to ask what was the most annoying book you have ever ploughed through?

[pandarific]

I am reading Her Fearful Symmetry for bookclub and I'm a fifth of the way through and hating it. It is just striking me as very cutesy and mimsy wimsy and I have eyerolled so many times in the past 100 pages. (Children, in 2010, in London, happily playing croquet - really? Oh and then there's a ghost. And some creepy twins! Great.)

It wouldn't be so bad, but the fecking thing is 500 pages long.

I know it's a matter of taste as the author's books are massive bestsellers. And I may be being unfair as I seem to just really dislike magical realism in general. And I am open to reading all kinds of different books (last one A Game of Thrones, before that The Kite Runner), and anyway, half the point of a bookclub is to read things you wouldn't pick for yourself. But but. The salesperson at Waterstones even went on about how great it was when I was buying it, ffs! Waaah, boo, disappointment, 500 pages of life wasted etc.

Anyway, I definitely will finish it as it's only fair to give it a real chance, and I will try not to BU and judge so quickly, but I have to ask - what books have you made yourself finish, bookclub or no, that you've hated?

The Memory Keepers Daughter.

Boring shit

With you on fearful symmetry I gave up. Commiserations if its a book club and you have to battle on. Loved time travellers wife so it was disappointing.

I enjoyed many of the derided books on here loved atonement, need to talk about Kevin, one day and enduring love. Totally agree about kate Mosse though meandering rubbish had to bail. Also the little friend though enjoyed secret history and loved goldfinch.

My shame is with the exception of a Christmas carol have managed to finish a Charles dickens book

The God Of Small Things
Wolf Hall- have tried twice and cannot get into it
The Labyrinth.

I've not finished any of he above- I just didn't care enough.

Should read "never" before managed

The Lovely Bones! Really don't know why I finished it.

Loved wolf hall and bring up the bodies

I've read a lot of utter crap in my life but the worst for me was Perdido Street Station by China Melville. It is the weirdest shite i've read and only after did DH and DSIL tell me it is proper hardcore fanatsy. It's a genre I just don't get.

Other ones are One Hundred Years of Solitude...felt like i'd been reading it for a 100 years.

In the Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

Have yet to be bowled over by Audrey Niffenberger, I just couldn't get into Her Fearful Symmetry too or Time Traveller's Wife.

Oh, I loved the Book Thief and The Night Circus . I agree with pp about American Psycho though, I was really upset by some bits and I am not sure that it being a satire yadda yadda yadda is excuse enough for the appalling violence against women in it.

Lady Flumpalot 'We need to talk about Kevin' was a book I had to plough through and it did get better.
I' m reading 'Where did you go to Bernadette' at the moment..... I'm losing the will to live!!
I also have 'After you'd gone' - not good.

Brick Lane ... Eventually i finished it.
I didn't finish : 'Love in a time of Cholera'
Or Cecilia Ahearn's first book. Nor will never try and read another of her books. Pure drivel.
Hated Harry Potter 1 - never finished it nor read the others. Oh dear.

I can't say I have ploughed through a book I have not wanted to. All the book clubs I have belonged to were ok with members not getting past the first chapter if they hated the books.

Books I have given up on include
Wolf Hall (loved her other books)
Captain Corellis mandolin ( loved his earlier books)
Love, Eat,Prey. (Seriously! People enjoyed this book )
The Help
Cloud Atlas
Da Vinchi Code (it's bollox)
There was some awful book set in the US Deep South that was dire... I can't remember its title but I feel agitated just thinking about its crap'ness.

All the Stieg Larsson Girl With... books.

I thought I might like them because I love Wallander but I found the fact that no woman alive can resist the sexual magnetism of the main character (obviously an avatar for the writer) really bloody annoying an far fetched. The second he gets off the train/plane in any place in the word, you're deafened by the sound of pants dropping a hundred at a time.

And the writer kept referring to Lisbeth Salander as anorexic, when he clearly meant skinny. She polished off takeaways FGS! Pretty offensive to use a word like that when you clearly don't know what it means.

Oh dear.
Haven't read most of the books being slated but ...
I love Stephen Kings books, started reading at about 12 and haven't quit yet.
Love 'Wuthering Heights', studied it for A level.
Reallllyyyyyy didn't like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. Read another book by the same author though, sucker for punishment.

I loved The Slap! Can't see why you'd need to like the characters to enjoy a well written, funny and insightful book? I had a lovely chat with the author on a mumsnet webchat.

None of you have read a truly awful book (including the tripe that is 50 shades of Grey-fan fic should stay as just that) unless you've read The Shack by William P Young. I started writing notes in case I forgot all the ways it was bad.

I think some books lose something in translation.
I did not have that impression at all after Stieg Larson (but I read them in Swedish)

Gone Girl, The Secret History, The Slap, anything by Jodi Picout...I'll think of some more I'm sure

How could I forget 50 shades?

Oh that's definitely possible, Quinteszilla and I have a lot of respect for Larsson as a man. But all the shagging was in the narrative. Unless the English translator was really bad and interpreted periods of intense research as euphemisms for having sex

defineme, I really enjoyed The Slap too! I Sure, all the characters were despicable but that's what made it compelling. As my DSis said, it was so entertaining, it was as good as watching telly!

The Alexandra Quartet by Lawrence Durrell...four flipping volumes of dialogue that essentially boils down to this:
"I love you"
"I despise you"
"I know you do. That makes my love for you even stronger."

Feh, I tell you, feh! Worse yet, followed by the Avignon Quintet. Have no idea where it all stopped.

I guess I must have ffwd through the shapping!

Can you tell I have not read 50 shades...

I dont even know how to spell "making love" in modern speak!

The Family Way by Tony Parson such drivel I actually tore it when I had finished reading the vile crap

The Hobbit- dont understand how they turned it into so many films.
Catch 22 one of the few books I didn't finish.

See I love George Eliot but can't stand Austen. I find her books so dull.

Don't like Philip Roth. It's all very same-y to me.

I tend to like authors that make people cringe, like Mitchell (I loved Cloud Atlas) or Haruki Murakami.

I'm re-reading The Forsyte Saga right now. Marvellous book.

50 Shades
Dear Fatty