Books that have taken you forever to finish

What books have taken you forever to finish?
What were they? How long did they take (If you ever did finish them)? Why did they take you so long?

There are some books that I have literally been working on for years for various reasons.

The last two LotR books, took me around 2 months each (but I was also reading shorter book in this period). Infinite Jest also took a long time, 3 months in total.

LotR took a long time most because I was kinda bored and not really into genre fiction, but I kept reading 1st because I just can't drop books and 2nd because some aprts were actually good, but far between

I read IJ really slowly, trying to keep up with the crazy timeline, and after 2 hours of reading I was through around 60 pages or so

Ulysses because it's boring as hell so I just read other books in the meantime

I've been reading The Bible for 3months now, still only at like 60%, I don't think I've ever read a book which took me this long.

Don Quixote, still havent finished second part, first part took me like a month.
But Im a really bad reader, sometimes I dont read for like a week or read other stuff in between.
>There are some books that I have literally been working on for years for various reasons.
lel

Why lel?
It took me 3 years to finish les mis too. lol

I'm 5 months into Ulysses at the moment, at about page 510. I've been reading a lot of other stuff as well and then when I feel like going back into Ulysses I do. I have quite a bit of momentum right now though having finished oxen and the sun and being about halfway through Circe I think I'll probably just read it until it's done.

This seems to be a theme. Is this common for readers on here? Pick up a really big book to read and space it out with finishing smaller books in the middle of it?
For instance, It took me about 3 years to read Moby Dick, but I finished countless short stories and other books during that time.
I'm currently working on GR, I'm on about page 100 after a couple of months, but I have read many things on my down time.

I read Ulysses during my junior year of high school and it took me a couple months, though I ended up finishing it while it was still Bloomsday in Ireland which is cool

I think it's probably just the nature of the work. Ulysses is so dense that I have to pick up something lighter just to kind of bring myself down or something. I'll probably do the same thing with gravity's rainbow once I'm done.

It's also nice to have a white whale to slay :P

Anna Karenina is my current one. Seven months or so.
I read a few chapters and then just want to read something else to completion before getting back to it.

>Why lel?
idk I just think the fact that it took you 3 FUCKING YEARS to read a book is really funny.

it's common for plebs

Lol, you do realize that means not reading everyday right? Some books just seem like required reading but are actually boring as hell.

So you only read one thing at a time? Must be a boring, simple life.

>any of the classics
>boring

just kys or realize that you can't appreciate literature and read trash you actually enjoy

Fucking yikes.

kek
surely you can agree that most of the classics, while foundational, are boring as shit. If not, then I would hate to see your sex life... the girls probably LOVE you...

Most? Nah, you can fuck off if you're going with that approach. That poster is almost certainly a retarded person, but, I can't go that far.

Why the fuck do you even read if you can't understand the qualities that actually made those books last for centuries, you are literally wasting time just to look "well read", pathetic.
What does boring mean anyway, do you want explosions or what, it's obvious you have no idea what are you talking about.

>I would hate to see your sex life... the girls probably LOVE you...

Just go back to plebbit, underage idiots with strawmans and ad hominems are not needed here.

>he likes great books
>lets say his sex life is boring

welp

Tbqh, Blood Meridian too me quite a while even though it's a short book. All the traveling through the mesa and desert really got boring after a while even though it was well-written.

Don Quixote is probably the most fun I've had reading a book ever
>playing the sex card
is this tumblr?

>Says strawmans and ad hominems are not needed here
>used primarily strawman and ad hominems since he started typing

You are so delusional that you don't even realize that you have been the only negative nancy in here since the thread started.
I never said that I didn't understand the qualities, I just said they were dated and boring... For someone as "Well read" as yourself you think that you'd be better with basic logic. Pleb.

In the Name of the Rose was a struggle to read at first because I thought the whole beginning was an incredible bore, it got better but not that much.

We aren't supposed to like the classics... we are just supposed to learn from them.
They are dated. Like the above poster with no sex life.

well, technically you are reading 20~40 books

>then I would hate to see your sex life... the girls probably LOVE you...

Did you missclick the board by any chance?
try

No, right board...
The point was that he sounds like a boring person.
Just because you like to read doesn't have to mean you are a boring person. Apparently this guy missed the memo.

I got 33% of the way through Moby Dick. My Kindle even said so.

Just got boring as fuck desu, though I'll admit I enjoyed Melville's prose.

It's alright, user. I usually defend most of the books that people find "boring," and find the term itself to be laughable and extremely pleb when it comes to literature...

but even I agree that Moby Dick, while a fantastic work of literature, is pretty dull. It has its moments, though.

As far as books that have taken me forever to finish...Leviathan has been collecting dust on my shelf for a long time now. I just can't do it.

I've taken something like a 6 month break from Underworld. I was like 250 pages in, stopped midway between a chapter at some bit where the main character (Nick?) and his mate are running through some deserted area. Dunno if I'll resume it, it was boring as fuck (other than the bits about Manx and the serial killer).

Do you feel better when you write such things to strangers on the internet? Pathetic..

