I bought World Without End when it first came out, no idea why as I was not that thrilled with his Pillars...I tried to get into it over the recent holidays & set it aside for something better! I may, or may not give it another try later.
I couldn't finish The Historian or Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell.

Pat

Eat, Love, Pray - to use Frieda's vernacular - "claptrap" in the highest degree. Self important, boring, me-me-me. Yuck.

Also couldn't finish the series of "Twilight" - badly written, ridiculous story line, bah.

"The World Without End" - after two chapters, I get it. The plants will take over the world and the cockroaches win.

That's all I can remember for right now. It's tough to remember books I don't finish unless they were truly dreadful.... These were dreadful.

One I wish I had NOT finished: "Fall On Your Knees."

Also, in the same category: "The Celestial Prophecy." Pure drivel.

Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm was a famous novel which I could just not finish. The characters were unpleasant, and the setting was so bleak.

Well there ya go. I tossed one out the other day and I don't even remember the title. A few I do remember-

The Mangus
The Handmaids Tale
The Towers of Trebizond
No Gifts From Chance

Adding Midnight Fugue to the list.

I toss out lots also and unable to remember titles.

Could not get into Middlesex, maybe the size of the book was one of the reasons.

I am losing patience with thick books!!

"Street of a Thousand Blossoms" by Gail Tsukyama. I'm usually a big fan of hers, but this one just didn't grab me.
"Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," which came highly recommended. It just depressed me from the get-go.

The trouble with this question is that if I start a book that I really can't get on with I usually return it to the library, give it back to the lender (although I am wising-up to borrowing books that other people love) and then forget both name and author.
When checking through my list of 'best books' of the decade I notice that besides the title Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks set in nineteenth century France, I have written 'rubbish'. I remember I only managed two chapters and after reading the dinner-table conversation between the youngest son of the house and his married sister about her difficulty in getting pregnant I chucked the book at the wall.
I must be getting old, as I wonder if the question of sex is mentioned in any modern households at mealtimes with parents, grandparents, young children all sitting round the table . . . but then Faulks probably comes from a intellectual family who dwell on a different cloud . . .

A few years back I tried to read From a Buick 8 by Stephen King, who I have always enjoyed since I was a teenager. However this book was just a mess and I eventually hurled it away and never touched it again.

I aso tried to read Lisey's Story, again by King and had a hard time getting into although I would recomend the audio book highly. Mare Winningham reads it so well and the story really is phenominal once you get into the meat of it.

New Moon by Stephanie Meyers was the newest I stopped reading and I won't try to read anymore. To teenybopperish for me I guess.

I could not finish The Help. I kept going and going, thinking it had to improve at some point. It was so highly touted that I was expecting it to suddenly become un-put-downable. I really disliked everything about it.

dedtired, a friend of mine was so blown away by The Help that she wanted me to read it. She compared it to To Kill a Mockingbird and she just knew that I would love it as well. I did not love it and only finished it out of courtesy. I had to tell her: Sorry, it doesn't come anywhere close to TKAM in my estimation.

Not here at RP but in some other forums it is a pounceable offense to say anything negative about The Help. I forget sometimes that 'fan' comes from fanatic, but the response to this book is almost surreal in that it cannot be criticized, even gently and respectfully, in some quarters. It's refreshing to me, dedtired, to run across another reader who isn't completely enamored with The Help. :-)

Friedag, thank you for your response. I posted a poor review of the book on Amazon and almost got skinned alive. However, a few other brave souls agreed with me and it was reassuring to know I was not alone in disliking it -- intensely.

dedtired and frieda - It's always amusing (maybe a little surprising) to me when we have one of these threads (What book could you not finish? or What book did you really dislike?) that posters frequently list books that I really did like. Take "The Help" for example. Although I agree it's no TKAM, I really enjoyed reading it, and recommended it to my book group for discussion. Another one listed here -- The Handmaid's Tale -- though I wouldn't call it an "enjoyable" read, really gave me food for thought, and I've thought about it many times since reading it several years ago. Some of the scenes are still vivid in my mind.

