Books that defeated you!

I'm with sara1954 and urmstongran in loving A Little Life. I read it on Kindle so wasn't really aware of just what a (physically)huge book it is. It was only when I saw a copy in a bookshop I noticed it's size and the very small print. Quite daunting - but a truly worthwhile read. I too felt like I had lost a group of friends when the book ended.
I once made the mistake of telling a colleague that Dr Zhivago was my favourite film and she promptly lent me the book. I think she took some pleasure in asking me almost daily how I was enjoying it. Eventually I had to confess that it was far too wordy, too Russian and altogether too complicated for me. I did manage to read a couple of chapters before giving up.

Nannan2, I read My Family and other Animals when I was about fourteen. I think you would enjoy it. It was quite funny.

NotAGran55

Even typing this makes me yawn 🥱 because it was so boring -
Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club.
A dreadful waste of paper imho.

Well I find him a boring oerson so wouldn’t even attempt his book.
Just remembered Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks .

Cloud Atlas was very difficult; liked some parts but couldn’t understand what linked all the different stories.
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James.Tried three times over my life and given up now. Anyone enjoy it?

Wolf Hall is my 'did not finish' book. I tried it as a Kindle book and also as an audible book but had to give up on both. Too many characters for me and I lost track.
Too many other books out there waiting to be read to finish a book that is not engaging you. It doesn't actually have to be an enjoyable book, as long as it's interesting.

I agree with HPQueen exam books are the best way of putting you off of a book or writer - hence my aversion to Jane Austen. I very rarely give up on a book but did recently over Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.

Sci Fi. not in books or films. there's enough to think of in the real world.

All this talk of the wonderful Wolf Hall has made me find the TV adaptation, and I’m watching it while ironing.
So good.

Mill on the Floss, just disliked the characters so much. Gave up War and Peace too, names were all too similar!

harrigran
I have to disagree about Richard Osman. The Thursday Murder Club series is very cleverly written - plenty of twists, keeps you guessing. I think the retirement home setting is brilliant and Joyce and Elizabeth are great characters.
Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are hard work because there are so many names to remember.
I was put off several authors at school - Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, Molière. The best way to destroy a book is to have to analyse it in mind-numbing detail!
Oh, and then there’s Shakespeare… Not a novelist though, as far as I’m aware. 🤔

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Had to read it for a book club and hated it from start to finish. It would never be the sort of book I would pick up and read by choice in the first place, but I found nothing exceptional or likeable about it at all, nor anything that would make it a ‘classic’.
Only point I could make about it, and it’s not a good or pleasant one, is the sad fact that the premise of the book, which is that books are outlawed, is not so far removed from what is happening in the present day. In supposedly civilised parts of the world, books are effectively being outlawed and knowledge censored, which makes me very sad and disillusioned. I found the book an incredibly depressing read.

I couldn’t get into The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and found the Harry Potter books very boring. But I’ve read lots of Dickens, War and Peace (twice) and Game of Thrones. That being said, I’m a member of the “page 17 club” now - if a book hasn’t grabbed me by then, it’s on to the next … life’s too short!

I remember reading several books and having to write essays about them for my GCE English Literature O level back in the 1970s. It really put me off enjoying books having to analyse everything. The books were:
Sons and Lovers
Romeo and Juliet
A book of WW1 poetry
Lord of the Flies
Jude the Obscure
I have always enjoyed crime novels such as the Shetland books and Agatha Christie but now I use books for reference. Currently I am reading about the Lancaster Bomber aircraft as my Dad was a pilot in 1944.

The last "Strike" book, by G K Galbraith. I enjoyed all the others, but this one defeated me. Richard Osman "The Bullet that Missed" and Howard Jacobson "Mother's Boy" (presents at Christmas) both have bookmarks halfway through, as they became so boring. Anything that won the Booker Prize.

With Captain Corelli you need to skip the first couple of chapters, then it gets really interesting.

I’ve got to the same place in “love in the time of cholera” three times and am determined to finish eventually. No particular reason on any occasion, just lane of time.
Also “The curious incident of the dog in the night time”. My brain just could not get into it.
Oh and also very recently “The Martian”. The film was ravesd about but I found the book to be not much more than a pretty boring diary

Cannot understand all the hype around Sally Rooney books. Not for me. But ‘The Count of Monte Cristo” is fantastic - even if I’m not normally into historic novels.

Anything by Salman Rushdie, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
Ploughed my way through Wolf Hall and the second in the trilogy but decided life was too short to read the last book

AnneRob Yes, I enjoyed The Wings of the Dove and most James.
My did not finish list is long: Jame Eyre, Huckleberry Finn, The Corrections, All the Light we cannot see,

I seldom give up on books but tried and failed twice with Wolff Hall

Anything involving science fiction. I Can't read them they bore me to pieces.

I agree with those who gave up on Richard Osman's " The Thursday Murder Club". I love murder mysteries but found it boring.
Hated Thomas Hardy books. Too tragic.
Have also outgrown DH Lawrence, though loved his stuff in my youth.
Never read sci-fi or science fiction. Can't accept the authors' fantasies!
Gransnet HQ should produce a top 10 (or 20) of books we love best and books we hated the most.

Guess I’m alone with this - I hated Life of Pi. Wanted to sink his boat, drown him, whatever! If a book irritates to that extent you’ve just got to give up.

No you’re not alone. That was another on my DNF list, along with Gone Girl and others of that ilk. The CI of the Dog in the Night Time didn’t appeal to my voracious reader DGS, even though he has ASC. He said it wasn’t realistic? I couldn’t argue because it was a DNF for me.
Love the Page 17 club idea, though for some books, even that’s too long.

Just has to be Moby Dick. I was happy to call him Ishmael, but all those lists of fish!! Life’s too short.