Books that you have read that you are disappointed with....

[AliGrylls]

I am currently reading Alias Grace. Everyone said to me - it is brilliant you must read it. I am not saying it is bad, it just leaves me feeling a little cold and also usually once I am into a book I don't put it down. I am finding it far too easy to put it down.

Has anyone else ever experienced this before You know when everyone tells you that a book is amazing / brilliant and it doesn't live up to expectations?

Mr Pip... loved it til the end which was so awful it spoilt my holiday because I couldn't get rid of the images.

Having loved Birdsong, I found Engleby completely tedious and couldn't get into it at all.

John Banville's The sea... it was all just meh- whyever did it win?

I actually liked Mr Pip quite a lot. But I should be shot, as I like quite a bit of early McEwan too

I haven't read Mr Pip - would I like it? I only managed three pages of The Sea.

I will forgive you for the McEwan but only because I respect your taste in cakes!

Mr Pip was dire IMO. Really threadbare plot and character development, uninspiring prose and a few shocking images chucked in at the last minute.

Hmm... well- I am a lot less discerning than you Janeite

Oh and Captain Corelli - GAH!!! Tried maybe6 or 7 times (!) as everyone loved it and I thought it must be me! But I could not get past the pea in the ear. Every time.

Just finished Chalcot Crescent, the new Fay Weldon. Was really underwhelmed by it, sadly. However, I had just read After The Flood which reminded me just how much I worship and adore Margaret Atwood. Interesting to contrast two visions of the (near) future, albeit one slightly more extreme than the other. Have now gone back to Oryx and Crake which I was not gripped by at all, but may enjoy more with the 'hindsight' provided by ATF

Wuthering Heights.

Thats sevreal hours of my life I'll never get back and frankly could have just listened to Kate Bush and enjoyed it more.

Totally agree, Kew. Hated Cathy, thought Heathcliffe was an arrogant selfish twonk. Didn't give a monkey's what happened to any of them. Now, Kate Bush is a different story...

Midnight's children - couldn't get into that at all. Mr Rushdie's flowery prose and magical imagery had me shouting, "Yes all very clever but get on with the bloody story!"

Further to my previous post on this thread, I should say that I've now finished Her Fearful Symmetry and it was actually less disappointing than I first thought. There are many flaws, mostly to do with character development and a certain lack of realism when it comes to London life, but a lot of the writing is excellent.

CasaBevron (great name! ), I loved Oryx and Crake and found it totally consuming.

Funnily enough I loved the Book Thief, but hadn't heard any of the hype at the time which probably helped.

Atonement I absolutely hated; On Chesil Beach I found dire but unintentionally hilarious so kind of liked it in that respect.

I'm with you on Midnight's Children, knottylocks - that's exactly what I thought!

oryx and crake made me think of some bizarre red dwarf style plot i was def v about it.

a pity because, as already posted, i loved alias grace and also the handmaids tale and the robber bride.

That was one of the things I liked about it, Mayor , that it was so funny while being so packed full of disturbing ideas.

ChickieNobs

I did read it for my MA dissertation though, so was perhaps more likely to find it worthy of pontification in the first place.

i think if i knew it was going to be like the adventures of lister et al then i might have enjoyed it a bit more...instead i found myself constantly thinking eh?

maybe i will give it another whirl sometime.

currently reading margate of the marshes (john peel) v v g

On Chesil Beach is just boring and awful. I must admit I enjoyed TTW and Lovely Bones but I have a special loathing for Paul Coelho after dragging myself thriugh 'Veronika decides to die'. What a SHIT book that was. I exchange books with my mum, and we have a running joke that occasionally we slip in a complete and utter dud, so I gave her the Coelho. She phoned me up in hysterical laughter at just how abysmal it was, and made me read a Cecila Aherne book as revenge.

thanks Cyteen

Can confirm that I am loving Oryx and Crake this time round. Funny how some books can take a couple of readings before you 'get' them. I wouldn't have gone back to it if I hadn't read After the Flood I think, but am glad I did.
I think I found it tougher going the first time round partly because it comes from a male perspective and MA writes women so well. The background and hindsight that you get from After the Flood has helped me to channel Jimmy!
MayorNaze I would definitely recommend After the Flood if you haven't read it, much more like vintage Margaret Atwood and the female perspective is far more accessible. I think that quite often because her male characters are very much objectifiers of women they are harder to identify - and sympathise - with. ATF brings the whole thing down to a more human level.

Can you tell that I hear Margaret Atwood?

I know we're supposed to be talking about books we did't get, but if anyone wants a recommendation, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn is another strange one, dealing with genetic modification of a kind, but from a very different angle!

hear heart

Haha Casa, Geek Love is another one of my dissertation texts!

Great minds, eh?

Do I win a prize if I can guess another?

What was the subject of your dissertation if you don't mind me asking?

I'm still not writing it at the moment actually - it's about monstrous bodies in recent literature, so lots of stuff about the interplay of technology, language and physicality. Other stuff I'm looking at includes World War Z, Darwin's Radio/Darwin's Children, Middlesex...

Ooh, ooh I was going to say Middlesex!

Sound v interesting. Am currently struggling to fit in a Spanish GCSE around looking after a two-year-old but would love to return to studying lit at some stage. I can't help thinking that if I had my time again I would make so much more of the course than I did. What's that they say about education being wasted on the young?

On Chesil Beach has the most icky ejaculation scene I have ever read. Not a book I enjoyed.

I was disappointed by Oryx And Crake. Middlesex was good but I like The Virgin Suicides much, much more.

The John Peel thing really annoyed me - it just seemed like name dropping all the way through and whatshername's bits were v badly written I thought.