What books were you 'supposed' to enjoy but thought were a pile of crap? And why?

Silas Marner - boring beyond belief

The Lovely Bones - horrid

ohand don't even get me started on "Tuesday's with Morrie" I actually through the book across the room and stamped on it...soooo cliched, patronising and smug.

I emnjoyed white teeth

I found White Teeth and also Da Vinci Code utterly tedious. Although i loved the Time Travellers Wife. So there!

LOL!!!
I can imagine there are some men who would find that a turn on...

Saw Lionel thing on a book programme. She seems to always wear white cotton gloves. Somehow linked with using the word 'coitus'?

I thought it was just me who couldn't get into Captain Correlli and The English Patient - glad to see there are others out there! I tried both books before the films came out and gave up, there was then so much hype about the films I thought I'd better try again....I never made it to the end of either.

Thought The Island was ok (for a holiday read!) so bought her new book - The Return....a bad move, its crappily written.

I think you have to be 15 and really really angst ridden to get the best out of WH. I loved it but then I made Morrissey look like Anne of Green Gables.

DH spent a long time trying to get me to like Irving Welsh. Noooooohhhh! He kept reading bits to me in a Glasgow accent (he's from Clacton) which put me off for life. Shame, and I loved Trainspotting, the film.

I've not read the Kevin book, but did pick up another one by her...Post Birthday something...
I was going to give it a shot - really...until she referred to sex as "coitus".

Time to put it down.
Sigh.

I have never been able to read Wuthering Heights. I have tried and tried but i can't!

The Ukranian tractors book - everyone kept telling me it was hilarious, well in that case they must have read a different book with the same title

The Forgotten Garden and House at Riverton
Labyrinth and the follow up book
All the ladies detective agency books
Mister Pip
The Welsh girl

MamaHG: I kept on expecting it to get better as well, but it didn't. Not at all. It just flopped. It was so terrible.

'A Handful of Dust' I found it really dull.
'God of Small Things' couldn't get into it.
'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' couldn't be arsed with that one - tried really hard to like it for the sake of an ex boyf when I was a student - failed.

PYSO - sorry, but I love History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters! I can't say it changed my world exactly, but it's something I think about a lot, and I haven't re-read it for years now.

I never dared to read the second Donna Tartt, because I loved A Secret History so much! (I was also a Classics student, once upon a time...) I have it - in hardback, no less - sitting smouldering on the shelf, unread because I've heard so many disappointing reviews about it. Same with A.S. Byatt's most recent novel. I love her work - most of it - so much, I'm almost scared to read one I think will be disappointing. God, I'm a sad coward!

bleh - 'reading notes', esp. at the back of really mediocre books, make me see red! Salmon Fishing was terrible, wasn't it? So trite and shallow. I kept on expecting various things to happen, or points to be made, but no - it really was that mundane.

The accordion crimes was really awful it's true, but I liked her first one.

Also hated History of the World in something or other chapters (my brother's favourite book...read it read it it will change your life...fabulous etc) which was so dull. Sorry, bro, no meeting of minds there.

Couldn't stand the second one by Donna Tartt (the little friend) such a shame after the Secret History, one of my faves.

I really like Christopher Brookmyer but couldn't finish his last one, he seemed to have used all his favourite devices one time too many! Like when you can eat prawns happily your whole life then one suddenly makes you allergic....

The Accordion Crimes, by the same person who wrote The Shipping News, one of the most turgid books ever. Was disappointed by the Book Thief. The Gathering, really rubbish. Am never reading a booker prize winner again.

Just had a further scan down the thread and The Great Gatsby springs to mind. After loving Tender is the Night as a teenager I read The Great Gatsby - twas also much loved but why did nobody tell me he dies - oh Lord I was in an awful state. Exactly the same as when I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Completely distraught...

MamaHG: I agree with Salmon fishing in the Yemen. It was terrible. I suppose the idea was good, but the way it was written was TERRIBLE and even worse, at the end they had a series of questions to help "Did you like the way it was written, as notes?" "What was your favourite chapter and why?" like a f*ing GCSE Eng Lit class. Blegh.

The Time Travellers WIfe - bloody crap book. Utterly underwhelming. Wished I'd never bothered and I'd bloody paid for my copy instead of using the library!
Ditto of the Thomas Hardy one with Bathsheba in it - the name escapes me - misogynystic old fart that TH was. He will never darken my bedside table again...
But I loved Wuthering Heights, Catch 22, and I read LOTR every couple of years because I enjoy it so much.
I can't read On the Road (Jack Kerouac) no matter how hard I try. Must be a generational thing.
For what it's worth the only way I could finish Catch 22 was to make that the only book I took on holiday one year. With bugger all else to read, I had to either keep going or be bored. About one third in I was utterly hooked.
Jonathon Norrell started out to be promising, but was a bit "take it or leave it" by the end.

The Outcast - zzzzzz
Time Travellers Wife - awful self-indulgent characters moaning on and on and the book was several hundred pages too long as well
Cloud Atlas - I've tried it three times but simply can't progress beyond chapter 2
An American Boy - I stuck with it, but why?

Why do authors write such long books when the plot runs out after 250 pages? Are they told by publishers to write to 'blockbuster' size? For example, I really enjoyed the first half of the Poisonwood Bible. Really enjoyed it. And then the next half was boring old pants that could have been condensed into 30 pages.

I have read about three books in my lifetime that ended as well as they began.

I didn't really get on with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings but I like the films. They are too convoluted for me. I still feel that mabe I should try again 10 years on and that I'm missing out on them.

I thought that the Da Vinci Code just confirmed what everyone knew about the church deep down anyway. I didn't find it particularly groundbreaking- just an entertaining romp.

I'm a notorious reader and will read any old crap rather than have nothing to read - so if I can;t finish a book it is very significant (I read all of A suitable boy, the Davinci Code and even several of Jerry Archers novels)

I could get past the first chapter of:

Mill on the Floss
Catch 22
The Hobbit
David Copperfield

I think that may be all.

oh good I see WH has had its fair share of slating