When do you give up on a book?

[Bunk]

No way lol. As soon as I read the title of the thread I remembered giving up on The Lord of The Rings but wasn't going to admit it as surely no one gave up this series. I was a hardened Dungeons & Dragons player and reader at the time and it didn't quite fit in to the standard genre so went to read something else instead.

I blitzed The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings when I was a kid. I then moved onto The Silmarillion and came crashing to a halt. Just couldn't get into all the stuff at the beginning about the world being created. I tried again recently and got on much better with it but my commute is so short at the moment that I haven't been reading much of anything lately .

[Bunk]

Never got into Ulysses. I go back to it every so often to see if I can make some progress but inevitably give up.

[zoco]

I think it was William Burroughs who pointed out that life doesn't come tidily packaged like that so why expect literature to do so?

With your tastes - steer clear of Burroughs

I have read bits of The Naked Lunch. There was a lot of homo erotic stuff that wasn't really my bag.

Another book I gave up on was Kerouac's On The Road. Started well but ended up descending into a self-indugent account of Sal's drug taking.

One of those books that "you have to read" as a student. Don't think I enjoyed any of those books really. Never tried Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nor the Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. They are books that definitiely fit into that category.

Frankly, if I'm on the beach, I want a real page turner not a load of pretentious claptrap.

Got the lataest Tom Clancy in me suitcase for when I go on holiday

[SimonMac]

I quit the book usually just as the film comes out

[sasguru]

Interesting thread. My Kindle is full of part-read books. I find as I grow older that I'm more discriminatory - if a book doesn't grab me in the first 50 pages it doesn't deserve to be read.
Having said which I've read War and Peace twice - great story line, brilliant characters, just superb.

*I'm just starting Zadie Smith's new one, "NW", its got rave reviews.

[VectraMan]

I gave up on Bored of the Rings, and then years later I gave up on the film too.

I did read The Hobbit, but only to try to find out how to do the computer game.

[Gibbon]

Then again, I don't read fiction any more.

Ahem, you've read some of my posts!

[Clare@InTouch]

I tend to give up after a chapter or two if it hasn't grabbed me by then. One I really really tried to finish was this one: A Canticle For Leibowitz: Book One: The Saint Leibowtiz Series: Amazon.co.uk: Walter M. Miller Jr: Books because it got such good reviews. Still sat half read on the bookshelf though.

Loved Lord of the Rings though, and the George RR Martin Fire & Ice books. Currently on book three of the Wheel of Time series - can't beat a bit of magic for true escapism

Almost gave up on To Kill a Mockingbird. I think it's one of those books that you have to read when you're young to appreciate fully. Like Huckleberry Finn.

[alluvial]

I started to read "Book of Mormon", got to the first page, thought "Oh, Christ" and didn't go any further.

[mudskipper]

I quit the book usually just as the film comes out

They made Janet and John into a film?