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 enjoyed the 100 yo man till the very end when he suddenly gets his libido back - aargh - FFS - ruined it for me

Corelli - awful, managed about a third

The French Lieutenant's Woman - urgh - finally managed to finish it after about a dozen false starts don't know why I bothered

50 shades of crap - AWFUL & the sex wasn't even that interesting IMO

Fyrefly, I feel that way about Eat Pray Love. From the title alone, I infer that it must be absolutely excruciating. Nice to see my instincts vindicated by its popping up so much on this thread!

I think I have an unread copy of The Rose Labyrinth on my bookshelf somewhere... fairly sure I bought it some years ago at an airport and just forgot about it. Clearly it made a huge impression! It may have to be consigned to a charity shop.

Oh and I also loathe The Time Traveller's Stupid, Dozy Twat of a Wife. The mothers at my playgroup absolutely raved about it. They passed two or three battered copies around the group as if they were gold dust.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It may well have become better, but I couldn't get past the writing style. It read like one of my DS's attempts to deploy personification, simile and metaphor in half an hour to impress the 11+ examiners (though better executed than my DS's attempts, which tended to be things like "as angry as a raelly really angry gorril gorila ape".)

The Slap for sure; also The Inheritance of Loss; and (last book club choice) The Yellow House. Hours of my life I will never get back.

^ Is that the one where the brother and sister end up shagging, MrsSteptoe? And there's a page long description of phlegm? What was all that about then? Dear goodness.

I hate it when authors try to be edgy and different, but are painfully self conscious about it all the way through the book.

Karma agree

sorry I was agreeing with Time Traveller's twat wife

She is a twat though Imagine if she posted on Relationships...

'my DH has been stalking me since I was a teenager, now that we're married he disappears at random....'

I love Anna Karenina - read it on a train in December in the '80's between Moscow and Leningrad - it was snowing and cold and awesome and the mood was so right for the book. Luuurve it.
On the other hand I hated The Beach, more drivel pretending to be insightful. But Eat Love Pray still gets my number one vote for worst book in the world - she really really annoyed me. All copies should be burned.

Karma v. LordSnooty
yup, that's the one

I read a lot so have collected a few stinkers over the years. I can
t remember the names now but various feisty-female-detective ones that have just been so predictable and badly written ( I like good feisty female detectives like VI Warshawski and wossname in the early Val McDermid books)

Anna K is my all-time favorite. I got my husband to read it (major - he's non-fiction all the way), and it's now his too.

Agree with Labyrinth, couldn't finish it!

Also these were complete bore fests for me;

Freedom - Franzen - didn't give a shit about the characters
Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling - ditto
The Outsider - Sadie Jones ( made me feel like throwing myself off a bridge afterwards!)

The Night Circus. Boring, boring boring.

The Coffee Shop of Kabul. Very poorly written. The synopsis compared it to The Kite Runner, so I was surprised that it was so shit.

The Lotus Eaters, set during the Vietnam War. I hated the main character, a female photographer with no redeeming features who had all these men falling for her for no apparent reason.

I was hoping she'd die from about 1/3rd of the way through so the nice Vietnamese guy could be the lead instead. She didn't die and I am still very annoyed about the time I wasted reading it.

I even hoped for a Dusk Till Dawn type scenario where vampires would take over, but that wouldn't be historically accurate.

rookiemater do you mean the memory-keeper's daughter or something? The children were twins but the girl had Down's Syndrome so he gave her away and pretended she died. Maybe it was the Secret-Keeper's daughter or something.

I did quite enjoy Eat Pray, Love but think thats cos I was about to go off travelling to India by myself for 4 months after being made redundant and needed some courage...

The Emergence of Judy Taylor - most annoying protaganist ever!

Dawn french's dear sylvia, disappointing as i like her other book.

I don't care if Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook is a seminal piece of feminist writing as my goodness it's dull and she is so unbearably smug.

I know I didn't finish it but no bad book thread would be complete without a mention of that absolute shite Vernon Godlittle