The Robert Jordan Wheel of Time books. By book 7 I hated the main characters and really hated the writing style. The repetition. The repetition. The repetition…
The Sanderson books were ok, but they couldn’t rescue the series and I got no joy from finishing it. A lot of relief though to be done with it.
I rage quit after book 3. I’m sorry you had to suffer so much longer.
Read Sanderson’s own books though. They’re pretty good, IMO
I know a lot of people don’t like Sanderson’s writing. I like his books myself. I don’t think the Stormlight Archives series is the masterpiece that many seem to claim it to be, but they are good.
I’ve read all the Mistborn stuff and the first Stormlight Archive book. And I really did have a hard time getting through that one. First 1/2 is definitely boring and too long.
Mistborn is more my style.
Actually, Orson Scott Card is more my style. IMO, he has the right pacing (even though not all his books are stellar)
Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. After that book I gave myself permission to DNF though, so it was a maturing experience for me. I mostly wanted to know what happened to Stephen and that’s what drove me, along with the “No mere book shall defeat me” attitude.
I really enjoyed all of the Fae short stories actually. I’m not really a horror fan, but I found Fae, and mortals interaction with it, particularly gripping and memorable. I never put the book down when I was in Fae, trapping me along with the victims, perhaps that’s why I wanted Stephen to just be ok.
It was just everything else in the book I couldn’t enjoy. The titular characters I found uninteresting. The setting, fae excluded, I was apathetic about. The structure, the footnotes, dear god the footnotes.
But the Fae stuff? I’ll take 10 more of them in an anthology please.
I agree with you about Strange and Norrell. The pacing was poor and it was over-long.
But!
Susanna Clarke’s next book, Piranesi, is actually really good. Like, really, incredibly good. I recommend it to everyone and so far no one has said anything but positive things about it. I rarely re-read books but this is one that I’ve come back to.
As it happens, I read Piranesi first, so I found JS&MN a bit disappointing, but I’m glad I read them that way around otherwise I might have skipped Piranesi, and that would have been a mistake!
It took me several attempts to get through Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I finally managed it once I decided I wasn’t going to read the footnotes. I guess that means I missed out on some of the story but oh, well. I really liked the book, but all the back and forth was too much for me.
Moby dick ( complete unabridged edition).
The parts where they go into detail about whale hunting was like reading a manual, I did not know there where other editions and just got the frost one I saw. Maybe it was my part for not investigating before.
The Bible was a difficult read for me. I pushed through just because I wanted to have at least read it when using it’s words to contradict Supply-Side Christians.
Fucking “IT” by Stephen King. That book started so good, but it’s about 400 pages longer than it needed to be and the child orgy at the end really didn’t help me cross the finish line. That book became a chore to get through.
