Books you tried to finish but just can't

[Chris Grieb]

Has anyone out there actually read Proust? Someone is supposed to have said about Proust that life was too short but Proust was too long. Has anyone read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Has anyone out there actually read Proust? Someone is supposed to have said about Proust that life was too short but Proust was too long. Has anyone read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann?

Yes, Chris; I've read both, the Proust longer ago than The Magic Mountain. I love The Magic Mountain and I have a special Heritage Edition of it, on high-quality paper, beautifully designed typography and layout, illustrated with woodcuts, and with a for-that-edition Introduction by Mann. My first copy of that book was in a suitcase which was the only item I've ever had stolen -- when I stupidly left it for a moment in a phone booth and walked a few feet across Grand Central lobby to get change at a newsstand. I was taking that first copy with me to show to a friend whom I was on the way to visit. Since Heritage Editions are printed in limited quantities, I couldn't find a replacement copy for a long time. Finally Larry found one for me on one of his trips to a conference or someplace.

Ellen

___

[Laure]

Probably only a small percentage of those who bought The Satanic Verses in protest proceeded to read it cover to cover. Neither the story nor the style would have wide appeal. I, however, did read all of it, and loved it, and hope to read it again someday. I thought it was a brilliantly crafted interweave of whimsy, devastating mockery, and occasional highlights of breathtaking beauty. But, then, for one thing, I have a fondness for thick symbolism (I even actually enjoy Ulysses). For another, I had enough familiarity with the mythology being lampooned to get a lot of the joke. The fundamentalist Moslems, who would have understood all the references, including ones that went over my head, didn't find the joke amusing. The situation is sort of comparable to that of the Mark Twain Letters from Earth, which mock various Biblical myths. One might be entertained or incensed or incomprehending depending on one's knowledge of and attitudes toward the material being ridiculed.

I read The Satanic Verses mainly in order to say that I had -- but I really enjoyed the writing style. Unlike Ellen, almost all of the references went over my head, though I could tell that someone familiar with Islam would "get it" much better than I did. I've read a couple other Rushdie books. I wouldn't recommend "Fury" -- it's kinda creepy. On the other hand, "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" is really a cool book! It's a fairy tale allegory that's sort of "about" the fatwa against him. It would make a fantastic computer-animated movie!

I started Letters from Earth awhile ago and haven't had time (or made time) to finish it, but wow, it is "cutting edge" for that era! I can't believe he wrote that stuff back then. I want to read more Twain; I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court while my 10-year-old was reading it this year, and loved it.

(This thread was supposed to be "books you couldn't finish" but somehow it's more interesting to discuss books you could finish... sorry for the detour.)

[emb021]

Actually, the book I was surprised to see on the list was the Harry Potter book!

Come on! Not to put down Rowling, but the HP books are mainly aimed at children (tho, like the best of 'children's literature' can be enjoyed by adults as well). As such, the writting is clear and easy. I read all the ones so far, and am hoping to get the next and last one to read on my flight to England this summer (the last book was supposed to be my airplane book as well, but I wound up reading it before I left on my trip).

So, IMO, for someone to say they had problems reading it, I have to wonder about the reader (more so then the writter, as I would with other books).

[Chris Grieb]

Larue; Some years ago I got to see Hal Holbrooke do Mark Twain. At the time there was documentary that claimed to prove Noah's Ark. There were some very funny lines from Twain about Noah in the show. Mark Twain was not impressed with that Bible story.

[Rich Engle]

The Harry Potter franchise<tm> can kiss my ass and die.

The usual argument is that "hey, finally someone wrote something that kids want to read...blah blah..."

It's a (heh) argument from intinidation. I dunno, but I think having raised children, that if you do it right they will want to read things anyway.

I don't see anything in these books at all, I find them numbing. I went to school with E.B. White's niece...I grew up on stuff like "Charlotte's Web," which, in my opinion, blows the snot out of any Harry Potter book. There's a lot of stuff like that. I came from a place where, in elementary school, there was a custom. After lunch, our teachers would read chapters from novels. It was a beautiful thing. It, heh, "literally" made you want to go out and get books to read.

I don't get Harry Potter. For one thing, the dude is starting to grow facial hair. The other thing is that there are so many books out there prior to this stuff, better books. But it's just good capitalism, I guess...did you ever see how much she grossed on that franchise? Zowie!

