Books I Hated That Everyone Else Loved

The (Stupid) Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Melancholy, morbid, and saccharine. Like Sweet-and-Low sprinkled on aged gizzards. Ick.

What book did you hate that was foisted upon you?

TK Kenyon

Really? I haven't read The Notebook, but it's on my to be read list because I loved the movie. If you've watched the movie, did you enjoy that?

Hmm, I seem to hate any books we read in English. xD The teachers always pick books for people much younger than our age group. This year I had to read Letters from the Coffin-Trenches which I strongly detest. It's hard studying something that really is not worth that much time!

Hate is a pretty strong word, but Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain earned it from me. I don't mind allegory, but when the protagonist waxed poetic for what seemed like several hundred pages about a pencil, I lost it.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - ugh! I got halfway through and promptly put it on BookMooch for some other poor soul.

Perdido Street Station. An overwrought, self indulgent, narcissistic, 600+ page Field Guide for a RPG. An infuriating waste of time. Despite a delirious overabundance of adjectives concerning filth, bodily excreta, morbidity, injury and decay (along with a copious use of the word FLESH) to describe city streets, cloudy skies, windows, doorknobs, paper clips, and ironing boards, it's not well written. This book single handedly ruined my faith in the notion of finishing a book despite reservations early on. One of the biggest pieces of bullshit I have ever read. A con job from cover to cover. And his monsters stink- they're contrived, derivative concoctions.

The other would be A Confederacy of Dunces - An introvert's callow wet dream where personal sloth and gluttony are passed off as the attributes of a rebel, and racial and sexual stereotyping are passed off as satire. Another bullshit con of a book, often described as "howlingly funny" (almost always a bad omen) that I found not so.

I agree on Confederacy of Dunces. Again, I was told that it was so funny and satirical, but I found it sad and boring. It did rise to satire for me. I don't like characters that whine and indulge in sloth and gluttony. I didn't finish it. Didn't come close.

TK

I pretty much agree with Dave on this one. I would not say "hate," but the truth is I read over half of the Magic Mountain (enough to qualify as more than a normal-length book) and then could take no more. I think my bookmark is still there where I left off--about fifteen years ago.

Jim

I really disliked 4 of the Harry Potter books...though i don't suppose Everybody else loved them...but seriously after the first few..they just weren't anything special

Eragon....just makes me angry...can't believe it became a movie...omgosh why!!!!!! so many other books would make such better movies!!!!!! grrr...

#5 arthur, your description of Confederacy of Dunces reminds me of Palahniuk's Choke which some people seem to consider as among his better works. I'm not sure why. The book struck me as dishonest, sentimental, and in love with its own outrageousness--qualities it shares with its narrator.

Haven't read that guy yet, but the obvious pick The Fight Club is buried somewhere in one of my TBR piles. I'll probably get to that one next year. I do hear mixed things about him, though.

I liked Palahniuk's early novels--especially FIGHT CLUB and LULLABY--but his last two or three have been so over the top sickening that I have to wonder if he's working to shock and outrage, rather than tell a good story.

I don't tend to finish books I absolutely hate--the last one I literally chucked across the room was COLDHEART CANYON by Clive Barker. That one was a real clinker.

New to the group and hope to pop in now and then. Think it's a great concept...

I read Confederacy of Dunces in my young and drinking days, so it was quite enjoyable--at least what little bit of it I can remember. Strangely, I have no desire to read it again.

Dave: ah, the good old days.

CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES is a fave in our house, though I can understand why it ain't for all tastes.

I'm often disappointed by books that are over-hyped: they tend to be OKAY but little more than that. Junot Diaz's BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO and TREE OF SMOKE by Denis Johnson were like that for me. Big award-winners, critical darlings but (to this author's eyes, at least) structurally flawed and a bit dull.

COLD MOUNTAIN by Charles Frazier. Forgot about that one. Got about 25 pages in and it bored the shit out of me. Couldn't believe it beat out Don DeLillo's masterpiece UNDERWORLD for the National Book Award. Yet another reason I don't take awards--literary or otherwise--seriously...

