Book Snark: Books that Disappointed for One Reason or Another

[AuntiePam]

Hoping it's okay to talk about books we didn't like, and why.  Sometimes my reasons are quite silly -- like an author using the word "suddenly".  Sometimes I'll dump a book, go back to it a few years later and love it.

 

I, Zombie by Hugh Howey -- I adored Wool, but this one is just an exercise in gross-out.

 

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Beer.  I mention it only because the "Nazi Officer's Wife" part of the title is extremely misleading.  You might pick it up thinking "Oh cool, I've always wanted to know what Himmler served at dinner parties."  Edith's husband wasn't a ranking officer, he was never anywhere close to the inner circle, he knew she was Jewish and didn't care, and she was never in any danger because of their relationship -- he would have been in just as much trouble as she was if they'd been found out.  Plus, their marriage was short and unhappy.  Other than that, this is an interesting memoir, with details about the work camps not often found in other books.

 

Black Hills by Dan Simmons -- high hopes, Simmons rarely disappoints, and it's about Custer.  What could go wrong?  Maybe this should have been marketed as a love story between Mr. and Mrs. Custer, because the book read like Penthouse Forum letters.  Simmons would have us believe that the two of them, while on a mission with Custer's troops, stopped for oral sex behind some bushes while his troops waited nearby.

 

The Last Good Day by Roger Brauner -- the whole plot hinges on a woman who's described as fearless, strong, independent, yet she's unable to tell an ex-boyfriend to go away.  She never told him to buzz off.  The whole plot hinged on this, and it was never believable.

 

Devil Red by Joe Lansdale -- not sure what happened to one of my favorite writers, but this one is just nonsense.  And not fun nonsense either.

 

The Help by Kathryn Stockett -- white people born after 1980 need to stop writing about being black in the 1950's. 

 

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.  This one came out about ten years ago, rave mainstream reviews -- huge disappointment.  Big fat book where all the characters -- despite being from all over Europe -- talk and sound exactly the same -- and a convoluted plot that made no sense at all.  One character drinks absinthe and becomes an amnesiac, forgets the woman he married.  The ending is probably the worst ever devised for a horror novel, and that's saying something.

 

The Last Policeman by Ben Winters -- decent book that commits the cardinal sin of not letting the reader know that it's the first in a series.  You don't end a book with a cliffhanger unless you've warned the reader that the story's not finished!

[Pickles Aplenty]

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.  I just thought it sucked, and the characters didn't seem "real" enough to pull me into the story. 

[psychoticstate]

I agree with The Historian.  I picked that book up and just couldn't get into it despite what everyone else seemed to say.

 

I also was disappointed with The ThirteenthTale, although I may be the only one.  It started strong but then I just grew bored and stopped picking up the book.

 

I've already mentioned The Time Traveler's Wife in another thread. 

 

I'm disappointed with anything written by Danielle Steel after the mid-80s (same handful of plots recycled over and over) and Jodi Picoult, whom I consider frighteningly overrated. 

 

In general I feel that V.C. Andrews' ghostwriter has called it in for years.  Ms. Andrews was never on par with Dickens or Austen but she did have a unique style, especially for the late 70s into the 80s.  Maybe it's time to get a new writer?

 

This isn't a dig at this book per se since I've not read it, nor do I plan to, but I'm disappointed that there has been so much hoopla around Fifty Shades of Gray. 

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.  I just thought it sucked, and the characters didn't seem "real" enough to pull me into the story. 

 

Our posts crossed  - - I freaking hated that book.  I love the concept of time travel so much and wanted to love this book and I ended up feeling as though I needed to throat punch myself for sticking with it.

 

I didn't understand all the accolades then and I don't understand them now.

[GaT]

Allegiant, Allegiant, ALLEGIANT I can't even begin to explain how much I hated this book. Veronica Roth apparently decided on rewriting the entire backstory between the 2nd & 3rd books, & gave one of the lead characters a completely different personality. And of course, there was that one big, really bad, surprise! we all got. It was such a disappointment. I find it interesting that they recently started filming Insurgent, the 2nd movie in the trilogy & Theo James said this in an interview:

 

“You have to honor the material for the first film because you have a fanbase, but when you come to the second one, if you you’ve done well with the first movie, you now have the ability to think outside the box,” James added. “And I think as long as you have good character progression — which is essentially Four and Tris, the anchors of the films — if you have that stuff right, then if you lose some kind of threads of different plotlines, it shouldn’t matter.”

