Stuff You’ll Never Read Again...

[JohnW]

A friend of mine lent me The Fountainhead long ago and I don't think I made it to the second chapter.
But she also lent me Love in the Time of Cholera, which I really liked and – and this is more important – I fancied her mad.
Anyway, Ayn Rand doesn't count because we all agree it's garbage. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on the other hand, belongs on this thread because, much as I loved his books at the time, I have no more appetite for minutely constructed, slow-moving, Latin-American magical realism. Middle age has made me crass, or maybe just less intellectual and less sentimental.
I'll leave the books on my shelf so people might think I have a soul, but I won't be rereading.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Raymond Briggs, When The Wind Blows
This is just plain sad. Why would I want to read something that makes me me so sad?

I'll admit to a morbid fascination with this book. I read it around the time when I started big school, when I was starting to recognize none of the British/American media I was consuming was addressing all the murder and mayhem that seemed so normal, almost mundane in my wee corner of Ireland/UK. Maybe all that mutated my threshold for tragedy and despair. There was something weirdly intoxicating about this wee comic with charming art, that addressed innocents getting caught up in the actions and agendas of psychotics. The idea that a bomb (THE bomb in this case), could wreck the lives of those that weren't even caught in its blast was something I knew more about than I should have at that young age. I don't know the mind of Briggs, but he probably didn't intend that reading. Maybe that's just proper art happening. I might dig this out of my mother's bookshelf next time I visit.

I wasn't sure if I should post this nonsense, so I let it marinate for ~an hour and ~a whiskey before posting, so there ye go.

The Fountainhead. I was recommended it and knew very little of Ayn Rand at the time.  I was just baffled at the idea that I was supposed to admire the sociopathic, joyless, rapey weirdo of a protagonist and his awful, brutalist architectural designs. I gave up halfway through.

I started reading Atlas Shrugged, knowing full well who Rand was and what she represented. I stopped about 50 pages in.

Atlas Shat more like.

There's a lot of Tharg's output I'll never read again, including stuff I liked. There's "great big re-read" threads I can refer to here, to scratch those itches.

[Dandontdare]

my shelves are groaning with books I'll never read again, but books are like pets .. you can't just ... get rid of them ...it's inhumane!  Look at them on my shelves, see how well-read I am, fondle them, remember them, but I'm physically incapable of dumping them.

I am grateful for my English degree that I ever read poetry and shakespeare at all - I've got a whole shelf of Byron, Keats, Owen etc, and I'm glad that the academic discipline forced me to read and understand them, but I'm never going to think "y'know what? I fancy a bit of Keats tonight"

Lord of the rings however is a book I can reread to infinity. I reread it for four consecutive summers in my teenage years, and 3 or 4 times since, and I know I'll do so again. Gave up on the Silamrilion when I was 15 however, and have no desire to revisit it.

Never read Ayn Rand and never want to - read enough about it to know that life's too short for that crap

[Proudhuff]

I've got a large wall of books that about a quarter are waiting to be read  , new ones keep piling up, mostly at birthday and chrissy time. I've not got the space to 'display' any more that I currently have. I'm loathed to stick em in a box in the loft for my sons to sort when I shuffle orf.

So I'm slowly, very slowly, getting rid of novels I wont read again, GN and TPB that are a bit meh, even considering off loading my 2000ad/Dredd annuals as I won't be looking at them again really.
My reading time over all has diminished as my commute has been cut from a total of 80 mins a day: four times a week, to just 20 mins a day three times. And I no longer have a 'book at bedtime'.
...However I now enjoy talking books more as I can 'get on' with stuff during the day while listening.