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30-day Challenge! - Day 11: A book you hated
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We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. Where was her editor? I could have chopped off 200 pages easily!
The Lovely Bones If Heaven is that banal give me the other place anytime. And the police investigation! pathetic. Not to mention the dreadful in-somebody-else's-body sex. It all made me squirm.
A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates. I stuck with the book and actually finished, but wanted to rip out the pages and burn it halfway through... definitely a first for me!
I hate The Lord of the Rings. I read it and it was so long and boring. Not really for me.We walk and walk and then we do something, but then we start to walk all again.
More showy telling than actual showing or forward progression.
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice. With the (somewhat surprising) entry of erotica onto bestseller lists (Shades of Gray), I got into a conversation with someone about the book and genre. I hadn't read any of the Shades books. The person suggested I read it Anne Rice's erotica trilogy, saying they were the books that 'mainstreamed' the genre. Well ... um .... I HATED this book. Sorry, it and' t erotica or as , to my reading. It as rape rape naked people and more rape :-o
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lol ... sorry about all those typos (I visit Goodreads via app when I'm taking a break from reading), but I see you got the gist of my comment ;-)
The first Shades of Grey book. My co-workers suggested it; they absolutely loved all three books and couldn't get enough of them. I read the first one and hated it. Needless to say, I didn't read the next two!
The Pillars of the Earth or Shadow Man, Pillars because it just drug for me, and Shadow man because the trauma to the heroine was a no go for me.
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs or Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
I attempted to read Shades of Gray. I hated it and quit in the middle of ch 4.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle because it was just soooo boring. I suppose you could say that The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien was boring, but really, it wasn't. Tolkien just took a long time to explain/ present the theme/ subject, but when he did, just like, W-O-W. For wrinkle, though, overall the theme was just badly presented.
Aidan wrote: "A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle because it was just soooo boring. I suppose you could say that The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien!!! I just bought two box sets for two of my neices/nephews!
MK wrote: "Aidan wrote: "A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle because it was just soooo boring. I suppose you could say that The Fellowship of the Ring by [author:J.R.R. ..."For wrinkle or for lotr?
Aidan wrote: "New episode!"YES! ooof .... it just ended. That show, it's tense from beginning to end, every episode!
MK wrote: "Aidan wrote: "New episode!"YES! ooof .... it just ended. That show, it's tense from beginning to end, every episode!"
I know right... but they keep introducing new characters and killing the old ones...
Aidan wrote: "I know right... but they keep introducing new characters and kil..."ahhhh, so true! I've decided not to become 'invested' in ANY characters anymore, b/c they will just die a horrible terrible death, if I do :-o.
Shawn wrote: "One Hundred Years of Solitude
Am I the only one who hated this one?"
Ohnooo! That's one of our group reads for next month, I am so looking forward to it! I'd only heard good things about that one, so far.
What did you hate?
May 11th entry: Hating books really isn't my thing, but there is one book in particular that comes to mind.... The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was forced to read that the summer before freshman year of high school, and it was awful. Very long and boring in my opinion. I do enjoy some fantasty novels, but I guess Middle Earth is not my cup of tea.
Annina wrote: "I hate The Lord of the Rings. I read it and it was so long and boring. Not really for me.We walk and walk and then we do something, but then we start to walk all again."
Oh Annina, I absolutely agree, your comment made me laugh. 70 pages before the end I thought "life is too short" and gave up. I was dragged to the movie on opening day, and it was the most expensive nap I ever took.
I hated Twilight by Stephenie Meyer so much I never even got very far into it - forget how many pages I did read, but the I found the writing style juvenile. As far as a book I actually finished but hated, I'm sure that would be one of the numerous textbooks I've read over the years and successfully forgotten LOL.
Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray. read it first (and so far only time) in 11th grade. did not care for rebecca sharp at all. in fact, i wanted her to fall off the face of the earth. it was the strongest "dislike" i have ever had to a fictional character. i keep telling myself to readdress the book now in my 50's but i haven't managed to bring myself back to it.