A friend has raved about The Help, I have it my library to ask for book.
I shall approach with caution!!

The stand out of unfinished books for me has long been One Hundred Years of Solitude. I say "stand out" because the book is held in such esteem by so many. I really don't get it.

As for The Help, I enjoyed reading it, but felt it suffered from Dances-With-Wolves Syndrome.

Yes, Kathy that is one of my biggest objections to The Help, along with the stereotypical characters. Funny because Dances is one of my least favorite movies, at least among movies that are generally popular with others.

Of the books listed here, I did very much enjoy Middlesex. Thank heavens we don't all like the same things. Life would be awfully dull if we did.

I want to make a comment about "The Help." I think to appreciate this novel fully one must have had to have grown up in the deep South, in the pre-Civil Rights time. I found it a spot on commentary about the society which I myself knew so well. I also liked the way the author interwove fictitious characters with actual personnages of this historical period, e.g. Medgar Evers.

Having said that, it was by no means a perfect book. I would agree that Harper Lee writes more eloquently of these same issues.

Maybe it is considered "heresy" to dislike this work because it has remained so long on the NYT best seller list and the topic is sensitive to Americans.

A chaq'un son gout!

kathy t - What is a "Dances-With-Wolves syndrome"? That's a new expression for me.

I wondered the same thing, sarah. ;-)

This is an interesting thread, in some of the books not only disliked, but with a vengeance! I really liked Middlesex (although it sort of went down hill toward the end) and The Handmaid's Tale has been a re-read for me recently.

Here is a definition I found on a blog: "Dances With Wolves" syndrome, wherein the non-White society is validated by the arrival of the White man.

I liked Middlesex too, and I also liked Dances With Wolves. The above definition is interesting, because to me the film showed that Native Americans had a perfectly good lifestyle until the White Man interfered. I also thought the use of subtitles while they spoke in their own language was well done, rather than pretending all the 'red Indians' spoke English among themselves.

astrokath, For whatever it's worth, I also liked "Dances with Wolves" quite a lot; in fact, I own the film. I agree with your opinion.

The way I understand "Dance with Wolves" syndrome is it is the reinterpretation (revision) of history to redress a former lopsided view. Native Americans were once portrayed mainly unsympathetically, the bad guys, while Whites were the "good guys." To correct this view, historians, book and screen writers, swung the opposite direction, portraying Native Americans as noble while Whites were anything but. Good intentions, probably. But unfortunately many go to the opposite extreme, without subtlety, to build up the once down culture at the expense of the once on-the-top culture. Instead of alleviating or expunging racial stereotyping, it can enhance it, just in the other direction.

I have not read "The Help", but from the descriptions I have read and heard, there seems to be quite a bit of black=good/white=bad stereotyping. Maybe that is the problem that irks some readers, but the politically correct view today tolerates (even promotes) stereotyping, as long as the stereotyping goes the politically correct way.

Thanks kathy t and lydia for the definitions. I did some online digging, too, and found a definition attributed to a Joseph Bruchac, who may have coined the term. It basically said the same thing that lydia explained. I think the term may have been expanded to include the definition that kathy t gave. I read several comments from people online saying that the new movie "Avatar" suffers from the "Dances With Wolves" syndrome.

Given either definition, though, I'd have to disagree that "The Help" suffered from this syndrome. And kathy t and frieda, I hope you don't feel "jumped on." I just want to explain my reading of the book.

Possible SPOILER ALERT
- I didn't feel that all the blacks were noble and the whites evil. Minnie, for example, certainly had some questionable character traits (think about her "chocolate pie, ewww), and her husband was basically abusive. As for the white characters, I felt that many of them were oblivious rather than evil (except for the main Mean Girl and a few others). They'd grown up under that culture and never stopped to examine it. One maid's story even told about how great her employer was to her and her family.