[Judith]

During the years when I was doing a lot of copyediting, I'd get so that when I finally headed home at night, I was still proofreading signs, theater adverstisements, subway maps...couldn't turn off the proofreader mode. I sometimes felt that I would go mad from the automatic mental correcting of every typo and grammatical error I saw. Do you have any idea how many typos and grammatical errors can be found amongst the reading material which plasters a major New York subway stop?

AAAAAHHHHH! But you can't do anything about them!! That kills me. I'm reading something and I find an error and I WANT TO FIX IT. Having actually done some copyediting for a novelist friend, I can say that few things are more satisfying.

Elizabeth, a science fiction cum fantasy writer I'd recommend that you try if you haven't read any of her work yet is Ursula Le Guin. Her The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my all-time favorite novels. I like her work in general, with her crisply clear yet mythically evocative style, including her collections of short stories and her juvenile novels, especially the Earthsea trilogy.

I'd second that recommendation, especially for the Earthsea books. They're quite deliberately based on Jungian archetypal situations (coming of age/accepting the shadow, love/sex, and death), and as such stay with you for a very long time. I would consider them to be among my all-time favorite books.

Judith

[Mike Hardy]

Re the compulsive reading some have mentioned -- if nothing else is available, grab a cereal box: During the years when I was doing a lot of copyediting, I'd get so that when I finally headed home at night, I was still proofreading signs, theater adverstisements, subway maps...couldn't turn off the proofreader mode. I sometimes felt that I would go mad from the automatic mental correcting of every typo and grammatical error I saw. Do you have any idea how many typos and grammatical errors can be found amongst the reading material which plasters a major New York subway stop?

Geez, Ellen, may bee Roland Pericles is knot really a whirled

fame us philosopher, but just a pseudonym invented buy ewe.

I never suspected. -- Mike Hardy

[Richard Uhler]

There are many books which I started but never finished; and I'm interested to see that some have already been mentioned in this thread. I started The Unbearable Lightness of Being twice, but was never able to get more than about 30 pages in; likewise The Magic Mountain & To The Lighthouse. I got halfway through Giles Goat-Boy before surrendering to somnolence. Sometimes A Great Notion was good for a hundred pages or so.

And Ulysses...ech. I keep thinking that somewhere in all of that verbosity there is a decent novelette screaming to be freed. (I lasted exactly two pages with Finnegan's Wake; same comment applies.)

I actually did read all of The Satanic Verses; mainly I recall being highly amused by a character who was pretty obviously supposed to represent Ruhollah Khomeini, and which I suspect was the real trigger for the infamous fatwa. (I've also read The Moor's Last Sigh by Mr. Rushdie, which I found more entertaining in general.)

And I really wanted to like the "Tevye The Dairyman" stories, but I just couldn't get into them (granted I was reading them in English, so maybe something was lost...).

Edited March 23, 2007 by Richard Uhler

[John Dailey]

Barbara:

~ Re SFiction, try some 'short' stories rather than novels; 'anthologies' is where to appreciate actual 'SF'. Trust me on this; THIS is where SF originated its mark; the 'name' authors (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, etc) have their real 'classics' here. Contemporarily, I think there aren't any of those anymore. I'm talking 'the classics' (Rand ref'd Frederick Brown, if I remember. 'Short' ones is all he did; like Serling's TWILIGHT ZONE [which used many of SF 'short' stories] stuff.) --- Appreciating any novels (then or now) requires an established 'fan.'

~ As far as reading things I couldn't finish, hasn't happened yet (that I can recall!). Tolkien's Ring trilogy was a slogfest, and, it was quite a while ago. I decided 'never again'; like movies, I'll check the reviews, book-blurb, author-familiarity, hype, etc. 1st. --- Re Shakes' 'comedies', my wife says that the plays are to be seen, not read.

LLAP

J:D

[John Dailey]

MSK:

~ Hope you don't have to drive Kat around to too many places...all those billboards and...things Whatever, avoid the highways and roads near and through Las Vegas and similar areas. Obviously dangerous territory, iykwim.

LLAP

J:D

[Chris Grieb]

John; Frederic Brown's short stories are very good. The one novel I tried to read were not as good.

