What books were you 'supposed' to enjoy but thought were a pile of crap? And why?

[MrsMerryHenry]

A Suitable Boy

Writing style far too poncey and utterly incapable of moving me.

ah, should not write on public forums after vast consumption of wine

Which Stephen King ones have you read? I think he's brilliant - he and Jane Austen are my favourite writers (I clearly have quite broad tastes!).

So many books on here I loved (in particular Catch 22 - one of my very favourites, and OMG Flowers in the Attic, I ADORED those in my teens many moons ago)

However, could not stand Capt Correlli and his sodding mandolin.. tried twice cause everyone kept saying how great it was. So NOT great, just boring banal tripe

Also, the Da Vinci code, rubbish in my opinion, what was everyone going on about! Not intriguing, not well written and not true (people were talking to me about it as if it was based on fact!.. it was a novel FFS!)

Tess of the D'urbevilles - god girl, just shoot yourself. I can't stand miserable endings and the whole book was a misery!

Phew... clearly needed to get all that of my chest

On the Road - tried to read it three times and gave up within 100 pages every time (and those 100 were a struggle). Classic? I just wished they'd stop arsing around and get proper jobs

And The Accidental by Ali Smith. I couldn't believe the hundreds of glowing reviews splattered all over the cover (inside and out). I actually rather like pretentious twaddle usually, but this was just taking the proverbial.

Oh and Wuthering Heights - great if you're a teenager, I suspect, and can relate to all that hair-tearing angst over not much, but I read it as a 32-year-old and thought 'for God's sake, woman...'

Glad to hear others hated Shadow of the Wind. I tried reading this in Spanish and gave up halfway through, but I put it down to my bad Spanish. I'm so comforted to hear it was actually his bad writing that was at fault!

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I didnt understand it at all and gave up after 3 pages

I'moverhere: "Also, the Da Vinci code, rubbish in my opinion, what was everyone going on about! Not intriguing, not well written and not true (people were talking to me about it as if it was based on fact!.. it was a novel FFS!)" - tell me about it. I had a highly-educated neighbour trying to convince me that it was the most insightful thing he'd ever read about how awful the Catholic church was.

I don't have a problem with people criticising any branch of any religion, but when the basis for that criticism is a lightweight novel written for a Beano audience?? and double-

LadyAga - if you don't mind groaning at every page and being able to predict every 'surprise' twist in the tale then I'd say Da Vinci is definitely very...well, readable, if nothing else. Certainly entertaining (I mean that in both senses of the word! .)

OHHHHHHH the ham is pure stinking of rotttt

Life of Pi - if that was the one with the boy, the tiger and the mangroves. I just did not get it.

My RL name prompted two generous souls to buy me Sophie's World. Yawn.

Twilight, obviously - am seriously worried that prepubescent teenage girls are having their emerging sexualities warped by it, but perhaps that's just me? - but although I loathed it, it has an insidious grip and I found myself getting the rest out of the library. Wasn't going to pay Mad Mormon Sex-Is-Baaad Woman anything more, anyway!

I tried a Paulo Coelho book once, on the raving recommendation of a friend. I couldn't get past the first few pages - it is turgid, massively overrated stuff, and I just can't fathom his popularity.

Sophie's World was just boring. Sorry, I know I'm meant to be really interested in a review of world philosophers but I gave up the will to live after Spinoza.

Salmon Fishing in The Yemen. What was the point?? I took it on holiday with us when I was pregnant with DS (ie, the last uninterrupted holiday for blissful, relaxed novel-reading I'll ever have) and still resent the waste of good book space in my suitcase!

Has anyone said Wuthering Heights yet? Great song, dull book.

And anything written by Martin Amis of course.

oh good I see WH has had its fair share of slating

I'm a notorious reader and will read any old crap rather than have nothing to read - so if I can;t finish a book it is very significant (I read all of A suitable boy, the Davinci Code and even several of Jerry Archers novels)

I could get past the first chapter of:

Mill on the Floss
Catch 22
The Hobbit
David Copperfield

I think that may be all.

