I don’t often give up on books. I think that’s largely because I select the books I want to read relatively carefully, and also because I’d rather speed-read to the end of a book and add it to my list than give up – particularly if I’m over halfway. People often say that life’s too short to read books you’re not enjoying, and I daresay that’s true, but I’m still relatively young (more relative by the day…) so perhaps have yet to feel the impending pressure of how few books I’ll actually manage to read in the rest of my life. Frankly, it’s mostly because I like putting the books I’ve read on a list. I love lists.
But I did give up on a book this week, pretty quickly, and it got me thinking about the books I’ve given up on over the years. I thought I’d go through them, looking at how far I got and why I gave up. (And, since they don’t end up on my lists, who knows how many others I gave up on and forgot about? Incidentally, I’m not including books that I never finished because they got lost in the pile of current reads – these were all intentional give-ups.)
The book: The Extraordinary Life of A.A. Milne by Nadia Cohen
How far did I get: c.40 pages
This is the one that kicked off the post. I hadn’t realised a new biography of AAM was out last year, and was quite excited to go to the library and get it. My excitement quickly dissipated. It was written in a sort of tabloidy style (everyone was ‘outraged’ or ‘never forgave’ etc.) and generally quite over the top. Then Cohen referred to his ‘stories about a family of rabbits’. She was referring to The Rabbits – sketches about a group of amateur sportsmen, so-called because ‘rabbits’ is slang for amateur sportsmen. How poor was her research? There was no referencing whatsoever, and – more worryingly – Milne’s autobiography wasn’t even listed in the tiny bibliography. I suspect she read Ann Thwaite’s excellent biography, abbreviated and tabloided it, and churned it out in time for the Goodbye Christopher Robin film last year.
The book: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
How far did I get: c.50 pages
This was all the rage a few years ago, and I made an impulse purchase in a supermarket – which had a big stand of them. Not my usual sort of novel, being quite traumatic, but I thought I’d give it a go as I’d heard such good things. Well, I never made it as far as the traumatic bit. It was so poorly written – so over written – that I just couldn’t continue. I recall that I gave up at the sentence (while the narrator is having a bath and is worried that the hot water might run out) that ‘it permeated my ablutions with disquiet’. Good lord.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
How far did I get: c.20 pages
I’m sure Lolita is brilliant. There are enough people who rave about Nabokov whose opinions I respect that I don’t doubt he is one of the twentieth century’s great writers. But I cannot read about paedophilia, particularly inside the mind of a paedophile. I recognise that that limitation is with me rather than with the literature, and I certainly don’t believe in censoring books (except on quality – there’s no reason that badly written books should be published) but this crosses one of my lines in the sand.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
How far did I get: c.100 pages
This was for book group. And, of course, everyone was reading it a few years ago – and watching the movie, and then watching the next movie. I wasn’t excited about it, because I don’t love gruesome books. But the reason I actually gave up was because it was so deathly dully. It read like an Argos catalogue – every item mentioned getting its brand name and value. (For good measure, I did get one description of torture and murder that haunts me still.)
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
How far did I get: c.100 pages
I love the Harry Potter series, and I was certainly very open to reading more by J.K. Rowling, under a pseudonym or otherwise. And a murder mystery sounded perfect for her, since many of the Harry Potter books are essentially mysteries – and she’s quite brilliant at pacing in those. But The Silkworm… again, I just found it really boring. And rather gruesome, yes, but it was the tedium that put me off.
Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
How far did I get: 1.5 pages
Never have I given up on a book so quickly. It was just so astonishingly bad. You can read more about my thoughts (and my annotations for those 1.5 pages) in a post from the time. I got lots of lovely comments on it, and one (Anonymous, naturally) telling me that “you probably weren’t worthy of reading it anyway”.
Do share which books you’ve given up on – and if you write a blog post about it, pop it in the comments.