So it sounds like they're trying to figure out a way to make the piece of crap the final book turned out to be into something palatable for the movie.

[joanne3482]

I didn't like Gone Girl. I kept jumping to the end hoping it would get interesting. It never really did. 

[psychoticstate]

I didn't like Gone Girl. I kept jumping to the end hoping it would get interesting. It never really did. 

I listened to the audio version and while I liked it for the majority of the time and it kept me listening, I was very disappointed in the ending.  I felt the book should have ended probably a chapter sooner. 

 

I also felt that neither Nick nor Amy were very likable characters and there was no way everything would work out for Amy in the end the way it did.  Based on the Nick that I felt I "knew" from the book, even as unlikable as he may have been, I couldn't believe that he would continue living with her after he knew that she killed someone to make her cover story plausible.  The fact that she didn't get her just desserts, not in any fashion, made the book a letdown.

[joanne3482]

psychoticstate, under your spoiler bar - exactly.

 

The first time I read Wicked I enjoyed it. I reread it before reading Son of a Witch and found it doesn't really hold up well. Son of a Witch was a total and complete disappointment, which I should have been expecting since I had read all the other Gregory McGuire books and found them to be totally confusing messes. 

[AuntiePam]

I agree with The Historian.  I picked that book up and just couldn't get into it despite what everyone else seemed to say.

Since you couldn't get into it (so presumably didn't finish it), let me spoil it for you: 

The reason Dracula was writing letters to historians and librarians all over the world, and causing some of them to be killed, was that he was looking for someone to catalog the books in his library.

 

(Hope I did that right.)

 

I kid you not. 

[nodorothyparker]

James Lee Burke.  The guy's actually a pretty good writer as far as description and turning a phrase.  But he's been recycling the same plot for going on 20 years now in his Dave Robicheaux series and it's just gotten tired.

 

Alcoholic ex-cops, 1950s nostalgia, Southern mystique, greasy New Orleans mobsters, a whole lot of ass kicking.  The first half dozen or so books in the series were pretty decent but now his protagonists are well into their 70s and still beating the hell out of people, with their now adult self-righteous Mary Sue offspring along for the ride.  The villain in the last book may or may not have actually been the devil.  I think it may have been two books ago that the story ended with both protagonists being apparently shot to death, but of course they were resurrected by the next book.  They shouldn't have been.

[GaT]

The first time I read Wicked I enjoyed it. I reread it before reading Son of a Witch and found it doesn't really hold up well. Son of a Witch was a total and complete disappointment, which I should have been expecting since I had read all the other Gregory McGuire books and found them to be totally confusing messes. 

I read Wicked & didn't like it at all. What particularly annoyed me was 

How she had a kid but somehow had absolutely no memory of being pregnant or giving birth. That was just so dumb, & it pissed me off that she never acknowledged him.

[Pickles Aplenty]

I may be the only person alive who couldn't get into Wicked.  I tried reading it, but I couldn't get past the first fifty pages.  It was written in a very weird way, and I wasn't quite sure what was going on.

[ikmccall]

I may be the only person alive who couldn't get into Wicked.  I tried reading it, but I couldn't get past the first fifty pages.  It was written in a very weird way, and I wasn't quite sure what was going on.

No, I didn't like it either. So much so that I refuse to see the stage show. No matter how much my friends love the show.

[annzeepark914]

To those who didn't enjoy reading Wicked, don't bother with the stage show.  Thank God our daughter was with us (she'd already seen it in Chicago). At intermission she told us what the heck was going on (it was that boring!)  Also, the music was forgettable - didn't hear anyone whistling or humming a tune from this show on our way out of the theater, nor could I remember any of the songs (and for me, that's very unusual).

 

I just finished David Ignatius' latest book, The Director, and must say it was disappointing (I've been told that Body of Lies is really good so I'll give DI another chance). The only parts of the book that were interesting to me were the locations his main characters visited and that was only because the CIA is headquartered not far from where I live...so that's not much of an enthusiastic plug for a book.  His writing is quite good (character & scene descriptions),  but I'm not familiar enough with the inner workings of computers (and this book is all about international hackers). Plus the ending wasn't worthy of the time I invested in reading this tome! 