[emb021]

Barbara:

~ Re SFiction, try some 'short' stories rather than novels; 'anthologies' is where to appreciate actual 'SF'. Trust me on this; THIS is where SF originated its mark; the 'name' authors (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, etc) have their real 'classics' here. Contemporarily, I think there aren't any of those anymore. I'm talking 'the classics' (Rand ref'd Frederick Brown, if I remember. 'Short' ones is all he did; like Serling's TWILIGHT ZONE [which used many of SF 'short' stories] stuff.) --- Appreciating any novels (then or now) requires an established 'fan.'

~ As far as reading things I couldn't finish, hasn't happened yet (that I can recall!). Tolkien's Ring trilogy was a slogfest, and, it was quite a while ago. I decided 'never again'; like movies, I'll check the reviews, book-blurb, author-familiarity, hype, etc. 1st. --- Re Shakes' 'comedies', my wife says that the plays are to be seen, not read.

SF has many good novels and epics out there. But like any other area of fiction, there is a lot of garbage. There are many excellent short stories, mostly classics from the past. Sadly, the venues for such works has been drying up for decades. But you can usually get collections of the good stuff.

LOTR is not for everyone. I read it in spirts and still conceder myself a fan. I keep thinking about re-reading the whole series, but there's too much new stuff I want to read.

If you think LOTR is daunting, try Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn 'Trilogy'. 3 thick hardbacks which were reprinted into *6* thick books (in the US. Other countries split each book into 3 or 4 paperbacks!). I was afraid to get into it, as the first part of the first book is setting up all the various characters/groups (about a half dozen) so we got to know them before things really got started. Thankfully I got past that 'hump' and went straight thru the rest of the trilogy. (I got the books because I was going on a 2 week trip that I'd knew I'd have quite a bit of free time I need to 'fill' with something, and there was no tv, etc. A couple of really thick books is good for keeping me going.

Hamilton has another big 2-part series that I'm waiting for the second one to come out in paperback before I jump into it. I don't to finish the first and have to wait for the second.

[Barbara Branden]

Barbara:

~ Re SFiction, try some 'short' stories rather than novels; 'anthologies' is where to appreciate actual 'SF'. Trust me on this; THIS is where SF originated its mark; the 'name' authors (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, etc) have their real 'classics' here.

LLAP

J:D

John, you have a point. I now remember that I did read some SF short stories that I liked -- I think one of them was by Ray Bradbury, whose description of his imagined country in space was beautiful. Dare I say that I'll give SF short stories a try? Can you recommend any books of these?

Barbara

[Dragonfly]

Dare I say that I'll give SF short stories a try? Can you recommend any books of these?

For short stories I recommend John Wyndham's Consider her ways and others and The Seeds of Time, and if you get the taste for it, I suggest his novels The Chrysalids and Trouble with Lichen. As I said in an earlier post, he is one of the very few SF writers I really like, I dislike the genre in general.

[cjsmall]

I would suggest any of the short story collections of George R. R. Martin and /or Vernor Vinge. All are excellent.

Regards,

--

Jeff

[Barbara Branden]

Thanks, Jeffrey and Drangonfly. I'll try your suggestions as soon as I finish the stack of books on my night table. But if you can suggest anthologies of short stories, that might be better.

Barbara

[BAMF]

Her The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my all-time favorite novels.

I've been meaning to read that. My teacher recommended it to me.

I came from a place where, in elementary school, there was a custom. After lunch, our teachers would read chapters from novels. It was a beautiful thing. It, heh, "literally" made you want to go out and get books to read.

Same here. I always LOVED being read to and I loved to read all the time, although I didn't have terribly good taste in books back then (Goosebumps series? ). I caught on to the whole 'reading thing,' but it seems as though the rest of my generation has not. They cannot even handle reading the back of a cereal box...unless of course there's a maze on the back for them to do...and then they need my help with it.

John, you have a point. I now remember that I did read some SF short stories that I liked -- I think one of them was by Ray Bradbury, whose description of his imagined country in space was beautiful. Dare I say that I'll give SF short stories a try? Can you recommend any books of these?

Barbara, you should try out the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin. Pretty good read.

Also, Ray Bradbury is excellent. I read The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man and loved them both (but mostly The Martian Chronicles). I thought that The Illustrated Man was a brilliant idea, but the writing in it wasn't as quality as in TMC.

