Popular/critically acclaimed books that you can't stand?

MissFlitworth

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro. Found the 'omg!!' twist to it eye rollingly thick and they were all such a pack of moany holes. Probably didn't enjoy it because it was all about my least favourite type of person - people who complain but do nothing to change their situation. It's been a while since I read it but there was something about his style of writing, some way he begins chapters that I can't for the life of me remember but irritated the hell out of me when I read any of his books.

emeraldstar

MissFlitworth wrote: »

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro. Found the 'omg!!' twist to it eye rollingly thick and they were all such a pack of moany holes. Probably didn't enjoy it because it was all about my least favourite type of person - people who complain but do nothing to change their situation. It's been a while since I read it but there was something about his style of writing, some way he begins chapters that I can't for the life of me remember but irritated the hell out of me when I read any of his books.

Terrible, IMO. It's been so long since I've read it that, tbh, I can barely remember what it was that I didn't like about it - unsympathetic characters, perhance - but, my gosh, that was a book that was a struggle to get through for me.

Harry Angstrom

emeraldstar wrote: »

Terrible, IMO. It's been so long since I've read it that, tbh, I can barely remember what it was that I didn't like about it - unsympathetic characters, perhance - but, my gosh, that was a book that was a struggle to get through for me.

The problem is, a lot of writers only have one good book in them. Ishiguro's was The Remains of the Day. They then try to recapture what they don't have anymore, ie one good idea.

Harry Angstrom

Hayte wrote: »

Conrad or Marlow or the framing narrator?

Conrad. He's quite possibly the most boring writer I've ever read. Unless there's something better than Nostromo, Typhoon and Heart of Darkness out there.

Frank Lee Midere

I like Never Let Me Go and if you think the protagonists could easily have done something about their situation you read it wrong. ( that's not all - the story operates at a deeper level - it's about how most humans accept their subaltern position in society, how they may feel pride in it which is why it is similar to Remains).

I didn't like Mantel's acclaimed Wolf Hall. And I read it when it was on the short list. I assumed it was a compromise vote but she's won again. I didn't like the writing, I didn't like Cromwell or find her internal dialog believable, and she massively overused pronouns. You had to re read her pragraghs to work out who the he taking to him is, who the he who just came in is, which he is talking to which him.

dx22

The Life of Pi - gave up after 1 chapter

LynnGrace

This is one from the 90's, Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend. It was very popular at the time. I tried and failed to read it.

GastroBoy

Can't stand any books by Ross O' Carroll Kelly. I just don't understand how people like that rubbish.

minnow

r3nu4l wrote: »

I'd disagree over the Wasp Factory, I loved that one, same with Catch-22

Me too, I loved both. Also really enjoyed the writing style of IQ84, it takes a while but is a beautiful read IMO.

coldcake

longshanks wrote: »

Shantaram.

Have to say I enjoyed this.

Ipso

GastroBoy wrote: »

Can't stand any books by Ross O' Carroll Kelly. I just don't understand how people like that rubbish.

Reported.

donkey_kong

GastroBoy wrote: »

Can't stand any books by Ross O' Carroll Kelly. I just don't understand how people like that rubbish.

Out of interest are you from South Dublin? Maybe those who aren't plugged into that bubble don't realise how good a parody it is? When the series was at the height of its popularity I was never into it but I revisited after several years in UCD and really enjoyed them.
As the series has progressed, I think its now at a stage that a new reader couldn't pick up the latest book and enjoy it, but existing fans are already invested in the characters and long running plots etc.

confusticated

LynnGrace wrote: »

The Book Thief, I read most of it, but I struggled. Two books I read that are popular, but I couldn't wait to send to the charity shop, Room and We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Have picked up The Slap a few times, and considered it, but still haven't read it.

Don't. One of the most pointless books I've ever read, supposed to open up all this discussion of rights and wrongs...but I didn't care about even one character in it.

