Which book did you give up reading this month? Why?

I simply couldn't finish Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. I got through about 1/3 of it when I realized I wasn't even enjoying the story. The characters were so annoying. There also were a couple of instances in which the credibility of the scenes made me groan.

I must have picked Jodi Picoult's best book first. I did like My Sister's Keeper -- even the ending -- which was mostly hated by others. Vanishing Acts was okay, but this last book, well, I just couldn't get into it.

Well, there is a book I got a third of the way through and stopped - it's Earth by David Brin. I don't think I've stopped it for good, though. It's an odd style of book - it's a novel, but it seems like a series of related short stories so far, and one of them really disturbed me, so I wanted to read something else for a while before continued.

But I don't give up on many books. Last year, I gave up entirely on 2 books, and temporarily (at least, I hope I'll be able to start again eventually) on 2 more.

I temporarily stopped reading Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins because it is so grim and not gracefully written, but I will pick it up again because I want to finish it. My boyfriend had the same experience with it and warned me about it, so this may be partly due to the power of suggestion.

I just stopped reading The Weeping Woman by Michael Kilian, which was supposed to be a "Jazz Age" mystery, but instead was turning out be a long and plotless excuse for 1920's era name-dropping.

I gave up on Anne Ursu's Spilling Clarence after reading approximately one-third of the book. I found the premise interesting but something about the style it is written in really bugged me, and I have too much I'm looking forward to reading to bother ploughing through I book I'm not enjoying.

#4

You may like The Jazz Bird.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have already read it.

In the last fortnight I've given up on Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Jose Carlos Somoza's The Art of Murder (touchstone wrong)both for the obvious reason that I found them tedious. I've returned to some non-fiction.

I'm supposed to be reading Ahab's Wife by Naslund but it's 668 pages of this immensely detailed saga of a woman in the 19th century. It's not that it doesn't capture my interest but, after 160 pages, I think I've had enough. It has so many anachronistic details that I feel as if I'm being held hostage by someone's inability to hone a good story versus writing everything that came into her head. It would be a good book at half the number of pages and a bit more attention to how the world and women really were in that century. Moreover, the lead character is simply too perfect.

The last book I gave up on was The Birthdays by Heidi Pitlor. It was either this month or last that I gave it a try. I got about half way through and just couldn't finish. I didn't care about any of the characters, so I really didn't care what happened to any of them. They felt flat and stereotypical. The whole book just read like a Lifetime movie to me.

>8 hazelk:

I persevered with The Secret History and probably wasn't any better off than if I'd abandoned it at an early stage - didn't get it at all, and felt quite miffed that my patience wasn't even rewarded by any kind of resolution at the end.

I gave up on A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. I always feel so guilty when I stop reading a book and I don't often do it. But I wasn't into this one plus I was reading 5 or 6 other books at the time. The other books whispered louder.

Might have been that I didn't like the binding of the edition I was reading. It was a mass paperback; I have a hard time getting into anything bound like that, I don't know why.

I stopped reading The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. I loved The Secret Life of Bees and was looking forward to reading something else by Kidd but I knew immediately that I was going to hate it. I just can't get into books about people with perfectly happy lives and marriages who go out and sabbotage them by having affairs. I've never liked romance novels or soap operas and I knew I wasn't going to like this book.

-->13 jlayoung:

I forced myself to finish The Mermaid Chair. I disliked The Secret Life of Bees and wanted to give Sue Monk Kidd another chance.

No more chances now! I should have quit when you did, jlayoung.

-->13 jlayoung: I purchased The Mermaid Chair ages ago and have never gotten around to read it. I'm like you I don't like reading novels about people having affairs.

I tried for a couple days last week to read The Sight of the Stars by Belva Plain but after about 40 pages I gave up because I just could not get into the plot.

Kathy

I rarely give up on books that I've started (but I won't say it's never happened). However, in the last few days I've almost given up on two. Stolen by Kelley Armstrong for reasons that have no reflection on the book itself and Boys that Bite because it started off almost too silly for me. I'm really glad I didn't give up on Boys that Bite because I did wind up liking it and plan to forget my silly little misgivings and pick up on Stolen where I left off.

In the beginning of January I started I Don't Want to be Crazy by Samantha Schutz. I read maybe 10 pages before getting completely sick of her writing style. It's written in prose. Juvenile prose. I don't recommend it to anyone.

I got about 150 pages into House of All Nations by Christina Stead, but ugh, I had to give up. I loved The Man who Loved Children but I kinda fear the rest of her work being unreadable.

I stopped reading The Egyptologist because it was unbearably boring. I had a huge dislike for the the main character, and it made me cringe to read his endless journal entries. I read until I absolutely could not tolerate it anymore. This is rare for me as I gernerally feel I owe it to the author to read the entire book. I also forced myself to finish Praying to a Laughing God, even though it was just very depressing. I'm not reading about old people anymore!

I agree with you, carlianna. I finished The Egyptologist because I forced myself, but I greatly disliked the character.

I started reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson in Oct 2006. The first two-thirds is pretty enjoyable, but then the story starts to drag. I stopped reading in Nov 2006, and haven't picked up the book since.
(sorry, missed the part about books you gave up this month)

I gave up on Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted because the main character never did get around to doing what the title promised she would. It was too whiny, even for chick lit.

I'm really stuggling w/ On Beauty, an abysmal 64 pages into it.
Maybe if I actually set aside some time to have a good go at it I might be able to get my teeth into it. So far I've just been dipping into in on my lunchbreak at work, where often it's too noisy to concentrate properly &I end up reading the tabloids instead.

-->
I'm really stuggling w/ On Beauty...

I had to give up reading On Beauty, wonderlake. I was bored by the story and disliked the characters.

I am really disappointed by Zadie Smith. I found her debut novel, White Teeth, extremely funny and engaging, but was very disappointed by her following two novels. It's as if she were writing now just to be a literary heavy and not simply to tell a good story.

Steveh King's Lisey's story. It was so boring - I was hoping for a good story, easy to read and a bit (OK a lot) out there. I had just read Cell and it was really good - so I was totally disapointed in Lisey's story.

Carlianna that is exactly the experience I had with The Egyptologist.

I've temporarily stopped reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's a phenomenal book, but it's just so depressing I have had to put it down before I lose all hope. I'll go back to it after a dose of something more uplifting/positive. Suggestions anyone?

I think I'm going to give up on Minion by L.A. Banks. I've only got about a hundred pages left, but I just really don't care about what's happening. I'm not feeling it at all; it's words on a page, nothing more. I might stick it out, but right now it's not looking good.

Edit: okay, I stuck it through to the end, but I ended up speedreading/skimming the last hundred pages or so.

Cross by James Patterson. I only got as far as reading the blurb a couple of times then realized that I just didn't care.

Streisand Her Life by James Spada

This read like a gossip column, and a badly written one. I try to avoid gossip, however, if it's juicy I must admit sometimes I get drawn in despite myself. However, while this comes across as a bunch of gossip by people who little knew her, it's dull gossip. Who cares if some kids in high school she never spoke with thought she wore weird colored lipstick and nail polish?? Spada seems to have primarily sought out people who only knew her superficially and solicited bad opinions, but puts on a facade of presenting her in a neutral-to-positive manner.

I grew up on Streisand's music, my parents loved her and by proxy, I appreciate her too. She can interpret songs like few others and she's driven, but this book makes her out to be some misfit who didn't know how to bathe and has no social manners whatsoever. It's bad taste, but worse, it's boring.

In the end, I forced myself to read about a third of the 500+ pages and simply could not get interested.

I gave up on Cryptonomicon. Sorry. I just don't care what happens to these characters.

I almost gave up on A Feast for Crows, too, which surprised me. The first 3 books had some slow bits, but there were big payoffs. This one was very slow and nothing interesting or surprising happens. Saw the Cersei thing coming for miles.

It's official, I'm giiving up on The Old Curiosity Shop. Life's too short and I have begun to wish someone would kill Nell humanely to stop any more suffering. My suffering, that is.

I'm reading lots of other things instead.

