Top Ten Books I Never Finished

Usually when I post book lists, I have formative or compelling reads in mind. But yesterday I was thinking wistfully about books I started with high hopes and good literary intentions but, through the vicissitudes of time or machinations of fate, somehow never finished. As an avid reader, it was a humbling exercise.

So here's my list of the top ten literary ghosts of my past, rattling their unfinished chains at me from the dusty corners of my bookshelf. What about you? Any books back there that you started with the best of intentions only to get bogged down and abandon somewhere between "Once upon a time" and "happily ever after"?


10. The Imitation of Christ,Thomas a Kempis.
I've tried twice to wade through this medieval masterpiece of Catholic piety, and something about it always escapes me.




9. Don Quixote, Cervantes.
I made it to the end of Book 1 and at page 450 or so, I was still only half way through. I sat for a moment in a staring contest with Book 2, until Book 2 won. (Later I sat through all 3.27 hours of the Man of La Mancha, so maybe in that I'm redeemed).

8. Middlemarch, George Eliot.
They told me this was a masterpiece of an English Novel but I could only get down the first 90 of its 800 or so pages before it lost me. Later I read Silas Marner and loved it, so maybe Middlemarch is worth a second attempt.



7. Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche.
Maybe if I were a nineteenth century German existentialist, this book might have seemed far less pompous, angry, and ridiculous; as it was I'd lost all ability to take him seriously after the first 50 or so pages.



6. Hard Times, Charles Dickens. For the record, Tale of Two Cities ranks high on my list of favorite novels, so it's not Dickens himself, but somehow the times in Hard Times were a bit too hard for my patience. I think I reshelved it after chapter 1.



5. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.
See the disclaimer about Dickens on #6 above, but to be honest, while I could recognize the genius of this novel, I never quite made it to the end.





4. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy.
Tess (of the d'Urbervilles) is one of my all time favorite heroines of English fiction, so I tackled Jude with quite high hopes. I'm not sure where or how, but at some point the whole plot seemed to unravel for me and I couldn`t muster up the sympathy to read Jude's sad tale to its (by all accounts) pathetic end.



3. The Pilgrim's Regress, C. S. Lewis.
Funny enough, I really love this early Lewis book, and I've read it all the way to the last few chapters something like three times; but somehow it derails for me in its final throes, and I can't track the allegory through to the end of its last 20 pages.



2. The Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan.
And speaking of allegorical pilgrims, to my great chagrin I confess here that I never finished The Pilgrim's Progress. Moment of silence. I read Book I dutifully (and it was dutifully) but somehow I couldn't find the energy to do it all over again with Book II.



1. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Because people I respect deeply deeply respect this novel I did my best, but somewhere in the Russian Monk's life history, I trailed off and have never (yet) found my way back.