Books you want to throw across the room

A Song Of Stone. Such a shame because I love every other Iain Banks book I have read. This one was like it had been written by a different author. I can't even really remember the plot, just that it dragged interminably. I did force myself to read to the end thinking that it must get better. I just didn't get it and didn't get to know any of the characters enough to care about them. (Banks' characters are normally brilliantly written and you feel something for them even if you hate them.)

Yes I loved the Cement Garden too.

Atonement I hated but read, then threw at the wall when I realised he had written the whole book so he could write one paragraph about authorial responsibility about 400 pages in. Self-indulgent prick.

Such a relief other people didn't like it.

Many, many years ago I remember picking up Erich von Daniken's Twilight of the Gods. Somewhere around page 8 he purported to cite something in the bible, but said he wasn't quite sure if he was right and hadn't got around to checking it. So I thought "If you can't be bothered to check that what you write is accurate I can't be bothered to read it" and never opened it again.

Actually I hated 'On Chesil Beach' more than Atonement and Saturday , but I still remember the brilliance of discovering McEwan all those years ago when First Love Last Rites and The Cement Garden came out yep, I am old

Yes Margaritas. I hated Atonement. And Saturday. So much that I vowed never to read any McEwan again and never have. Waste of time, money and trees. God, he's an overrated pompous arse.

Atonement by Ian McKewan.

Hate. Never hated a book so much.

How can three people on here have hated We Are all Completely Beside Ourselves so much? It's one of the best books I've ever read, and so brilliantly written! :)

Cinnamon do you mean Oliver James? Oliver Sacks is brilliant. Oliver James is a hateful, misogynist, backward arse.

Her by Harriet Lane. She is such a brilliant writer but the plot was so preposterous, it read as though an editor had put a gun to her head and forced her to write a high stakes thriller when she wanted to write a quiet, subtle novel about repressed jealousy.

Lionel Shriver- The Post Birthday World. Pile of old shite. If you can't write a cockney accent, don't put one in the bloody book. Duckie.

Laska, I read the earlier book by the author of The Essex Serpent and it didn't really do it for me.

Oh dear, I typed that last post in such a passion of hate , the spelling went completely out of the window!!

agree with teh diremess of bothe The Danish Girl, and the Girl on the train- utter ,twaddle both..

But n eveworse was A man called Ove .. (was so upset when the hook came out of the ceiling , I just closed the book there and then) .

Then theres 'The Essex Serpent'.. ( i MAY give this one another go , but so far , the main character is not ringing at all true, and it seems to me that the author is writing this too much from a 21c persepective, )

I once attempted 'Remebrance of Things Past .. .. Christ... I know its supposed to be an utter classic , but I found it so hard to not fall asleep , and then when I found out that the famous 'madeleine' moment its so well known for know happened at the end of the interminal first chapter , I decided that NOBODY had ever read any further ,.
Reader: I binned it.

I've got one chapter to go with Sebastian Faulks' 'Where my heart used to beat' - worra load of shite. Women are constantly just taking their clothes off in front of the dull, dull dull protagonist who is clearly Sebastian Faulks in his head .

When I decided I was done with feeling guilty about having been stressed in my third trimester, put my child in childcare before the age of 3 etc etc I gleefully shoved Oliver Sacks' How Not To F**k Them Up in the recycling. What a load of shit that was.

Wow, I thought A Little Life was one of the best books I've read in years. Disturbing, yes, but beautifully written and incredibly moving.

I just read Hot Milk by Deborah Levy, and it was beyond annoying.

Yes, Swedish, good editors seem to be a thing of the past; likewise proofreaders (especially on Kindle).

The Miniaturist is dreadful. I've read lots of bad ones recently and sometimes I only realise how bad they are after I've finished them. Girl on a Train is pretty weak but I did find it a genuine page-turner. But The Miniaturist was just cliched nonsense.

Too many books now are written with an eye to being a potential film. So full of implausible, but dramatic, plotholes. And not enough editing.

The Magus (John Fowles). Unbearably pretentious.

Wuthering Heights. I know it's a classic. I have tried and tried and tried to like that book let alone love it but I just can't do it. I get so confused with the characters and the locations and all the intergenerational stuff it just ends up frustrating me and I end up pissed off at all the doom and gloom. I have finally accepted that I am never going to finish it in my entire life. I consider it a personal failure

As a writer of Brit thrillers this thread has been like a breath of fresh air and it's given me pause for thought. Maybe it's better to write / read a novel that has an effect on the reader (one way or another!) than have a "meh" experience. Years ago a friend recommended Celestine Prophecy to me and
I dropped it while reading it in the bath. It was a tough decision to fish it out again, but it was the charity shop's gain.

Lupton not Lipton. Doesn't make the book any better though

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox. Ghastly faux Victorian twaddle.
Sister by Rosamund Lipton. Tiresome and predictable.

I hardly ever want to throw books across the room let alone burn them but would have happily consigned these two to a bonfire.

I actually did throw The Horse Whisperer across the room. Horrible rushed ending really made me cross as I'd really liked the rest of the book.

Today I tried to read Betrayal by Aleatha Romig. Although I havent ever read 50 shades I imagine it is a bit like this. I hated it, I didnt finsh it, I only got about 35% through it. I couldn't actually throw it as it's on my Kindle.
It got really good reviews on Amazon

Girl with Dragon Tattooo... omg, she's waifer thin but does all this intense physical stuff & of course her mother's ex-boyfriend is head of some peado ring (of course, that would be the case). The guy is 20 yrs older but somehow attractive to our ghost like heroine. Who has amazing IT skills all self-taught. What a pile of tosh.

I loathe any murder/detective mystery book where the protagonist ends up being in mortal danger themselves or having to save someone they love. Then our hero does some kind of amazing feat to save lives... repeatedly. What a total pile of BS.

Something I've just discovered are Inspector Morse books. They can be crap in other ways, but at least they are simple detective stories where characters go home at end of day to whatever other life they have that is mostly completely unaffected by their work. The coppers smoke, fume over who goes first in the queue at coffee shop, drive 5 hours on boring twisty roads to go interview a witness, get hollered at to move the car from a no parking zone. The modern equivalents would be arguing with the self-service machine at supermarket and fielding PPI calls on cell phone when trying to ring someone important. I think I'm in love!!

We are all completely besides ourselves. I was mad because it was the only book I took on holiday with me and I had nothing else to read. I couldn't even drag myself to the point where the big 'twist' in the plot was revealed.

Blood and Guts in High School was utter, utter drivel. Like diarrhea on the page, seriously. And Crash by JG Ballard made me irrationally angry, wanky, tortuous bollocks.