Supposedly Great Books I Couldnt Finish
Discover supposedly great books I couldn’t finish—bestsellers and classics that didn’t live up to the hype. See which popular reads made my DNF list and why!
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Foucault's Pendulum
by Umberto Eco
"As brilliant and quirky as THE NAME OF THE ROSE, as mischievous and wide-raning....A virtuoso performance." THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Three clever book editors, inspired by an extraordinary fable they heard years befoe, decide to have a little fun. Randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entires, they think they are creating a long lazy game--until the game starts taking over.... Here is an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force as enthralling as anything Umberto Eco--or indeed anyone--has ever devised.
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
A story of friendship through adversity, faith and destiny, and the search for God.
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Billy Phelan's Greatest Game
by William Kennedy
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed explores the seedy underbelly of a Depression-era town in the second novel in the Albany cycle Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie, moves throuh the lurid nighttime glare of Albany, New York. A resourceful man full of Irish pluck, Billy works the fringes of the city's sporting life with his own particular style and private code of honor, until he finds himself in the dangerous position of potential go-between in the kidnapping of a political boss’s son. In relating Billy's fall from underworld grace and his storybook redemption, Kennedy captures the seamy underside of a brassy, sweaty city that would prefer to pretend that the Depression doesn't exist. William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city’s netherworld, and its spheres of power—financial, ethnic, political—often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period. The novels in his cycle include, Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn’s Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe.
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Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Guilt and desire, money and the nature of capitalism are pervasive themes in Dickens's magnificent novel, Great Expectations.'Pip's expectation, before his expectations, is that he will be shown to have already committed a crime', writes David Trotter in his Introduction to this new edition. The orphan Pip's terrifying encounter with an escaped convict on the Kent marshes, and his mysterious summons to the house of Miss Havisham and her cold, beautiful ward Estella, form the prelude to his 'great expectations'. How Pip comes into a fortune, what he does with it, and what he discovers through his secret benefactor are the ingredients of his struggle for moral redemption.
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London Fields
by Martin Amis
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A blackly comic late 20th-century murder mystery set against the looming end of the millennium, in which a woman tries to orchestrate her own extinction—from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation" (TIME). “Lyrical and obscene, colloquial and rhapsodic." —The New York Times First published in 1989, London Fields is set ten years into a dark future, against a backdrop of environmental and social decay and the looming threat of global cataclysm. As the dreaded Y2K approaches, Nicola Six, a “black hole” of sex and self-loathing, has chosen her thirty-fifth birthday, November 5, 1999, as the date of her own murder. Whom to manipulate into killing her is the question; her choice wavers between violent lowlife Keith Talent, who is obsessed with winning a darts tournament, and a dimly romantic banker named Guy Clinch. When Samson Young—a writer suffering from a long bout of writer’s block—stumbles upon these three, he believes he has found a story that will write itself. A highly unusual mystery with an unexpected twist at the end, London Fields is also a corrosively funny narrative of pyrotechnic complexity and scalding moral vision.
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The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
From “A Scandal in Bohemia,” in which Sherlock Holmes is famously outwitted by a woman, the captivating Irene Adler, to “The Five Orange Pips,” in which the master detective is pitted against the Ku Klux Klan, to “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes and his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, face each other in a showdown at the Reichenbach Falls, the stories that appear in The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes bear witness to the flowering of author Arthur Conan Doyle’s genius. “The plain fact,” the celebrated mystery writer Vincent Starrett asserted, “is that Sherlock Holmes is still a more commanding figure in the world than most of the warriors and statesmen in whose present existence we are invited to believe.”
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A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends? Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.
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Get Shorty
by Elmore Leonard
Mob-connected loan shark Chili Palmer is sick of the Miami grind. So when he chases a deadbeat client to Hollywood, he decides to stay. This town of dream makers, glitter, and gorgeous, partially-clad starlets seems ideal for an enterprising criminal with a cinematic taste.
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The Fires of Heaven
by Robert Jordan
The Wheel of Time ® is a PBS Great American Read Selection! Now in development for TV! Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time® by Robert Jordan has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow. Into the forbidden city of Rhuidean, where Rand al'Thor, now the Dragon Reborn, must conceal his present endeavor from all about him, even Egwene and Moiraine. Into the Amyrlin's study in the White Tower, where the Amyrlin, Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan, is weaving new plans. Into the luxurious hidden chamber where the Forsaken Rahvin is meeting with three of his fellows to ensure their ultimate victory over the Dragon. Into the Queen's court in Caemlyn, where Morgase is curiously in thrall to the handsome Lord Gaebril. For once the dragon walks the land, the fires of heaven fall where they will, until all men's lives are ablaze. And in Shayol Ghul, the Dark One stirs... TV series update: "Sony will produce along with Red Eagle Entertainment and Radar Pictures. Rafe Judkins is attached to write and executive produce. Judkins previously worked on shows such as ABC’s “Agents of SHIELD,” the Netflix series “Hemlock Grove,” and the NBC series “Chuck.” Red Eagle partners Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon will executive produce along with Radar’s Ted Field and Mike Weber. Darren Lemke will also executive produce, with Jordan’s widow Harriet McDougal serving as consulting producer." —Variety The Wheel of Time® New Spring: The Novel #1 The Eye of the World #2 The Great Hunt #3 The Dragon Reborn #4 The Shadow Rising #5 The Fires of Heaven #6 Lord of Chaos #7 A Crown of Swords #8 The Path of Daggers #9 Winter's Heart #10 Crossroads of Twilight #11 Knife of Dreams By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson #12 The Gathering Storm #13 Towers of Midnight #14 A Memory of Light By Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time By Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons The Wheel of Time Companion By Robert Jordan and Amy Romanczuk Patterns of the Wheel: Coloring Art Based on Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time
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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory. But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England's magical past and regained some of the powers of England's magicians. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French. All goes well until a rival magician appears. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative-the very opposite of Mr Norrell. Strange thinks nothing of enduring the rigors of campaigning with Wellington's army and doing magic on battlefields. Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr Norrell accepts Strange as a pupil. But it soon becomes clear that their ideas of what English magic ought to be are very different. For Mr Norrell, their power is something to be cautiously controlled, while Jonathan Strange will always be attracted to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic. He becomes fascinated by the ancient, shadowy figure of the Raven King, a child taken by fairies who became king of both England and Faerie, and the most legendary magician of all. Eventually Strange's heedless pursuit of long-forgotten magic threatens to destroy not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything that he holds dear. Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred pages leave readers longing for more.