I gave up on “A Room with a View” I found it subtle to the point of complete opacity. Although I don’t necessarily need to “like” the characters in a novel, I have to find them interesting, amusing and/or memorable in some way and by page 40 was I was sick of Lucy and her sensitive piano playing and the trembling George..
I also rarely give up on books, but like you I gave up on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I also gave up 2 pages into The Da Vinci Code – I thought it was so badly written I couldn’t get on with it at all. Quite a few people have told me since that if you can get past the bad writing it quickly becomes compulsive reading, but I really think life is too short (I’m a bit older than you!)
I remember when The DaVinci Code was all the rage, my mother bought copies for each of us for Christmas. I did read the whole thing after a dinner out at which every single person was talking about it. I’ll give Dan Brown points for a fast plot but I did try to read the follow-up novel and it was so awful I gave up without even finishing the first chapter.
I couldn’t get through the first chapter of The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, pretty sure I’m going to skip Kevin. (Plus I’ve read some interviews with Shriver that turned me off her as a person, so there’s that).
I did read Lolita in college and pretty much hated it. I do rather like the Galbraith series but I mostly like the relationship between Cormoran Strike and his assistant. So far I’ve disliked the murders which have been gorier than I normally read. I get that Rowling is trying to do something different but I think there’s enough of that sort of gruesomeness in books already.
And I had to read your review of Gone to Earth just so I could read all the comments which are hilarious. There’s one about the introduction to Return of the Native which really struck me because I only got through it because I was listening to the audiobook version narrated by Alan Rickman. I could listen to that man’s voice read a grocery list and I’d be fascinated. A terrible loss.
I used to persist, but I give up on more books now that I’m getting older and my available reading time is shrinking. Books I had to give up on include: Wolf Hall, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Luminaries, Tristram Shandy, plus a few others. I usually push myself to read almost halfway, if possible. But I agree with you on TGWTDT, I couldn’t make it to chapter 3.
I didn’t care for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or any of JK’s Galbraith books, but I persisted. The only book I’ve ever given up on was the ghastly Gormenghast trilogy. I think I got through most of the first book before heaving it across the room in a fit of rage and frustration.
Like you, The Tattoo, Galbraith and the beyond bad Dan Brown. I think a big part of us knows we’re not going to like them before we start but everyone is reading them……
I’ve got to the age where my future reading time is limited, so I’m less tolerant of books I don’t like. I gave up on The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It was praised to the skies but I couldn’t get through it. Luckily, it was a library book and not a purchase.
I haaaated The Corrections. The characters were just awful, I could not find one redeeming thing about that book. Also Franzen was so smug. I wish I could get those hours of my life back.
I too still rarely give up on books, even bad thrillers – just one or two a year. I recently gave up on Joanne (M) Harris’s The Testament of Loki after about 30 pages – sequel to her Loki-centric retelling of Norse myths – but in this one Loki went through Chaos after Ragnarok into a computer screen of a teenager playing a game called Valhalla. Oh dear. I also couldn’t get into Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner – only managed about 10 pages, but it was just not written in a style I could endure.
You will no doubt be appalled but I couldn’t finish one of your favourites – One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens. The book reads like a relentless list of clumsiness by a person with zero common sense written at a breathless pace. I switched on the oven, the doorbell rang, I burned my hand because the oven was hot, I ruined the dinner, I tripped over the carpet and broke some china, etc and on and on. The list of disasters was piled on too heavily and was too repetitive. The tone was a little too snide to be funny. Housework is tiring and dull, employers are capricious and this book just wasn’t enjoyable, so I didn’t finish it.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is the only one that comes to mind at the moment – it felt so dense and uninteresting.
