I just read a terrible book

[Orangeis]

Bring me back, B A Paris.

What a load of absolute tosh. A man's partner dissapears, 6 years later he gets with her sister and lives with her. The big twist is.....the new girlfriend is actually the missing sister. He didn't realise this as she had a different hair do.
That's hours of my life I'll never get back. I feel like taking the book in to the back garden and burning the bugger.
What's your worst book and why?

I couldn’t agree more. Very grating. Some time ago, l read a book set in 1981 where a character from talked about “wanting closure.” I was a teenager in 1981 and this is not a phrase that was ever used at this time. I feel the same way when twenty first century values are put on characters from an earlier time. TV programmes (I’m looking at you Call the Midwife and All Creatures Great and Small, channel five, in particular) and films are especially guilty of this.

I once binned a book, half way down the high street. I’d been reading it on my lunch break & couldn’t take any more! I was quite young then & don’t have particularly high brow taste, but still... It was that bad. The worst offenders, for me, are ones where conversations are literally transcribed with no nuance or character building. So bring to read.

Boring, obvs!

Must agree about Cecelia Ahern. The idea for PS I Love You is good, and would work for a movie (I think they made one?). But the writing... Such repetition! It was so hard to get through.

Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway series. Have read the first ten, wasn't impressed with the first hit ploughed on thinking they'd improve. They didn't. Threw one across the room it annoyed me so much!

Usually love everything by Mike Gayle, but 'Half a World Away' was too predictable and cliched, and when it did try a twist it made it utterly miserable.

Also Libby Page - 24hr Cafe ..couldn't get past the opening few chapters as I felt it was just poorly written with cringy characters. I enjoyed her book The Lido ( so many books now about lidos or wild swimming nowadays) , but recognised it wasn't brilliantly written either.

I love Richard Osmans books though, some proper laugh out loud moments.

Re Jodi Picault, @SirChenjins , I read her only when I’m holiday and over the years I have discovered this fact: she writes both awful books and really quite good books; the ratio is something like 4:1.
The Thursday murder club was rubbish.

To be fair I can sort of understand the conforming to 21st century values. Downton Abbey would have been ultra depressing if they had slung Thomas out on the street to be homeless because he was gay, and refused to ever speak his name again. Or if Call the Midwife had people being dismissive and nasty to women suffering domestic violence etc. It just wouldn’t appeal to the modern viewer.

'The Marble Collector' wasn't too bad.It was a Book group choice.

I have another one which I hated and everybody liked : The Family Upstairs.
They were such a weird family. Ok, I know that is kind of the point, but not one of them behaved in a sane manner.

She really only got published because of who her dad was.

Sebastian Faulks is always awful, IMO..his version of a James Bond book was diabolical also.

Thursday murder club was just Gangster Grannies for adults

I've never read any of her books. Not my thing at all. But I find it hard to believe she got a publishing deal because her dad is a disgraced former Taoiseach. Her chick-lit target market wouldn't care about that. Apparently she's sold 25 million books to date, so she's clearly got the knack for the genre.

Dd1 gave me the Richard Osman book last year as a present and I've nit even opened it yet! Doesn't sound like I'm missing much!

The Alchemist - far too many pages to illustrate that you should take opportunities in life, which we all already knew
Peculiar Ground - too many words used to describe too little story
The Time Travellers Wife - could have been so good but who cared about the unlikeable protagonists.

And watch Deliverance 🥴

I've read this one, but can't remember what it's called either. I wanted to scream at both of them.

Cecelia Ahern has a target market and is very good at meeting the brief and hitting her mark.

A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle. Every sentence has a comma, just so. Nice cover which just shows me.

Last year I read On earth we're briefly gorgeous by Ocean Vuong which I thought was utterly pretentious and pointless.
And The invisible life of Addie LaRue which was so badly written and just went on and on and on...

@BigglyBee I think in Lord of the Rings the key thing to skip is the songs/poetry! I don’t mind the battles.

"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was such a disappointment. It’s hard to see how a novel seemingly inspired by the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands could end up such rom-com slush. Give me an accurate historical account any day."

Absolutely agree!

"To be fair I can sort of understand the conforming to 21st century values. Downton Abbey would have been ultra depressing if they had slung Thomas out on the street to be homeless because he was gay, and refused to ever speak his name again. Or if Call the Midwife had people being dismissive and nasty to women suffering domestic violence etc. It just wouldn’t appeal to the modern viewer."

I disagree. I can't stand anachronism. What's wrong with people that they can't cope with understanding people having different values in the past? It doesn't make any sense if, say, you educate people that obtaining gay rights in the last 50 years has been such an important thing, and then you read a work of historical fiction and people have 2023 views on things.

I found the fact that people say “Thanks” rather than “thank you” in Daniel Deronda really weird, even though that’s set at the time it’s written. I just can’t imagine people in the 1870s saying it.