What are the worst books you've read this year?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

Having read the What is the best book you've read this year? thread I was wondering what the worst book you've read so far in 2012 is?

Mine would have to be either 50 Shades or Before I Go to Sleep.

[pictish]

Also - The Slap - load of old shit, that.

[LastMangoInParis]

The Greatcoat wasn't so great as a chilling ghost story, but I liked it as a story about loneliness - which I think often is a good background for stories about 'haunting' - IYSWIM. I also liked it as a historical story about a post-war housewife. I thought the details about the main character's lifestyle were very interesting, as were the relationships between her and her husband, the people in her village/town, etc.
I probably wouldn't have noticed or read it if it hadn't been advertised as a ghost story, and I really enjoyed it. Will look out for more by Helen Dunmore, I like her writing a lot.

Books like The Greatcoat keep me reading stuff that's current and commercial, recommended by Amazon, etc.

[LastMangoInParis]

Am I the only person who found The Woman In Black derivative and predictable?

[NicknameTaken]

I quite like the settings of Susan Hill's books (I like a nice Victorian lawyer's office or gentlemen's club, the rain beating on the window pane). but I agree there is no real depth to her work. It's basically a rip-off of MR James' stuff.

I'm quite interested in the question about how we choose books and whether we all end reading the same heavily-promoted stuff. I mainly choose via book reviews and browsing at the library. Because I read a lot of non-fiction, it's easy to browse the shelves on a particular subject area and find something interesting. For fiction, if I've heard a lot of talk about a particular book I might borrow it, but otherwise I tend to read crime, and if I like a particular author, I'll often read everything by them. I also like mid-twentieth century writing by women, so I look out for books published by Virago Press.

Probably the dullest books I've ploughed through this year have been The Hare with the Amber Eyes and Spell it Out, about why we spell words the way we do. I expected to like both, as they're the kind of thing I usually enjoy, but dullsville.

[DuchessofMalfi]

I did actually rather like The Greatcoat, as a novel examining the loneliness of the young wife in a new town left to her own devices with her husband out at work and no friends. That works, but a ghost story does need to be scary and Alec (the ghost) is too likeable for that!

The Woman in Black, I thought, was chilling. I liked that it left me feeling unsettled. However, I read another of Susan Hill's ghost stories, The Man in the Picture, recently and that was dreadful - so dull.

[DuchessofMalfi]

Oh and I picked up a lovely big volume of M R James's ghost stories from a charity shop recently - will wait to see if they give me a sleepless night!

[elspethmcgillicuddy]

I haven't got much time for Susan Hill either. I read her autobiographical book which was supposedly about how she spent a year only reading books she alread had on her shelves. I thought it was a fab premise but on reality it was just an excuse to name drop all the people she had met. I find her books so disappointing.

(although I loved The Woman In Black on stage)

[Wolfcub]

Monday to Friday Man (thank god it was a kindle offer) wins the prize for worst book so far this year for me. Utter tripe

[SkiBumMum]

Room. Bloody awful.

[MrsMellowDrummer]

Will Self's "Umbrella".
If it wins the Booker, I'm throwing a tantrum.

[QueenofJacksDreams]

I think for me its going to end up being The Casual Vacancy. I'm half way through it and I hate it but I can't stop reading it

[ShellyBobbs]

Queen Sometimes books really are that bad that you have to finish them to see just how awful they can get :)

[VeritableSmorgasbord]

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
I don't get it
The characters are not interesting or well-drawn
The setting is dull
The murder, whilst shocking in itself, is rather commonplace
The writing is pedestrian
I read it and thought: why did this book get written? It contributes nothing.

[LastMangoInParis]

I loved The Suspicions of Mr Whicher!
I thought it was one book that truly lived up to its glowing reviews. Loved the details about Victorian life and the people who lived at Road House, the ways that Kate Summerscale dealt with lacunae in information and found it totally gripping. I thought it was one of the few massively publicised books that more than lived up to the hype and my expectations of it.

Haven't yet read 'Umbrella', but having heard WS talking to Mariella on R4 I've been almost prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt after his 2 decades of ceaseless 6th form twaddle and give it a go.

'Room' - very disappointing, but I read a short story by Emma Donoghue which was quite good and I wonder if 'Room' was really a short story that got stretched for sales purposes. It reads that way.

WRT to Susan Hill, she seems to be regarded as a 'serious' author, which I don't think she is. I read 'I'm The King of the Castle' as a child and found it brilliantly creepy (don't know if I would now, but mean to reread). I've read a couple of her books in the last few years and they seem quite well written in parts (atmospheric, good snapshots of recognisable settings, etc.), but also formulaic and bland.

[elkiedee]

I actually quite liked a lot of the books people have mentioned, both literary and chicklit stuff, so I'm hoping I also enjoy the ones that I've bought and haven't yet read. I didn't like Finkler Question and think One Day is wildly overrated, but I read them before this year.

I read quite a lot - 230 books so far this year, which probably means my total will be slightly lower than 2010 and 2011 (both over 300), and I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer so I get to try some books, both bestsellers and obscure things, for free. Again with books I borrow from the library or ones I buy, I read both well known things and ones which aren't so much. I was quite disappointed by Mary Horlock's The Book of Lies. I don't hate many books and I haven't hated anything this year, just had a few I didn't like very much.

[LastMangoInParis]

Ooh, tell us more, elkie...

[SuperB0F]

Sowornout- do you mean Anita Brookner? I think Anita Loos wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I agree with you though: I can't read anything of hers without getting horribly depressed. As a rule, I avoid anything described as elegaic, as it invariably means 'maudlin and navel-gazing'.

[Selky]

Zero Day - David Baldacci
Ash - James Herbert
Three Feet of SKy - Stephen Ayres

Derivative and clunkily written. Finished them, though. I need to learn to cut my losses.

[CoteDAzur]

elkie - You read 230 books so far this year? That is about 6 books per week, almost 1 book per day, every day!

[KurriKurri]

I've got Cloud Atlas and The Interpretation of Murder on my shelf, - finding them both very hard to get into, I've seen them recommended though - are they all hype and no substance?

Elkie - enormously impressed with your reading, - I'd love to be a fast reader, but one average sized paperback takes me four or five days.

[deleted203]

SuperBof I did mean Anita Brookner - you're right. Complete brainstorm there (it's because I've just been reading a couple of biographies of silent film stars - Mary Pickford/Clara Bow and Anita Loos featured in them). It was bloody 'Hotel du Lac' that I read and hated.

[CoteDAzur]

Kurri - Cloud Atlas is a brilliant book. Persevere

If you need a bit of help deciphering its many clues and themes, here is a thread in which I wrote quite a bit about Cloud Atlas.

[KurriKurri]

Thank you CoteD'Azur - I'll give it another go, and I'll check that thread out

[LastMangoInParis]

Cote - that's a great Cloud Atlas thread!