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?

Had bookclub last night, and... started off with the question 'So, hands up who liked the book?' tumbleweeds

And now I am freeee, freeee, freeee and I don't have to read it any more!

I was forced to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles for A-level. Depressing and I hate how after she is hanged the man who supposedly loves her marries her younger sister because she is a 'copy' of her, as if she was just worthless. Pissed me off!

I was also forced to read The Collector. Also depressing and very disturbing. Why do they make you study the most depressing and pointless books? Life is tragic, depressing, pointless. I want to read to escape that and be happy!

I also hate anything by Josephine Cox. I made myself finish Three Letters. the most boring and predictable piece of rubbish!

I'm glad I'm not alone in hating 'The God of Small Things',as a result I'm always suspicious of anything that has won a literary award.

Anything by Martina Cole-there is only one plot.

Her Fearful Symmetry could have been good,but was very disappointing and unsatisfying.

Never finished LOTR,Tom Jones,or Tess.

I sleep badly,so don't mind the odd dull book on my kindle to knock me out,and by current one is something by Fanny Burney,which has a good plot,but is sooo boring.I can't remember the title but it is set out in the form of letters from a young girl to her guardian.

Oddly very pleased to read all the Wuthering Heights hate. If only I'd known I wasn't the only one when doing it for A level.

One moment, One day is dull and depressing book. Why I ploughed on to the end I don't know. I think I though something must happen at some point. It doesn't.

Oh so many !

I used to own two secondhand bookshops , so used to read almost everything that came in so I could suggest titles or authors to my regulars , but the downside was the amount of utter utter shite I ploughed through.

Any Jodie Piccoult . Boring boring pretentious clap trap .

We need to talk about Kevin . No . No I really fucking don't .

The Help . I wanted to like it , I really did . Bored me to resorting to the evening standard on the train instead.

Brave New world - Aldhous Huxley . Managed to write my 4000 word thirty percent of my a level marks essay , having read only 67 pages before drowning it in a bath in despair .

Simon Price's Everything, about the Manic Street Preachers.

Dull boys, dull book.

SpringHeeledJack : Shame Morrissey's book was bad. I did howl with laughter at the summary thaT I heard on the radio on publication day.

I so wanted Moz's long-anticipated autobiography to be brilliant, but wasn't at all surprised that it, um, wasn't very well received.

Sticking with the Smiths albums.

The Five People you Meet in Heaven. I had to read it for a college English class. The class voted on books, and that one won because it was the shortest.

I hated it. I felt as though the author wanted me to have an emotional connection with the main character, but didn't want to make the effort to make me care about him.

I might get picked on for this but personally, if a book get recommended by Richard & Judy I steer well clear of it now. I've read several of their recommendations over the last few years & with the exception of only about 2 books I've found most of their book club finds to be utter garbage!!

Panda, did you get through to the end? Did you hate the ending as much as we predicted? What form did your rage take?

And what are you reading next?

ha ha, squoosh, this is Mumsnet. No way will anyone be polite if I name my book :)

Not a Victorian detective, dwarf. It's a contemporary setting. The one I'm working on at the moment is set in the 70s/80s though, so I may be slowly working my way back towards the Victorian era :)

Ann Rice - 'The Vampire Chronicles' series. I made the mistake of buying the first four books at once, big mistake, only got as far as page 5 of 'Interview with the Vampire'. Dire tosh, straight into the charity shop bag.

So glad so many hate 'The Slap'. Made myself finish it on holiday. Fantasising how to knock off each character in gruesome serial killer style helped the return 'plane journey pass in a flash.

Nooooo - i was completely obsessed with Interview with a Vampire. That was when i was a teen goth though - not sure i'd go such a bundle on it now. I agree the sequels get progressively silly.

Can't believe someone hated Brave New World. I first read it in my early teens and it was one of the first books, along with 1984, that really made me think. I still love them both now.

OneEgg - I was obsessed with the 'Angélique' series as a teen - we all have our dark secrets. I still read 'Brave New World' and '1984' every so often and enjoy them as much as the first time.

