Critically acclaimed books you hate?

jakesgirl

missmatty wrote: »

Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Had it for the LC and absolutely HATED it, most depressing pointless book ever

I totally agree! pointless misery and didnt care about any of the characters.

jakesgirl

Slugs wrote: »

The Twilight series. What a load of putrile sh1te. I'm never going near them again. I have a feeling I lost iq points reading it...

Absolutly second that! Self-indulgent, moody and inarticulate teenage morons--I wish Bella had just DIED in the first book so we wouldnt have had to endure the three that came next

Red Hand

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.

lemon_sherbert

Jeremiah 33 3 wrote: »

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.

Oh god, that book had me completely traumatised as a teenager

emeraldstar

Jeremiah 33 3 wrote: »

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.

Ugh! Awful book. I couldn't stand any of the characters and it was so bloody drawn out.

Algernon

Lord of the Rings.

Naidylady

I thought it was going to be really thought provoking but found my mind wandering through parts! I don't understand why people think it is so amazing.

panda100

Orlaladuck wrote: »

I was just wondering where the hell is Stephanie Meyer's atrocity! I have 13 year old illiterate cousins who can write a better book than her. Her writing style is awful, she abuses the thesaurus and then all her characters are Mary Sues! I saw an article in the Independent two weeks ago 'it's promoting chastity!' as well as waiting for 'The One' that's not human, bestiality, pedophilia And abusive relationships.

You may enjoy this article about Twilight a bit better,I reckon its pretty spot on .( WARNING- There is spoilers for the third,fourth and fifth book in ths article! )http://bitchmagazine.org/article/bite-me-or-dont


'The curious incident of the Dog at night time' did nothing for me,I think it won numerous awards, for what I cannot fathom!

Persiancowboy

Surprised at the couple of negative views of McEwan's Atonement - I would rank it as one of the 5 books I would have to have with me if stranded on a desert island.

Two books I wouldn't use to light a fire are The Little Friend - Donna Tart's hugely disappointing follow up to the brilliant The Secret History. The other gets my prize as the most over-praised and over-hyped novel in the past few years.....Netherland by Cork-born Joseph O'Neill ....the most boring heap of ****e I have had the misfortune to read in a long long time yet the literary critics fell over themselves in lavishing praise on it.

fontanalis

jakesgirl wrote: »

Absolutly second that! Self-indulgent, moody and inarticulate teenage morons--I wish Bella had just DIED in the first book so we wouldnt have had to endure the three that came next

Twilight was critically acclaimed?

Orlaladuck

Panda110 wrote: »

You may enjoy this article about Twilight a bit better,I reckon its pretty spot on .( WARNING- There is spoilers for the third,fourth and fifth book in ths article! )http://bitchmagazine.org/article/bite-me-or-dont


That article was great . I read all the series since I was going through the whole 'zomg twilight' phase but after reading a few not so nice truths I realised then I re-read abit/saw the movies and was just like..'this is crap!I can write better than this!'

Monkeybonkers

It's interesting to see what some people enjoy while others think it's a pile of ****e. Shows that every single book is completely subjective to the individual readers taste. Hence why I never listen to critics.

Denerick

Monkeybonkers wrote: »

It's interesting to see what some people enjoy while others think it's a pile of ****e. Shows that every single book is completely subjective to the individual readers taste. Hence why I never listen to critics.

Probably a wise choice. Though I do enjoy reading Robert Harris' column in the Sunday Times culture magazine, but thats mainly because he slates books I'll probably never read anyway

Col!n

I must say i really enjoyed The Road and Life Of Pi.

I found The Great Gatsby underwhelming, and the Lord Of the Rings long-winded give me The Hobbit anyday.

Irvine welsh needs a thesaurus every second word is either f**k or c**t.

sexdwarf

Stevieo wrote: »

That said, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is BALLS...

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

willietherock

At Swim Two Birds was a big steaming pile of horse manure. I don't know how I forced myself to finish it.

