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?

[Warmworm]

Interesting to hear all these opinions, I loved The Slap, enjoyed We're All Completely Beside Ourselves and like most books by Shriver (although The Post Birthday World was pretty crap)!

Agree with chucking Me Before You, Sister and Under the Dome though.

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

I want to forget I ever read The Bunker Diaries. My own stupid fault for reading it, I hated Road of the Dead so should have known better.

My Year Of Meat by Ruth Ozeki.
Awful stereotypes. Author is flying the flag for vegetarianism so meat eaters are domestic abusers or paedophiles.

[SophieLeGiraffe]

How has no one mentioned Go Set a Watchman??! It reads like the worst kind of fan-fic where the characters are recognisable but not right. And now I don't know how to feel about Mockingbird - do you apply the awfulness of the Watchman characters or not? Did she write it or not? The whole thing made me very angry I very newrly threw the book at the window of the train.

[hopefulpuffin]

I would have thrown The Nightingale across the room and vigorously stamped on it. But it was on my kindle....

I never, ever, ever would have finished it if it hadn't been for book club. Damn you, book club. That's 5 hours I'm not getting back.

[JustDanceAddict]

I loved A Little Life - sorry, haters
I did hate The Slap - dreadful plot & characters. one of the worst books I've read. Also years ago read Does My Bum Look Big in This? By that Arabella Weir comedian - was tripe personified. Also read an awful John Grisham for book club - it read like it had been written by a child.
Some books I never finished and thought wtf: White Teeth (tedious), Portnoy's Complaint - it went back to the library!
I quite liked 'we're completely beside ourselves' and loved dragon tattoo (all of them).
I read 'the paying guests' recently and thought it was ok. I have heard that some of her books are very good.
The latest Marian Keyes was bad too!!
Never read Eat, Pray, Love or 50 Shades and never want to either!!

[JustDanceAddict]

Ps: big brother by Shriver is very good until you get to the last chapter!! Wtf!!

[TequilaBlockingBird]

JustDance agree about Big Brother.

[WillWorkForShoes]

American Psycho literally went across the room

The Time Travellers Wife and Double Fault by Lionel Shriver were poor.

How has no one mentioned Go Set a Watchman??!

To Kill a Mockingbird is my absolute favourite book. Watchman only works for me if I view it like it was - a first draft of the novel that eventually became Mockingbird and was never meant to see the light of day!

[sarahsarah76]

50 shades was trash all along im not surprised everyone threw it in the bin

[MaryLennoxWasAnAspie]

Anything by Henry James makes me want to throw the book across the room. Overblown fussy prose style with tortured syntax and pretentious vocabulary. I am speaking as someone who normally quite enjoys Victorian novels and didn't find it too hard to finish Les Mis (though I could have done without the history lectures).

At the other extreme style-wise, The Great Gatsby. Now that really should have been a short story because there's so little to it. The best bit is the poetic description of the parties; the rest is just a waste of trees. Daisy, Tom et al have to be the most pointless characters ever.

[WillWorkForShoes]

The Great Gatsby. Now that really should have been a short story because there's so little to it.

First read this when I was 17. My A-level history teacher was annoyed with me because I apparently missed the point of the book. I thought I got the point very well!

[CakeNinja]

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

[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.

[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.

[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!

[Notonthestairs]

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

[LocalEditorMerton]

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

[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.

[allegretto]

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

[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.

[Ankleswingers]

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

How people raved about it still baffles me.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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