Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

metrovelvet

Moby Dick
Finnegans Wake
Anything by Louisa May Alcott
Anything by DH Lawrence

emeraldstar

metrovelvet wrote: »

Moby Dick
Finnegans Wake
Anything by Louisa May Alcott
Anything by DH Lawrence

Aw, this makes me sad. Little Women is one of my childhood favourites. Actually scrap that, it's one of my absolute favourites.

carrie19

I'm pretty sure people HAVE mentioned this but:
All of those crappy Twilight books. I mean really now.

And please dont talk to me about the movies.
-They put the human race to shame..

squeakyduck

The Jane Austen Book Club. terrible is not the word!

UpCork

squeakyduck wrote: »

The Jane Austen Book Club. terrible is not the word!

Awful book. I remember being stuck reading that book on a train journey from Dublin. Had read all the other books I brought on holiday with me and this was all that was left. It was so crap - just cliched and crap

vincentdunne

The Abduction, Mark Gimenez. So bad that I kept reading to find the punchline ..... there was'nt one. It was not actually a 'Spinal Tap' at all.

wellboy76

leegrace wrote: »

Pretty Little Liars..

Sounds like research Lee!!!

Pamplemousse19

Does anyone find classics or some of the books to be found in "Top 100" lists to be completely overrated? I tried to read Lolita but found it impossible to pay attention. The description is very nice but the story just drags on! It's obviously disturbingly perverted too but I think that was probably its point.
Also, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie was an impossible read- really tedious and confusing at times.

kerash

Pamplemousse19 wrote: »

Does anyone find classics or some of the books to be found in "Top 100" lists to be completely overrated? I tried to read Lolita but found it impossible to pay attention. The description is very nice but the story just drags on! It's obviously disturbingly perverted too but I think that was probably its point.

Glad you said that I though I was the only one! I had exactly the same problem with Lolita. Just a bore! :P

Boo Radley

Geranium wrote: »

Terry PRATchet.

Ha. Clever.

'The Third Twin' by Ken Follett is pretty badly written. A series of unbelievable coincidences with an unusual lack of realism when addressing quite serious issues, such as the best friend of a rape victim hanging out with the rape suspect. Leaves the reader bemused and a little baffled.

Boo Radley

Feck, I almost forgot that 'Codex' by Lev Grossman exsited. It was truly the worst piece of story telling I've ever had the misfortune of reading. It pretends to be a mystery for the length of the book only to result in the mystery being there is no mystery!

After spending a week reading to and from work on the tube I threw it against a wall in disgust (I thankfully finished it in the privacy of my room).

A definate never read.

Dorcha

“The Da Vinci Code”: My niece had a copy of it and was raving about it, so I borrowed it and read. Good enough in itself as an adventure/mystery story. I got the impression that Brown deliberately extended it near the end to achieve the proper volume size for a “blockbuster”. There were too many twists and u-turns in the plot for my particular liking and I was getting bored near the end of it. I also disliked his gimmick of a pre-story list of “Facts”, which pointed to a conspiracy within the church.

Anything Stephen King writes, fiction or non-fiction. I am a person who always tries to read a book completely before criticising it, but in spite of many attempts, I have never been able to finish a King work of fiction, either novels or short stories. His writing is of a juvenile standard and his plots childish. My brain just starts to turn to jelly after only one chapter. After one such chapter of “Pet Cemetary”, I made a guess at to the ending, and flicked to the last page. Oh, yes. What was the point in reading two or three hundred pages of mind numbing prose for that?

Writers of boring, turgid prose: Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift.

fionav3

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. I just finished it and it was a complete and utter snoozefest. Painful to read and I kept wanting to put it down and never pick it up again.

sundaybrunch

It's taken me three months to get through Dan Brown's latest offering 'The Lost Symbol'. I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons but this one is just ludicrous...

sundaybrunch

fionav3 wrote: »

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. I just finished it and it was a complete and utter snoozefest. Painful to read and I kept wanting to put it down and never pick it up again.

I don't agree with this at all, Birdsong is an absolute triumph with such critical acclaim the play version is now debuting in the West End.

fionav3

sundaybrunch wrote: »

I don't agree with this at all, Birdsong is an absolute triumph with such critical acclaim the play version is now debuting in the West End.

One of my friends loves it as well, it's one of her favourite books but I just found it so dull. Different strokes for different folks; I adore Catcher in the Rye and I know people who hate it.

Doctor C

Have to say I did enjoy Dan Brown's "the lost symbol" even though it was about 150 pages too long.

longshanks

Shantaram, what an absolute cunt of a book, written by a lying scumbag. Overly long and brain meltingly boring. Two (at least) of the most interesting characters in the book are completely made up, which for a supposed true story is taking the piss.

MonkeyBalls

Agreed with sundaybrunch. Birdsong is one of the best novels I've ever read. Just goes to show.

MonkeyBalls

One to avoid: "Fear Nothing" by, Dean Koontz

The novel revolves around the aptly named Christopher Snow, a man who, owing to a rare skin condition, cannot be exposed to daylight. Acquainted with the night, he sees things that the rest of the sleeping world does not.