 

Now reading Fred Stoller's Maybe We'll Have you Back.  I used to envy Hollywood actors--thought it would be fun to be on a weekly show but had no idea how difficult it is for most of them to get even guest starring roles (maybe one or two lines).  Fred's the schlubby guy in Seinfeld who couldn't remember Elaine & it drove her crazy.  I believe one must have thick skin to survive in that industry.

[AntiBeeSpray]

I tried reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck when I was in high school. Had to since the teacher assigned it to us. It was really blandly written. I understand that the time period it was about was not a good one (the dust bowl, the 1930's), but it honestly put me to sleep at times. Not that I need to be entertained by a book, but it just didn't get me into it, one iota. And it was only certain parts we had to read too. The teacher wasn't really a fan of it either.

[kathyk24]

I hated Infinite Jest and the Corrections. I thought they were boring and none of the characters were likable.

[galax-arena]

Most YA dystopian fiction.

 

Dystopian lit used to be my favorite, so I was excited when YA moved on from vampires to dystopias. Color me naïve for not realizing that it was largely just another way to write in more forbidden romances, with “society” standing in for “vampires” as the star-crossed factor du jour. A million half-baked plots, world-building, and characters later, and dystopian lit is no longer my favorite.

[AuntiePam]

galax-arena, I didn't realize that was becoming a thing.  The last dystopian novel I read was The Scourge by A.G. Henley.  It was a Kindle freebie, and not too bad.  But it did have that plot.  Society was composed of people who lived on the ground and an upper class who lived above ground, in trees.  Sounds silly but it was interesting and reasonably well-written.  And sure enough, just like you said, a tree-dweller and a ground-dweller fall in love.

 

There's a sequel but I haven't bothered with it.

[stillshimpy]

Our posts crossed  - - I freaking hated that book.  I love the concept of time travel so much and wanted to love this book and I ended up feeling as though I needed to throat punch myself for sticking with it.

I didn't understand all the accolades then and I don't understand them now.

 

I'm semi-convinced that we've all been had and that no one actually liked this book. Cue the dozen people who will doubtless declare the book-love-of-their-lives, and to whom I apologize before continuing with my Time Traveler's Wife vitriol. It's just first I tried listening to it on an audio book while exercising.  Well, that was a no-go. I found it distracting because it seemed just plain-old bad, but I'd been told it was good.  So I picked up a copy, read it halfway through and stopped before it could entirely kill off my love of time-travel stories.  

 

Then a few years ago someone picked it for a book club I was in and I, prepared to find out what the hell anyone liked about that drippy mess, powered through to the ending at long last, nearly wanting to pitch the blasted thing when there was more talk of toe-sucking.  I thought that was what was pissing me off, I wanted a fun time-travel story and instead I got a book that was more romance than time-travel fun.  Plus, it made time-traveling boring, which was a sin and a half.  

So absolutely everyone in my book club hated the damned thing too.  I felt slightly better about hating what I had been told was a beloved book.  

 

I'm positive that there are people who really liked it, nay, loved it.  I've just never met a person who did.  

[Sharpie66]

I rather liked Time Traveler's Wife when I read it, but looking back, I realized it was just for the settings. As a lifelong Chicagoan, I was happy with the way she set the book in places I knew (the traveler's job as librarian at the Newberry Library is my dream job, actually, and I am finishing off my MLS from the same school where the traveler got his degree, Dominican University, which was Rosary College at the time he would have gotten his). In fact, I started reading the book when my dad and I were driving back from visiting my aunt and uncle. In the first two pages of the first chapter, the time traveler tells about when he went from walking down the stairwell at the Newberry to finding himself face-down on the carpet of a room at a Motel 6 in Athens, Ohio. My aunt and uncle lived in Athens, and we were driving out of that town at the very time I was reading this!

 

I haven't been tempted to pick the book up and re-read it in the years since, so I definitely don't have a fondness for the material as a whole.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Sharpie66

[BatmanBeatles]

I just read the YA dystopian novels Matched and Uglies.

