Stuff You’ll Never Read Again...

[JohnW]

... no matter how good it is.

After squeezing a new bookcase into the second-hand shop that my living room increasingly resembles, and rearranging books accordingly, I've uncovered things I'd forgotten I had.
There are some quality publications that have been taking up space for twenty years simply because they're quality. I don't know if I'll ever look at them again.
Two examples:

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

Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth
This ain't exactly cheerful either, even if it's a low-grade depressing sort of sadness as opposed to the break-your-heart sadness of Briggs.
Also, I think I needed a magnifying glass to read it the first time, and that was when my eyes were twenty years younger.
I've seen it referred to as the Ulysses of comics, but I'm pretty sure I'm never going to read that either.

Anyone got other worthy but unloved books/comics of their own to add? Something you're happy to own but haven't the heart or stomach to reread?

[Barrington Boots]

When the Wind Blows is absolutely soul destroying!

Hadn't really thought about this, but looking over my equally overflowing bookshelves there's a bunch there that I wouldn't go with again - for example, I've got a bunch of Brett Easton Ellis books that I doubt I'll ever read again - I've moved on, I think, from that being the sort of stuff I want to read. The older I get the more I want my horror and violence to be fantastic and not grounded in realism. I suspect I won't read the Game of Thrones again. Even if George RR stops procrastinating and releases the next book, I'm not sure I can wade through all the Joffrey / Ramsay cruelty again, to say nothing of the snoozefest that is feast for crows.

I no longer own it, but Louis de Bernieres The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts. You think it's going to be a slightly breezy parody and it turns out being an absolutely horrific tale of rape and murder.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

The Road

The best book I didn't enjoy

[JohnW]

And I should have started this thread in Books & Comics – obviously.
Balls and botheration.
I'd blame Monday mornings only I'm always like this.
Moderators, please feel free to remedy.

Other high-brow but unwanted comics I've just noticed:
Adrian Tomine. This guy describes a world that has nothing to do with me;
Comics so outside the mainstream that reviewers feel safe in praising them, such as Rutu Modan, Exit Wounds and Juni Ba, Djeliya;
Beautiful hard-back Mike Mignola editions not drawn by Mike Mignola – I'm looking at you, Jenny Finn;

None of these are bad – far from it – they're just not for me.
But they look nice on my shelves and they have damn-all resale value.

The Road

The best book I didn't enjoy

I saw the film on a Friday and it was still disturbing me the following Monday. You can keep the book.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Jerusalem.  I've been reading it for over a year, with breaks of shorter books. The Lucia Joyce POV chapter is, while an incredibly skillful homage to Finnegans Wake, honours its inspiration by also being really hard to get through.

You're all wrong about The Road. The book is way better, with full armies of cool cannibals instead of just a handful, and a fun landscape of ash and soot rather than just grey grass and trees like the film.

[Pyroxian]

I keep Where the Wind Blows to lend to people who go 'Oh, Raymond Briggs - he did that nice one about the snowman didn't he', just so I can see the haunted look in their eyes when they return it...

[Link Prime]

Approx 99% of all comic purchases from the past 10 - 20 years, including 2000AD, sadly.
Even from the past year I could only see myself ever going back to rare gems such a The legend of Luther Arkwright or Fantastic Four Full Circle.
I only ever really want to re-read select material from creators I truly enjoy - Gaiman, Moore, Miller, Simonson, J. Wagner, Byrne, Kieth, Windsor-Smith, Claremont, Ito, Morrison etc.
As for books - probably a 0% chance for literally any of them.

Life is too short, getting shorter, I'm just bagging and boarding for a future wherein a disinterested family member will try and flog the lot off for Cents on the Dollar while I enjoy sweet oblivion. 

[JohnW]

Life is too short, getting shorter, I'm just bagging and boarding for a future wherein a disinterested family member will try and flog the lot off for Cents on the Dollar while I enjoy sweet oblivion. 

