What is the most boring book you have ever read or have tried to read?

[ccharles000]

I think Little women is the most boring book I have ever tried to read.

[Tobin S.]

1. My digital camera owner's manual

You can probably launch the space shuttle with the thing judging by the thinkness of the manual. I gave up on it. I just aim, click, and upload. That part was self-explanatory. :)

[BlueIris]

2. "An Instance of the Finger Post."

Iain Pears. So bad, and so stultifyingly boring.

[Patiod]

30. One of the few I haven't been able to soldier through

:boring:

[tigereye]

61. I love Pears, and I wasn't able to get through it either

I don't think it was bad, just really, really descriptive, even more than Henry James...

I drag it out every so often and try to take another stab at it.

[Broken_Hero]

3. Hmm,

probably Eye of the World, its one of two books I've never finished. I would get to page 100 and just doze off. I tried a couple of times to get into it/push through it, but I never got past page 100.

[Callalily]

4. Salman Rushdie's

Satanic Verses. As a matter of fact I found it so boring, so labor some I quit reading it. But in Mr. Rushdie's defense, he is a fantastic lecturer.

[cemaphonic]

87. Have you read Midnight's Children?

That's generally considered to be his best, and it's my favorite of his.

I liked Satanic Verses ok, but I haven't really been in a hurry to reread it either.

[reflection]

109. That was a very tough read.

I slogged through it though, because it there's one thing I hate worse than a bad book, it's not finishing a book I've started. But I was very underwhelmed by it.

[Adsos Letter]

5. "The Religion of Protestants: 1559-1625" by Patrick Collinson

...history made stupefyingly boring.

[elocs]

6. Evidently for me that book was so boring I don't remember the title. n/t

[HopeHoops]

7. Numbers in the Bible.

If that won't put you to sleep, nothing will.

[KG]

8. altas shrugged

the one the few books i just couldn't bring myself to finish. and that was back when i was young and impressionable.

[MineralMan]

24. +1

[maxsolomon]

49. +2

my daughter made it through.

[BarenakedLady]

112. +3

[Deep13]

115. I looked at the number on the last page and thought...

..."It sure takes a lot of ink to convince people that selfishness is a virtue."

[HughBeaumont]

9. Anything written by Toni Morrison or Henry James.

And our professors kept on GIVING us these books. What does this teach me, what NOT to do?

[joeybee12]

47. I like early Toni Morrison and early Henry James...

their later stuff is just them being full of themselves.

[Orsino]

10. Faulkner's The Bear

Starts out as a good adventure story, then turns to zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[joeybee12]

48. I can't get through anything by Faulkner...

...not a dang thing.

[Orsino]

56. The Unvanquished is good. Even funny, in places.

As I Lay Dying is very moving.

[joeybee12]

59. I just get confused by it all...our American james Joyce! n/t

[cemaphonic]

88. "Light in August" or the Snopes books might be worth a shot,

They're interesting stories, and his writing style is much more straightforward than in The Sound and The Fury and the like.

[Bunny]

11. Foucault's Pendulum

I couldn't get past page 2. :snooze:

[Richardo]

13. You and I are on the same wavelength, Bunny

I so wanted to read that book, but could NOT penetrate the writing. :boring:

[Bunny]

15. Wavelengths!

;)

ETA - this book had such critical acclaim that I thought there was something wrong with me when I couldn't understand what the hell it was about. I'm glad to be in your company, Richardo.

[Pool Hall Ace]

12. A Separate Peace

and I'll add Beowulf, even though that is really an epic poem and not a book.

[tigereye]

63. maybe the newer translations of Beowulf might be more accessible

I really liked A Separate Peace, but that was years ago.

[Richardo]

14. "Ancient Evenings" by Norman Mailer

Ancient Egyptian fiction. I could get no further than 20 pages.

Impenetrable. :boring:

[femmocrat]

21. Same here. I gave up and donated it to the local book sale.

:boring:

[_dynamicdems]

16. Thr Creators A History of Heroes of the Imagination by Daniel J. Boorstin

This book makes a better reference than it does a good read. Great work, but honestly....zzZZzzz

[Ptah]

17. Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

:snooze:

[eppur_se_muova]

73. No way! Caro is awesome!

And it's hard to imagine anything about LBJ being boring.

