I really struggled with The Name of the Rose. I love medieval history and some of the wordy bits were actually interesting and informative, but it just got so boring and dense at times – most of the architectural descriptions were just guh. The only reason I finished it was because I was staying with family at the time and had literally nothing else to read.
On a less “literary” level, The Name of the Wind by Rothfuss was probably the only fantasy book I ever picked up and just couldn’t finish. The story sounded interesting, the setting and creatures and magic system all sounded very interesting, but that main character... he’s just too smart and too talented and too handsome and too brave and too, well, perfect. Gave it a few tries, but never made it past page 50 or so.
Right now I’m struggling a bit with ASOIF. (slight possible spoiler alert) It’s just a bit hard to engage in a story when every character you start caring about ends up dead.
On a side note, it’s absolutely fascinating reading through some of these posts and seeing how tastes can differ so widely. One’s person’s book-that-changed-their-life is another's meh, I’ll read later.