Books everyone thinks are great but you hated (and vice versa)

[inva]

Dracula
Starts off good, by the end I felt like my life was being drained too.

 

[Voley]

Slightly different but On The Road and The Catcher In The Rye were both books I loved as a teenager but reread and hated in later life.

On The Road got described as 'an ode to selfishness' by Dillinger4 on here once and after rereading it I agreed.

Similarly Catcher In The Rye just seemed whiny and self-absorbed. I was like that myself at that age so that's why I liked it then, I think.

 

[Aladdin]

I tried reading James Joyce's Ulysses three times. Gave up each time about 25% of the way through. Will never bother trying again.

Yep. I gave up 6 times. Finally finished it just because I refused to be bested.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Yep. I gave up 6 times. Finally finished it just because I refused to be bested.

Was it worth it?

 

[A380]

Anything by Dickens, you can tell he was getting paid by the word.

Even before the politics thing Harry Potter, It just seemed a poor execution of what could have been a brilliant urban fantasy but was just plodding and pedestrian. After the first couple of books' massive sales JK could obviously tell the editors to fuck off as well and they were ridiculously long plodding and pedestrian books.

Stranger in a Strange Land. I mean I love Heinlein* but Stranger is bollocks in writing, plot, politics and philosophy. And yet it is his must famous book and people hail it as a literary masterpiece. It’s the only book I hate I have re-read, three times to see if I had missed something.

Tolkien.

(*I know, I know but read Moon is a Harsh Mistress first)

 

[Winot]

Slightly different but On The Road and The Catcher In The Rye were both books I loved as a teenager but reread and hated in later life.

On The Road got described as 'an ode to selfishness' by Dillinger4 on here once and after rereading it I agreed.

Similarly Catcher In The Rye just seemed whiny and self-absorbed. I was like that myself at that age so that's why I liked it then, I think.

Interesting - I had exactly the same experience with OTR but found something new in CITR the second time with an older perspective. Have reread other Salinger too (Franny & Zooey etc.) and love his style.

 

[rubbershoes]

No Country for Old Men. Cormac McCarthy is one of my favourite writers but this book just read like a western pulp thriller.

 

[quimcunx]

Slightly different but On The Road and The Catcher In The Rye were both books I loved as a teenager but reread and hated in later life.

On The Road got described as 'an ode to selfishness' by Dillinger4 on here once and after rereading it I agreed.

Similarly Catcher In The Rye just seemed whiny and self-absorbed. I was like that myself at that age so that's why I liked it then, I think.

Both terrible books when I read them in my 30s. Gave up on On the road 10 pages before the end.

'Top 50 modern classics' lists should be renamed 'Top 50 crap novels men fondly remember reading as teenagers'.

 

[Aladdin]

Was it worth it?

Not really.

 

[Sue]

The Confederacy of Dunces. My friends all loved it. I didn't get why at all.

Oh God, that was absolutely terrible. I hated it.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

A couple of obvious ones spring to mind.
Lord of the Rings, which I read as a young teen. I just couldn't believe how shit it was considering the praise. I also read the Hobbit, which I thought was better but still shit (there wasn't a lot of interesting books in my school library).
Harry Potter - the first one. Lot's of people at work telling me it was a great book for adults despite being a childrens book. . . . I just couldn't finish it. It was an easy read for sure, but boy was it boring as fuck.

In the reverse . . . I was told to avoid Louis Sachar because his books were for children. . . but I read Holes and The Card Reader to my daughter as a child and found them to be quite neat/tight stories that I may well have been happy enough to read to myself before bed.

 

[Sue]

I loved Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children when I read it at a similar age, but read it again about ten years ago and found the writer’s voice insufferably pleased with itself.

I've read two or three of Rushdie's books and hated all of them.

 

[hitmouse]

Not liking Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce? Bunch of philistines in this thread.

I've never understood what everyone sees in Haruki Murakami. Also If on a Winter's Night a Traveler tends to get a lot of plaudits but I found it tedious.