[Ptah]

74. I'm getting bogged down in the long history of the senate.

I know it's necessary to put his career in context, but it's wearing me down.
I haven't given up, yet.

[eppur_se_muova]

75. I'm more likely to be fascinated by history ...

but if it's a lot of stuff you already know, it does tend to get boring.

[DevonRex]

18. Moby Dick, hands down. nt

[surrealAmerican]

33. + 1

That whole "whiteness of the whale" part was just tedious.

[Bertha Venation]

19. Judges.

in the Bible.

[femmocrat]

20. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Trinity, by Leon Uris.

:boring: :boring:

[Patiod]

29. Bobby Sands didn't find Trinity boring

In fact, it radicalized him, and he went from a common street thug to something of a martyr.

It moved me as well - I remember sitting down with an acquaintance in the college cafeteria, and she was reading the newspaper and crying.
"Bobby Sands is dead," she said.
"Did you read Trinity?" I asked.
She nodded.
"I didn't know you were Irish," I said. I just assumed anyone crying over Bobby Sands was Irish (and was correct in this case). I think it was kind of like "Exodus" for those of Irish ancestry.

But then again, I read it as a teenager - I wonder how it would hold up today.


On the other hand, Garcia Marquez puts me to sleep, too...

[femmocrat]

46. Thank you.... maybe I should give it another try.

I tried to read it a long time ago and didn't get very far. I just remember being disappointed after hearing how great it was. I usually like big sweeping historical novels.

Thanks for taking time to reply. :hi:

[SteppingRazor]

51. grrr!

As you can probably tell by this recent post, I kinda sorta disagree with you a little. ;)


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=8953235&mesg_id=8953336



Specifically, this part: "Gabriel Garcia Marquez is almost peerless. 100 Years of Solitude should be on everyone's must-read list. They should hand that book out to everyone at birth. People should keep family trees in copies of it instead of the Bible."

[Patiod]

82. If femmocrat is willing to re-try Trinity, I'll try 100 Years

And I point our again that I read Trinity when I was a dopey teenager, likely to get riled up about nationalistic propoganda (not realizing that I'm wasn't Irish, I was American, with some Irish ancestors).

GGM doesn't make those Best Lists for nothing, but I'm not a fan of the magical realism, and I couldn't handle him in college. Maybe a retry is in order.

(PS, your avatar wrote my favorite opening line in a book: "We were 100 miles outside of Barstow in the desert when the drugs began to take effect....")

[SteppingRazor]

95. Definitely one of my favorite openings.

Exact quote: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..."


It's certainly in my top 10 openings, though my number one is probably from William Gibson's Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

I mean, that is just a great metaphor right there.

[bif]

22. "Gravity's Rainbow" Thomas Pynchon

I've tried to read it several times. I think I finally threw it in the trash.

[JitterbugPerfume]

37. I found Gravitys Rainbow unreadable too

but it is still on the shelf

[rurallib]

50. Itried 3 times and finally gave up

It had such great reviews, won some awards I think. So it was 'the book to read.' I don't think I ever got past the first chapter.

[tigereye]

64. I feel a bit the same way - but my husband has read it multiple times -

he loves it. OTOH, the weirder and more obscure the book, the more he likes it - like Gormengast, for example.

[ismnotwasm]

23. "Atlas Shrugged"

Insulting, boring and pointless, unless you think being an over dramatic supercilious asshole is a good thing

[hobbit709]

25. Anything by Ayn Rand

[JitterbugPerfume]

38. yes! anything by Ayn Rand

[joeybee12]

40. And I will agree with your agreement...

...painfully bad and stupid.

[Twillig]

41. It's one thing to read boring good sentences and paragraphs

it's another to read clunky *and* boring prose.

[joeybee12]

45. True...something may bore me, but it can be written well...Rand hit the trifecta

boring, badly written, and incoherent.

[Doc_Technical]

44. The Fountainhead

I got more than halfway through it and I
couldn't take it anymore.
How did it end?
I don't care!!

[skypilot]

26. Bram Stoker's "Dracula".

Should be held up as an example of how NOT to write a scary story. The whole epistolary format made me feel removed from the action and there really wasn't that much action to begin with. Dracula himself is barely even in the novel. I actually managed to plow through to the end even though I started nodding off every time I picked it up.

