Books

For me currently, it's Ursula K LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I'm a little over halfway through, but for whatever reason I can't seem to read more than a few pages before I have to take a break, making progress really slow. I also struggled to get through A Wizard of Earthsea, even though I enjoyed the setting, plot, and characters, so I think the problem is simply a matter of not jiving with her writing style.

Fortunately the book isn't in high demand at my library so renewing it hasn't been an issue, but I just picked up three other books (holds that finally came in) and I've been struggling to justify starting them until I can get LHoD finished first. Ironically one of the new books is a long-time stuck book for me: as a teenager I dropped Xenocide midway through (IIRC it wasn't as fast-paced as the first two Ender books so I got bored) and now years later I've challenged myself with finally finishing it.

The Color of Magic. I've started that book so many times, and I enjoy it while reading it, but as soon as I put it down loose all motivation to pick it up again and I move on to other books. No idea why. It's just that my enjoyment does not stick with me once the book is closed. I just don't get hooked and wonder what will happen next.

I'm stuck on Gideon the Ninth.

It's not even a bad book! It's actually quite good and I want to see what happens. I guess I'm just not in the mood for grimdark in space? It's been sitting there for two months. I've read like three kindle books rather than read Gideon. :/

Infinite Jest

I totally DNF'ed that book

I’m stuck on the fourth book of the Dark Tower series.

[mild spoilers] tension is rising and some foreshadowing let you imagine shit it’s not going to end well. And I can’t read it…

The Silmarillion. I can only get as far as Valaquenta before I have the urge to do anything else other than read a book as dense as that.

This is how I generally read books, so there are dozens.

If you only count books I'm more than a couple chapters into, then in descending order of how long they've been on the list:

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson

Finnegan's Wake

Gravity's Rainbow

House of Leaves

They're all great books, but they require a bit more dedicated reading time than I generally have.

道德经 (Dào Dé Jīng / Tao Te Ching). I've tried and bounced off this one five times now and am in the middle of try #6. I've got the classical Chinese next to a modern Chinese translation with commentary next to at least three English translations and it still hurts my brain.

Les freres Karamazov.

There are so many people in it I just have to start over again basically I guess as I haven't touched it for a couple of months...

Consider Phlebas has me stuck. I can tell it's going to be good, but it's not grabbing me

Gödel, Escher, Bach. A philosophy reading neighbor was excited for me to read it but it SUCKS. I must finish it so we can talk about it but I'm not into it AT ALL.

I'm also most of the way through a book called The Martian Inca. It's fine, just not very compelling.

The third Ringworld book. It's just not doing it for whatever reason, so I switched to listening to Discworld: Color of Magic and reading The Witcher.

The Great Book of Amber has been giving me side eye for at least 15 years. I know it's more than one book, but it's definitely my mental ball and chain.

The Odyssey. Got to half way through book 4 and just didn't continue it.

I was stuck with Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany for well over a year. Finally finished a couple months ago. I think the longest I've been stuck with a book before this is maybe 4 months and that's usually because I haven't had enough time to read.

The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman. It’s almost 600 pages of very information-dense prose but very well-written. It’s genuinely fascinating but I can read a dozen pages and spend a month or two thinking about them before diving in again.

James Joyce's 'Ulysses' for me, just can’t get the momentum to get into it.

The Silmarillion. I've tried three times with the dead tree version and twice with an audio version. Can not get more than halfway.

It's a book my dad wrote. I want to read it because I love my dad, but I really don't enjoy his writing style. It's been sitting on my desk for a few months now, I'm working on the second chapter.

It was just A LOT of reading, but it was The Big Book of Cyberpunk by Jared Shurin. It was a whopping 1000 pages of double paragraphed pages, so 2 columns of writing. It covered a a bunch of different “topics” while covering stories from the beginning (60s?) to when it was written. The topics included “Self”, “culture” “post human”, among a few others that I can’t recall right now.

It made me realize, as much as I love Scifi, I don’t like cyberpunk, I need “Space” in my stories.

I did actually finish last week! I would a few stories every few weeks while reading my other material. I loved it for the concept and history of Cyberpunk, but as mentioned, the stories were meh, but that’s a me thing. Great book otherwise.

Dune was dry in a few places and took me longer than usual to read, but part of that was just digesting everything, really technical reading, really slows you down.

Edit, oh wow, I checked my phone, and I bought it Oct 26/24. So took me just about a year to read it! It’s a beast.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño - it took me a couple of goes to get through the first section, but I was finally getting into it, when it suddenly just changes completely, into an entirely different story.

I will have another go at some point, but I'm in no rush.

Don Quixote. I have been reading at it for years. I am going to try with a different translation one of these days.

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. I loved Annihilation, but Authority, while not bad, was so different (and slow) that it killed my momentum through the series. I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through Acceptance, but every time I try to go back to it, I just put it back down after a couple of pages.

Little Men by Louisa May Alcott.

I'm mostly a genre reader (SF, Fantasy, sometimes horror), but my mom adored these books. So to honor her (and for connection to her) I've slogged through Little Women twice. Little Men... I've had it out for three years and am still only halfway through. I'll get there though!

The Player Of Games, the second Culture novel, by Iain Banks.
Use Of Weapons by Banks and Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie have been next on the list for ages, too.
(I thought Rushdie would be arid/academic prose, but boy was I wrong about that, The Ground Beneath Her Feet was a true joy to read)

Wheel of Time

Dunno if I'd even finish it so long after, but tried reading some 15 years ago Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and found it to be such a bore I stopped halfway through and contented myself with the movie instead. Meanwhile, all other books were a super easy read for me.