So I am just wondering what are the most boring books you guys have read? This could be for school or maybe you made a bad decision I just want to know because I’m curious.
For me it has to be a tie between The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, 1984 by I think George Orwell, and A Cats Eye by Margaret Atwood. I had to read the first one in high school and I found it so boring, the story is very literal and I didn’t really have much to discuss after. As for 1984 I’m not sure if I just didn’t understand it, I had to read it for AP lit, but it just felt like it dragged on and on even in the more fast paced parts.
As for A Cats Eye I picked it off a summer reading list and ended up not enjoying it, I found the story to be very slow and not creative at all so I eventually gave the book away.
by French-toast-bird
32 Comments
The Old Man and the Sea isn’t a story about an old man trying to catch a fish. Maybe you needed a better English teacher that would’ve sparked more interest
We had to read A Prayer for Owen Meany in my high school English class and I remember that being an absolute snooze fest
20,000 leagues under the sea. By about 20,000 leagues.
For me one of the most boring books I’ve ever read was The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It was horrible. I had to read it for my senior AP lit class. The descriptions were so verbose without needing to be. I absolutely hated that book. There was a tone in the book that rubbed me the wrong way. My male classmates loved the book. We also Jane Eyre that year and I really enjoyed it. Most of the girls in my class did. As for lengthy descriptions, I’m totally open to them. I love reading Thomas Hardy’s long descriptions in his novels. There must be something about Conrad’s writing. To this day, I refuse to pick up anything by Joseph Conrad.
Also, I’m sure there are other books that I’ve found very boring. This is just the one that stays top of mind for how unpleasant of a read that it was.
Never Let Me Go. I kept waiting for something to happen that would link the main characters to the big story that was happening around them, or at least change something in them, and then it ended.
*Phenomenology of Spirit*, by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It’s so difficult to understand that after more than 200 years there’s still no consensus about what it means.
I’ve heard it’s worse, not better, in the original German. But what really made me question the value of Hegel was his conclusion that Prussian monarchy under King Friedrich Wilhelm III was the pinnacle of history, essentially the goal towards which all of history had led.
Iliad. Quit about 1/3 through
Had to read Great Expectations in high school….That one bored me to tears
I’ll be real, if it’s boring, I don’t finish it and forget I ever read it until I come across it in the wild again.
Anna Karenina. I just didn’t caaaaaaare. The writing could be quite beautiful at times, and I really enjoyed the Levin & the peasants sections. But all the society sections, ugh, just be done book. I finished it though. Good to know that Tolstoy just isn’t for me.
american psycho
It’s such a waste when schools recommend Hemingway and Orwell to children in school. These books are much better appreciated after you’re older and have a lot of reading experience.
The Way of Kings is the single most boring book I ever read.
The Demon Cycle is the most boring series I ever read.
Rose of the Ranger is the most boring book I ever DNFed.
The Hotel New Hampshire is the worst book I’ve ever read.
Persuasion. Maybe rich people romance just isn’t for me. I stopped reading it 90 pages in
Undaunted Courage. Chronicles Lewis and Clark’s expedition but went into way too much detail. Some people like it but supply lists are not my thing.
There was one I had to read for my school called “Senhora” (only know the name in Portuguese, sorry).
It spent the first three pages or so describing how a woman entered a room. Her shoe, the curtain, her dress, and so on… I could not finish the book, because I got sleepy reading it, and then I figured out I didn’t absorb almost anything over the last page, and got disgusted thinking I would have to read the same page again, just for nothing to happen…
If I could compare with something, it’s basically like having to watch a single episode of Dragon Ball Z per week – you spend almost 30 minutes watching two men concentrating power and _nothing freaking happens_…
I’m having a hard time with War and Peace. I can’t relate to any of the characters and the book is just dragging.
Moby Dick. I DNF as it was sooooooo boring. I was hours in and Ahab hadn’t even shown up yet and they weren’t even on a ship.
The cure for insomnia is reading Utopia by Thomas More. I know some people find it fascinating, but it was the most boring book I read in all my years studying literature.
New Atlantis by Francis Bacon is a close second. There is something about early utopian literature that is just insufferable to me. Proably that there is nothing but long descriptions of societies that are meant to provide social commentary on the issues of the time.
Thomas Mann – Doctor Faustus nearly did me in.
The Fountainhead. The only book I’ve put down with zero intention of ever picking it up again…and that was 300ish pages in.
So. So. So. Drab.
Ethan Frome
This was not appropriate for 13 year olds. It didn’t have sexual content or anything of the sort.
But I felt that it was not appropriate because it had themes like two adults in an unhappy marriage and emotional cheating and it was just sooooooooo boring. They were like farmers or something.
And it was through the pov of an adult.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to read books in the pov that are leading different lives than you.
But really? Unhappy marriage and emotional cheating with an adult narrator? For 13 year olds?
We had way more fun reading Hamlet at 13/14.
I don’t finish boring books.
Canterbury Tales. The most boring book I never read and sure to put me to sleep. I still pick it up sometimes if I get a spot of insomnia 🤣
It hurts my soul when people dislike Hem or Orwell so much but I suppose I get it.
Sometimes mandatory reading can be an instant turn off. We had assigned reading of The Great Gatsby in high school and I was rather bored. I reread it in my mid-20s and was blown away with the writing.
I came to 1984 and Old Man and the Sea on my own as a 30 year old and loved them. I read Catcher in the Rye, of my own volition at age 21 and that book meant a ton to me.
Maybe try a Farewell to Arms and see how you feel. Read Animal Farm through a lens of today’s environment and see if it makes sense to you
The Bible. Somewhere in the Psalms I dozed off and never found out what happened next.
What were the most boring books you’ve read?
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I once read a Geometry textbook.
All of it.
Even my love of numbers and math is unable to overcome how damn boring I found it.
I should have avoided R/books today. So much of dissing the classics. Jesus.
Scarlet letter
Finally another one who thinks 1984 is boring.
the audiobook is good but I can’t get through the book. maybe I’ll try again
Middlemarch.
“I Am a Cat” by Natsume Soseki. It was over 900 pages of painful boredom. Both the narrator (the cat) and his owner were insufferable as fuck.
Btw, I read another book by Soseki, “Kokoro”, around five years later. I enjoyed that one so much more.