 

Matched - It's basically The Giver with a love triangle and the protagonist is a girl. I don't think I'll read the next two books.

 

Uglies - It's an interesting premise. When people reach the age of 16 they get to have surgery to make themselves look beautiful. But I thought the main character was too whiny and the futuristic slang drove me crazy. For example: Children are called "Littlies".

[GaT]

I just read the YA dystopian novels Matched and Uglies.

 

Matched - It's basically The Giver with a love triangle and the protagonist is a girl. I don't think I'll read the next two books.

 

Uglies - It's an interesting premise. When people reach the age of 16 they get to have surgery to make themselves look beautiful. But I thought the main character was too whiny and the futuristic slang drove me crazy. For example: Children are called "Littlies".

I've read both. IMO, the 2 books after Matched didn't live up to the first, I won't go into why because of spoilers, but this was another disappointing trilogy for me.

 

I read all the books in the Uglies series, & for the life of me, I can't really remember what they're about. I guess you could take that as my opinion on them.

[BatmanBeatles]

 

I've read both. IMO, the 2 books after Matched didn't live up to the first, I won't go into why because of spoilers, but this was another disappointing trilogy for me.

Just put it in spoilers. I don't care.

[ikmccall]

I'm semi-convinced that we've all been had and that no one actually liked this book. Cue the dozen people who will doubtless declare the book-love-of-their-lives, and to whom I apologize before continuing with my Time Traveler's Wife vitriol. It's just first I tried listening to it on an audio book while exercising.  Well, that was a no-go. I found it distracting because it seemed just plain-old bad, but I'd been told it was good.  So I picked up a copy, read it halfway through and stopped before it could entirely kill off my love of time-travel stories.  

 

Then a few years ago someone picked it for a book club I was in and I, prepared to find out what the hell anyone liked about that drippy mess, powered through to the ending at long last, nearly wanting to pitch the blasted thing when there was more talk of toe-sucking.  I thought that was what was pissing me off, I wanted a fun time-travel story and instead I got a book that was more romance than time-travel fun.  Plus, it made time-traveling boring, which was a sin and a half.  

So absolutely everyone in my book club hated the damned thing too.  I felt slightly better about hating what I had been told was a beloved book.  

 

I'm positive that there are people who really liked it, nay, loved it.  I've just never met a person who did.  

 

 

Preach it, sister!

[AuntiePam]

I was almost sucked in to the hype for Time Traveller's Wife. 

 

My tried-and-true method for deciding whether to invest in a book is to check out the one-star reviews at Amazon.  The folks who hate a book are often more specific about their reasons than the folks who love a book.  This was true with this book, so yay for critics!

[Haleth]

[smallvoice] I liked The Time Traveler's Wife [/smallvoice]  Maybe I'd better go to the Unpopular Opinions forum. ;)

[stillshimpy]

[smallvoice] I liked The Time Traveler's Wife [/smallvoice] Maybe I'd better go to the Unpopular Opinions forum. ;)

[big booming voice] Well that's okay, Haleth :-) Rock on with the TTW like.

[joanne3482]

My tried-and-true method for deciding whether to invest in a book is to check out the one-star reviews at Amazon.  The folks who hate a book are often more specific about their reasons than the folks who love a book.

 

Middle of the road reviewers 3 or 2 stars will also do the same thing but they'll include the positives too, so I read those too. 

[GaT]

Just put it in spoilers. I don't care.

Well, the 2nd book, Crossed was 

nothing but traveling. Basically, the entire book was everyone going to another place. The occasional thing would happen, but then they would travel some more with lots of descriptions of mountains & streams & dirt.

As for Reached, I barely remember it. I remember it being slow & dragged out, but not much in the way of plot. That pretty much tells you everything.

[merylinkid]

Wicked was not bad.   But there was some HUGE plot holes.   Like how Elphaba became such an advocate for talking Animals.   Yeah she had that one professor but she really only talked to him on the train to school.   Or how she wound up in affair with Firaz and had a kid that she never remembered having.   Just did not hang together.   But I read all the books in the series, they got progressively worse.   Have a friend who loves show tunes.   I still sing Pop-U-Lar every so often.   It's catchy.

 

Never read  the HIstorian.   I read the fly leaf and decided it wasn't that interesting.   I don't care if everyone raved about it, I am not reading it for that reason.   

