I hate giving up on a book. but sometimes it's all you can do. Presumably the publisher liked it, but for the reader... I gave up on War and Peace about three-quarters through, tired of trying to make sense of all the minor characters you'd first met five million pages earlier and were expected to remember, though I did finish it courtesy of a book that gave condensed versions of 'classics'. But the one I gave up on fastest was one I abandoned halfway down page 1. That was Oliver Twist.