This book has its downs and downs

Colby Cosh notes in passing that he is reading Gibbon. I'm guessing Gibbon's Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire. I have the six volume unabridged Everyman's set, which I picked up used for $25. It's in my books-that-I-should-read-someday stack. I wonder what version of Gibbon's Colby is reading.

I'm sure it will be good whenever I start reading it...but this reminds me, for some reason, of books that I struggled to finish. (I haven't started Decline and Fall because it looks like a daunting reading task.)

Hard for me to finish books that come to mind:

War and Peace (I bought that on summer vacation when I was a teenager, believe it or not.)

The Brothers Karamazov

Josephus' History (never finished it)

Anna Karenina

The Good Soldier Schweik (two false starts on starting it)

The Pickwick Papers (I thought that Oliver Twist and David Copperfield were okay. I guess that when I was younger I never developed enough of a taste for Dickens to appreciate this one.)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (no wonder this new paperback was on sale!)

A book by one of my political science professors, which I traded in after I finished the course. The fact that it was an 8 A.M. class didn't help.

...What books could you not finish?

(I'll sleep on this and add more to my list if they come to mind.)