Didn't like Catcher in the Rye either.

JohnMearsheimer

I disliked Shantaram, I've never come across a more unlikeable main character in a book. I wasn't mad about The Alchemist or Tuesdays With Morrie either.

On the other hand I really liked The Book Thief, The Road and Catch 22.

LynnGrace

confusticated wrote: »

Don't. One of the most pointless books I've ever read, supposed to open up all this discussion of rights and wrongs...but I didn't care about even one character in it.

Yes, I think the fact that I have picked it up, in bookshops, and left it down more than once, even when it is on a special offer, tells me I won't ever read it.

Hayte

Harry Angstrom wrote: »

Conrad. He's quite possibly the most boring writer I've ever read. Unless there's something better than Nostromo, Typhoon and Heart of Darkness out there.

Thats fair enough but I would encourage you to give it another shot.

Its really difficult to tell whether its Conrad, Conrad's framing narrator or Marlow who is speaking. In parts you can consider it almost biographical because the logistics of Marlow's journey are similar to one made by Conrad in 1889. The trips back and forth between London and Brussels. The first leg of the voyage from from Bordeaux to Boma, then from Boma to Matadi and from Matadi to Kinchassa.

But Marlow and Conrad are not the same person and their journey is different in alot of ways. Some of it is highly likely to be fabricated, other parts are skipped over or the time compressed or expanded. I don't think anyone knows his motivation for doing so.

It is highly unlikely that Conrad believed what Marlow (or the narrator) says about the pointless explosions in Matadi. They were building a railway and the purpose of that is clear when you see how arduous the voyage from Matadi to Kinchassa is on foot.

In the novel, Marlow (or the narrator) describes it as a grove of death, which is not far off periodical reports around that time period suggesting as many as 150 Congolese forced labourers were dying per day to smallpox and dysentery. But if you read Conrad's diary, the only bad thing he says about Matadi is that people habitually spoke ill of each other.

We know from Conrad's diary that it took him over a month to walk some 200 miles over rough terrain from Matadi to Nselemba and that his expedition was beset by illness. He mentions a man named Harou who was "vomiting bile in enormous quantities" and had to be carried in a hammock for part of the journey, the burden of which nearly resulted in a mutiny. But in Heart of Darkness, Marlow skips over the experience of this journey in only a few lines and shrugs it off as being largely uneventful.

The motivation for writing, the decision to stay behind multiple narrators and a possible alter ego are still a mystery to me, so I find it a fascinating puzzle. I think its wrong to say its a realist work too because of how unreliable every source of information is except for the loose structure of the voyage which is partially based on the author's first hand account.

I also find it difficult to read Heart of Darkness without also reading Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart". They are standalone works and very different in subject matter, tone and perspective but whenever you read about any experience of colonialism it is impossible to ignore the very skewed power relationship. "Things Fall Apart" shifts the balance of power by giving a wronged people the right to represent their own history and their own fate. It makes people of marionettes and it is brilliant in a similar way that Jean Rhys makes a human being of Bertha, the Creole woman in "Jane Eyre" who is disturbingly imprisoned in Rochester's home.

I dunno. I find that the subject matter and the method has stayed in my thoughts for a long time. I don't think it will ever go away.

cloudatlas

'The life of Pi', I found it to be very flat, stupidly simplistic style and unchallenging. Khaled Hosseini 'The Kite Runner'. I've read widely and watched a lot of foreign film so I am unsurprised by the direction that this book took, I didn't think it was paced well and it was quite dull.

prettygurrly

Swiper the fox wrote: »

I'll get the ball rolling with a couple I've read(and finished) recently
The Wasp Factory had it's moments but mostly it was rubbish in my opinion

When I saw the title of your thread that's the book that came into my head...I still don't know if I particularly liked it or not. Years since I read it and I was sad when the author died but nyeh

prettygurrly

My contribution is Midnight Children by Salman Rushdi...I have about 150 pages left but haven't touched it since I got back from hols at the start of September...maybe a long flight to Buenos Aires will let me finally finish it and then I can leave it in a hostel somewhere. His style of writing is just so unbelievably tedious and I still can't quite remember what's happened...350 pages in!

