i am beginning to seriously resent books that i read and then they are shit

[grumpypants]

i accept i am an unpublished writer etc, and therefore a bit of anyone published, but just lost two nights of my life to The Way We Were and it is pure, drivelly, cliched drivelly drivel. How the hell does this stuff make it to the shelves?

I am pretty much ok about giving up on crap books. Recently I dropped a reliable wife and cleft, despite them coming highly recommended. My teeth were grinding so that's a good sign to give up. Jonathan franzen is my current fave modern author. But its all very subjective isn't it?

I'm trying to get my "to read" shelf back into manageable proportions at the moment, but don't have huge amounts of time to read just for leisure. I hate having to slog through a book, especially if I'd beed looking forward to spending some "me time" with it.

Agree about Labyrinth, never finished johnathan strang & mr norrell either - it was too long for the amount of interest I kept in the characters - got half way twice!

I loved The Slap! Sorry

I nominate When God Was a Rabbit (the best thing BY FAR (shouting here in frustration!) was indeed the title. I came to the end and thought - so what? I didn't care about any of the characters except Jenny Penny. And the book felt it had absolutely no point.

The thing about novels hyped to be best sellers at the moment is the pointless addition to, it seems, every novel of Reading Group questions to hype it up. I feel like I'm being targeted as "you'll feel intelligent and be seen as so if you're reading this".

I'm reading a lot of teen/YA books at the moment as I am finding the quality of the characters and story far superior - if you get off the Twilight bandwagon. But even here, like with so many in the best sellers/reading group genres there are so many fomulaic books.

Old house/garden with secret going back to past is becoming yawnsome!

Oh and The Memory Keeper's Daughter - I felt the same. I threw it across the room as I hated everyone in it!

(hides nervously behind cushion) The Hare With the Amber Eyes...I know I should have stuck with it as it becomes very exciting(!) but honestly, those first pretentious first chapters!

Zoomed through the Larsson books but felt pretty dirty by the end of them. Too much gratuitous violence masquerading about highlighting violence against women. One Day was beyond irritating as he was such a tosser.

Really enjoyed At Home with Bill Bryson read while reading a holiday trashy novel called The Last Duchess. They both covered many of the same things: namely rich Amercans in the 19th century/ the UK class system and were a very guilty pleasure.

Trying to get through Fingersmith at the moment, I'm not enjoying it but don't like leaving books. Especially hard because I've got the new Mark Billingham to read and am desperate to get started. Worst book I tried to read was The Interpretation of Murder - dreadful.

Give it up. Pig - it's dreadful. I was also v v disappointed in An Interpretation Of Murder.

I completely agree with this thread.

I don't mind books which are written to be fun, and aren't highbrow or meaningful - just a good story. (I think Marian Keyes is a good example.) That is a skill.

I really mind books which 'have a story to tell' - and they invariably involve abusive or cruel behaviour towards a child, too, if they're not along the lines of 'let me shove down your throat the parallels between a historically inaccurate person I made up and this modern-day woman looking for meaning in life'. SO WEARING.

Richard and Judy did everyone a favour, though, with that book club, because in the main, that's the kind of book they featured. Easily avoided thanks to those stickers. [snob]

I feel the same, annoyed that i have wasted my time on them.
Larson books, the slap, Picoult...all utter utter shite and drivel.

I feel offended that people put glowing reviews actually ON the books themsleves...clearly they have not read them OR are being paid to say those things.
I am very fussy, admittedly, and really good books are a rare jewel and i have found maybe 4 really good books in my entire 41 years of life.
Some times i am desperate though for a good read, and so will pick them up only to be discusted at the crapness of them.

"disgusted" i meant...doh!

The slap..crap, absolute crap, got bored about 1/3 of the way through. i have gone back to it a few times, but again i flip loads of pages as it just does not hold my attention.

I LOVED all of Bill Bryson and will be getting his latest, looking forward to that.
Read that " thousand rising suns" i think its called, enjoyed that but read it in 2 days...so ready for another good read.

Bigun - what are your four? Wanders off to think what they might be... :)

dribble drivel, woman, drivel!

I hated Labyrinth - awful stupid book with completely moronic plot "twists". Can't imagine how I finished it.

I did, however, like The Forgotten Garden - sorry.

Would like to throw in that appalling one about Ukraine Tractors - shite.

And (sorry again) The Famished Road, by Ben Okri. Tried it once, years and years ago - liked the first couple of chapters, then got stuck. Had borrowed it, it had to go back so I never finished it. This grated so much, I had to buy it when I saw it in a charity shop - made the effort (grinding) to finish it and was UTTERLY pissed off that it never lifted itself up to the (to my mind) level of the first two chapters.

Georgette Heyer's Penhallow - godawful book with not a single sympathetic character in it. I didn't care who murdered whom; I didn't care if they all died. But I discovered that it was contract-breaking book - she wrote a bad one deliberately to get out of the contract with her publishers (and did a DAMN fine job of it being bad!)

Angelas ashes by Frank Mc Court..i read this over and over and over again.

small Island by Bill Bryson, makes me laugh out loud every time i read it.

The shining....Obv

Any factual books, i have a strange love for the BNF which is a drug book Any medical book.

Mocking bird is my number 4, love that book.

The Stand would be one of my top two! And I love Bill Bryson but I think he'd be in my top twenty, rather than top 4.

If I'm working on the assumption that these are going to be the five books I can have on a desert island, I'd probably go for -

The Stand
The complete works of Austen (is that cheating?)
The Lord Of The Rings (not the best book I've ever read, true - but I like to go back to it and there's enough in there to keep me going!)
Erm....probably a huge history book, although that might be cheating too.

Two more - Of Mice And Men and Lord Of The Flies - both pretty much perfect novels, although for different reasons.

The stand....whats that about, think i may have attempted that one once...

Oh I don't ever want to read LOrd of The Flies again. I still have too much recollection of it from when I read it 30 years ago to ever want to go there again. Good book, well written - but it's in the same never-to-be-opened-again box as Animal Farm for me.

Thumbwith - I feel the same about The Grapes Of Wrath: it was magnificent but so, so awful in its relentless misery that I just can't face the idea of ever putting myself through it again.

BigUn - The Stand is the one where most of the population are wiped out by Super Flu: it's bloomin' brilliant.

Sorry, I lost the 'c' from your name there.

The Stand is. so. good.

What does happen in the Slap? He slaps the kid, there's a big hullabaloo, then what?

I don't slap children and don't smack my son, but from the synopsis of the book I was kind of glad that guy did it. The kid sounded terrible.

I haven't read The Slap but I read something a while back which began with a mother getting angry with her son and killing his pet snake. It was rubbish but I can't for the life of me remember what it was!

The Slap was written by a man obsessed with big dicks. All the characters seemed to go on about them - I hated it so much I think I took to counting how often this was mentioned.

Also thought th Interpretation of Murder was utter bollocks. Don't think the writer was a fan of Carl Jung!