The first sentence just kills it for me. And I quote:

"From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office beacause her father had called it that — a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them."

First sentences with 122 words are a major turnoff for me, no matter how many "100 greatest books ever" list a book may appear on. And if that didn't do it, the "long still hot weary dead September afternoon" certainly did.

I certainly did not give this book a fair read, but I did try to start reading it at least four different times. And four times I found myself bored and distracted.

Faulkner is just not my cup of tea, I suppose. I approached this book at a time in my life when I appreciate accessibility since I don't have a ton of free time to learn my way through a text.

The fact that I'm a newspaper editor & journalism teacher who stresses brevity colors my approach as a reader, I'm sure.