Books that defeated you!

Agree with a lot of people on here but Catch 22 is the best book - it was heartbreaking, hilarious and so very clever. To the person who said it went around in circles, that was the point

Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov. I was trying to impress a new boyfriend. I gave up on the book and him, though I did try the book a second time.

Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit. Not my thing. And far too long. Have to keep a list of all the characters just to know who is who.

Gave up on The God Of Small Things and A Suitable Boy - and I usually love books about India.

Finished The Lovely Bones but really didn't enjoy it.

Very quickly gave up on Midnight's Children.

I find Dickens hard going but I love all of the TV adaptations.

Ploughed on through Life of Pi but hated every minute, such accolades for it but definitely not one for me.
Yammy, I also studied Portrait of the Artist for A-level and loved every minute of it, helped enormously by a great teacher who could explain all Catholic and Irish nuances which would otherwise have been lost on me. Didn't mind Ulysses but not quite as enjoyable.

Sorry to hear that dragonfly46. One of my favourite books. I found it hilarious.

Les Miserables - a gift from a French student. I did read it all the way through, and a lot of it was inspiring, so I'm glad I bothered, but it was very confusing and actually "life's too short"as others have said. Wonder how much of his life he spent writing it 😬!

Almost anything by Iris Murdoch. I've got her Booker Winner The Sea, The Sea nearby with a bookmark in it about 30 pages in. It hasn't moved for months. Look, I know she was a great writer, and I have book-loving friends who think she's the bee's knees but she's never clicked with me. Yet.

Ulysses I've read three times end to end. The first was an ordeal that I only got through by sheer determination. The second time I blogged it section by section as I wrote it, and that helped. I compared it to walking the Pennine Way (which I've never done' although I've walked bits of it including some of the more testing stretches) where some days are easy and some you spend wading through knee-deep peat bog but you feel great when you reach the end. Somebody once told me that when the going gets tough you should try reading it out loud. Joyce was an accomplished singer with a keen ear for the sounds of words and how they fit together.

Oh! Tried this and loved it, but did take 3 attempts

Tristram Shandy anyone? I tried this several times but very quickly gave up. Would love to know if anyone has been successful.

Anything by Angela Carter.
At Swim Two Birds, Flann O’Brien, given to me by a boyfriend, but no thanks.
Terry Prachett, book group choice, also Philip Pullman, both chosen by the male members.
Dombey & Son, started but left, also Middlemarch, but I may give that another go.
I also had Tale of Two Cities as set book, hated it and never read historical fiction.
Loved Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn and Kevin as mentioned above.

I tried Tristram Shandy and I’m the proverbial bookworm, but gave up.

Lord of the Rings
I got about 10 pages in, gave it to a charity shop

The thing about Middlemarch is that it's the ultimate beach book, the Victorian great-grandmamma of all soap operas. It's no good trying to read a few pages every night before you go to sleep, you need a good long run at it. When I did it as part of an Open University literature course I found a week slobbing on the porch swing for a week while visiting my American Mom-in-law.

I can't seem to get through most fantasy fiction, HP and LotR included. Plus I made chapter three of The Goldfinch then gave up. What a boring load of twaddle.

Lots of books I also couldn’t finish/didn’t enjoy but also many I love which other people hate. No one has mentioned’The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. My friend assured me if I got to page 100 I would begin to enjoy it but I just couldn’t get into it. Conversely she couldn’t read ‘Wolf Hall’ and I loved it - every word. I loathe all crime novels Tried Val McDermid recently but gave up after 5pages because life’s just too short.

Richard Osman books are awful, are we supposed to like them because he is on TV ? Not a good story teller at all, over hyped tripe.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (I think that's his name), couldn't make head nor tail of it I'm afraid.

I no longer persevere with books I don’t enjoy. Always feel a bit guilty about it for some reason. Maybe it’s my days of studying English Literature at school and having to plough through things like Tale of Two Cities and Volpone.

Dearknees
I really enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and all the books which followed.
LadyHonoria
The Sea, The Sea is a favourite of mine, really
enjoyed it, but I read it many years ago, can’t remember it in much detail.

I don't often give up on books, but last year one defeated me, and it surprised me that I abandoned it. It was Little Women. A very early edition (not a First), large and beautifully leather bound. I know the story backwards having read various other editions, played in a stage production, and seen the films. So I was looking forward to reading the original version. But sadly I found it very hard work, tedious even. I could easily pick out the storylines that I knew but it was very over embellished, excessively descriptive, repetitive - and boring. I managed to read 2/3rds of it then gave up. I left a bookmark where I had stopped maybe one day I'll try to read the rest. But for now I enjoy it as a beautiful book on my bookshelf.

I bought the Durrells books as i thought they will be as good as the series on tv- or even better-but i never started them as when they arrived they had so many pages in they were like tomes! Maybe one day when ive nothing else left to read....🤔

I have a very worn copy of Little Women which was my dads, it was part is a set, possibly Treasure Island and more boyish things, so I only had Little Women, never likely to read it, it’s too discoloured, but it has nice illustrations.

I did enjoy War and Peace but skipped through the battle plans. Also liked A Suitable Boy and Catch 22
Can’t think of one that I hated but have given up on a few, Where the Crawdads sing is the last one. Everybody raved about it but it did nothing for me. Didn’t like The Hobbit either but loved Lord if the Rings. Wouldn’t attempt any Harry Potter after gamely trying to get my young son into reading The Philosophers Stone, ended up reading it to him and neither of us wanted to try another one! That bloody game of Quiddich!

I did finish A Little Life. I wasn’t tempted to stop, but can’t say that I enjoyed it because it was harrowing. I enjoyed the time Travellers Wife, but goodness, the timing was difficult to follow. I loved David Copperfield, but like many, couldn’t get through most of his others.