There was so much fuss about this when it came out. I just couldn’t get into it either. Eco wrote an interesting essay on translating novels which was why I tried to read it. Perhaps it needs a better translation (or I should learn Italian)
I frequently give up on books. One of my first was Pride and Prejudice at 14 and then at c17 D H Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers which I thought quite dreadful. I find it quite empowering to try something and not slog on with it to the point of dislike. With PandP – several of us tried it, none of us particularly liked it, but of those who persevered they refused to ever read Austen again. I felt I was too young and would try in the future. I now love her but it taught me the importance of reading at the right time and not feeling that you HAD to read something. Sometimes I skim read so that I have the whole story in my head but I don’t think finishing a book has ever changed my mind. I know within 50 pages whether I like it or not.
I started Lolita twice and — like you — put it down after about 20 pages. Not for me, although I have enjoyed other books by Nabokov.
I’m another one who just spent a happy 5 minutes laughing at the Mary Webb post, plus comments. Excellent! I’m definitely more able to stop reading these days if I feel my time would be better spent on another book. But I completely understand the issue of the list – mine dates back to summer 2002 and it bugs the heck out of me to leave a book off it because I didn’t read to the end! Three DNFs that spring to mind are Conrad’s Lord Jim, Peake’s Gormenghast, and Ulysses. Urgh, Ulysses. *shudder* Perhaps I need to write up my own DNF post… I also occasionally put unfinished books back on the shelf because it’s ‘not their time yet’ even though I know my first impressions will persist and I’ll likely never pick them up again!
I have given up on two Sarah J Maas titles. Throne of Glass started well, but was so badly written that I gave up about a third of the way through. Then, after seeing rave reviews for A Court of Thorns and Roses, not to mention all her other books, I gave her another go. Three chapters this time. Maybe it’s sheer jealousy that some one who writes so badly not only gets published, but writes best sellers. Next time I’m in danger, I’m not going to run, I’m going to hurry my feet.
I somehow managed to get through Lolita and admire the writing in spite of the horrible topic and I’m not sure how was possible. Two unfinished novels that come to mind are The Name of the Rose and Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron, which I tried to read before a trip to Barcelona but gave up in disgust at least 100 pages in. The Name of the Rose just didn’t interest me and I gave it at least 100 pages, too. I sometimes start a book and put it aside, only to come back to it days or weeks later and like it. Timing is everything.
I had a good snorfle at ablutions being permeated. We share a few aborted titles here, although I did persist with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. “Gone to Earth” was awful and, like you, I ditched it pretty early on. Unlike some here, I persisted with “The Name of the Rose” and came out the other side unscathed and liking the story being told. Having used “Gormenghast” as the basis for my thesis, I disagree with Anonymous that it is ghastly and quite love it. Chacon à son goût. Oh, and I did finish “Ulysses” but only by reading it out loud.
One that I lament having given up on, because I know that, in another reading mood I probably would have loved it, is Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx. I plan to try again this autumn and see if I fare better this time (I’d read more than 500 pages last time ’round, 3 or 4 years ago). Others that I abandoned over the years include Jane Eyre, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, The Last Battle.
I am a moody reader; most books that I’ve set aside, like those above, I’ve revisited later and found a connection after all. Actually – I’ve enjoyed all but the Milne biography in your list. In the right mood, a book doesn’t have to be written brilliantly for me to enjoy a good story e.g. Dan Brown and nor do I mind spending time in uncomfortable characters’ lives, knowing I can shut the cover if necessary – e.g. Shriver…but, in each of these cases, it’s totally about suiting the mood of the moment.
I ditched “The Quincunx” too, Buriedinprint. I’m also a moody reader.
The line you quoted from ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ made me throw back my head and laugh. I can’t imagine an entire book in that style! Thanks for sharing.
I give up on books quite rarely, and usually if I am over half way I press on. One exception a few years ago was The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch – I can’t remember what it was that I hated. I got about 200 pages into the 400 page novel and just couldn’t continue. I was part of a Murdoch read along so I ended up reading all but one of Murdoch’s novels. There have also been a couple of book group books that I have given up on, and other books I probably should have.
