I just read a terrible book

I'm still a bit cross about The Island (that Hislop woman) as we were flat broke when it came out and I scrimped and saved penny by penny to get it, took a loooong time. It was utter crap, writing so bad a two year old could tell you a story and make it more interesting.

The Colour of Water in July; some nice bitsof prose here and there but otherwise so predictable and obvious. Jess particularly annoying and stupid.

I love all the hate for A Little Life. I can't stand it either. What a load of toss. Literary misery porn with ideas above its station. Two friends of mine asked if I wanted to go see it on stage with them. I was momentarily tempted to go purely to see James Norton, but quickly realised even he wouldn't be compensation enough to have to engage with A Little Life again!

Came back to read through and have remembered so many more books I didn't like.

JK Rowling – The Casual Vacancy. I have come to the conclusion I just don't like her writing. I tried a Cormoran Strike one as well, didn't like it.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - if you're going to write a book in the form of letters, then the letters at least need to sound like different people wrote them. I'm a huge fan of historical fiction, especially WW2 historical fiction, and this one was just...not good. Felt like it was ok to pass the time if there is literally nothing better to do. I can't believe so many people loved it!
Kristen Hannah – i read The Great Alone and really liked it, so then read The Nightingale. Disliked it for all the reasons posted in the Goodreads review someone linked to a few pages back. Terrible. I then tried another one - it was in fact and arc from Netgalley, and was about the great Depression and in particular the Dust Bowl in America. Lots of very modern attitudes in it, which jarred - but it was like she read the Wiki page about it and then spewed a novel round those facts. Terrible, predictable but not realistic. Won't bother with any others.
All The Light We Cannot See - I wanted to like this. But I didn't. It was just boring. So turgid. I didn't feel anything for the main characters.
Anything by Ishiguro I want to love, but just don't. I don't like the style - very flat.

I was conned into buying a book by Stephen King - no, not that one - someone who had craftily inserted a tiny R in between Stephen and King. It wasn't terrible, but it was blatantly obvious after less than a paragraph it was a different person!

A good friend recommended The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. She raved and raved about it so I bought it. Absolutely hated it. I have no idea why I ploughed through to the end - but I do remember thinking at the time - well x said it was brilliant so I should keep going as it's clearly going to get brilliant. It never did. She loved everything that I hated about it. I have never told her though. Vampires featured heavily.

I loved this book! I read it when I was about 15 though which was probably peak age for appreciating gothy dark tales.

beguilingeyes I was really annoyed by the inclusion of supernatural nonsense in The Hunger and The Terror. The real events are scary and horrible, why introduce some stupid magical element?

I can't do fantasy or sci-fi at all, fiction has to be pretty grounded in reality for me and I find most 'chick-lit' horrendous. Horrible term but you know what I mean.
Someone lent me Rivers Of London having raced about it but the inclusion of ghosts just put me off.

I can’t think of anything that was “terrible”, just stuff I didn’t like.
I read Hideous Kinky several years ago (Esther Freud) and remember finishing it and thinking “is that it?” It just felt like nothing really happened.
I gave up on “All the Light We Cannot See” as, again, I just felt like nothing really happened.

The book I hated was Less, how on earth did it win a Pulitzer?

Night Library and Miniaturist were so disappointing.

Nine Perfect Strangers is by some measure the worst Lianne Moriarty, her others are better.

I also hated Conversations With Friends, all the characters are deeply unlikeable.

HyggeTygge I love your username!

I do still agree with the pp that said they were rubbish though! Badly written and dull with no character development. But still interesting to read with an adult eye and an understanding of the author’s beliefs/motivations.

And the Native American characters being described as smelling bad and being unpredictability violent? Hmmm….

Isn’t it so weird that dressing it up with vampires glossed over all the weirdness of it altogether? I can’t imagine removing the vampires and parents hearing their child is reading about a girl who is obsessed with marrying and having sex with a boy she’s just met and is obsessed with, along with a comparison of native Americans as animals and a literal confederate soldier on the side! But make them vampires and it’s cool?

@Kanaloa agree. I lived in Utah for a while and became friends with lots of mormons. The book suddenly makes sense when you read it from the perspective of that religion.

@Kanaloa Yes, I only read it ( or tried to read it ) because I was working with children’s books and thought I ought to find out what they were all so enthusiastic about. Clearly I was the wrong age to appreciate it. Loved Buffy though!

I agree twilight is awful but it’s quite an interesting read if you consider it with the author’s religious/political views in mind. I read it as a teen and only saw vampires and werewolves. The Mormonism and racism and all the rest just went right over my head. Very odd read.

Oh I loved the Giver of stars and thought the same re film. I heard someone bought the film rights?

I did also really like the Paper Palace but not as much as a couple of friends did.

I was really sad when I finished Eleanor Oliphant. I loved it.

2 favourites of late have been Small Pleasures and Lessons in Chemistry

I thought 9 Perfect Strangers was terrible. I also read Liane Moriaty's last book which was mainly about a very competitive Tennis family. I loved her earlier ones but the last 3 of hers I have read I really haven't enjoyed.

The Giver of Stars os one of my favourite books and I wish they’d make it into a movie!

I loved The Giver of Stars!

I enjoyed The Paper Palace (except the ending)

The Midnight Library, Elinor Oliphant and The Crawdads were ok.

I didn’t enjoy Thursday Murder Club at all. I loathed Nine Perfect Strangers.

50 Shades I didn’t get past the first couple of pages.

Book Lovers was my worst read.

Camilla looks quite keen on reading!

royalreadingroom.uk

I laughed at how crap this sounded when I read this post the other day but now I think this is probably the book I’ve just started reading! So far husband has just reappeared after 25 years and we’re getting his story in flashbacks - he’s currently working in a hostel in France and has just stolen a dead man’s passport. It’s by John Marrs who’s already been mentioned on this thread. It’s not great. 😂

Twilight is awful. I got about two thirds of the way through then had to give up because her feebleness so annoyed me . She kept falling over!

I listened to it rather than paper copy (almost all my reading these days is audio books) so maybe there's something in the written form that works but it didn't work as an audio book at all. I actually did finish it because I thought there had to be something I was missing/about to get.

Mind you, the screen writing/text format doesn't work at all for the audio book of The Ink Black Heart either. The rest of the story is enough to keep it going though (but JKR, Queen that she is, needs an editor brave enough to tell her to cut a few pages).

I have this to read and can't remember why I bought it now

All the talk of vampires has reminded me how terrible Twilight was. Pages and pages where nothing happened.

Also A Discovery of Witches. It really pisses me off when an author takes an established monster/supernatural creature and turns them into something so unrecognisable they should have called them something else. Going out in sunlight. Not drinking human blood. The 'vampire' in A Discovery of Witches did yoga ffs.

Those authors should stick to writing crappy fanfic on tumblr.

Just remembered another one, John Boyne, The Echo Chamber. I don't understand why it was nominated for a comedic writing award.

I loved Dracula (and Buffy). Have never got on with anything else vampirey. Bought The Historian and didn't get past the first few chapters.