[azmouse]

54. The scene with Dracula climbing the outside wall of his castle...

THAT was scary. I loved that book.

[AllenVanAllen]

67. I love the exchange Max Schreck has with Albin Grau

about Stoker's Dracula in the movie Shadow of the Vampire.


Albin ~ What did you think of it?

Max Schreck ~ It made me sad.

Albin~ Why sad?

Max Schreck ~ Because Dracula had no servants.

Albin ~ I think you missed the point of the book, Count Orlock.

Max Schreck ~ Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he... that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes... when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.

[ceile]

27. Love in the Time of Cholera

How many pages do you need to describe the freakin' parrot?! Get on with it already!

:banghead:

Now, I never put down a book, no matter how bad, but I seriously could not finish it. Maybe I'll give it another try in the future.

[jobycom]

107. It's in my "Maybe I'll force my way through it one day" pile, too. nt

[Reverend_Smitty]

28. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

I had to read that along with The Awakening by Kate Chopin, (which I liked a little more) the summer before my senior year of high school. I could barely make it through Tess, I guess I'm just not a fan of Victorian literature...plus that book was a total downer

[crispini]

43. That's just Hardy, not all Vic lit.

I took a Hardy seminar in college and ALL of his books are like that. Depressing and loooooong. That said, I did read them, but I certainly did not re-read them.

[PassingFair]

80. I love them ALL.

Especially Jude the Obscure.

I'm a sicko.

[buzzard]

92. Count me as another sicko I love Thomas Hardy.

[DevonRex]

100. So do I. I read all his books in Jr. High and still love them.

[ceile]

113. Me too.

I've read Tess and Mayor of Casterbridge twice each. Love Hardy.

[PassingFair]

116. I even love his POEMS..

and I HATE poetry.

[Strong Atheist]

31. Being and Time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Time

[pokerfan]

32. Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics by Walter Greiner

[Arugula Latte]

34. For some reason I could never get through "Cannery Row."

I've been to Monterrey oodles of times but yet I just can't make it through that book.

[MajorChode]

35. The dickshonary

[JitterbugPerfume]

55. If'n you think that is boring

try the encyclopdeuh

[MajorChode]

76. I reckon thurs moor pickters

[madamesilverspurs]

36. Fires of Spring (Michener)

Read it after having read most of his other stuff. Had I read it first, I never would have bothered with the others.

[kid a]

90. I loved that book! After reading it, and Iberia, I was hooked.

I read it my Freshman year in HS.
I read novels today because of The Fires of Spring.
Wow...can't believe you thought it boring.

[KamaAina]

39. My Pet Goat

:P

[Initech]

42. Scarlett Letter

And the funny thing is everyone in my class hated it so bad that they gave up and showed the movie (yes the POS Demi Moore remake) - and even that was fucking boring!

[csziggy]

94. Oh, God YES! That book soured me on "literature" forever

What was sad is that the English teacher that year was one of my favorite teachers and we really liked each other. But I loathed that book. I only passed the course by reading the Cliff Notes instead so I could regurgitate all the crap that turns on Literature Majors. I love the Cliff Notes for stuff like that. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/

[Joe the Liberal]

117. The World According to Garp....

had to read it in high school and I couldn't stand it, I almost wanted to get up on my desk and yell "WHO GIVES A SHIT"

We even watched the movie which was even more of a snooze fest.

[SteppingRazor]

52. Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (aka Remembrance of Things Past)

Whew! That is one long, dull slog. I couldn't finish it.


Also, I wouldn't necessarily call it boring, but I found Joyce's Finnegans Wake to be all but unreadable.

[azmouse]

53. Any book by Henry James.

I loved Little Women but then I love Victorian fiction.

[Spider Jerusalem]

57. Silas Marner.

[Common Sense Party]

58. The U.S. tax code

They obviously don't WANT citizens to understand it.

[blue_roses_lib]

89. +1

I remember lugging it around for income tax class in college :scared: always struggled with it. I remember my teacher saying (the second time through) 'Cmon Anna, I don't want you in my class anymore' and I said well DAMNIT I don't want to be in your f*ing class anymore!!!

Ugh.

[Common Sense Party]

97. LOL! I can't imagine having to get tested and graded on understanding it.

I've only had to deal with sections of the code dealing with qualified retirement plans and annuities. Those are complicated (and boring) enough.

