Disappointment with over-hyped books

I've never been so glad to finish a book as A Little Life, I did think it was ok but twice as long as it needed to be. Hated Elinor thing. Loved The Goldfinch apart from one bit that just went too far. Tangerine wotnot I ditched for Home Fire (brilliant).

Ugh A Little Life. One book I wish I had given up on. What a gratuitous pile of misery.

The one book that did really disappoint me was Shantaram. It was sold to me as an amazing story, people kept recommending it to me as the best bool they'd ever read, the person who lent it to me said it changed her life. It was the self-absorbed ramblings of a grubby little drug-dealer. I hated it.

My lovely (now) DH bought me this for Christmas when we'd only been dating a couple of weeks. I never read it because I thought it looked dire, and he teases me about it at every opportunity. Glad to see someone confirming my irrational prejudice ;)

My Italian isn't fluent, and I read the Elena Ferrante novels in English, but was around friends reading them in Italian, and have read the odd chapter in Italian, and as far as I can gather, the translation is fine (though you lose all the transitions between Neapolitan dialect and standard Italian, obviously).

I read them all while on holiday with other friends and DH (all of whom really liked them) last summer, and didn't care for them. Obviously, they have their good things, and people whose literary opinions I respect adore them, but in general I found them tiresomely melodramatic, and reading them one after the another was a bit like being endlessly sung at by a very loud operatic contralto. And Edna O'Brien covered much the same territory more interestingly in the 1960s and 70s.

Don't start me on how much I loathed every misery porn page of A Little Life. It got to feel like that Derren Brown show where a TV studio audience got to choose what happened to a guy have his house burgled, have someone pick a fight with him in a bar etc in terms of 'Look what else I can do to this character, who is already a disabled self-harmer enduring chronic pain and a childhood of sexual abuse!'

Most books I'm perfectly willing to accept that opinions are subjective - but I can't understand how anyone could not like Life After Life. It's magnificent! I loved The Goldfinch but hated A Little Life. So crass.

Anything Matt Haig has written - utter dross!
I read the rave reviews and assumed all celebrities had been paid to rave about it, and anyone else just wanted some recognition absolute rubbish!

Glad I bought second hand, and regifted !

Eleanor Oliphant - years of abuse and trauma cured with a boyfriend and one trip to the GP (who sends her to a brilliant therapist right away who sees her twice a week and prescribes the perfect anti-d). Yeah fucking right.

Another vote for Eleanor Oliphant, I just felt it lacked something.

There's a lot of pressure on books and authors these days to be This Year's 'X' - so much bollocks. It's a little unfair really. I try to avoid the hype and bestseller lists when buying books as invariably I'll be disappointed. I'm a sucker for a pretty cover though

I liked My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante but didn't love it. I suspect it lost a lot in translation. I haven't read the other 3 but might get round to it at some point, when I've ploughed through the Book Mountain a little further.

The Girl On the Train - didn't have high expectations, wasn't disappointed. It's a psychological thriller, it's hardly going to win the Booker.

The one book that did really disappoint me was Shantaram. It was sold to me as an amazing story, people kept recommending it to me as the best bool they'd ever read, the person who lent it to me said it changed her life. It was the self-absorbed ramblings of a grubby little drug-dealer. I hated it.

'One Day'. Dire. My 13-year-old daughter has more self-esteem, thankfully. Silly young woman with poor boundaries meets dickheaded man. Then dies. The end.

Hated the Book Thief and One Day.
Hype is just marketing. Of course not every book is going to appeal to every reader.

Goodness! I came on here specifically to criticise "The Girls" - lured in by the title alone - to see it's in the OP. Am so pleased!

IMO, it was derivative crap with one-dimensional characters and a deeply convoluted prose style. Definitely one of the few books I regret forking out for.

Don't get me started on One Day

Oh god yes. Really trite, with awful, two-dimensional characters.

I loved The Goldfinch, and The Essex Serpent.

Gone Girl made me deeply, deeply angry.

The Goldfinch - too long.
A Little Life - horrendously depressing.
Lincoln in the Bardo - just didn't make any sense
Tattooist of Auschwitz - difficult subject matter handled very well
Eleanor Oliphant - fab
Little Fires Everywhere - fab
Elena Ferrante series - fab

My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante. Hated it. I've tried twice to read it and can't get past half way. Tedious and badly written or maybe badly translated.

HATED The Book Thief. Absolutely hated it. I threw my copy out rather than giving it to a charity shop because I didn't want to inflict it on anyone else.

Life After Life, sooo dull!

Vox was a massive let down. Such a waste of a fantastic premise.

Don't get me started on One Day. I am still cross about how disappointing that was years later!

I literally just read Eleanor Oliphant, as someone had left their copy on a very long train ride I was on last Thursday. It’s not the kind of thing I read at all, but I was open-minded, or as much as you can be after flicking through all the glowing reviews before you get to chapter one.

It just doesn’t ‘work’ at all as a basic premise. Eleanor behaves like a time traveller from the 1850s or someone who’s beamed in from Mars, or like a fairly un-nuanced light fiction depiction of autism from someone who’s only read about it online — the hilariously formal language, complete failure to understand other people, dependence on routine etc — but she spent seven years in normal enough foster families, then went to university where, even if she only went to classes, she would have been around other people, and she then worked in an open-plan office for her entire twenties. I can understand her loneliness and the effects of trauma, and her lack of experience of friendships, I just didn’t buy Eleanor being so entirely disconnected from society.

Weeping a bit about "Bridges of Madison Cunty". :o

Couldn’t even get into the Goldfinch - I read about 100 pages and gave up. Very unlike me.

I hate hype. I try to stay away from it, or wait until it's over. I get so fed up because often the books are good... But they're not the best of their genre. Hype is good as mane it gets non-readers or occasional readers to try different genres or read a book. And then it probably will seem really good. But i think if you read a lot then often these hyped books will disappoint.

Take The Miniaturist. I did enjoy that book, despite criticisms (felt the whole miniaturist but could have been cut completely with no ill effect...) But it was hardly anything special.

Gone Girl - just so underwhelming and disappointing.

What about The Miniaturist? I wanted to love it but it missed the mark for me.

That bloody Sally Rooney book that was so hyped at Christmas.

Agree re The Goldfinch.

All Matt Haig trite bollocks