Books you stopped reading (for whatever reason)

xxpost

or Air-Conditioned Guitar since he goes on @ great length about being the only living art critic in Las Vegas

In Cold Blood: True crime, meh.

xpost I might pick that book up again sometime, there was a lot of things about it I really liked and I enjoyed that book of short stories ('The Elephant Vanishes') he wrote but I really wasnt in the mood for it at the time. I think I put it down after the cat-slicing part.

In Cold Blood is interesting more for its historical significance in journalism than its narrative drive, I'll give you that

xpost Have you read any of his other novels? A Wild Sheep Chase, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World were all way better (those are the only others I've read).

i can't even get through a murakami short story in the new yorker. but that's just me. i know people love him.

I think he works best as a novelist based on the few I've read vs. The Elephant Vanishes which I didn't care for at all, but I can see the novels being polarizing, too. He's someone you definitely have to be in a very specific mood for, as he pretty much just writes subtle variations of the same book over and over.

there are some writers...i feel like i'm always watching them do something. like i'm watching them make an elaborate meal and i just want to eat. i don't want to watch them cook. that's why i like good sci-fi. because good sci-fi is like watching a really good magician. i just get wrapped up in the story or i just follow them blindly because i want to know where they are going. and when i'm done with their book i say how'd they do that!?

i tried to read a paul auster book years ago and it was like watching someone cooking in their kitchen and i got SO hungry. like, great, you bought really good ingredients, just put it in the oven already. i have this problem with a lot of kinda magic realism types. they never whisk me away. i'm too busy noticing every little move they make.

i'm really bad at metaphor by the way.

scott that metaphor is perfect!

Paul Auster bought real good ingredients but fucked the recipe up pretty bad.

No, I haven't read anything else by Murakami but a few people have recommended 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicles'. Another highly rated book I couldnt be bothered finishing was 'All The Pretty Horses'.

i've never even tried to read murakami, at first it was as a rebellion against trendiness/oversaturation but i guess i should give him a shot at some point.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is probably the best place to start, although I've heard very good things about Dance Dance Dance, too.

Brion Gysin, The Last Museum.

A man whose posts I followed remarked that he'd read Atlas Shrugged almost all the way through, but decided to abandon it with eight pages left to go.

i've stopped reading wind-up bird three times now, i dunno.

it was like page 300 and he was still sitting at the bottom of the fucking well. spoiler warning i guess.

I don't remember that part.

there are some writers...i feel like i'm always watching them do something. like i'm watching them make an elaborate meal and i just want to eat. i don't want to watch them cook. that's why i like good sci-fi. because good sci-fi is like watching a really good magician. i just get wrapped up in the story or i just follow them blindly because i want to know where they are going. and when i'm done with their book i say how'd they do that!?

i tried to read a paul auster book years ago and it was like watching someone cooking in their kitchen and i got SO hungry. like, great, you bought really good ingredients, just put it in the oven already. i have this problem with a lot of kinda magic realism types. they never whisk me away. i'm too busy noticing every little move they make.

i'm really bad at metaphor by the way.

― scott seward, Wednesday, July 25, 2012 11:49 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's a great metaphor, actually. Although with the first few Auster books I read felt more like I was watching a magician cook a meal, I guess. But I rarely have patience anymore for Great Writing that calls attention to itself. I prefer well-crafted but not overly assuming prose that leads the reader along the path of a good story. Some of my favorite writers are able to write capital P Prose and still spin a good yarn, e.g. E.L. Doctorow, but that's a rarity.

I stop books all the time though. Ones I remember stopping in recent years are Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea (just didn't want to be stuck listening to the narrator talk), The Razor's Edge (just didn't grab me), Augustus by John Williams (found the whole construction forced and painful), Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (enjoyable but fine to read in snippets - may pick it up again). I stop non-fiction all the time but I feel like there's no real need to finish certain non-fiction books

enjoyed charles yu's novel about time travel, so i bought his first book of short stories, 'third class superhero' (annoyingly has no hyphen), and it was, 1st story aside, dull sub-george saunders modern-life-is-so-commercialised stuff, all the stories much the same, so i gave up

I really, really, struggled with Robinson Davies. Everybody told me that I'd love him, but his books were so belabored and ... wordy. If I hadn't read John Fowles at an early age, I'd feel the same about him. I got sick to death of John Crowley, Dan Simmons, Stephen King (novels, not short stories), Richard Ford, late Nabokov, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, D.H. Lawrence and H.G. Wells.

