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?

You could start a whole other thread on books that don't end properly. Or end in a stupid pretentious way. (Atonement; The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, for example).

American novels are especially awful. Even the 'classic' ones like 'Moby Dick' read like very second rate bad novels by lesser 19thC European novelists. I loathed 'The Great Gatsby' when I was forced to read it at university. Just a load of pretentious, vacuous rich idiots farting around.

Tell you another overrated American writer - Donna Tartt. The Secret History is one I read when it came out as it was so hyped. Really nothing to it yet it whinged on for what felt like 6000 pages.

Forgot to add 'Catcher In The Rye' -possibly the most brattish, irritating bit of teen wank ever written. Just want to punch the hero's lights out, for all the mithering on about the phoneyness of everyone and everything. Jesus Christ, is that the best you can do? Mind you, my friend taught American undergraduates Literature, and in one course she spent ages trying to make them understand the "Angry Young Men" writers of the 50s/60s. After a seminar or two she asked the students if they could name one of the Angry Young Men. One put his hand up and very earnestly offered "Charles Manson?"

Yes stack of fuckers - had forgotten how godawful One Day was, I gave up halfway through.

Loved Girl with Dragon Tattoo but the two follow ups I couldn't finish. I'm afraid I just wasn't that interested in Lisbeth Salander and the first one wasn't primarily about her.

The Almost Moon
yy to Labyrinth - gave up

MIDDLEMARCH. Hands down the most irritating book I have ever read. And because I am clearly being punished for something, I have had to read and write essays on that damn book at least three times over the years at school/uni. It never got any more bearable.

Many many of these, but also special mentions for Heart of Darkness by Conrad, its only about a hundred pages long but fucking hell NOTHING HAPPENS. I also have a particular loathing for Paul Coelho after someone made me read Veronika decides to die and I spent the whole book wishing she would get on with it. And dont get me started on Cecilia Aherne, she gives me the rage.

I fucking hated On Chesil Beach too.

Linda Maccartneyssausage you are quite about Anita Shreve googling her locations! My mum threw one of her books accross the room (The Pilots Wife perhaps?) when the protagonist needed her passport to cross the Irish border. Errr, nope.

Oh and Dickens is shit hands back Eng Lit degree

Dickens is, indeed, shit. All coincidence and melodrama.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I read it as a class reader with my class, and I couldn't disguise my annoyance. Bruno's "innocence" just doesn't wash with me - it seems very patronising to children, and so very frustrating the way he cannot tune into what somebody right in front of him is saying. And though it would have been incredibly risky (though what chances did the prisoners really have?), as kids in my class kept pointing out, Shmuel could have gone under the fence.

I actually think the album reviews might finish me off Snails!

Life Of Pi - I just couldn't finish reading it. I was really disappointed as everyone seemed to be going on about how good it was but I just found it really dull and in the end gave up.

At school I was made to read Wuthering Heights. I know it's a classic but I hated it! The two main characters are horrible and deserve a slap. Couldn't write that in my exam though.

100 years of solitude. Yes, I know.

I do try to persevere with books, and sometimes it pays off (The Poisonwood Bible springs to mind). Out of the five books I can remember resolving decisively to abandon, three have already been mentioned (The Famished Road, Possession, The Road); the other two were Snow by Orhan Pamuk and Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. Ugh, the latter makes me shudder just thinking about it.

(The Handmaid's Tale is one of my all-time favourites, though, and I also liked Never Let Me Go, Atonement and We Need to Talk about Kevin.)

Seems quite common to love one book by an author but be disappointed by subsequent efforts... My contribution here is Zoe Heller: I loved Notes on a Scandal but thought there was something really smug and boring about The Believers.

Caitlin17 I had almost exactly the same experience re. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina! Was quite a shock to have my own teenage perceptions overturned. Not tragic or romantic - just irresponsible, needy and narcissistic, the pair of them.

BTW HenriettaMarie and anyone else who struggled with Anna Karenina - there are 2 new translations planned in the coming year or so, by Rosamund Bartlett in the UK and Marian Schwartz in the US. Very odd to have 2 translations of such a huge title out in such a short space of time... But might be worth looking out for one of those to give it another go?

I second Heart of Darkness. Another one I was forced to read at uni, and absolutely nothing happens whatsoever in it. No interesting theme, either. Drab characters. A few years back, I wanted to do the Masters in English with the OU but all the books were so boring and worthy, I decided against it.

5o shades given to my60plus sister as a last minute present by her non fiction reading son.He heard the hype.

We ploughed through in horrified wonder and thought the male leading character needs to be in a secure institution at least....we are old!

Awkward (least said the better) thank you to the gift giver.

What the hell to do with it..,imagine church bazaar?
Nearly got done by nature cops for burning it in a suburb on another continent

So thankful that we are old and knew nothing about how sex should supposedly be in spite of decades of marriage.

Wish we could write something that a zillion sheep would read and be rich and famous.

gotthemoon - That is one of the funniest posts I have ever read on MN Thank you!

maniacbug Thanks for that, I'll check them out. Somebody also recommended the Pevear / Volokhonsky published by Penguin as being one of the best available.

I think my copy is Constance Garnett, so bloody old.

Latin Course for Schools Part1

A lot of Suzanne Dunn's books when she tried to do historical lit - she should have really have stuck to her friends/lives books (Blood Sugar etc) rather than harp on about Katherine Howard. All of the supposed thinkings are really getting my goat.

Bidisha - someone lent me her book and it was tripe. I also didn't like Gone Girl as I could see the end coming a mile off and it was contrived shit.

SelectUser and LindaMcCartney - I was the same with The Red Tent didn't feel anything very forgettable.

The Beach was a book that really made me want to give the author a slap. Best read in conjunction with the hilarious Are You Experienced.

Other books I have disliked include the first twilight book (and only one I have read) - where basically nothing happens in the first 100 pages except bella wonders if she should allow the vampire to bite her or not - which had me shouting shit or get off the pot.

Then there was Lord of the rings (read half of it when I was 14, my friend kept telling me to keep on reading and it'll get interesting - it never did.

I also second (third? Fourth) the new york trilogy - pretentious twaddle.

HenriettaMaria (got your name right this time!) I read the old Penguin one (by Rosemary Edmonds) and more recently the Zinovieff/Hughes translation for OneWorld, but the Pevear/Volokhonsky does generally seem to get a lot of praise. Personally am looking forward to the Ros Bartlett translation, as I heard her give a talk on it last year and she is using the 1970s version of the Russian original, apparently the most unadulterated, which has only been used once before - and not by Z/H or P/V. In case you're interested in other Russian classics, there is a new translation of Crime and Punishment (by Oliver Ready) coming out in May, which should be worth looking out for....
(sorry for thread hijack OP!)

THe Slap
Gone Girl

Utter tripe, both of them. Didn't even finish Gone Girl, it was sooo bad.

Also struggled through The Woman Who Went To Bed... and Harold Fry, and wished I hadn't. Really shouldn't believe the hype.

Possession I also struggled through, and I did like it, but I had to skip all the poetry

I nearly gave up on LotR because of Tom Bombadil, but was glad I persevered.

I came close to reading Hundred Years of Solitude last month - I borrowed it from the library, but didn't open it. Won't bother now!

But I'm appalled that fivefourtime has cited Terry Pratchett!