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. I know it's a huge favorite in the genre, but I couldn't stand it at all. Horrid characters in a grim world.

*whispers* Twilight and the two that follow it. But I bought all three in an internet deal and hate to pay money not to read a book. I hated everyone in those books, Bella was a sap and Edward a control freak. *looks around carefully, hides from Twilight Lovers Group*

Harry Potter

I read the first 4 during a time when I had no money to buy books but they were given as gifts to my son who was too small to read. Staring at the walls would have been a better use of my time.

I really hated A Confederacy of Dunces. I thought it was repulsive. I also disliked The Historian it was soooo boring. Both were book group reads.
And I hated both Matthew Pearl's books The Poe Shadow and The Dante Club. I just can't stand his writing. I never finished the Poe book. Again 2 book group reads.

The Stephanie Meyer books are for the illiterate or terminally adolescent. I feel like crashing the Twilight Lovers group and confirming that view...

#9, Choke was the book that came to my mind when reading the description of Confederacy of Dunces. I liked Choke *okay*, but I did almost put it down because the main character continued to disgust me.

twilight ya it sucked....i mean seriously girl moves to small town, right off the bat becomes obsessed with guy, and....that's the entire thing...her obsession and his pretending that he's strong enough to resist his obsession...seriously *rolls eyes*

I agree about "The Notebook". When it first came out the book chat room I was in kept raving about it so I read it. I thought "what is the big deal" It was ok, I guess, but not all that great. Other books I have had trouble reading are Wicked, which my daughter loved and insisted I read. I could only get thru half of it. I thin part of the problem is that it is fantasy and I need a real place to get my bearings. Another book everyone raved about was Blood Work by Connelly. I kept wanting him to get to the point. I suppose that's why I don't like murder mysteries. Right now I am reading The Alienist. Same problem. Get to the point!!!

I couldn't stomach Eat, Pray, Love. I feel so bad for someone who has a crisis, then gets to escape life for a year by traveling around the world. It felt contrived.

I thought I was the only person on the planet who hated Wicked and The Notebook. Thought it was just me. But the one that comes to mind for me is Black House. I love SK, but the first 20 pages had me poking at my face with a toothpick to keep focused.

#22 I read fantasy all the time, and I had difficulty with Wicked. Nor did I particularly care for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. I have Perdido Street Station on the TBR heap, but it just moved down after hearing you, Arthur. The book that I hated, hated, hated--3 page chapters, ADHD changes of focus, the style completely killed what might have been a tolerable story--was The Davinci Code. (ducks for cover) I read it because so many were raving about it, a good friend gave me the book. I could read maybe two-three pages at a sitting, then had to put it down and do something else!

I didn't hate the The Davinci Code because it's deficiencies as fiction were almost immediately apparent.
It's like drinking a can of grape soda at a barbecue -you know it's no good for you, but you drink it to be a good guest at the party.
Reading The Davinci Code was like going to see the Rocky Horror Show when it first was a midnight movie phenomenon. You do it because EVERYONE wants you to - the family dog wants you to.
I am amazed when people take the thing seriously on any level, though. Five seconds of online research can plug you in on how lame it is.

double post city....

I never read any of the Harry Potter books, but listened to them all. Jim Dale's performance was worth the effort, although I must say that the last three seemed to be awfully loooooong.

#20, well, I came to Choke after a couple of other Palahniuk books, including Haunted which deserves a mention elsewhere, so I already had some level of skepticism, which Choke ran right into.

And I have to admit, I didn't find the main character repulsive so much as pathetic. The book really brought out my inner Republican: I kept wanting to tell Vincent to grow up, get a real job, and stop sponging off of decent people. The mother character, OTH, seemed like she would have made a decent character in the hands of a good writer, but the way she's written doesn't really end up making much sense. (It didn't help that I was reading some of Umberto Eco's nonfiction around the same time. A '60s Italian radical who moves to America to switch around the bottles in hair dye? Was she the punchline for half of the Red Brigades' jokes? Did she leave Italy out of embarassment?)

