The worst books you read in 2017

[BestIsWest]

Inspired by @SouthEastDweller’s best books of 2017 thread, what’s your worst read of 2017?

Mine is unquestionably The End OfThe World Running Club. Just dire. Misogynistic macho drivel. And there wasn’t even much running.

The Power interesting concept but so badly executed.

It read like an enthusiastic GCSE student had written it.... 'look miss, look miss, I'm doing an analogy!'

Couldn't give a shit about the characters male or female. What little plot there was bumbled along and it was just dull.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This week I read the first chapter in the next book in the series: Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash written by a predictive text bot. That brought be more pleasure and made more sense than that travesty of a script. Very very disappointed in you JK.

Mend The Living by Maylis de Kenangal. Managed to turn something dramatic and moving (what happens to the people involved in the 24 hour period of a heart transplant) into an overwritten, overwrought, pile of bobbins. Extremely poor use of the comma. Winner of the highest number of times I threw a book on the floor in disgust award 2017.

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild. Book about a painting. Many, many pages of mediocrity leading up to the final frightfully tense auction scene at which point the author went “nah, don’t think I can be fucked with this any more. The End.”
Complete waste of a week’s worth of reading.

The Sport of Kings by C E Morgan. It’s about horse racing and CONTEMPORARY ISSUES. A veritable smorgasbord of contemporary issues written in such an overbearing, preachy and incontinent style of prose I would have thrown it to the floor many more times than Mend the Living had it not been on my Kindle. Deeply regret not DNFing it after 30 pages.

The Vegetarian by Han King. Unpleasant and not in a good way. Thankfully rather short.

The Essex Serpent for me too. The main character was utterly unbelievable and annoying to boot.

Oh glad I’m not the only one with NOTW I mean I did finish it, because some elements of the story were intriguing and I kept thinking it would go somewhere. I’m glad to hear confirmation it doesn’t get better with the second one, as in vulnerable moments I’ve been tempted to just see if the story picks up I felt like the author had never met any real women so didn’t attempt writing about any in case he got it wrong.

I haven’t included the ones I didn’t finish - but I gave up on The Dust That Falls From Dreams as I felt it should have been called “Here is Some Research I’ve Done on WWI (oh and some characters that do and say unrealistic things)” Disappointing as I quite like Louis de B.

Swing Time I got utterly fed up with, mainly because of her awful sentences that just, sort of, meander on, and on, I suppose, with lots of weirdly placed, commas, and which, never seemed to end, but I still think about, I suppose, finishing it, maybe, someday.

The first Red Rising I ditched when the narrator described a character as gliding in like a lonely tower or a golden spider - oh like one of those gliding towers? The ones a bit like golden spiders? What?

But I didn’t mind Elinor Oliphant and liked the Essex Serpent very much

Agree about the girls! I'd forgotten about it because I had been so bored by the time I finished

Interesting, I gave up on The Essex Serpent and thought it was me being crap as it seems much loved on here.

(TBF with the Essex Serpent at that point in the year it did feel a bit like if I wanted to hear about unhappy marriages, domestic violence, children with ASD finding life difficult, terminal illness etc etc I could just spend the night down the pub with me & my friends.)

Agree re: the girls. Horribly dreary and depressing.

The Power and My Name is Leon were both underwhelming.
I read The Passion of New Ever this year. It my first Angela Carter book and I absolutely hated it. I also hated The Little Red Chairs by Enda O'Brien.
But if I had to pick the very worst book it has to be The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel. It was nasty, predictable and poorly written. Runner up would be the very unnecessary Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler.

Why did you not like the Stalin book, Remus? I read it too and I was impressed because I don't know much about Russian history but it was very accessible. I felt like I had a good grasp of the subject by the end.

Into the Water. Paula Hawkins. Didn't even bother finishing it.

Agree re Cursed Child. Abominable.

Stalin book annoyed me because he kept changing people's names, so I kept forgetting who I was reading about.

I read it TES before I’d read anything about it, and loved it without any expectations. It is a thoughtful, lyrical book, but probably not to everyone’s taste as not a great deal “happens”.

Another one underwhelmed by The Power. Didn't think it did anything that hadn't been done better before.

Yes I agree with The Power - fantastic idea badly executed.

Absolutely agree about vinegar girl!!! Awful

But I loved the power and Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine

It was definitely easier to keep track of the names of Stalin's closest associates after about 1940 when he stopped murdering them on a daily basis. If it was fiction it wouldn't be believable. I saw The Death of Stalin film about a month after I finished the book and it helped fix all the main characters permanently in my mind.

I just really disliked his writing style, unfortunately.

Anyone here who disliked Name Of the Wind is wrong. It is a brilliant book .

I on the other hand read all 14 books in the Wheel of Time series, some of which were great and some of which were dulllllllllll.

"It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis for bookclub.
Oh dear lord it was dire. Only one of us in the bookclub finished it and that was the person who suggested it.

It was shit

Yes, it is a brilliant book, but, much like the spectacularly moving best song in the world young Kvothe (no I didn’t sneeze, his name is really Kvothe) wrote, there is no existing evidence of it

So glad other people are saying The Power too. Such a good idea, with terrible execution. It's the only book this year I've abandoned part way.

The Girl Before by JP Delaney.

Just awful.