Entertainment For Lively Minds
Books fated never to be finished
I've just picked up my copy of George Macdonald Fraser's 'The Steel Bonnets: A History of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers'.
It's something I've done a significant number of times in the 15 years or so that I've owned it.
It starts well - and I'm the man who should know - and each time I get going with it my mood is one of pleasurable expectation. I want to read it. And yet I never have.
There are reasons for this. I like to read and more often than not can have at least two books on the go. I commute into work and use that time to read one book. When at home I have another, to read in bed or when not making shallow comments on here. In between I can dip into all sorts of different volumes that pique my interest.
And so it seems I get pulled away into reading other books from isbn number to index and The Steel Bonnets gets left until I have to close it and start again from the beginning at another time. So often now I almost feel that its a certainty I won't get past page 65.
Does this sort of thing happen with any of you? Do you have one book that you know you will enjoy and you want to get through but circumstance has never let you?
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I don't know about enjoy
but I've started Catch 22 many times. Mrs P has started it once. Neither of us has finished it, despite being otherwise voracious readers. She doesn't feel inclined to start it again, but I'm sure I'll give it a go some time.
I've also tried Dr Zhivago a couple of times, but never got far.
I've lost track of the number of times
I've given Catch 22 a rattle. Page 140 is my best...
I've actually read it many times with pleasure
But one of the characteristics of it - and of his other books - is this endless combing back over the same events to pick out the thing that is different/significant which gradually reveals itself as the book progresses. In Catch 22 its Snowden dying in the back of the plane. The upshot is that if you're not convinced it feels uncannily like reading the same chapter over and over and i the end you can despair - I really love Catch 22 (a lot of humour in that book), Good As Gold has some good stuff in it but Somthing Happened is really horrible and put me off his other books for years
Must re-read it
Haven't read Catch 22 for over 20 years but loved it at the time.
I'd forgotten that it used that slow-build, "re-visiting" technique to gradually reveal the story, something which John Irving and Dennis Potter also used to great effect.
I'll dig it out again - thanks.
65 pages more than me.
And I've tried, at least four times.
Yup
This is the one. I have done about the first 50 pages about 10 times. Don't know what it is that makes me give up. I think I am due another try in October 2011
Books destined never to be started
I've had Wild Swans for what seems like decades. I picked it up once. I put it down again. Looks quite good, I thought. I know I'll never read it.
julian cope
head on/repossessed. I've had a couple of goes but its just dull. Maybe i should skip to the drugs
You're missing out on a terrific read
If you must, skip to 'Repossessed'.
DULL?
I'm struggling to believe anyone could find Cope's book(s) dull.
In fact
I've decided to charity shop it out of my life. Its just sitting there being the perpatually unread. I pick up books below, above and beside it and devour them but never that.
Its in Fopp for a couple of quid if I ever feel the need some day when all other books are destroyed
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
It's just huge. I'm not convinced that anyone has ever finished it.
I have! (Well, sort of)
I've finished it inasmuch as I've read every word of it. But I did it in three wodges, with several months between the first two and two years before taking on the final third. Since I did no recapping, I couldn't remember a lot of detail - who major characters were, minor quibbles like that - so it was all a bit mystifying by the end.
That said, it almost certainly is the Great Twentieth Century Novel. Even the footnotes are better than some much-feted writers' entire careers (hi, Martin!).
Bleak House
Three attempts so far. Managed about 300 pages. Sigh.
I'm exactly like you;
I always have two, three or even four books going at the same time.
And with that reading style the dull book will always get pushed to the side; left at the bottom of a pile of books, note pads and magazines.
You'll find it when you finally get around to tidying up at the desk, but by then it's too late. And by then new books have been purchased that you are eager to start reading...
One that I've never been able to keep my eyes open long enough for is Sterne's "The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy". Must have bought it at least fifteen years ago. I think four chapters is the longest I've read. I saw the movie, so I no longer feel the need to try again.
Lawrence Durrell is another author that I find impossible, but in his case I've never even read one single page. I was given this massive brick of a book as a gift ten years ago. Just looking at the size of it puts me to sleep.
And I've never managed to get through Susan Faludi's books, they are incredibly dull. The subject matters are interesting, but her style of writing is awful. Insomniacs should be able to get her books on prescription.
