• 3rdBlueWizard@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    The Robert Jordan Wheel of Time books. By book 7 I hated the main characters and really hated the writing style. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition…

    The Sanderson books were ok, but they couldn’t rescue the series and I got no joy from finishing it. A lot of relief though to be done with it.

    • Terevos@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I rage quit after book 3. I’m sorry you had to suffer so much longer.

      Read Sanderson’s own books though. They’re pretty good, IMO

        • Terevos@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          So far I’ve only read Way of Kings. I found it too slow paced for me, especially the 1st half of the book. But… I’m reading Lost Metal now and will probably read Tress… and then back at it for the next Stormlight Archive

    • Terevos@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I rage quit after book 3. I’m sorry you had to suffer so much longer.

      Read Sanderson’s own books though. They’re pretty good, IMO

    • StranaMente@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Agreed on the wheel of time. Every character has one and just one quirk and they repeat it in every occasion. Also it’s quite troubling, once you start thinking on it, this fixation on men/women relationship.

  • Fish@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. After that book I gave myself permission to DNF though, so it was a maturing experience for me. I mostly wanted to know what happened to Stephen and that’s what drove me, along with the “No mere book shall defeat me” attitude.

    I really enjoyed all of the Fae short stories actually. I’m not really a horror fan, but I found Fae, and mortals interaction with it, particularly gripping and memorable. I never put the book down when I was in Fae, trapping me along with the victims, perhaps that’s why I wanted Stephen to just be ok.

    It was just everything else in the book I couldn’t enjoy. The titular characters I found uninteresting. The setting, fae excluded, I was apathetic about. The structure, the footnotes, dear god the footnotes.

    But the Fae stuff? I’ll take 10 more of them in an anthology please.

    • frankPodmore@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I agree with you about Strange and Norrell. The pacing was poor and it was over-long.

      But!

      Susanna Clarke’s next book, Piranesi, is actually really good. Like, really, incredibly good. I recommend it to everyone and so far no one has said anything but positive things about it. I rarely re-read books but this is one that I’ve come back to.

      As it happens, I read Piranesi first, so I found JS&MN a bit disappointing, but I’m glad I read them that way around otherwise I might have skipped Piranesi, and that would have been a mistake!

    • gina@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It took me several attempts to get through Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I finally managed it once I decided I wasn’t going to read the footnotes. I guess that means I missed out on some of the story but oh, well. I really liked the book, but all the back and forth was too much for me.

    • diegeticscream[all]🔻@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      But the Fae stuff? I’ll take 10 more of them in an anthology please.

      Have you heard of “the thinking woman’s guide to real magic”? I thought it was rad.

  • SuperSloth@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Fucking “IT” by Stephen King. That book started so good, but it’s about 400 pages longer than it needed to be and the child orgy at the end really didn’t help me cross the finish line. That book became a chore to get through.

  • Variden@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Fahrenheit 451 but I wanted to put it down because of the bad translation. I switched to reading it in English and everything went smoothly after that.

  • Atom@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    The Bible was a difficult read for me. I pushed through just because I wanted to have at least read it when using it’s words to contradict Supply-Side Christians.

  • TheSlyFox@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Moby dick ( complete unabridged edition).

    The parts where they go into detail about whale hunting was like reading a manual, I did not know there where other editions and just got the frost one I saw. Maybe it was my part for not investigating before.

  • OmegaMouse@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Les Misérables. I love Hugo’s way of writing, and his descriptions of Jean grappling with his conflicting feelings or breaking down when he was finally shown love were breath taking. There were certain parts of the book in which I couldn’t put it down. But the chapters that described the battle of Waterloo and the layout of the Paris sewer system bored me to tears.

  • Terevos@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Malazan: Book of the Fallen.

    Having no idea what’s going on and not really even being able to comprehend what I’m reading should not be a ‘feature’ of a fiction book.

    • CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.netOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I know exactly what you mean. It suffers from the very worst fantasy tropes of meaningless words. I did not finish.

  • frankPodmore@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Solar Bones by Mike McCormack was really bad. It was meant to be ‘experimental’ but it was literally just a very boring story with, get this, no punctuation (an ‘experiment’ first conducted about a hundred years ago). There were literally pages and pages where the narrator complained about a building with poorly poured concrete foundations at one point (yes, really). It was quite short, so I got through it, but it was just totally pointless!

  • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Plato, Complete Works.

    Now, it was required for a class, so there were external factors to why I finished it. However, it’s the only book I’ve ever wanted to burn and bring forced to read it likely exacerbated that feeling. I haven’t yet, but one of these years, it’s going to be ash.

  • ramsgrl909@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Gunslinger, first part of The Dark Tower series - The style just wasn’t for me. I finished the series though, 100% best series I’ll ever read.

  • diegeticscream[all]🔻@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I pushed through Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, and I honestly regret it.

    I can’t find any redeeming qualities in it looking back, just awful.

  • Lateralking@vlemmy.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m attempting a run of the wheel of time at the moment and it’s just so long winded. I’m taking a break with other books for now.

  • unwinagainstable@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    The Count of Monte Cristo. I did like it, but I expect the abridged version would have been better for me. There were parts that were a struggle to get through. It just seems like the unabridged version is more recommended, so I felt compelled to get through it

    • StranaMente@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      There’s a reason behind it. When it was first published, it was serialised, so Dumas had an incentive to drag it along, also it romanticizes travels around Europe because it was fancy at the time.

      The plot behind it is still one of the most compelling I have ever read and a revenge story that few modern works of art can match.