The most painful part is that I slogged through the entire first Thomas Covenant trilogy ("oh, but the next book[s] are so much better!"). Thank goodness I read very fast. There were about 30 pages [spoiler: the part about the massacre of the Giants at Seareach] which were superb and chilling -- but then I was returned to the Goddamn Self-Pitying Whiner Programming Already in Progress.

I can't read Heinlein either, no matter how many people tell me _Stranger in a Strange Land_ was simultaneously (1) a major influence on their lives and (2) atypical of his other work. Respecting books and writers as I do, I can count the number of times I've thrown a book across a room on one hand and have fingers left over...