Books you almost finished but...

[Amor de Cosmos]

Generally I feel committed to finish a book once I've started it. On the rare occasions I jack it in it's within the first chapter or so. After that I'm in for the long haul. Recently however I gave up on a The Detective by Roderick Thorp about ten pages from the end. I'm not sure why I stuck out so long, it's over 400pp. It was clear the writing wasn't going to get any better much earlier than that. I began it for two reasons. I knew I'd seen the movie, starring Frank Sinatra, back in the late sixties but couldn't remember a single thing about it. I hoped the book would jog my memory. It didn't. More interestingly Thorp actually was a private detective, so authenticity was a draw. It didn't matter, the man really can't tell a story.

The fact it was so long should have been a warning. Most crime fiction comes in well under 300pp, but Thorp bites off far more than he can stuff in his gob, never mind digest. Yes there's a possible crime which our hero, an insurance investigating Thorp surrogate, takes on. But as much, or more, of the book deals with his relationship with his semi-estranged wife, and the deceased's ex-spouses, than it does with actual crime-solving. Though set in the early 1950s Stylistically it's a novel very much of its time. Think Peyton Place crossed with Airport. Not popular fiction's finest moments.

So, are there any books you've danced with almost to the end, before you said "bugger it?"

[ursus arctos]

This is very rare for me but did happen with a history of Berlin that became unreadable in the last 50 pages or so because of the author's rabid anti-communist and anti-socialist views (which understandably were less apparent in her discussion of the city under the Hohenzollern).

[San Bernardhinault]

A was about 20 pages from finishing Camus's L'Etranger. I had it in my bag on the beach in Barbados and someone stole the bag. There was nothing else of note in the bag apart from a room key.

I was sufficiently underwhelmed by the book that I didn't bother buying a new copy to find out how it finished.

[Sunderporinostesta]

Christopher Brookmyre - Quite Ugly One Morning. Left three copies on tubes and trains.

Gave up on two this week when about a third in: Sergei Lebedev - Untraceable and Joe Ide - Smoke. Boring translation from Russian original first and not being down with the kids enough for the second. Life’s too short for bad crime fiction.

[imp]

I once spent a whole day on trains and ferries from Madrid to London reading a Dashiell Hamnett book. I had two pages left when I got off at Walthamstow Central station, but managed to lose the book between there and home, a 10-minute walk away. But I forgot the plot and the mystery so quickly that I realised reading detective novels is a con - it's always an anti-climax when you get to the end. So I stopped reading them after that.

When I was 22, I took The Magic Mountain on a month-long trip to Europe when I was working on a construction project in Italy. By the time I got on the ferry at the Hook of Holland back to Harwich (I took the long way home), I had 200 pages left, which I determined to read on the 8-hour crossing. I managed it (possibly speed-reading the final pages), but I can safely say that if I hadn't had that stretch of nothingness to fill, I'd probably have tossed the book over the railing. Can't believe I wasted a month's reading time in my life on that tedious door- (and conversation-) stopper.

[Benjm]

A was about 20 pages from finishing Camus's L'Etranger. I had it in my bag on the beach in Barbados and someone stole the bag. There was nothing else of note in the bag apart from a room key.

I was sufficiently underwhelmed by the book that I didn't bother buying a new copy to find out how it finished.

There is a well regarded novel called The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud which is a response to L'Étranger narrated by the murdered man's brother. I read 120 of its 140 pages a few years ago then broke off for some reason and never got round to finishing it. The book is on a shelf in the living room with a bookmark poking out as a visible reminder of the shortfall. I still think that I ought to complete it but never urgently enough to have actually done so. It's been long enough that I'd have to start again from the beginning now.

[Sporting]

I have a Portuguese friend who, when deciding whether to read/buy a book, always turns to the final page and reads that. She says the last page is a good test of quality. She reads voraciously.

[imp]

I've a friend with a bookshelf that's packed with bookmarked books, all about one tenth of the way in. He's great for the book industry - sees something in the shop, gets enthused, gets his wallet out, takes it home, reads the first three chapters or so, then gets distracted by something else.

[Patrick Thistle]

I read The Three Musketeers as a teenager and got to within 50 pages of the end, put it down and never picked it up and finished it. The book sat on my bedside table for 2 or 3 years until I went to university, bookmark inside. Then my mum tidied up. I found it several years later on a shelf, still with my bookmark in. I don't know what happened to it after that.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I think I stupidly read about three quarters of the way through I, Partridge before good sense kicked in and I made myself accept that "I've started so I'll finish" is not a good enough reason to waste even more of one's life. I'm generally a fan of the Partridge stuff, but, as I realised far too slowly, nowhere near enough so to make it worth the effort for me plough through it in its attenuated printed word form. Maybe one actual LOL moment in the whole* book for me, the archery event early on.

* not the "whole book" of course - the whole of the three quarters which I read

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Also, on the closely related "books that I should have put down having nearly finished", the top candidate would be War and Peace. The epilogue is entirely unnecessary, just Tolstoy droning on at tediously repetitive length about his thoughts on history.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I never got past about page 150 of Dune, although it is still on my bookshelf. By all accounts the upcoming film only covers the first half of the book as well so even that won't save me the bother.

[San Bernardhinault]

Also, on the closely related "books that I should have put down having nearly finished", the top candidate would be War and Peace. The epilogue is entirely unnecessary, just Tolstoy droning on at tediously repetitive length about his thoughts on history.

