Which books or authors do you know you *ought* to like, but just can't?

arti - Paolo Coehlo is total crap, and about as deep as a petri dish. please dont apologise for not liking his stuff! I dont know why so many people are taken in by it.

Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf

I love Catch 22 though!

I quite liked Catch 22, but I was quite young when I read it so perhaps I was less discerning. I don't see why it's an "ought to read" book though, I though it was a fairly standard thriller thing.

Could not get to grips with Philip Pullman at all, DH urged me to read it as he though it was great but I just thought it was dull and a bit pretentious.

Don't like Dickens or Ian McEwan. My Mum loves McEwan and keeps trying to pass books on to me. She says that he writes the thoughts of female characters really accurately. Which explains why my mother and I rarely see eye to eye on anything I suppose as I think his female characters are irritating.

I like some Iris Murdoch, but she can be very heavy going.

I can't bear Dickens.

And I started reading the Harry Potter books when they first came out as everyone raved about them - read one, thought ok, not too bad. Then read the second one and had to double check the cover as I thought I'd picked up the first one again. Persevered through then by the time I started number 3 I decided they were the Groundhog Day of books and gave up.

I've thought of another one: The Alchemist.

I know it's meant to be allegorical and I'm probably just really shallow but...yawwwnnn...

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I forced my way through one Iris Murdoch.
I also dislike Edna O'Brien.

For some reason, I've never read Iris Murdoch so, when one of hers came up in the book group, I thought that it would be a chance to improve my high-brow credentials. Hated it! It is a first-person narration and said FP is a very, very tedious character; I cannot relate to him at all. I gave up about a quarter of the way through because we were still scene-setting and nothing was happening. Very yawnsome.

Scarletibis- I did the same with the Women's Room. (although have never gone back for a second attempt)
I remember with CITR thinking "yeah, and???"
Maybe I should go back and reread all these "meh" inducing books.
Except Magical Realism. I'd rather read Elvish poetry than that. Or Cold Comfort Farm. I'd be the loopy one in the woodshed if I had to read that again.
Didn't really get Time Traveller's Wife either. It was OK, but not worth the hype.

Have to disagree here , Got CITR the second time, all of a sudden at the end - hairs rising on the back of the neck kind of feeling

Agree re: Catcher In The Rye, although unable to put it as eloquently as Custardo!

im with ya on catcher - what a pile of wanking shit bollocks

I've read Catcher in the rye about three times, thinking perhaps I'd missed something. I still don't get what all the fuss is about.

Iris Murdoch

Couldn't read Wuthering Heights either

The other one is The Women's Room by Marylin French. Was given it in my early 20s, tried to read it - gave up and gave the book away. Then, in my 30s thought maybe I was too young to appreciate it, so I bought the book again, tried to read it, failed again. It's still on my bookshelf now, gathering dust.

(loved Jane Eyre and Catch 22 though).

Little Dorrit - impenetrable language. Though I was trying to read it while in hospital with appendicitis.

The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings - life is too short. More suited to trainspotters and anyone else turned on by boring detail.

Agree about Austen Janeite, tis sacrilege no less and also with whoever mentioned Tolstoy, like wading through treacle for me

I think I was lucky with Jane Eyre as we read it for English at school at 14/15 and it hooked me, it's probably more interesting to read about the grim Lowood school when you're a child yourself..

Having read all this thread I'm now knocking Amis off my 'to read' list

Oi - step away from the Austen!

For me the one book I just can't get, that everybody tells me is wonderful is 'Middlemarch' - it isn't.

Dickens

Ian McEwan

Anything hailed as 'a fine new voice in literary fiction' or somesuch drivel -

'A Quiet Belief In Angels' and 'Kevin' spring to mind.

'Poisonwood Bible'

Joyce, obviously.

Jane Eyre - the second half is bloody brilliant; the first half is excrutiatingly dull.

I can't bear Martin Amis either, I think he is wildly overrated and far too impressed with himself. It all feels a bit 'look at me and my incredible intelligence'.

Didn't finish Catch 22 either, so pleased I'm not the only one! I enjoyed what I read, but I lost momentum after a long break from it.

Also detest magical realism.

I thought 'The Alchemist' was a load of cod philosophy.

womblingalong, have you ever read 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period' (short story by JD Salinger)? It makes me howl with laughter.

So agree about Joyce Carol Oates. She's so very prolific, and they're all so very long and so very not-really-much-good, aren't they?

Read all of Hardy when I was younger but they are pretty much all onegirlthreemenonlyoneofwhomisanygoodmuchtragedythereforeensues.

what is about catch 22?

i actually wuite liked it, found it pretty amusing, but have h=never got to the end.
i think every chapter 'feels' the same, the style doesn't alter at all, so i just stopped reading it, got sidetracked, then didn't get back into it.

i could say the asme about catcher in the rye & on the road as well.

those damn, modern americans,

but i did finish both of those quite easily

i get quite annoyed with people confusing loooooong okish books with greatness though, eg. LOTR - too easy just to get lost midway. would have been so much better if the publisher just said 'we're cutting out half'

Oh I agree on Hardy, and Hemingway and also Martin Amis.

Also Hanif Kureishi, Hemingway, Salinger (I think you need to read JD when a teenager to 'get' it)

Lowering the brow a bit...

If I had a pound for everyone who has recommended that I read those Ladies No 1 Detective Agency books I'd have a fair bit of change in my pocket. Everyone reads them and thinks of me and assures me that I'll LOVE them. They're probably right but I just can't read more than 5 pages in. Dreadful. Can't stand them.