I didn't really get on with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings but I like the films. They are too convoluted for me. I still feel that mabe I should try again 10 years on and that I'm missing out on them.

I thought that the Da Vinci Code just confirmed what everyone knew about the church deep down anyway. I didn't find it particularly groundbreaking- just an entertaining romp.

The Outcast - zzzzzz
Time Travellers Wife - awful self-indulgent characters moaning on and on and the book was several hundred pages too long as well
Cloud Atlas - I've tried it three times but simply can't progress beyond chapter 2
An American Boy - I stuck with it, but why?

Why do authors write such long books when the plot runs out after 250 pages? Are they told by publishers to write to 'blockbuster' size? For example, I really enjoyed the first half of the Poisonwood Bible. Really enjoyed it. And then the next half was boring old pants that could have been condensed into 30 pages.

I have read about three books in my lifetime that ended as well as they began.

The Time Travellers WIfe - bloody crap book. Utterly underwhelming. Wished I'd never bothered and I'd bloody paid for my copy instead of using the library!
Ditto of the Thomas Hardy one with Bathsheba in it - the name escapes me - misogynystic old fart that TH was. He will never darken my bedside table again...
But I loved Wuthering Heights, Catch 22, and I read LOTR every couple of years because I enjoy it so much.
I can't read On the Road (Jack Kerouac) no matter how hard I try. Must be a generational thing.
For what it's worth the only way I could finish Catch 22 was to make that the only book I took on holiday one year. With bugger all else to read, I had to either keep going or be bored. About one third in I was utterly hooked.
Jonathon Norrell started out to be promising, but was a bit "take it or leave it" by the end.

MamaHG: I agree with Salmon fishing in the Yemen. It was terrible. I suppose the idea was good, but the way it was written was TERRIBLE and even worse, at the end they had a series of questions to help "Did you like the way it was written, as notes?" "What was your favourite chapter and why?" like a f*ing GCSE Eng Lit class. Blegh.

Just had a further scan down the thread and The Great Gatsby springs to mind. After loving Tender is the Night as a teenager I read The Great Gatsby - twas also much loved but why did nobody tell me he dies - oh Lord I was in an awful state. Exactly the same as when I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Completely distraught...

The Accordion Crimes, by the same person who wrote The Shipping News, one of the most turgid books ever. Was disappointed by the Book Thief. The Gathering, really rubbish. Am never reading a booker prize winner again.

The accordion crimes was really awful it's true, but I liked her first one.

Also hated History of the World in something or other chapters (my brother's favourite book...read it read it it will change your life...fabulous etc) which was so dull. Sorry, bro, no meeting of minds there.

Couldn't stand the second one by Donna Tartt (the little friend) such a shame after the Secret History, one of my faves.

I really like Christopher Brookmyer but couldn't finish his last one, he seemed to have used all his favourite devices one time too many! Like when you can eat prawns happily your whole life then one suddenly makes you allergic....

bleh - 'reading notes', esp. at the back of really mediocre books, make me see red! Salmon Fishing was terrible, wasn't it? So trite and shallow. I kept on expecting various things to happen, or points to be made, but no - it really was that mundane.

PYSO - sorry, but I love History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters! I can't say it changed my world exactly, but it's something I think about a lot, and I haven't re-read it for years now.

I never dared to read the second Donna Tartt, because I loved A Secret History so much! (I was also a Classics student, once upon a time...) I have it - in hardback, no less - sitting smouldering on the shelf, unread because I've heard so many disappointing reviews about it. Same with A.S. Byatt's most recent novel. I love her work - most of it - so much, I'm almost scared to read one I think will be disappointing. God, I'm a sad coward!

'A Handful of Dust' I found it really dull.
'God of Small Things' couldn't get into it.
'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' couldn't be arsed with that one - tried really hard to like it for the sake of an ex boyf when I was a student - failed.

MamaHG: I kept on expecting it to get better as well, but it didn't. Not at all. It just flopped. It was so terrible.