The only character in the book who I ended up liking was Denny, which was ironic, because I spent the first half of the book hoping he'd meet a violent end. It didn't help that he seemed to have been an escapee from some government genetic experiment to crossbreed Jar Jar Binks and Pauly Shore in order to create a human being with a negative IQ score. (Perhaps later to be released into the population of Europe or Asia to help bring down their test scores.) But somehow his whole half-assed redemption through rock collecting thing kind of worked.

>19 CliffBurns:
It's possible to dislike books without insulting the people who read them.

Dumb people read dumb books.

Lazy minds refuse to tackle challenging reads and their mental muscles become slack, atrophied.

Do you think someone who reads Stephanie Meyer's books or those Nicholas Sparks abominations are as literate, intelligent and profound as someone who tackles David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon or William T. Vollmann?

Unlikely...

It's possible to read an unchallenging work of fiction and not be stupid. Many people don't think fiction is important on that level.

I'll say again:
there are people who are as smart as anyone can be, who don't read much fiction because it's fiction. They put stock in the information they get from non fiction. Whether their life is lacking, is something that would have to be determined on a case by case basis.
People can and do derive personal enlightenment and cultural communion from sources other than fiction.

>33 CliffBurns:
You're hilarious.

True, Arthur, but there's also high quality, intelligent non-fiction and suck-ass whiny, fake memoirs by twenty- or thirty-somethings who need to have their noses surgically removed from their own navels.

You don't think there's a QUALITATIVE difference?

I have no problem with people who don't read fiction--they're merely exhibiting a paucity of imagination.

Er, that was a joke (I think)...

I think Cliff woke up on the wrong side of the bookshelf this morning ... I second Arthur's comments, especially his first ... I, for one, read plenty of "unchallenging" fiction in addition to enjoying Vollmann and Wallace ... and frankly, some of the doggerel/"songs" Pynchon wrote in Gravity's Rainbow seemed pretty dumb to me.

And remember Cliff, there are plenty of people who think sci-fi is an inherently "dumb" genre.

I recently read Lucky Wander Boy and I absolutely hated it. There seemed to be a large amount of high reviews received here and there. It was disappointing to wade through the whole book looking for that one gem of insight to finally appear, just to hit the end and realize that there was no redeeming factor.

@ 9 - 10
I also just finished Fight Club and I enjoyed it, but I am afraid to read any more of his works. The joy of writing purely for shock value, instead of for a good story seem to have pulled him off course, based on the reviews I have heard from others.

36>
"You don't think there's a QUALITATIVE difference?"

I think the concept of qualitative is relative. I could see reading "suck-ass whiny, fake memoirs by twenty- or thirty-somethings who need to have their noses surgically removed from their own navels" as being potentially useful if for no other reason than to gain a measure of the exact dimensions of banality.

And then, sometimes, those we wish to easily dismiss, can surprise us.

Krome:

Often SF IS an inherently dumb genre. Too much of it, especially in the past, is the equivalent of juvenilia.

I've always had trouble with folks who don't think you can break down and separate good and bad writing. This notion that taste is entirely subjective. To wit: Stephanie Meyer is just a good a writer as Pynchon and a Dick & Jane reader is equivalent to the prose of James Joyce. "I may not know art but I know what I like (so there! Tbbbsppp!").

This strikes me as utterly silly. People's reading muscles can grow flaccid just as a bicep can if you don't work them enough. If you read Pynchon AND some dopey escapist fiction fine, but if you ONLY ready dopey, escapist fiction, you're going to be frustrated, annoyed and defeated by the Vollmanns and Pynchons of the world and hold them in contempt as a result.

"I've always had trouble with folks who don't think you can break down and separate good and bad writing."

Well that's not what's going on here. This exchange has been about people flatly rejecting your evaluations of other people's intelligence based on what they read.

Arthur:

From #39:

"I think the concept of qualitative is relative."

