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Books to avoid

217 replies

Redglitter · 23/07/2015 22:37

Plenty of threads for recommendations but what books would you advise people to avoid

For me it's 'Her' by Harriet Gray

A total non story with a dreadful ending. I actually thought my kindle had forgotten to download the last chapter. Don't know if the author was running late for her deadline or what but ugh avoid

OP posts:
orangeyellowgreen · 05/08/2015 20:22

Elizabeth is Missing. A jolly romp about dementia. So bloody depressing and the ending is rubbish.

LornaGoon · 06/08/2015 09:17

Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing. It's a clumsy mash between fact and fiction; none of the beauty of her previous works. Very disappointing. I blame the publishers though for trying to make a fast buck as they knew it would be her last novel.

God grief yes to Catch-22. The joke is done with, hammered dry and dead within 100 pages, and that's being generous. There's something very male and some clever-dicking about with it.

One hundred Years of Solitude - 'He said this and she said that and they did this and then this happened...' for pages and pages, broken up with very little dialogue and total lack of depth with characters. It's just punishing.

I think all three of these novels are a case of Emperor's New Clothes.

mistyegg · 06/08/2015 09:27

The Da Vinci Code and anything else by Dan Brown

hollyisalovelyname · 06/08/2015 09:40

Moby Dick

MamaMary · 06/08/2015 14:00

I enjoyed Alfred and Emily.

I haven't read all of Lessing's works, though.

hesterton · 11/08/2015 07:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

hackmum · 11/08/2015 08:46

Fay Weldon generally is awful, I think.

DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen · 11/08/2015 10:23

The Fifth Child?!Shock

LaurieJuspeczyk · 13/08/2015 04:52

I have a mental Literary Shitlist just for conversations like this Grin There are spoilers in some so I've bolded the titles in case people want to avoid them.

The absolute worst book I've ever read is The Fountainhead - I would be quite happy to see that book slowly and methodically tortured to death before being cast into some kind of space-time slip that erased the possibility of anything remotely similar ever being conceived of throughout the entire span of humanity's existence. I once made the mistake of accepting a friend's offer to lend it to me, only to discover that she refused point blank to take it back before I'd finished reading it. I had that book for seven years before I gave it to one of those free book places, just so I could rest in the knowledge that it wasn't taking up precious oxygen space in my house anymore. On reflection I wish I'd recycled it, at least that way it might have been useful to someone, somewhere.

Before I discovered that one my least favourite book was The Road by Cormac McCarthy - the only other book I've ever literally thrown across a room through sheer infuriation. It was highly recommended by someone whose taste I normally love, so I really wanted to like it, but the plot - at least of the first 70 pages, which was as far as I got - can be summarised as 'father and son use 500 synonyms for grey with made-up words and pretentious lack of punctuation to symbolise post-apocalyptic dystopia; occasional cannibals'. However, after reading The Fountainhead I feel slightly less inclined to hate it just by virtue of the fact that it's only enormously irritating and not a giant steaming turd-maggot of narcissistic literary masturbation, so there's that.

Unlike the two above I actually finished The Dice Man - I couldn't imagine a book where the 'hero' rapes his downstairs neighbour within the first 30ish pages (it's ok though, she secretly wanted it all along!) being quite so popular, so I kept going in order to reach the point where he was revealed as a shitdick and got his comeuppance. Turns out he was actually just a straightforward hero all along and this was being presented as a valid life strategy. Ok then. This one isn't quite as bad as the above, but it sticks in my mind because it has the worst concept:execution ratio of anything I've ever read - even among the people who like it there seems to be a lot of 'well ok so it's a bit shit, but you have to admit that the premise is interesting'.

Most (not all) of Ian McEwan's books are mildly infuriating, mainly thanks to the fact that they're actually quite good until he ruins them with shitty contrived endings that he seems to think are clever. Amsterdam is a decent book until the two protagonists simultaneously get it into their heads to murder one another by manipulating Dutch euthanasia laws, all because of a paragraphs-long misunderstanding of where exactly the emphasis goes in a sentence on a postcard. Saturday is similarly good until the psychopathic would-be murderer is spontaneously reformed by some middle-class twonk reciting poetry and the beauty of scientific progress. Sometimes I wonder whether McEwan's ever met anyone who's not an old white male literary genius, because NOTHING HIS CHARACTERS DO MAKES ANY FUCKING SENSE.

The only other book I disliked enough to remember now was West of the Wall by Marcia Preston - I feel a bit bad about that one as it felt far more well-intentioned than any of the others, but it was full of characters called Rolf and Wolfgang who spent every other paragraph being poor, wearing lederhosen and mournfully eating sauerkraut, and I just couldn't get into it.

(That was a LOT longer than I intended, but I feel much better now AngryBlushGrin)

Matilda2013 · 13/08/2015 12:22

I actually didn't mind gone girl as much as I had issues with The Girl on the Train as I was really looking forward to it after it was so hyped up and then I waited for a reasonable price drop on Amazon (glad I didn't pay full price now) and I like the rest of the books by Gillian Flynn.

I liked The Lovely Bones as well but couldn't stomach the film (I think the guy was a little too realistically creepy)

Couldn't read The Hobbit despite loving the LOTR films (this was before the hobbit films) so didn't even try Lord of the rings.

And I'm not a big fan of lots of classics I have tried; Jane Austen in particular. Although I'm not sure if this is due to these types of books being forced upon us at school or just because they are accepted as classics it puts me off.

Oh and I love Jodi Picoult! Only one book I haven't liked of hers. This may just mean I like "easy" books though.

I hated A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks but forced myself to finish it.

pootypootwell · 13/08/2015 13:15

Middlemarch; the only book to have defeated me throughout an English degree and a lifetime of being a bookworm

hesterton · 13/08/2015 15:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

ladydepp · 13/08/2015 15:09

LaurieJuspeczyk - love your reviews Grin. I haven't read all those but completely agree about Saturday. Please please can you read Before I Go To Sleep, I would LOVE to see your review

DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen · 13/08/2015 17:37

Hesterton - yes, loved itGrin

DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen · 13/08/2015 17:39

Matilda - the Girl on the Train was ok but Gone Girl was shocking, the only thing that was good about it was the ending as I like books that aren't all wrapped up nicely for the reader. I really enjoyed her other books though, no idea why GG had such rave reviewsConfused and the film??? Beyond awfulHmm

ifigoup · 14/08/2015 09:24

I absolutely love The Time Traveler's Wife, so nothing could have been more disappointing than Audrey Niffenegger's dismal later book, Her Fearful Symmetry. Just not good. I can't remember any specific examples, but I remember it struck me as being London as written by someone who'd never been there.

I would also avoid anything by Salman Rushdie. It was either Midnight's Children or Haroun and the Sea of Stories where I got seven-eights of the way through and then thought, "I am so close to the end, but I'm stopping anyway because I really, really don't need to give any more of my life to this". It was very freeing!

Matilda2013 · 15/08/2015 15:59

See I think I just expected so much more from the girl on the train and that's why I was disappointed. I do prefer Gillian flynns other books to gone girl but I dunno I felt they deserved each other cause I disliked them both by the end

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