Ask HN: What books have you not finished? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What books have you not finished?

12 pointsgidorah41 comments

I frequently read books 2+ times. I find that I get a lot more out of a second read after some time, than I do on just one read. So I rarely give up on books. The only two I can think of are:

Dereliction of Duty: HR McMaster - This was waaay too detailed for me. I got really bogged down and just strggled about 2/3rds of the way through.

God Delusion: Richard "Dickhead" Dawkins - This was a gift to me. I made it a few pages in. I just got turned by his sense of rightness. I don't believe in any god/gods, but I don't think that you can break down religious belief with logic. I don't think it works that way.

So, what were you not able to finish?

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The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck or something like that. I can't stand Mark Manson. It's bro wisdom sprinkled with swearing. I didn't make it to the end of the free sample.

The Life-Changing Magic Of Not Giving A F*ck. This one was actually good, but after a chapter or two you get the point. It could have been a blog post.

Catch-22. It's funny, but it's not going anywhere. Perhaps that's the point.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. It's really funny, but it's one Deus Ex Machina after the other. After a while it starts to feel pointless.

Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. I actually finished it, but regretted the effort. It taught me to put down books I don't like. I still don't understand what people get out of this book.

I am currently reading „Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance“. I drive a motorcycle myself. I get things he talks about. Still, in between the interesting parts, it’s just not enough to keep me interested so I’m thinking about putting it down, too. Maybe I should. It was recommended to me and I thought I’d give it a go. There are philosophical concepts and I get that they might be interesting but overall I have a hard time to keep on reading.

It gets worse, not better. At some point I had no idea of what I was reading. If you want a motorcycle book, read Jupiter's Travels.

Thank you for the recommendation, I’ll look into it.

Funny thing is that first time I read Zen And The Art.. I also put it down and could not for the life of me finish it. 3-4 years later I picked it up again, finished it and loved it.

I have even read it fully a second time since then. Some books you have to be ready to read, so don't be afraid to put them down and leave them for at few years. The book does not change but you will.

I agree about Hitchhiker's guide. I've read the first book and at one point it even makes jokes about its deus ex machina.

Despite it being very funny, it doesn't drive me to read the other four books because it doesn't have any overarching story. Just a series of vaguely connected events that are quickly resolved.

Which makes more sense when you understand that it was developed from what was initially a radio series. The books largely retain that episodic feel throughout.

- The Monk who Sold His Ferrari

I was young and stupid, and I bought this book because of its very high Amazon rating.

It's badly written, same old self-help cringe, and generic good advice packaged as something novel. I also found the depiction of the Yogi community of the Himalayas of very poor taste and far from reality. He and the people who does his PR are master marketers. That's why his books sell so much. Total waste of money.

- How to Win Friends and Influence People

I got this from HN. Sure, I knew about it, but if it was on a highly upvoted comment on HN, it must be good, or at least that's what I thought.

The writing is good, but the book is sexist and classist. "How to be a good wife"? Seriously? And suggesting that they cook different dishes and some such sexist nonsense! Whoa!

I learned some cool facts about Abe Lincoln which I enjoyed. I will read a summary or watch a video some day.

Btw, I have had some really great recommendation from book threads on HN.

- War and Peace

I was really enjoying it. Will definitely finish it someday.

________

I only read a book when it appears on my radar from multiple sources. HN threads, Reddit threads (not r/books pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-origina posts), people that I respect who talk about books (e.g. Paul Graham), books that appear on the bibliography of another book I am reading, etc.

Despite these checks and balances, I am surprised that I spent money for The Monk who Sold his Ferrari and How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Imagine Dale Carnegie was born and grew 100 years later and wrote his book in our time. Do you think it would be the same? Maybe, he would address that cooking advice to both husbands and wives, would not he?

Imagine yourself being born 100 years ago. Would not you think differently about those sexist parts of the book? You might actually find them useful if you were a regular American back then.

Every time someone tells me they liked "How to Win Friends and Influence People" without mentioning some reservations about the sexist and classist content, I think less well of them. I have yet to regret doing so.

> It's badly written, same old self-help cringe, and generic good advice packaged as something novel

Sounds like my experience with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I'd had such high expectations for the book after seeing it praised in so many places online but it's just terrible.

Thanks for the heads up. I am not going to buy it then.

I'm actually quite willing to forgive sexism from old books. Remember, the book was written in 1936. It was a little after women got voting rights in the US, and it wasn't until WW2 when women were taking over the factories that equality seemed legit. Child marriage in my country wasn't only legal, it was encouraged at that time, because women were illiterate and "needed a good man".

We've gone damn far in 3-4 generations. Books of the time were sexist. I was reading Aristotle's Poetics and it struck out as sexist - he said that women and slaves made for bad protagonists because of their lower class, unless it's a story about people in a lower class.

Old books have a lot of good forgotten things, but they're usually much harder reads because you have to mentally filter out these things.

