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Worthy books you have started but never finished

Professor
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If you'd like to make a stab at re reading some older books you didn't finish back in the day check this site.
https://www.fadedpage.com/
Free downloads of novels and anthologies that fell into public domain.
 
lillatroll
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Joe_A Joe_A
I'm half surprised Finnegan's Wake has not been mentioned.

I'm a fan of Joyce and was lucky enough to start with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, followed by the short story collection Dubliners. Once that far in, I was later able to read Ulysses early in life and then later on again.

But I could not get very far into Finnegan's Wake and from what I have read about it, it helps to be multilingual - which I am not.

I had no difficulty with Melville, but I find no pleasure in reading Dickens.

Context of the day matters. Lingustic convention matters.

I suspect that educated contemporaries of artists from days gone by had an easier time of it than we do today.
I put it on my list. The biggest issue is the lack of punctuation. It's a very cumbersome and tiring book to read.
 
lillatroll
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Canterbury Tales starts off in a pub called the George Inn. It is still in shoreditch London and it is still open as a pub. It was also probable that Shakespeare frequented the place.

The inn next door, which is no longer there was run by a man with two sons. One of them went to America to seek his fortune because the inn owner did not have the funds to support both sons. The second son did rather well in America and helped fund the library of a little known college. Today the college is reasonably well known. I think it's called Yale something or other.
 
kip595
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"Texas" by James Michener

Great book, but I flagged somewhere around page 900-something and just haven't been able to get back into it since. (most editions are around the 1400 page mark total)

I'll get around to it...😗
 
Roosa
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The Brothers Karamazov. Seems wonderful, but I lost time to read for a few months and by the time I picked it up couldn't remember half of what was going on.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Godel, Escher, Bach. I like philosophy, I like math, but I've just never been able to get into it.

And finally, a controversial unworthy book I didn't finish: Les Miserables. See the musical, read the cliff notes, but dear lord does Hugo spend a lot of time writing excessively about things that don't matter. Makes sense since he was essentially paid by the word, but still..... I might have made it further if I read a physical book and could easily skip ahead, but I was trying the audiobook and eventually gave up somewhere after Waterloo.
 
MRC
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Roosa Roosa
The B

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Godel, Escher, Bach. I like philosophy, I like math, but I've just never been able to get into it.

Ah yes, the Eternal Golden Braid. I got about half-way through.
 
Uscjake87
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My vote is Frank Herbert's "Dune." Too many long made up names for everything makes it hard to follow.
 
WatchCor
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Uscjake87 Uscjake87
My vote is Frank Herbert's "Dune." Too many long made up names for everything makes it hard to follow.

Oh boy, Dune is still sitting half read on my shelf from last summer vacation😟. I might have to re-read it all just to catch up.

Or just wait for the Villeneuve version of it in theaters.
 
jumpingsecond
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Moby Dick & catch 22 couldn't finish but different reasons. Catch 22 is still hillarious but it continues and continues where as MD just stopped from the get go.

Game of thrones is on the list too but not my fault. GRRM get to work :whipped:
 
w154
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Uscjake87 Uscjake87
My vote is Frank Herbert's "Dune." Too many long made up names for everything makes it hard to follow.
I only just made it to the end of the plot synopsis on the Dune Wikipedia page 😁
 
Muddlerminnow
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I loved Moby Dick. But then, I like fishing. I also liked Ulysses.

But could not make it through Finnegan's Wake. If it was half as long it might be twice as good.

Another stumbling block for me has been Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste. I love parts of it--but it English the translation doesn't quite seem to work. My French isn't good enough for the original. Among contemporary-ish books, I could not make it to the end of Sloterjik's Critique of Cynical Reason when it first came out--but maybe I should revisit it and try again?
 
rob#1
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‘Web’ by John Wyndham.

Enjoyed reading The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos when I was a teenager, but couldn’t get past about a third of Web after trying numerous times. The whole story turned my brain into a web and I just couldn’t get my head around it. No wonder he never released the book while he was alive...
 
ras47
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I've never started a book and not finished. Its an OCD thing. Even if its pure torture, I'll power through. It's cost me a lot of hours of my life too. Books I wanted to put down after page 20 I wanted to put down even more after page 220. And when I flip that last page I ask myself what the hell was I thinking? It's not a virtue - it's a compulsion.
 
MMMD
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MMMD MMMD
Joyce’s Ulysses. There’s not enough whiskey in the world.
359C2B79-8F65-42C0-9F58-3B4F110B6917.jpeg
Ha!
Well, For Whom the Bell Tolls is another one that I’ve only gotten about 2/3 through.
 
MRC
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MMMD MMMD
359C2B79-8F65-42C0-9F58-3B4F110B6917.jpeg

Perhaps he had one copy as a daily beater and one as a NOS shelf queen?
 
Stripey
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This thread has reminded me that I have an unread original copy of The Diamond Smugglers by Ian Fleming. Must get on to that (indeed, must actually find where it is ...).
 
Lucasssssss
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I enjoyed Ulysees, but had to read it with a companion guide. Worth pushing through some of the more difficult chapters in my opinion.

The Wake, I cannot get my head round.

riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs
 
JohnnyRocket
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alam alam
The Iliad and the Odyssey - required reading in my one of my humanities courses, I tried ....but failed miserably. The weekend before the final, I spent several hours with a classmate who explained the who, what when and where —in the best cliff-version possible way over pizza and beer, she was one good tutor and the only reason of me dealing with the total non-sense presented in that course! 😜
The Comic Book Version was much quicker to read.
 
Waltesefalcon
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While there are a few books I've taken awhile to finish, any book I thought was worthy I've finished. I've got fifteen on my night stand right now and sometimes the slower ones will fall towards the bottom of the pile.

Apparently, I'm also a little weird because I truly enjoy Moby Dick, I think it's probably the best American novel ever written and have read it cover to cover three times.
Edited:
 
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