The Do Not Bother To Read Before You Die Thread

As Good As It Got by Isabel Sharpe

I have to go and wash out my eyes now.

Tee-hee.

I've said before in other threads and I'll say it again here:

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl

After you die, however, feel free.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

I will throw in The Devil Wears Prada, though. Biggest waste of paper I've come across yet.

Schooling by Heather McGowan. And that one does actually appear in the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die list! Never again...

#3 - But the movie was such fun!

I wouldn't waste my time on The Memory Keeper's Daughter. It was a whole lot of 'meh.'

#5 My book club is reading Memory Keeper's Daughter this month! I'll confess, I wouldn't find it gripping, exactly . . . but what do you mean by 'meh' ? That you didn't find it moving? Okay, I haven't gotten that far into it, but I could see possibly having that reaction. I'm not really caring that much about any of the characters.

Rather of reminds me of The Master Butcher's Singing Club. I almost came to care about the characters, but then Erdirch just . . . *sigh* . . . fails to supply a satisfying resolution to really any of the characters, as I recall. I'm not even saying I wanted a happy ending for everyone. I just wanted something, you know, satisfying.

#3> Aww, I actually liked the book. The other (Everyone Worth Knowing) by Lauren Weisberger wasn't worth the time, though.

I'd have to say Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I will never get that wasted time back.

Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

I want to say The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, but there are so many people who love it.

blue - I'm with you on that one!

# 8 - I don't think I ever even finished The Name of the Rose...

#6 - Exactly. I couldn't feel much sympathy for any of the main characters. Also, how many times in one book does a writer need to have her characters stare at patterns of light on the floor/wall/snow and have flashbacks?

Well, The Name of the Rose is one of my favorites, but I'm weird. 8^} Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell is on my list. And Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.

Ah. No wonder I couldn't get the touchstone to work. Thanks, flee!

There now, you see? I love Wuthering Heights, it's one of my constant re-reads. And I've read The Name of the Rose twice now, and after just recently talking about it with MrsLee I've been thinking I should read it again soon (I guess I'm weird too drneutron ;-) And after diligently working my way through half the book, I ended up really liking Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell too.

Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. Really, by the time I got to "Catatonic", I was.

I liked The Name of the Rose, Memory Keepers Daughter and Wuthering Heights, LOL.

ETA Now, anything by Patricia Cornwell in the last few years particularly....another add to the don't bother list.

Patricia...what happen to you. once, i enjoyed your books. good stories, pretty well written. but in recent years...awful.

and where the heck did your editor go??

The Great Gatsby. I loathe that book. Read it in high school and hated it, then a couple of years back, I decided to read it again to see if my dislike was due to being an immature teenager. Nope. It just sucks.

I have to agree with Cryptonomicon. The book was waaaaaaaay to long for what it said. Would have made a gripping short story...

#19: I continue to scratch my head at people who hate The Great Gatsby. That was the book that made me desperately want to live in the 1920s! I thought when I was younger that I'd been born too late...

Oh well, all types, you know. I've been staying out of this thread, because I honestly can't think of any book that I've read that nobody else out there would like.

The DaVinci Code - god, that missing time that will never come back to me spent reading utter tripe..... I weep!

For everyone who finished these books they hate: for goodness' sake, why did you bother finishing?

I'm really weird, I have read Cryptonomicon at least trice, and the Baroque Cycle twice (I think). Of course, lots of sequences were you can just flip pages until the real story resumes, at least in the Cryptonomicon, but I still both enjoyed and liked it.

I liked The name of the rose as well, back when I read it, but that was a considerable time ago and I don't know what I'd make of it now.
Time for a reread, may be.

Mappa mundi, now... I enjoyed reading it, but then I got to the end. I can understand that she wanted to do an ending with a twist, and that she did. But that don't mean I have to sympathise with it.

And The Voyage of the Sable Keech? There's only so much unwarranted gore I can take. I can accept the odd dose of gratuitous sex and violence (not too much, though, I want the things in the stories I read to have a meaning) but that one is so over the edge (I didn't finish it).

23>

For the sake of saying I gave it an honest shot...
Because I like to complete the things that I start...
To see if maybe the ending makes it worth the trouble...
To be able to put it on my list of books that I finished this year, so that my time isn't entirely wasted...

Lots of reasons to finish a book, even if I hate it.

>23 JPB:
I didn't finish Jonathan Strange. I got about halfway through, realized it was never getting any better and put it on BookMooch.

>23 JPB:: The only books I hated that I actually finished were for school. One such case is The Great Gatsby. I had to write a paper on it and that would have been hard without finishing it ;-)

But today, if I don't like a book, think it's boring or even hate it, I quit reading it. Sometimes I am just not in the mood for it at that moment and pick it up again years later, but usually I don't.

