When do you give up on a book?

[mudskipper]

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.

Read it for the first time a couple of years back having not seen the film. I enjoyed it.

[Spacecadet]

I can put up with a book being a bit tulip and badly written but when writers start relying on lazy clichés I generally give up.

[northernladuk]

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.

ROFL!! Same here I couldn't get across the lake for ages. Ah memories. Wasn't it the troll clearing that was a right bitch to get out of as well.

[d000hg]

Generally I'll either read about 10 pages, or the whole thing. However I'm very fickle choosing books from new authors... browsing Amazon you've nothing to go from other than the title and cover really! So I'll take a punt on books on sale to a quid and get some nice surprises.

As Sas mentioned the Kindle, you can normally get the first chapter free but I don't seem to make much use of that - probably I should get the free bit of loads and loads of books as a way to find new things, but the investment of time when I could re-read an old favourite and I'm very busy is difficult.

[Pondlife]

If I have the time then I'll generally persevere to get through most things. Notable exceptions are catch-22 which took two attempts 3 years apart and Anna Karenina which was just mind numbingly boring. (Mrs P loved it)

[mudskipper]

If I have the time then I'll generally persevere to get through most things. Notable exceptions are catch-22 which took two attempts 3 years apart and Anna Karenina which was just mind numbingly boring. (Mrs P loved it)

I read Catch-22 recently and enjoyed it mostly.

[Pondlife]

I read Catch-22 recently and enjoyed it mostly.

I did too in the end. I think the first attempt was on a trip to Boston, so I started on the flight over but didn't get a chance to finish. By the time I picked it back up I'd forgotten what had happened.

[nomadd]

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

This^

Even Joyce himself admitted that the book was designed to keep literary scholars busy for decades trying to understand it.

Very, very rare that I do not finish a book, but another pseudo-intellectual bullsh*t book to add to the list 'god, this is simply rubbish' is:
Gravity's Rainbow: Amazon.co.uk: Customer Reviews: Gravity's Rainbow

EDIT: And add Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (as someone mentioned it above.) A huge disappointment.

[IR35 Avoider]

At 16 tried, very hard, more than once, to read Ulysses, never got more than 30 pages in.

I was a bit sceptical of Tolkien anyway, but probably made a mistake by trying to start with The Silmarillion, gave up rapidly and never went near him again.

[IR35 Avoider]

Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was an important book for me. I latched on to some of the philosophy, thought, re-read, re-thought, and turned my understanding of the world inside out.

Note not saying its a good book, or that anyone else should read it! Even I found large chunks boring and the book unsatisfying as a whole.