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!

I didn't like Thursday murder club (irritating) , crawdads (boring), life of pi, captains Corelli's mandolin.

Tried a few Liane Moriarty books and they just bore me.

Gave up on all of them.

I did really like Shuggy Bain.

Agreed. I did like that it was a gay love story. But got a bit silly really.

I liked Thursday Murder Club, mostly because I like the old folk characterisations & their wry observations of life, I can totally picture them (Ron is a cross between my dad, and a guy I used to work with!) but if you are looking for something in that genre that’s maybe a little less known have you read A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett? 3rd in series is just out

I didn’t like Crawdads much either & Wolf Hall was a slog but the one I really can’t understand the hype on is My name is Lucy Barton - it was jumbled & absolutely nothing happened. Also Conversations with Friends - tedious, boring & nothing happens in 300+ pages!

Crawdads. My Brilliant Friend. Hamnet (performance writing, I thought). Still Lives (Sarah Winman) is another - bloody magical realism. I really hate The Great Gatsby.

Love 'Wolf Hall' etc though and liked 'The Room'. I really really want to like Virginia Woolf and have read them but meh! I love 'Ulysses' though which I didn't think I would. I'm probably in the minority in not liking Anna Karenina though I quite like War and Peace (except for all the tedious freemasonry stuff). No consistency in my tastes.

I didn't like the midnight library either and The time traveller's wife was awful.

Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm was associated with the Victorian aesthetes, and knew Wilde, so I hoped it would be another Dorian Gray, with beautiful dialogue, etc. I had such hopes for this. I love anything about the Oxford aesthetes (Walter Pater, John Ruskin, Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited etc). But I just did not like it at all.

Oliver Twist. I worship Dickens, and David Copperfield is my all-time favourite novel, but I was disappointed by Oliver Twist. It has too many of Dickens’ faults.

Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure was just too bleak for me. Again, I love Hardy, especially his poetry.

The final part of Evelyn Waugh’s sword of honour trilogy was a let down, especially as the first two novels are among my favourites.

Mani, by Patrick Fermor. I love A Time of Gifts, but found Mani too long-winded.

Joy in the Morning by P G Wodehouse. I worship Wodehouse almost as much as I worship Dickens, but this was another disappointment. People call it his masterpiece. Not for me. His true masterpiece is Right Ho Jeeves.

Siegfried Sassoon: Memoirs of A Foxhunting Man. I so admire that WW1 generation, and love anything about people like T E Lawrence. I love Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, and Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But no, another disappointment.

Revolutionary Road. Deeply depressing.

Brick Lane by Monica Ali. It seemed to be so highly acclaimed and I’ve liked books on a similar theme but I just found it incredibly tedious and boring.

I also really disliked My Sons Story by Nadine Gordimer. I wanted to read something by a Nobel laureate to see what the fuss was about and it was awful. Unnecessarily verbose, indulgent, weak plot, unlikeable characters. Give me Coetzee any day.

I agree. Hitman Anders by the same author is great though, IMO.

I also really disliked the Midnight Library. I persevered to see if the ending was any good, and it really wasn’t.

I did really like the Thursday Murder Club and the others in the series. Admittedly not gritty, but I really like the characters.

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. Absolutely pointless waste of time. I carried on to the end because I hoped there would be some sort of point to it all. I was sadly mistaken.

And the Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Loved the idea, got bored quickly and soon lost track of who everyone was and what was going on. I’d like to have seen how they wrapped it up in the end but just couldn’t be bothered.

I hated the midnight library! I do not get the love for it. It was just...stupid.

Elinor Oliphant started off well, but it turned into just another variation on dowdy woman gets a make-over and becomes more sociable and liked.

You are my people. So many lovely authors, and memories. But I loved Zuleika Dobson.

I hated this so much but really wanted to like it so ploughed on. I gave up literally five pages from the end because I just couldn't stand it any more. Boring navel gazing drivel, and so misogynistic.

You didn't miss anything by not finishing it. I can assure you the ending was shite too

My brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante - I found the main character irritating and couldn't work out who all the characters were because their names were so similar. It also ended in a really peculiar way.

I've heard the TV dramatisation is actually much better than the book, but haven't been able to bring myself to watch it.

I loved Little Friend! Hated Secret History though.

Had a couple of goes at Wolf Hall before I managed to get through it (and BUTB/ Mirror and Light).

Hamnet was a disappointment. Shuggie Bain was a misery fest but I'm told the author's new one is better.

And please don't come for me but Pride and Prejudice? I hate it!

I read The Midnight Library for my book club and was the only one who didn't like it. It's what I call a 'we' book, when you can tell the faux deepness is starting because there are 'inspirational' bits that begin with the word we. See also, Shantaram (hilariously bad), Beach Read, The Fault in Our Stars

I also loved The Little Friend, I've read it at least twice. Can't get more than a few pages into The Shadow of the Wind, doesn't grab me.

I agree about The Thursday Murder Club. I thought it would be more intelligent. It was just a poor man’s regurgitated Agatha Christie.

I’ve tried Midnight library, The Secret History and Sophie’s Choice but I can’t get into them.

This was disappointing beyond words

Truly, I am pleasantly surprised to see several positive posts for The Little Friend, I must have read it 20 years ago and have never met anyone who liked it.

'Our House' by Louise Candlish was beyond unbelievably overrated. (The real story it was based on would have been a preferable newspaper read).
This book starts out well enough but it just gets heavier and heavier, and more and more inexplicably boring considering the genuinely outrageous subject matter. I really wanted it to snap out of its self destruct ennui but it just didn't. Loads of pointless content that should have been edited out, and ludicrous coincidences that just patched up a really ultimately lazy narrative that leaves a reader like me feeling cheated/patronised/gullible. Awful.