[John Dailey]

Barbara; 'short story' collections (from what's called 'The Golden Age'):

~ Heinlein (Robert A.) -> The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Green Hills of Earth, Revolt in 2100 ('If This Goes On--'...you'll like it), The Menace From Earth, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, The Past Through Tomorrow --- 'novella' collections are -> 'Waldo & Magic, Inc,' Assignment In Eternity.

~ Clarke (SIR Arthur C.) -> Expedition to Earth, Reach For Tomorrow, Tales From the White Hart (my fave; understand one of the stories was used in one of the military academies), The Other Side of the Sky, Tales of Ten Worlds, The Nine Billion Names of God, Of Time and Stars, The Wind from the Sun.

(2B-Cont)

LLAP

J:D

Edited March 30, 2007 by John Dailey

[John Dailey]

~ Asimov (DR. Isaac) -> 'I, Robot' [ring a movie bell?], The Rest of the Robots, Earth Is Room Enough, Nine Tomorrows, Nightfall and Other Stories, The Bicentennial Man [movie also] and Other Stories, Buy Jupiter and Other Stories.

~ Theodore Sturgeon (who legendarily responded when asked "Why do you write that stuff? 90% of it is crap!" with "90% of EVERYTHING is crap; so?") and Frederic Brown wrote many short stories, but none compiled as above. They'd be findable in 'general' Anthologies of SF writers; check the cover blurb re classic, though.

~ If you 'like' 1/2 of what you check out, then you like SFiction and some SFantasy. These writers are who started (er, made 'popular') the whole genre. The novels (and other writers) came later...for better or worse.

LLAP and...don't get too lost in...The Twilight Zone.

J:D

Edited March 30, 2007 by John Dailey

[cjsmall]

Also, Ray Bradbury is excellent. I read The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man and loved them both (but mostly The Martian Chronicles). I thought that The Illustrated Man was a brilliant idea, but the writing in it wasn't as quality as in TMC.

Kori:

Bradbury is also one of the greats and I think Barbara would enjoy his writing - especially any of the early work including the two you mention. Have you read Something Wicked This Way Comes? This is my favorite Bradbury novel. I also think Dandelion Wine is a fine collection of short stories. Bradbury is so emotionally evocative and Dandelion Wine is the epitome of what Summer means to a child (at least to a mid-westerner of my generation) while Something Wicked This Way Comes is, for me, the ultimate expression of Fall. Bradbury captures the innocence and the wonder of youth like no one else.

Regards,

--

Jeff

[Barbara Branden]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll follow up on at least some of them and let you know my reactions. Jeffrey, you make Ray Bradbury sound very interesting; I'll try him first.

What I have run into in my SF journeys is all sorts of stories in which i learn much more about science than I have any desire to know -- or, at least, any desire to learn about in a novel. Am I correct in thinking that may be true of Clarke and Asimov? I haven't read either of them, so this is simply a vague impression; but if its true, please warn me not to attempt them. Also -- and I should have said this before I asked for recommendations -- I intensely dislike the SF I've read that has no possible application to human life on this planet; if the point of the story can apply only to Martians with three heads and no sex life, I'm not interested.

Barbara

[Chris Grieb]

Barbara; A quick look at Amazon showed only one Frederick Brown title. What Mad Universe. You would need to check larger libraries or second-hand science fiction book sellers for other titles.

[John Dailey]

Barbara:

~ Re 'short stories', no, these writers may bring up BEM's (Bug-Eyed-Monsters), but, really more hinted at than anything explicitly speculated about. The stories are really about speculated expectations of the future (aliens, ancient discovered artifacts, technology [robots, for only 1 obvious subject there], time-travel, etc) as such may impinge upon humanity (or, 'a' human.) In short, how 'the human condition' would/could deal with 'the future.' Little room in such 'short' stories to 'teach' anything about science (beyond perfunctory explanations/technobabble about it's frontiers relevent to the story; and they ALL deal with the idea of the frontier's possible challenges.) As I said: think Twilight Zone and Serling.

LLAP

J:D

Edited March 31, 2007 by John Dailey

[John Dailey]

Barbara:

~ Sorry I missed refs to Bradbury (Ray) -> Dark Carnival, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, R is for Rocket, I Sing the Body Electric...and others. --- Bradbury's more a metaphorical-oriented 'fantasy' writer than SF proper, but...many professionals and fans argue over the diffs re 'fantasy' and 'science' anyway. Worth reading, but, not to everyone's tastes.

LLAP

J:D