Terroir a myth?

originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I think we need a thread about books we really loved but could never finish. I only got ca. 15 pages into Ulysses, while still thinking it was the best thing in the whole wide world.
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I have tons of books like this. I start them, like them well enough, but just can't trudge through, especially if they seem to be knocking at the same door over and over. It gets worse the older I get.
 
Soon we will all be sitting on the back porch with a copy of Reader's Digest.

More seriously, I have never been of the "I started it so I have to read it all the way through" school. But it's peculiar when you really like something, but it just doesn't keep you going with it.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
But it's peculiar when you really like something, but it just doesn't keep you going with it.
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I agree. I never understand people that don't finish the bottle of wine in one sitting....
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I think we need a thread about books we really loved but could never finish. I only got ca. 15 pages into Ulysses, while still thinking it was the best thing in the whole wide world.
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Infinite Jest.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I think we need a thread about books we really loved but could never finish. I only got ca. 15 pages into Ulysses, while still thinking it was the best thing in the whole wide world.
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Three times bashing my head against The Goldbug Variations. I have the same impression about it that you have of Ulysses (which I was lucky enough to take a class on in college, which forced me to read the whole book).
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
I think we need a thread about books we really loved but could never finish. I only got ca. 15 pages into Ulysses, while still thinking it was the best thing in the whole wide world.
Click to expand...

I have tons of books like this. I start them, like them well enough, but just can't trudge through, especially if they seem to be knocking at the same door over and over. It gets worse the older I get.
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Baroque Cycle. I'm going to try again soon.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Soon we will all be sitting on the back porch with a copy of Reader's Digest.

More seriously, I have never been of the "I started it so I have to read it all the way through" school. But it's peculiar when you really like something, but it just doesn't keep you going with it.
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I have, but there have been a very few books I couldn't finish. Ulysses and Island of the Day Before come to mind. In Search of Lost Time took me 3 tries before I got into it.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Pete, in case you're wondering about all the inside jokes, Anna Karina played the role of Anna Karenina in the Godard version of War & Peace.
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I didn't get any of this. I have no idea what Godard movie they're talking about and couldn't read War and Peace.
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Don'tcha hate all the inside jokes on Wine disorder?
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Joe, don't laugh, but I didn't even know I was missing something (if I really was?). Even after the so-called explanation, I don't see what I was presumed to have perhaps been "wondering" about.

I guess I don't read enough of the writings here on Wine Disorder.

. . . . Pete
 
Three times bashing my head against The Goldbug Variations.
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I love this book. Bach and genetics is for me just the perfect match.

Most books I start I won't finish. I never feel like I must finish a book if I don't like it. But Proust took a couple tries. And that's because the beginning with the famous Madeleine scene is probably the most difficult part of the book. But once I got through that, a wonderfully readable comic novel started. Why do so few people talk about the comedy of this huge work?
 
So true!!

And, like Cory, I would never have read Proust if not for a grad class on it. (Taught, unrelatedly, by a professor from St. Pierre et Miquelon.)

The best part (well, aside from the payoff that is Le Temps retrouvé) is A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur. That book rocks.
 
When I was in my early-mid 20s I insisted on finishing every book I started. I'm not really sure why. Something to do with completeness and achievement, I suppose.

Now I could care less.

My professional 'reading' is actually better described as skimming and most of my leisure reading occurs on trips. So if I don't finish a book on a specific trip I may never get around to it.

(Speaking of which, am going through NW by Zadie Smith at the moment. And just today, about 200 pages in, the writing flagged a bit and I thought I may need to put this book aside)
 
Sometimes I feel like books require momentum. Set them aside for a bit, and there you go. Even if you intended to continue.

But maybe that's just me.
 
My OCD takes the form of feeling compelled to finish books that I start, hence I'm known among my friends as the guy who actually finished Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses, Gödel, Escher, Bach, The White Goddess and other tomes. However, I did put down a couple of books that just didn't grab me: Don Delillo's Underworld, several books my Michael Chabon and Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
My OCD takes the form of feeling compelled to finish books that I start, hence I'm known among my friends as the guy who actually finished Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses...
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GR didn't seem that hard to finish. Plenty of plot-driven suspense to keep things moving along, even if the writing was challenging.

But how about Finnegan's Wake? I'm the idiot who read that cover to cover while commuting on the NYC subway to his job.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
My OCD takes the form of feeling compelled to finish books that I start, hence I'm known among my friends as the guy who actually finished Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses, Gödel, Escher, Bach, The White Goddess and other tomes. However, I did put down a couple of books that just didn't grab me: Don Delillo's Underworld, several books my Michael Chabon and Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae.

Mark Lipton
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Dhalgren?
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Sometimes I feel like books require momentum. Set them aside for a bit, and there you go. Even if you intended to continue.

But maybe that's just me.
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That definitely happens to me as the books get set aside in-between trips. The problem is remembering the names of all the characters when I come back to the books!
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Sometimes I feel like books require momentum. Set them aside for a bit, and there you go. Even if you intended to continue.

But maybe that's just me.
Click to expand...

That definitely happens to me as the books get set aside in-between trips. The problem is remembering the names of all the characters when I come back to the books!
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Read history... the characters don't change.
 
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