Books you want to throw across the room

[tobee]

Over 20 years ago, on holiday I took The Chamber by John Grisham. I'd heard it had (at the time) the biggest amount for film rights ever paid. When I finished I literally threw it across the room in disgust. (Actually poolside area). It was such a load of hogwash! Now I look back and wonder I bothered to get that far.

Any books that have provoked a similar reaction in you?

[Thirtyrock39]

I found apple tree yard, gypsy boy and sister really disturbing ...didn't throw them but wanted to put them in the fridge like joey in friends
Think I'll avoid a little life to didn't realise the subject matter
cannot understand people not loving one day and the book thief

[dirtyprettything]

Love American Psycho (also the Rules of Attraction)
Love Atonement
Love love love Wuthering Heights - how could you?!!!

Agree A Little Life was total bollocks

[MightyJoeAverage]

The Heart goes Last by Margaret Atwood.

Drivel.

[LadySpratt]

Non-Fiction:

1. The only book I've thrown is Gina Ford. Absolutely nothing for NICU babies. No point of reference. Couldn't do anything in the book so she made me feel like a double failure. Grrrrr.
   
2. I second Raising Boys - what utter twaddle and why the large text? Do parents of boys have universally poor eyesight?
   
3. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - ooh she makes me angry. Really angry. How dare she push and push and push and push. A roll out piano keyboard on holiday. Get a grip.
   
   Fiction: nearly everything on Kindle.
   But massively enjoyed Perfume by Patrick Suskind.

[Roystonv]

Heleconia (think this is right) Spring, Summer etc. So dreary. Read them ages ago when I was resting after early pregnancy bleeding some 30 years ago. Have never dared revisit them to find out was it the circumstances or are they just awful.

[FoxesOnSocks]

^
Example of a late night long winded over described insomnia driven rant

[FoxesOnSocks]

Oh can't believe I forgot to mention Russian classic. They seem to all drive me insane!! Anna Karaninananana, War and Peace or Doctor Zhivago, all full of tedious waffling about philosophising and intellectualising tedious things; a man ploighing his fields by himself means something else about his personality or needs, rather than means the freaking fields needed to be ploughed - just freaking get on with in no need for three thousand pages of the pretentious bollocky shite about what it means on a higher plain.

I can recall what they were discussing in Doctor Zhivago, but I recall two characters (Zhivago or Lara/Larissa?) have a discussing something, it was possibly the meaning of life as inspired by a cooled down iron. I just thought for fecks sake what ps the deal with finding meaning in nothing - and had an overwhelming desire to lob the book across the room.

the endless, self-satisfied commentary to just stop and let the plot happen.

Yes!! This in books has me twisted (I like things to be straight to the point) a bit of description is ok but once you've made your point shut up and move on!!! Never Let Me Go seemed to be entirely self satisfied (moany defeatist) prose: waded through it but never found much of the plot

[FoxesOnSocks]

I'm in agreement about The Great Gatsby, Go Set A Watchman, and Attonment.

Haven't read from Wuthering Heights, but must confess I'm not a lover of many of 'the classics'; I've read such books as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and just found them annoying, there's not a lot going on and what does go on is a little bit irksome. Mostly it's down to the period, there's wasn't a whole lot for those of the class written about to do, expect sit on the drawing room sewing and talking about others, and I find the whole sit around discussing other people's behaviour irksome!! That and the fact I dislike the expectation that you can interpret meaning from some slight mention in a sentance, so such thing as 'she was sitting in the carriage without her bonnet in his presence' means these are the actions of a loose woman that she has been disgraced and so shall never marry (which means she might as well give up) and will die destitute well apparently destitute, it's more people keep saying she's destitute whilst she still manages to live to have a quite large house and a few servants

I also don't appreciate Animal Farm it seems. There are some classics I love though!!

[IPityThePontipines]

Yy to the ending of 'Light a Penny Candle'! Read it as a young teenager staying at my grandmother's and unable to find much to read. Got thoroughly involved with the story and characters, and then it fell completely flat at the end.

Exactly Wriggler!

I agree with White Teeth being pants. It just felt so, so, overwritten. I longed for the endless, self-satisfied commentary to just stop and let the plot happen.

