30-day Challenge! - Day 11: A book you hated

[Lesserknowngems]

I think I hate this book because I really, really wanted to like it. Like desperately wanted to like it. Some of my friends do read, but I find myself more and more wanting to talk about books that they might have heard of, but nothing more. I get that, different strokes for different folks and all that. Then Ender's Game by Orson Scott Cardreally caught on in one of my groups. Everyone read it and loved it and I was doing a happy dance. Then I read it. It’s Twilight for nerds. And that is fine, but I got so angry because this book could have been good had it been written well. Had the character been fleshed out and not a blank slate character. Had they actually discussed the themes of child soldiers and sacrificing one to save the many, instead of glancing over them. Had it not been someone’s poor list of excuses and wish fulfilment as a way of blaming everyone else and not themselves.

You can ignore bad books, but since it has such a big part in my comunity I can't help but hating it.

[[deleted user]]

. I HATED this book. I found it uninteresting and dull. It was required for my university class, and it was a huge chore to slog through it.

[Hilary]

A Clockwork Orange (a clever premise, but utterly horrible)

[Joseph]

Not surprisingly my answer is similar to my answer for most over rated. But upon thinking it over carefully, I will reverse the order of these two.

Most hated On the RoadDishonorable mention Ulysses

[[deleted user]]

Twilight - there was nothing I liked about this book, absolutely nothing.

[siriusedward]

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

[Bat-Cat]

The Fall of the House of Usher

[Linda]

Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I read it 1.5 times and just couldn't finish the second try.

[Gerard]

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

[Hayley]

Crime and Punishment - - had to put it down.

[Rhedyn]

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. Tolkien|656983..."

WHAT? I LOVED A Wrinkle in Time!!! Okay, everyone's different....

Really every single modern or YA book I've been stupid enough to pick up.

[Lena]

Outlander, Catcher in the Rye, The Devourers, In the Land of the Ling White Cloud, The Wretched of Muirwood... oh was it only suppose to be one? Damn me and my rants.

[Brina]

Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace

[Renee]

I read A Clockwork Orange with another group a few years back. My husband had always liked that one and kept telling me how great it was. I just couldn't get into it at all, and hated the book.

[Rosemarie]

Robin, your comments make me glad that I didn't read Outlander. I prefer the classics if I am going to read a long book.

[Jehona]

Maria and Fifty Shades Trilogy

[Maggie the Muskoka Library Mouse]

Undoubtedly "Brave New World." I can't stand it!

[Terry]

Lincoln in the Bardo

[Robin P]

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry - totally unbelievable and has an element I detest, where a child is in the story just to make the adults happy. Way too much melodrama.

Like the other Robin, I didn't like Outlander, it was full of common romance tropes but with way more sex and violence. It seemed like sadomachistic soft porn.

[Lori]

The Pillars of the Earth - I was so looking forward to a wonderful historical fiction read and found that it became very much like a medieval soap opera. I didn't care for any of the characters and just couldn't wait for it to end. This is an example of me reading a very hyped book and then finding myself in the minority. Happens all the time.

I also hated Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. That book just weirded me out completely and I saw nothing to like at all.

[Nidhi]

Recently I started Decameron. Left it unfinished ( first book in my life, I choose carefully what I read). That book is not for me. I will not recommend it to anybody.

Decameron Grand DNF.

[Joseph]

Remembrance of Things Past

aka In Search of Lost Time.

No matter how I search, I'll never get the three months back I spent on the Longest Novel in the World.

https://100greatestnovelsofalltimeque...

[Lynn, New School Classics]

This is always a dangerous thread; rather contentious. Realize if I criticize your favorite book I am not criticizing you. We just react differently to different things. I hated The Handmaid's Tale. I hate true life stories about exploitation of young women. This seemed like an even worse version. This insane fantasy just had nothing to teach me, show me....I have no idea why people like it and please don't try to explain it to me. People have tried to tell me it "raises awareness" or "sounds a warning"....no, just no. I see enough sad/tragic situations as a teacher. I read to escape into a better world with ideas I have not encountered, or to escape into a world of joy and innocence.

[Piyangie]

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo, I'm sorry to say.

[Sara, Old School Classics]

It occurs to me that what makes these books endure is that we have a reaction to them. They do not fade away from us. They are the kinds of books that will garner love or hate, but not indifference.

I hated Lolita. Literally hated it, wanted to throw it at the wall.

[Marilyn]

Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace. It's on the Guardian 1000 list in crime novels. No idea how they could choose it. Some books can be an uncomfortable read, which is not necessarily a bad thing. This book was unnecessarily graphic, didn't have a good story and was a thoroughly unpleasant read. Still don't know why I finished it. Hated it.

[Sherry]

I actually have a "books I hated" shelf on Goodreads and there are four books on it:

Romeo and Juliet
The Lovely Bones
Love You Forever
Disgrace

Reading Romeo and Juliet as an adult who knows too much about teenage suicide and how much of it is related to devastation over relationships, it was impossible for me to like a play that romanticized suicide. Horrible.

The Lovely Bones had me angry and disgusted at the author, the editor, and the publicists of this book.

Love You Forever, the beloved children's book, sounded like a good idea when I had my wonderful son. I hadn't realized it was a creepy story about a mentally disturbed mother who is completely oblivious to the concept of personal boundaries, and in the end stalks her adult child before finally dying. Did I really want to read this to a child, particularly one I loved, and say, "That's your bedtime story, sweet dreams!" NO, I did not.

And finally, J.M. Coetzee's disgrace was about a disgraceful man who had an opportunity for redemption clearly presented to him but passed it by--at the expense of a dog's life. Hated it. Coetzee is a good writer, but this is a bad book.

[Scott]

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian was awful. I know there was a lot of horrific violence along the Mexican border at that time, but the novel exaggerates it to an absurd extreme. It feels like the author has no real talent, he is just good at describing the most base violence.

[Linda R,]

Scott wrote: "Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian was awful. I know there was a lot of horrific violence along the Mexican border at that time, but the novel exaggerates it to an absurd extreme. It feels like the a..."

That is interesting because I had been thinking of reading it since I read The Road. But I have enough problems already with his lack of punctuation, if the violence is horrific too then it may not be worth looking into.

[Linda R,]

I couldn't finish Crime and Punishment. I liked The Brothers Karamazov but there was just no one redeemable in Crime and Punishment to make me go through all that uglyness.

[Wreade1872]

I could go with The Great Gatsby, Robur the Conqueror (verne) or Princess of Mars (rice burroughs)... but i truly hated reading Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg .

[LiLi]

@Wreade1872, I remember at some point my husband tried to read the Barsoom series. He said the writing was pretty bad and iirc there was plenty of sexism and racism. Does that sound about right?

[Wreade1872]

LiLi wrote: "@Wreade1872, I remember at some point my husband tried to read the Barsoom series. He said the writing was pretty bad and iirc there was plenty of sexism and racism. Does that sound about right?"

Yes absolutely, whats odd though is that was my first ERB , so i'm not sure if its really as bad as i remember or whether i just had a hard time adjusting to it.
I've read a number of his works since and actually liked a few of them, Tarzan's certainly worth a look.
My main issue was the flatness of the writing certainly more than the content.