#30

I gave up on Cryptonomicon a couple months ago. To me it was the sort of book that could have easily been absolutely engrossing, but it was carried out extremely poorly.

I'm currently taking a break from the Bancroft Strategy. I say "break" because I might end up finishing it, not sure. I just have so many other books that I want to read that I decided to set it aside for the time being while I got through some stuff I was more interested in.

I stopped reading The Memory Keeper's Daugher. I got about 130pps in, and couldn't stand it any more! The book had such rave reviews that I thought it would pick up....but it didn't. I finally put aside my guilt, and let it go. Now it's at another home, hopefully being enjoyed!

I stopped reading The Memory Keeper's Daugher. I got about 130pps in, and couldn't stand it any more! The book had such rave reviews that I thought it would pick up....but it didn't. I finally put aside my guilt, and let it go. Now it's at another home, hopefully being enjoyed!

I am putting aside Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane for now. I bought it when I was in Ireland last October, and started reading it in mid-December. I read about 20% of it, but it's ~REALLY~ dark and unsettling -- lots of talk about death and bad feelings. The chapters are short -- longest is 6 pages, and the book reads like a diary.

I've read 6 other books since starting this one, so I'm pretty sure I don't want to finish it at this point. But I'm not going to get rid of it because I DID find parts of it interesting, and I see the potential for it to be good reading.

I'm with ya, carmarie. I tried The Memory Keeper's Daughter some months back and just couldn't finish it. Probably got about half way. WAY too Lifetime movie for my taste- sappy, unbelievable and overly dramatic.

#11--deargreenplace

I loved The Secret History and I think what I liked best was the peculiar resolution at the end. I thought the ending seemed very realistic--the way something like that actually would work out.

I did stick it out with Memory Keeper's Daughter. I work in special needs, so it held appeal for me. But it was Lifetime movie-ish. Mostly I was just interested Phoebe.

I gave up on The Colour of Magic by Pratchett. Maybe it was my mood, but the humor seemed strained, and I just didn't care about the characters or even what happened next.

#19, 20, and 26 ~ I loved The Egyptologist. Perhaps I had a different experience with it because I listened to it on audiobook. I remember it did get a bit bogged down in a few parts, but I found it fascinating how the two main characters each truly seemed to believe his story was the true one, but neither was being completely truthful with us or with themselves.

#39> I gave up on The Colour of Magic by Pratchett.

I did the same thing, for the same reasons, but it wasn't this month, it was in December.

I gave up on Michael Grant's The Rise of the Greeks. I read a lot of history, but this was simply too dense, and the information, or perhaps the author's delivery of same, seemed much too obscure for a person unfamiliar with ancient Greece to follow.

The Colour of Magic is the weakest of the Discworld books I've read. I think the humor is pretty forced in that one. But don't let it sour you on the series. The collaboration with Neil Gaiman was good for Pratchett, and the more recent Discworld books are excellent--graceful and genuinely funny. Try starting with The Truth or even with one of the death books like Reaper Man. Personally, I can't stand Rincewind. Death is a much better character.

I've given up on an author rather than a book this month. The author being Pratchett. I gave him a good shot and read three different books. I didn't think even one was worth the read. They were... cute and that's about it.

I started Anne Tyler's Digging To America on CD. The narrator was good, but I was confused by the narration skipping from person to person. By the time I figured out who was related to whom, I was tired of everyone talking. I decided to put it down.

Should I resume this novel at some point? It came highly recommended by a good friend. I have read other novels by this author and find them okay, but not particularly exciting.