#23 JPB> It's just a thing of mine. I never leave a film before the end and never give up on a book. I guess I kind of think that that everything deserves to be judged as a whole. Maybe the ending redeems it all, maybe not but at least I've given it a proper audience.

#27 - I used to solve that problem by reading the beginning, a portion of the middle, and then the ending. I know it's cheating, and I didn't get great grades in lit. but at least I didn't flunk it ;-)

I usually put books down that don't intrigue me, but I told myself for the 888 challenge I'd read everything I started this year. I've only broken that pledge once with a stupid vampire book, but have finished everything else.

I actively disliked The Mistress's Daughter by A. M. Homes - whiny drivel. I mostly disliked (except for about 30 pages) Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

I never finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter because I didn't like any of the (adult) characters. Didn't read enough of it to meet the children.

Never finished lots of other books, but the ones that are still on my shelves are ones that I might pick up sometime and totally devour. I'm hoping that Jonathan Strange is one of them.

I think I was too dutiful to hate books in high school - I must have figured that the teachers knew something I didn't because I don't remember HATING anything. My almost-15 year daughter HATED The Iliad and The Odessey, but she read them. I pray they don't throw any more epic poems at her - I think it's the format more than anything else.

#17 and #18 - I completely agree with the Patricia Cornwell books. My goodness! They have become dreadful. I refuse to pick them up any longer. She has rapidly declined in the last 10 years.

The Lord of the Rings. BAH! I know many people love the books but did nothing for me.

I second the DaVinci Code and throw in Angels & Demons. I think I just dislike Dan Brown and his snide condescending characters in general.

#31 it is just about greed? what a rotten thought but i can't see any other explanation.
i have serious doubts sometimes that she is actually still writing them anymore, but if when all is said and done and she and her editor read it and see how inferior it is...well, to then put it out there...i assume it is just about the money.

#21 - It's not that I thought the book was badly written. It might even just be due to my flaws as a reader. If I can't find at least one character (no matter how minor) that I can respect or care about, I tend to dislike the novel. Gatsby is a story that's told very well, but in essence it's a story about unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other. Just not my thing, I suppose.

#34: It might even just be due to my flaws as a reader.

Nah. Sometimes books just rub you the wrong way--I totally get that. (My personal example: Flannery O'Connor. I've read A Good Man is Hard to Find two-and-a-half times. It's not badly written, but I just hate it with a fiery passion.)

I loved The Name of the Rose in book and movie form, but Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before are dreck. Actually, I've never even finished The Island - it just gradually filtered out of my reading pile.

Has anyone actually finished Ulysses? I've started it several times and have given up each time. It's one of the few books I actually bought then gave away. If someone has a ringing endorsement of it, maybe I'll try it again.

>32 Madcow299:: See now, I finished The Da Vinci Code even though I really, really disliked it. But I wanted to know the ending. But it never even occured to me to pick up anything else Dan Brown wrote. I disliked it that much. And he didn't get a second chance from me.

I read Ulysses twice, both times in my 20's. I wouldn't make the attempt now.

I loved Jonathan Strange and hated Cryptonomicon. To each hir whatever.

I did not hate The Da Vinci Code. I didn't love it either. I read That and Angels and Demons, and two others of Browns. I liked Angels and Demons better. Both held my interest and were fast reads.

Dan Brown will never make ot my favorite anything list, but still. It amuses me that he keeps ticking of Rome. I mean, seriously....

I read a book for my book group called The red and the Black by Stendhal. I can't believe I actually made an effort to finish the thing. The amusing part was during the discussion no one could remember why we voted to read it in the first place.

I agree with mckait - I found that The Da Vinci Code was middle of the road, I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. I also feel that way about The great gatsby but I think that's only because I had to read it twice and I found more appreciation for it in college than I had in high school (still don't like it that much though).

I've had book disappointment lately. Sigh. To keep from following in my sad footsteps, I recommend not reading The Man on the Ceiling by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem or City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer.

I'm at the thread a little late, but somehow I'm reading the title a little differently. Perhaps I'm strange, but I think a book that inspires hate can be as worth reading as one that inspires love. For example, I've reached a point where I have almost 0% temptation to ever pick up another Chuck Palahniuk book. Yet, I don't regret reading Haunted or Choke. Haunted was kind of intriguing in its awfulness. Choke was the book where I finally felt like I "got" Palahniuk. (Though I then felt like giving him back.) But some books are truly and utterly pointless.

So, my list would include Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master which have all the pompousness of Tolkien without any of the craft. Or Dean Koontz. Well, he's published a lot, so I can't slag on his entire output. But I don't think I would be missing anything if I had never read any of his books. (I've only ever read 2, and that was enough to lower my curiousity factor to near 0%)

Perhaps it's unfair, but I suspect a lot of "airport reads" might belong in this category. Books which have no reason for existing outside the claustrophobia and anxiety of frequent travellers.

