Comments on: What Makes You Stop Reading a Book?

By: Vinnie

Vinnie — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:09:42 +0000

Nice job by Laura,Thanks for the discussion. Also liked the abandon book piece.V

By: C.

C. — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:17:48 +0000

Ah, to each his own. I’ve read and enjoyed several of these other people’s unreadable books. In re: Joyce — I never finished Ulyssess, but that’s on me. Have you tried, however, Dubliners? They’re not stream-of-consciousness, and to my mind they show his strengths in a different way, one that isn’t so caught up in the confusing structure and allusive punnery that Pirate Jim goes completely off the deep end with in Finnegan’s Wake. Or in other words: Ulysses is a brick, but The Dead is quite possibly my favorite short story of all time, and maybe that’d hit you in a way that’d let you see what was good about him, Laura. I’d hope so. Everyone wants everyone else to like their favorite stuff.

But in re this subject as a whole…I often find Updike insufferable, but he’s not a bad writer. He’s quite a good one, in fact, and I can recognize that, I just don’t enjoy him. Putting a book down midway doesn’t necessarily mean the book sucks. It just means that you don’t like it.

By: Laura Mc.

Laura Mc. — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:36:55 +0000

correction: widow

By: Laura Mc.

Laura Mc. — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:36:14 +0000

I have always had this would-be 8th grader in me that wants to *learn* from the book. Because of this, I read Victorian novels almost exclusively.. I like semi-predictable musings about women by women that go on forever and ever into the English moor.

So, for me, I couldn’t deal with Joyce. I just didn’t know how to develop any kind of connection with the material. I couldn’t get a word in edge-wise with so much mind-blowing, structural revolution (or garbled nonsense depending on how you look at it), and I STILL don’t understand why he is part of the canon.

Druggie ex-pat who was in the right place at the right time and pitched his dribble to the right wealthy widower.. but I say this with a tinge of adolescent angst.

By: Bunting

Bunting — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:04:07 +0000

ferretrick: I didn’t finish that book either. It’s like David Lynch; if it’s too weird with no normal to pin things down, I feel mentally queasy and don’t know what the point is.

By: Jthan

Jthan — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:18:25 +0000

Late to the party (but fashionably attired) I have to add that I can’t read a book that has a character being offensive JUST to be offensive. It may be satirical, but no. I’ma lookin’ at you, Brett Easton Ellis.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:56:25 +0000

1. Is the book too depressing? (Though I probably wouldn’t have picked it up at all if I thought this.)
2. Am I really bored? Do I give a shit what happens to any of these characters?
3. Do I hate the main character? Are they Too Stupid To Live? (That is usually my #1 pet peeve).
4. Does the book go around shaming a particular group (say, those “yummy mummy” books)?

By: Michelle Kinsey Bruns

Michelle Kinsey Bruns — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:12:26 +0000

Nobody captured 20th-century suburban-bourgeois America more vividly than Updike did. Given that M.O., I see his unlikeable characters as really just sort of an unavoidable occupational hazard.

Coincidentally, I had to physically restrain myself last night from explaining in great detail, over at TN, why Tim O’Brien’s “Tomcat in Love” was one of the most unenjoyable (two-thirds-of-a) books I’ve ever read. Short version is, an author with neither liking nor respect for his characters is going to have a hell of a tough time in making them interesting to me. If O’Brien cared about Tom and Lorna Sue the way Updike cared about Rabbit, I might just have finished that book. But he didn’t, and in fact, seemed to be making fun of them pretty much nonstop the whole way through. Total turnoff.

Do read “Love Is a Mix Tape.” It’s amazing. But learn from my mistakes: do *not* start Chapter 1 in the bathtub while getting ready to go to a party. “Buzzkill” doesn’t come close.

By: Roisin

Roisin — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:36:52 +0000

I keep trying to read books that are narrated in the present tense, and then having to give up. I just find it too annoying and try-hard, like they’ve been written by someone in a creative writing class. For that reason I have never been able to finish anything by Anita Shreve.

By: Mark Blankenship

Mark Blankenship — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:59:03 +0000

@ Just Smooty — I’ve heard about “Love is a Mix Tape.” Thanks for reminding me of it! I really want to read it.

@ Seth — Send me an e-mail. You’re welcome to my copy.

@ Sarah — It really resonated that you said you hate having opinion on something you haven’t finished. I’m totally with you, which is why I agonized about putting “The Song Is You” away. And it’s funny, because just before I picked up Phillips’ book, I read Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” At first, I was dubious, but I pushed through, fell madly in love with the thing, and ended up finishing it in less than two days. I was hoping for something similar with Phillips… but it wasn’t to be.