 

Of course, I put off reading Harry Potter for that reason.   Then broke down and was hooked.   Despite the HUGE plot holes (hello Muggles don't know wizards exist but happily send their kids off to Hogwarts based on a letter delivered by an OWL????)  But hey, popularity and plot holes can be overcome by decent writing.

Edited September 5, 2014 by merylinkid

[Athena]

Of course, I put off reading Harry Potter for that reason.   Then broke down and was hooked.   Despite the HUGE plot holes (hello Muggles don't know wizards exist but happily send their kids off to Hogwarts based on a letter delivered by an OWL????)  But hey, popularity and plot holes can be overcome by decent writing.

 

It's been mentioned that Muggleborns get a real visit from a Professor when they are told they are accepted. I think McGonagall had gone to see Hermione's family. It's made unclear because the books are told from Harry's situation and he wasn't ever told he was a wizard because of the Dursleys complete failure in parenting. There are probably some Muggles who won't want to see their kids to go, but since the magic explains strange circumstances, most parents would realize their child would benefit from learning to control it. The books aren't perfect I agree. I mostly have issue with the romance, but even then I overlook it for other reasons.  

[Pickles Aplenty]

Two other books I devoured at the time, but didn't become favorites for two very different reasons: The Help, by Katheryn Stockett, and Room, by Emma Donoghue.

 

The Help was very entertaining and readable, but when I was done I felt kind of...gross? I think it was because Stockett seemed to be justifying the whole black-maid-who-raises-white-children thing with the character of Abilene.  When I read her bio and found out she herself had a black maid growing up, it all fell into place.  Also, I felt like the message of the book was simplified to, "Racism is bad!"  Yes, we know racism is bad.  Think of a way to say that that seems fresh and interesting, please. 

I did like the shit pie, though. That was a nice touch.

 

Room was better, but I hated the character of Ma (I don't remember her real name.)  I know she had been through a lot, to put it mildly, but there was something about her personality that rubbed me the wrong way, even

after she was freed.

  Is it wrong to hate a character that is in a horrifying, Jaycee Duggard type situation?  I don't know, it's all fiction.  Maybe it's okay.

 

So, yeah, those are two books I read a while ago, back-to-back, that made me yearn for something a little heavier, so I read Oliver Twist immediately after and enjoyed it immensely.  Scrubbed the Oprah's Book Club reside right off my brain.  It was nice.

[idiotwaltz]

[smallvoice] I liked The Time Traveler's Wife [/smallvoice]  Maybe I'd better go to the Unpopular Opinions forum. ;)

 

Aw, I liked TTW too. Though I'm not terribly fond of any of the characters and the editor should've axed another 1/4 of the book. 

 

I enjoyed the first two books in the Hunger Games trilogy, but Mockingjay was a total borefest. 

[GreekGeek]

I saw this and decided to make it a project to read as many of the books as possible: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-famous-book-set-in-every-state-map-2013-10

I've read some good stuff that I would never have picked up otherwise, but there have been a few that I just couldn't get into, notably:

 

James Michener's Hawaii. I just could not work up much interest in the characters from the early chapters.

 

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. I made it about two thirds of the way through. It bugged me that Lestat was apparently unkillable, because I found him a total bore, and I couldn't work up much sympathy for whiny Louis. If anyone halfway normal or pleasant turned up, he or she would be vampire food within a few pages. I find myself indifferent to all things vampire. They worked as a way for Victorians to write about sex without writing about sex, but now that we've overcome that taboo, what's the point?

 

Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. Too much machismo. And I was really offended by Hemingway's use of the "n word." It didn't bother me in Huckleberry Finn, because Huck didn't know any better, but when Hemingway uses it in his own voice without irony...no. Just no.

[Snow Apple]

The Interview With The Vampire series bored me too and I can't understand the love and obsession fans have with the books. I did like the parts with Claudia though and I'm quite fond of the movie (usually it's the other way around). 

[Sun-Bun]

"Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns"

by Lauren Weisberger

Horrible. Awful. Just a complete waste of time and effort that completely killed the vibe of the first brilliant book and might as well have been called "Revenge is Lauren: The Chick-Lit Diva Returns."

