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

[Jammy smears]

Ballard's Concrete Island, I started reading it over a decade ago and still haven't finished it, I found the protaganist insufferable.
Faulkner's The sound and the fury, I couldn't get past the first couple of chapters

 

[krtek a houby]

Dystopiary I didn't hate it exactly, but I found Story of O quite repetitive and dull but I guess people don't read that book for the plot.

Couldn't finish it either. Probably had enough erotica after reading Dirty Havana Trilogy

 

[oryx]

Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things. Found the story good but the writing style really irritating.

I read a novel by Rachel Cusk, who IMHO is critically hyped, and thought it was awful. Irritating characters and clever-dick style which may or may not have been reminiscent of...

...Martin Amis. Only read one (London Fields), but had no inclination to read more.

 

[marshall]

Rachel Cusk is a mystery to me too - ‘whoosh’ straight over my head.

I did read lots of Amis in my early 20s when I was young & dumb, but by ‘London Fields’ I’d moved on. ‘Money’ was his peak IMO, bit underrated that one.

 

[rutabowa]

Gravity'Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon. partly because it is HUGE, but also I have suspicion it doesn't really many anything and it definitely add anything to my life. Read 6 Balzac novels in the same time, far more productive and enjoyable.

 

[chilango]

Seriously? I thought it was great. I understand why people might not have liked it but the worst book you've ever read? I might need to read it again though tbf but I remember the psychology parts being really convincing. It was a long time since I read it though.

Yeah. I hated it.

The whole balloon thing really annoyed me.

The writing - to me at least - felt aimed at reviewers rather than readers.

(I'm sure there are worse books though, I just haven't read them! Like "Eat, Pray Love" for example )

 

[SpookyFrank]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Copying down the Wikipedia article on 'autism' is not writing a book.

 

[rubbershoes]

Do people like Ian McEwan here? I threw Saturday across an empty tube carriage in disgust. I did like his early ones though.

I'm a big fan of Ian McEwan. Particularly Saturday.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I hated Saturday. Normally like McEwan, but Saturday was either boring, annoying or infuriating. Sometimes all three together.

 

[hitmouse]

No. I guess I just don’t think Roth ages well. Some writers don’t.

Yeah, FWIW (and based on having read Janine this year but not having read Portnoy since I was a teenager) I definitely think Janine's the better book as well. Did really enjoy Portnoy when I read it but not sure how it'd stand up to a re-read now.

 

[polly]

I'm a big fan of Ian McEwan. Particularly Saturday.

I hope I haven't yucked your yum, in that case.

 

[Jennaonthebeach]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Copying down the Wikipedia article on 'autism' is not writing a book.

My ex and her mother gave me a copy of this to read because I'm autistic and they thought i ought to read it. I still have the copy, and no, I've never been able to bring myself to read it.

 

[mojo pixy]

This thread reminds me of



but books instead of music

 

[mojo pixy]

Thought of another one: Beckett.

Im a bit of a Beckett fanboi and I think Waiting for Godot is one of the best things ever written, but in fairness I think Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson took the same idea and improved it vastly when they made Bottom.

 

[frogwoman]

And I just finished a Lynda Laplante book that really wasn't that good

 

[Idris2002]

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Genuinely the worst book I've ever read all the way through to the end. It feels like he wrote it while he was drunk, and didn't bother revising it. Every time you think there might be some sort of climax or crisis. . . nothing actually happens.

wikipedia tells me that Fitzgerald considered the book to be his masterpiece. Hey ho.

 

[Idris2002]

Not sure if Lady Chatterley's lover supposed to be that good but it's obviously very famous. It's horrible. All three main characters are really unpleasant with no redeeming features. It's a shame the publicity around the court case led to it being seen as some kind of big deal.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "no redeeming features", but yeah they're not easy people to like. Mellors has a lot of Heathcliff DNA in him, while also obviously being a wish fulfilment for Lawrence himself.

However - I think it does qualify as a big deal because it does try to grapple with the Big Questions, the Human Condition, What's it all about, etc.

 

[wtfftw]

I hated A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. I read it recently for a bookclub and was surprised at my dislike.

 

[Brainaddict]

I hated A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. I read it recently for a bookclub and was surprised at my dislike.

Yeah it was crap. Can't even remember it but I remember it was crap.