Very, very happy these days to give up on books and since I almost always borrow them from a library there is no “I paid £10 for this and hate i but I’m getting my money’s worth” nagging feeling. So my list is long and mostly forgettable but here are a few:
The Decameron
Anything after Swann’s Way in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time series
Almost anything by Dickens (managed David Copperfield)
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Silmarillion
A whole slew of “Golden Age” crime fiction :-)
Like you I don’t actually abandon that many books—my ‘Abandoned’ bookshelf on GoodReads only has 24 titles in it though there are probably more that I just can’t remember. If the book is just a bit mediocre then I’ll probably just persevere either by blasting through it or by reading it alongside another, more interesting, book. But there have been some where I just lost the will to read any further. One of those that still sends shivers down my spine is a book on the Tudors, called Tudor England by John Guy; I started reading it quite innocently, hoping to be enlightened by it but as I progressed through it I just found it impossible to stay awake, or to read more than a few sentences before I started to think that there must be something more interesting that I could do like cleaning the drains or doing the washing-up. It was just so incredibly dry, and although it was supposed to be for the general reader the author seemed to presume the reader was as knowledgeable as the author on the topic. About twenty pages was all I could stand before I got rid of the thing. I haven’t been able to face another book on the Tudors since; not even Hilary Mantel.
Other ones I have abandoned include Finnegans Wake (well, no-one has actually read it, have they?), anything by Thomas Pynchon but particularly Mason & Dixon and more recently The White Guard by Bulgakov, for some reason I just found it incredibly dull. Oh, and years ago I tried ‘Bridget Jones’—about ten pages was all I could stand.
Two books come to mind: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and One Hundred Years of Solitude. The former was too bleak for me. The latter is acknowledged as a masterpiece by pretty much everyone. I was trying to read it during a difficult period in my life and gave up, confused by the plot and characters, halfway through. I keep telling myself I will try it again. I did love Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.
I, too, dislike giving up on books, but in the last few years I have started to do so now and then. Last week it was time to quit “Everything Happens As It Does”, by Albena Stambolova (translated from Bulgarian). I’d seen a normally sane book blogger review it and since I’m trying to read a lot of translated literature, I got it from the library. I only made it through about 5 pages. All short declarative sentences. Very quirky style. But I did soldier on through “The Stolen Bicycle”, although the second half of 376 pages was not to my liking, all about WWII in Taiwan and some jungles. Plus the English translation had errors and oddly worded non-native English phrases here and there. Long ago I read Lolita, Ulysses, and The Name of the Rose, and am thinking of rereading the latter.
Dragon Tattoo was just vile – why waste your time, I say! I too tend to go for books I believe I’ll love because life is to short to waste on books you hate. I abandoned both Molly Keane and Angela Thirkell because of the hunting elements. They may have redeeming factors, but I just couldn’t!
I also gave up on We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I found the first one incredibly dull and I didn’t like the narrator and the second one I just remember being bored by. It’s very rare that I give up on a book and these are the only examples I can think of from the last ten years or so.
Did you know that Christopher Robin Milne wrote some books about his own life? I read one of them called, Enchanted Places, and it was lovely.
I tend to choose wisely, too, so I have about five DNFs a year. I remember giving up on a very boring translation from the German called Adventures of a Bed Salesman at about 400 pages out of 500 because I just could not. This year I’ve given up on a re-read of Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (just too horrible). Eve Green’s Something Like Happy (a very sad book about a cancer patient, could not deal with), Eileen Myles’ The Importance of Being Iceland (dense and weird and not really about Iceland), Helen Russel’s Gone Viking (too silly) and I skimmed Helen Cullen’s The Lost Letters of William Woolf (not about what I thought it was about). I’ve DNF’d Ulysses a few times and that’s not going to ever happen. I love this post and its comments, though!
This is interesting. I am German but had never heard of thsi book. I googled for the German title, it was completely different. And – I had never heard of the German title, either. So, I guess that says a lot about the book. LOL
Better luck next time. If you are looking for good German authors, you might like Julie Zeh, Zsuzsa Bánk, Dörte Hansen, three wonderful female writers whose books have been translated into English.
