Books that were recommended to you but turned out to be absolute pointless drivel - the wasted hours you'll never get back - a warning list for others!

[MadreInglese]

These immediately spring to mind:

Kate Mosse - Labyrinth
(also her The Winter Ghosts - should have known after I read one of hers that another would be just as crud)

Paulo Coehlo - The Alchemist

Audrey Niffeneger - Her Fearful Symmetry
(first half was readable then she appears to have taken some strange pills before embarking on the rest of the book)

Stephanie Meyer - The Twilight Trauma Saga

Oh yes, I remember the Celestine Prophecy bollix.

Another one for me: Cold Comfort Farm. Wtf happened there then? Only read it last year and couldn't work out if it was a love story, a funny yoke thing about inbreds shagging sheep and each other, or a serious treatise on mental illness. And I never did understand the something-nasty-in-the-woodshed thing.

It just whoosshed completely over my head.

The Secret. I CANNOT believe that my mother bought the hardcover version and paid postage costs from the US to send it to me. Who reads (and believes) that kind of shit?)

Staines - I like The Number One LDA too - and also failed with a couple of his others that I tried. I think the LDA ones are really gentle and feel-good - no thinking required but like having a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake! :)

Anything by Robert Jordan - book 13 just released written by someone else because the original author pegged it before finishing it - that's what you get for milking it! I can't believe I read the first 5 (but am glad I read them out of the library and didn't fork ou any hard-earned dosh for them).

The Time Traveller's View is a set text on the A level course I teach... don't like it and the film is even more awful