Oh yeah, If on a Winter's... is unreadable. Some other Calvino is good though. And don't get me started on Tristram Shandy.

Also, I remember really liking Flight from the Enchanter but a friend of mine, who has fairly similar tastes and usually likes Murdoch, is trying to read it now and hating it. Any other Flight from the Enchanter lovers and/or haters here?

 

[frogwoman]

Both terrible books when I read them in my 30s. Gave up on On the road 10 pages before the end.

'Top 50 modern classics' lists should be renamed 'Top 50 crap novels men fondly remember reading as teenagers'.

Yeah there's kind of an undue reverence for 'the classics' which often means 'any book published more than 20 years before I was born'.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I've read two or three of Rushdie's books and hated all of them.

Same here. I really couldn't understand the acclaim.

 

[danny la rouge]

The Confederacy of Dunces. My friends all loved it. I didn't get why at all.

I agree. Couldn’t finish it.

 

[frogwoman]

Tbh though I don't especially understand all the hate the Da Vinci Code gets. It's not perfect but there are definitely much worse books out there.

 

[hitmouse]

Takes all sorts innit, I think I've maybe read Confederacy about three times by now.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

The Dice Man. Although hopefully there'll be some agreement that it's rubbish on here because the people who like it are a) idiots and b) should probably be on some sort of police watch list.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Slightly different but On The Road and The Catcher In The Rye were both books I loved as a teenager but reread and hated in later life.

On The Road got described as 'an ode to selfishness' by Dillinger4 on here once and after rereading it I agreed.

Similarly Catcher In The Rye just seemed whiny and self-absorbed. I was like that myself at that age so that's why I liked it then, I think.

Agree with both of these. On the Road I just found boring and gave up on tbh. Catcher in the Rye I think is better written but yeah I think ultimately I find him to be just a bit of an irritating dick.

 

[danny la rouge]

The Life of Pi.

Or as I call it, the Life of Pish.

 

[Aladdin]

Tbh though I don't especially understand all the hate the Da Vinci Code gets. It's not perfect but there are definitely much worse books out there.

It's an entertaining read.

The film is shite

 

[frogwoman]

One critically acclaimed book I couldn't finish recently was Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar Goshen. Well written but the main character was so unlikeable that I gave up.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Tbh though I don't especially understand all the hate the Da Vinci Code gets. It's not perfect but there are definitely much worse books out there.

I absolutely hated it. The writing was so immature.

 

[DotCommunist]

Oh, and Paolo Coelho's the Alchemist deserves a special mention for being absolute trash of the highest order, and politically suspect too. It's not true that everyone loves it but I have had many, many rave recommendations for it, mostly from hippyish people while travelling but from more ostensibly sensible people who ought to know better as well.

yeah its a terrible book. Turns out the treasure you were seeking was...at home all along. Fuck off.

 

[frogwoman]

I absolutely hated it. The writing was so immature.

Tbh i read it when I was 16 so I may have overly positive views of it.

 

[Aladdin]

Tbh i read it when I was 16 so I may have overly positive views of it.

Me too.. I remember being gripped by the intrigue.. I think I read it in one day. Possibly one sitting.

 

[frogwoman]

yeah its a terrible book. Turns out the treasure you were seeking was...at home all along. Fuck off.

I hate books with that kind of an ending. There is an audiobook I listened to last year about an author who realises that someone is copying his books to do a bunch of murders. In the end it turned out that he did the murders himself and hallucinated most of the book's events including hallucinating that he had a pet dog, which was the best part of the book

 

[danny la rouge]

I absolutely hated it. The writing was so immature.

I remember it as immature too, and shallow. And also you could see the formula sticking out a mile. And now I’m working towards the cliffhanger that’ll get you reading the next chapter. And annoyingly, it worked! I read the whole fucking thing. And felt dirty and ashamed, like when you eat Pringles.

 

[ska invita]

James Baldwins nonfiction... Too 'posh'.
I've not read any of his fiction though.