I started the second epilogue (aren’t there several) and realised it wasn’t actually part of the book, abandoned it, but assumed that this doesn’t count as not finishing the book, any more than not reading the footnotes means not finishing a book.

[delicatemoth]

Opposite of the thread premise, but I put down 'Money' by Martin Amis after reading a page.

I'm on the final chapter of Andy Beckett's 'When The Lights Went Out' and I don't know if I'll finish it, it's just really depressing at this point.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I got to within about 15 pages of the end of 'The Ambassador' by Morris L. West, but I put it down to do something and I never did get back to finishing it. I can't be arsed now.

[longeared]

Not quite of the same literary merit as most of the books on here, but Boycott On Cricket. The great man spends most of the book offering his robust opinions on the state of modern cricket at the start of the 1990s, then the last quarter descends into score settling of minor disputes with long forgotten administrators and committee members so I decided I couldn't be arsed to wade through all that some 20-odd years after publication.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I'm on the final chapter of Andy Beckett's 'When The Lights Went Out' and I don't know if I'll finish it, it's just really depressing at this point.

Fair enough, not a happy ending as we all know. Somewhat outdone on that front though by the final chapter of Ian Morris's book "Why the West Rules (For Now)", which, after all the preceding chapters dealing with global history from origins to the present day, offers some thoughts on the probable future of humanity for which the word "sobering" would be a fairly major understatement.

[elguapo4]

When I was in school, we had to study Great Expectations for the Intermediate Certificate exam, and Wuthering Heights for the Leaving Certificate. For the former, I was out sick for the week we finished it, for the latter, we still had a lot to get through in our course,so the teacher told us to finish it in our own time, so I've no idea what happened at the end of either of them.

I read Stephen Fry's autobiograhy up until he fills it out with 100 pages of unabridged diary entries. I bought John Water's biography of U2, waded through the first chapter, then said "fuck this ".

[kokamoa]

I’ve only ever chucked the towel in early with 2 books as far as I know, though it took me until around page 180 in both cases. One was The Irish R.M. which I was really looking forward to based on memories of the TV show, but given that virtually every story followed the thread of R.M goes on a hunt and finds himself lumbered with a temperamental horse and trouble getting home, I lost patience with it while there were still nearly 300 pages to go.

The other book I threw out at page 180 was the highly praised, The Slap, which looked like an intriguing read with a fascinating central concept. But by page 180, I found myself thinking, “I hate everybody in this story: adults and children.” Looked it up on Wikipedia to see how it ended.

[jameswba]

I almost never give up on books early, and never ever give up on them within sight of the end. I did have a slightly distressing experience with Anna Burns' Milkman, which a colleague had lent me and which I absolutely loved. I can't explain how, but I managed to leave it on the train on the way to work one morning, at a point where I would have loved to stay on the train and finish it. I had to order a new copy - which took perhaps a week to arrive - finish it, then give it to my colleague. I admitted the whole thing to her, as she's one of those that likes to put pencil notes in her books.

Interesting verdict on The Slap. I remember looking at that a few times in a bookshop and thinking the concept was interesting, yet something kept putting me off buying it. The 'hating everybody in a story' thing last happened to me with Jonathan Frantzen's The Corrections, which I did struggle to the end of, though neither my understanding of 'post-9/11 America' nor, indeed, anything about my life is any richer for that achievement. Talk about over-praised.....

[Discordant Resonance]

Also, on the closely related "books that I should have put down having nearly finished", the top candidate would be War and Peace. The epilogue is entirely unnecessary, just Tolstoy droning on at tediously repetitive length about his thoughts on history.

On a related theme, if you've got Les Miserables on your bookshelf, and/or you're reading it for the first time, there are whole sections you can skip without any particular relevance to the plot - a chapter on thieves' argot, another on the sheltered lives of French nuns, and a portion of the chapter "In The Year 1817", which is a précis of obscure headlines. You can almost do the same with the Waterloo section, except the last chapter of same is crucial to the storyline.

[ale]

Gave Lord Of The Rings a chance chance back in mid 1980s. The premise & length had never appealed. But I did like The Hobbit. And more encouragingly I knew a fair amount of fans who would describe themselves as illiterate in terms of engaging with book reading. Not because they couldnt but because they wouldnt and didnt see the point. Yet if LOTR was the only book they had ever willingly read they had done so more than once. Got to within 150 pages of end before putting down-which in a book that size means a lot of pages had been read. If 1200 pages that over a 1000. If 1000 pages that still 850. So the equivalent of 2 or more novels. Not making this a sacred cow moment. Just wasnt for me and knew it wouldnt be really.

[Discordant Resonance]

You already managed far better than most newcomers to LOTR, who tend to break down early in the Fellowship due to all the "eleventy-first birthday" and Tom Bombadil folderah. At least you managed to finish the first two books, so if you ever get a mind for it again, it's largely just Return of the King you'd need to revisit.

[elguapo4]

And ignore all the singing/ poetry, it's all Tolkien self indulgence and doesn't advance the story in the slightest.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Interesting verdict on The Slap. I remember looking at that a few times in a bookshop and thinking the concept was interesting, yet something kept putting me off buying it. The 'hating everybody in a story' thing last happened to me with Jonathan Frantzen's The Corrections, which I did struggle to the end of, though neither my understanding of 'post-9/11 America' nor, indeed, anything about my life is any richer for that achievement. Talk about over-praised.....

Finished 'The Slap' for book club - did not like it at all. Put 'The Corrections' down after a few chapters - never came back to it. I'm not a great reader