Page 25 | I just read a terrible book

Orangeis · 2023-02-06T11:29:15+00:00

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?

Brefugee · 08/02/2023 20:09

this post contains spoilers for the Time Traveller's Wife.

The reason i loathe it is because the writer makes him make a big deal about how important his feet are to him. So of course, he gets frostbite and loses one (or both?)

I don't mind so much that he watches the wife grow up, but it's a bit of a conundrum. Does he watch her as a child because he knows her as an adult, or does he groom her?

But mostly it is the utter irresponsibility of getting pregnant completely against his will, knowing he arrives naked and has often been attacked and even raped. And blithely gives birth to a child - a daughter! - knowing that she may carry the gene. Absolutely awful awful woman. And no judgement from the author, just she's right and he's wrong and the poor child just has to put up with it.

TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl · 08/02/2023 20:11

TomKittensLostMitten · 06/02/2023 12:29

Eleanor Oliphant was the biggest pile of shit ever. Actually made me properly furious it was so unbelievable and the way it trivialised childhood abuse and serious mental illness was just bizarre. Total raging alcoholic but only on the weekends - right. Lonely social misfit with hints of dark abuse and grim childhood - oh guess what all she needed was a makeover, a Brazilian wax and the love of a good man. And as for the 'ending' - she's actually been hallucinating her long-dead mother all along?? In other words floridly delusional. But she's FINE NOW?? Absolute bollocks. Cannot understand why anyone likes it.

Yes and one intervention cures her alcoholism! It’s a wonder other alcoholics don’t use this approach

TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl · 08/02/2023 20:34

Chemenger · 06/02/2023 12:54

I really like quite a few that have been named. The one I hated (along with the film) was Life of Pi. Meant to be deep, actually just boring. And, of course Jane Eyre, which is the worst book ever written, tedious book about a tedious, whiny woman.

I think that’s the point of Jane Eyre though - a tedious woman meets a total twat and they fall in love because they’re both so awful

TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl · 08/02/2023 20:36

As an aside re BA Paris, Behind Closed Doors was good if you could suspend your belief system. A woman who socialises regularly and has loads of opportunity to tell people she’s been kept as a prisoner, never does and no one is alarmed when her husband keeps following her to the loo. And she’s too scared because apparently he will go and visit her sister or something. Weird.

TheMarzipanDildo · 08/02/2023 21:37

GloomyDarkness · 08/02/2023 16:54

It's ridiculously modern, though. I mean.... the very idea that a woman of any class could "gain freedom" from social conventions, like she wouldn't have to face the music at some point. Her whole life would be ruined.
But it's not even about consequences and what other people would think. She would have self-censored the slightest impulse, if indeed she ever felt any, to behave like that.

TBF I can think of some actual historical young women who played with fire around that time or before - sometimes ending up unmarried mothers, marrying either that man or someone else - but very risky behavior. I think my issue with believing that was the actress Kate Winslet didn't come across as quite young or naïve enough to sell that or as swept up in passion.

I did like Wolf Hall though got in on some sort of kindle deal - style took me back initially but I rapidly got into it and loved it.

I wrote a dissertation on a Victorian celebrity who shagged around a fair bit in her youth and ended up advertising Pears soap as an extremely respectable woman in her later life so it can’t have been a tragedy for everyone.

ReneBumsWombats · 08/02/2023 21:38

Every generation thinks it invented sex...

HotSauceCommittee · 08/02/2023 21:58

The Absolute Truth by Peter May. A lab chimpanzee types a comma after a letter and leaves a space before doing some more typing. This is supposed to prove God exists and we are supposed to give a fuck about it.
I didn't finish it. Absolute bollocks.
YY to the Colleen Hoover domestic violence novel and Sally Rooney's crap.
That Sophie Kinsella character needs treatment, not novels written about her.
I love The Secret History, though.

CatJumperTwat · 08/02/2023 22:20

Alcemeg · 08/02/2023 17:01

@CatJumperTwat
actually I've already got a thick cardigan on

I know it's not a cardigan, but based on your username I can sort of picture it!

You're spying on me!

HotSauceCommittee I think that was Peter James, not Peter May, and my recollection of the plot is pretty different...

DesdamonasHandkerchief · 09/02/2023 00:01

Agree with PP who said Into The Darkest Corner was a terrible book.
Badly written, one dimensional characters - who act to further the plot rather than in any logical manner - and gratuitous sex and violence.
However as I found out when I posted a one star review on Goodreads it has a fanatical following.

TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl · 09/02/2023 00:22

A Slow Fire Burning.

More like a slow plot burning with boredom. I only read it a few weeks ago and can’t even remember who the killer was in the end.