But I am surprised at the mentioned inability to get through "Catch 22".
I read it the first time when I was about nine years old, and it instantly became my favourite book for many years ahead. I must have read it thirty times, laughing out loud during most of it.
But Heller's other novels are unreadable; "Something Happened" is exhausting to read, you won't get far.
The sentences lasts forever, and contains so many parentheses that goes on for bloody pages making you have to go back to find the beginning of the original sentence ( because by the time the parenthesis finally ends and the original sentence returns, you've forgotten what it was about - but the continuation of that original sentence doesn't last long before the next bracket appears, to your growing frustration ) which wasn't very interesting anyway ( and this is a very condensed version of Heller's writing style in that novel ) and thirty pages in you end up throwing the book in the nearest wall while screaming four letter words for a very long time ( including some in parenthesis )!!!!
( So I wouldn't recommend it. )
Amen to that!
I posted on Heller further up but wouldn't have bothered if I had read this! Also read Catch 22 when very young so know just how you feel about it...
*Pseud Alert*
One that I've never been able to keep my eyes open long enough for is Sterne's "The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy". Must have bought it at least fifteen years ago. I think four chapters is the longest I've read. I saw the movie, so I no longer feel the need to try again.
Really, I must insist that you try again. Its the most fantastic book this country has produced; witty, wise, warm and wonderful.
But the whole point of it is that it is impossible to read. It is frustrating, infuriating, digressive, pointless, and inconsequential. It is, to use the book's own last line 'a cock and a bull story', a pointless but amusing waste of time.
And I think its one of those things where the penny has to drop, you have to understand that Tristram himself is an infuriating character and this is his life story. Once you understand the character and his motivation, you see all the pointless stories and digressions as part of the charm of the book, in fact they are what makes the book. Plus, the characters of Walter Shandy, Uncle Toby, and Corporal Trim are equally ridiculous, each in their own world and each with their own hobbyhorse, fundamentally unable to communicate with each other.
Having said all that, the film version with Steve Coogan is brilliant, it captures the spirit of the book perfectly. It is a film about trying to make a film about a book that is about trying to write a book. If you've never read Tristram Shandy the film is brilliant, and if you have, I think its even better.
On the DVD extras there's a great section of Stephen Fry visiting Lawrence Sterne's house and talking of his love for the book, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be on Youtube, but here is short clip from the film that might explain the book. Perhaps. ( I can't get it to start at the right place, so go to 3min 13 secs )
As for me, I couldn't get more than half-way through Monica Ali's 'Brick Lane' due to a combination of my two literary pet hates: a plot and story explained through letters, and a technically skilled and highly literate author attempting to write the dialogue of someone who can't speak English very well.
Oh, and I waded through three quarters of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' but thats what it would need to make me pick it up again.
I've always liked the IDEA of Sterne's book
ever since I first heard about it, that's why I bought it.
It is the sort of book that I usually would love, but unfortunately the style in which Tristram Shandy tells his story is very hard labour for me to get through.
I have read books in english since the age of ten, but it isn't my first language, and those long sentences digressing in all directions...I tend to lose my focus after a while.
My eyes continue to scan the page word by word, but my mind is somewhere else. Suddenly I "wake up" and haven't got a clue what I've been reading for the last fifteen minutes.
I could of course get a translated copy of this book and see if that helps. But the reason I read books in english ( when that's the original language ) is because you lose so much in translation.
The nuances and the atmosphere of the text gets lost.
Ah yes!
I can see why you had difficulty with it then. Its not easy to read even if English is your first language.
If you do ever feel the desire to give it another go, though, I offer the following advice: If you lose focus, and realise you haven't taken in the past ten pages, don't worry. Put it down, make a cup of tea, stroke your dog / cat, walk round the room, look at a couple of youtube videos, browse a high quality music magazine, or do whatever you do to refresh your mind, and then pick it up again.
The bit you've missed will invariably be one of the deliberately difficult bits. The book is largely influenced by the tradition of 'learnéd knowledge', the 18th century obsession with learning from antiquity and the wisdom of the classics, combined with the writing of the new, modern scholars who were pushing back the boundaries of science and human understanding.