Sometimes it is just timing … life timing … I too hate to give up on a book but when I start one and cannot stay on / in the pages I just put it away taking up another (there are stacks of others waiting attention) feeling relative certain / hopeful that in the future I will pick it up again & successfully, happily make my way to the finish …
Whiskey Jenny has only ever DNFed, I believe, three books. I DNF books all the time and I am baffled by people who do not, BUT I am delighted that you also didn’t care for We Need to Talk about Kevin. Before Lionel Shriver stopped being an insistent jerk as often as possible, I tried to read a couple of her novels, and always had to give up. The one about someone’s birthday is also deadly dull.
I have given up on lots of books and I think it’s healthy. I do make a distinction though between books which are a bit hard going but worth it in the end, and those which I give 30 pages’ worth of reading and then close the book happy in the knowledge I’ve had a genuine try but this book wasn’t for me. Life’s too short and all that…
In the first category I’d put things like Dickens (currently reading David Copperfield) which are an effort but reward richly in terms of being part of English heritage. In the second category I would put books like Harry Potter, Bored, sorry, Lord of the Rings…books which others admire but which I can’t.
As for contemporary blockbusters like Da Vinci Code, John Grisham etc, I don’t even attempt them, but am happy to wait and see if they are still being read in say 30 years’ time! (Well it worked for ‘Forever Amber’ and ‘Valley of the Dolls’ and ‘The Group’, books which were runaway bestsellers of many years ago, and for me, have great appeal).
I loved We Need to Talk about Kevin. I’m rather partial to a bit of flouncy overwriting and besides the style so suits the character; up until the time the horrible things happen to her she is the sort of person for whom that hideous and ignorant phrase “first world problems” was invented.
Plus I got into it one hot summer while in hospital having tests. The combination of book, heat and morphine made for some pretty vivid dreams. At the end of my stay, the doctor came round and told me that sorry, I was unlikely ever to have children and I’m pretty sure it was partly the book that helped me to think “Oh well” and shrug.
My general principle used to be never to give up, so I hacked through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but also thought it deadly dull. I assumed it must have lost something in translation.
Such an interesting discussion. I do agree with you, “I think that’s largely because I select the books I want to read relatively carefully, and also because I’d rather speed-read to the end of a book and add it to my list than give up – particularly if I’m over halfway.” And I’m probably at least twice your age.
The only book from your list I did enjoy was We need to talk about Kevin and the only other one I read and didn’t like at all was Lolita. That might have been a book I should have given up on but it’s such a classic and I was halfway through, so I thought I might as well carry on.
I might stay clear of the other ones you mentioned. ;)
I used to have no compunction about giving up on a book – I was definitely of the “life’s too short” mind. But since starting the Keeping Up With The Penguins project, I’m very determinedly not giving up on a single one (I don’t feel it’s fair to review a book without having read it in its entirety). It’s actually been really good for me, and I’m learning a lot that I would have otherwise missed out on. Forcing myself to continue with books that I’m not enjoying isn’t exactly fun in the moment, but it’s teaching me so much about what I like and why, what works in literature and why, and all kinds of stuff like that. I think I’ll probably keep up the habit, BUT once I’ve made my way through my KUWTP list, I think I’ll be a lot more discerning in my selection ;)
It’s funny you mention We Need To Talk About Kevin – I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people say the same, that they couldn’t finish it (even though the premise was fantastic, the writing was just too much). I’m toying with the idea of reading it, but I haven’t made up my mind yet (I’m not a huge fan of Lionel Shriver as a person, tbh). And I really appreciated your frankness about Lolita! It’s actually one of my favourite books, but I can *completely* empathise with how difficult it is to tolerate the mind of a man who is abusing a child (and it’s not exactly a short read, you’re stuck in there for a while). Thank you for sharing!! <3