While reading this thread, I kept wondering, why would anyone hate a book? I mean, what would make you keep reading once you realized you didn't like it? Well, OK, if you're a kid in school. Or if you were snowbound in a mountain cabin and there was nothing else to read.

Which reminds me: When I was married to my first wife, and we used to go visit my father-in-law, I was desperate for reading material. The only books in his house were religious (he was a fundamentalist Lutheran) or in German (he was a retired high-school German teacher) or else very conservative political publications like the National Review and Human Events. The least objectionable thing I could find was the Reader's Digest, so I mostly read that. So what do you suppose he bought me as a Christmas present? A subscription to the Reader's Digest! Eew! Gag me with a spewn!

I have to admit though, that there are a lot of books I started reading and never finished. I don't necessarily blame the book, though. I mainly blame my own short attention span, and the fact that I got interested in something else. In case anybody's interested, here are some of the books that I've read a good chunk of, then put aside, but may pick up again some day:

Moby Dick. Tom Brown's School Days. Remembrance of Things Past. Lark Rise to Candleford. Two Years Before the Mast. Old Jules. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The Pickwick Papers. Lucky Jim. Boswell's Life of Johnson. Dracula. Pride and Prejudice. The Mysterious Stranger. The Ginger Man. Life on the Mississippi.

I wouldn't say I hated any of these books. They all had something attractive about them and I enjoyed the part I read. I just didn't "get into" them enough to keep the momentum going.