But Sterne is comparing this learned knowledge with acquired knowledge, and saying that having your head buried in books does nothing but fill it with pointless and useless information. So Tristram and his father Walter constantly quote facts, sayings and stories from books that have been made up by Sterne. Thus the book is filled with nonsense and with deliberately arcane, obscure information, as well as, for example, pages of impenetrable legal jargon meant to satirise the impenetrability of legal jargon.
So if you can't understand a bit I wouldn't worry too much, its probably not meant to be understood or its not important. I don't know if this will help you or encourage you to give it another go, but its certainly useful to keep inside your head if you do try and read it again.
I finally completed OHYOS after six years of trying,
Getting half-way through, etc, but I perservered and all I can say is that it was worth it. Not in the same way as completing half an hour of banging your head against the wall (because it's nice when etc), but because it was such a beautiful story.
Maybe I just came to it late,
But mystical realism is a load of old tosh to me.
I know this was one of the originators of the post-colonial era, independent voice, dream-like, reality-challenging school of fiction, but I got fed up of flowers growing out of bodies, butterflies filling rooms and generations of fucking Buendias.
I know its churlish to find plot holes and inconsistencies and a fundamental hypocrisy in a book thats given so many people such pleasure ( and which I never finished ), but that book really put me in a bad mood.
Actually, if you can tell me what happened at the end, than I'll know if I fundamentally misunderstood the book and should take all of that back. And it'll save me a bit of time so I can move onto Electric Eden. Ta!
In the end... (WARNING: contains spoilers)
Aureliano used a neat trick involving melting ice that his grandfather taught him, defused the bomb, and released all the hostages. Then he married his auntie.
(And I like García Márquez.)
Eh?
Bomb? Hostages? Am I missing a joke, or did I really stop reading in the wrong place?
Thanks though, its certainly convinced me that I don't need to read the rest of it now.
Took me about 4 tries and 10 years to get past...
... chapter 1 of Peter Biskind's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", but once I did, it was the best book I'd read in ages, so you never can tell.
Though my "to read" pile is getting rapidly smaller (now down to 2 shelves thanks to a recently-adopted longer commute), I'm convinced the last book I'll read from it will be the breezeblock of intimidation which is Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon". I've owned it for at least 10 years, and just can't bring myself to commit to the 4+ weeks it'll surely take me to read...
Alla Reshersh de Tomps Perdoo
"For a long time I used to go to bed early."
I simply don't care ...
Proust
It's the (best?) film of his work that has spoken to me-"Time Regained".
But here is a summary
My first thought in response to...
...Alla Reshersh de Tomps Perdoo was:
"If your calling the author of 'A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu' a loony I shall have to ask you to step outside."
Is this wretched demi bee
half asleep upon my knee, a freak from a menagerie?
It would have been better if
Petite Madeleine had sung a few tunes...
I never seem to be able to get to the end of
"Lady Don't Fall Backwards"
I finally got rid of:-
'A Suitable Boy', by Vikram Seth - a 1488 page monster. Made various attempts, but once you forget where you got to, you get tired of going back to the beginning. The sheer size was off-putting, although it is very well written.
I love some of his other books - I gave away his 'On Golden Gate', a story written, would you believe, in Sonnet form (only because my sister could not find a copy in the USA !!) - brilliantly done.
I also gave up on 'Gravity's Rainbow' - life's too short. I swapped it for a half bottle of whisky when I split up with a girlfriend (over 30 years ago). I think she got the better end of the deal.
I finally got rid of:-
'A Suitable Boy', by Vikram Seth - a 1488 page monster. Made various attempts, but once you forget where you got to, you get tired of going back to the beginning. The sheer size was off-putting, although it is very well written.
I love some of his other books - I gave away his 'On Golden Gate', a story written, would you believe, in Sonnet form (only because my sister could not find a copy in the USA !!) - brilliantly done.
I also gave up on 'Gravity's Rainbow' - life's too short. I swapped half bottle of whisky for the paperback version when I split up with a girlfriend (over 30 years ago). I think she got the better end of the deal.
