Anyone regret reading a book?

kunst nugget

Day Lewin wrote: »

He WHAT? How, how?

Well, there'd be a lot of white dust on them and he'd roll up a fiver to help him suck the dust up his nose until the mirrors were spotless.

lbc2019

Day Lewin wrote: »

He WHAT? How, how?

with bill.

endacl

Gravelly wrote: »

As a father, I found The Road extremely depressing.

As a reader, I found it irritatating. Not the story. The ending. Why not 10 pages earlier, or 10000 pages later?

Which is the point of the story, I suppose...

Ipso

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Left Behind. The plot was bad enough to begin with but it's also incredibly badly explained. There's one paragraph where a woman offers someone a lift home. He says no thanks. in the next sentence he's getting out of her car and thanking her for the lift. It completely skips any mention of him changing his mind about taking the lift from her.

That's just one example. The book is full of things that make no sense. I think I only read about a third of it before I couldn't take any more.

You do know the intended audience believes thatbstuff is going to heppen?

pleas advice

Moby Dick

Duchamp

A couple:

'A Child Called It' by Dave Pelzer - an autobiography of his experiences of child abuse at the hands of his mother, and 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' by Dee Brown - laying out the treatment of Native Americans in the 19th Century.

Both heart breaking reads, I'll never forget passages from either of them. I don't think I could ever read 'A Child Called It' again

Gimme A Pound

Yeah The Road left me feeling so empty - I knew it would be grim but crikey... Don't regret reading it though.

Gimme A Pound

Duchamp wrote: »

'A Child Called It' by Dave Pelzer - an autobiography of his experiences of child abuse at the hands of his mother

Oh I read an interview with him, which had an accompanying review and summary of the book, references to certain parts etc. Dear God... I couldn't bring myself to read that book as it just seems too horrific, but I got a good gist. That evil woman. :mad:

Posy

'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry. A great book set during The Emergency in India. Well written, good plot, well-rounded characters.

-For one thing, there is a disturbing scene of murder/torture that stayed with me for a good while after reading it.
-Also, just nothing can ever go right for the characters in this book- they are just downtrodden people being kicked when they're down over and over again.
I thought the characters were well developed and got drawn into the tapestry of their story- I found myself rooting for them and finished the book with a general aura of sadness and dissatisfaction.

Excellent book, but depressed the hell out of me.

Duchamp

Meadow Gorgeous Comet wrote: »

Oh I read an interview with him, which had an accompanying review and summary of the book, references to certain parts etc. Dear God... I couldn't bring myself to read that book as it just seems too horrific, but I got a good gist. That evil woman. :mad:

Yeh, it's utterly brutal. Not only his mothers abuse, but his father not intervening. He eventually got out of the situation, but one bit that sticks in my mind, is him realising later that he was the lucky one, as his younger siblings were left in the situation and caught the abuse when he was no longer there.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Joseph O'Connor, Redemption Falls.

Such a disappointing follow up to the epic Star of the Sea.

TheRepentent

Meadow Gorgeous Comet wrote: »

Yeah The Road left me feeling so empty - I knew it would be grim but crikey... Don't regret reading it though.

All his books are like that..Blood Meridian was brutal ,viciously violent and written in a very weird style. Not one character had any redeeming traits.

A few books left me messed up for a short time but in the long run I was very glad to have read them. The most obvious of these was The Naked Lunch which does a good job of making you view humanity as nothing more than producers of sh*t, semen, piss and vomit - but in the long run that book and many books from the "Beat Generation" formed in me a core of hope for humanity in contrast to the content.

Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy just - change me I think. It is just a light comedy book really but it instilled in me a view of how ludicrous life and people - and most of their concerns and agendas and motivations - actually are. Not sure I "regret" reading it as such but I often wonder would my view of the world be much more settled without it.

Funny most of the books listed on the thread I actually quite liked and never regretted, from the road, to Moby Dick, to Catcher in the Rye. I think often _when_ you read a book is important though. The Catcher in the Rye for example I am glad I read when I was a teenager. Do not think I would appreciate it now. The Road I am glad came to me when I was myself an adult and a parent. Would not have appreciated it as much as a teen or college student.

As for Moby Dick - I want to re-read that one. But I am waiting for Patrick Stewart to do the audio book.

Eggs For Dinner

Meadow Gorgeous Comet wrote: »

Yeah The Road left me feeling so empty - I knew it would be grim but crikey... Don't regret reading it though.

The Road is literally the only book that I wasn't able to put down until I had finished it. Unreal reading experience

mariaalice

mariaalice wrote: »

Not because it was dreadful but because it was disturbing, toying with reading If This Is a Man Survival in Auschwitz) is a memoir by Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi.

