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 really enjoyed it too!

I have tried with Nabokov, oh Lord I have tried, but I just can’t see it.
People whose opinion I respect (Martin Amis, for example, and also Harold Bloom and Stephen Fry) all tell me he was the greatest prose stylist of the 20th-century. But he just doesn’t do anything for me. When I compare his prose to the writers whose language I most admire (Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, P. G. Wodehouse, Cormac McCarthy, Anita Brookner, etc), he leaves me dead. I like it well enough. There are sentences, and occasional paragraphs, that seem very beautiful. But they’re no more beautiful than passages in Hemingway, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley and countless other writers I enjoy.

Lolita was fine - very well written, etc. But sublime? Not for me. I also got very little out of his famous autobiography Speak Memory. Give me Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That any day. I even find the spare, clear prose of Orwell and Bertrand Russell more beautiful than Nabokov’s.

@Alltheyearround I've not read the autobiographical books - I must do! I think one of my fav books is the short story The Christmas Mouse. A comfort read at any time of year! And I also love the Gerald Durrell books. The link on FB is this https://www.facebook.com/groups/40261408975 - I've asked to join!

Placemaking.

The majority of the (short) book was just endless descriptions of hallways, statues , vestibules, tides, and birds.

The main character has no personality, there really isn’t a clear story and not much happens tbh

I saw a good reads review on this book, which describes it perfectly:

Reading this book felt exactly like listening to someone tell you - in excruciating detail - all about the crazy dream they had last night. Poorly structured, grasping at meaning (unsuccessfully), and just so, so uninteresting.

I did like In Memoriam though saw a review saying it was the generations Birdsong - no way it wasn’t a patch on that.

@Covetthee thanks for that description!

immediately deletes Piranesi from audible wishlist

I was going to say Lessons in Chemistry which I finally finished yesterday, but I’m obviously not alone!

Another for me was The Lovely Bones

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie. So very very poorly written. I hated it.

Donna Tart. The secret history.
A whole thread about how wonderful and amazing and how people couldn’t put it down.
Tripe.

I started this recently and got about 40 pages in. So bad.

I loved Piranesi. I think it's one of the best books I've ever read. So atmospheric, so cleverly done. Worth a read.

I liked In Memoriam enough that I actually finished it and looked forward to reading it at night. Which is fairly rare for me these days (menopause brain)....but it's no Birdsong.

It was a bit like reading a well written fan fic to be honest.

Piranesi is also a favourite of mine. I first read in lockdown, where it was particularly powerful. I have subsequently reread and got even more out of it. I loved the world building.

Strange to do that on one person's opinion....

I agree with the Tattooist of Auschwitz being overhyped and disappointing. I found the dramatisation of it much better than the book.

@HeadNorth I read it in lockdown too! I wonder if that's why it struck such a chord with me. I also wonder if some people missed the twist so didn't get why it was so powerful in the sense of control and coercion through the manipulation and misrepresentation of information and environment.

Erm no definitely got the twist and it didn’t really change the book for me, the author could’ve easily made the point without the endless descriptions of statues and vestibules, by the time it got to ‘the twist’ I didn’t care enough as i was bored out of mine. I just really do not enjoy overly descriptive and repetitive books.

a bit condescending to say someone didn’t enjoy the book because they didn’t understand it the meaning behind it.

Out of my mind*

I liked In Memoriam.

hated a LItte Life.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. So well reviewed but I found it messy and disappointing, and the main character unlikeable.

Someone else mentioned Shrines of Gaeity by Kate Atkinson, that was a DNF for me. I found it so boring I just couldn’t bare to read any more!

I was also disappointed in sorrow and bliss after seeing so many rave reviews. Like you said, the main character is very unlikable.

I did enjoy you be mother by meg mason though.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith. Boring. Too long and muddled.

Also Middlemarch.

@Covetthee I didn't mean to be condescending, sorry. There's lots of books where I didn't get a twist. No offence meant!
I loved Middlemarch. DNF Dickens' Tale of Two Cities (or basically anything by Thomas Hardy).

Yes I liked you be mother too! I felt it was so different to sorrow and bliss.