Latest book you just couldn't bring yourself to finish

[Vlad Luskin]

Pete Townshend: Who I Am. Keith Richards's Life is like reading Tolstoy in comparison.

Michael Chabon: Wonder Boys. Gave up after three attempts, unable to get past page 30. I like most of his other stuff and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is incredible. Never saw the appeal of Wonder Boys. (Disclaimer, my kid went to pre-school with one of Michael's kids and I've been to his house for pre-school birthday parties.)

Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go. Put it down after I became completely disgusted with the concept, once I figured out the plot.

[jitahs]

Not a fan of Foster Wallace for this reason (Jim Harrison):

"Shortly after Dave killed himself, I reread “How Men Pray,” and I remember wondering whether, in the midst of Dave’s torment, he might have found consoling Harrison’s belief that a writer is someone who “consciously or unconsciously takes a vow of obedience to awareness.” Perhaps he would have smiled at Harrison’s belief that the writer’s gift, and curse, is one of “excessive consciousness.”

Harrison brought up Jonathan Franzen’s much discussed New Yorker piece about Wallace, in which Franzen revealed that he could never get Wallace interested in his passion of bird watching. “This is interesting,” Harrison said. “Of the 12 or 13 suicides I’ve known, none of them had any interest in nature. In other words, they had no interest in what Rimbaud called ‘the other.’ The otherness, say, of nature.” They could not make, Harrison said, “that jump out of themselves.”

We were silent for a while. “You know,” Har­rison said finally, “he loved his dogs for that last year, but he should’ve been having dogs for 30 years. Every day of the year, the first thing I do after breakfast is take the dogs for a walk. They absolutely depend on it. But it’s also what’s best for me.”

[Dave Thompson]

I'm 100 pages into Hugo's Le Miserables. I don't think I'll live long enough to finish it.

[alexstar]

I'm 100 pages into Hugo's Le Miserables. I don't think I'll live long enough to finish it.

I hope you do. Le Miserables is a true masterpiece.

[Mabouya]

I hope you do. Le Miserables is a true masterpiece.

Hmmmm...

[David Tollefson]

I thought Goldfinch sounded familiar. My wife had the book on CD from the library. I listened to a couple chapters on a road trip, and by the end of that I was asking what's the f'ing point? No way I could read that crap.

[lumpy]

I hope you do. Le Miserables is a true masterpiece.

I got to step up and do this one of these days.

[Dave Thompson]

I hope you do. Le Miserables is a true masterpiece.

It was great, wonderful music and songs! ....wait....

[Vlad Luskin]

I'm 100 pages into Hugo's Le Miserables. I don't think I'll live long enough to finish it.

Keep going, Dave, it's just your size

:-)

[WMdeR]

...About to start Infinite Jest. I'm hoping there's more to it than 'I'm smarter than you' smarminess.

There is a lot there, until, abruptly, there isn't. May I suggest you read a few of his short stories first? There is a pattern to his best short work and how he handles crisis and denoument. It is fun and clever in a ten-page short story, but I'd establish whether this pattern is something you want to see writ very large before you invest the effort of 800-odd pages of text and parallel-story footnotes. It is otherwise a lovely, grotesque, and occasionally powerful read.

Cheers,

Will

[doomridesout]

Infinite Jest is my favorite novel ever but I don't say that out of a play for 'smartness'. There's something very resonant to me about the way he parses the world, probably the depressive, inward turned character of his writing of inner states of his characters. Plus, if you like his linguistic play it can be howlingly funny.

I tell anybody starting that book that if you can get past about page 130, the narrative becomes much clearer and easier to read. If you get past that and still hate it, there's no shame in calling it. Hating that book might just mean you're not predisposed to depression.

[holliscx]

The Goldfinch. Hard to get past the 1st chapter.

I was just about to ask about G, I loved The Secret History.

I may have mentioned it before, but my wife and I keep a "shelf of literary defeat".

^ brilliant

ps i bailed on ulysses about six years ago

faulkner.jpg

[taz]

Infinite Jest is my favorite novel ever but I don't say that out of a play for 'smartness'. There's something very resonant to me about the way he parses the world, probably the depressive, inward turned character of his writing of inner states of his characters. Plus, if you like his linguistic play it can be howlingly funny.

I tell anybody starting that book that if you can get past about page 130, the narrative becomes much clearer and easier to read. If you get past that and still hate it, there's no shame in calling it. Hating that book might just mean you're not predisposed to depression.

Predisposed? I'm diagnosed… Is that going to be a problem? (in the same way that I love Lou Reed and Joy Division but I can only listen in small doses.)

[Vancouverdave]

I've enjoyed every other book of James Ellroy's, but "Perfidia" was too over the top for me--racism, extreme violence, etc. Just way beyond what contributed to the story line. I didn't think I was that PC, but the 1940's descriptions of Japanese did me in by halfway.

[choke]

I don't think I've ever not finished a book. The hardest one for me to get through was Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The story was interesting to me but the flow just wasn't there - perhaps that was due to it being a translation.