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What famous books haven’t you read?  That’s too easy a question.  Tons of ’em.  But what famous (or, in a pinch, reasonably well known) books have you given the old college try but just couldn’t get past the first hundred pages or so?  I can think of five big ones off the top of my head:

Ulysses
Moby-Dick
Bleak House
The Brothers Karamazov (twice!)
Foucault’s Pendulum

I’m not sure what sets these books apart.  It’s not that I’m allergic to long books.  I plowed through War and Peace, Les Miserables, and Infinite Jest just fine.  I’ve read plenty of other Dickens (though I’m not really much of a fan) and nearly everything by Dostoyevsky except the Brothers K.  Ulysses is famously difficult, so no surprise there, but I’m not sure why I gave up on Moby-Dick.  Probably the middle third did me in.  Just wasn’t interested enough in whales.  And frankly, I don’t even remember Foucault’s Pendulum, let alone why I gave up on it.  And I suppose I ought to throw the Bible onto this list too, since I’ve often thought I should read the whole thing but then given up pretty quickly for fairly obvious reasons.  How about you?

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

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