Books that you thought you'd love but didn't.

[CaramelJones]

I thought that I was going to love We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House but I didn't, in spite of how many boxes they ticked for me.

Which books were you disappointed by?

I tried, tried and tried but never got very far.

A La Recherche DuTemps Perdu (rememberence of things past) by Marcel Proust. I read a biography of Proust and was fascinated as a 16 year old. Tried the actual book and it was impenetrable.

Life of Pi. Shit.

Last Exit to Brooklyn - Jesus, my eyes bled.

Bloody wonderful amazing book. Gothic romance at its best. Read it as a young teenager and just up my street!

All the Cecelia Aherne

A Little Life - was it just me who found it weird that 4 completely different personalities became best friends just by sharing a room, and were still best friends years later? Even more annoying was that all 4 became incredibly rich and successful.

Two of my absolute favourites lol

Again Rachel Marian Keyes

i loves the first novel but this one felt that it had been written by a 16 year old. The characters were vacuous & unbelievable.

maybe it’s my age but many ‘popular’ books Time Travellers wife, woman in the window, . Just seem stupid to me!

Girl on the Train and the Da Vinci Code.

I couldn't follow life after life at all and I tried a few times. The TV adaptation was much more enjoyable

I loved Wuthering Heights.

Loving this... Funny to see so many books I love getting slated. LOVE Wuthering Heights- you have a shrivelled soul if you don't 😂 liked Catch 22 and Catcher but didn't love.

For me it's The Stand by Stephen King. I love SK and was excited to read it as it had so many positive reviews but that ending... Blegh
Also have to agree with This is Going to Hurt although I'm not sure I expected to like it.
Life of Pi was horribly disappointing.

Also I've started a few Dickens novels and just can't get into them. Very verbose, sentimental and I hate 'coincidences' in books.

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. I just can’t, no matter how many times I try to read it. So boring!

The Alchemist

The way everyone went on about it I thought it would open up a whole new world of enlightenment, but it was really really bad. I ended up reading it all only to have a laugh.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell - I was SO excited for this and couldn’t get on with it at all.
Piranesi - I didn’t finish this one, the plotless vacuousness of it overwhelmed me by about 1/3 of the way in

Life after life - I felt like I was inside a washing machine as it revolved endlessly to no purpose

Goldfinch - didn’t finish this as I found it so boring, and I was in hospital at the time for 7 weeks and desperate for reading material. Sad as I loved the Secret History.
Sally Rooney - total case of emperor’s new clothes here imo, boring narc characters and nothing happens

Loved: My beautiful friend and sequels

Anything by JoJo Moyes

Life of Pi - rubbish
Sophie's world - more rubbish
Captain Corelli's mandolin - even more trash (don't even lift the lid up)

Started a complete waste of time recently about a lady moving from the city with her three kids to the countryside into a fix'er up'er. Took it right back to the library the very next day. Material for the Fire bucket. Complete trash.

Life is too short to read trash.

Shuggie Bain. I’m plodding through it but it’s not really going anywhere

Harry Potter

Captain Corelli's sodding mandolin.

Took me a couple of goes and I was so disappointed at the end!

Crawdads
The Secret History (but I loved The Goldfinch!)
Eleanor Oliphant
Elena Ferrante's books
Sally Rooney's books
Brooklyn
I'm sure there are more!

The Coming of the King by Nikolai Tolstoy, back in the 1980s. I was really into Arthurian legend at the time and expected to like it, but it was unspeakably heavy going.
The Remains of the Day, as mentioned by a previous poster. I felt as if it was written in sepia and got to the end still waiting for something to happen.
The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble. I loved Ms Drabble's earlier books when I read them in the 1990s and suspect I'd have enjoyed The Pure Gold Baby if I'd read it in my twenties, when I could identify with the characters and their lives and aspirations, rather than in my fifties.
Fit for Life by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Didn't even take that one to the charity shop, it went in the dustbin. And I'm rather a fan of Sir Ran.
Various sports autobiographies have been profoundly disappointing, mainly because they've been written to make easy money while the athlete was at the height of their fame rather than later when their career had played out and they were at liberty to tell the really good stories.

Bit niche but the latest Phryne Fisher detective novel by Kerry Greenwood. The first 20 books are brilliant but then she had a gap of a few years and then recently published a new one and its like its written by a different person. The sentence structure is appalling, its barely clear which character is talking, the characters are acting out of character and it just feels completely different.

Also 1Q84

And Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, I have tried to read both of these several times and I just can't get to the end they irritate me too much.

Also I used to love a bit of chick lit, but anything that involves a cafe in cornwall is probably badly written.

Chick lit, people like Trisha Ashley can be very good. But some of the authors haven't really understood the 'show don't tell' part of story telling. Instead they tell you at the start who the main character is going to fall in love with, beat you over the head multiple times with it, thrown in a few cupcakes and a kiss. I've given up reading it unless its an author I know will be good.

What the crawdags sing made me want to puke. I love DEJ but think the movie will be vomit inducing too.

I’ve been trying to read The Little Friend for about six months and my Kindle says I’m still only 33% of the way through it. Think I’m going to give up.