[theNotoriousP.I.G.]

60. Stephen Fry's

The Liar. It's very witty and very well put together but it just sucks ass.

[tigereye]

62. hmm, you might prefer Geraldine Brook's March

tells the story from the absent father's perspective in the South during and after the Civil War.


I loved Little Women, mostly when I was a little woman/teen. :D

[sarge43]

65. Ivanhoe followed very closely by anything by James Joyce. n/t

[XemaSab]

66. There have been a few books I just didn't get through

Great Expectations, the Fountainhead, and Middlemarch among them.

As far as worst book I got through goes, Cryptonomicon was probably the one.

[Danger Mouse]

68. Carson McCullers' 'Member of the Wedding.' Had to read it for 10th grade English.

And boy was it terrible.
Boring, depressing, infuriating. It's like it was trying to piss you off. :grr:

[Taverner]

69. Foccults Pendulum. And I read In the Name of the Rose over a weekend

[jobycom]

108. I loved both, but his "Island of the Day After Tomorrow" did me in.

It's sitting in the same pile as "Love in the Time of Cholera."

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

70. Dhalgren - Samuel Delany

just awful sci-fi. couldn't finish it.

[Parche]

71. Hey

i love submarine books
but this one was not well written

:hug: :loveya:

[pitohui]

72. i guess i'm not easily bored, most on this list suggested by others i did not find boring EOM

,

[Tyrone Slothrop]

99. Same here

I'm actually a fan of a lot of the stuff that's been mentioned. (Except the Rand stuff, of course.)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

77. Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators.

Almost as boring as Atlas Shrugged.

[PassingFair]

78. My Antonia...The Shipping News and anything by Don DeLillo...

if anyone else gives me one of his books,
I'm gonna puke in it and hand it back.

For some reason, people pressing DeLillo
books on me.

Also do NOT care for anything by "Papa" Hemingway.

Snore.

One edit, another that defeated me:

"Dr. Zhivago"

:puke:

[JVS]

79. I liked Little Women

[Sheltiemama]

105. I loved "Little Women."

I don't know how many times I've read it. It's one of my all-time favorites from childhood.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

81. Most boring movie ever:

HEAD CLEANER



Sorry, wrong tape in the VCR.




:rofl:

[applegrove]

83. I read a cultural history of alcohol. It was really dry. LOL!

[Generic Brad]

84. The Egyptian Book of the Dead

It simply did not resonate with me.

[cherish44]

85. A remember reading an ABC book as a kid and thinking the plot was too predictable

I knew how it was going to end before I even started

[Kali]

86. the Bible

those people sure talked funny back in the olden days

[kid a]

91. amen

[zanne]

93. War and Peace. I never got through it. nt

[Dora]

96. Vanity Fair.

[TZ]

98. Wuthering Heights as I one I did read.

Ulysses by James Joyce as I one I TRIED to read..:eyes:

[DevonRex]

102. I liked the book but I hate it when people think of it as a great romance.

But then I don't think Romeo and Juliet is romantic, either. At least not between Romeo and Juliet.

[SidneyCarton]

101. You mean fiction?

Because I've read a lot of theory and philosophical stuff that could easily be used as sleep aids.

In fiction, the most boring book I've ever tried to read was "Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper. I honestly have to say that the film was a great improvement on the book. It strikes me that Cooper attempted to use a massive amount of words to show how educated and accomplished he was, and succeded instead of making the book almost unreadable.

[Odin2005]

103. Phenomenology of Spirit by GWF Hegel.

That giant load of nonsensical sophistry hurt my brain.

[handmade34]

104. Running with Scissors

maybe it was too much like my formative years

[LostInAnomie]

106. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

I probably had a poor version of it, but it pretty much seemed like the whole book could have been summed up in about 8 pages.

[OwnedByFerrets]

110. Similarion. Never could get past the first chapter.

[annonymous]

111. Anything by Arthur C. Clarke

His books are a sure cure for insomnia. I can't get past the first 100 pages.

[Deep13]

114. A Harlot High and Low, Honoree de Balzac nt

[ShenandoahAspen]

118. the Bible.

Back in my teenage fundie days, I tried reading the whole Bible, cover to cover -- but couldn't get past Exodus. Nowadays I don't even crack open a Bible. I'm such a bad Christian. :P