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?

Disclaimer by Renee Knight - skull-crushingly boring, sordid, insulting nonsense, just utter trash. I threw it across the room, picked it up to put into the recycling (as wouldn't consider sending it to a charity shop it was that bad), then thought that someone might pick it up in the recycling centre and it'd be my fault if they read it, so I threw it in the rubbish bin and threw food and old teabags on top of it to make sure it was dead

The dust that falls from dreams by Louis de berniere - hated it, it was for book club. Needless to say I just drank the wind that evening as I couldn't enter the full discourse as I declined to finish it. Saying that the whole group were unimpressed.

50 Shades. Utter, utter crap. Couldn't get past the second page, it was so bad. And I quite like cliterature.

Erk, a few of these are on my waiting-to-be-read shelf

I've thrown two books - Fifty Shades (not for the badly written sex, just because it was badly written in general) and the novelization of The Notebook, syrupy pap.

Eric Clapton's autobiography
Got about a third of the way through and realised I simply wasn't interested enough to carry on.
Didn't throw it mind as it was a hard back but certainly felt like it.

Yy to 'We are all completely beside ourselves' and 'The Slap' (beyond dreadful), also all of Kate Mosse, I had decided to treat myself and bought all 3 new - Labyrinth, Citadel and Sepulchre, read half of the first chapter and threw the whole lot of them into the bin. Awful tripe and so badly written.

American Psycho.
Thought The Time Traveller's Wife was arch, over-hyped mush.

Testimony by Anita Shreve. spoiler alert

The premise is that a young teenage girl (I think 14) at an exclusive private school drinks alcohol at a party and then has group sex with several students much older than her. It turns out one of the boys involved filmed it all and the book deals with the fallout. The tone of the book is dreadful. The boys are portrayed as innocent 'victims' and the girl, despite being underage and intoxicated is some kind of temptress, responsible for their downfall. When one of the boys eventually commits suicide, it's clear who the author blames.

I couldn't throw it across the room but I deleted it from my kindle with a very firm press of the finger!

Oh gosh, The Slap was dire wasn't it? Not one sympathetic character in it.

Eat, Pray, Love was appalling. Caused a rift in our bookgroup

The most recent Fiona Gibson one. They are easy reads but this one was utter shite.

Dune. Had to read for a freshman seminar. Chucked it across the room and it got very dented - luckily it had no resale value in the first place!

Testimony was a fucking disgrace. Victim blaming shite.

But I do like some other Anita Shreve, particularly The Pilots Wife.

Me Before You. I hear it's now a film. Maybe it suffered from too much hype but I found it a little write-by-numbers

Christopher Unborn. It was the second book I didn't finish - didn't even try to. Usually, back then anyway (20/30 years ago) I thought that it behooved me to finish a book, showed respect for the author's pov and thoughts and labour, but with that one I just couldn't.

Some by someone call Ellory. That book flew across the room and out the window!

And The Island by Hislop. I still hate her for spoiling a potentially beautiful story with such awful, crude writing.

..and Game of Thrones book 1. I got to the description of the 12 year old princess having sex with her new husband and stopped reading.

Don't recall 12 year old princess sex!! I may have missed it as I repeatedly knocked my head off the wall trying to wade through the immense amount of description of every fecking tiny little fecking detail on every action, on every movement, about all clothes worn and every morsel eaten that was in Game of Thrones.

GoT was more of a shaking the book while hissing 'Get. On. With. It" through gritted teeth book than lobb across the room book. Book 2 was decidedly more frustration than book 1. Didn't punish myself read with the rest

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It was so descriptive it went on and on and on there was far too much detail. The second in the series wasn't much better I couldn't read the third

Just lending my voice to the chorus of those who couldn't get on with The Slap. Not a pleasant experience-was the TV version any better?

Fifty Shades trilogy. I read them as it was "the thing" at the time. Utter, utter bilge. Mind you, the reviews of the books on Amazon were very entertaining!

Another vote for One Day here. It was just so bad and the characters so uniformly awful that it made me very cross.

What is the Susan George novel DixieWishbone? It sounds so awful that I had to look it up, but could not find it. is it the same Susan George who's an actress? Or do you mean Elizabeth George (the Inspector Lynley writer)?

I was interested by the story in The Slap, but I hated all the characters. It was irritating but I finished it.

Slightly OT but I thought we weren't supposed to iike any of characters in The Slap, to make it even more 'huma.' Did go a bit OTT with the nitty gritty sex details though

Oh no Morris. I was going to nominate The Pilot's Wife for throwing across the room. Hated it. Only an American pre 9/11 could portray those events like that imho.

Also couldn't get in with Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I heard it praised on R4's A Good Read (which I love) and wanted to love it but hated it and there may have been some book throwing.

So relieved to hear the hatred for A Little Life. It made me feel like a perverted voyeur. 'Misery porn' is the most apt description ever. And as for every single character having an amazingly successful, super-incredible career - as if.

Fecking horrible book.