The plot was ridiculous and unbelievable, with the way it completely overturned all the established relationships, careers and characters of the first book, and then the lead heroine herself went from being a strong, intelligently-driven career woman to a whiney, generally boring wimp with no real drive who just wants to fit in with her rich husband's snooty in-laws?!

Then the entire narration of the story went from first to third-person so randomly that it didn't even feel like a sequel to the first book at all---dare I say it, the damned book felt like it wasn't even written by the same author or characters period.

Ghost writer consulted for a hasty turnaround/easy paycheck, perhaps?? I'd be willing to bet money, honestly.

The sequel to "The Nanny Diaries", "The Nanny Returns" suffered the exact same abysmal fate, unfortunately. Equally awful, ridiculous and disjointed all around---maybe they used the same ghost writer for that one?

Or maybe most big best-seller sequels just aren't worth reading??

[ElderPrice]

I had the same reactions to Nanny Returns and  Revenge Wears Prada. Absolutely dreadful. The characters behave in ways that they never would have behaved in the first novels and the plots are ridiculous, I think the sequels were slapped together in a week.

 

My book that I hated that evidently is very popular is The Invention Of Wings. Slavery is bad. We get it. You don't need to announce it on every page. But what's worse is having the plantation owner's daughter act so out of character for the day and time. She was given a slave for her own when she was 11, a standard enough practice for that time and in those circles, why does she react in such horror? The book beats you over the head that Slavery Is Bad, as if we didn't know that, in such a clumsy over the top way that I couldn't finish the book.  

[QTBlueMoon]

No, I didn't like it either. So much so that I refuse to see the stage show. No matter how much my friends love the show.

You can't really compare the two - I didn't like the book, either, but the play was outstanding!  

[Eegah]

I'm largely a fan of Tamora Pierce. Her romantic plots can be a bit unsettling (the worst involves a 30 year old guy hooking up with his 15 year old student, after stealing a lock of her hair while she's sleeping), but mostly she's a terrific fantasy author whose work is very empowering to young girls, on top of containing a ton of great ideas (zombie dinosaurs, for one), and characters that grow throughout her stories and it's always a joy to see pop up again.

 

And then I hit Mastiff, to date the final entry in her Tortall series (though she's working on more). I hated this book, to the point where I have no idea how the woman who's produced such great work for three decades now could have thought anything in it was a good idea.

 

To start, it ditches almost all of those aforementioned great characters. The previous book Bloodhound sort of did this too, but it at least gave us some significant time with them first and introduced new ones that filled the space quite well. This time, we only get a bunch of absurd conservative strawmen who you can sense Aaron Sorkin nodding his silent approval at, the kind who you can just imagine laughing around a poker table while lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills, then head out to club some baby seals on their way to burn down the local orphanage. Pierce has always included these guys before, but until now they've always just been minor villains who didn't need to be anything more than what we got. Here they're the main attraction, so that lack of depth and the sameness of all their personalities quickly gets aggravating.

 

Worse, the final act involves a certain character being revealed as a traitor completely out of nowhere, after they'd been a complete hero up until now. It's such an absurd betrayal of the character that I seriously wonder if they were based on a real person who Pierce had some kind of falling out with. Imagine if The Avengers didn't have any of that stuff with Loki's staff, and we were just supposed to accept that Hawkeye woke up one day and decided to turn evil; that's the level of writing cheat we're dealing with here.

 

I really hope that this was just a momentary blip in Pierce's career, but it's so terrible from beginning to end that I seriously wonder if she's reached the stage of just not giving a crap anymore, knowing her huge fanbase will buy her stuff no matter how little effort she puts into it anymore.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Eegah

[proserpina65]

I also was disappointed with The ThirteenthTale, although I may be the only one.  It started strong but then I just grew bored and stopped picking up the book.

 

I'll agree that it does kind of drag a bit in the middle, but I was determined to stick with it and was extremely glad I did.  It finished up like gangbusters.  You may want to give it a try again sometime.

 

White Teeth by Zadie Smith made me break my old cardinal rule about books: finish it no matter what.  I got so bored with the stories of the two main male characters about 1/4 of the way through that I stopped reading it.  I found the women's stories to be interesting but unfortunately not enough to stick with it.  And as a result, my new cardinal rule is: if a book can't hold me interest for the first 100 pages, I give up.  Life's too short, and there are too many other books to read.

