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?

How Late it Was, How Late.

Just don't. Not ever. Words cannot describe....I cannot articulate my annoyance with it.

Oh and I hated The Finkler Question too. Waste of my life.

Oh I loved paddy Doyle
I think it helped to have read all the other books though

Oh yes to The Mill On The Floss.
I am no longer at school though. Books are not homework. I do not have to finish a book if I am not enjoying it.
I do try to give up sooner rather than later although I have been known to give up when more than half way through.
There are those, that others rave about, that I wish I hadn't bothered with though.
Gone Girl.
The 100 year old man etc.
The boy in the striped Pajamas.
The Road.
Yawn..

Cloud Atlas. Teeeeeeeeeeeeeedious.

I don't finish books I dislike, so it would have to be some of the fiction I had to read as part of my degree. George Eliot and Hardy.
The dislike is a personal thing, I have friends who loved everything GE ever wrote.

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope is the most recent awful book I've read. I thought she was supposed to give it a 21st century makeover but she rigidly stuck to the story and it was nonsense.

The Lord of the Rings. My DH raves about it -and has read it ten zillion times but the sentences go on forever and The Two Towers is downright dull.

Aww, I loved Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Roddy Doyle's books can be tough to read with the no quotation marks and the no chapters - takes a while to get into each. Bit like Irvine Welsh maybe?

at showy

Had my suspicions about the Finkler Question - that it might be an exploration of middle aged male neuroses and some sex - like those "great American novel" snorathons. Will give that a miss.

Wolf Hall - just couldn't get past half way at both attempts. It's an ear I know a lot about and I was looking forward to it - got it was dull

era ffs not ear!

Eat, Pray Love. I wanted the protagonist to die.
Chesil beach; dull, dull, dull.

To The fucking Lighthouse.

What a load of shit!

The Celestine Prophecy. Badly written and dull. Shame.

I don't finish books I dislike in general by the way - but for discussion at a book club I feel I should give them a fair shout, so will at least try to finish them.

Thumbwitch I couldn't even finish Love in the Time of Cholera. It was the second book I didn't finish.

The first book I couldn't finish was Rachel Cusk - The Temporary. Dear God, but it was dire! I threw it across the room in a rage at how such shit ever got published. The only positive thing I can say about it is that it taught me that life is too short to finish bad books.

Prior to that I had struggled through some bilge; I think the worst was some chicklit thing by Wendy Holden which was sub-sub-sub-Jilly Cooper and was just bad pun after bad pun after bad pun, plus an even more predictable plot than usual (I can remember thinking on about page 25 "oh, the woman the heroine thinks is the love interest's OW is going to turn out to be his sister" and hey presto, 200 pages later the big denouement was that they were brother and sister).

Also a thriller by somebody Kernick - think the book was called Relentless, or something like that - which was implausible, badly-plotted, had no consistent characterisation and was, in a nutshell, shite. I am still genuinely amazed every time I go into W H Smiths and see a new Kernick novel; I can only hope he improved with practice.

Brick Lane
The Road Less Travelled
Any of Jilly Cooper's bonk busters
Anything by Jodi Picault (sp?)

Oh yes I managed all of Wolf Hall - I'm still waiting for my medal.

Never got past Chapter one on The Time Traveller's wife, or Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Angela's Ashes. Just because you have lived an 'interesting' (ha) life, doesn't mean you should write a book about it.

White Nights by Dostoevsky. Most annoying narrator I have ever encountered. I wanted them all to jump in the Neva and be done with it.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Managed the astonishing feat of being both repulsive and astoundingly boring at the same time.

Also fond (whispers) Wolf Hall very annoying. Which was a pity as I thought I'd like it.

Pawprint I loved Brick Lane, and the N something one.

i cannot read chick lit
i hate it

Oh and Parade's End - managed about a third as I quite enjoyed the TV series, lent it to my father for a year, now got it back and it is looking at me in the living room - I might suggest it for Book Club as penance for teh fact I have only just been allowed to join.

Oh and most Jodi Picoult books I get about 1/3 in before I realise I have read it before - slightly overweight frazzled mother - check, handsome husband with dubious past history - check, heart-wringing melodrama involving child - check leading to court case finale. I could just write them myself and save her the bother - although I believe she has already roped in her daughter to make it a family effort.

The Princess Bride. I just don't get it.

Select - I read it twice, to try and understand it better. Didn't work - it was twaddle both times.

Another book I read twice in an effort to like it was Georgette Heyer's Penhallow. I love GH, have her entire collection - but Penhallow is relentlessly appalling. Not a single sympathetic character in it, and it notably lacks her usual humorous touch. Years after reading it, I found out the she wrote it in a strop because the publisher wouldn't let her out of her contract - so she deliberately (apparently) wrote a bad book so they'd let her go.

Just thought of another - The Stranger's Child was both awful AND pointless. Oh and looong, too. Not one person in a 25 strong group finished it. It literally had no point. Meandering crap without plot that went nowhere.