Books you have begun and never finished

[Lucian Poll]

Great thread. There have been a few abandoned books, to my shame, but they remain on my TBR pile:

2666 by Roberto Bolano - I slogged through the first two parts (twice), devoured the third part (which was so much better) and then put it down just as it seemed to get interesting! I'll get back to it. In a book with a mass serial killer undercurrent you can't get to "The Part About The Crimes" and ignore it forever.

Noble House by James Clavell - I loved King Rat, Shogun, and Tai-Pan. Gai-Jin was decidedly meh, and I think this may have tainted my enjoyment of this book. Another to come back to afresh.

The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko - It just didn't grab me, which is a shame as I've also got the other three books in the series to read!

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk - 'Guts' is one of my favourite short stories, but the portmanteau structure of the book leads me to treat it like I would any collection of short stories, i.e. something to dip into.

But I do make a point of coming back to abandoned books, and sometimes it really pays off. Around eight years ago I bought a book called Q by a collective called Luther Blissett (who these days write as Wu Ming), which I started to read but put down after 30 or so pages. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't what I was looking for at the time. (It is an epic cat-and-mouse game played across Reformation Europe between two influential figures: one Lutheran, the other Catholic.) I finally pick it off my bookshelf this summer and am delighted to find a fantastic, full-blooded and utterly absorbing read that fizzed with ideas and energy. It got me thinking about writing for the first time in many a year and for that I am very thankful.

[Xiabei]

Too many to list. The nice thing about the library is I can try books out before buying them. Out of every ten I get from the library, I might make it through five. A book may sound good but after a few chapters it turns out not to be. I realize that's subjective, but I often don't like books if there isn't enough dialogue, or if the author spends way too much time setting up scenes and describing things.

And sometimes it's just my "book ADD". I'm constantly wanting to move on to other things, even if I happen to be enjoying a particular book. At the moment I'm reading five different books; I just keep juggling them.

edit: I know I mentioned it before, but I'm one of those who doesn't see the point of forcing myself to finish something just because I started it. Life is short and I'm not getting any younger (though I like to think otherwise), and there's too many books out there to slog through something I'm not enjoying. :-)

[bookworm 1]

Still can not get through Weaveworld.

[paperdragon]

I was finally defeated by "At the Molehills of Madness" by Rhys Hughes. A collection of short stories that at times I thought would show some promise and I kept thinking "well the next one might be better" I finally decided not to waste any more of my life forcing myself to finish it.