Come to think of it, there was one other novel by this author, I also tossed aside int he past. The one (I forget the name) where the middle age woman walks up the beach and away from her family (and away from my reading her story). :-)

I am almost ashamed to say I gave up on any book, but now that I see how many other people do......I will confess. I gave up on "Stones from the River" by Ursula Hegi and I see it on all kinds of reading lists all the time. If I am not mistaken it was on Oprah's Book Club. I just could not penetrate her language at all. I have picked it up several times, being the stubborn Scorpio that I am, but still.....nada...zip...zero. Can anyone 'splain to me what I am missing??? Or what they liked about the book ?
Another one that I read this absolutely astonishing review of, so fantastic that I threw my clothes on and rushed out to the nearest Barney Noble because it sounded like you had not lived until you read THIS BOOK- "The Transit of Venus" by Shirley Hazzard. MY god, that was the most sleep inducing, thick soup, verbose writing I have ever encountered. If there is a plot in there I never got to it. I felt like a complete boob, but I gave it up anyway. Again, hints, suggestions, hit me over the head with something??
I tried, I really tried............

re:wonderlake&squeakychu:
I had the opposite experience, reading "On Beauty" first and really liking it, and then "White Teeth". I admit "On Beauty" drags a bit in places, but I think if you gave it another chance you would like it. Maybe,maybe not. Just a thought.

On reading these "confessions", I am led to these conclusions: There are a lot of LTers whose recommendations have been belied by our experiences, and there are a lot of great reading experiences we would have missed if we had not been led to them by a recommendation from someone on LT.

What to do, what to do? I'm taking names. I am starting a list of LTers whose word I will follow, and another list of LTers I will ignore. Otherwise I will forget just who did what.

~47: Artisan, we should have an LT review section: voting by members as to how much a book sucked or how much it changed their life. Much simpler statistically than wading through the disparate 'current' threads looking for recommendations.

Just a thought. :)

Hera, I never have to look for recommendations. My TBR pile has quadrupled since just reading these topics, routinely. I am reading more, buying more, wanting more, and can't keep up. LT is wonderful. Anyway, the rating system should help, but we need to learn by experience who us too free with stars and who is too stingy. That's why I say "Take names!"

I see what you're saying. A poor review from some people carries weight, from others not so.

I've had so many excellent recommendations on here that my reading has exploded. It's fantastic.

Getting a bigger handbag to accommodate a good-sized novel for everyday use is just a bonus on top of reading more. :)

The Reconstructionist by Josephine Hart I got to page 48 and realized I didn't care what was going to happen the the main character. I didn't even skim ahead to see what happened in the end. Maybe I'll try it again some day.

I have a personal rule that I only give a book 50 pages to grab me (30 pages if it's a book of 200 pages or less). I used to finish every single book I would start, but after throwing a few across the room at the end because they were so horrible, I made this page rule. I gave The Reconstructionist about 20 more pages than I should have before quitting.

It's wasn't this month, but I couldn't finish Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund. I don't know why I couldn't finish it, but I am determined to continue reading it from cover to cover.

Last week I gave up on Reading in the Dark. It just didn't hold me at all. I kept forgetting what I had just read and which character was who. I finally just put it down for good.

#44 SqueakyChu -- I liked Anne Tyler's Digging to America a lot . . . I think the author's talent is in creating characters who seem real. I thought the multiple viewpoints in the novel worked well. For example, one character describes the Iranian mother-in-law as elegant and sophisticated, but another describes her as icy and aloof. Both descriptions fit, and I think that's what gives the characters complexity.

I recently read the other Anne Tyler you mentioned, where the woman walks away from her family at the beach. It's called Ladder of Years. I didn't think this was her best work, but I was intrigued by the premise. One of the members of my book club often talks about how much she hated this book. It seems to hit a sore spot with some readers.

I really wanted to like Yiddish Policemen's Union. After 100 pages I still didn't care. Perhaps I will try again someday.

I got about 1/3rd of the way through Hellstrom's Hive and had to quit it. It felt almost misogynist.

#54 - Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years was the first book of hers that I read - I enjoyed it and have quite a few of hers since - wasn't too crazy about Saint Maybe.
I tried reading Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs - couldn't take it. Will have to get rid of his Dry as well.

Pickwick Papers got on my nerves. I wish it didn't. Perhaps it wasn't the best Dickens to start with.

Two books I had reserved at the library arrived at the same time. Since I am 1. a slow reader and 2. can't read two books at the same time - I had to choose.
Rebecca or Labyrinth?

Rebecca won out. I have not even started it yet.