The obvious thing to do is to take it all with you.
Have yourself burned atop a great pyre of all your books and comics so that you can read them in the afterlife.
If you want a full traditional funeral you can have all your weapons, your favourite horse and favourite wife thrown onto the pyre too (but you might just want to settle for a favourite armchair or coffee mug).

[Hawkmumbler]

It's the obvious answer but I really can't bring myself to read anything of Tolkiens again.
I'm glad I read them when I did as a prepubescent nipper, but those where summer days that seemed to drag on forever so downing 3 and a bit massive tomes spanning The Hobbit and the Rings trilogy didn't seem so daunting.
I just do not have the capacity to engage with massive works like that anymore.

Massive collections of short stories are one thing, indeed I'm presently working my way through the complete prose and poems of Poe and that book is a 2000 page monster, but I simply can not get into novels exceeding 500 pages anymore as with my now pressure spare time it's just an unendearing way of spending my precious reading time.. Alas, poor Dune, it seems I may never give you the chance you quite likely deserved.

[BadlyDrawnKano]

Crime and Punishment - When I left sixth form college I was in a bit of a messy place (my step-father had died the summer before, and my Mum was increasingly ill) and I felt the need to be out of education for at least one year. One turned in to four as I ended running a fish and chip shop owned by a friend's father (it's a long, dull story!) but by 1996 I was ready to head off to uni, but was a little bit worried that given all that time off I might now struggle with the kind of material covered by an English degree and so started the book. It's something I think is brilliant in places, but absolutely exhausting and mentally taxing in others (especially after the crime has taken place), I'm so glad I read it, but I will never, ever read it again!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

It's the obvious answer but I really can't bring myself to read anything of Tolkiens again.
I'm glad I read them when I did as a prepubescent nipper, but those where summer days that seemed to drag on forever so downing 3 and a bit massive tomes spanning The Hobbit and the Rings trilogy didn't seem so daunting.
I just do not have the capacity to engage with massive works like that anymore.

Massive collections of short stories are one thing, indeed I'm presently working my way through the complete prose and poems of Poe and that book is a 2000 page monster, but I simply can not get into novels exceeding 500 pages anymore as with my now pressure spare time it's just an unendearing way of spending my precious reading time.. Alas, poor Dune, it seems I may never give you the chance you quite likely deserved.

Ooof, yeah. Tolkien is hard going. I managed a reread when the movies came out, but my last attempt, back when that awful Hobbit trilogy came out, crashed and burned when I got to the chapter "The Council of Elrond". One of the worst chapters in any book. Not just because of its content, but also its context. The story and peril had been slowly ramping up, and then FUCK YOU! You have to sit through this interminable admin meeting mixed with a school assembly. Mr Dwarve's class will sing you a song and Miss Elve's class have prepared some poetry. My enthusiasm was bodily pummelled.

Every attempt at the Silmarillion has resulted in the words sliding of my brain and my eyes sliding off the page.

It didn't put me off big paper cinderblocks mind you. I read all the Song of Ice  and Fire books, but probably won't read the next one if it ever gets published. It's been so long I can't rightly recall what's going on and the TV show so wildly staggered off its source that it's no good as a refresher. Piecing together what's actually happening in Westeros from several unreliable narrators is fine, but the reason I don't want to read those books again is the chapters of basically over verbose menus and livery/heraldry catalogs.

I've made peace with this, the series injects realistic politics and sociology into a fantasy setting. Those are two things that never get satisfactory resolutions anyways.

[Funt Solo]

Every feast another "trencher of stew". You could play drinking games in  Eddings' Belgariad for every time he wrote "pennants snapping in the wind".

[Barrington Boots]

I'm ploughing my way through a bag of R.A. Salvatore D&D novels that a friend gave me and I know I'll never read these again. They're all basically the same book, and that book wasn't good to start off with.

[Proudhuff]

I keep Where the Wind Blows to lend to people who go 'Oh, Raymond Briggs - he did that nice one about the snowman didn't he', just so I can see the haunted look in their eyes when they return it...

    

[JayzusB.Christ]

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.