As for the other definition, the white man, or in this case woman, coming in to save the day, I also didn't get that out of my reading. I felt like Skeeter's motives were pretty self-centered. I don't think she really even thought about how what she was doing was affecting the maids until pretty far into the project. The maids were the ones who were really taking the risk in talking to her. They were their own saviors, so to speak.

END OF SPOILERS

Anyway, that's just my opinion of the book. It certainly doesn't compare with "To Kill a Mockingbird," but then what book does? We'll be reading "The Help" for my book discussion group later this year and I'll be curious to hear how my fellow readers there feel about this story. This month, we're reading another book with a similar theme: "The Space Between Us," about the relationship between an Indian woman and her servant.

I didn't finish A Hundred Years of Solitude or Lamphiere's Dictionary and a few others I've forgotten. Mostly I go on and plow through what I start--don't know why, really.

Frieda, did you know that Fowles rewrote part of The Magus at a much later date? I have not (and will not) reread it and was thoroughly confused by the first edition. I remember one of my English profs saying, "What was it all about, John?" during a class once.

Aha! It has a name : 'Dances with Wolves Syndrome' -- the phenomenon, that is, of tipping the scales of revisionism too far. I've observed it and have tried to describe it, so I appreciate a pithy phrase. Thanks to all who brought it up and defined it. (Does the film Braveheart also suffer from DWWS? Scots/good, English/bad.)

Vicki, nah, I don't feel jumped on. I'm pretty confident in what I like and dislike. :-) But I do feel sorry for some folk in other forums who are pounced on for having differing opinions.

You state your opinion very eloquently and convincingly. I would love to belong to a real-life book club with members as articulate as RPers!

Actually, the stereotyping in The Help didn't bother me as much as the accumulation of it and a bunch of picayunish things, such as the use of dialect for the black characters but not white ones (as if those southern white women spoke flat textbook English) and a certain looseness in factuality (yeah, the author admits she got her facts wrong in the notes at the back of the book), etc. I found all these things too distracting and it didn't give me any great confidence in the writer. If I had liked the way she told the story, the smaller things wouldn't have mattered, though.

Yeah, comparing any book with the theme of race relations to To Kill a Mockingbird is not advisable, unless it really is 'blow the fish out of the water' good.

Thanks for the compliment, Frieda. I, too, am glad to be part of a group of dedicated readers who feel comfortable enough with each other to disagree about their likes and dislikes. And since "The Help" was a debut novel, maybe this writer will get better with her writing and her facts.

P.S. I never read "The Magus," but it doesn't sound like I missed much.

I'm probably the only one on this forum who has actually read both versions of Fowles' "The Magus" and liked it. Maybe the mystery and the setting appealed to me, having spent some time in Greece. I would venture to say that this would be a novel that would not age very well, however. I am sure that if I went back now and re-read it, after many decades, I would find it flawed, especially with regard to the "male chauvinism." Having said this, I do think Fowles is a thoughtful and talented author, and I like his other works.

Thank you, Sarah, for expressing so well my own thoughts about "The Help." I thought it was a wonderful debut novel and captured the culture of that period in Mississippi. I still maintain that if one grows up in a particular culture, in a particular period, it influences one's strong reaction to a work, in terms of accuracy and tone.

I think TKAM is a better piece of writing because Harper Lee captured the universality of the themes in such an eloquent style.

Frieda, I come from a country who's people/Governments have been blamed for endless wrongs from the days of King Alfred, via Francis Drake to the American War of Independence, the Scots/Irish 'troubles', to the India question (think of the film Gandhi along with Braveheart as you mention, or the one about Michael Collins for which Hollywood must take much blame).
I think these days, as Top Nation, the US is getting it in the neck with various factions from the anti Columbus lobby to the League for Keep Outer Space for Little Green Men.
I still feel it should be possible to tell a good story without distorting the facts . . . although that hasn't stood in Dan Brown's way with his way-out misinformation re the Masons and the Founding Fathers. ;-)

Vee, I love "League for Keeping Outer Space for Little Green Men." Maybe I'll write a letter to the editor of our local paper; they advocate almost anything "left-ish."

