'Life-changing' books that left you cold

[swee'pea99]

My all-time can't do book is Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. Tedious to the last full-stop. Or so I've heard, since I never got to the last full-stop.

A friend of mine always referred to the movie spun out of that book as 'Cry Boredom'.

I remember enjoying Zen as well, though only once. I suspect I'd find it irritating now. Perhaps I should read it and find out.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I've just finished reading 'A brief history of Adhesives' .... I literally couldn't put it down!

 

[Dayvo]

I've just finished reading 'A brief history of Adhesives' .... I literally couldn't put it down!

I believe you can get that on tape, too.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I believe you can get that on tape, too.

Chapeau!

 

[Fab Foodie]

Self help books
A while back I bought 'Feel the Fear and do it anyway ' I just couldn't bring myself to read it ....

 

[User482]

The Great Gatsby is considered to be the Fitzgerald's finest work - one of the greatest books in American literature. I don't like it: no doubt its depiction of the decadence prevalent in that era was accurate, but I struggled to relate to, or care about it.

Maybe I should try re-reading it.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I like walking into a book shop and asking the assistant whether they have a copy of 'How to cope with rejection without killing'?

 

[Fnaar]

However many shades of bloody grey it was. Tedious.

 

[Fab Foodie]

However many shades of bloody grey it was. Tedious.

Miss Goodbody said it was a spanking read that had her tied-up for many hours as she whipped through the pages ....

 

[AndyRM]

I loved Garp, but very soon realised that all Irving's books are incredibly similar and contain characters and situations off a tick-list (bears, wrestling, cross-dressing ...), so after that there wasn't much point in reading any more of them. I make a slight exception for A Prayer for Owen Meanie, for its masterful slow-motion description of Owen's finest moment.

I totally agree with you, adding incestuous relationships and Germany/Austria to the tick list.

A book I cannot stand is Catcher in the Rye which I find almost painful to read.

 

[Ian H]

Hardly life-changing, but I have never been able to get on with the adjectival diarrhea that is Dickens. Though strangely enough I get on alright with Wilkie Collins.

 

[John the Monkey]

Hardly life-changing, but I have never been able to get on with the adjectival diarrhea that is Dickens. Though strangely enough I get on alright with Wilkie Collins.

I bloody love "No Name". Exquisitely worded melodrama at its very best.

 

[hopless500]

One of the things about reading is that, generally, you get used to the author's "voice" as you get into the book. Ulysses is really difficult in that sense, because the "voice" changes throughout. I've only read it once, but enjoyed it, once I'd figured out that I'd be disorientated by the changes in style throughout - the upside, of course, is that if one style doesn't work for you, another will be along pretty soon...

I just love her turns of phrase, and use of language - the plots, I can take or leave

You're right about the voice thing. The time that was brought home to me was a book by Clive James. I could hear him narrating it.

 

[Profpointy]

You're right about the voice thing. The time that was brought home to me was a book by Clive James. I could hear him narrating it.

The "voice" thing brings to mind "History of Wales" by one Dr John Davies, who was the warden of my halls of residence at Aberystwyth. Read the book some 30 years later and could hear his voice narrating as I read. A great read by the way, and unusually for historians, didn't really seem to be pushing some clever angle, nor some cod Arthurian Celtic romance beloved of other Welsh and Irish writers / thinkers. I think he was a Plaid supporter to, but still told it straight.

 

[subaqua]

Not so much cold as WTF. Atkins Diet. Stopped at something about bananas being a no-no but you can eat lots of meat.
Cycling = bananas. And trying to munch on a ham hock duct-taped to the bars didn't work too well.

not trying hard enough then were you !!!