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

Ooh Drmelons I agree wholeheartedly on "We need to talk about Kevin" and I too wanted to slap the mother till her teeth rattled!

But I loved a prayer for Owen Meany, it was slow but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have just finished "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" which was soooooo boring I feel like I deserve an O level for reading it!

sorry- LOVE (and slightly freaked out by) The poisonwood Bible!

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Wasp Factory and the Red Riding Books by David Peace, I read them all and they were urgh!!!!

Eat Pray Love - what a load of crapola! I RESENT having paid money for that rubbish!

I must be easily pleased as I liked lots of the ones listed on here!

The one I failed dismally with recently was The Lacuna, dull, dull, dull - gave up about halfway through. None of the characters gripped me in any way.

I have also given up on the White Woman on a Green Bicycle - again I have no interest in any of the characters.

I found the Lacuna got a lot more interesting once Trotsky turned up

The hours by Michael cunning ham
2666 by roberto bola no. Worst and longest book ever

Ah - clearly I should have waited for Trotsky!

he was really sweet too...

MadreInglese Remains of the Day is the best by far of the 3 Ishiguro books that I've read. I also read Never Let Me Go which wasn't nearly so good. Having seen the film of Remains of the Day first, the book slightly annoyed me for the first couple of chapters because it's written as the Butler's first person narrative. After that, I loved it!

"Can't BELIEVE someone said Catch-22! Probably one of the best books ever written! Shame on you"

The Book Thief - dull dull dull

Re. 'The Lacuna': I've just finished it, and got to love it, but was fully aware that if I hadn't been reading it on holiday, and able to sit for long stretches at a time, I wouldn't have finished it - I think it's a fab holiday book, but not conducive to my usual read-for-half-an-hour-if-that-at-bedtime style.

Loved the Shipping News but couldn't seem to get into any more Annie Proulx's; seemed a bit of a one-trick pony to me.

time travellers wife - absolute poo.

Also the the Interpretation of Murder

Blimey- I thought I was the only one in the world who didn't like The Book Thief. Cheers Bumperlicious!

Oh god, I'd forgotten (maybe blocked out of mind like some post-traumatic incident) Memoirs of a Geisha (Nicely written though, I think, in all fairness to yer man, it was simply that I find Japanese-ness so alien to me personally anyway, that any books set there leave me a bit cold. Mo Hayder's (who I usually love in a horrific pageturny kind of way) set in Japan are awful too.

Also agree about Splendid Kites and Running Suns a lesson to us all should be that just because the subject is serious, it doesn't mean the storybook is worth reading. It was derivative, badly written, and I felt abused by the writer somehow, as if he'd rubbed his sweaty palms together and thought, "ooh I can make lots of money about this, all I need is a burkha, an abused wife, poor Afghani children......" Horrible.

Agree with Jodie read one you've read them all churn them out to a formula Picoult.

Catch 22, yeah, dull, dull. The first 20 pages or so was so-so, the rest was just more of the same.

Suspicions of Mr Whicher - fab!

THe later Patricia Cornwell stuff (her earlier ones were better)
Any book passed on to us by MIL that she has bought in "the Works" (or similar bookshops). We just don't have the same tastes.

God yes, Patricia Cornwell is insane. Totally. I think people (like me, it has to be said) keep buying them because it seems somehow rude not to, when you've been reading them all these years...but truly the latest stuff (prob from when Marino rapes her, which was in itself) is just tooooooo weird.

Victoria Hislop's The Island - boring drivel.

Chris Cleave's The Other Hand - poorly edited boring drivel. I mean, really... We're expected to believe that some poor Nigerian girl walks from Essex to Kingston upon Thames, without having been in Britain before and apparently without a map. What did she do? M11 followed by the North Circular? And then a child in a batman suit falls into an open grave. For pity's sake.

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas - now what was that all about?

yy to lord of ther rings. loved the movies but i don't want to waste my life reading a 20-page description about every dewdrop in fangorn fucking forest.

found most of thomas hardys stuff hard going, so depressing, finished all of them except adam bede.

forced myself to finish the tenderness of wolves, where were the wolves? how were they tender? what a waste of my time.

tried and failed to finish crime and punishment. is there a single person on the planet who has actually made it to the end?
same with Dr Shivago(sp?)

i stick to my crime thrillers and jack reachers now.

Yes, bamboobutton, I read Crime and Punishment to the end! It was hard going in parts but well worth it .

Actually, take that back, Crime and Punishment wasn't hard going as such, just intense - which can be a good thing.

how on earth did you manage that!! i was flinging myself about in my chair with the tediousness of it.