Whatislove82 · 09/02/2023 05:59

ReneBumsWombats · 08/02/2023 21:38

Every generation thinks it invented sex...

😐

HDready · 09/02/2023 06:21

TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl · 08/02/2023 20:36

As an aside re BA Paris, Behind Closed Doors was good if you could suspend your belief system. A woman who socialises regularly and has loads of opportunity to tell people she’s been kept as a prisoner, never does and no one is alarmed when her husband keeps following her to the loo. And she’s too scared because apparently he will go and visit her sister or something. Weird.

I didn’t love the book, but to be fair it wasn’t that he has going to visit her sister, it was that he was going to imprison and torture her.

pollyhemlock · 09/02/2023 08:34

One of my least favourite plot devices is when a character is given a delightful pet, usually a cat or dog, and you just know that about half way through the book this charming animal will be horribly killed. This happens in, for example, books by Penelope Lively, Zadie Smith and one of the early Ruth Galloway books by Elly Griffiths. Tends to put me off a book when this happens.

echt · 09/02/2023 08:53

I've just started "reading" Outlander as an audiobook, having not seen the filmed version.

Fuck me. Not only is the author not entirely literate, the text, and I'm just on Sassenach, is littered with American usage, e.g sun up, when sunrise or dawn would be more accurate.

Aaaarghhh.

echt · 09/02/2023 08:55

And the author has the nerve to pity George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire for his letting the filmed version run away with his narrative.

At least he can write in lucid English prose ya numpty.

Brefugee · 09/02/2023 09:29

Fuck me. Not only is the author not entirely literate, the text, and I'm just on Sassenach, is littered with American usage, e.g sun up, when sunrise or dawn would be more accurate.

is there a BritEng version available? I love Dick Francis, and back in the days when it was incredibly difficult to get books in English here (Germany) I bought one in a bookshop, delighted to find a) a book in English 2) by an author i love iii) i hadn't read.

It was great but half way through i realised he kept using the word "hobo" and i realised that i'd also read "sidewalk" and things of that ilk. It was the US version. We are divided by a common language, as you notice if you watch things like John Oliver on TV - he has a British accent but uses US words and inflection/intonation to make it easier for the host nation.

MissHavishamsMouldyOldCake · 09/02/2023 10:34

I remember reading a book set in Victorian London. We had to part ways when in the first few pages someone sat on a 'stoop'.

GloomyDarkness · 09/02/2023 10:52

I wrote a dissertation on a Victorian celebrity who shagged around a fair bit in her youth and ended up advertising Pears soap as an extremely respectable woman in her later life so it can’t have been a tragedy for everyone.

I have no problem believing that - it was just the examples coming to my mind were writers or related to them and that was I remember happening to them - honestly though I think many more people in the past lived more exciting/risky lives than it is popularly given credit for.

I remember reading a book set in Victorian London. We had to part ways when in the first few pages someone sat on a 'stoop'.

I once put down a book set in modern London but was completely oblivious to existence of NHS and plot driver was need for money for fairly mundane medical care - it left so little other impression that's all I remember about it as just wasn't very engaging.

CatJumperTwat · 09/02/2023 11:01

I read a horror by an American author but set in Kent, where the premise was a group of people being stranded in a rural area several hours from any house or human contact. If I set a book in another country I'd at least get one person from there to beta read it...

Walkinginthesand · 09/02/2023 11:37

CatJumperTwat · 09/02/2023 11:01

I read a horror by an American author but set in Kent, where the premise was a group of people being stranded in a rural area several hours from any house or human contact. If I set a book in another country I'd at least get one person from there to beta read it...

That’s hilarious!

DatasCat · 09/02/2023 11:54

Walkinginthesand · 09/02/2023 11:37

That’s hilarious!

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Yeah, they needed to switch county. Yorkshire Dales in winter, maybe. Brecon Beacons? Entirely possible. If in doubt, try the wilds of the Scottish Highlands or one of the islands.

But if you want true isolation and horror, try riding the top end of the Victoria line tube all day…🤣

SammyScrounge · 09/02/2023 15:02

Haus1234 · 06/02/2023 12:20

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Anything which is generally described as “deep” is going to be rubbish, I should know better.

It's the sort of book Harry and Meghan might like.

MissHavishamsMouldyOldCake · 09/02/2023 15:06

I can't see any of the royals being big readers.

ReneBumsWombats · 09/02/2023 15:08

MissHavishamsMouldyOldCake · 09/02/2023 15:06

I can't see any of the royals being big readers.

Why not?

MissHavishamsMouldyOldCake · 09/02/2023 15:12

ReneBumsWombats · 09/02/2023 15:08

Why not?

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Just can't picture it. None of them give off big reader vibes.