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!

Totally agree about Pickwick. A lot of Dickens fans struggle to finish it. Too long (and not that funny).

I also preferred David Copperfield to Great Expectations. Actually, I think I preferred Emma to Pride and Prejudice.

Life of Pi and Thursday Murder Club

Memoirs of An Infantry Officer carries on from the ending of Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man - Sherston in the army and fighting in France, while gradually coming to oppose the war and deciding to say so publicly.

Must re-read Goodbye to All That, now you've reminded me.

Sherston/Sassoon in the army and fighting in France, while gradually coming to oppose the war and deciding to say so publicly, that should say. It's semi-autobiographical.

Norwegian Wood by Murakami. Just hated it.

I wanted to love A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher as I love her other stuff and it's a cool concept, but the protagonist annoyed me no end.

I really like The Thursday Murder Club but agree with you about the Midnight Library. I found myself skim reading it.

I skimmed the first few chapters of The Midnight Library thinking it can't be worse than How to Stop Time, can it?

Yes. Yes it can. Always trust MN rather than reviews on the book cover.

I listened to The Midnight Library because it was in the free selection in Audible. It was OK, the narrator was good which helped, but it went on for far too long and one bit really upset me.

Anything by Terry Pratchett. I know! Sorry

The Miniaturist. Her writing is beautiful but almost nothing happened for the entire book.

Anything by Thomas Hardy, his descriptions are just so long-winded.

Love is Blind by William Boyd. It's the sort of thing I usually love, and I didn't hate it, but I just found it slightly lacking in soul. It felt a bit formulaic.

Piranesi had to give up around a 1/2 way in. Utterly pointless and gimmicky.

War and Peace have tried and tried but the patrynomics and shortened names made it difficult to know who was who or care.

Wolf Hall , an author I normally like, a period I am fascinated by , a book I had to force myself to finish .

Lovely Bones finished it but a really dislikable book.

Oh and On Chesil Beach. Finished it and thought what stupid characters and story.

Read one chapter of 50 shades .... the worst tripe and so badly written , however lots of people who never read had read the series.

My DM insisted that I read at least one Ian McEwan because "he writes exactly how women think". I picked On Chesil Beach because it looked short. I got to the end and told my DM that the entire book would have been unnecessary if they'd had a five minute conversation instead of making assumptions and acting all moody. If that's "how women think" then it explains quite a lot about how Mum and I sometimes don't see eye-to-eye.

I picked up On Chesil Beach in the charity shop and find it...strange. The writing is formal and stilted, almost as if he's looking at specimens he's dissecting and providing a commentary. I'm also finding the insistence on the different classes they come from and how cultured she is and how cultured he isn't to be old fashioned - what I'd expect from a novel written in the 60s. I appreciate he is writing about the 60s but it comes across as odd. Was he actually trying for that sort of style?

Never read any of McEwen's books before so no idea what his writing is like.

All the Light We Cannot See. Gave up a third of the way in.
The Historian. Started off being quite good, but way, way too long and I never did get to the end.
The Little Friend. Utter snooze fest.
The Miniaturist. A friend lent it to me and told me how brilliant it was. It wasn't.

I did like On Chesil Beach, Elinor Oliphant, and Evelyn Hugo though!

I hated The Book Thief. I don't like to not finish a book so I struggled on until the end but really wish I hadn't bothered.

I'm loving the fact that half of these I'm thinking 'yes, that was absolute shite' or 'I've not even attempted to read that because it was so obvious it was such a pile of poo' and the other half I'm thinking 'what? That's an absolute work of genius.' #teamtartt #bringupthebodiesisaworkofstaggeringgenius

The only good thing about On Cheshil Beach is that it's short! I read another Ian McEwan afterwards (the one with a red balloon on the cover, I think) and came to the conclusion that he writes boring pretentious shite. The literary equivalent of a vegan ready meal.

And another Cloud Atlas read it , hated it , can't remember anything about it now.

Blonde. My friend recommended it to me, she said it was her best read of the year. I was appalled by it. The main thing we say about Marilyn Monroe these days is that she was exploited. So for Joyce Carol Oates to "re-imagine" her story, only to make it so much worse than what we know was horrible to read. The book was soaked in internalized misogyny, at some points I felt she was relishing piling more misery and abuse on Marilyn.

@JaninaDuszejko

Did you like Little Friend?

For me The Goldfinch is a 3 star

Secret History 5 star

Little Friend no stars get in the bin

Literally the worst book I've ever read, thinking "surely it will get better??!"

Turd is accurate 😂

I only read all of that because our flight was delayed and we were stuck in an airport at 4am.

Totally agree and, after many hard lessons, have learned to swerve any book that, in recent years, is described as hilarious. Unless of course they mean that it is hilarious that it actually got published.

Same here. I like books set around WW2, particularly from the home front, rather than novels with epic battle scenes. I genuinely thought I'd like this, but I hated it. I pushed myself to finish it, but wished I hadn't bothered. It just wasn't worth the time I gave it.

And the same goes for All The Light We Cannot See. Tedious, pretentious, over-written and the ending wasn't worth the effort of reading it.