The character is likeable. He takes his vampiric existence in his stride, knowing that moping will lead only to wasteful regret. He's thoughtful, good-natured. This is the novel's strong point: Christopher is firmly on our side as the plot kick starts.
Which is unfortunately right where it begins its chugging descent into lame, poorly conceived absurdity. Christopher discovers that his parents' mysterious deaths, at a sinister top-secret research facility, may not have been accidental. He discovers a link between their deaths and super-intelligent monkeys who have been roaming around at night attacking people (remove "super-intelligent" and you have a description of your typical post-nightclub Irish scumbag). Christopher sets out to uncover the secret hidden truth, and finds himself enshrouded in a shadowy conspiracy world, with all sorts of evil and lies and deceptions and dangers lurking in the shadows, played out in the perpetual darkness of his existence.

The story doesn't feel well thought out, as though Koontz came up with the idea in the wake of a feverish demented dream involving monkeys and conspiracies which seemed really cool when he was dreaming it, so he thought he'd try it out on paper, but half way through realised it was complete bollocks and he couldn't quite finish it with any kind of coherency. So he shrugged, remembered that he's written about forty novels so what the hell, and finished what he started, badly.

Amazotheamazing

longshanks wrote: »

Shantaram, what an absolute cunt of a book, written by a lying scumbag. Overly long and brain meltingly boring. Two (at least) of the most interesting characters in the book are completely made up, which for a supposed true story is taking the piss.

Meh, I don't think it's especially believable but it's a decent yarn.

Love the bit where the multi-millionaire drug dealer can find no one better suited to pretend to be American in Afghanistan than a two time Australian junkie who's only worthwhile ability is being handy with a first aid kit. Clearly the Indian Mafia aren't fully up to speed on the whole mercenary thing.

That bit, and the bit where he cured an entire slum with two lozenges and some cotton wool, really had me doubting the veracity of the story.

fionav3

Okay, I've forgotten to mention this but Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Shockingly dull and one of my biggest disappointments, really thought I'd love it!

longshanks

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

Meh, I don't think it's especially believable but it's a decent yarn.

Love the bit where the multi-millionaire drug dealer can find no one better suited to pretend to be American in Afghanistan than a two time Australian junkie who's only worthwhile ability is being handy with a first aid kit. Clearly the Indian Mafia aren't fully up to speed on the whole mercenary thing.

That bit, and the bit where he cured an entire slum with two lozenges and some cotton wool, really had me doubting the veracity of the story.

Its not even a decent yarn though, all those passages of philosophical nonsesnse that pollute every conversation he has. Also, the parts you mentioned along with all the rest of it. Jesus it was bad.
I had a look at his website when i got back (i read it when i was away on holiday), it led me to despise the man even more. Long hair and bald and leather trousers. Need i say more?

Amazotheamazing

longshanks wrote: »

Its not even a decent yarn though, all those passages of philosophical nonsesnse that pollute every conversation he has. Also, the parts you mentioned along with all the rest of it. Jesus it was bad.
I had a look at his website when i got back (i read it when i was away on holiday), it led me to despise the man even more. Long hair and bald and leather trousers. Need i say more?

You need to be able to stand back from it abit and laugh, the guy couldn't possibly love himself more.

Tbf, it was given to me by a Clareman I met in India, I enjoyed the nonsense of it. The bit where he goes to the village was particularly amazing, oh and when his friend resurrects, good trick that.

Kate P

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller's Wife.

I read it for a book club and by the end of it, wanted to club the author for ridiculousness, pretension and pathetically incredible plot twists. And it had started positively enough...

That said, she's written a breathtakingly beautiful illustrated book called The Adventuress. Long on gorgeous visual images, short on words, maybe it's what she should stick to?

DonOcelot

Recently read Peter James's "Prophecy".
It started well, strange events, odd coincidences etc... aspects that kept me turning the pages. I even liked the main character, Frannie. But then it started getting silly, people were dying left, right and center in such bizarre and gruesome ways, which was bad enough, but the characters reactions, the way they seemed unrealistically oblivious or unaffected by them.
And then the ending, it was just plain ridiculous and ruined whatever positives the book had going for it.

So yeah, avoid it.

Grievous

Has anyone mentioned the Twilight books?

I suppose the writer can't be blamed for their popularity(Kids will buy what they like, taste and an abiltity to discern the objective merits of a good writer come later in life) amongst teenagers and kids, but she is responsible for writing these terrible, hacky, soppy novels.

H. Flashman

Rule of four - this came to me highly recommended as 'the smart man's da Vinci Code' or whatever ... turned out more of a poor man's da Vinci code - utter snooze fest AVOID

The Gathering - less said about it the better

The Historian - Yawn

as for somebody's suggestion of Birdsong ... I thought the first half of the book was pure brilliance and at times in the second half it was good too but I guess I could understand someone getting board/depressed with all the trench warfare stuff

Grievous

An intellectuals Da Vinci Code would be Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Ego.

Check that out.

marienbad

Anything by Dan Brown, no wait, I struggled through 'The da Vinci code' long before the hype and it was rubbish then and at least saved me from reading any more of his crap and all those other rip-off Knights Templar/Rosicrucian/grail books that we are inundated with.

have to agree with the poster on 'Foucault's Pendulum'. a true classic