// you’re reading...

filed in Daily Life

End of Week Zen

Austin Kleon

Today, a friend who is an accomplished poet and writing teacher, admitted that she never finished Giliad by Marilynne Robinson. I didn’t either. What acclaimed book did you quit?

Illustration by Austin Kleon

Discussion

24 comments for “End of Week Zen”

  1. Gina says:

    Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, didn’t even make it half way!

  2. Petra says:

    Only semi-acclaimed (but it got high praise in the outdoor/running world)–Born to Run, about the Tarahumara barefoot runners. Overly dramatic, with characters (actually real-life people, as it’s a work of non-fiction) sans depth. Got through about a third of the book before deciding that the author should really have written a magazine article instead of a full-length book. And it certainly did not inspire me to ramp up the running.

    Acclaimed book: The Idiot.

  3. paulette says:

    Gina, your choice is a book a colleague of mine keeps insisting I read, but I have browsed it at bookstores and I have doubts. As Wendy asked how long before you gave up on it?

    I gave up on Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. Just could not get into it at the time, and at 50, I’ve decided that time is of the essence, and I must fill it with books I actually enjoy. I struggled with Augie, just couldn’t get past the first two chapters.

  4. Latarsha says:

    100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Sometimes you have to be in a certain mood for magic realism and at the time I tried that book, I wasn’t.

    Walden by Thoreau. All that deep thinking and walking around in the woods made my eyes hurt. I’ve tried that book three times and have never made it even halfway through.

    Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Who takes a book about a black man’s descent into madness because of a racist world with them on vacation to a B&B on the North Carolina coastline? Moi. I didn’t finish (naturally) but that one is more of a mood book like 100 Years. I’m certain I’ll pick it up again.

    The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Pretentious Englishman reflecting on his loves and loses from the latter years of his life. Got it. Didn’t finish it. The wafting of elitism is what did me in that time.

    • wendy says:

      Right after Gabriel Garcia Marquez died, I picked up 100 years of Solitude. (It’s my brother’s favorite book.) I could NOT get through it!!

      • Robin says:

        I couldn’t get into 100 Years of Solitude either. I had concluded I was literarily deficient in some way. So glad to know it’s not just me.

        • Latarsha says:

          I’m happy to have found others that didn’t finish 100 Years … I thought it was just me too. When I read “Love in the Time of Cholera,” I was fortunate to be seeing someone who bought me the book (swoon) and warned me that it was really slow going for the first 50 pages but then it’ll really pick up after that so just hang in there. I needed that because otherwise I wouldn’t have stuck with it. I have no one in my life to offer such encouragement for 100 Years …

        • wendy says:

          I had tried years ago and failed, and also figured it was more about me. And this spring after Marquez died, I was determined. But after page 50, I’d had enough.

          • Latarsha says:

            Wendy, page 50 is when it turns around! I was ready to throw in the towel too but my former paramour said to hang in there until page 50 because page 51 is when it takes off like a rocket. I have to say I agree with him. Turning the page to 51 was when, for me, it became a completely different book and suddenly worthy of all the raving people say about it.

          • wendy says:

            It was page 50 of 100 Years of Solitude when I decided to stop reading. (I believe now you’re talking about Love in the Time of Cholera, right?)

  5. Ann says:

    Catch-22. Tried it more than once and at several times during my life. Found it to be not funny (or even entertaining) at all, and I was in the military for 8 years.

  6. Latarsha says:

    Wendy, the “it gets better after the 50th page” is in reference to Love in the Time of Cholera. I got no tips or tricks for getting through 100 Years of Solitude!

  7. Stacey says:

    I never finished “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck. Of course, I was in high school and was reading it for my literature class, and it was my last bit of rebellion before graduation. Somehow, I still managed to get an “A” on the paper I wrote on the book. Thank you, Cliff’s Notes! (P.S., I did watch the movie all the way through, several times, and I love it. Henry Fonda was a master of his craft.)

    • wendy says:

      I read East of Eden within the last few years and I adored it. Maybe it’s worth giving Grapes of Wrath another shot.

      • Stacey says:

        I just started “Moby Dick”, even though I rarely read fiction. It was on the extensive list that my Lit teacher passed out, and we each had to pick a book from the list for that last paper. I had passed over “Moby Dick” for “The Grapes of Wrath”, based on the extensive footnotes about nautical terms, and I didn’t feel like reading a book by reading the bottoms of the pages, lol. (I was 18 and about to graduate, and my senior year in high school is part of what I refer to my “young and stupid years”.) However, I recently heard about the real historical event that inspired the story of “Moby Dick” (the sinking of the Essex), so I decided to give it a shot.

        I may give “The Grapes of Wrath” another shot some day, but I’m not a big fan of Steinbeck’s, so then again, I may not.

        • wendy says:

          Keep me posted about Moby Dick. I’ve often thought about reading it again, but never have gotten around to it.

Leave a Reply