then he murders an Aboriginal who somehow knows that he has the ring, then he runs away from his home because police want to get the ring back because it's a archaeological treasure, then he leaves to find his dad who has been dead for ten years.

You know the kicker? All the weird shit that happens in this book is all apparently about the ring, and NOTHING is explained. The book just ends with him leaving. Yup. Awful. Bloody awful.

Oh yeah, and that book about a bunch of teenages fighting a government with the power of love and music. Yeah. That's a thing. They even turn a flight of bombers into birds by singing and then eat some dinners.

 

[crepesack]

I've managed to read most of the books mentioned so far. But the one book I dropped (although I was already 2/3s done) was Moby Dick.

For all those dropping LotR...that's understandable. But I think if you can power through the fellowship both the two towers and return of the king are easy reads and are more "action packed." I actually reread the series every 2-3 years or so.

And here's my tip for getting through shakespeare: Read it outloud with yourself and be really dramatic about it. Or do it with a friend and have some laughs while enjoying literature. Plays weren't meant to be sat down and read. They were meant to be performed with emotion.

 

[Gizmo1990]

And it only gets worse in the second book, Eldest.

I actually sorta liked the parts focusing on the brother...

The series had ALOT of problems but for some reason I liked it (except the ending, fuck that!) but I had a big problem with the parts with Roran. Eragon could kill a 1000 people in 2 seconds because he is a magic super being. Roran could kill 1000 people because the writer and fans liked him so he got plot armor that makes Batman's plot armor seem small and useless.

OT:
The sword of Truth (the first one). I really did try to like it but I just could not.

 

[james.sponge]

Anything by Toni Morrison I just can't stand her writing sorry on the other hand I can read anything by George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Philip K Dick with pleasure.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

His work is just so bad.

There's a lot of quality inconsistency with his works.
Some are truly amazing, some I can completely agree with you on. I really loved The Mound because he managed to create an entire other civilization of sorts. I also have extremely nostalgic memories of The Thing On The Doorstep, but that might just be because of my childhood, although I do think the concept is great for a very different kind of horror than he usually employs. Hm, what else? Shadow Over Innsmouth is great and the character only faints after describing the horrors. And the twist ending is just awesome. Similarily, I loved The Horror In The Museum for its build-up and nice (albeit a bit predictable) ending.
Eh, I can't fault you for having sort of given up on Lovecraft's stuff, having read a lot of his awful stuff myself, but there are a lot of great stories, too. Buried in the rubble, I suppose.

The universe he created is amazing, I just think, based off the short stories I read, that his writing style isn't that great. When you are reading a number of them in a row, and you just keep getting let down after let down because the monster is ALWAYS made indescribable for some reason, it just makes it feel as if you are reading the same thing over and over again. I like his world, but I just don't like his writing style, it feels lazy at times.

I'd have to agree with this. As fantastic a read as Lovecraft can be, he keeps banging on his "fear of the unknown" drum far too insistently. It's a great mechanic and a central point of Gothic Horror, but Poe at least knew to keep the "unknowable" aspects of some of his darker stories in control. Lovecraft really comes across as a man who was ruled by his apprehensions and who didn't have much else to work with.

It could be worse, through. Michel Houellebecq wrote "Against the World, Against Life", which is a rather depressing essay praising the Master of Providence for his excessively bleak view of the world. I've read it as part of my thesis, and I have to admit that watching a super-happy Disney flick with all of the associated sugary glee felt like a huge relief, after a chapter or two. It wasn't hard or particularly boring - but it was depressing.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

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.

I hated that book...I had to read Gatsby for school but I can't technically count it since I don't remember if I actually read all of it.

As for books that I have read and hated/I found to be extremely boring: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (only not really). When I was much younger, I absolutely loved The Hobbit (and still enjoy that book); when the announced the film trilogy I really wanted to read the books before inevitably seeing the films so I read Fellowship and ended up watching Fellowship. Then I had a year or three to read Two Towers...that never happened. Towers and King released to theaters and I never bothered to see them because Two Towers isn't so much a book as it is a literary brick wall. When I did finally get through it all it did was make me dislike Return of the King and Fellowship retroactively...actually now that I think back I remember not liking the ending of Return of the King...

Anyway: official answer here is Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (but only because I went from not taking 50 Shades of Gray seriously to being made physically sick by it (and also enraged))

 

[soren7550]

In fact, this thread reminds me when I thought the Guardians of Ga'hoole series by Kathryn Lasky (even though at the time only the first two books came out) was going to be a very boring read... The first book I pretended to not have any interest in it... The second was pretty good now that I started paying attention to the story and characters... Then, the third book came out and everyone in the reading group I was in immediately ordered a copy for ourselves this time and after we finished it, we had a hard time waiting for the fourth book... Even when the school year was over, we all still kept in contact, discussing each of the books that came out later... We even met up years later to see the semi-interesting movie... (We all thought it was "okay", at best...)

Holy crap, someone else on the Escapist that's read the Ga'Hoole books? Awesome! I gotta ask, what did you think of the books that came out after Book 8? I remember them being pretty bad and getting much worse with each progressive novel.

Back on topic, I recall being bored to tears by The Fountainhead. I mean, in this book's weird ass world, architecture is *the* thing everyone is apeshit over, and this one dude is shunned by society because of his 'radical' ideas on how to design buildings. I recall something about the 'radical' raping some bitchy woman that subsequently would sleep with him after she prevents people from going to him to design buildings.
I don't remember a whole lot else about it. Just that my English teacher was very surprised that I decided to read it (only picked it up because I had wanted to read Atlas Shrugged because of BioShock, but I couldn't find a copy so I settled for this), and I got about a third or so through it before I gave up.

 

[JazzJack2]

I can't believe some of the books people are mentioning here as dull, particularly The Outsider which is my favourite book of time all, I mean even if you don't like or understand Camus' message I just don't see how you could not love the form and style of his writing.