I just read a terrible book

@GoldenCupidon
I am always confused about why other women like the story about the friends who don't seem to actually like each other much - is this what people's lives are like??

Yes, this!!!

I think the Thursday murder club books are a bit emperor's new clothes. He gives the air of a clever man therefore his books must be clever and if I say I like them people will think I am clever.
I thought her fearful symmetry was a let down after time traveller's wife which I loved.
Someone recommended Susannah Gregory so I've just started the butcher of Smithfield.

Ooops. Kate Williams. My mistake. 😳😂

Probably nothing like the same style of writing.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Tuesdays with Morrie, both book club staples almost made me cry with frustration.

You can't pay to join a book club ever again. There is always some silly moo who suggests those so called books.

I have found that Bryson's books have got less and less engaging as he has got older (or maybe as I have got older).

Bill Bryson has just turned into a grumpy old man and it's tedious (if you like travel books try Tim Moore or Charlie Connolly)

Has anyone mentioned Never Let me Go? another one everyone said i must read and it made me so bloody angry. NOTHING HAPPENED. And it was super obvious very early on what it was about. And there is no discussion of ethics or morals. Another one to be cast aside with great force

that's not kate atkinson!

I've read it twice and am planning to hike the Appalachian Trail as a result - love it 😊

I hated The Midnight Library so much that, by the end, I was actually genuinely angry with myself for having taken the time to read it (I find it very difficult to break my 'I'm going to finish you out of spite' habit).

My sister refers to him as 'the Poundland Paulo Coehlo' - I should have listened to her.

Also pleased I found this thread because a mate of mine was banging on about A Little Life and how great it is the other day - based on the general tone of the reviews here, looks like I've just saved myself a few hours of my life. 😄

I read a book recently which I bought in a charity shop knowing it was crap, but I expected "agreeably crap" i.e. poor writing but good plotting IYSWIM like another one I'd read by the author. But no.

It was a detective story and the heroine spends the first 50 pages of the book - before any crime has happened - meeting quite a large number of interchangeable men at their workplace, maybe about 10 of them who all do a similar job. One of them then gets done in and the next 200 pages are spent with her trying to work out which one of the other interchangeable men did the killing. I was desperately hoping for a plot twist however obvious but no, just the world's slowest exposition of the world's most boring crime.

It was Rattle His Bones by Carola Dunn (?) if you're interested in what to avoid.

I also could not read To The Lighthouse. I had got half way through it and realised I had no clue about what was going on.

they should definitely use that as the quote on the cover, if they decided to do a reprint.

I’ve read Kate Atkinson’s The Pleasures of Men, and while it passed the time enjoyably enough I can’t get past one of the female characters being called Edwarda. Eh??? That name sounds like something a 6 year old might have made up.

I’m going to brave it even though I know MNs love JK Rowling
But
Very disappointed with The very long and drawn out ‘The Deathly Hallows’
If you only watched it on tv and thought it was dragging, reading it was worse

Think she must have felt forced to turn one book into two

Another one here who thought the Richard Osman books were awful. Big disappointment. He needed a tougher editor.
Also read three prize winning contemporary books that were dreadful - I really don't understand the criteria for these prizes.

The Thursday Murder Club - thought it was going to be ok, but then the ending seemed so contrived and was so convoluted about which characters did things and why. I just got confused.

Michelle Obama's - Becoming - doesn't she love herself and how hard she worked to get where she is? And I thought she tried too hard to make Barack sound like the perfect husband, when he actually seemed to be quite self centered.

I tried to read The Hearts Invisible Furies twice, bloody hell it was so badly written and don’t get me started on the 7 year olds discussing sex in adult voices..awful, no future attempts will be made.
Where the Crawdads Sing had some beautiful descriptive writing but just so implausible. The main character has no hairbrush, shampoo, toothpaste, washing powder or decent nutrition living in desperate poverty but somehow manages to have long lustrous hair, beautiful skin, posing about in sparkling white dresses…give over. These glaring errors spoil books for me.
For the most disappointing book I’ve ever read I give you Shrines of Gaiety. If I had commissioned Kate Atkinson to write me a book this would have been the storyline but it is bloody terrible. Cliched, laboured, repetitive, weak characterisation and full of ridiculous co-incidences. I can’t believe it was written by the same person as her earlier books. Gah!

I love them
Not a bloke though😁

And all celebrity biographies are dull- most people have boring lives and sound even more dull on paper than in real life. esp. Dawn French

I loved The Lovely Bones, but I think I can see why some people didn't.

The Lovely Bones and The Time Travellers wife. I could never be bothered to finish either of these- both make no sense to me!

Oh God yeah, Where the Crawdads Sing just really didn't make any sense and was so stupidly implausible,

Lord of the Rings- The Hobbit was ok at first as a book I read as a kid, but the the whole thing is just tedious to me and seems to only appeal to middle aged blokes who never grew up!

Agreed, 50 Shades is utter trash, But then again, it never pretended to be anything but. I skim-read it just so I could join the conversation.

Jamie Dornan eased the pain of the movie adaptation 😆

There was one character in Birdsong whose death did make me slightly teary. He was the main protagonists's friend. He was an alcoholic virgin, and then he died, if I recall. But other than that I was generally meh about the book.

I can't remember the name or the author but I was after a who dunnit that wasn't bloody or violent, more a good story with lots of twists. This had a beach on the front cover and revolved around a young woman coming back to her hometown by the sea to investigate the murder of her best friend. You guessed it, she was the best friend after all and wasn't dead. I guessed it quite soon in.