The reading experience …

… Lionel Shriver: 'Moby-Dick? Get on with it: did the old bastard catch the fish, or didn’t he?' | Books | The Guardian.

The book I couldn’t finishA Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I know it won a Pulitzer and I know the story of its publication captured the popular imagination (the author killed himself years before his magnum opus appeared in print). But I found this novel utterly unreadable and every joke, for me, landed like a sack of flour. When I finally gave myself permission to put it down, I felt as if I’d just been let out of jail.

That was exactly my experience. And I didn’t finish it either.