Wuthering Heights! I know it is a Good Book but with several attempts I couldn't get past the first page.

I have also just dumped a book I fancied for the Xmas holiday after the first couple of sentences mentioned seven people!

I am feeling quite miserable as we have to go masked in the shops and on public transport due to a sudden outbreak of both Delta and Omega. We opened up the borders a little and look what happens. Over the holidays too!

I can't walk and breathe wearing even the best ventilated type so I am stuck indoors.

I would second Wuthering Heights! I tried it many years ago and failed. Then Diana/Dido who used to post here said "Give it another go and stick with it." So I did, but I couldn't.

I always wonder about the folk who claim that 'War and Peace' or 'Ulysses' are their favourite go- to books. Either they hold doctorates in Eng. Lit. or, as we say somewhat vulgarly in England, they are just so 'up themselves'.

Masgar, I'm sure I will think of other eg's The reason I have failed to finish some/many books is not so much the 'cleverness' of the writing but because I just can't care about the characters . . or plot.

annpan We are meant to wear masks in shops, banks etc. and the vast majority do comply. Most theatres and cinemas are again closed but people can still go to parties/clubs . . .crazy . . . after lateral flow tests . .. the rules are now tighter in Wales, Scotland and N Ireland and may well change in England.

Vaccination places have been open over the holiday period.

vee : Veer, of course I started quite a number of novels or non fiction books and after a while I quit, and I have not regrett about them, but the two I named, entice my curiosity in a strange way. One has a fascinate plot , the over one has a beautiful prose.

Vee, my mother did read War and Peace and told me she had to make a list of the characters as they were confusing by having several names. I think they were family names, nicknames and diminutives.

I have problems with too many characters and will dump a book for that reason unless the plot is so gripping that I carry on with notes!

OT All Metropolitan venue entertainment for New Year's Eve has been cancelled. You can imagine how well that has been received! Only the horse races are allowed with double vacced patrons in masks. Makes cheering on your favourite a bit difficult!

My son has his gigs outside the affected area so will be fine. Also he doesn't have the 40C weather there as I have had this week.

I wanted to read The Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan for ages and was gifted several of the books a few years ago. I did get through a book and a half (there are 14 of them, I believe) before admitting defeat. His writing is just so dense it takes six pages to get one character down a hallway and I just didn't care enough to go on even though I had started to get into the story. I've been watching the series on Amazon Prime instead (which starts slow and gets much better - I'm really enjoying it) and gave my copies of the books away.

I had to read Wuthering Heights for a high school English class and so had no choice but to finish it. Definitely not a favorite.

I wanted to read A Winter's Tale ....but...........

My experience with books I want to read but find heavy going is to listen to them as recorded books. I have had excellent success with this approach. The only one I've tried that still didn't work was Moby Dick. Apparently I am not fated to read Melville.

Oh, and you did well to dump The Wheel of Time. I made it through six or seven of the books before I quit. By that time, I hated each and every one of the characters and I wanted them all to die. I quit watching the video presentation as well, though for different reasons as I've stated elsewhere.

We had to read Moby Dick in high school. I never understood what the appeal was and I also never thought about trying it again.

A good friend of mine just loves Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I've tried it three times and haven't gotten very far. I felt much the same as Rosefolly - disliked the characters and really didn't care about their lives. :)

OT - here in central FL you'd never know there was a pandemic. Huge crowds at the theme parks, crowded restaurants, theaters operating, and very few people wearing masks. But according to the news, hospitals are again bursting at the seams with covid patients.

Donna

Rosefolly, I laughed SO hard at your comment about wanting all the Wheel of Time characters to die after six or seven books! You don't know how much better I feel knowing you didn't like them either! Thank you for that, you made my afternoon :-)

I only read the first Wheel of Time book. I was told they get much better, but I just took their word for it. I read Wuthering Heights as a teen after liking Jane Eyre so much. Later in life I thought maybe I hadn't been old enough for it and read it again. No. I just wanted to smack them.

My daughter gave me The Paris Library for Christmas, and the new Bryant & May, London Bridge is Falling Down, has just come in from the library waiting list, and Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone isn't getting any shorter. The Christmas decorations need to come down, too. Such problems I have.

Carolyn, traditionally the decorations should stay up until Twelfth Night.

I only put wreaths on the outer doors and will take them off after New Year's Day.

When I got them from a box in the store room I found a miniature tree, a table decoration that has me worried as I don't know how I come to have it! I have no recollection of being given or buying it. Perhaps it was a free gift with an online purchase?

I dread losing my memory so this is why I am bothered about it!

I had to give up on A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez after two or three tries. The last time I made myself stick with it longer, to really give it a chance. But there came a scene in which the family tied their grandfather to a tree (can't remember why) and I just had to stop.

Also, based solely on the title, I was long interested in reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. It didn't take me long at all to give that one up. Too bad. That really is an excellent title.