[Lovecat]

Wild made my breasts ache with rage (TM Glee's Santana Lopez). Let me count the ways:

1) In my head I always pronounced the author's last name as "STRAY-ed," two syllables, emphasis on the first. In the book we learn that not only is it pronounced as the past tense of "stray" (one syllable, emphasize stray and swallow the rest), but it's a surname she picked FOR HERSELF. I went from "Ironic, no?" To "Oh honey, no" in 5 seconds flat. Hey, I understand people wanting to re-invent themselves, but giving yourself a "deep" new moniker just screams "pretentious!"

2) She kitted up fairly well for her trip, but didn't bother to do any practice hikes with full pack, or to plan out how she was going to carry all of her shit. Well that right there made me want to punch her right in the throat.

3) She seemed to be convinced that she was the hottest piece of ass to ever hit the PCT, and that every man (and some of the women...and wasn't there a boy on the cusp of manhood? And a dog??) wanted a piece of her. ORLY?

And OK, I realize these are gripes against the author, not the book itself, but when you're reading a memoir, it's hard to separate the two. I actually didn't think the book was all that hot, either. I thought she was to have learned some big profound lesson about life and herself as a part of her journey, but damned if I could tell you what it is.

I *am* still interested in seeing the film adaptation, though, primarily to see if Reese Witherspoon's portrayal will incite the same kind of rage :)

Edited October 19, 2014 by Lovecat

[Sandman87]

Going back a couple of decades for one that I just read recently: Ancient Light by Mary Gentle. It's the second of two books about a diplomat who's been sent to an alien world to negotiate with the locals for access, development, and/or trade rights. Along the way she gets tangled up  in the politics of both worlds and stuff happens.

 

Now the first book, Golden Witchbreed, is perfectly fine; a sci-fi exploration of two cultures meeting that's worthy of comparison with Le Guin. But that's the first book.

 

The second book...let's just say that the ending ruins things. In particular, you might ruin your head from banging it against whatever hard object happens to be handy. Alternately, you might ruin one of your walls by throwing the book against it.

The quest was a failure. All the surviving characters stand around bickering and wait to die when the planet is destroyed. Everything that happened in both books was for nothing. There is no hope.

That's it. The end.

Edited October 26, 2014 by Sandman87

[Crs97]

Light between Oceans - only one person is likeable and we somehow are supposed to be rotting against her (at least if my bookclub is to be believed). Horrible book!

[proserpina65]

Light between Oceans - only one person is likeable and we somehow are supposed to be rotting against her (at least if my bookclub is to be believed). Horrible book!

 

 

 

 

That one actually sounded interesting from the brief synopsis I read - oh well, I may try it sometime anyway but thanks for the head's up.

 

I was disappointed by Beautiful Ruins.  Some of it (specifically the main plot) was quite interesting and well-done, but the book kept getting bogged down in what, to me, was a pointless and stupid sub-plot

The thing with the lousy wannabe writer and his stupid Donner Party screenplay - I mean, the Donner Party? Really? And that character added absolutely nothing to the rest of the book.

and kept veering away from characters who were quite fascinating.  Entire sections of the book were a real slog to get through just to get back to the parts which were worth reading.

Edited October 28, 2014 by proserpina65

[DakotaJustice]

The BIGGEST disappointment??

 

Without a doubt, the last two books in Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" series.  I loved the first four books (published between 1980-1990) then waited, what, over ten years for book 5 and when it came out...SUCKED. just SUCKED.  Tedious to read to say the least.

 

But I held out hope for the final book in the series - The Land of Painted Caves.

and guess what, it was even worse than Book 5.

 

Speaking of The Nanny Diaries, which I liked except for the end because I wanted to kick Nanny for being such a doormat - the book written by the same authors that came out afterward (NOT the sequel - the one about internet porn or something...) was just so abysmally bad that I've managed to block it out.

 

However, the Jean M. Auel books were by far the biggest literary disappointment ever.  The only bright side is that they resulted in quite a bit of snark at the ECFans.com forum.

[Brn2bwild]

The BIGGEST disappointment??

