Yes I could not finish the third hunger games book. I just resigned myself to watching the movies. Got really tired of being in katniss'. Cannot stand the wishy washy annoying person she is so I got through book one and two and started three but couldn't finish it.
I tried to read 50 shades of grey but couldn't get pass the first few pages.
I could never finish the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I tried a few times but kept getting all the characters mixed up.
The same for any Jane Austen novel.
Several times I've tried to read Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. For the life of me I cannot get through even the first chapter.
I believe the only Conrad work I read to completion was Heart of Darkness. That was not because I wanted to do so. It was required reading in one of my literature classes.
I saw the movie, the Cruel Sea. It was long winded but I watched it.
Several years later, I found the novel, The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat.
Wow, I thought the film was long winded...
I never finished the book!
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana
Lots and lots of books lately that I can't finish. I have several friends that read and they keep up with reviews, etc. They pass the books to me to read but I am overwhelmed and don't have the time to read as much. I often will have three books going with book marks inside and maybe one will be finished. I don't know why I don't get swept up in a book like I used to. But I will never stop trying. Audio is great on long road trips. Or even not so long. Been known to sit in the car parking lot waiting for a chapter to end before I can go inside a store.
I've actually enjoyed The Lord of the Rings Trilogy a lot. I've read it more than once. Now when Tolkien moved on to The Silmarillion he lost me completely. It was incredibly boring.
I actually kind of liked the Silmarillion, though nowhere as much as LOTR and The Hobbit. If you approach it as a work of mythological history, it work much better than if you go in looking for a novel. It needed more work, but putting it out was far from the worst of Christopher Tolkien's sins. Some of the Lost Tales volumes were much worse.
I read the first book in the Game of Thrones series but could not get through the next one in the series.
I've been terrible for not finishing books the last while. Some of it is life, some of it is mood. basically, the only novel-length works I've finished in 2019 were ones I took on vacation with me.
In terms of long term failures to finish, though, the most egregious is Clive Barker's fantasy epic Imajica. Started reading it on a trip to Shanghai in 1995 while my wife was ill and we were holed up in the Peace Hotel. Still sits unfinished on my shelf today. Not bad or anything, but very long and complex and once I lost focus on it, I couldn't get it back.
Anything by Steven King. I've tried several, but there's something about his writing that just makes my eyes glaze over. I never get more than a couple of chapters in before I give up.
It took me three times to finish Lord of the Rings... Actually it took me three times just to finish "Fellowship of the Ring." I got super tired of Bilbo's birthday party.
Once I got past that, it was a breeze. But at 12 years old, all that first 400 pages is a bit tough to get through.
I have had books that I set aside and then come back to...
Devil in the White City... King Leopold's Ghost...
I usually alternate between reading and audio books so I'll get it one way or the other.
As a history writer, I can't often read for pleasure but to further my awareness of something that is supposed to be fact. But interpretation is a bugger in warping the so-called "facts." So some ways of interpreting events have become so well known to me that I can almost tell how a certain historian is going to "take" almost any event. Try reading "1491" and compare what it says to you about America's indigenous peoples, compared to what they taught us in school.
But when I read for pleasure, I sample everything until I find something i just "fall into." I am a sucker for romances for example, as long as they are good. Further, Nietzsche once said, we can never read the same book twice. He means that if you like the poetry of Tennyson, and you read a book with a whole lot of poems, some you will understand right away, and others on the second read, or even the fifth read. So as you grow, your ability to read grows, and that in turn make you see the world better, and on and on like that. So some pieces I have read many times. I just keep seeing new things. I think I could give a good example with music. Let us say you like Bob Dylan. You mayo like one of his songs, and even know the words, but do you really know what he is talking about? Then suddenly, one day it hits you between the eyes like a pie! The Old "Light Bulb" Experience! I love books like that! So, my conclusion is, I seldom finish a book!
