Books I wanted to like but didn't

[Rayn22]

I so wanted to like The Thursday night murder club but it was not what I expected. I thought it would be a gritty thriller. I disliked it immensely but noticed people are raving about Richard Osman books on other threads.

Another one is The midnight library. My friends kept going on about it. Kept it for my holidays and found it really slow and dull.

Anyone else got any others they were excited to read and were disappointed in?

I hate it when it happens as it puts me off reading for a while as I feel cheated. Silly I know!

The Song of Achilles was disappointing to me. I loved Circe, but Song of Achilles was flat in comparison. The characters weren’t interesting and it read more like YA to me.

I loved Elinor Oliphant but have never read Margaret Forster who was popular when I was young. Thank you for the tip-am going to check her out. Which one should I start with?

Donna Tart’s books - everyone raved but I couldn’t be doing with them. The Goldfinch was a waste of a great premise.

When God Was A Rabbit (fatuous), Crawdads (great nature writing, terrible character writing) and The Road (truly unforgivable, I will never get the image of a spit-roasted newborn baby out of my head)

I agree about Eleanor Oliphant, nothing happened! I kept waiting for something to happen but it never did. I did finish it but it took forever and I wasn't invested in the slightest.

The midnight library I struggled with. It was kind of sold as about hope and there being more to life and it being worth it etc. I read it when I was having a very tough time in my life, and it made me feel worse. Rather than making me feel like there was good to come, it made me feel hopeless, like my life would always be shit regardless of any choices I made. I spent a lot of time crying when reading it, and it didn't do me any good.

A long ago booker prize winner Hotel du Lac by Anita bruckner?. Got to the end and wondered why I bothered. Nothing happened the entire book.

I did enjoy Thursday murder club.

I tried The Catcher in the Rye but gave up halfway through.

Absolutely this. It used to be that 'prize winner' meant something good. It now means, to me, 'over-hyped rubbish'.
These days 'Booker prize winner' is synonymous with 'avoid'.

The dutch house. I love ‘through time’ ficitions especially if its family related but my god what a bore! The main character was incredibly immature and annoying.

you had to leave your childhood house that you lived in for 5 mins and then spent your whole adult life dwelling over it all? Boohoo. Borefest for me

Totally agree with the booker prize comments!

Matt Haig's 'The Humans' is much better than Midnight Library, which felt like him writing a bad pastiche of himself!

So so many! Catch 22, Goldfinch, Labyrinth (Kate Mosse), Life of Pi.

I’ve got so many half-started books on my Kindle. Where are all the decent authors these days?!

I agree about the midnight library.
It felt quite teenagery.
It dragged in the middle then finished quite quickly.
I don't think the message is very reassuring.
And I'm uncomfortable about a man writing a female protagonist. He just didn't 'get' things like motherhood imo.
I also didnt like the political undertones of an assumption about whether we have agency in our lives.
There was no mention of privilege or how the decisions of others impact us.
It could have been so much better.

I wanted to like Neon Yang's 'On the Black Tides of Heaven', which had some amazing fantasy ideas, and very original ones, but the way the story jumped through years of the character's lives left me wanting more detail of those periods, which the books could have carried without feeling over-long. So the book felt too short for the narrative it was trying to support.

DH and I loved that novel so much that we called DS Owen! 🤣

I also didn't like the Thursday Murder Club at all, couldn't even finish it.

I also strongly disliked The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller - I thought it was self-indulgent nonsense with largely unlikeable characters!

The Great Gatsby was a huge disappointment. "Great American Novel" my bottom

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: Chris Packham's memoir: I so wanted to like but couldn't finish it! Possibly because I was thinking it would be written more in the style of Gerald Durrell.
Cloud Atlas: didn't enjoy but did finish. Preferred the film.
The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse, is still on my bedside table with, to quote Father Ted, 'a bookmark on page 7'!

Where the crawdads sing.

Daisy Jones and The Six - I dont think the interview format worked well at all and was very boring plot wise, i was expecting lots of 70s rock n roll debauchery but it was more about the main guy getting sober and being faithful to his wife - who wants to read about that 😂

I have completely given up on the literary establishment. People don’t win prizes for the quality of their writing but for who they are. Harold Bloom warned about this twenty years ago. He despaired at the way writers were being overpraised (or dismissed), and the way the canon was being attacked. Even George Orwell warned about it. He writes somewhere about the quality of literary criticism when he was young. For example, Orwell recalled a horrible, old-school Tory reviewer who praised a novel by a socialist. The Tory reviewer may have hated the socialist, but he regarded it as his sacred duty to be honest about the work. The socialist had written a great novel, and the Tory reviewer was honourable enough to acknowledge that. In other words, he cared more about art than politics.

Arts journalists and literary critics have abandoned that duty. And they have betrayed the young. I no longer trust them, and I ignore things like the Booker. If I want a guide, I use Harold Bloom. There are enough established classics for me. I’m no longer interested in contemporary fiction.

I so agree. Midnight Library, Goldfinch, Elinor, Murder Club - all absolutely appalling in my opinion. I can't bear this overhyping of certain books and authors.

Although I did actually laugh out loud the other day on a similar thread where the OP asked for literary recommendations and someone said Elinor

It's harder and harder to find well written books.

A couple of authors I rate highly are Deborah Harkness and Lucinda Riley, who both write beautifully.

Lessons in Chemistry, I could tell from the first couple of pages that I wasn't going to enjoy it. I carried on a bit then completely gave up, it's in the charity shop pile.
Storyteller by Dave Grohl.

I think the first one of hers I read was Miss Owen Owen is at home when I was 16, many years ago. She also wrote Georgy Girl, so that might be a good start.

The Three-Body Problem, I thought it would be right up my street but I didn't like it at all. Actually the historical bits about the cultural revolution were interesting, and I'm not normally into historical fiction, but I love sci-fi and the sci-fi part of the story was boring and all the characters seemed flat somehow.

I agree about Thursday Murder Club, I was given it when it first came out, didn't finish, found the audio version on Borrowbox recently and decided to give it another go, did finish it this time but far too many threads, far too many unanswered questions.

Crawdads was absolutely dreadful, the two main plotlines didn't work well together, random poetry, completely unrealistic and an unsatisfactory ending.

This is Going to Hurt - I usually like memoirs but this was so nasty and sneery.

This Much is True - Miriam Margolyes. I liked her till I read this, not any more.