I suspect I would have a similar reaction if I read The Da Vinci Code which has neither the sheer gonzo outrageousness of The Illuminatus! Trilogy or the detailed scholarship of Foucault's Pendulum. (Or at least so I've gathered from the movie.)

And to be fair, I'd probably add a genre that I have a particular weakness for: 80 - 90% of Cthulhu Mythos stuff. I actually went through a phase of seeking a lot of it out. But most of it doesn't really provide much except a reminder that Lovecraft inspired a lot of people.

As for the popular offenders, I loved Jonathan Strange, Name of the Rose, Wuther Heights, and City of Saints and Madmen. And I think Foucault's Pendulum merits a reread.

Geez who knew that Dan Brown that would get more defenses than LOTR :P. I don't dislike the stories as much as the characters who always act superior in a "oh, if everyone thought like me, the world would be a better place." The story telling made me give Angels & Demons a try, but it was still time wasted for me.

The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams. I only read this under duress for my online bookclub

The first problem was the protagonists - twins. Couldn't tell them apart, which is a bad thing in a novel. If you're going to have two main characters, you need to be able to distinguish between their voices.

In fact, I'll just copy and paste a bit of what I wrote in the discussion:

'So what went wrong? Well, for one thing, the plot just seems completely ludicrous. It's hard for me to make that judgement when one could argue that all fantasy plots are farfetched, and somehow ludicrous. However, within the context of fantasy plots themselves, this one is just ridiculous to me. Mirror twins, one killed to travel to a 'spirit' realm, one left alive in the 'living' in order to bring the two together so a big....thing can gobble souls. Er. Ok.

In fact, I felt like the author wanted to pack his book with as many names of demons/creatures/ghoullies as he possibly could. Like taking 5 big packs of raisins and stuffing them into one very small muffin. It's interesting - Erikson, for example, can pull this off with aplomb. Perhaps because the scope of his novels fit the players. This? It felt like a farce.'

'And then, truly, came the crowning glory of page 196. The part I take the most issue with, the few little lines that, honestly, offended me.

Dizzyingly, the author takes us to a flash back of the brothers at a museum, where they are staring at a viking longboat that's on display. Hadrian thinks to himself 'it had been underground five times longer than his country had existed.

I had this image, actually, of a wide space of sea in between Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and all of a sudden 'POP!' and Australia just bobs out of the water, flounders a bit, then settles, around 300 years ago.

And then I thought to myself - what if I was an aborigine, reading this book. How would I feel? I might look at the picture of the author and think 'that's a typical statement from a skinny white boy.' (And there's a disclaimer here, I am not in any way shape or form being racist - hell, I'm married to one! Heh). Given that the aborigines have been settled on Australia for around 40,000 years, assuming that the anthropologist's dates are correct. Mr Williams, Australia has existed a lot longer than since the colonists arrived. I saw red and that's the point where I said 'that's it, no more.'


It's rubbish. Absolute, and utter, rubbish. I would never touch another thing this man has written.

Anything by Alexandre Dumas. I know they are classics, but they are tedious. See the movies instead.

Foucalt's pendulum I hated it so much I swore not to touch anythign else Eco ever wrote, but I'm interested by #36 which claims name of the rose wasn't so bad? Any other supporters for this view?

Quicksilver I don't like historical fantasy /alternative history much anyway, and this is a prime example of why I don't.

#45 Sean Williams has written some reasonably good SF, his Evergence trilogy was quite enjoyable, if not outstanding and certainly worth a try nefore you consign him to the dustbin forever.

#47 I really like Name of the Rose, and picked up Pendulum recently after I saw a discussion here. Haven't read it yet though..

Severn, I could never belong to a book club. It would be impossible and torturous for me. I admire those who do....

Meh...I'm not that enthused over it anymore...the choices are just...meh most of the time. Honestly, since I've found Talk on LT, I'm not that interested...

Poor SFFWorld...it's been booted out in favour of LT. Better conversation, more interesting people...

@47. I'm not a sci-fi reader at all. I think it's safe to say he's dustbinned. :)

The Iron Tree

What a waste of time...

I don't think of the time I took to read The Da Vinci Code as wasted because it took all of 45 minutes to read the thing.

The Cather in the Rye.

Seriously, an entire book about a bratty rich kid who gets handed absolutely everything, who whines about how "nobody gets me" and "my life is so hard".

I could go to the suburbs and hear that.

And I wouldn't enjoy it there either.

I second that, Kite. I hated Catcher.

@ 54

The worst part is that the closing sentence is amazing. It makes me hate the book more. Ha!

Umberto Eco and James Joyce are two of my favourite authors... so I'd be really amiss not to stick up for their works... :)

37 - I loved Ulysses, but it is definitely not for everyone. (Maybe not even for most! He's an acquired taste, like Natto -- which is fermented soybeans, or even like Vegemite.)