SecondTime

Anything by Dickens, I just can't stand them.
Nearly lost the will to live trying to read The Lord of the Rings - gave up, never finished it
Wuthering Heights - just get on with the story FFS
I have a soft spot for Catcher - and I agree with others here, it depends on how young you were when you first read it. I'm afraid to re-read it now in case I don't like it anymore
I loved Atonement and I thought On Chesil Beach was close to perfection. But I really didn't like Enduring Love.

Malari

SecondTime wrote: »

I have a soft spot for Catcher - and I agree with others here, it depends on how young you were when you first read it. I'm afraid to re-read it now in case I don't like it anymore

I'm thinking the same way! Thought about reading it again when old JD died recently but I'm afraid of ruining it. I was probably a horrible 14 year old and wouldn't think the same way at all now

I recently read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. Don't know if it was acclaimed exactly but loads of people seem to have been reading it a few years ago. I thought it was tripe. Meant to be like the Da Vinci Code, which actually moved along and didn't take up too much of your life, but this one was dragging so much the only thing that kept me going was the Cathar history. Bloody hell, I even laughed at some of the reactions of the characters, they were so incongruous.

Bootsy.

I absolutely loved Life Of Pi! Brilliant book.

No Country For Old Men on the other hand, absolutely bored me to tears... "He went here and did this, then he went there and did that, then he drove over here for something else, then zzz zzz zzz ..."

I only got three chapters into The Satanic Verses before getting distracted but the writing is brilliant so I will persevere one of these days.

TheBandit

I wasn't a big fan of "on the road". I thought it was a good book but the characters annoyed the hell out of me. A lot of them came off as pretentious pricks who i could not be around for more than 5 minutes without wanting to smack them, especially Dean....(shakes fist)

SecondTime

Malari wrote: »

I'm thinking the same way! Thought about reading it again when old JD died recently but I'm afraid of ruining it. I was probably a horrible 14 year old and wouldn't think the same way at all now

I recently read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. Don't know if it was acclaimed exactly but loads of people seem to have been reading it a few years ago. I thought it was tripe. Meant to be like the Da Vinci Code, which actually moved along and didn't take up too much of your life, but this one was dragging so much the only thing that kept me going was the Cathar history. Bloody hell, I even laughed at some of the reactions of the characters, they were so incongruous.

Totally agree about that Labyrinth rubbish. I had to read it for a book club about 2years ago and I have a rule that if someone doesn't finish the book (even if they hate it) well then I take less heed of their criticism/opinion on that particular book-well it nearly made me cry having to stick to that myself:eek: But I would like to go see Carcasonne:)

Whippersnapper

Have tried reading Shadow of the Wind and just cannot stick with it. It annoys me with all the impending twists just for the sake of having twists.

TheBandit

Confab wrote: »

Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood. Very derivative and extremely disturbing... not violent, but the content is nasty. I stopped halfway through and tore it up. Sickening stuff.

I really enjoyed this book, good plot/characters, humorous too. I agree with you that it could get pretty disturbing at times though

SecondTime

Whippersnapper wrote: »

Have tried reading Shadow of the Wind and just cannot stick with it. It annoys me with all the impending twists just for the sake of having twists.

Yeah, I didn't hate it but I was really disappointed cos it was a bit lame and convoluted for no good reason and it came recommended by people who tend to have similar tastes to mine

Malari

SecondTime wrote: »

Totally agree about that Labyrinth rubbish. I had to read it for a book club about 2years ago and I have a rule that if someone doesn't finish the book (even if they hate it) well then I take less heed of their criticism/opinion on that particular book-well it nearly made me cry having to stick to that myself:eek: But I would like to go see Carcasonne:)

Yeah, I try and finish every book I start too!