 

[frogwoman]

Dystopiary it was really rubbish, not bad enough to mean 1 star but still pretty terrible and I'm quite disappointed

 

[Storm Fox]

I agree with ATOMIC SUPLEX regarding Lord of the Rings. I found the prose so stilted and everything was dragged out for such a long time. I liked the (Peter Jackson) film versions. I even tried the Audiobooks, and every time, I could not get past where Frodo and Sam were wandering around The Dead Marshes.
I might give the Andy Serkis audiobooks a go.

 

[Sue]

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Horribly sentimental, horrible writing and a really annoying child narrator to boot. I was amazed by how bad it was.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I agree with ATOMIC SUPLEX regarding Lord of the Rings. I found the prose so stilted and everything was dragged out for such a long time. I liked the (Peter Jackson) film versions. I even tried the Audiobooks, and every time, I could not get past where Frodo and Sam were wandering around The Dead Marshes.
I might give the Andy Serkis audiobooks a go.

I tried the audio book of the Hobbit after I read the book (maybe about 12 years old?) I read the book but found it boring and zoned out in many places. The School library also had the tape, so I thought it would be like watching TV on demand (no video recorders then). It was still shit, but I do remember liking the voice the reader put on for Golum.

My problem with Lord of the Rings was not the prose (I wasn't a fan, but I just put it down to being an adult book) it was just that the story was so linear . . . they just went from one thing to the next. Can't get through here, now we can. Oh we are stuck, new magic thing never mentioned before saves us. It was boring. Consequently the movies brought all that flooding back. I hated them.
I haven't tried watching the Hobbit, but I do remember that being a better story. Maybe just because it was shorter?

 

[petee]

Jack Kerouc - On the Road. Self indulgent wank.

i've tried to like the beats a few times and i can't do it. ginsburg wrote some great stuff okay, but kerouac, ferlinghetti, burroughs, anything i've read by them has been put aside quickly.

 

[hitmouse]

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Genuinely the worst book I've ever read all the way through to the end. It feels like he wrote it while he was drunk, and didn't bother revising it. Every time you think there might be some sort of climax or crisis. . . nothing actually happens.

wikipedia tells me that Fitzgerald considered the book to be his masterpiece. Hey ho.

I thought Tender is the Night, not as good as Gatsby but I remember its biggest flaw as being that Fitzgerald seemed to want the reader to take a protagonist called Dick Diver seriously. Also iirc Dick Diver's tragic ending is that he ends up living in Iowa.
Gives its name to a great Triffids song, though.

 

[Sue]

I thought Tender is the Night, not as good as Gatsby but I remember its biggest flaw as being that Fitzgerald seemed to want the reader to take a protagonist called Dick Diver seriously. Also iirc Dick Diver's tragic ending is that he ends up living in Iowa.
Gives its name to a great Triffids song, though.

Spoiler

I've never been to Iowa but my very, very dull colleague chose to live there despite having loads of other options and is always going on about how great it is so

 

[oryx]

Gravity'Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon. partly because it is HUGE, but also I have suspicion it doesn't really many anything and it definitely add anything to my life.

I have made three abortive attempts at that novel, and have no intention of making a fourth.

Henry James. I know he's meant to be a great writer, and it's probably my taste, but I couldn't get past the first page of The Ambassadors. Literally could not even finish the first page.

 

[ouirdeaux]

Faulkner's The sound and the fury, I couldn't get past the first couple of chapters

I had that as a set text at school. And I probably didn't get further than you did. I passed the test by writing about it in a pseudo-Faulknerian style, which I hoped would disguise the fact that I hadn't read it all. It did, and the teacher wrote 'nice stylistic experiment' on my paper.

I don't get Henry James either, despite the fact that various people whose tastes I respect are mad about him. One of them said his writing was one of the three crowning achievements of American civilisation. (The other two were peanut butter and jazz, which make far more sense to me, although I'd miss jazz more than peanut butter. But at least there's a point to the latter.)

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Just remembered . . . I never finished fear and loathing on las Vegas. Bit weird for me not to make it through a bad autobiography (though I suppose it doesn't quite count?). I honestly can't remember why I didn't finish, but it can't be a good sign.

 

[danny la rouge]

Just remembered . . . I never finished fear and loathing on las Vegas. Bit weird for me not to make it through a bad autobiography (though I suppose it doesn't quite count?). I honestly can't remember why I didn't finish, but it can't be a good sign.

Maybe. But maybe you got everything you needed from it. That kind of nonfiction can be like that: you don’t always need to finish it, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t value what you got from the bit you did read.