Women and Men
ISoLT
GEB

The only one I wish I was more consistent with was GEB, because every time I start up again, it takes me like half a chapter to remember what any of this lingo means.

hunger games

That's how it was for me when I first tried reading it. Barely got to page 100 what with all the traveling like you said and the long sentences with no punctuation. Giving it another try now and it feels a lot easier, I'm at page 200 and now I'm actually enjoying and appreciating it. Even when it gets a bit boring that prose just makes me rock hard and I keep on going

pardon me for being a bit blunt, but that's fucking retarded

It took me like 4 months to finish Little Women. I have no fucking idea why. It's not a difficult book by any means, but I just read it at a snail's pace.

The Beach

Bought while travelling and enjoyed it, getting around two thirds of the way through before I had to fly home. Never touched it again. That was 5 years ago.

omg exact same, pg 566

Les Mis is a musical though? How would that work in book form?

0/10, put in some effort at least.

ya.. you're looking at 3 yrs to read something like les mis unless you are an avid reader i could do it in 4.5 months meaaaannn

i read moby dick and gr in less than a month

usually i end up drawing out shorter non-fiction works (i read like 5 at a time)

>reading any book past 400 pages
I can't do it
Novellas are life

The Iliad, I dropped and came back to it many and many times, and tried different translations.
But this time I swear I will finish it guys

If you're reading 50 pages a day (hour and a half at most) you can do it in just under a month. And that's only if you don't spend multiple hours reading each day.

But why? What's the difference between reading one 600 page novel and two 300 page novels?

Two is more than one

Do you happen to have a goodreads account?

One of the best ways to realize you don't actually enjoy literature is reading books for months on end. What's the point?
Sometimes I pick something that's part of the western Canon but it's a chore, why would I suffer instead of reading fantasy and being unable to stop turning the page.

Well, can't someone enjoy literature but either A) Just not be able to find the time to read a lot or B) as bad as it might sound, have interests that supersede lit in that moment like other media like film, music, video games, internet?

I think I spent at least a week dragging my feet through Infinite Jest before deciding it just wasn't worth it for a meme. When I was much younger, I spent a week or so on the first third of one of the later Wheel of Time books before my patience ran out and I dropped that trash. First book I couldn't make myself finish.

I generally wrap a book up within a few days (barring obscene length) so I don't forget anything. Even the clusterfuck of comprehension that is Shadow & Claw took me under a week.

I just feel like 300 pages is more than enough to get a point or moral across.
There are exceptions obviously, anything with world-building or very abstract ideas should be lengthy but not overly pedantic.

This is such a boring attitude. As if anything that doesn't just happen fast and with a nice, quick flow is somehow bad. As if you must be ready for every book right now, maybe sometimes its better to read it slow or read it later. As if the only value in things is in how good they instantly feel to you.

I'm always reading 5-20 books of which about half might be non-fiction and possibly have a few more on a long-ass hiatus. This obviously leads to me spending relatively long periods of time between starting and finishing books.

The point is this: I may currently feel bored by a book, but maybe I won't in a week. Better it read it then rather than now. My state of mind is not always the same. Sometimes it is willing to work, sometimes not, sometimes it needs fun and sometimes it needs exercise.

Also: if we extend this "why would you do it if its not fun :)" attitude to every other pastime, why ever do anything besides browse Veeky Forums and eat tasty junk food? This is the easiest, fastest way to feel kind of good. Picking up a book may require a slight amount of effort compared to just staying here, yet it might very well be more rewarding in the end. But no, the disgusting "natural" hedonist can't have that! You must not do what you don't instantly enjoy! Fuck you. Pleasure isn't inherently good.

This is the first response that has really spoke to me. I completely relate. I might have 20 book "projects" going at one time, but at different speeds and across different lengths of time.
For instance, I recently finished Lolita in about a weeks time despite working on Moby Dick a little bit at a time for the last couple of years now.

I used to own an edition of pic related before I lost it. I love those old modern libraries. One year later I downloaded a version of it on my kindle starting from the beginning. Then I got incredibly bored during the parts about Alyosha in the monastery. I would pick up the novel once in awhile. While abroad this summer I picked it up again and got addicted after the part where one of the characters gets murdered. However, I have a feeling I won't finish the novel until 2017 because I am now busy again. I've never spent longer than a few months on a novel at a time but I can honestly say it's taken me so far 2 years to read The Brothers K. I've read longer and more challenging books in less time, but the novel has, for me, a lot of weaknesses that make me lose interest.

Man it's taking me 3 months to read ''How to read a book''.

It is an astonishing read though. I have read a bunch of other books since I started, but I'm in no hurry to finish it.

>dated and boring

It's time, son.

that's right and at the rate of 100 pages a day you get it done even faster

Why do you keep reading dull book if you not interested in it? It's better drop reading of boring book, than torture yourself, isn't?

portrait of the artist as a young man took me two months. i was 15 i think and it's probably due to that. it was a bit traumatic for me (using 'traumatic very lightly) i haven't finished any fiction book after it. all i've read are psych and pol books after that

You expect me to read all that?

Not really. I post mainly for my own amusement.

I've been reading Moby Dick for like half a year now. I'm on chapter eighty-something and it's just not fucking ending