NO.

This goes against everything I believe as a writer AND a reader. You can break down and parse sentence structure the same way you can a mathematical formula. Place two pieces of prose by a good and bad writer side by side and it's clear who has the talent, who doesn't.

Everything I write is a struggle AGAINST mediocre writing, mediocre thinking. I challenge my readers and expend enormous energies to make my prose as finely crafted as I possibly can. To do otherwise is a disservice to my readers...and my Muse.

Look, clearly I'm offending folks here. Maybe it's better if I back off. Strongly held views seem to be hard for folks to take without feeling personally abused. I find that baffling--it's like playing a game of football without trash talk and teasing. And, of course, I always play to win...

>42 CliffBurns:
Nothing personal, I just like to call out trolls when I see 'em.

"Strongly held views seem to be hard for folks to take without feeling personally abused. I find that baffling--it's like playing a game of football without trash talk and teasing."

The cultures surrounding reading and the participation in athletic team sports respectively, seem, by their very natures, to not share obvious and immediate correlations or concerns. To submit that they do, is a unique notion that others are not obliged to accept.

I think all people should read, even the "dumb" ones! People read for all different reasons, and none are to be looked down upon in my opinion.

Dumb people read dumb books.

Lazy minds refuse to tackle challenging reads and their mental muscles become slack, atrophied.

Look, clearly I'm offending folks here.

You seem to truly believe everyone are idiots who read poor writing and then seem surprised you have offended people. I am a Software Engineer and IMO a rather intelligent individual and I have read Dan Brown and Steve Berry. Are they wonderful authors? No, but they fill a need, such as needing something to listen to in a car on a long trip, don't need to think too hard. and sometimes work drains me out and what I need is something dumb to relax to, I prefer reading over TV. Of course that is not all I read but your statements included me as one of the 'dumb' people. Where you step over the line for a lot of people is going from insulting poor authors and their books to the people reading them.

Personally it generally comes across as sour grapes. I plan to eventually read one of your books before I make any final judgments.

... and you know, a true relativist would say that a more profound book isn't "better" ... it's just more profound.

>42 CliffBurns:

just curious on what you are terming "good prose"...complexity? long words? words not commonly used? sentence structure that follows the proper rules set down by....people not living today?

ya just agreeing with the other people who disagree with your statement that reading material reflects intelligence

challenging reads....what are you defining that as? books where it is hard to decipher what the author is saying? books where the reader may feel challenged by the assertions of the author?

i'm honestly curious about people's definitions of "challenging reads" and "good prose" for since your qualifications depend on the definition of those ideas....you really can't make a judgement and it is relative from person to person depending on how their mind works and how they define them

Hmm...If one joins a group called "Books I Hated That Everyone Else Loved," I think one ought to be prepared to see one's beloved fluff reading described as trite, banal, or badly researched.

I think I was invited here because of my charming review of the first half of Any Given Doomsday; if this book had redeming values, I was unable to locate them.

Personally, I think that fluff reading is only acceptable as a form of stress relief. I disapprove slightly, even then, and I urge caution. This is from personal experience. During extreme stress, I have read most of the Robert Jordan books, most of the Terry Goodkind books, and a few Nora Roberts things, which barely merit the status of books. In retrospect, I would have been much better off reading something that reinforced my sense of intelligence while still being entertaining, such as Lois McMaster Bujold. Additionally, I wasted money on books that I probably wouldn't give to my enemies. I might donate them but that also seems cruel.

I also hated the latest Dexter book Dexter in the Dark. Bringing the supernatural into an ordinary fiction series in the third novel is inappropriate.

>49 psocoptera:

Robert Jordan books barely merit the status of books...interesting...

Hmmm....can you explain a bit more about why you think so-called "fluff reading" is "only acceptable as a form of stress relief"?

America Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. 4 pages of a description of a flat is not a social commentary on the 80s, its a Jackie Collins rip-off crossed with a slasher book!

