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

So reassuring to see so many of my sentiments expressed on here!

Yes, why does Kate Mosse get such good press? Labyrinthe - crap
Also:
Perfume - crap. Read it years ago and the thought still makes me shudder
Birdsong - crap. Why does everyone talk about it as if it's the definitive book of WW2 (or is it WW1?)
Time Traveller's Wife - irritating crap
The Night Watch - utter crap
Alchemist - crap. For all the reasons stated above
Kite Runner/Thousand Splendid Suns - ditto Alchemist

Personally, I expect things like the Da Vinci Code to be crap (snobby, moi?) so when I find out it is I'm not that upset. It's the books that are raved about in The Guardian and the like (such as Kate Mosse) whose crapness actually offends me

Anything by India Knight. What a load of contrived, cliched shite.

agree about ernest hemingway. i WANTED to enjoy for whom the bell tolls.
I think it's the only book i've never finished reading

oh yes and Thomas Hardy.
Have read about 6 books thinking I might find the one that people rave about...... no.

Love Thomas Hardy. Bamboo, he didn't write Adam Bede!!

Agree about Patricia Cornwell, I force myself to read the books for some reason. Also whenever I read interviews with her she seems slightly nuts and paranoid!

The Forgetten Garden (or whatever it was called ) by Kate Morton

another book by Kate Morton (God knows why I read 2 - you'd think i'd have learned)

The 13th Tale by Diana Setterfield.

Labyrinthe - I suspect Kate Mosse must be mates with all therse literary critics and newspaper editors...

I read a Kate Mosse years ago, before she became Someone Important...I bought it from one of those remainder shops where you get 3 paperbacks for £2. 'Nuff said.

who wrote adam bede then? anyhoo it was depressing dross which is why i thought hardy wrote it.

George Eliot, bb

Many of these, plus

Middlemarch

The last two Jilly Cooper's. Jump and the school one.

Goodnight Mr Tom (dragged through it at school where it was commonly known as The Wet Bed Book).

Angela's Ashes

i read a couple of thomas hardy for 6th year english and was sent out the class for saying aye well.. it dragged on a bit .. I mean the story is there but he could have told it in about 20 pages the rest was just boring description.... apparently you dont say stuff like that about classics

I didnt like capt correlli or jump either .. dh says I'm a phlistine for not liking capt correlli.. I have been proved right on here!

The one book I couldnt finish was lord of the rings.. wtf is that about????

I have become a lee child's fan. Jack Reacher is just a great hero

The Lovely Bones - gave up after a couple of chapters because it was so dull.
Lord of the Rings - managed about a quarter of an inch before flinging it away in disbelief at the utter tedium of it.
Does my bum look big in this? by Arabella Weir. A load of smug, "aren't I jolly funny?" bollocks.
Da Vinci Code - realised a couple of pages in that I was going to hate it, so got rid pdq.
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - see Da Vinci code!
Predator - loved the earlier Scarpetta books but this was bloody hard work, so I gave up halfway through. I don't think I'll bother with any more after reading above that Marino rapes Kay; that's completely out of order and I don't want to read it.

I wouldn't even start trying to read Her Fearful Symmetry because the title winds me up with its pretentiousness and the synopsis sounds dire.
I have to stick up for Catch-22 though, it's one of my absolute favourites and I could read it over and over (and have).

george eliot?! doesn't ring a bell. it might have been a different book i read.

it was about some guy who has a crappy life for most of the book and then his children hanged themslves in the wardrobe.

i stopped reading it after that.

That's Jude the Obscure Bamboo and I didn't finish it either!

Suspicions Of Mr Whicher - I liked the first half and hated the second half.

Hardy - irritates me more and more the older I get: I loved him as a teenager but now I just think all of his characters need a good slap.

Catch 22 - I can't read it - am obviously not clever/warped enough.

Pmsl about The Tenderness Of Wolves - it was drivel.

What was that Elory one as well - A Quiet Belief In Angels??? God that was shite.

Catcher In The Rye - boring teenage angst shite.

Crime And Punishment - good but not fun!

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Lost Symbol was a waste of time, as was The Davinci Code but I loved Angels and Demons.

The first few Jodi Picoult books I read I liked but after the 3rd one they got very samey, The worst one being Songs of the Hump Back Whale which was terrible!

The House at Riverton

The Ukrainian Tractors

We need to Talk About Kevin

George and Arthur (Julian Barnes)

oh no no. I loved George and Arthur.

Arthur And George = bloomin' brilliant imho! Flaubert's Parrot brilliant too but he disappointed me beyond those. England England was ridiculous and the next one I tried was unreadable.

Oh no - have I killed this thread?

Yes, you've killed it.

And Catcher in the Rye is brilliant, by the way

Lovely Bones - found it nauseatingly bad and long. Sorry!

I Capture the Castle

Dull as fuck

I love I Capture the Castle!
also loved Catch-22 when I last read it (many years ago) - but my (fairly old) children love it now too (I think it must be an age thing)
Catcher in the Rye (ditto)(ditto)

Another one for Perfume.