Read it, it's my favorite book. It's rough at times but well worth it. Everyone should read it.

facehugger99

The World According to Garp by Irving.

Pretentious twaddle where every character is annoying as fcuk.

daheff

The Hobbit. well cant claim to have'read' the book.... got about halfway and gave up. so much sh*te & waffle..... with some kinda story hidden in there.

put me off watching the films

Day Lewin

daheff wrote: »

The Hobbit. well cant claim to have'read' the book.... got about halfway and gave up. so much sh*te & waffle..... with some kinda story hidden in there.

put me off watching the films

The film is nothing like the story.

"The Hobbit" is a children's book, originally written by the author for his own kids, bit by bit. A light-hearted book, with some funny scenes, talking animals etc. And a serious plot twist too.

When Jackson had finished making "Lord of the Rings" he must have decided that the public love battles like video-games!
- so, why doesn't he make a film of the Hobbit, like a Prequel, and simply fill it with video-game battles that go on and on and ON?
It was a terrible film that I regret paying money for: but the original book should be viewed as a kid's story-book; fresh and innocent.

Ah I just remembered the Spellsinger books. Remember thinking after it "What kind of thinly veiled tribute to bestiality sex did I just read". Not _bad_ books per se. Just the author has some seriously messed up stuff going on.

The J Stands for Jay

The Pheasant2 wrote: »

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet

Was initially absorbed by the premise and the setting. Over a thousand pages later and the whole thing was poorly written with predictable plot and paper thin characters.

May have to revise my rule of always seeing a book out to the end for tomes >1000 pages in the future.

Read the blurb just now. Nope. Wouldn't even entertain starting to read this.

BeerWolf

Some fanfics...

/shudders

valoren

Day Lewin wrote: »

The film is nothing like the story.

"The Hobbit" is a children's book, originally written by the author for his own kids, bit by bit. A light-hearted book, with some funny scenes, talking animals etc. And a serious plot twist too.

When Jackson had finished making "Lord of the Rings" he must have decided that the public love battles like video-games!
- so, why doesn't he make a film of the Hobbit, like a Prequel, and simply fill it with video-game battles that go on and on and ON?
It was a terrible film that I regret paying money for: but the original book should be viewed as a kid's story-book; fresh and innocent.

The Peter Jackson adaptations are a cinematic example of the inverse square law.

He originally pitched the Lord of the Rings as two movies but New Line decided that there was sufficient material in the books to actually warrant 3 films. Jackson was ecstatic. He, Fran Walsh and Philippa Bowens actually had to drop material from the books e.g. Beorn and the Scouring of the Shire which upset fans of the book. As Jackson himself put it "..this could actually go on and on and on". As such, over 3 very long films the subjective quality could be consistently strong as a consequence of the book being such a strong 'source' material.

The opposite happened with The Hobbit movies. The source wasn't strong enough to warrant a trilogy. It was a children's book. It was sufficient for one long movie, not three but New Line wanted to follow the $ucce$$ formula from the original trilogy and the filmmakers had to drum up second rate, weak material to the detriment of the overall quality of three long movies.



Think of S as "The Lord of the Rings" with r as The Fellowship of the Ring movie. You get to make a rich, thematic movie but there is sufficient strength from S to allow 2r (The Two Towers) and 3r (Return of the King) to receive sufficient intensity from S with the subjective quality holding over time. The Hobbit simply didn't have enough strength in S to sustain it over 2r and 3r per above. If it was only done with r it would have been a classic film. So when someone says the Hobbit films were crap, just tell them "well that's the inverse square law for you". The plot and the running times were, as Bilbo himself might put it "....thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread"

topper75

mariaalice wrote: »

The bible is a very interesting book full of allegory and myth.

There is no hope of understanding western culture without reading it.
As they say in Irish - Tá siad fite fuaite lena chéile. Whether you like it or not.
Nobody would be so dumb as to study Arabic culture and utterly ignore the Koran.

I was not really a novel man, more non-fiction. I got gifted Dermot Bolger's The Valparaiso Voyage years back. Haven't touched another novel since.

AudreyHepburn

pauliebdub wrote: »

I've just finished Gone Girl and found the ending very unsatisfying and just implausible.

Agreed although I loved the book as a whole. I think the whole point of it was the none of the characters were particularly likable.

The one book I regret reading entirely is The Road - so bleak and depressing and the film was even worse.

topper75

valoren wrote: »

The Peter Jackson adaptations ... it would have been a classic film.

I very much sensed this at the time, but I love the spelled out explanation of what went wrong!

