"Once I put it down, I couldn't pick it up again"

jono987

Lord of the rings for me. I read it after I watched the films, can't believe how much the films miss out. Especially the first book it misses out all the good bits, tom bombadil etc

Courtjezter

I think you may have not grasped the point of the thread. In my opinion, the omission of Tom Bombadil is in the film's favour. A pointless character who does nothing in service of the story.

DPinBucks

I have read just about everything Niven has written.  Ringworld is my all-time favourite SF novel, but the follow-ups were nowhere near as good (also even more true of Clarke's Rama series).

Generally his Known Space series are uniformly good, and his short stories are excellent.

I find his one-off novels to be rather patchy.  Lucifer's Hammer was fine, as were the two Motes and the two Hereot books.  Others were not so good.  The Integral Trees was dire, imo.

TylerDurden

Only one I can think of recently was Cloud Atlas, just couldn't get on with the writing style, oh and Game of Thrones (although quite enjoying the audio book)

jono987

I liked him but yes, think I have read the thread wrong

pringtef

It's funny Stephen King being mentioned as i got to about half way through 22-11-1963 and just got fed up with it.  Ironically this seems to be rated as one of his best books, but i just couldnt get fully interested.

Read Shining and Dr Sleep recently though and got through those no bother.

Earl Nuce

We Need To Talk About Kevin - the first book I have not finished. It should have been called We Need To Talk About Lionel Shriver. Talk about literary masturbation.

quarry2006

The Lord Of The Rings was very hard going.  Just the style of the writing - the story itself is cracking but I find bad writing very hard to cope with.

Before she died, my mum bought me The Secret Of Crickley Hall by James Herbert.  I started reading it because it was a present off my mum.  I've still not finished it.  I might have liked Herbert when I was a kid but, damn, he was a poor writer.

Llamatronian

Dune. I'm 33 and since my teens I have now tried on 5 occasions to read this book. Each and every time I have gotten approximately half way and stopped. This is despite promising myself that the most recent time would be the one where I finished it. The odd thing is that I don't particularly dislike the book.

Astle68

Two books I thoroughly enjoyed were the autobiographies of Ricky Ponting and Brian Clough.

Ponting provides great insight into his captaincy of the best cricketing side I've ever seen whilst also talking about the problems after the retirements of Warne, McGrath, Langer, Gilchrist and Hayden - the foundations of the highly successful Australian side. He also talks about his family, his struggles trying to create a family with his wife who he speaks fondly. Furthermore, he provides an insight into the charity work he now undertakes after seeing children in hospital with illnesses.

Brian Clough was Brian Clough. Honest, funny and gave a good insight into his time at Derby, Leeds and Forest - his struggles with certain players and the decline that set in at Forest in his later years. He, like Ponting, speaks very highly of his family, in particular his mother.