What’s your “ How did this crap get published?!” book?

[MrsGrindah]

Just finished The Pretenders by Agatha Zaza. Gosh it was dreadful.Cannot understand how drivel like that gets a publishing deal. There was a scene where, in the middle of a “ dramatic” moment, one of the side characters crosses the room to his wife and “ took hold of the corner of her blouse” . What?! Who does that?! I can’t even picture it.

[quote BeanToCup]@SirVixofVixHall Chesil Beach, when I finally read it, confirmed to me what I strongly suspected which is that he is crap in bed and suffers from all the resultant issues.[/quote]
Hmm yes. His female characters are one dimensional and unbelievable, at least also in The Children Act, the only other book of his that I have read.

The Frog Report, a children's book I read at secondary school for our Library lessons. I forget the author's name but the book was incomprehensible garbage. I came to the same conclusion in my book review and passed on the opportunity to re-read it!

Ugh, yes, Victoria Hislop truly hates the reader.

Moon that ad is crude but makes a good point.

The OP who mentioned the importance of the Fifty Shades marketing campaign was also spot on.

Here is a blog about how to create a bestseller. NB it's not about the quality of the writing www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/05/18/how-to-promote-a-book

Do readers know that publishers pay some shops to prominently display mass market books, including children's books, or to promote them in catalogues or on websites?

bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/2010/01/how-do-books-get-stocked-in-bookstores.html

Both examples from the US but I understand that it's much the same over here.

Time Travellers Wife - christ, what utter hokum, and horrible writing, and yet people rave

One Day, ditto, except written imagining it was going to be made into a romcom and miss out on the screenwriter

Normal People - at least well written but so dreary

Room - horrible, actually nasty

My brilliant friend, by Elena Ferrante. Others in my book club loved it, but I couldn't get into it.

Goldfinch- even in audible I gave up as I just didn't care.

Catcher in the Rye- I suspect because I read it as an adult. Might have loved it as a teenager.

The Muse, Jessie Burton (the miniaturist). Its worse than the Miniaturist.

I quite like Victoria Hislop. Not all of them. The short story one was very good.

Agree so much about Nine Perfect Strangers.

If there's one thing I detest above all other in prose, poetry, music or film, or indeed any form of art, it's LSD trip depictions.

I really like some of the books on this thread! Just shows how we are all different.

I’m not a fan of David Walliams, with the exception of The Midnight Gang. There are so many brilliant children’s authors who are sidelined for his drivel.

Adam Kay This Is Going To Hurt.
His misogynistic references regarding older women with gynae problems made me furious. I’m glad he gave the profession up. I haven’t read the sequel, obviously. I’m still cross.
Also agree with Nine Perfect Strangers, Eleanor Oliphant and Crawdads. AlsoThe Tatooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey. Both awful.
I also disliked the MN favourite, The Heart’s Invisible Furies. A totally unbelievable set of coincidences in order to make the story work.

Girl on a Train

Shockingly badly written zero depth

Any where 'she padded into the bathroom' anybody that 'pads' anywhere can just fuck off. As soon as I see that it's game over.

I did like Life of Pi.
But hated one recommended in here My Sister the Serial Killer pure shite.

A Discovery of witches. The main character is SO WET. Repetitive self absorbed drivel. And so many baths!

I read the first of the series (I believe it was a series?) and hated it. Just more romantic vampire blah - as if Twilight wasn't bad enough.

I remember the fact that she seemed to eat a lot - as in we got details of what she was eating very frequently (hardly the stuff bestsellers should be made of .. and yet) but she never seemed to eat anything with any fibre in it. I found how bunged up she must be very troubling and extremely distracting from the story.

And it included my worst vampire bug bear of all time - his impeccable and super strong sense of smell means he is irresistibly drawn to his human lover's scent and she smells of lovely things like cinnamon and jasmine and elderberries with a hint ofginger or utter wank like that.

No love you don't. Let me break it down for you - to a person with super smell you stink of shit and piss and sweat, a lingering trace of b.o that never goes away and then on top of that ... your showergel smells of cinnamon and roses.

Every time you fart, lady - he stinks it. You go to the toilet - he knows exactly what you did and it clouds around you like a miasma.
It is no coincidence that the mammal with the strongest sense of disgust is also the mammal with the weakest sense of smell, the only mammal that doesn't recognise others of it's kind or other species by smell.
Now maybe because the vampire is a predator he won't be disgusted by the shit and piss and will find the various stenches of humanity akin to the scent of a roast dinner for us ... but let's not pretend he's smelling ginger and wildflowers, yeah?

I think the best thing about Buffy is that - while her vampires had an enhanced sense of smell - they never made it a sexy and romantic thing. It was just a thing.

@SunshineThelma

Nine Perfect Strangers will stay with me for a long time because it was absolute bobbins (I left the physical copy in an Airbnb). Her Name Was Rose - one that came up on my book club list and was the biggest heap of tripe I've ever encountered.

I'm terrible for sticking with books, even if they're the worst. Maybe 2021 is the year to be more ruthless with jettisoning books I'm not enjoying!

Oh gosh yes. Her name was Rose was terrible.

Can I add Sweet Pea by CJ Skuse. Revolting book. I HATED it

I like some of the books mentioned but god yes some are really awful. I used to really like Philippa Gregory but the last few have been awful. Is my taste changing or is she just leaning too heavily into the whole I AM A QUEEN I LIKE HAVING BABIES HERE IS A MAGICAL CURSE?

Totally agree Greenteaandchives. Amazed the editor let it go. Or maybe I'm not. What a dick he is.

