Authors who are very popular but you just don't get....

[Corneliawildthing]

I read the first Harry Potter book when my kids were little and was rather underwhelmed by it (maybe I wasn't the target audience). I started The Cuckoo's Calling and seemed to have been reading for about 2 hours and had only reached page 25.

My in-laws raved about the Stieg Larsson books but I think I lasted about 20 pages.

Don't like Hilary mantel, Kazuo Ishiguro although I can understand why some do.

Found Dostoevsky hard work but glad I read him.

Kate Atkinson I really don't like and can't see what others like in her: the plots are rubbish, the writing is dull, characters wooden. Her work is neither entertaining nor thought provoking I find.

I really like Ian Mcewan and gabriel garcia Marquez though!

Only read one Ali Smith book and wouldn’t read any more.
Read KateAtkinson’s Life after Life and became so bored I could hardly drag myself to the end. However, bought Transcription to give her another chance. It was a vaguely okay story but still bored me. Decided no more. Life is too short.

Hilary Mantel. I should love her books but I just can't get on with them. I've tried reading Wolf Hall twice and tried it on audio book too but it's just awful. It was so unbelievably boring and I could never work out who was supposed to be speaking.
It all feels very emperor's new clothes.....

Virginia Woolf. Three chapters into any of her books and I’m ready to load my pockets with stones and jump in a river.

Kate Atkinson except for Behind The Scenes At The Museum.

Sally Rooney.

William Boyd.

Am I really the only one who hates Chuck Palahniuk? I've read at least 5 of his books over the years and been annoyed by each. Yet because of recommendations and praise I keep giving him another chance. Every time, I just find his writing pretentious and overblown, putting on an air of being deeper than it is, trying to hard to be edgy or cheeky or weird.

Walliams!! So NOT the new Roald Dahl

Andre Aciman - Call Me By Your Name was ok, Find Me was unbearably pretentious and I think a reviewer summed it up well by saying A.A doesn't seem to have ever met a woman judging by his female characters!

Really couldn't get into Joseph Conrad either or anything magical realism. Paullina Simons I enjoyed as a teenager but reading The Bronze Horseman trilogy as an adult I'm struck by how problematic and misogynistic it is wrapped up under the guise of 'romance'.

I love Pratchett but now find his earlier stuff really hard going as it's fairly obvious he hadn't quite worked out where he was going.

Dean Koontz. Love some of his stuff but he's written some absolute crap and I just don't like his newer books.

Think the change in style or your own personal taste doesn't half do it for a lot of horror writers.

Bret Easton Ellis. Love American Psycho but his other stuff is deeply irritating.

I can't get into Tolkien. I used to read a lot of sci-fi in my younger days, and I have read a fair few fantasy and classic authors but I just can't do LOTR. Page after page of what colour jerkin each dwarf is wearing and what style their beard is...zzzz

Hilary Mantel, I read the first one, extremely hard work!
I love Terry Pritchett, try ‘Going Postal’.so clever!

Celia Ahern - boring
Marion Keyes- boring
Terry Pratchet - Come back to Earth mate
Jk Rowling - love her life story, hate her babyish novels / stories
Kate Atkinson - torture and navel gazing ( thank you for your torture English lit teacher Mrs White)
Jo-Jo moyes- it is not your calling, honestly
Louis de Bernieres - using racist derogatory language , no thanks mate
Stephen king- just bloody cheer up sunshine