I foolishly tried to get girlfriend interested by bringing her to the third Hobbit movie. As she slumped down in her seat with boredom I could see her estimation of me going down in unison.

quickbeam

valoren wrote: »

The opposite happened with The Hobbit movies. The source wasn't strong enough to warrant a trilogy. It was a children's book. It was sufficient for one long movie, not three but New Line wanted to follow the $ucce$$ formula from the original trilogy and the filmmakers had to drum up second rate, weak material to the detriment of the overall quality of three long movies.

Nice analysis. Only one thing I'd correct is that the Hobbit book is so short, you couldn't have even made a long movie out of it. It could have made a nice 90 minute movie though.

quickbeam

On topic (at least the topic that this thread has evolved into, as I don't think the OP just meant for us to mention hated books).

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Left Behind. The plot was bad enough to begin with but it's also incredibly badly explained. There's one paragraph where a woman offers someone a lift home. He says no thanks. in the next sentence he's getting out of her car and thanking her for the lift. It completely skips any mention of him changing his mind about taking the lift from her.

That's just one example. The book is full of things that make no sense. I think I only read about a third of it before I couldn't take any more.

Though an entirely different genre of book, the above description reminded me of the same sort of thing happening in Master & Commander which I read recently. I found it utterly impossible to figure out where or what was happening at any given time. I have serious disinterest in continuing with the series.

beveragelady

quickbeam wrote: »

Though an entirely different genre of book, the above description reminded me of the same sort of thing happening in Master & Commander which I read recently. I found it utterly impossible to figure out where or what was happening at any given time. I have serious disinterest in continuing with the series.

I chain-read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin books after I discovered M&C by accident. They are engrossing and charming and enlightening and exciting and heartbreaking and amusing and occasionally bewildering but mostly perfect. The seafaring vocabulary leaks into my daily speech even now and the characters are like friends I wish I could ring for a chat.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

quickbeam wrote: »

Nice analysis. Only one thing I'd correct is that the Hobbit book is so short, you couldn't have even made a long movie out of it. It could have made a nice 90 minute movie though.

I actually think it could have made two films. The book is short, but relatively action packed.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Joseph O'Connor, Redemption Falls.

Such a disappointing follow up to the epic Star of the Sea.

Yes, I was very, very disappointed.

chrissb8

The Luminaries

The author would only get the book herself. Convoluted and trying to be far too smart. Adding nonsense that had nothing to do with the plot but just showed the authors knowledge in astrology. Well done for diluting what could have been a great story with a bunch of gobblygook.

chrissb8

chrissb8 wrote: »

The Luminaries

The author would only get the book herself. Convoluted and trying to be far too smart. Adding nonsense that had nothing to do with the plot but just showed the authors knowledge in astrology. Well done for diluting what could have been a great story with a bunch of gobblygook.

I loved the luminaries..

Ardent

The Da Vinci Code. A fifth grader could have written something with more substance to it.

The Pheasant2

quickbeam wrote: »

Though an entirely different genre of book, the above description reminded me of the same sort of thing happening in Master & Commander which I read recently. I found it utterly impossible to figure out where or what was happening at any given time. I have serious disinterest in continuing with the series.

The jargon can be very heavy initially, I agree.

But I would also really recommend sticking with them - with some help from a naval glossary you'll quickly get a general idea of what's going on in sailing terms, and that's all you need, the real fine points aren't necessary to fully imagine the manouevres occuring.

That apart, the series is a triumph of historicity and characterisation. Amongst the finest historical series I've ever come across.

The Mulk

AudreyHepburn wrote: »

Agreed although I loved the book as a whole. I think the whole point of it was the none of the characters were particularly likable.

The one book I regret reading entirely is The Road - so bleak and depressing and the film was even worse.

I couldn't put the book down at the time. We had just had out first son, and he was lying in his crib beside our bed as I read the scene with the pregnant woman and the two men in the forest. It broke my heart. I still feel sad visualising that scene. Based on this I regret reading 'The Road'.

I don't think that scene made it to the movie, i haven't watched it

RiderOnTheStorm

I have never finished a book that I didnt like. There isn't enough time to read all the books in the world, so why waste time on one that you dont like?

My mother-in-law insisted on finishing once she started. She saw it as a challenge if it was a bad book.

Also.... I did write a novel once, and struggled to get it published. And every piece of advice I read said that the first page, the first paragraph, HAS to capture the reader. Then I read some piece of dross and get annoyed that they got this published. I always finish 1 chapter, just in case. But if it hasn't hooked me by then ... Off to the next one!

uncommon_name

Eggs For Dinner wrote: »

John Grisham's An Innocent Man. Like reading a shopping list. I know it is non-fiction but there wasn't any flow to it.

