Disappointing or overhyped books

[YaMuvva]

I have just finished reading I Who Have Never Known Men after 2 friends have harangued me into reading it for a while now.

What a total let down. I hate it when books build up a mystery with loads of clues as if you’re gonna have answers at the end, then…nothing! So frustrating. I’m so cross I wasted my energy and time on it.

I also hated Elenor Oliphant and kept wondering when the good part was gonna start. Nothing happened except that she got a makeover.

I actually think it might be better as a tv series tbh

i get the impression might be the same for lessons in chemistry?

yes, I hate it!

I do know David Copperfield. Very well. That's what's putting me off Demon Copperhead. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Lots of the books mentioned above are hyped up books that certain groups of people want to be seen to be reading. And to say they've read at dinner parties. 😃

Susan Hill's Woman in Black
Daphne du Maurier Don't look now - love her other books though

I was very disappointed by Robert Graves' I Claudius. It must be the only time a TV adaptation was better than the novel.

😔 i loved that whole series.. i was so invested esp after the film really got me 💔

But i get you on the louisa clark. I have a friend who is always a full namer

I love the Tattooist of Auschwitz but I wish it wasn’t written as fiction when it is very much a true story.

Noooo I’ve just bought tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Is it wanky? I had a feeling when I was queueing in Waterstones that it would be a bit wanky

Yes!! So disappointing

The concept of women being able to shoot fire from their fingers to take over the world and oppress men is an absolutely genius concept for a dystopian novel. So how she could have got it so wrong I will never know. The message at the end seemed to be “Women are just as bad as men” 🙄 I threw the fucking thing at the wall

@YaMuvva

I thought so! But I also have 0 interest in video games.

Also without giving too much away I really disliked how one of the relationships was portrayed as acceptable when it really wasn't

A Little Life. Awful misery porn.

The Slap. Unconvincing, boring, shit characters

Where the Crawdads Sing. Tbf I knew it was going to be shit but read it for a work book club. It read like a barely fleshed out idea for a screen play, which in effect, it was.

I quite liked Lessons in Chemistry but that was probably influenced by context - in hospital awaiting breast cancer surgery, no phone reception, couldn’t get 4g on my kindle…Hated Life of Pi, hated A Little Life

The Book Thief, In Memoriam (so derivative - chunks lifted from Owen, Sassoon and even Blackadder) but the worst was Where the Crawdads Sing!

Oh sorry, not Highbrow enough for the thread?

No, but literally no one has ever suggested Fifty Shades are any good.

I think that poster means that whilst it’s overhyped those books are universally mocked and made fun of too

@YaMuvva it's not a true story. In fact the families/descendants and the holocaust memorial centre have been very critical of the author and what she's done in co-opting the stories then making things up.

On Chesil Beach
Conversations with Friends
The Murder Club Books

OP, I enjoyed Tomorrow & Tomorrow. Give it a go.

I also LOVED Crawdads. I think it’s become fashionable to trash it because it became really popular. I read it in 2019 after overhearing a woman in Waterstones asking if they had a copy. It had just been published here and I was in a devil-may-care mood so I bought it too. I just loved it. Once it came out in paperback it seemed to take on a life of its own, a load of publicity and then Reese got hold of it and the movie followed. It got away from itself.

Eleanor Oliphant would be my overhyped choice and another vote against the Midnight Library. Somebody upthread called it childish. I would agree.

Agree with a lot of the ones mentioned above!
Anything by Matt Haig
Life of Pi
The Heart's Invisible Furies
Conversations with Friends
The Miniaturist

(Loved Convenience Store Woman, though!)

Plus some books written by comedians have been a bit of a letdown eg Ruth Jones. Don't want to say it's all of them but you do wonder if some of them would ever have got a book deal if they were nobodies. There have been some terrible children's books written by people who must have thought I write for a living, I've got a kid, how hard can it be? For example Stephen Mangan, Ben Miller.

@PaperStarred Not at all what I was meaning. I was recommended Wolf Hall by more than one person off the back of the fact I enjoyed the Shardlake series as well as others such as Bess of Harwick by Mary J Lovell (absolutely brilliant!). I have a wide taste in literature but unfortunately Wolf Hall wasn’t for me.

@leafybrew I loved Gone With The Wind too. And the film.
Epic stuff!

I had a lucky find in Tesco last week at their charity bookshelves. I was walking by and a book literally fell at my feet.it was Lewis Grassic Gibbon's "Sunset Song"trilogy. Split new For £1.
It is more than 50 years since I first read it. A really.moving tale full of vivid characters and how their fates and country life alter when the Great War.comes. The 3 books are about the end of a way of life for Chrissie, the heroine of the book. Epic!

Still life- sarah Winman SOOOO boring!

piranesi- probably my most hated book

Trust by Hernan Diaz. How did this get a Pulitzer?