Seriously, what gives? it's even worse if I have more stuff in the directory. I once tried to import a directory with a little over 200GB of mp3s, and it flat-out crashed the first try. The second try it made some progress but it took all night, third try it froze up again due to the number of tunez.. I gave up after the fourth try still hadn't gotten all the files (basing estimates of completion on folder size compared to iTunes library size after import.
This has happened on multiple computers, with multiple versions of iTunes. I'm guessing it's something inherent in the "import mp3s" algorithm Apple coded into iTunes, but I can't fathom what is so complex about the process that they'd mess it up that drastically.