Two from school immediately pop into mind but Jane Eyre has a slightly amusing story to go with it so I'll pick that one to talk about.I know it's the beloved favorite of many, but I just can't stand it.
When I read it for English class, as an alternative to writing a standard essay our teacher gave us the option to write an alternate ending to the book - with the catch being it had to be in a similar literary style... I asked her if she'd consider it gothic horror, and she said yes. I then asked her if she'd consider Dracula to be gothic horror, and she said yes to that too...
So my alternate ending involved Bertha being a vampire, sneaking down from the attic at night, drinking everyone's blood and terrorizing them. The last scene was her making a very good meal of Jane... It was quite cathartic! I think the only reason I got away with the story was because I included lots of symbolism and foreshadowing.
I got a free audiobook copy of it last year and decided to give it another shot... Loved it up until Jane got to Thornfield Hall, then Rochester's secret-keeping infuriated me and I had to stop.
Melanti, that is awesome. lol so funny. Did your teacher like it?
She loved it, thankfully! She had a great sense of humor.
Watership Down. I know some people love this one like life itself, but I had no love for the boring bunnies. The movie was even worse.
Kirsten wrote: "Gone Girl and The Reluctant Fundamentalist"i just bought gone girl haha! Why did you hate it?
Amy wrote: "Watership Down. I know some people love this one like life itself, but I had no love for the boring bunnies. The movie was even worse."I keep wanting to read that one, too! heh
Reynawaf wrote: "Kirsten wrote: "Gone Girl and The Reluctant Fundamentalist"
i just bought gone girl haha! Why did you hate it?"
That's funny! heh
Interested to see if you like it or hate it. Oh, also, welcome! :)
I don't like Fahrenheit 451. I've tried to read it three times and it always gets so boring that I just simply quit reading it. The longest I got was about half way, then I skimmed to the end and saw that it wasn't worthwhile to read the rest.I also found Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a bit disapointing, because everything felt so rushed, especially the ending, which was way better in the movie version. Also I gave up reading the Finnish translation, because it also felt a bit rushed and not so much of a quality version as the other six books were, even though the translator was the same for all the books.
Maarit wrote: " I don't like Fahrenheit 451. I've tried to read it three times and it always gets so boring that I just simply quit reading it. The longest I got was about half way, then I skimmed to the end and saw that it wasn't worthwhile to read the rest."I'm a huge Bradbury fan, but I agree with you on this one. It's quite a bit longer than it really needed to be. I actually like the short stories and novella that it was based on/composed from a lot better than Fahrenheit 451 as a whole.
IMO, Bradbury's real strength is in his short fiction, not his novels.
Melanti, I loved your alternate ending :-) You should have published! Alternate storylines such as Pride & Prejudice and Zombies / Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters have become quite popular.
lol. Well, I'm sure it's much too short to publish. Only 20-30 pages? And this was a couple of decades ago anyway, so it was long before the current fad started. (Wow, THAT makes me feel old!)Even if I wanted to, though, it looks like someone beat me to it - though they wrote Bertha as a werewolf rather than a vampire.
Jane Slayre
Melanti - a gothic novella! Pfffttt...werewolf, schmerewolf. I reckon a vampire is much more interesting ;-)
Little late now, trying to catch up...Hate is such a strong word but I think I strongly disliked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was too violent for me (unnecessary violence described with too much detail) and not very interesting. It might be the plot was too unbelievable for me, too, especially in the later novels that I haven't read but have seen the movies. Salander was ok, different at least, but still, not interesting for me to finish the trilogy.
Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)
Books mentioned in this topic
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Carl Sandburg (other topics)David Peace (other topics)
Victor Hugo (other topics)
Madeleine L'Engle (other topics)
Orson Scott Card (other topics)
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- Moby Dick. The actual story about Ahab and the whale was very interesting, but it was only about 15 pgs long. The other 600 pages were all about whale hunting, whale anatomy and physiology, different uses of a whale, etc....
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