<p>^ that is hilarious!</p>
<p>Fielding’s Tom Jones. I never read it in school and decided to do so a couple of years ago. I read every word, but it was excruciating. </p>
<p>I too disliked Freedom. I read about 100 pages and then gave up.</p>
<p>surprised no one has mentioned the Bible yet, hehe ;)</p>
<p>Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce. I love A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners, but I find the former two just plain unreadable.</p>
<p>Dune by Frank Herbert. Never got past all the geo-socio-political gobbledygook at the beginning.</p>
<p>The Bible! Ha! Actually just the Old Testament. What a load of unreadable crap. (I make Psalms and my personal favorite, Ecclesiastes, the exceptions.) The New Testament I can handle. And the Apocrypha are actually pretty interesting (which I guess is why they didn’t make the varsity squad, so to speak).</p>
<p>I was a huge Faulkner fan in college - again it had more to do with my professor than Faulkner. Same holds true with Virginia Woolf.</p>
<p>I recommend those that don’t like The Help to listen to it as an audio version. </p>
<p>Middle daughter finished Catcher in the Rye an hour ago, lifted her head and said, “Caulfield was such a whiner!”</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered if Salinger perhaps became a recluse and pretty much stopped writing after he realized that The Catcher in the Rye was crap.</p>
<p>But then, Harper Lee dropped out after writing To Kill a Mockingbird, and she was no hack, so go figure.</p>
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<p>If you think Fielding is excruciating, try Richardson’s Pamela. Or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress!</p>
<p>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce was the single most boring book I’ve read.</p>
<p>Trying to get past the cognitive dissonance of seeing Dan Brown mentioned in the same context as Melville, Proust, Joyce and Faulkner.</p>
<p>Mine would be: The Shipping News (a long time ago) and Suttree (just the other week).</p>
<p>I have to post this because it may encourage a reluctant reader and their parents. </p>
<p>Years ago, my middle child was beside herself at the end of 5th grade because she was reading below grade level. At the beginning of that summer I got Harry Potter on tape (it was back in the day) and she diligently read Harry every night with the unabridged tapes. Jim Dale sounded out every difficult word she encountered. She re-read that book/tape 4 times until the next book came out. The Harry Potter books/audio books changed her academic life. </p>
<p>She is now voracious reader, who blew through high school, and is now a successful college student. </p>
<p>So, if you have a child that is having difficulty reading, I highly recommend getting an unabridged audio version to help them. I hope it has the same effect on your student.</p>
<p>I have to agree with Mailer, Ayn Rand and Joyce. </p>
<p>I loved 100 Years of Solitude, but hated Love in the Time of Cholera.
Having read Catcher in the Rye again this year, I can’t believe how much I hate Holden Caulfield. I also tried to read Less than Zero and Bright Lights Big City again, and they both left me cold.</p>
<p>I liked Dune and read all the sequels, too. But that was in my sci fi phase at around 14 or so.</p>
<p>The first book I ever read by Ayn Rand was We the Living, which I enjoyed. I guess she wrote it before she became full of herself and dropped all pretense of subtlety. I’ve tried to read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged since then, but no dice. Couldn’t stand 'em.</p>
<p>Well… I’m no Mailer fan, but I did love The Executioner’s Song. Read it about three decades ago though, so no telling what I would think of it now.</p>
<p>I also couldn’t get through Love in the Time of Cholera. I’m pretty bored with any magical realism – don’t hate me.
As long as I’m bashing genres, I don’t like memoirs anymore either. </p>
<p>I used to really like Paul Auster, but lately he writes as if he’s bored with himself. </p>
<p>Most contemporary books could be cut by a good 30%. They are way too loooong. Where are the editors?!</p>
<p>Speaking of 30, I allow myself to drop a book after reading 30 pages. I feel like I’ve given it a fair shake by then. Life is too short!</p>
<p>I liked Catcher in the Rye, but it is very much of its time and place. LOVE Moby Dick and am fascinated by the cetology chapters. Like most of Garcia Marquez, Dickens, Faulkner, Twain. </p>
<p>HATE Chick Lit (the entire genre), The Help and all victimized white woman redeemed by her relationship with saintly oppressed women of color books, , Janet Evanovich, find John Grisham unreadable, as is Dan Brown and David Baldacci. </p>
<p>I used to read everything and would finish a book, even if I hated it, but as I get older I developed the ability to quit a truly terrible book.</p>
<p>DH just read King of Torts. Not sure why, I think he found it on the plane. It was a howler. He would read me excerpts. Unbelievable what they will publish these days. It’s not just the atrocious prose but the incredibly cartoonish characters (evil corporations, saintly attorneys, something evil in the water supply type threat). </p>
<p>Who on Earth keeps reading this stuff???</p>
<p>Agree with lololu - the only chik lit I like is Jane Austen . . . and early Joan Didion.</p>
<p>^^I don’t like the Janet Evanovich books , either.</p>
<p>I have a similar thing,mousegray but mine is the 100 page rule.</p>
<p>I listened to Atlas Shrugged on tape on a drive to the Ocracoke NC. The two things were quite incongruent.</p>
<p>The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Absolutely couldn’t do it. Also have had trouble with some of Toni Morrison’s books but have persevered and was glad I did.</p>