 

Without a doubt, the last two books in Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" series.  I loved the first four books (published between 1980-1990) then waited, what, over ten years for book 5 and when it came out...SUCKED. just SUCKED.  Tedious to read to say the least.

 

But I held out hope for the final book in the series - The Land of Painted Caves.

and guess what, it was even worse than Book 5.

 

Speaking of The Nanny Diaries, which I liked except for the end because I wanted to kick Nanny for being such a doormat - the book written by the same authors that came out afterward (NOT the sequel - the one about internet porn or something...) was just so abysmally bad that I've managed to block it out.

 

However, the Jean M. Auel books were by far the biggest literary disappointment ever.  The only bright side is that they resulted in quite a bit of snark at the ECFans.com forum.

 

Yeah, The Shelters of Stone was mediocre, but The Land of Painted Caves was unforgivably awful.  It did not take her 9 years to come up with that.  No, she just lost her interest in writing and simply went through the motions.  Her writing style was never that great to begin with, but at least she put thought and effort into the first four.

[Hybridcookie]

 Downfall by Rob Thurman, the latest Cal Leandros book.

 

It was awful, and so, so boring, plus an awful cop-out ending As one reviewer said: 'Too much Robin and too many 'clever' fake outs. Too much maudlin reminiscing about reincarnations.' There also wasn't enough Niko, be barely did anything in the whole book, he was mostly just 'there'.

 

Mild spoiler:

Also, I hated all the hypnotism crap, or whatever was going on with Robin and Cal. Just annoying and awful

Edited November 9, 2014 by Hybridcookie

[joanne3482]

Without a doubt, the last two books in Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" series.  I loved the first four books (published between 1980-1990) then waited, what, over ten years for book 5 and when it came out...SUCKED. just SUCKED.  Tedious to read to say the least.

 

I worked in a bookstore in 1996. At least monthly, if not more frequently than that, I'd get the question - "Any word on Jean Auel's new book?" I didn't realize it had been 6 years (at that time) since the last book was published and that it would be 4 more years until it actually was. That's kind of sad. 

[kassa]

Catcher in the Rye.  Thought Holden C was a whiny jerk when I was in high school and decided to revisit it in my 30s to give it an honest shot.  After all, so many people claim him as their literary hero -- maybe I had missed something?

 

Nope.  Still wanted to push him into traffic.  

[BlackberryJam]

I am full on rant mode.  HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK.  It is an abomination!  It is of the Devil!  It offends my very being!

 

What's got my literary knickers twisted in a knot?  The Monogram Murders which purports to be a "new" Hercule Poirot mystery.  It is horrific.  It's like Battlefield Earth-level awful.  It's not Poirot.  It's not Agatha Christie.  It's not even close.  

 

If you're a Christie fan, hell, even if you're not, do not read this book.  Step away from it before it pulls you into a vortex of suck. 

[heebiejeebie]

I love historical fiction.  The good kind (I know) not the endless Tudor books that feature women in dresses without heads.  Nor Conn Iggulden.  I'm talking Dorothy Dunnett.  Or going back to what a bored kid found on his grandparents shelves that they probably got from their parents.  Mary Renault.  Harold Lamb. 

 

So I jumped on Hilary Mantel's award winning books about Wolf Hall as hard as a reader could.  Yech.  Bland in some places, good in others.  When it did not meander though it seemed it was deliberately oblique with perspective and inner thoughts in a way that felt too contrived a style over actually story telling.  Critics jump on it too.  and dry hump it in an orgy of praise I found baffling.  So much I went back to read it to find out why I was so stupid not to see its glory.  Nope. And awards fell down out of the sky to dry hump it.  So when she wrote the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, I perversely gave it a go.  It was slightly better.  I think in part because  I was used to her style of writing.  It won awards.  It was a light terser in prose and less indulgent but still.  I was so disappointed. 

 

And more and more i;m noticing how praise is being heaped on authors who go so heavily for contrived style over simple story telling.  Maybe I am getting dimmer as I get older.  but I also think that reviewers and many readers simply adore reading a book they think validates them as being better, brighter and smarter than anyone else.  i recently read two books get natter.  And several reader reviews just gushed over how the book is a challenge and you have to be smart to "get it".   I want to let the hounds run those people down.