That's disappointing to hear. It was the next book on my list.

GLaDOS

Don't think i can say I've ever really regretted reading any book. Even if I didn't like it, I can usually take something positive from it.

Some books I loved mentioned a few times here. Amazed at The Road being mentioned so often!

RiderOnTheStorm

....boks started but never finished:
Catch 22
Moby Dick
Great Expectations

OP.... Do try that concentration camp book. A depressing/ thought-provoking story might still be a good book. "Mans Search For Meaning" (viktor frankls personal story of life in various concentration camps) is a favourite of mine and I get something positive out of it every time i read it.

RiderOnTheStorm

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

....boks started but never finished:
Catch 22
Moby Dick
Great Expectations

OP.... Do try that concentration camp book. A depressing/ thought-provoking story might still be a good book. "Mans Search For Meaning" (viktor frankls personal story of life in various concentration camps) is a favourite of mine and I get something positive out of it every time i read it.

I have read Mans Search for Meaning but that is in a slightly different vain i.e how to find meaning in suffering.

Day Lewin

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

....boks started but never finished:
Catch 22
Moby Dick
Great Expectations

OP.... Do try that concentration camp book. A depressing/ thought-provoking story might still be a good book. "Mans Search For Meaning" (viktor frankls personal story of life in various concentration camps) is a favourite of mine and I get something positive out of it every time i read it.

Catch-22 is one of those rare books that make far more sense on a second reading. Sorry, but it's true!
The dénouement at the end of the first reading is unexpected and shocking: and thus, iif you re-read, it will be found to have influenced the entire story up to then - the flash-backs etc - now that you know what they were flask-backing To. Enlightenment - (and black humour)

The Tetrarch

A book about the Mafia, can't remember the title or author.
I won't read another books about them.

KatyMac

Faerie Tale by Raymond Feist ... I was reading it during my lunch breaks because it was so scary I couldn't read it unless I had company around me. I used to be literally scared stiff and had to look up to see other people around me! But to be honest I don't regret reading it and may some day re-read

There have been plenty of books i didn't like but none i actually regretted.
Maybe the windup girl. Thomas covenant books.
shrug

riffmongous

pleas advice wrote: »

Moby Dick

I read an adaptation (rip off) of the ending section once in a Warhammer book that really had me interested in reading the original.. then once I found it and started it I found it to be so incredibly dull at times that I just skipped to the end. Total waste of time for me sadly

Deise Vu

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

....boks started but never finished:
Catch 22
Moby Dick
Great Expectations

OP.... Do try that concentration camp book. A depressing/ thought-provoking story might still be a good book. "Mans Search For Meaning" (viktor frankls personal story of life in various concentration camps) is a favourite of mine and I get something positive out of it every time i read it.

I read Catch 22 about 30 years ago and I recall that I loved a lot of it but there is a huge section in the middle that was just torturous On the pain of death though, don't read Heller's follow-up "Something Happened". Relentlessly depressing, unhumourous (it's not meant to be) self absorbed, drivel.

Another book that was supposed to capture the zeitgeist was The World According to Garp. It was supposed to be funny and feminist. I thought it was misogynistic and about a funny as a guinness, chicken tikka masala and piles combination.

This won't be popular but Lord of the Rings was the first book that I started and decided life was too short and finishing books was not compulsory.

Day Lewin

Deise Vu wrote: »

Another book that was supposed to capture the zeitgeist was The World According to Garp. It was supposed to be funny and feminist. I thought it was misogynistic and about a funny as a guinness, chicken tikka masala and piles combination.

Giggle, so true! It was a desperately dull book. I didn't finish.

quickbeam

If the Garp film is anything to go by then I've zero interest in the book.

quickbeam

beveragelady wrote: »

I chain-read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin books after I discovered M&C by accident. They are engrossing and charming and enlightening and exciting and heartbreaking and amusing and occasionally bewildering but mostly perfect. The seafaring vocabulary leaks into my daily speech even now and the characters are like friends I wish I could ring for a chat.

Each to their own. And I do know that feeling especially close to favourite book characters, but M&C just wasn't for me. It wasn't just the nautical terminology it was constantly having no clue of what was going on. As per above, one minute they were in the middle of a battle and the next minute they were back in harbour and I'd no idea how they got there. Oh, and reading about battle after battle got boring very quickly. I had zero interest in these particular characters or their exploits.

I do tend to finish all books I've started though as I feel I don't have the right to an opinion unless I've finished them. So, got through M&C and happy to now know that it's not for me.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Mod note: This thread is more suited to the Literature forum. I'll close it and move it now.


Please note the new forum and change of forum rules.


Buford T. Justice.