IdaBlankenship thank you. I had a feeling it was going to be dire

I hated The Slap, but a few months after finishing it I found I wanted to read it again. I still hated it, but I hated it differently. I only really liked the one character in the entire book (Anouk) but I do think that hating it might be the point. At least I hope so. If we're expected to like those people then I have no idea what the point of the book really is.

I've liked quite a few of the books hated here. The Leanne Shapton one with the really long title, 'Important Artefacts and Personal Property…' is one of my favourites, I got on quite well with The Time Travellers Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, I've just bought The Woman Upstairs so I I hope I like it now.

I read American Psycho because of the John Sutherland essay about the book and he offers quite an interesting theory about the mistakes and events in the book. That theory being that none of it ever took place outside of Patrick Bateman's head, it was all hallucinations as he overdosed and I think died. He backed it up with claims that the book was so highly edited and hyped that those 'mistakes', such as Patrick talking about his clothes and seeming to be wearing two ties (I think it was, perhaps two belts) at the same time just wouldn't have been missed, they were supposed to be there to support the unreality of the book and act as clues that all was not as it seemed to be.

I loved Anne Rice as a teen, but even I - with my extremely high tolerance for purple prose and overblown dramatics - struggled with the later ones in the series. I am still quite fond of the first one, but they do get iffy after that. I don't think I could get through them now. I remember getting quite cross with Memnoch the Devil, in particular. Don't think I finished that one.

Adored Brave New World, still do.

I love Brave New World too - its the first novel that got me into dystopian fiction when I read it as a teen. Prefer it over 1984 to be honest (which is still an amazing book).

I like Wuthering Heights too. Read it during my 'awkward' phase as a teenager, but look at it the same way I do at Jeremy Kyle - it's car crash fiction/tv.

Never made it beyond the first 50 pages of LOTR. All that talk about a party being arranged bored me to tears. And I love SF/Fantasy normally.

Not annoying, but horribly depressing (and I read it on holiday. Not a good move) - A Fine Balance. My WORD I still get bummed out when I think about that book. Everything that can go wrong does, and in a really horrible, miserable way. Awful book. Really awful.

I had to read A Child in Time by Ian McEwan for A Levels, and have never been able to read anything by him since as I hated it so much. It's about a man who loses his child (as in, she disappears and they think she's been kidnapped but don't know) while out shopping.

I did Brave New World for O level English Lit.

As wider reading I read Animal Farm , 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 - my teacher encouraged that - but Brave New World stuck with me more.

My teacher also got us to watch Soylent Green (good), the film of Fahrenheit 451 (dull) and also Logan's Run which is silly fun with Michael York and Jenny Agutter in embarrassing Spandex but the same themes.

What I learned much later was that the title referred to The Tempest [duh]. I bet she mentioned it and I just don't remember.

We did A Midsummer Night's Dream as our Shakespeare text. It might have been more fitting to do The Tempest but who knows the work politics - maybe it was the curriculum, or maybe the teacher I had for Shakespeare liked AMSND and didn't like the 20th century texts teacher.

Tackling a whole extra Shakespeare text at 15 was probably a step too far.

Looking back, she was excellent, wasn't she? Actually, both of them were good. But I now think she was outstanding.

The Slap for me too, I gave up part way through.

Oh, Absy, I liked it - more than Saturday and Amsterdam, anyway.

I remember being blown away by early McEwan when I was in my teens - In Between the Sheets, First Love, Last Rites and The Cement Garden but of the later stuff, I've only really liked A Child In Time.

the instruction book for the camera

We Need to Talk about Kevin - I finished it but I have no idea why. I guessed the ending after about the first 100 pages. The whole idea of that Kevin became a psychopath because of his mother was just contrived nonsense.

The Slap is another one I finished but hated. Every single character without exception was horrible. And why so much swearing? Do people in RL really swear so much? Not in my RL they don't.

I can never get past about pg 10 of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Attwood and I have tried several times. I can't comment on it as a whole but the bits I have read were dreary.