What are some books you read that you disliked?

Everyone kept telling me to read “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter”. I still haven’t finished it. I just couldn’t get into it.

@adreamofautumn I loved that book, but I guess it’s not for everyone.

I recently read “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” I was so into it while I was reading it, and bawled my eyes out at the end. But when I really put thought into it later, I was so annoyed at the way the author contrived things and played with my emotions. Makes me inappropriately angry.

@Likeradar

When/if I become a writer, I’ll want to write a book that emotionally involves the reader.

Also, to add to my list, the book “After” by Francine Prose sucked…haha…it’s about a school shooting that causes this school to become paranoid and brainwash parents through email and cart a bunch of kids off to boot camps and what not…it was not credible and the ending was basically “who knows what happens next”.

Also, I just noticed that all the books I mentioned were by women…lol

Tropic of Cancer

To Kill a Mocking Bird. EGHHHHHH

prepares for shitstorm…

Manchild in the Promised Land.
I am currently having trouble with Albert Camus’ The Stranger, which is very highly regarded. But I will eventually finish it.

@Dansedescygnes Emotional involvement is great… but feeling like you were manipulated afterwards is not. I love books that really suck me in and makes me feel, you know? But “We Need to Talk About Kevin” was so manipulative.

@uberbatman

Oh, you’ll get a shitstorm, mark my words. ;)

I loved that book. We read it in 8th grade along with Johnny Tremain, Walk Two Moons, and Of Mice and Men. Those were all so excellent.

@Dansedescygnes I LOVED the bean trees. Of course I read it as an adult and of my own accord. I think I pretty much despised anything I was forced to read (aside from one or two exceptions in college).

@RedPowerLady

I liked plenty I was forced to read like all those 8th grade books I mentioned, an abridged version of “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Atonement”, etc. I don’t even remember “The Bean Trees” that much, I just remember thinking it was boring at the time and then hearing basically everyone I know (including my current English teacher) say the book was bad. I’d probably be willing to read it again, to be honest.

(Umbrella raised, waiting for shit-storm)

How about worst books you ever read? There’s a recent list here.

Disgrace by JM Coetzee. Read it in my book club. Hated the writing, the characters and the story.

Some books just sound outrageously terrible. There’s a book called “Until I Find You” by John Irving (author of “The Cider House Rules”). Apparently this book is about tattoos and a man’s relationship with older women and contains 500 pages of descriptions of his molestations and sexual escapades as a kid. WTF?

Coetzee – Crusoe was on my shit list too.

How about anything by Ann Coutier? Any comment I have about her will be moderated.

@Dansedescygnes I also enjoyed the “sequal” to Bean Trees, lol. I’m a fan of Kingsolver though and so far have enjoyed everything i’ve read of hers (which certainly isn’t everything she has written). I was forced to read her book “Prodigal Summer” and I did enjoy it. (but again that was in college). I suppose the only book I enjoyed being forced to read in younger years was the outsiders, lol.

@RedPowerLady

Well, I plan on doing plenty of reading in the future. I love books. And I did like “The Outsiders”, that was a summer reading book.

Eugénie Grandet. God, how I hated that shit.

Author of The Outsiders?

@Jeruba S. E. Hinton.

@Jeruba

S.E. Hinton was a teenage girl when she wrote “The Outsiders”.

Thanks. That title has been used more than once.

Moby Dick—expected something that could be made into a John Holmes film.
The Life of Pi—light on the math.

Mmm… pie…

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Paint it Black by Janet Fitch
...amongst others that I just can’t seem to recall at the moment.

blech.

Anyything Mark Twain. I hate his work. Especially Tom Sawyer.

the screwtape letters by c.s. lewis
i love c.s. lewis, but i found it hard to actually get in to this book.

The Shack
The first three Harry Potter books (I stopped reading in the fourth book right after the dark mark appeared—people kept telling me that they would get better, but I finally decided to give up on the series and read something that I would actually enjoy or that I would be able to gain something by reading.)

@aidje I couldn’t agree less. The Harry Potter books are amazing. They start off as childrens books, and advance as the kids grow. By the time you get to the 7th and final book, you are completely engulfed in an adult thriller.
Once I read each of the books, I had to go back and re-read the others, because I realized how much had been added to the story. I thought Book Two was the weakest, until I read Book Six, when I realized how important Two had been.
I urge you to try again! The movies just don’t cut it.

