Ideas and Ideals

As this is for both reader and writers, I was just wondering if there have been any books that you (yes you, the person reading this now) have been unable to finish? I don't mean because they are too complicated. Rather that they are so mind numbingly boring and repetitive your brain simply switches off. For instance, I've been trying to read How The Universe Got Its Spots by Janna Levin for a while and can never manage more than a few pages before rubbing my eyes in boredom. I just can't get in to it, yet have a genuine like for the subject matter.

Most recently for me it was Master and Commander, which I did finish, but it felt like it took forever. As I said elsewhere in my review, it took 1/3 of the book before the ship leaves port, there's no suspense during the big battle scene nor any sense of buildup, and there is way too much mundane detail about sailing ships (show us through story how ships work; don't tell us through a character in a mind-number "tour").

As someone who was weaned on Treasure Island and graduated to the Mutiny on the Bounty series and a few Horatio Hornblowers, I love sea adventures. But not this one.

Another one that comes to mind from long ago is Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Not that it was boring, per se, and I did finish it, but I really didn't follow it. I should read it again in my maturity.

I'll think of more later.

I'm reading The Other Boleyn Girl, which isn't awful, but it's also not very good. I will finish it because I have a compulsion to finish most things I read, but so far I get the idea—Anne is a 20th-century nighttime soap opera bitch in Henry VIII's court, along with her innocent sister thrown by the family wolves into adultery. Cue music.