Atlas Shrugged. I remember when my kindle got from 49% to 50%, the quote "Life is too short to read a bad book." popped into my mind and I deleted the book.

Same, also The Fountainhead, and that quote is always on my mind when choosing books. Thankfully most of the time I don't have to enforce it.

I thought about rwading it. But then I saw on Wikipedia how long it was and decided it probably wasn't for me.

The Wikipedia article gave me enough.

Uładzimir Karatkievič, Ears [of wheat] under Thy sickle

I was supposed to read this at school, because it's a seminal work of Belarusian literature or something, but I somehow managed to avoid it back then. So I've decided to give it a try now. And... I just couldn’t finish it.

It's a book about nobility. And I just can't associate myself with the nobles, with their rules and ideas about life.

E.g. there is a situation when Aleś starts arguing about politics; he says some things that irritate his classmates, and he knows it. Then three classmates find him alone, tell him some things that irritate him. And he starts a fight, because honour or something. And he's supposed to be in the right here.

I just... it's just so different from my worldview. They way they act, the way they think.

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Ohran Pamuk, İstanbul: Memories of a City

I just can't finish this book. It's just... I don't know, I don't feel compelled to continue reading? It's just a collection of memories, with no real incentive to read them.

Also, I find it difficult to empathise with the grief about the ruined empire, because for me, ruined empires are a good thing. So, a large portion of the book's sentiment is lost on me.

A lot of them, because it has been some years since it was effectively none (effectively because textbooks, manuals, xeroxed pages, etc.

That’s a way of suggesting that the compulsion to finish each book started is a young person’s vice. And virtue…I was well served at the time I read the Florida Building Code front to back…but the main utility was that it was easier to look up the right information than to rely on memory (doing the right thing was easier than the alternatives).

The greatest benefit of not finishing books is with good books. I can set something good aside to read later. I can savor short books.

Sam Shepard’s Motel Chronicles is the latest. It’s undergone something akin to exponential backoff.

On the other hand, I probably won’t finish the collection of Steinbeck essays I was reading in April, May, and August. The first part consisted of Steinbeck writing for the joy of writing. But the next is making arguments, and I can get all the arguments I want and then some on my iPhone.

I do read books twice. But only because they are so good. Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America most recently. And that was two in a row. So good I gave it away to someone I love.

I read Dawkins’ Consciousness Explained in the ‘90’s. I guess that might make me an early adopter of the memes meme…not that that pays any bills.

What, so far as I can see, is different between that book and the one you have is that the argument for memes is a novel way of thinking in general. A new canal for thought to flow down from n general. It’s not rewarmed polemic.

However, recently the central thrust of The God Delusion has given me an historical perspective on the concept of “fake news”. I am not hopeful it will be combatted.

Of course, God Delusion is in an important category of books. Those I can talk about without actually reading by virtue of having read about them. You don’t have to read Moby Dick to know a enough to use it in a metaphor.

The Power Broker - I can see why people might be fascinated to read about someone rising to power, but I could not stand about the misuse of this power with the sole purpose of catapulting himself forward. I am very well aware of the egotism and power-complexes that exists so I did not want to spend hours reading and getting reminded about it.

Wealth of Nations - Too much detailed information about grain prices and the like from the time where he wrote the book. It is difficult to follow and I had to stop. It is however a book I think I will give another try at some time, but then ruthlessly skip over the parts I find boring.

The Design of Everyday Things. Found it longwinded and jargon heavy without saying a lot or anything actionable at times.

I had some UI design skills already and intuition about it so I found a lot of the advice common sense. Like don't blame the user, give them a way to undo mistakes. This might be why I couldn't relate to people who say it's mind blowing and makes them see the world in a different way.

I've read Don't Make Me Think as well which is often recommended with the above. I thought this book was great. Concise, actionable, simple to follow. Refactoring UI is like this too.

There are plenty, but the most notable one is A Perfect Mess, by Freedman and Abrahamson.

The idea was quite good - mess is chaos, but chaos was not always bad. If you have a pile of stuff on the floor, it's efficient to take stuff from the pile and put it back in. Organizing is sort of like overarchitecture.

They used the book as proof of concept. The book was unplanned, there was probably no editing. It was just a dump of ideas and not organized in a coherent fashion.

So in a sense, it disproved the thesis that mess is a better state. It's a good book, but just really hard to read.

The Expanse Series: Babylon's Ashes (Book 6)

Potential spoilers

A couple hundred pages in, the pacing just felt too slow. The "high stakes" that kept me on the edge of my chair felt like they disappeared. Where I stopped reading, Mars was collapsing, Earth had collapsed (something that might be fixed in many generations), and the Belt was divided with Marco facing mutiny. And the Marco character went from seemingly having some grand plan and being 10 steps ahead to seemingly being just a charismatic thug who got lucky. Who really built the Protomolecule? In Holden's vision, who were the people who killed the people that built the Protomolecule? Where did they all go? Are any of those civilizations still alive? The first three seasons of the show and even books had a political/human struggle angle, but the Protomolecule and the alien tech were the glue that kept the story progressing. Even in Book 4 with New Terra from one of the ring gates. But seriously – Book 6 – the pacing of the story just turned me off. They could tell me in one chapter that Inaros and his crew got blown up and we don't have to talk about them anymore, and I wouldn't even be mad.