Mince Pie

100 hundred years of solitude. I could feel myself going grey reading it.

Hayte

prettygurrly wrote: »

My contribution is Midnight Children by Salman Rushdi...I still can't quite remember what's happened...350 pages in!

Neither can Saleem (even if he tries to convince you otherwise). Thats what makes this comment so amusing.

Harry Angstrom

Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Pure rubbish.

Swiper the fox

Harry Angstrom wrote: »

Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Pure rubbish.

I tried to like that and forced myself to finish but it wasn't my cup of tea. What are the front runners here? I've seen life of pi mentioned a few times but it seems they never got past the introduction part, not really a fair review IMO, I loved it when I read it first and it held up fairly well when I re-read it last year. On the Road and the Catcher in the Rye have a few nominations also, as does the book thief which I haven't read.

vitani

donkey_kong wrote: »

I recently reread Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, I think it has aged very badly.

I don't think it was ever that good, tbh. I don't know if the problem was bad writing or bad translation but I've always been surprised that it was rated so highly.

EuropeanSon

Don't get the hate for 1Q84. Thought it was very interesting, if a little indulgent.

Murakami's best books are really fantastic, though. If he got a Nobel, it wouldn't be for 1Q84, it'd be more for The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and the short story collections, I'd imagine.

I didn't like Crime and Punishment. The Idiot is far better.

George Martin's last two Song of Ice and Fire books were pretty poor, too.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I tried a few times to read Kerouac's Big Sur. It's just a load of nonsense. I got a fair bit into it the last time I tried but I could not pick out any kind of story or point or sense.

poundapunnet

Asbury Park wrote: »

Beloved by Toni Morrison. This book's presence on the reading list persuaded me to ditch English at Uni - that's how bad I think it is. I concluded there was nothing these people could teach me about good literature if they thought this novel was worthy of study.

Read an article once that described her as "creative writing class literature", oh how we laughed.

Kevin Barry's last short story collection I thought was very patchy, really disappointed, I liked City of Bohane though.

Agree on Life of Pi, would add any and all Austen to the list.

Neil Gaiman I think is really over-rated, I appreciate that it's not pretending to be high minded literary fiction or anything but it's boring as hell, really annoyingly repetitive in style and theme too. Chuck Fightclub (don't care about him enough to google how to spell his stupid last name) goes in that camp too. Not aware of anything apart from Fight Club of his that's worth reading, and I'd say FC is showing its age by now too.

For people saying they didn't like The Great Gatsby, I really would recommend reading it again or getting a copy with a good introduction, it sounds poncy but once you know what you're looking for it's a really rewarding read.

frenchmartini

nice thread!

For me, Room by Emma Donoghue. Cliched and uninspiring. Unmoving and pedestrian. No idea what the fuss was about. For me, very ordinary and very forgettable.

Anne McCarthy's Pern Chronicles (the first book, there were at least 20 after that), I couldn't get beyond the first couple of chapters. What nearly killed me was the almost identical character names, with maybe just one letter separating each of her lead characters. Life's too short....

The Small Hand by Susan Hill. My god, what was she thinking? To write something as special as The Woman In Black (very spooky) to this claptrap.

JackH14

1984 by George Orwell.

Maybe it's just me but, besides the fact that the world he depicts is interesting and political, I found the plot and the characters quite dull. Anyone else agree?

Harry Angstrom

JackH14 wrote: »

1984 by George Orwell.

Maybe it's just me but, besides the fact that the world he depicts is interesting and political, I found the plot and the characters quite dull. Anyone else agree?

I agree with you. Orwell had great ideas but he was a poor enough storyteller. 1984 is fairly tedious, to be honest.