We all know people who tend to give up on a book if it’s not interesting enough or grabbing their attention within the first 100ish pages. What’s a book that rewarded you for sticking with it through a slow or uninteresting start?
My examples:
Billy Summers by Stephen King. I just finished this one a couple of weeks ago, and while it’s currently my least favorite King that I’ve read so far, it did get considerably more interesting about 150-200 pages in. I thought the beginning of the book was quite slow but around this page mark, the story picked up quite a bit. I’m glad I stuck it out.
Proxima by Stephen Baxter. Currently about 100 pages from being done with this one and I must say that this book was pretty slow and boring as far as sci-fi goes for the first half. It does however get much more interesting mid-way through and I’m now thoroughly enjoying the cool concepts that he’s playing around with.
What are some of your personal examples?
by Darrow_Of_Lykos4584
13 Comments
*Until I Find You* by John Irving was quite large, but the first half wasn’t really paying off. At about the half-way point, there was a certain change/twist/development and the whole thing took off like a rocket. Probably ended up enjoying it more than any of his other novels.
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s a book that takes quite a bit of time to unfold, but it is very good when it does fully unfold. Plus, the idea of being in a Mitteleuropean (sic) city that is should be familiar but isn’t is an interesting one. It’s probably my favourite Ishiguro book besides The Buried Giant.
*Middlemarch*, by George Eliot. This novel made me quite uncomfortable because it’s mostly about unhappy marriages. I can read about wars all day because I’m not a soldier and don’t expect to be in a war. But I am in a marriage, and I don’t like reading about realistic unhappy marriages.
That said, I stuck with it and I liked the book very much. It didn’t exactly have a happy ending, but also didn’t have a tragic ending. As in life, people just muddled along as best they could, coming to terms with the choices they made.
But I do believe the author, who was in a very unconventional relationship with a married man, wrote the book in part to show how quietly unhappy old-fashioned conventional marriages could be.
In case you don’t know, Middlemarch was published in installments in 1871-72, but was set in a fictional English Midlands town in 1829 to 1832.
*Half of a Yellow Sun* by Chimimanda Adichie. It was outside my reading ability and quite harrowing, but Adichie is an amazing writer and the book was amazing.
i’m a serial DNFer but the one that i actually stuck with and was rewarded by was Dark Water Daughter by H. M. Long.
the whole time i was wondering why it had gotten such rave reviews because i was so blisteringly bored. i hate insta-love in any sense tbh, i couldn’t figure out the characters, and i personally have a grudge against people named Samuel so that didn’t help.
but i liked the aesthetic and i loved the world the author had built, so i stuck with it. within the last 150 pages it went from a light 3 to a solid 4.5 (.5 still knocked off for insta-love but i got over the Samuel thing). it turned into damn near a masterpiece tbh and i’m looking forward to the rest of the trilogy coming out.
War and Peace. The first 100 pages or so introduced scores of charters with confusing Russian names. The narrative then narrows focus to a handful of key characters. Luminous. Gorgeous.
I know I’ll get hate for it, but It took me moooonths to get through Fellowship of the Ring (seriously, they’re singing again?), then only a couple weeks to read through Two Towers, and one day for Return of the King. Definitely a slow start, then it really sucks you in. At least for me. I had previously read The Hobbit about 20 years before that, and wasn’t expecting LOTR to be so different, but maybe the difference was only 20-years-older me? 😉
The Name of the Rose. Starts out pretty heavy and with a lot of detail but was ultimately quite fun and interesting.
Lonesome Dove. Holy crap was I bored for the first like 25% of the book but it ended up being one I had a hard time putting down!
**Wizard of Earthsea**.
The Scarlet Pimpernel. I was maybe a little young when I first read it and the language may have been a bit over my head. But the ending made it one of my favorite books of all time.
Just finished *Bleak House.* Almost DNF’d at the ~30% mark or so, just didn’t feel like it was going anywhere, the plot development was pretty slow, descriptive passages were just soooo… Dickens. But then it all kind of clicked. Development was slow as a metaphor for the snail’s pace of the court, the characters wove together really well, nice arc (both triumph and failure) to the stories, and a satisfying ending. Really glad I stuck it out.
Pale Fire.
I don’t actually think “Shade’s” poem is very interesting poetry, and I don’t really like poetry, but getting through that to the “analysis” was thoroughly rewarding. I honestly can’t sing Pale Fire’s praises enough.
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