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?

I offer up "The Autograph Man" - tried to read it twice and couldn't get beyond fifty pages, too self-consciously clever

The Satanic Verses - another one I made two unsuccessful attempts at reading, boring twaddle.

The Time Traveller's Wife - irritating and pointless

Never Let Me Go - weird, didn't find any of the characters engaging in any way.

I've just finished American Gods which I was disappointed with. I thought I would like this as normally enjoy fantasy.

I love time travellers wife and the book thief.

Wuthering Heights. Could not abide it and convinced me that English Lit A level was really not for me....

I once got stuck on holiday with only 'The Island' by Victoria Hislop for entertainment. Sexy, yet pure and virtuous young Greek wenches, with intolerable suffering bravely borne thrown in for good measure. Just so very bad.

I didn't get on with Catcher in the Rye or The Grapes of Wrath. I find 'big inportant themes' in general really hard going. That one about philosophy (Sophie's World'?) was abysmal. Give me believable characters I care about any day!

Diary of a Call Girl. Picked it up as a freebie on holiday, so bored by the holiday that I read the whole thing but found myself not any more entertained. Found out a few years later when all the names became public that I'd had a romantic run in with her bloke- totally explained everything about why it was so utterly dull as dishwater and considering it was supposed to be a memoir of erotic adventures, I thought thoroughly vanilla.

Ooh doctorsnewkidneys, The Spire, good call!

Another book where you have to drag yourself through the whole thing thinking "is something going to happen at some point?" Then you go "Oh it's the end" :o

I was shocked that Wuthering Heights was so pants, after all the build-up, I thought it was going to be a sweeping romantic tearjerker. Instead it's full of awful people, most of whom live in different time periods from each other, and completely lacks plot.

However I LOVE Frankenstein.

American Psycho was utterly vile, gave me nightmares and made me feel unclean for having read it. Only bought it because it was recommended in Waterstones...

I loved American Psycho. It's the only B.E.E. book i've enjoyed tho.

War and Peace.
Moby Dick.
Yawn.

Dr Sleep- Stephen King was a huge fan when I was younger, loved the Dark Tower series. Read the one about JFK which I thought was great and then started this one before Xmas and have had to give up. Just can't get into it and find it quite disturbing.

I adored Wuthering Heights as an angsty 15 yr old. I have no patience for any of the characters now and, unless it becomes a set text, I doubt I'll read it again.

I second Orlando as another book I suffered through.

Can I also add Tom Jones by Henry Fielding? A jolly romp interrupted by a God awful and interminable spell with the man on the fucking hill. Worse than the diversion to Tom Bombadil in LotR.

Has anyone mentioned Gone Girl yet? God I wanted them to end for both of them in a suicide pact I was that desperate for it all to be over.

Arrrrgggh, On Chesil Beach! So disappointed and let down by the end. That remains the only book I've ever thrown at the wall with sheer frustration. FFS, TALK TO EACH OTHER.

Quite a few of the books mentioned above ring nasty bells with me. However, American Psycho is the only book I have ever destroyed, rather than give away. Though I did delete 50 Shades from my Kindle, now that I think about it.

My book club has been running since 1996 or thereabouts, meeting monthly. Only once in all that time have all 8 of us said, "This book is so crap, let's ditch it." That was Thomas Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon." I still resent the space that its 784 pages take up on my bookcase, but I haven't yet found anyone prepared to give it a home.

Also agree:

The Slap - just shite couldn't finish it.

Jodie Picoult stuff - so depressing, get dragged down by the shitness of her characters lives.

The Secret History - what a disappointment, bought it on my kindle after reading The Goldfinch. What a sodding crappy story, thought Goldfinch ace though.

Ulysses - hated it, yet felt I should have read it.

Loved some of the hated books here though - like An Equal Music and The Mill on the Floss.

Damediazepam- just scrolled down and see you hate the exactly the same ones as me! Feel free to recommend me a good book, am on the search as have just finished the Goldfinch.

Fought my way through The Book Thief and Room. Didn't enjoy either of them. Didn't even manage to get through The Time Traveller's Wife. Started it a few times, and just couldn't get into it at all.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

it was so so boring, overly descriptive, the same tedious story could have been told in less than half of the what was written

it was such a relief to finish it

Lorna Doone
Larkrise to Candleford
The Secret History
London Fields
Never Let Me Go

Oh, I hated The Island! So badly written. Also hate Sons and Lovers. Stupid whining fool.
I really disliked Atonement, especially the sex scene, but in the film Joe Wright made it fabulous.
I hated all the characters in The Slap and in Gone Girl, but found them engaging reads.
I couldn't finish Labyrinth. Boring. And the second David Peace was too relentlessly grim to complete.
There is a Mo Hayder book called The Treatment . I wish I had never read it. I hate her for putting those images in my mind. I enjoy detective fiction and don't mind a bit of gore, but she poisoned my mind and I can't forgive that.

I think The Road is profoundly affecting and beautifully written. I read Love in the time of cholera because I loved One Hundred Years Of Solitude but found Cholera to be a justification for paedophilia.