The author's adoration of Carcassonne was unfounded in my opinion. It's a world heritage site so worth seeing but it's incredibly commercialised. It should have been a warning to me before reading the book! :pac:

Whippersnapper

SecondTime wrote: »

Yeah, I didn't hate it but I was really disappointed cos it was a bit lame and convoluted for no good reason and it came recommended by people who tend to have similar tastes to mine

Did you finish it? I feel like I should because of the recommendations I got. I think I got about ten chapters in.

buck65

These book clubs are all a bit nonsensical I think. I was even involved in setting up one on Boards but they really are a hard thing to get right. Everybody has such different tastes.
I especially am wary of such books as Labyrinth.

Malari

buck65 wrote: »

These book clubs are all a bit nonsensical I think. I was even involved in setting up one on Boards but they really are a hard thing to get right. Everybody has such different tastes.
I especially am wary of such books as Labyrinth.

The only advantage I can see to reading books like that is to highlight the quality of writing in other books! I mean you can read some really boring classics sometimes, but at least the author was able write well :cool:

I like the idea of online book clubs that you can opt in and out of on a monthly basis. My mom is in a club and some of the stuff that gets selected is truly awful stuff. I'd hate to be obliged to read some of it.

SecondTime

Whippersnapper wrote: »

Did you finish it? I feel like I should because of the recommendations I got. I think I got about ten chapters in.

I did finish it, it's a very rare book that I don't finish - I'm mostly thinking of Lord of the Rings!!

buck65 wrote: »

These book clubs are all a bit nonsensical I think. I was even involved in setting up one on Boards but they really are a hard thing to get right. Everybody has such different tastes.
I especially am wary of such books as Labyrinth.

Well with our one the protocol is that whoever's turn it is to host it gets to choose the book. I've read things I would never have picked, some I've loved, some not so much the odd one I've hated. But that's what I like about the book club - well the wine & food are pretty good too:D

Morlar

I think Brett Easton Ellis & Chuck Palahniuk have written amazing books but also some that were completely over-rated/didn't work.

This one here The Arcades Project is the all time most over-rated piece of **** I have ever read. Drivel & insane disconnected ramblings pure and simple.

Amazon.com Review
You could spend years trying to read Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project--after all, he spent much of the last 13 years of his life doing the research. When he committed suicide in 1940, he destroyed his copy of the manuscript, and so for decades the work was believed lost. But another copy turned up, and Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin have translated it into English. It is a complex, fragmentary work--more a series of notes for a book than a book itself--which probes the culture of the Paris arcades (a cross between covered streets and shopping malls) of the mid-19th century and the flaneur ("the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets" in an "anamnestic intoxication [that] ... feeds on the sensory data taking shape before his eyes but often possesses itself of abstract knowledge--indeed, of dead facts--as something experienced and lived through"). The Arcades Project is, frankly, so dense a work that one hardly has enough time to glimpse fleetingly at its sections--over 100 pages of notes on Baudelaire alone!--before mentioning it to you, though one certainly looks forward to the opportunity to peruse it at leisure. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Because he was Jewish and a Marxist in Nazi Germany, history was against the great literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). His writings were left scattered in ephemeral publications, went unpublished or were simply left unfinished when, in 1940, the critic committed suicide because he believed that the Gestapo was about to seize him. In Germany, his works have been compiled and scrupulously edited, and now, at last, American readers too have access to his final, great unfinished work in an edition that is both well translated and helpfully annotated by the editor of the German edition, Rolf Tiedemann. In 1927, Benjamin began taking notes for a book that would critique the cultural, public, artistic and commercial life of Paris, a city Benjamin thought of as the "capital of the nineteenth century." The arcades of the title are the city's glass-covered shopping malls dating from that era. This edition is comprised of the fastidious notes he made for this never-completed study. Essentially, Benjamin was planning to write a prehistory of the 20th century. The lively arcades--colorful scenes of public mixing, modern shopping and quotidian activities of all sorts--figure as a focusing device. His ambition was to integrate a picture including advertising, architecture, department store shopping, fashion, prostitution, city planning, literature, bourgeois luxuries, slums, public transit, photography and much more. His perspective is largely Marxist, but not in any conventional or dogmatic sense. Benjamin's chief virtue is an uncanny originality of vision and insight that transcends the constraints of ideology. (Dec.)