I know there are more books. At some point between now and when the next season of the Expanse airs on Prime Video, I'll probably finish Book 6 and move on to the remaining books. But seriously – Book 6 has hurt my brain. And I'm sad to learn that it'll be the final season of the show.

I felt the same. Books 5 and 6 are a real slog. I haven't been able to finish book six, but I'll try to before the next season is released.

Malazan Book of the Fallen is a series of epic fantasy novels. I can't do them. There are super fans and I think they are masochists. I like long, detailed series. Wheel of time, a song of ice and fire, the works of Brandon Sanderson, and more. Malazan just tosses you into a complex situation with zero onboarding. This can be a fun way to jump into a world, but Malazan is just terrible at it. I read the first two and a half books. Around that time, they finally described a race that our characters were at war with for the last two books. Like, basic descriptions like the fact they were not hominids was finally conveyed and completely altered what I had in my head for the last 60 hours of reading. Or we find out after a long while of reading (maybe separated by books) that a main character has red hair. I had no clue what was even happening in the first book until the last maybe the last 20%.

I like collecting books and in some way on purpose buy and collect way more than I could possibly read in all formats, audio,physical,digital.

I guess for me finishing the book is not the expectation, I like to reflect and sit back and really examine if I agree or not agree with the author.

books that I decided to stop reading :

"You are not a gadget" by Jaron Lanier, it's too negative and has the bias of believing lack of action is equivalent to building and self-correcting, I might return to it one day but right now I don't need more of that academic passive negativity.

kazuo ishiguro "never let me go", the introduction of the novel is gripping, the strange tone of the young protagonist draws you in, but then it starts getting more heavy with London heavy clouds dark sky vibe, and I was feeling like "no thanks, not today".

The one thing in common with the books that I finished more quickly is that they were either inspiring or had concise clear conclusions with satisfying progression and ending.

Clean Code - I read Clean Coder first and got really turned off by Robert Martin’s preachy, holier-than-thou tone (you should practice coding for 4 hours per day _outside_ your normal job? Really?). My impression left a bitter taste that remained when I tried to read Clean Code, so I just didn’t bother.

Christine by Stephen King. I am a King superfan and even I could not get through this, was just boring, there is only so much you can write about a possessed car and the novel is undeservedly huge. I have no problem with his other giant novels like The Stand and IT, love them.

Tried As I Lay Dying recently, maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace for it but I really couldn't make head nor tails of it. I was looking forward to reading Faulkner too, and this has soured me for a little bit.

Napoleon by Andrew Roberts defeated me. I was finding it interesting but I guess the sheer size put me off. I don't often read non-fiction so I find those a lot more difficult to get through, I want to work on that.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Excellently written like all his books, but the complete loss of hope (realistic as it was) was far too depressing - I like my SciFi as escapist as possible

Kurtzeil's The Singularity is Near - I recently picked up the book for the second time, after initially buying it when it first came out. I've put it down again. I don't know if it's the way it's written, the posturing, or what? I get and accept the concepts, but it just feels so hand-wavy and...I dunno. Anybody else have similar reaction?

Snow Crash.

I know, I know, everybody loves the author. But I couldn’t get into the author’s writing style. Long, drawn out sentences, sometimes so long that it had to be done on purpose. And although I liked the plot, it was kind of exhausting to read. I read about 3/4 of it before putting it down and ultimately giving it away.

I am struggling with Cryptonomicon for months now. Mostly due to the WW2 sections.

Zero to One, I tried many times but it's hard for me.

I have read other books and finished them. But this one is challenging.

Fichte's Science of Knowledge defeated me at 22, and again in my 50s. There are plenty of books that I have left unfinished, and hardly recall. But Fichte sticks with me for utter incomprehensibility. Maybe I'll give him another shot.

https://www.navalmanack.com/

First half was great about wealth and strategies for fast learners. Agreed with most of it. Later parts about meditation and diet and stuff. lost interest, r/fitness is the way.

Heretics of Dune.

I mostly enjoyed the previous Dune books. Particularly the first three. But God Emperor of Dune was kind of meh (lots of waxing philosophical with Leto...). It was hard to get into Heretics of Dune with none of the original characters to latch onto.

I am on my second reading of Dune, and will be going onto some of the others. I guess I might have some time before I get to Heretics.

Game of thrones. I loved how well written they are but there the books are huge so I'll never have the time to finish them so gave up about half way thru first one

War and Peace. Tolstoy is just... dense.

Not that I was unable, it just chokes me up sometimes: Permanent Record, Edward Snowden.

So far I haven’t finished any of Douglas Hofstadter’s books. I don’t think I’m alone in this :)

Just the one I am currently reading.

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