I'm with you on American Psycho. I got turned off by the endless repetitive descriptions of high-priced couture. It's been a long while since I read it, but I remember wondering what it was about when I finished it. The story seemed to have no arc, the characters no development.

Whew! What a thread. I read The Twilight series and don't consider myself terminally dumb. I've also read some classics, quite a bit of non-fiction, and some serious fiction this year.

I, like most people, read things for a variety of reasons and at various stages of mental strength and neediness.

I don't feel that every book I read has to be challenging. I don't want to analyze every book, pause and look up references, place the book in the cosmos or rate it with other books of different types. Sometimes I just want a thumping good story.

CliffBurns - I sure wouldn't want to be around you very much. You would make judgments about my value as a human being based on what I read and probably ignore the x% of good stuff I read and focus in on the y% that I read for other reasons than education or mental stimulation.

But, regarding quality - yes, you can set two pieces of writing side by side and it's pretty clear if one's better written than the other, but that's not the sum of a book's worth. Some things are not quantifiable and quite a bit of good literature cannot be broken down to properly parsed sentences. It flows somehow. Some books are BETTER books from a structural or objective point of view, but if people don't like them or they don't grab you emotionally or serve another need, what good are they? I personally cannot stand to read Virginia Woolf and just recently got rid of almost everything of hers I owned, but most people consider her brilliant. That's fine. She's a brilliant writer who I don't like to read. End of story.

Books I've hated this year: Snow Crash, Pretty Little Mistakes, One More Year, Any Given Doomsday. Good literature or bad literature? Good books or bad books? Definitely not good for me, but it doesn't bother me very much if other people like them.

And I like Dan Brown's books because they got me thinking about things I wouldn't have otherwise thought about - The Catholic Church, religion, computers, things found in ancient ice, Mary Magdalene, etc. All good subjects that I might not have thought about without reading his books. And they passed the time and I enjoyed them while reading them. Would I read them again? Probably not. But you just never know.

Anything by Peter Ackroyd. I've tried, oh how I've tried but they are just dull. For example his book on London - could have been very informative but it was anything but! Talk about verbose.

>53 karenmarie:

I like what you're saying....kind of reminds me of Heart of Darkness...very well written...extremely difficult to read (for me anyways, i just got easily distracted while reading it..) and i don't think i'll read it again for at least 10 years....

Eragon. Worst. Book. Ever.

Talk about the literary wet dreams of a callow youth. Everyone goes on about how gifted a writer he must be since he was published when he was a teenager, but what they don't know is that every teenage sci-fi/fantasy geek writes this kind of story after reading a handful of superior works. They just don't have over-indulgent parents.

That said, I read Eldest which was slightly less bad than Eragon, and I plan to read Brisingr if my library ever has it available. It's like watching those videos on YouTube where someone gets hurt and makes dumb noises. You know you shouldn't watch, but you just can't help yourself.

i totally agree about eragon

19)

Whew .... I guess I should leave LibraryThingy for good. It would certainly break my heart if you were to find something I read unsuitable and not up to your standards. I just don't know what I would do if you called me illiterate and adolescent on here.

I think it was downright evil of TK to start this thread then leave. :>

Well, have far can you go with a concept like this? Are you going to go out of your way to finish books that you hate just to come here to kvetch about them? ;)
There are those milestones where you say "Never again" and you move on.
There are other books I hate, but not necessarily that everyone else loved...

I think the book i hate much is wheels by MacPhail, Catherine..

I also loved A Confederacy of Dunces. But I too can see that there's a fine line between satire and making fun of the mentally ill or at least, the socially dysfunctional.

Cold Mountain was indeed painfully boring. If you must read an "on-the-road-home-after-the-war" story, read The Odyssey instead. Again.

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. Hands down the worst book I've ever read all the way through. Usually, if a book is bad, I just stop reading; but I kept reading this one because so many people I respect recommended it, and I kept hoping I'd figure out why. (I still don't know - perhaps my friends are all masochists or something.)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is also pretty awful, but I don't know if anyone really loves it - other than the people who come up with school reading lists, of course.