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A list of really good books I can't finish

These books have been sitting on my shelf for years now, forlorn little scraps of paper marking the place where I just gave up. I keep meaning to restart them. I never get around to it. It's easier to re-read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for the 50th time.

So, here it is. My list of books I can't finish, even though they're well-reviewed and probably really good and would expand my horizons. Come on, fess up about yours. Everyone has these. Here's your chance to confess your sins and get absolution before the new year.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Affliction by Russell Banks
The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

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Permalink Reply by cynthia on December 18, 2007 at 1:13pm: It took me what felt like a year to finish Kavalier and Clay. Was it worth it? At least I can say I finished it.
I have a thing that if I start a book, I have to finish it. Which is torture at times. Hence my current struggle reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. You would think the way Oprah went on about it that it would be some life-changing thing...maybe that will happen in the next chapter.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by andrew on December 18, 2007 at 1:24pm: I never finished Kavalier and Clay, either.

I was also unable to complete:

John Irving's A Son of the Circus
David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
Orhan Pamuk's Snow
Richard Russo's Empire Falls
McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Kelly on December 18, 2007 at 3:25pm: Here's my never finished list:

Don Quixote by Cervantes - was supposed to read it in college, and got about 1/3 of the way through before giving up
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - never got past about page 30
Any of the Dune novels past the first one - BORING!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Claire on December 31, 2007 at 11:40am: I loved Confederacy of Dunces! Couldn't finish Foucault's Pendulum, (felt really bad about that- have friends who think that book is the best thing ever....) nor Kavalier and Clay. Got through about 70% of the Einstein and the Benjamin Franklin biographies by Walter Isaacson. They were interesting, especially all of Franklin's achievements, but I do not need an endless litany about every frickin' grocery list and post-it note these guys ever scribbled......I agree with you about Dune. I also couldn't finish the Hobbit a million years ago. Didn't even start the Trilogy.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by sophie on December 18, 2007 at 3:37pm: Yeah, Mason & Dixon sucked. I feel like finishing it would have been unprincipled, in light of how much I disliked it. But I did love Kavalier & Clay -- finished it twice.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Amy on December 18, 2007 at 4:27pm: Cynthia - honestly - I felt like I read Pillars of the Earth for like fifty years - and at the end - I was not at all sure it was worth it. I think I went into it expecting some big revelation and at the end I felt like I had read a slightly-more-literate-than-usual Harlequin romance novel.

Andrew - I also was unable to finish Empire Falls and I'm not sure why. I just never could get into it. I got farther into it than my normal "abandonment point" though. I haven't tried to read Snow - but I did read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk and it was great - not a fast read but well worth it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by chantal on December 18, 2007 at 8:51pm: You know, I actually enjoyed White Noise, not that I can tell you what I liked about it but it seemed just a shade more penetrable than Pynchon.

Here's my dusty shelf list:

Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorw
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
120 Days of Sodom, Marquis de Sade
The Earth is Flat, Thomas Friedman; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Marjorie on December 18, 2007 at 9:51pm: Ulysses. I just gaze at it...have done so for years.
I think I will put Infinite Jest next to it, and begin gazing at that also.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dan Ehrig on December 19, 2007 at 9:05am: The ones that spring to mind for me are:

Dune - Frank Herbert - I just lost interest
The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea - ditto
The Histories - Herotodus - probably an ill-advised purchase to begin with; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by SAS on December 28, 2007 at 10:08pm: I'm so with you on Ulysses, Marjorie. I signed up for a Joyce topics course at UNM this spring -- so I'll be forced to complete that and a couple of Joyce's other important works.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by andrew on December 31, 2007 at 11:47am: My dad, a high-school and college English teacher, had a club of other teachers who couldn't finish Ulysses. Sometimes they'd get together for a beer or something to commemorate yet another year of not reading it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by roadrunner lady on December 28, 2007 at 8:33pm: I have Blood Meridan on my list of next to read, but I have finished The Road and No Country for Old Men (which i read before the movie came out).

I can't seem to finish Dominc Dunne's People Like Us.

Let me know fi you finish Affliction, I loved the movie, very edgy.; ▶ Reply to This