Infinite jest brought it a few summers ago for a big readalong call infinite summer but got couple of hundred pages in and just hated all the tennis bits as tennis is a sport I was scared with as a kid having to sit and watch every summer Wimbledon when I’d rather have been watching cartoons or blue peter .That said I may return to it at some point .
#bookaday 25 never finished it
I’ve given my copy of this one away without starting it! Well done you for getting so far in – I had no idea there were the tennis bits!
Well would like to have got further but maybe another time
Couldn’t agree more! I took this with me on holiday 2 years ago and sort of waded through it – skipping bits here and there. There were some good things there, but it was just too long. I just look at the zany eloquence of ‘Tristram Shandy’ and think: that’s the way to do it!
Despite my interest in tennis, I’m daunted by the size of this one…
Hahaha I loved this one. My “never finished”??? The Satanic Verses – have started it more times than Rushdie has said “fatwa” but unreadable. As we know though Stu, we’re all different.
Hi, Tony. I can’t leave a comment on your blog because you have the dastardly embedded comments enabled and that system makes them disappear into the ether. :/ I’m not on Twitter any more, but I do miss chatting with you. I hope all is well.
P.S. Sorry to hijack your comments, Stu.
Great to hear you’re all ok, I was a bit worried there for a while when you just disappeared. All is well, I’m very much looking forward to Spanish Lit month & then Women in Translation month. A big fundraiser coming up too, walking the full Larapinta for indigenous women culture retention.
I also chose this as my unfinished read – like you, the tennis was just too much! Still feel slightly guilty about not reading it though. My other was Jean Genet – no guilt there, I don’t even care Bowie write a song about him!
I’ve never read it either. Maybe I should but there are so many books I’m already ding to read. Something about it has never peeked my interest.
I’ve tried and tried to read it. I even bought a ‘reader’s guide’, but that was worse than useless. I call ’emperor’s new clothes syndrome’ on the book. I don’t know why critics are so excited about Wallace’s writing. I think he was just having a joke at their expense.
The joy of a kindle is that I bought this book as a daily deal and no one will know I’ve never read it because it is virtually invisible on my book shelf. The one book I do have in several copies and translations is “Crime And Punishment”. I can’t even get to the murders and then stomach the idea of another how many pages with Raskholnikov. I think it is the cast not the writing. I loved “The Idiot”. Go figure.