Perseverance

Anna Karenina one of my favourite books... have never actually picked up War and peace. Would recommend Joyce's Ulysses. Anyone see the cartoon in the Guardian on Joyce this week? (Jesus that sounds wanky)

Saw the cartoon. Struck me as the laziest, most unfunny, unwry satirical cartoon I've seen in a good while. And I'm not even a fan of 'Ulysses'. Difficult for me to come up with just one or two candidates for this thread, as I find most books very hard to get into, and come out usually feeling it was worth it.

People keep telling me this is the case for Cervantes Don Quixote... I have tried getting into it about twelve times in my life now. I always get to about page 100 and then forget to continue. It is the only book I've started but not finished. If anyone has a tip as to how I can get out of this do let me know.

Bleak House. It is totally crap for three hundred pages, and I spent a decade giving up on it. But it takes off after that and is a cracker.

Did it Hen? But did you LIKE it?

I'd always finished every book I'd ever started until a book called "The Book of Danish Dreams", which was odd, because I really enjoyed the first quarter. Couldn't finish White Teeth because it was insipid, obvious drivel written by someone who seemed to despise her own characters and I'd rather have live rats sewn into my mouth than ever touch Pride and Prejudice again. The Trial I found inspiring until about page 100 and then I just faded and had had enough. I have tried hard while staying at other people's houses to read Marquez and just really didn't get on with it at all, which is mad, because magical realism is pretty much my genre. I generally know which books I will really not cope with - anything historical, and anything pre twentieth century. I still feel a bit ashamed that I have not tackled Finnegans Wake, but I know that I will struggle with it and that life is perhaps too short. The only book I'd really say to persevere with, even if you don't like it at first is Catch 22, but then I can't really imagine anyone not liking it at first. *prepares to be shot down in flames on this one, having mauled loads of other people's favourites* - maybe Clockwork Orange, since the language is strange until you get hold of it. And actually, I've lent Everything Is Illuminated to a few people who hated the first chapter - if I'd been the author, I'd certainly have got stuck into the myth-telling sections earlier and not started with the foreign narrator who speaks very bad colloquial English.