Sometime ago here at RP we had a 'discussion' about Austerlitz by W G Sebald. As I had decided to take part I forced myself to read it not once, but twice. I realise he is considered a literary genius but I found it not just difficult but down-right boring and I vowed never to read anything by him again.

OT Carolyn, we never take decorations down before the Feast of the Epiphany/Twelfth Night when Christmas and New Year festivities come to an end and everyone goes back to work in earnest.

Kathy......I had to chuckle at your comment about If On A Winter's Night.....I also thought the title was enticing and tried to enjoy the story. Decided to have a root canal instead.

Bon - LOL - great description!

I am often quite daunted by very long books, so would never attempt "War & Peace" and that ilk. In high school, we were forced to read "Wuthering Heights". Romantic teen that I was, I thought I had liked it. As a grown up, when I re-visited it, I found it emotional drivel.

I really tried to like "The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett, but just could not get interested in it, after several tries.

As for W.G. Sebald, I not only liked "Austerlitz" but went on to read 3 more of his books. Granted his style may be an "acquired taste." He was a native German who relocated to the UK, so possibly that influenced his sentence structure.

I have some thoughts to share about Wuthering Heights, which may be the book everyone loves to hate.

It is often described as a novel of passion, and I think that is quite true. The problem is that modern readers interpret "passion" as being romantic or sexual passion, rather than its original meaning, intense emotion and suffering. It is a passionate novel about anger, hatred, and revenge, not so much about love. I have read it twice. The first time I was quite young and did not like it much. It was when I re-read it a couple of decades later that I came to appreciate it.

Having said that, I do not love it the way I love Jane Eyre. JE is one of my all-time favorite novels. I re-read it every ten years or so, and it is a different book each time I read it.

As for taking down Christmas decorations, I aim for January 2nd. Usually I manage to come in pretty close. However, I remember one very busy year when I had three school aged children and was attending graduate school that I did not manage to get it done until Valentine's Day! I was actually relieved that I got it down before Easter.

I had to laugh at the all the Wuthering Heights posts, because all this time I thought I was the only one who could not finish it! In fact, WH was the first novel that came to my mind when reading Masgar's original post. There are some others for me, though: first, Giants in the Earth. I have tried to read it twice, but just couldn't get past the first 50 pages or so. Everything I've read about it says I ought to like it, but so far, no. Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norrell was another DidNotFinish for me as well. I read more and more reluctantly as my interest waned until it was due at the library, and I've never bothered to re-borrow it. Then just this year, I tried Set My Heart to Five, about a 'robot' (more like a cyborg actually) that surpasses its programming to develop human emotions. I was expecting something like Martha Wells' Murderbot (which I absolutely LOVE), but I found SMHt5 so utterly tedious that I skipped the last 3rd of the book and read just the last couple pages to find out what happens. And that was after waiting for it on the holds list for months. Win some, lose some!

The Mill on the Floss. It SHOULD be right up my alley, apparently, being in that Victorian era that I seem to devour. However, after a few failed attempts (both the book's fault and mine), I've created some sort of mental block that seems to prohibit me from even picking it up.

Maybe 2022 is the year that I gather the strength for another valiant attempt. If 2021 didn't "do me in", Mill on the Floss certainly shouldn't be a challenge, right?

Carolyn. Rosefolly, Sheri, I was just gifted the first three Wheel of Time novels. I was slightly stressed about having to read and share my opinion and now I am positively dreading it. Whenever anyone gives me a book, I feel like I have to report back on whether or not I liked it. And there are FOURTEEN??? Seriously? I was dreading three... Fantasy is NOT my genre. Did anyone read them and enjoy them?

As for Moby Dick, I had to read it for a philosophy class for my master's. And the best part of having read Moby Dick means I never have to read it again. Tough slogging...

Call me Scrooge, but my decorations are already down. I am all about the anticipation of the Christmas holiday. But once it's done, my decorations just look tired to me. I wish I was one of those people who could enjoy them longer.

PAM

Reading through this is lots of fun. I forgot about One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had read Love in the TIme of Cholera and thought it was excellent. I was so impressed with how great it was and that it was translated into English and still was brilliant. So of course, I was excited to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Well- let me tell you- it was night and day. All I remember is that there were like 10 characters who seemed to have the same name and I just couldn't figure out what was going on or who was who and I think I gave up after about 40 pages.

Way back in the mid 60's-70's it became very fashionable to read the books of D H Lawrence. I believe it started after all the fuss over Lady Chatterley. Several of his books even became 'set texts' on secondary schools exams syllabus (but NOT Lady C!)

I remember trying to read Sons and Lovers and maybe something else but finding the style so long-winded and the content so over-written and dull that I gave up.

I was pleased to read that back in the late 1920's Virginia Wolff and others of the literati said Lawrence along with Joyce and T S Eliot were the most overrated 'modern' writers . . . and let it not be told in Gath, but I agree with her . . .