I've just tried to get into "Wolf Hall" which many of you have read on this forum. I just could not get interested in it--- far too many characters and complicated family trees for my taste. If a book does not engage me by the 3rd chapter, back it goes to the library.

If I am going to read about that period of English history, I think I would prefer to look for something by Sharon K. Penniman.

woodnymph -- I'm having a little trouble with "Wolf Hall" myself. I'm reading it on my Kindle, so I'm not sure just how far I have gotten. I like the Thomas Cromwell character, but when I put the book down, I don't find myself feeling anxious to get back to it. In fact, I find myself thinking about what other books I could be reading. And now it's getting into descriptions of torture, which always bother me. Not sure if I'll finish it or not.

On another note -- I thought of a couple of books that I did put aside during the first attempt, but then ultimately finished reading because they were book club choices. The first one I recall was "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. I tried reading the book on my own but was annoyed by the use of all caps every time Owen spoke. When my book club chose to read it, I was leery. But I ultimately enjoyed the book -- not as much as "Cider House Rules" -- but I'm glad I read it.

Also, two books that I put down initially (years ago) but ended up finishing and loving: "The Hobbit" and Mitchener's "Hawaii."

sarah, that's interesting about "A Prayer for Owen Meany." Years ago, a good friend praised the novel to the skies and told me it was absolutely the finest book he had ever read. I tried repeatedly to read it but could not get past the first chapter.

I skipped ahead in "Wolf Hall" and found some descriptions that were a bit too graphic for my taste....

Maybe this is cheating but I cannot say that I did not finish Wolf Hall because I did not even start it, once I got it from the library. Weight wise uncomfortable reading for me.One quick return.

"Wolf Hall" and "A True Balance". I tried with both of them and finally decided I was punishing myself. I can't see why "Wolf Hall" won the Man Booker award.

I just remembered that I gave up on "One Thousand White Women" more than two-thirds of the way through. It has an intriguing premise based on an actual proposition that one thousand white women volunteers would become the wives of Cheyenne men in exchange for one thousand horses. The women would "civilize" the Cheyenne and the resulting offspring would be a blend of the two races. That would make everything hunky-dory, I guess.

After countless stereotypes, anachronisms and sensibilities more attuned to the 1990's than the 1870's, I was grinding my teeth. Then there's the violence, a lot of it graphic, and the constant swearing. And the protagonist, May Dodd, whose journals we are supposed to be reading, is a caricature of a much later type of feminist. I was beginning to think this book was written as some sort of joke. Imagine my shock when some readers I know actually gushed about the "authenticity."

I was confused reading "Wolf Hall" at first, but once I figured out that the "he" pronoun always referred to Cromwell I enjoyed it tremendously thereafter. I also appreciated it more after participating in the discussion started by martin_z here at RP.

I also enjoyed Wolf Hallimmensely. It was the first book I have read for a long time that I wanted to carry around with me in case I got a chance to read a couple of pages.
Vannie, I am interested to know why you think it was not a worthy Booker winner. It isn't to everyone's taste, obviously, but it was well written.

I was surprised when Wolf Hall won the Booker Prize, because I found it such a very readable and enjoyable book. I usually find that particular prize goes to works loved by the Ivory Tower critics who only admire the often incomprehensible meanderings of their intellectual friends.
mary/woodnymph I love books with family trees and often spend longer looking up who married/begat who rather than read the actual 'story'. Of course it does help to have some knowledge of the period in question or in the case of the Tudors a 'feel' for the times. So Sarah Canary, try and get past the few torture scenes, they have to be put up with; this was still a brutal age.

vee -- I'm sticking with "Wolf Hall" for now. I'm less confused by the number of characters (so many Henrys and Thomases!) than by the way she jumps from scene to scene (and time to time) without any warning. But, I'm over halfway through the book, so I will probably finish reading it.

