Books you've left unfinished.

[tdr1nka]

I did read the Hobbit when I was about 7 with my brother, each taking it in turn to read to the other and I loved it, but when I came to LOTR I'll admit to being somewhat daunted and the more I read the more I felt I had the measure of the books from having already read the Hobbit.

I guess I'm not that good with sagas, which probably says more about my attention span than anything!

 

[marinyork]

I think that The Hobbit was the better book.

 

[Dave5N]

Couldn't be arsed to read all the hobbity arguments on this thread, but my nomination is Flann O'brien's The Third Policeman.

Clever possibly.

Pissed when he wrote it? ALmost certainly.

 

[tdr1nka]

Couldn't be arsed to read all the hobbity arguments on this thread, but my nomination is Flann O'brien's The Third Policeman.

Clever possibly.

Pissed when he wrote it? ALmost certainly.

That's my current read and it is decidedly odd.

 

[longers]

Couldn't be arsed to read all the hobbity arguments on this thread, but my nomination is Flann O'brien's The Third Policeman.

Clever possibly.

Pissed when he wrote it? ALmost certainly.

Thanks for reminding me, I got through that and enjoyed quite a bit of it, would need to re-read it I think.

At Swim Two Birds - by the same author was pretty much unfathomable to me and got put down quite quickly.

 

[Dave5N]

Oh, and I have failed to complete quite a few of the other half's 'I grew up as a woman in China/Japan/korea during the Cultural Revolution/Recovery from Defeat/Move To Industrialisation After The Cold War and the personal conflict I endured in the clash between East and West' books.

 

[Renard]

Anyone mentioned the Bible?

 

[longers]

Anyone mentioned the Bible?

Only in the second post .

 

[longers]

And I think richp mentioned it too.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Couldn't be arsed to read all the hobbity arguments on this thread, but my nomination is Flann O'brien's The Third Policeman.

Clever possibly.

Pissed when he wrote it? ALmost certainly.

That's a great book, I've read it three or four times over the years. It is a bit odd though.

 

[Andy in Sig]

And where were they when the Romans rolled in, eh? Or are the Romans acceptable in a way that the Normans aren't?

When I said "we" I meant the English. The English were of course not in Britain when the Romans came: that was the British, later the Welsh.

As for bitching about language changes - you're probably aware that about 80-90% of English has got Anglo-Saxon/Viking roots. It's an interesting experiment to identify and remove all the Norman French rooted words from a piece of English. It is also interesting to note what types of English are used for what purposes. For instance if you read an over-wordy bit of officialese the chances are that most of it will be in Norman rooted words. I've got a cracking example of that in a book on just this subject. I just prefer English words. For instance "over-wordy" in that sentence above is very Anglo-Saxon. The Norman rooted equivalent would possibly/probably be "verbose" (not 100% sure because it could be a borrowing from Latin).

 

[yello]

OT, sorry.

I just prefer English words.

Can you give an example? I'm aware of the influences on the English language (it's they that make it so wonderfully flexible) but I can't honestly say that I know an "English" word!

(I'm in the process of learning French and there a staggering number of words shared by the two languages)

 

[Renard]

Only in the second post .

Doh

 

[02GF74]

Paradise Lost - blimey, what nonsense that is - I'd read a page then try to work out what I just read and couldn't!! So abandoned it.

 

[red_tom]

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Quite tempted to try again as I gave up on my first attempt with Cryptonomicon by him as well but absolutely loved it when I actually had the time to sit down and read it properly. I wonder how many books are not finished purely due to the less than ideal settings that we try to read them in.

I loved the Thomas Covenant books as a kid, but then I was playing quite a lot of D+D