43 - I also feel that a book that inspires hate isn't necessarily one to not bother reading, as even thinking about why you hate it can be beneficial. I know I've read a number of books that I absolutely loathe -- but deciphering why I recycled those books into paper pulp in my kitchen has been almost as valuable as finding books that I love. The ones I feel belong in my don't bother reading list are the ones that leave almost no impact on me when I'm done reading (as in, I can't even remember the character's name sometimes).

Eco's work has been called 'scholarly' predecessors to Dan Brown's work by a number of critics / reviewers / etc. After reading both, I personally would agree with that interpretation. You made me think of a funny side note to the Eco/Brown question. I've read from more than one academic in this particular field that credits Eco's work as being an inspiration, whereas Dan Brown's work went to court to prove it wasn't plagiarised from two academics (the court decided that it wasn't).

#47 - but I'm interested by #36 which claims name of the rose wasn't so bad? Not to pick on you, but you must really hate Name of the Rose if you have to paraphrase someone's enthusiasm of a book as "wasn't so bad." (Then again, I thought it was pretty good.)

#56 - In another bit of irony, Dan Brown won not because he did original scholarship but because stealing nonfiction ideas for a work of fiction doesn't count as plagiarism.

56/57

Obviously his scholarship was not original - it also wasn't a scholarly work. We wouldn't have a ton of historical fiction out there if people weren't allowed to use others' research for it.
Quite aside from that, having read both The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail and others of Baigent's works, I have to say that they're really not that similar.

Brown's work includes a lot of things Baigent never mentions (which Brown presumably found somewhere else), and the core idea isn't so similar (or original to Baigent) that I would have called Brown out for plagiarism...

But maybe that's just me...

No caramellunacy, I agree too. In the copy I had, Holy Blood, Holy Grail was cited as a reference source in the afterword anyway. If you're going to call what he did plagiarism, then a lot of historical fiction would bite the dust.

I just objected to The DaVinci Code because I thought it was absolutely awful - badly written, dreadful storyline (the ending of which I'd worked out halfway through - unlike the incredibly intelligent scholars in the book who couldn't work out simple childhood riddles and tricks ....... uuugggh! I must stop this .... )

Message 58: Caramellunacy
56/57

"Obviously his scholarship was not original - it also wasn't a scholarly work. We wouldn't have a ton of historical fiction out there if people weren't allowed to use others' research for it.
Quite aside from that, having read both The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail and others of Baigent's works, I have to say that they're really not that similar. "

I could not agree more. I never understood that suit. Anyone can write a book about anything... as long as they use original words. Ideas or controversies can't be copyrighted can they? I have a dozen or more books about Arthur, which are all similar but different.

I read Holy Blood Holy Grail when it came out years ago, and again before I read Browns book. It is like saying any story about Jesus is plagiarized from the Bible .

Crazy

As I said before somewhere, I find it amusing that Rome gets its collective panties in a bunch over Browns work.

Psst....You're hijacking the thread...let the thread go and lets talk about this. No more of the thread needs to be hurt :).

Let me add to the pile of bad books 90 minutes in Heaven which was a waste for me both as a reader and devote Christian. Everyone told me I must read it, it was so inspirational. Bah, I've read far more inspirational stories in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

i'm going to kill one post every hour until my demands are met.

starting with this one, apparently.

Grrr ..... arrgggh ..... ooff! *finally loses battle with thread* ..... off you go little one!

I'll add White Teeth to the list. Everyone said Zadie Smith was wonderful but I hated this one with a passion!

I wonder if there is a book that actually is disliked by everyone here.

I won't go into the specifics, but there are a few books here I really like.

Ah well. Probably about as much chance as finding a book everyone likes!

>#64: Please Don't Poop on my Salad

oh, forget it, even the touchstone doesn't like it. Here:

http://www.librarything.com/work/2230797

The question being, is it possible to hijack ones own thread?

*shrugs*

HI Andrew!!! missed you!

as for

90 minutes in Heaven and the Chicken soup things.. I agree!!!!

MrA, are you a smoker?

I have to distinguish between books I disliked and books that are a waste of time. One that fits both catagories is:

Minnow Trap by Brian Horeck.

Books that aren't necessarily awful wastes to EVERYONE, but are to me include:

State of Fear by Michael Crichton;
The Davinci Code by Dan Brown;
mostly anything by Sara Douglass, even though I started off enjoying her stuff... just that they kept eating away at me and making me angrier and angrier.

Cheers,

Lisa

>#66: hi!

>#67: nup. what?
*checks what book in #65 was actually about*
oh.
I was just going by the title, i found it... unpleasant. I know nothing of the actual book. maybe it's great, who knows. I'm never going to read it.

Lorna Doone by Richard Blackmore or Nana by Emile Zola. Awful, boring, not worth it.