I rarely post here, but read your posts every few days. Thanks for all the great book suggestions! I tried to read Kristin Lavransdatter because of the posts about it here and found that after the first book, which I forced myself to finish, that I could not get very far in the second book. I just did NOT like Kristin. This is rare for me, almost never happens. On the other hand, I enjoyed WOLF HALL very much. Denise

vee, I was most surprised that Wolf Hall won, for the exactly the same reasons as you *g*
And I like to follow the family trees too. I am currently reading the latest Morland book, and refer to the trees quite often.

I am sorry to report that I don't think I am going to be able to finish Pat Conroy's latest: "South of Broad." I used to like this author but I think he has lost his touch. More and more his work seems derivative of his close friend, author Anne Rivers Siddens. I have found the novels of both to be top heavy with Southern cliches, with regard to the characters. The personnages just do not interest me, as they all seem alike. I was hoping to enjoy this novel, but I think it is going back to the library.

Did anyone else read it and what did you think?

Woodnymph2, I did read South of Broad and did like it. In fact, I prefer it to his dysfunctional family ones, although I devoured those, too. I find Siddons more repetitious than Conroy; I adore Charleston; and I enjoy southern novels. Do you like Dorothea Benton Frank?

Couldn't finish "House of Sand and Fog". Just too much of a heartbreaking train wreck for me.
I usually finish all books, even if I don't really like them. I guess I keep hoping the book will improve.
Jo

Lydia, do you think One Thousand White Women is another novel that suffers from 'Dances With Wolves Syndrome'? I am collecting examples of DWWS now that I have a name to go with the manifestation.

If you didn't enjoy the first two-thirds, you probably wouldn't like the last third any better. I finished it, but didn't like the ending. I did enjoy the 'what if' aspect of OTWW, but I concur that the writer was sloppy with his 'stereotypes, anachronisms, and sensibilities' and the violence and cruelty were off-putting (the scene of the prostitute having her insides washed out with hot water has stuck with me, unfortunately). As for it being 'a joke', if I remember correctly, it did seem to be somewhat satirical in tone, something that kept me from taking it very seriously. Ha! I've run across readers, too, who think it's history.

Woodnymph, my sister-in-law from South Carolina praised Pat Conroy's writing until his last couple of books (written before SIL's death), but she disliked Anne Rivers Siddons. I don't remember exactly why, but it ran along the lines of what she thought of 'the trap' that southern writers often fall into, which she described as "[the writers] giving the readers what they expect." I think she considered it 'lazy writing', so that may correspond with your opinion that Conroy "has lost his touch." Do you think so?

Carolyn, thanks for your input. I adore Charleston, too, thus my disappointment in "South of Broad." I don't know the writer Dorothea Benton Frank. Could you tell me more about her style?

Frieda, yes, I completely agree that the "lazy writing" is a good description of Anne Rivers Siddons, in particular. Certain southern writers seem to fall into a pattern and thus their plots, dialogue, and characters become sooooo predictable.

I would have to also agree with your assessment of "One Thousand White Women." I did finish it, but was well aware of the anachronism and modern slang terms in it.

I agree with the Anne Rivers Siddon postings.....what a bunch of unproductive people in her books. And in one of her books, they have known the perpetrator for a very long time, but had no idea that she was not actually physically handicapped, nor that she had the capability of killing anyone. Sorry if this is a spoiler, but I don't remember the name of the book, and you don't want to read such drivel anyway!

Mary, the DB Frank books are lighter reading than Conroy, but her heroines (who always return to the SC lowlands and always have men problems) are gutsy and clever. Read too closely together, they may seem much of a muchness; but my daughter and I really like them, too. You can read the end flaps and be able to tell if you think you would like them, I think.