Oddly, I'm strugging on a novel right now
Year Zero, a 9/11 satire by Jess Walter, whose crime novel Citizen Vince is extremely recommended. But Year Zero is told in a random series of flashbacks, a little like a literary Memento, and while the overarching plot seems worthwhile, the style comes across as a mere gimmick and would have been better if told in a more traditional way.
More famous books I couldn't be bothered with:
Vernon God Little tries to create an anti-hero, but merely reeks of misanthropy on every page.
Philip Norman's John Lennon biography: I guess I'm not THAT much of a Beatles fan after all.
Mark Z Danielewski's House Of Leaves. That one I probably will go back to at some point. Has anyone here read it and able to recommend persevering?
Oh, and I know it's hardly yer 40,000-page Vikram Seth, but the first 75 pages of Captain Corelli's Mandolin are bobbins, then it suddenly becomes a superb holiday read. Half a dozen people I know feel exactly the same - any other books out there which suddenly get good after an unpromising start?
Thackeray's "Vanity Fair"...
... was originally sold as a monthly serial (as was common at the time.) Sales of the first chapters were so poor that Thakeray's publisher told him to liven things up or he'd be dropped (perhaps the first recorded instance of the A&R telling an artist "I don't hear a single"...?)
Captain Corelli
Other way round for me - got through most of it pretty happily, but the final section is (IMHO) astonishingly poor.
Adam Thorpe's "Still"
has had a bookmark stuck at page 58 for a very long time now.... though I see I've bought another cheap copy with a less offputting cover, presumably thinking it'd encourage me to pick it up and start again from scratch. Sometimes weird strategies like this have persuaded me to read something I've just not been in the mood for on first attempt.
He's someone whose as-yet-unread backlist I will definitely read in time as his best is just superb.
Got bogged down with Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Way To Paradise", though I've enjoyed plenty of others. Books by another more famous Latin american author (GGM) have sat for years on the bookshelves unread.
I'm a serial buyer of library cast-offs and other cheap copies, so I always have lots around I'm partway through or just haven't read yet. Sometimes an adaptation provides the impetus to pick up a copy (e.g. Hilary Mantel's excellent Beyond Black) but any Dickens I've started has remained unfinished, despite some cracking adaptations.
Catcher in the Rye
Pants.
Someone once told me that
you have to be fourteen when you read it, otherwise you can't identify with Holden Caulfield. They went on to say that any adult who enjoyed 'Catcher...' was obviously suffering from some kind of arrested emotional development.
I didn't read it at school - too busy with the War Poets and Macbeth. I didn't read it at college - too busy with Hardy and Chaucer, and the rest of the English literary canon. So I picked it up at the age of 25 and absolutely loved it, and felt that I really 'got' Holden, really liked him.
Then I had the encounter with the aforementioned person. It was a short friendship.
Holden
I tried it at 14 and really didn't get on with it, but at 17 it was bang on the money. I fear Holden was a bit too close to me at 14. Goodness knows what I would think of him now.
Jonathan Littel's "The Kindly Ones"
Started it about 4 months ago, just cannot summon up the will to continue reading about Nazi atrocities and homoeroticism in Eastern Europe during WWII. Every few pages I need to put it down- and not because it makes my arms all hurty trying to carry it, but because the tone and writing just doesn't flow..for me anyway.
Have never finished Catch 22 either.
I first started Tristam Shandy
as an overly literary teenager. Didn't finish it then - probably owing to lack of the encouraging dirty bits which keep (virgin male) teenagers powering through serious fiction at that age, viz Gravities Rainbow..the Sot Weed Factor, Portnoy, even the Tin Drum - 45 years on I've made it to page 42.
I tried Andrew O'Hagan's recent novel
on Marilyn Monroe and her dog; absolute tosh though it does have a very decent cover. Shame, because his other novels have been very good. I have Family Britain collecting dust on my shelves and I can see that remaining unfinished. Am I the only one who found reading Austerity Britain to be a bit of a chore, very worthy but not good narrative history. I would suggest that any recent political biographies must remain unfinished - could anyone of sane mind possibly stomach Blunkett or Prescott's memopirs other than for some misplaced comedy value ? - apart from Chris Mullin's memoirs. Must also get around to reading & finishing War and Peace and Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Just wish I had the time.