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.

The Secret I can I understand why publishers thought great let’s tap into women’s insecurities it’s a money maker (I have yet to hear a man wax lyrical about this pile of nonsense)

The Slap, Normal People, A Tiny Bit Marvellous and 50 Shades. I didn’t take to Wolf Hall but I can’t explain why. Agree with those who mention the more recent books by Jilly Cooper and some other prolific writers. It is very sad when a series/author goes off the boil, especially when I loved the earlier books.

I did like A Little Life and The Cows though.

Anything by Ian McEwan: self-satisfied and "clever", overwritten and just annoys the hell out of me (I have not read all of them as he has annoyed me more and more as time goes on).

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is just horrible. In it a woman is blamed (by the author, not the characters) for her child being disabled, because she was an older mother (he says something like "she had left it too late for it to be safe"), and it is hinted that having a disabled child was the reason a character committed suicide. I am an older mother and read it around the time my son's autism was diagnosed, and I literally went out to a bin in the street and threw it in as I did not want it in my house.

Both the characters in Chesil Beach made me want to slap them so hard, especially the woman.

I actually love The Time Traveller's Wife though, although it is rather ethically unsettling in some ways...

Hi SkintHippy, forgot to say the drippy "Kate" has her own business in interior design or landscape gardening. She also has a Labrador who she takes on long thoughtful walks and buries her face in his fur when she's upset. That's after she's swallowed hard and blinked back the tears.

Please write your book about a hard as nails female bricklayer who drinks pints and lives in a bedsit.

Like a million others on here, 50 shades. Appalling.

@SkintHippy
Excellent! no 'pads' anywhere I'll read it

Thought of another. I was gifted Dear Fatty by Dawn French by relatives a few Christmas's ago, which was slightly worrying of itself. I have never displayed any signs of being a Dawn French fan and am not slim, so it seemed a rather ill thought out gift.
Gawd it was so badly written, it gave me the rage.

Having said that I quite like some of the books being castigated here.Whilst Elinor Oliphant had a rather unlikely ending, there are passages that I'll remember forever which is rare for me. I also thoroughly enjoyed both Graham Norton novels being soothingly narrated by him on Audible.

Brilliant thread

I agree with Normal People- worst book I've read in a long time. It reads like badly written Brat Pack movie without the benefit of a decent soundtrack.

I veer away from those over-hyped books that literally everyone seems to be reading - this year it has been that Crawdads book, last year it was the Oliphant one. It puts me off.

I read a lot and also on my list of worst ever (of the ones that people will have heard of):

Wuthering Heights - deeply unlikeable characters, the original misery lit
A Man Called Ove - predictable, boring
A Gentleman in Moscow - should have been a great book, absolutely turgid.
Tin Man- utter garbage
Sing Unburied Sing - also should have been a great book - nothing happens

rookie 😱😱😱😱 what did you say to the giver?

I’m not reading Sense of an Ending then.

I read ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt after many recommendations and it was awful!! I was so disappointed. It was so drawn out, slow and boring!!

50 shades. Utter utter utter garbage. My dog could write better. Also The Da Vinci Code (zzzzzzzzzzzzz) and Blood Orange. Depressing as hell.

@Ihatemyseleffordoingthis

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

Oh I loved Room too!

@dayswithaY Yes! How could I forget the labrador and the own business? Kate may also have a teenage daughter called Ellie with 'long, coltish legs' who is an utterly over indulged pain in the rear but 'adorable.' Or a son called Jake who has a terrible secret (on drugs or gay) that he can't share with her...Can you tell I've read a lot of these?
By the way, I don't mean that being gay is terrible, before the thought-police leap at me. I meant that whatever the 'secret' is, it creates so much torture and anguish. I may have oeverthought this.

Has anyone read The Fermata? An intruiging and clever premise, which could have gone somewhere very interesting, and well-written in terms of language, descriptions etc (in my opinion) but it's in fact just a drawn-out male sexual fantasy and becomes so so tedious by the end...

@MrsDoctorDear I think I should have written 'no one pads anywhere' rather than 'no pads.' It sounds a bit wrong now I look back at it. :-D

Totally agree with SkintHippy. Really dislike books with main characters who have a designery/ vintage clothing business and live in stylish fashionable homes with no discernible regular income. Which leads me to The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell - unpleasant characters and a ridiculous ending. Maggie has lots of fans but I'm not one of them.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Some good ideas, but unreadable, especially due to the fake Jane Austen style.
The Binding - Bridget Collins. Unlikeable characters apart from the sister who was treated badly due to the lurve affair of the two other main characters. Over dramatic descriptions and just well, OTT. Again some original ideas, but the denouement was obvious early on in the book.

I have a long list of loathed books, and find it hard to pick the worst. So:

Not Knowing when to Stop Award to AS Byatt for The Children's Book - dullsville, boring people.
Wrong Facts Award and Characters Drawn with Crayons Award to Song of Achilles by Madeline Wozzname
Implausibility Award to Deborah Levy for Swimming Home

I’m glad others have mentioned Nine Perfect Strangers. I read it on holiday and was baffled by what it was suppose to be. It was written like a comedy with slightly over the top characters and situations, but it wasn’t funny. I don’t mean it was meant to be funny and wasn’t, but more like a joke with no punchline which turns out not to be a joke at all. Just a really odd book.

Oh dear. I bought Nine Perfect Strangers for my cousin for Christmas

Every year said cousin buys me a heap of books from a remainder store. D’ya know what? I have found some real gems, which had sunk without trace. Not great literature, but decent plots and writing. I read one about a time-travelling serial killer (!) . I don’t like thrillers or science fiction, but this had my hair standing on end. It was infinitely better than the Time Traveller’s Wife.

Fifty Shades

@missyB1

Any of those bloody chick lit authors. The books are all the same! Recently broken hearted woman moves to a village in the Countryside/ by the beach, opens a book/cake/ chocolate shop. Meets local arrogant successful man with mysterious personal life / past. Falls in love. Happy ever after. Why oh why do they insist on churning them out?? Who the fuck is reading them??!

yes I hate that idealistic shite too

[quote SkintHippy]@MrsDoctorDear I think I should have written 'no one pads anywhere' rather than 'no pads.' It sounds a bit wrong now I look back at it. :-D[/quote]
😂😂

Agree about the Time Traveller's Wife. Have a particular dislike of books with a high concept and no heart that read like they were written with both eyes on the marketing potential and the film rights. Felt similar about The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

A high concept book I enjoyed on the other hand was Versions of Us.