What skot says is interesting w/r/t watching somebody cook. There are some writers I should really dig, and whom I respect, but whose prose or story never comes together and just ... lies, inert, on the page. A good question (and follow-up thread, maybe), is of the not-difficult writers that gave you the most trouble. Or the books that couldn't, for whatever reason, connect with you.

xp to hunter - I got about halfway through an Iris Murdoch book trying to impress a girl, although I don't know if I ever told her I was reading it. It was like a second-rate F.M. Ford novel.

Fowles and Davies also have that Jungian/psychoanalytic predilection in common. Kind of hard to take seriously.

I most recently took a hiatus from Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War... it's great, but I was in need of something light.

"the not-difficult writers that gave you the most trouble."

i have a problem with really flat deadpan affectless stuff and for years i would try to read john rechy and jean genet cuz they were transgressive and cool and all that but that matter of fact dead thing would basically make me forget what i was reading on every page. i think i would actually start daydreaming while i was reading. every once in a while i will pick up some genet and try again. maybe this explains my problem with murakami a little bit. japanese fiction can be very deadpan and matter of fact (i always wonder what i'm missing in translation). i mean i love kobo abe for the deadpan thing he does but its the over the top situations that make it work so well (i think he does kafka just about as good as anyone ever has since kafka). i was really proud of myself for finishing a mishima book a couple years back because i've struggled with him before too even though he's not really difficult to read.

I think the *great* writer I gave up on most quickly was probably Henry James.

:o

so instead of rechy i fell for james purdy and there is always celine and a bunch of other people if i need some lunatic french people in my life. (i can't read de sade either and he's not hard to read but zzzzzz....)

try agsin later with james!

again

at a later date.

Agsinbite of inwit

What James should I start with?

James Morrison of course

I got about halfway through an Iris Murdoch book trying to impress a girl, although I don't know if I ever told her I was reading it. It was like a second-rate F.M. Ford novel.

― bamcquern, Thursday, 26 July 2012 02:39 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FfoKY8W7b1w/0.jpg

Oh I've seen that Willy Wonka burn in like the last two or three days. Think of something new!

http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/4319_108119904198_3348685_n.jpg

start with some james short stories. ease on down that road. one yellow brick at a time.

It doesn't make me proud to admit that I've thrown out a book before finishing it but yeah, Murakami's "A wild sheep chase". I don't like his other books either. Or Ishiguro.

I think part of my frustration was that I went through a heavy Oe/Mishima phase and everybody was like "oh you like that? You should read this completely terrible other thing!"

Haha, that's better. I don't like to see a smart person like you develop rote ilx gif zing habits.

i mean to be fair i've never read any of ford madox ford's second rate novels

i gave up on parade's end! i'll try again someday. just too much of a commitment at the time. i kept putting it down and reading other things and then forgetting what had happened.

I like Ford, I just didn't like Murdoch that much. I didn't DISLIKE her that much either. It was kind of a by-the-numbers infidelity/marriage thing.

i think murdoch was a very talented novelist who kind of viewed it more as a recreation than anything else? i don't know. the novels display an obsessive repetition of two or three narrative germs, but then philip dick remains one of my favorite novelists since forever so i feel like i can't really get away with that as grounds for dismissal

i have never read a novel by murdoch, drabble, or lessing. i know, right! i have looked at them a hundred times. held them in my hands. never pulled the trigger. i am never in the correct mood for their books.

drabble is awesome! 'the millstone' is one of my favorite books.

i'm super-picky about what i buy so when i put down a book it's generally more 'i'm not ready for this' than 'i can't stand this.' i've read the first 20 pages of so of 'anna karenina' about three times and came to the former conclusion every time.

seconding The Millstone. and The Ice Age is THE proto-yuppie 70s novel predicting the 80s. but I've read nothing else by Drabble.

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich..interesting then meh by page 65.

Ishiguro is a good one. I brute-forced my attention through all of Orphans, got to the end, and chucked the book across the room. I've said elsewhere that George Eliot (specifically Middlemarch) gave me no pleasure, either, but I think I owe it another try.

i think murdoch was a very talented novelist who kind of viewed it more as a recreation than anything else

Also, she famously refused to be edited