I just returned about 20 books to the library, only 1/2 of which I read. The others were not badly written books, necessarily, just not right for me at this time. Also, I don't really like short stories but try them every so often because in the past I've found favorite novelists by reading something by them in a short-story collection.

The unread returns were: The Summer of the Big Bachi; Sex in the System (short stories); Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters (short stories); The cruel Stars of the Night by Kjell Eriksson; The Fall of Rome: a novel of a world lost; Three Novels of Ancient Egypt by Najib Mahfuz; and a Christine Warren paperback novel of The Others. Three were books of the Dresden Files, but I had to return them because they were the last three books of the 9 book series, and so far I've only read the first three books of the series. :(

All the Tea in China by Jane Orcutt. Supposedly a "rollicking Regency Romance" but I barely made it into the third chapter before sending it back to the library. Too religious for me.

#55 The Yiddish Policeman's Union does start off slowly, but I ended up becoming engaged and really enjoying it once I got about halfway in.

I'm thinking about giving up The Satanic Verses--I just can't see where the plot is going and I'm sure that I don't understand the symbolism / meaning of many things (and I'm not sure I care enough to do the research to figure it out). This would have been a good book to read for a class, but without guidance from a professor, I don't think I'm getting much out of it.

*bump*

The Celestine Prophecy . . . three years ago a friend gave me three huge boxes of books and this was in it. I was immediately going to toss it into the charity bin, but I thought I'd hang on to it and sometime when I was in a silly mood, I'd see how bad it really was. I got to the third chapter, and I just couldn't take it. It was sooooo bad, but not bad in an entertaining way. Just bad. Life is just too short to waste time on bad books.

I was reading The Roots of Romanticism and quit after about one-third of the way through. I really surprised myself. Isaiah Berlin is one of my favorite authors and I have usually enjoyed his writing on the Enlightenment and Romanticism. One problem is that I had read most of this by him before in different packages. The material did get rather dry. All of this led to a lack of interest and I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. It just proves to me that you can never be sure that a book will be one that stimulates interest. The next time I read Berlin it will be new subject matter.

Gave up on Absolute Friends because it bored me and I couldn't care less about the characters. They were all pretty whinily idealistic and full of rhetoric. Bah.

Also gave up on Company Man because it is almost exactly like every other book from him and I really can't take his soppy leading man again.

I may give the leCarre another chance, but frankly I can't remember much of it now and would have to re-read some. Ugh.

#1-SqueakyChu
Everyone I have known to read My Sister's Keeper really liked it. I've only read 2 other Jodi Picoult books, but they were really good, too.

So far I haven't given up on anything this month, but I did skim through lots of Jemima J because it was slow moving in spots.

In January, I gave up on Mayflower by Philbrick. I plan to go back to it, because it was really good. I just wasn't in the mood, I think.

This month, I'm about to stop reading Alison Weir's The Princes in the Tower. It's non-fiction, but she writes it as if it were fiction, i.e., "he had been thinking about usurping the throne and killing his nephews since his brother the king died."

Well, really! I mean, how can she possibly know what Richard III was thinking at any given time, absent proof that consists of something he wrote or what an impartial witness wrote that he said? If she'd written something like, "From what happened, it appears he had been contemplating usurping the throne and killing his nephews..." that wouldn't bother me so much. If, rather than say "He was a bad, evil man" (paraphrasing here), she'd said, "I think he must have been the bad, evil man that More said he was," then I could even accept that (though the truth is that More was a friend of the Tudors, Richard III's mortal enemies, and hardly impartial). But she started out obviously disliking Richard III and disparaging people (including historians) who don't believe he killed his nephews, but she has been unable to bring forth any evidence that was not put about by his enemies or the friends of his enemies, or that was hearsay.

Sorry for the rant. I just don't like it when historians throw unproven theories around without admitting they are just theories and am disappointed because I'd heard she was such a good historian.

Okay, I'm getting down off my soapbox now.

The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer

This book, caught my attention at the library. So I borrowed it, took it home and started to read it. Lo! and Behold! I had tried to read it about a year ago. And didn't like it then either. Just couldn't get into the story. The author couldn't bring me into his world or make me care about the peaple or the story.