Popular book that you didn’t enjoy

[Wanttocry]

Not really a TAAT but inspired by the Crawdads thread.

What’s a book that has been raved about, but that you didn’t really enjoy? For me it would have to be The Goldfinch, I just didn’t really get it.

@RampantIvy

The Midnight Library Gone Girl Captain Corelli's Mandolin Normal People

Loved, loved, loved Where the Crawdads Sing

I loved Crawdads too!

The Miniaturist. Started off quite promising but towards the end it was just odd.x

I like quite a few books on this thread - The Midnight Library, Cloud Atlas, The Time Traveller's Wife, Tolkien.

I really don't like Jane Austen. However beautifully written her books are, and however lush and impressively-cast the productions, it's still just boring. People at dances having endless conversations about who's going to marry whom, and alternately glowering, simpering or looking arch. Yaaawwwwn.

Normal People total shite. How did it do so well? No plot and irritating as fuck characters.

I gave up on Milkman. Just too bleak - and I read The Road in one sitting!

Only got as far as the first song in Lotr. I spent my late childhood reading books with v few females (Robert cormier, anyone?) And just get annoyed as an adult.

Liked my brilliant friend. Felt the style fit the protagonist.

Cloud Atlas felt like a rip off of a Nick Harkaway book, I think. But 1000 Autumns of .... was really good.

Miniturist was ok, but I didn't read it expecting great literature- easy reading.

Have a big soft spot for Hemingway. Dh's favourite book is the old man and the sea. He's not a reader. I found it strangely compelling

@StyleAndLasers how funny! Should I post a list of my favourites and we’ll see if you hate them?

The hand maids tale

Hamnet, lots of twiddling about with herbs. Awful.
Midnight library, meh.
My Brilliant Friend, beyond boring.

Catcher in the Rye - what a load of shite.
The Time Travellers wife
The lovely bones

@Vicliz24

Captain Corellis Mandolin. I really tried to plough through it but gave up .

I was going to say that one too. Hated it and gave up.

Apple Tree Yard
Blood Orange
Fifty shades of shite

I have read almost everything David Mitchell has written for some reason, I find them so turgid and pleased with themselves. Cloud Atlas was a million times better as a film IMO.

I didn’t hate The Bone Clocks but like all his books, you could cut out 3/4 and still have a reasonably good story.

Joe Hill - Stephen King’s son - is such a shit writer. I’ve read two and a half of his books and they’re even more meandering than his dads books. And not nearly so skillfully woven. I actually am quite angry that I’ve read 3/4 of NOS4R2 and am so bored with the boring characters I can’t be bothered with the rest. It should be exciting. But it’s just not!

Phew I feel better for getting that off my chest!

I see your Eat Pray Love and I raise you Wild.

Fucking twaddle then I had to sit through my book group saying it had change their life. A woman goes for a walk, and it changes your life? No Kirsty. Pass the wine.

@HoldontoOneMoreDay

I see your Eat Pray Love and I raise you Wild.

Fucking twaddle then I had to sit through my book group saying it had change their life. A woman goes for a walk, and it changes your life? No Kirsty. Pass the wine.

See I think Eat Pray Love makes Wild look like a work of genius in comparison — if only because Cheryl Strayed didn’t get a big book deal and waltz off around a world conceived as a funny foreign theme park for well-heeled American navel-gazing.

I also read Catcher in the Rye as a book about a deeply troubled, lonely, bereaved boy. Yes, he was also self absorbed etc but he was a teen who had lost his brother and was sent away to school that he didn’t work for him.

Vox by Christina (Christine?) Datcher. It was hyped as an important feminist work a la Handmaid's Tale but it was poorly written drivel (great concept though!)

I'll add the sequel to Handmaid's Tale (I can't believe Margaret Atwood actually wrote that), anything I've tried by Jodie Picoult (mostly due to book clubs) and controversially, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

There are some on this thread I absolutely love- The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, Eleanor Oliphant, 100 years!

@LunaNorth

Oh yeah, Life of Pi. A Little Life. Brick Lane. White Teeth.

Just found them really wordy in a not-beautiful way. Like someone saying words to you in a distracting monotone for hours and hours.

I must love distracting monotone, haha ! The only one I've not read is A Little Life but I loved the other three. Although maybe I loved them because they were rare literary insights into South Asian families!

Atonement
On Chesil Beach
The Children Act
Thursday Murder Club

Brick Lane, my Mum loved it but I just couldn't get into it.

Wuthering Heights is on my personal list of worst reads ever. I hate read it last year, forcing myself to finish it so I didn't ever feel the need to return to it and try again. How is this pile of mawkish shite so well respected? I don't think it compares well at all to Jane Eyre, which is one of my favourite novels.

As a family, none of us has liked The Hobbit. I started reading it to DD when she was about 9. She told me to stop. She hated it. She doesn't like Harry Potter either . DH & I read The Hobbit to DS when he was around 10, and all three of us were so bored and started skipping bits to get to the end. Never going to read LOTR ever.

The Lido - surprised no one has mentioned this yet! Pedestrian writing, dull insipid characters, hugely formulaic. I was so outraged at the hype I wrote a review on goodreads, which I don’t normally bother doing.

Tattooist of Auschwitz - dreadful writing, seemed to totally demean the subject matter. Could not finish.

A lot of the ones on here I quite enjoyed eg Crawdads, Thursday Murder Club, though I can see the issues (child abandoned by mother and living alone grows up into manic pixie dream girl amazing artist etc) I could overlook for a bit of entertainment.

@LawnFever

Me before you, awful depiction of disability and attitudes towards disability dressed up as romance, it made me so mad

I hated this for the same reasons. I think somewhere on the cover of this it said something like "if you don't cry at this you're a psychopath".

@lazylinguist

I like quite a few books on this thread - The Midnight Library, Cloud Atlas, The Time Traveller's Wife, Tolkien.

I really don't like Jane Austen. However beautifully written her books are, and however lush and impressively-cast the productions, it's still just boring. People at dances having endless conversations about who's going to marry whom, and alternately glowering, simpering or looking arch. Yaaawwwwn.

There is so much more to Jane Austen than that. You have to take into account the position of women at that time, there is a huge amount of sexual politics behind it it is all about survival but very subtly done.

I can't decide if I love or hate The Bone Clocks. I've read it twice, first time I really liked it but then the second time found it odd. Not sure if it was because the twist was already revealed the first time I read it though

Can't read Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I've tried but it leaves me cold. As does anything where I can't pronounce the names of the characters or have a good go at it - if I can't picture them in my head, or get mixed up by the names, it turns me off.

"The Lido - surprised no one has mentioned this yet! Pedestrian writing, dull insipid characters, hugely formulaic. I was so outraged at the hype I wrote a review on goodreads, which I don’t normally bother doing."

Agree - it was appalling. I also wrote a review of it on Goodreads. It got a lot of hype locally where I live because the author apparently went to school nearby. It was all local "girl" becomes famous author, literally everywhere. The book was bad. Really bad.