A totally unbelievable set of coincidences in order to make the story work.

I've become a lot more tolerant of unbelievable sets of coincidences ever since a completely unbelievable set of coincidences happened to a friend and led her to safety from a dangerous situation on the far side of the world. So incredibly unbelievable that if you wrote them in a work of fiction people would, understandably, dismiss it as being implausible.

Anyway, it left me feeling a lot more willing to suspend my cynicism and think 'well, I suppose it's possible. Unlikely, but possible'.

The Tatooist of Auschwitz is actually quite a dangerous book. Because the protagonist is this ducking and diving type we are lead to believe that the prisoners could just buy their way out of anything. Need medicine for your girlfriend who is dying of typhoid? No problem, just bung the guards some jewels. Need some chocolate? Just bribe a passing workman who is apparently invisible to the guards. Need to escape? Just walk out through a gap in the fence. I really don't think anyone's experience matched this, what happened to fact checking or can we all just make stuff up now?

For me my absolute worst ever is a book called Still Standing by Vicki someone. Partly my fault as I didn’t read the blurb properly and so didn’t realise it was autobiographical but I have honestly never read such navel gazing drivel in my life. Awful.

Ditto the Harry Potter series. I just flipped past half the pages when I «read» it 😄, the films too.
And then Fantastic Beasts came along! Blimey!
I was still taken by surprise how excellent I think The Vacancy is though.
And now, like swearing in church, but the whole Tom Bombadil part in LOTR. It was awful. Very glad it was not included in the films.

Yeah I hate being that wanker who thinks that Harry Potter just wasn't that good, but I just didn't get it! I guess for kids the whole imaginary world is quite exciting, but as an adult I thought it was just meh.

The Cormoran Strike books are way better.

Normal People and One Day are both overhyped absolute guff.

@EmilyinWolverhampton

Okay so I apologise for thread-jacking but the story of how 50 Shades got published is WILD and an object lesson in evil genius marketing.

As you may or may not know, 50 Shades of Grey was originally written as a Twilight fanfic and posted online under the title Master of the Universe. This was at a time when fandom culture was at its height. EL James was what is known in fandom circles as a "BNF", or Big Name Fan, a fan who is extremely active and popular/famous within that fandom.

EL James spent several years assiduously building up her status as BNF, and her reputation as a writer of decentish (by fanfic standards) and explicitly sexual Bella/Edward fanfiction. Master of the Universe is what's called an "AU" or "Alternate Universe", a fanfic that takes pre-existing characters but puts them in a new realm. So in her AU, Edward was a billionaire businessman into BDSM.

Then she announced that due to the response to her little fanfics, she was going to convert her most popular fanfic Master of the Universe into a proper book. She changed the names from Bella and Edward to Anastacia and Christian, changed the title, changed a few tiny other details and self-published it on Amazon.

Now it's extremely easy to make the Amazon best seller list, if you're savvy about how Amazon's algorithms work, and have a decent amount of friends willing to shell out 99p for your ebook. Many members of the Twiight fandom bought her ebook even though presumably they'd all already read it for free when it was a fanfic, in order to support one of their own.

EL James had substantial media connections and media savvy due to her father working in TV, her own lengthy career working behind in the media, and her husband's career as a screenwriter. She launched a huge PR blitz trying to attract the attention of any publication she could find with her story of "the little self-published ebook that topped the Amazon best seller chart." This pretty shameless self publicity generated a fair bit of press which resulted in her book being picked up by a trad publisher, and the whole thing snowballed and snowballed.

Some time later (before she'd become huge) EL James' former assistant/helper leaked her emails online, and the emails showed that the entire Twilight fandom thing had been one big PR stunt from the start, a highly calculated attempt to infiltrate and monetise fandom. In the emails James talks dismissively of Twilight fans and openly admits she's only spending time writing fanfic and becoming a Twilight BNF because it's an easy way to latch onto a built-in audience base. One of the things new writers struggle most with is getting their names out there and building up an audience. By linking her work so explicitly with Twilight, pretending to be a Twilight superfan, and engineering conditions so that a good percentage of Twilight online fans felt honour bound buy her book, she leapfrogged that entire arduous process. She didn't need to build up her audience, she just helped herself to Stephanie Meyer's audience instead.

Obviously something about her book struck a chord with people. But to invent such a calculating plot was pretty devious, and she certainly has a genuine gift for PR if not for writing.

Wow! That is SO interesting.

The Secret - what a load of nonsense

50 Shades - more nonsense

The Alchemist - pretentious nonsense

Eat, Pray, Love the most smug, pretentious, patronising nonsense (possibly of all time)

I have lurked on Mumsnet for a while, but just had to register so that I could comment on this thread! Totally agree with PP who made the comment about psychological thrillers featuring middle-class women called Kate. Are you me? :-) I couldn't agree more. I love a good psychological thriller but have recently given them up in disgust as they have become so formulaic and well, unthrilling. The main character is always a middle class women called Kate; she is always having a glass of red wine by the Aga, she is always being screwed over by a) her partner/husband, b) her best friend, or some variant of this. I actually once had in my pile of books during lockdown, THREE books where the main character was a middle class woman called Kate. No working class people ever appear in these piles of rubbish, unless they are a 'character' IYSWIM, ie the 'chavvy' family. UGH.
I love the way Pat Barker writes ordinary working class characters, and agree with lots of you on this thread about what you fling in disgust. I'm writing a psychological thriller, no one is called Kate, no one has an Aga, no 'pads' anywhere. I'm obviously not doing it right.