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?

Just paged through this thread to see if anyone's mentioned my book. No-one has.

Should be pleased, but actually a bit disappointed

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I really tried hard to like it and admit to enjoying Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code. He's a shit writer really.

Give us a clue undecidedanduncertain, we'll be polite.

Probably.

I hated The Pilot's Wife too - also because of the American tone of finding terrorism so charming. It was written pre 9/11 of course - then it suddenly became a bad thing

Definitely geography by google.

Have to agree with you Fakebook - the Lost Symbol was dreadful

undecidedanduncertain you don't write about a Victorian detective do you?

I stupidly read the Martin Amis about the kid who has an affair with his grandmother over summer holiday. It was vile.

Absy I read Wuthering Heights as a moody adolescent (had to study it for A level) and it was no better then. One likeable character would have been nice. Just one!

SpringHeeledJack are you thinking of Tender Is The Night?

SelectAUserName I was thinking about Wuthering Heights yesterday because of this thread.

I read it a few years ago as a middle-aged woman. Fuck me.

You have to be a 14 year old girl - and a particular type of 14 year old girl, at that - to like it.

But to carry that liking into adulthood is a definition of a personality disorder.

Harvest by Jim Crace. I've avoided my Kindle for the past month because of this (hence prolific posting on MN instead). I should just give up and move on. But I'm 70% through.

Labyrinth - couldn't finish.

Martin Amis - fascinated by the sheer nastiness and always promise myself not to touch another one again.

I loved Wuthering Heights as a teen. Haven't re-read it since, but I am fairly sure I'd still like it. I have always had a weakness for the gothic and the romantic, and WH has lashings of both.

Cloud Atlas-loathed it but made it to the end and The Magus Ploughed my way through it on holiday when I'd run out of reading matter it was dire.
Loved the Time Travellers wife and Shadow of the Wind is probably my favourite book.

But to carry that liking into adulthood is a definition of a personality disorder

Fabulous cross-post

at Tulip and limited

I was never the type of 14 year old girl to go drippy-wandering through the bluebells in a lace nightie imagining I was a tragic Victorian consumptive. I was usually stomping along said bluebell track covered in mud trying to catch up with the pony I'd just fallen off. Hence, Wuthering Heights was never going to be for me.

OneEgg - Zen And the art... What was that all about? I ploughed through it waiting for enlightenment. Alas, it never came. Just a geezer, musing.

The Slap, hardly anyone in it you can like or empathise with and the sex scenes were bizarre.

A book... I can't remember title or author... Came it a couple of years ago... It's got a picture of the green lawns of a stately home type place on the front with three people in evening dress walking across it... There's a poet called Sebastian I think in it - and a woman called Daphne - and it flicks forward through time in an incredibly annoying stupid way, never giving you the full story of any of the characters, which is so frustrating, with the implication that it's somehow clever NOT to just tell a good story when you can muck about implying that there would be a good story here if only you knew what it was. I made myself finish it in case it got less annoying. It didn't. But what is it called??! Someone help me out!

Oh, I think I know the one you mean there. Wants to be Brideshead Revisited but it's just rubbish. Christopher Someone?

Found it! The Stranger's Child! Nothing to do with a Sebastian at all

I really enjoyed Wuthering Heights whilst loathing the characters.

The Lord of the Rings was seriously hard going. It was a real effort to keep going to the end.
I gave up on Lisey's Story by Stephen King, I just didn't get it.
Does anyone remember Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith? I tried several times to read it but couldn't, just too depressing.

SliceOfLime - and the author is no Christopher either. Having checked it on Wikipedia, though, if is the one I was thinking about.

I remember Gorky Park DrDre I liked it, and the film too.

But then I have a soft spot for Lee Marvin and an even less un-PC soft spot for sable coats.

The man with the compound eyes.
A post-apocalyptic novel set in Taiwan, where part of the Trash Vortex crashes into the coast, bringing a man from a lost island tribe.
The title character May or may not be a real person, and a character who has at least one chapter written solely from his point of view turned out to be long dead.
That's a few days of my life I'll never get back.

LCHammer

I think I remember seeing that book and thinking . Wasn't it a Richard and Judy special