[echt]

I got "American Psycho" once I saw it was meant to be funny at the expense of the protagonist, that he was imagining all that shit.

Sooo glad to see someone's nailed the utter shite of "The Book Thief". Try teaching it. Dreck. Only surpassed by the saccharine film that pulls every one of the novel's puny punches. I can't tell you how glad I am not to be teaching it next year.

[TheEternalForever]

Catching Fire and Mockingjay (the sequels to The Hunger Games) weren't good imo. THG isn't quite great literature admittedly but I think it would've been far better staying as a single novel. I also didn't enjoy Gone Girl (although I think enough of the writing to try one of Gillian Flynn's other books if I can find them in the library). Also I'm probably going to die for this, but I didn't enjoy Pride and Prejudice. I appreciate that Austen is a good writer and that I might've viewed her work differently had I lived earlier, but nothing happens! It's strange because I generally like romance, but my kind of romance also has action or fantasy or something that makes it interesting. P&P is just boring for me.

It hurts my heart that someone said they didn't like The Book Thief Les Mis is brilliant, but it does have a looooooooooooooot of bits that don't strictly need to be there. I love it though! I also enjoy Wuthering Heights and Atonement (although I hate pretty much all the characters and want to slap them frequently).

[BertieTodd]

A GAme for All the Family by Sophie Hannah, so bad that I abandoned it, very unusual for me not to finish a book. Maybe it ends really well but I doubt it

[Colyngbourne]

American Psycho - put it in the bin but felt conflicted about it. The film is very good.

I've never binned any others but the very worst - thrown to the floor - are The Alchemist; and The Goldfinch (eminently readable but utter rot), and The Book Thief, both of which are loved by tons of people.

One of my most despised books of all time is "Year of Wonders" by Geraldine Brooks.

[Yawnyawnallday]

Zadie Smith - White Teeth. Historical inaccuracies right at the beginning which put me off the rest of the book. I persevered but couldn't take the rest of it seriously.

[Wriggler79]

Yy to the ending of 'Light a Penny Candle'! Read it as a young teenager staying at my grandmother's and unable to find much to read. Got thoroughly involved with the story and characters, and then it fell completely flat at the end.
Agree with the person who said you have to read Lionel Shriver's stories without thinking about them too much, to enjoy them. Quite liked most of them but HATED Big Brother - it's the ending. Why, ffs.
Loved Time Traveller's Wife - despite the annoying bits, it really drew me in.

[Ankleswingers]

Haven't read through the full thread but fifty shades was utter shite. Diabolical.

How people raved about it still baffles me.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

and a book called 'Only Ever Yours' from last year which was touted as The handmaid's Tale for teenagers. Drivel.

Oh goodness yes.

I loved If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and a later novel Even the Dogs which uses a similar narrative structure.

Agree with whoever mentioned the book with the donuts on the cover- what a waste of time.

[allegretto]

I hated Wuthering heights when I read it years ago but I recently retread it as a story about disfunctional parenting - much better!

[WillWorkForShoes]

Heathcliffe and Catherine can go boil their own heads for all I care

Yes!! People talk about this great romantic tale - they're both psychotic!
I like the book, but those two characters don't deserve my sympathy.

[LocalEditorMerton]

*American Psycho' - read it but had to bin it afterwards....Only book ever bought that's met such an ignominious fate.

[Notonthestairs]

Wuthering Heights. Loathe it. I am quite well read - but Heathcliffe and Catherine can go boil their own heads for all I care.

[Impala1980]

Never thrown one at the wall but I did cut out the epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows coz it infuriated me so much!

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

And I agree absolutely about Henry James - and I'm another who likes a lot of VicFic. Long, tortured, convoluted sentences that ramble on for half a page - how he has supposedly entered the canon I will never understand.
He had the cheek to criticise George Eliot's Middlemarch - to me nothing he wrote can hold a candle to it.

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

Forget the title since ages ago, but I'm pretty sure it was an Anita Shreve. Entire story turned out right at the end to be a fiction, passing through the head of the main character just before she dies in a traffic accident - the life she would have had if she hadn't died.
I was so bloody livid at the cheat ending - but v glad it was from the library and I hadn't paid good money for it.

[CakeNinja]

Another one piping up to say Atonement. Horseshit in book form.