Books you want to throw across the room

I think my criteria for chucking books at walls is different to some of yours.

Only two books I can think of have actually hit the wall and generated angry sobbing.

They were Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wives and Daughters. In both cases it was out of fury that the ending wasn't right, although Gaskell had a better excuse!

Oh Cel I forgot So much for that. It annoyed me greatly too!

Everything Lionel Shriver has written other than We Need To Talk About Kevin. It's my fault, I keep buying them because that one was so good, I know she can write well. And yet... the others are all truly terrible. The Post-Birthday World was abysmal, and So Much For That was so, so bad that it really made me angry, as a doctor (her writing about health issues is wildly off) and as a human being (the characters are unremittingly awful and unpleasant). Ugh, I'm getting annoyed again just thinking about it.

And magic realism. And historical fiction in which no attention has been paid to writing quality.

The Slap. Hated every character, every page.

I thought The Slap was a well written and interesting book. Enjoyed reading it.

On the other hand, I loathed a book I read by Paulina Simmons, I didn't read more than the first few pages of GoT even though I enjoyed the series, and Eat Pray Love made me feel stabby.

More controversially, am I the only person in the world who doesn't enjoy Tim Winton novels?

I love Les Mis! It's one of my all-time favourite books! Admittedly, it's not exactly action packed and moves quite slowly, but the writing is lovely and the atmospher and pcictures of Paris are so real you could be there. There are nt so many books like that around these days.

I'd love to know of a modern author who writes like that.

Backingvocals, thanks! Being a glutton for punishment, I actually read 'Committed' just to check I wasn't over-reacting. (That was shit too) so I probably need to read something she has written and enjoy it to make my recovery complete

American psycho, I was so appalled I threw it straight in the bin then couldn't sleep for weeks. How can anyone even dream up that horrible stuff.

Another person here who hated atonement. It didn't help that every character was utterly loathsome.

Also didn't like the woman in white, with its "pretty, fair but useless" or "spirited, clever but ugly as sin" sisters. Wuthering heights seemed so refreshing in comparison, I loved that Cathy was the opposite of traditional Victorian stereotypes of women.

AM Homes "what was lost" was navel gazing wank.

Isn't she a youtube celeb Purple, married to a former popstar? That's how those books get published! They have a ready made audience, no matter how crap they are!

Completely Beside Ourselves was utter utter drivel. I hated the following too:

A Year of Marvellous Ways
The Goldfinch
The Bone Clocks

No plot to any of them.

Les Mis is torture. All that waffling on about the sewers.

I feel slightly ashamed for saying this, but I'm currently reading Les Miserables and my god it's hard work.

I'm on page 86,mand yes mr Hugo, we have established that the bishop is a genuinely nice guy, and Jean Valjean is a victim of misfortune rather then a proper baddie, but ffs will you get on with things!

All that's happened so far is Jean Valjean has halfinched the silverware and the bishop has covered up for him. I reckon about 70% of what I've read so far could have been cut without it impacting on the readers perception of the characters, or the story itself. Verbal diarrhoea indeed.

Anything by Giovanna Fletcher.

My DD bought "Billy and Me" to take on holiday this year. She warned me it was drivel but I thought it would be an easy read for the beach.

It is literally the worst book I have ever read.None of the characters were likeable and the story was so lame. It sounded like it had been written by a love sick teenager who had just discovered adjectives...

What was worse was the fact that she has had 6 books published in the the last few years.

Seriously, how do books like this get published?

I hated Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White'. The way he described women made me want to scream.

I adore The Woman in White and think Marian Halcombe is one of the best female characters in Victorian literature.

That book with the doughnuts on the cover. Ironically I think it's called something like 'this book will save your life' or other nonsense. Biggest waste of times ever.

Mentioned in this thread more than a few times already, but I am just so disappointed with A Little Life. I thought I would love it, am about 200 pages in and really struggling although not quite at the point of launching it across the room . Think I will give it another 100 pages and then see.
I have Shantaram sitting on a shelf for years but I have this hunch that it may be better if I don't actually ever read it. Seems to evoke strong reactions from anyone I know who has read it.

Oh - another one! - "The Virgin Suicides"

Can't remember the author. What a load or tedious non-narrative that was. Couldn't believe they made it into a film.

It was certainly worse than synchronised swimming, and possibly on a par with listening to the self-justifying rants of Jeremy Hunt.

Da Vinci Code - complete and utter shite! - and worse than that - BADLY-WRITTEN complete and utter shite!

Also agree that John Grisham's "The Chamber" was bollox and there was another one I dumped (actually in the bin - not even the charity bag) it was so bad, but I can't recall the title.

And the Patricia Cornwell books are really going off have gone right off lately as well. I think some writers get up themselves, others get stuck in contracts to churn out umpteen books a year and just haven't got the ideas coming, and some are just bad writers and you wonder how they ever got published to begin with when your own superb novel, every word pure gold, languishes in a drawer in the spare room.

pontification I haven't read Eat Pray Love and I'm pretty sure I would hate it for all the reasons you give. But her book The Signature of All Things is actually brilliant. A massive story about an amazing woman that doesn't end in love and marriage. It might help you in your recovery from the other one

Oh and I cried at me before you. What can I say, I was pre-menstrual. it is tripe, but conveniently packaged light reading tripe. Like watching a chick flick. Or reading written by numbers Jodi picoult. Formulaic but worth an hour of your time if you fancy playing spot the plot twist. I got caught out years ago with the first one and got hit in the face by the sledge hammer plot twist on an intercity bus. Now I know the layout I appreciate her unsophisticated but mildly amusing habits.

Eat Pray Love

I hated it so much I have written an entire novel where the main character hates it so much that she writes a terrible review on her blog, inviting her readership to send her their copies so she can rid the world of the navel gazing scourge. She is quickly inundated with more books that she can handle and the accidental story hits social media. The original publishers offer her a deal to trace Elizabeth's footsteps and write about the experience - putting her in the exact navel-gazing position that she loathed so much in the original. Anyway she does it and eventually comes face to face with Liz in that fucking ashram. Set up by the publishers.

My book is shitter than the original. I carried my hate for years, but have in the last year listened to some Liz Gilbert interviews on writing. And I quite like her. I suspect I hated the book because I recognized her fucking irritating need to pontificate about herself as a personal characteristic laid bare, and someone was paying her to pontificate.

I'm over it. Sort of.

I haven't read lots of the others mentioned as there are only so many books I can write about other people's crap literature, and I recognize my own limits. (Unlike the majority of these authors).

I am pontificationcentral and I have a reading problem.

The Big Rewind by Libby Cudmore is one of the worst things I've ever read. Ever. It was so incredibly awful.

I love Ian McEwan too. Even Saturday. And I'm afraid "If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things" is one of my favourite ever novels (although I can see how it might be a bit marmite)