I got up to a hundred pages before I stepped back from reading it.
I usually read pretty quickly, I just couldn't seem to get in to the characters.

Constant reference to drug use made me uncomfortable, and just made me dislike all the characters immediately. Not that I have anything against them too much, I just can't relate at all. So as soon as I was distracted and had to do something else, I just didn't get back to it.

I probably will get back in to it soon. I ran out of books to read again any how.

Every one of them but Mario seems to be kind of a machine.

Pemulis, the math genius, kind of just made a meta statement along the lines of what you were saying. With reference to addicts who quit cold turkey (of which there is an abundance in the novel): "They got up and went to work and came home and ate and went to sleep and got up, day after day. But dead. Like machines; you could almost see the keys in their backs. You looked into their maps and something was gone. The walking dead. They loved it so much they needed it and gave it up and now they were waiting to die. Something was all over, inside."

It changes though, as I alluded to. They all kind of start out as addicts with some tragic satellite characteristics, but toward the middle of the book Wallace kind of starts softening them, and now about 800 pages in, they are just extremely relatable, each with redeeming qualities that I don't think the characters even know they have.

I kept putting it off just because I didn't like any of the characters initially.

The drug use reference and the lengths they would go about things just made me feel uncomfortable and sick to my stomach.

I'd probably enjoy reading it once I finally get in to the characters. Getting to that point though has been hard.

It is still definitely an easier read than the Kalevala though.

A lot are basically just what DFW would put if he used parentheses, but the bulk of them are actually part of or pivotal to the story that wouldn't fit anywhere else.

Read Gravity's Rainbow about 12 years ago and Joyce's Ulysses about 6 years ago. I have to build up my enthusiasm for taking on such behemoth books.

That man...ugh. Headaches.

once I realized (at least imo) that the story was basically about two bereaved parents entering middle age. I know there's a lot more going on, but that seemed to be the heart of the story for me and it engaged me.

I haven't really given Wallace much of a chance but I haven't been overly impressed with stuff of his that I've read...I haven't really given him much of a chance, although I am intrigued by Infinite Jest.

I've read it three times, and I'm fixin' to start again.

It is basically the kind of book people either love or hate, I think. I know a few people who started and just couldn't get into it at all. But the people who like it, seem to love it.

And how can you not love this: