The books that spring to mind are Dr Zhivago and The Book of Dave and I fully intend to finish them at some point...I think I just slowed down with them and then stopped while I read something else, and just didn't pick them up again.
This I've done with dozens and dozens of books - technically I'm still reading Anna Karenina, but I think it's been a year and a half or so since I last opened it, so when I feel up for it I'll just restart from the beginning. That one I own, but mostly this happens with library books, and at some point I just bring them back, and maybe give it another shot later. Like many other people, I started and gave up on Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon - twice even, I think - but then tried again, got through it and liked it enough to read the awesome next two books, and the rest of the series.
And it's not even necessarily that I dislike those books, usually I'm just not particularly gripped by them. Or I do love them, but find them too exhausting - Thomas Pynchon's books Mason & Dixon and Against the Day fall in that category. Still want to read them, especially the former, but they're books that are very hard to read at more than twenty pages a time, and after a while I just gave up.
Have you ever started and stopped reading a book because you disliked it so much? Or do you make yourself finish all books you read? Or maybe you just haven't happened upon a book that you had this kind of reaction to - I don't recommend it.
I don't really remember having given up on books in disgust, no... but yeah, loads of books that I haven't finished.
Yeah I think I'd have to start the books again that I've given up on as I can't remember enough about them, but they were such slow going that I'm not sure I can face it...I have to be in the right mood and atm I've been reading way too much YA and short books that go zoom that all I want to read is stuff like that! Tho I've got my readingness back to some extent again as I've finally started A Dance with Dragons so at least that's a bit more hefty.
I think I gave up on Dune the first time I tried it but persevered when I tried it again and ended up really enjoying it, but I'm not sure how many other books I've given up on and gone back to I've really enjoyed - maybe it just feels like an achievement having finished it at all and the slog to get through it made me like it less. Who knows.
TOES 
*MySmiley*
*MySmiley*
Have you ever stopped reading a book because you really don't like it?
- 31/03/2012 10:47:46 AM
1464 Views
Hm. Rarely as a conscious decision...
- 31/03/2012 01:45:52 PM
1057 Views
Re: Hm. Rarely as a conscious decision...
- 04/04/2012 08:49:56 AM
1337 Views
Yup. GRRM's stuff *NM*
- 31/03/2012 02:53:47 PM
547 Views
Me too. I tried twice.
- 31/03/2012 04:18:50 PM
1264 Views
i sometimes can't believe i managed to read those books... so much vile stuff in there 
*NM*
- 01/04/2012 06:53:50 AM
480 Views
*NM*
- 01/04/2012 06:53:50 AM
480 Views
More out of boredom than dislike, but there have only been a handful. *NM*
- 31/03/2012 04:12:32 PM
513 Views
yes. mostly when i was in high school... couldn't read erikson, i got to p100 and still didn't care
- 01/04/2012 06:49:45 AM
1118 Views
*NM*
You can laugh all you want Legolas, but I agree
- 02/04/2012 06:42:36 PM
1073 Views
Reading anything Victorian or older in Dutch translation tends to be a bad idea, agreed.
- 02/04/2012 10:24:54 PM
1062 Views
Of course! All the time!
- 02/04/2012 11:28:58 PM
1129 Views
All the fucking time.
- 10/04/2012 04:28:13 AM
1077 Views