Books to avoid

Ha ha ha at the reluctant readers of Wetlands.

I didn't get along with it myself because I simply do not enjoy reading tales of sexual violence/degradation, however consensual.

My friend's very uptight Christian mum had to read Wetlands with her book group and I think she was a bit

Mind you my gran read 50 Shades with her book group...but she's a bit harder to shock. As my DM points out they were all secretly reading Lady Chatterley back in the day, before the ban was lifted.

Brick Lane i read to the end and was eh? Just returned from holiday where the only book i could get my hands on was Wetlands, a story about a teenagers bumhole seriously wrong on sooooo many levels.

totally agree about lovely bones and cloud atlas

Absolutely love some of the books mentioned here, but just read THE most wretched book. Natchez Burning by Greg Iles. Am going through a thriller phase (it's summer so I tend towards page turners) so chose this. Cheap, schlocky, predictable, dealt badly with potentially fascinating subject matter. AVOID!

Ditto for Gone Girl. I am 120+ pages in and am trying to persevere. . . Was wondering if it was just some emperors new clothes job where everyone knows it's crap but refuses to acknowledge the fact!

I had forgotten The Dice Man. Yeah, I think it (and the sequel, which, yes, I also read) deserves its place on the list.

Butterdish: "My problem with Ian McEwan is that while I think he's talented, I also think he's also unusually limited by his maleness and his middle-classness."

We had a recent webchat with Ian McEwan, and I actually put that point to him about middle-classness, though I tried to do it diplomatically. I don't think he was impressed!

I also agree about David Mitchell - what I love about him is that ability to write in a range of voices.

alternatively, 'books I wish I'd avoided' ?

I tried reading, 'Brooklyn' by Colm Toibin. Dullsville - I managed about 15 pages.

Also failed with, 'The Silmarillion' although I love LOTR.

I was also a teenager (would have been first year of uni) - having just read LOTR at the recommendation of a friend who had also read the silmarillion. Yes, he was male and yes, he was also into dungeons and dragons .... . I did find it interesting that Tolkein could write about the same world in such different styles (inc Hobbit)

Books are so subjective, if I read a book and find it tediously slow I know my mum will enjoy it
indeed
the thread title 'books that were not at all to my taste (but may be enjoyable to others)' may have been more rational!

has anyone ever actually read the Silmarillion? I tried to as a teenager and failed
same here!

Nauticant, The Goldfinch and The Little Friend are both much too long and flawed - though I liked both - but the Secret History really is as good as the hype. It is just fantastic, a real gripping page turner but heart breaking too. I'll always stand up for it!

Child 44. It has three stages - this is excellent and claustrophobic, this is a bit silly and where did the menace go, and WTF.

I'm pleased to see some Donna Tartt non-love. I've not read any of her books but nearly ever book having that amount of hype has been a real let down for me.

It makes it very evident Butterdish, the recommend a book threads are always full of people disagreeing with something up thread.

Books are so subjective, if I read a book and find it tediously slow I know my mum will enjoy it. Certain books she dislikes I will love (handy situation if the book was bought rather than borrowed)

Errol, has anyone ever actually read the Silmarillion? I tried to as a teenager and failed.

Then all my male friends got into LOTR belatedly when the films came out (we were in our mid-20s) and I got a lot of kudos from these geek/fantasy loving blokes for actually having tried to read the Silmarillion despite being female...

I read the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society recently - thought it thin and disappointing.

The bits about the hardship under the German Occupation were interesting but so much of it was padded with silly letters and telegrams from the central character talking about romance and and mooning over various blokes she either fancied or didn't.

Stopped caring about any of them by the end.

To anyone who said Lord of the Rings, I'll raise you The Silmarillion.

just googled it, Guernsey library and potato pie society or something like that - Mary Shaffer, very dull

Well, doesn't that underline how much of reading comes down to personal taste, then, Wixing?

I really like CT's pared down prose (though friends whose opinions I respect but differ from have described it as 'dull' and 'journalese'), and I don't find his female characters repetitive. I don't think there's much in common between his Lady Gregory, the cold, angry heroine of The Blackwater Lightship (and her manipulative mother and grandmother), Eilis Lacey in Brooklyn, his version of Mary in 'The Testament of Mary) and Nora Webster. Eilis Lacey and Nora Webster share coming from the same place at roughly the same time.

I didn't enormously care for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, either. Wixing, but I think it's a decent enough debut and interesting things with style, though flawed, mostly because the characters don't develop. It's just not to my taste.

was the lemon cake about a young girl's sense of smell

that one about Jersey and war time letters, anyone? p sounds I think

I think Colm Toibin's novels are generally good (haven't read all of them, yet, though) but I wasn't overly impressed with Nora Webster. I didn't hate it, but just didn't think it was as good as it could have been - ever so slightly disappointed by the storyline which seemed to wander about a bit and not really go anywhere interesting.

The lemon cake one without a doubt. Boring nonsense is what it is.

A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by someone whose names I don't care to remember but was obviously thinking they were being cleverly alternative. It's nonsensical boring nonsense.

Anything by Colm Toíbín. Tedious repetitive female characters based on his mother. (Contradicting a post up thread)

I have just given up on The Blackstone Key, after taking 2 months to read the first 250 pages - I could read that much in less than a day if I really wanted to. It promised mystery and intrigue, but had thus far failed to deliver, while being desperately slow and boring.