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?

50 shades of grey
everyone I know loved it
i thought it was the biggest pile of utter shite I’d ever read

the girl on the train-even my mil hated it which is saying something

the woman who didn’t get out of bed for a year-I read the first chapter

this is going to hurt-the hate he has for women jumped out with every word

Same

Yes to all of that! ^

the woman who didn’t get out of bed for a year-I read the first chapter

Same, thought it was awful.

Also the 100 year old man who jumped out of the window, what a load of irritating unfunny nonsense that was, couldn’t finish it.

Kate Atkinson - Behind the Scenes at the Museum- Back in the days when I would force myself to finish a book no matter how much I hated it. I was so enraged by the time I got to the end I nearly set fire to it.

A couple of years later I tried another one of her books and gave up almost immediately, dreadful stuff.

@Amortentia , her Jackson Brodie books are great, but I can't get into the others. A friend loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, but I couldn't get into it at all.

Thank you! So many people rave about this and it looked just my cup of tea. Then she jumped into bed with the detective and I was all WTF where did that come from and why

I thought The Push was really overrated. The ending was a bit meh.
agree with crawdads and Shuggie Bain but I will.give that one another go.
9 perfect strangers was awful!

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. My book club read it and raved about in a month I was taking exams, so didn't read the book. It was recommended by someone who's taste I ususally really like but I found it really, really, annoying. I hated the style of narration, couldn't warm to the characters and wasn't at all interested in what happened.

Do you mean 'The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year'? I agree it was - mostly - bad, but I'd forgive ST - almost - anything because Adrian Mole is one of the finest literary creations of all time.

Yes and she was pretty much terminally ill when she wrote that 😢

What a Carve Up by Jonathan Coe -- came highly recommended, turned out to be a virtue-signalling satire of things that happened 20 years previously, with all the subtlety of a brick.

Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy -- the first one is one of the funniest books I've ever read, the second is OK, the third is just drowning in bitterness.

The Farm by Richard Benson -- OH loved it and insisted I read it, I can see why people like it but I just felt like I was being over-shared at.

The Shepherd's Life -- James Rebanks. Could the chip on the author's shoulder be any bigger?

I liked Wolf Hall though.

Agree with Wolf Hall. I so so so want to like it.

Is wolf hall worth a read at all? I’ve got it on my list but I’m getting put off!

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It had such good reviews but the characters were so boring and self absorbed and the book included so much detail about utter dross, it made me want to stick pins in to my eyes

Sally Rooney, but I was so bored by the first few paragraphs of whichever one I attempted that I probably haven't given her a fair shot.

MC Beaton - I've attempted at least one but it was so clearly dashed off in a hurry. It read like an early draft rather than the finished version. In my late teens, I loved the Regency romances she published as Marion Chesney, her own name.

The Thursday Murder Club. I got it for Christmas 2020 I think, I'm still forcing my way through it, I can only manage about 5 pages at a time. I keep thinking, everyone loved it, it must get better, but it doesn't...

Many people love it, so definitely try it. I suspect it might be a book you need to immerse yourself in, on a holiday or something like that. I've always tried to read a few pages a day and it's never worked for me. I've given up twice.

I felt the same way about Bleak House for years but read it round the pool one year and could not put it down. I am determined to read it one day!

The Thursday Murder Club

It just didn't live up to the hype . Actually rather boring but it was a gift . Of course I had to say I loved it and now she has bought me the bloomin sequel. I still haven't read it 9mths later

The Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. Should be right up my street but they are crap. For some reason I keep reading them; at least I can have a good rant about them afterward. The one which referred to the time period I know most about was almost thrown across the room thrice.

Kate Atkinson and Richard Osman couldn’t get into either. Also didn’t like Life of Pi.

Unfortunately I don’t remember the last time I could read a book for hours! Maybe one to get stuck into over the hols on my days off. It seems to be one of those books you hear raving that it’s amazing and the exact opposite. Marmite book maybe!

same here with Kazuo Ishiguro. all my friends rave about him and talk in depth about his books assuming I've read them. I keep trying and just feel bored.

Also Crawdads. Lovely nature writing and I did - just - believe the girl would survive in the wild, but the stories were stupid and the love scenes like something out of Mills & Boon - just ugly awful writing splodged in among the gorgeous passages on nature.

Hamnet. I love anything about Shakespeare but I can't get on with Maggie O'Farrell's writing at all. It's too showy for me.

I'm halfway through the third book in the trilogy. Really enjoyed the first two, I think The Mirror and the Light is perhaps slightly less good but still very readable.

I've been reading Wolf Hall for about 6 years and I have no clue about the various Thomases. I assumed it was because I was reading it on my kindle so it's not easy to flip back and forth.

Thought Crawdads was ok, not sure I'd repeat.

Shantaram. Badly written self centered tripe. In my opinion 😂