Brave new world and Beowulf read them both in senior year of high school . . .they were both a waste of my time.

@filmfann You are by no means the first person to say any of those things. I heard it so many times while I was reading the books (whenever I mentioned my lack of appreciation) and after I had given up on them. I realize that there are a great many people who love those books dearly, but I refuse, at this time, to waste any more time on that series. I just didn’t like it, and I have plenty of other things that I want to read. And don’t worry, the movies have nothing to with any decision in that area. I’ve never really paid attention to them. I simply do not like Rowling’s writing.

The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is the first book I recall really disliking. The story was good, but it was just way too long, which is understandable since he was paid by the word.

And I dislike anything by Nicholas Sparks. I gave up after about three books and I wish I would’ve stopped after the first one.

Dan Brown is another author I dislike. I read all four of his books (I don’t know if he’s written more) in middle school and I really liked the first two I read (The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons). After I read the other two books even I realized that he used the same formulaic plot in each of his books. But even so I thought, “Eh, formulaic but still entertaining.” Then I reread them my senior year of high school. Ugh. His prose is awful and his research is poorly done. I’m embarrassed that I ever liked his work.

These are the only ones I can think of, so I guess I’ve had good luck in choosing my books.

Just about every book I was forced to read at school, basically all of 19th and 20th century french litterature.

I hated “The Da Vinci Code” too; I thought it was very obvious and sloppily done. Love Dickens, Kingsolver and Cather. I think sometimes we’re exposed to great authors too early, but of course, no writer is great to everyone. I read “Engenie Grandet” five years ago for a class and was not crazy about it; nor did I love “Madame Bovary” although I did appreciate its value. I agree that “We Need to Talk About Kevin” was manipulative; still, I found it very compelling.

Ha ha, “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality”. Amazing. I should buy it. I could laugh and cry simultaneously.

Not too fond of Stephen King’s works. There was a time where everyone was reading them, and I found them well written and boring.

I read too little fiction, though. Wish I read more. Mostly fact books and philosophical literature. Last book was “The God Illusion”.

a million little pieces.

i wanted to claw out my own eyes.
actually, thats a bit dramatic.
i just wanted to stop reading it…which i couldnt do because im so OCD about finishing books.

Treasure Island
Ivanhoe
Great Expectations

And everything else I was forced, at the point of a red pencil, to read for school.

Lolita. I know it’s a classic, but I find it creepy and sick.

I hated The Bridges of Madison County. Supposedly it’s a classic love story and all that junk, and apparently someone liked it enough to make a movie out of it, but honestly I wanted to vomit throughout the entire thing. The writing seemed very juvenile, it was way too sappy for me to take it seriously, and the whole time I was thinking ”...Come ON! Give me a break!” And when her children read her in her letter to them that she had had sex on their kitchen table with the guy, and they find it romantic…it just doesn’t seem like a very normal reaction. Call me crazy.

I also didn’t like The Horse Whisperer. That’s one of the few examples where I think the movie is way better than the book. The book was, again, too sappy and “star-crossed lovers” for me to take seriously.

I don’t like Ernest Hemingway, that macho misogynist. I had to read him in my first year at University. Now that I am older, perhaps I will try to read him again.

Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes

ick

I’m a huge fan of science fiction, but I don’t really like Isaac Asimov. Go figure.

I’m politically involved and interested and usually enjoy learning about international economics as well, but SHEESH “the world is flat” put to sleep.Oh, and I loved the bean trees and anything else barbara kingsolver.
AND to kill a mockingbird. To each his own.;)

@wp1211 I had to read The World Is Flat for my sociology class. blargh. I stopped reading 200 pages in when I realized that the next 400 pages were going to just keep repeating the author’s single point. Not a good book for reading the expanded edition.

But I’ll have to disagree with you on To Kill A Mockingbird (which I’m sure you get a lot anyway). :-)

@wp1211 I read “The World is Flat” for my Problems of Globalization class. I really hated that book.

The Giver is one book that I was forced to read and I hated it. I refuse to ever read it again. And personally I dont think too highly of the Twilight series. (yes i read them all. i had some hope that they would get better, that maybe the second third or fourth would redeem the rest. i was EXTREMELY disappointed.) i also have this thing where i have to finish a series no matter how much i dislike them…stupid compulsion