What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
Just to chat
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Name a book that everyone else seems to love, but that you hated
XD ah okay. I can totally understand that tbh, not everyone will like every book and some just aren't for some people after all ^-^
Lobstergirl wrote: "You sound like a good candidate for adult literature..."Yep, a whole new field to be disappointed in. :D
Woolfie wrote: "I think it's safe to say that I can addThe Night Circus
The Magicians
And most YA novels
to my can't stand list."
Don't know "The Magicians" but it sounds like the Author thought "You know what I miss with HP? Sex, drugs and alcohol!".
Can't see anybody actually liking that...
Loved "The Night Circus", beautifully written and so romantic. *sigh*
But then I do like me some Teen/YA Romance fiction, so I guess I'm target audience.
I hate The Bell Jar. I've read it twice, once in my teens and again a couple of years ago to see if maybe I just didn't get it the first time round. Nope. I did not like it.I can appreciate it was groundbreaking in some ways, but I just found it humourless, tedious, kind of racist in places, and thought it glamourised depression. The whole cult of appreciation around Sylvia Plath is a little bit creepy to me.
edit: And I say this as someone with personal experience of depression.
I find Flannery O'Connor stories repulsive. I don't care how good of a writer she is or how compelling the stories are, there's a limit to how many times I can read the "n"-word before I can't bear to continue anymore.
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I used to keep track of the "n" word when reading novels (I would actually count), but I guess I've stopped. It was so common back in the 20s and 30s. Not just American writers but British too. Indians (from India) were referred to that way often.
I haven't read anything by Flannery O'Connor. Sometimes "the South" is too big a presence in a novel, and then I don't want to read any more southern books for a long time. I don't feel the same way about nonfiction, I try to fit in books about slavery and Jim Crow, but with fiction "the South" just seems oppressive somehow.
Agreed about As I Lay Dying. We had to read that and a couple of other godawful Faulkner abortions in one of our college English classes. Literally could not get past the first few pages. It seemed like pointless brain-draining garbage. So, we wrote a very intelligent essay saying so and explaining exactly why. Got an F, but so what! Bluejay
The Twilight series. I never understood the hype about the books or the movies.
Life of Pi. I'm still mad about the ending. The tiger should be a tiger!
I wouldn't use the word hate. It's such a strong word that people toss around a lot, almost like the word love. I might hate slavery (which still exists in some parts of the world). I might hate Hitler or the idea that such a despot could exist and maintain his twisted political views for so long before anybody thought to stop him. I might loathe certain diseases. Rack up most "hatreds" next to those and you realize that you're misplacing hate for irritation.But if I would have to state my dislike for a book that other people adored, it would have to be the entire Harry Potter series. It made me feel bad about myself for being an ordinary human being. After a while, I couldn't read the word Muggle without seeing the word nigger. Just substitute your least favorite epithet (kike, dyke, faggot, wop, dago, spic, etc.), and you'll see exactly what I mean.
Muggles get short shrift in Rowling's closeted little world. They're either despicable creatures like the Dursleys or nonentities like Seamus Finnegan's father or Hermione Granger's parents. We never learn anything about Hermione's parents other than that they're dentists. Then she Obliviates them and sends them off to Australia. Exit Muggle parents, stage left.
The Dursleys are dispensed with in almost similar fashion, sent off to who-knows-where in order to save them from the Death Eaters ready to attack Harry the moment he turns seventeen. We've delved into these people's lives for the better part of seven years and they're swept under the rug like so much dust.
The other pet peeve I have with these books is that nothing Rowling writes in them is original. Unicorns, dragons, centaurs, hippogriffs, mermaids, basilisks, giants, sirens (veelas), ghosts, dwarves, goblins, pixies, brownies (house elves), gnomes, witches and wizards have all been written about elsewhere.
Even Voldemort himself is merely a demon. Rowling never uses that word to describe him but that's what he is. The method he uses to gain immortality for himself--i.e., the Horcruxes--have been written about for characters such as Kostchei the Deathless and a droichan (a luck stealer written about in Charles de Lint's work Jack of Kinrowan). Humans can lose their humanity through great acts of evil. In such fiction, when magic is involved, coupled with a desperate desire for something that humans aren't meant to have, like eternal youth, supreme power or--guess what?--immortality, then demonhood is positively assured.
Nope, never got the wild, squealing love for Harry Potter. He was careless with his magic and an indifferent student who charged recklessly into danger. I wondered why in the world it was up to him to kill Voldemort when there was another more capable wizard who could have done it. Severus Snape was a wizard who seemed to gain in strength and power with every book. Hell, he even learned to fly without a broom, a feat that was shared by only the Dark Lord himself! If love really was needed to kill Voldemort, then Snape felt that for his beloved Lily, whom Voldemort murdered even after Snape begged him to spare her.
So why should the task fall to Harry? Oh, right, the Horcruxes. But with a little better planning (or better writing), Harry could have destroyed the Horcruxes, let himself be killed and then Snape could have found Voldemort and finished the job. It would have made a lot more sense.
But the entire series was named after Harry Potter so he had to be the one to finish off old Voldie. However, even the final battle fell flat. Harry and Voldemort meet, each fires off a single spell and Voldemort drops dead, hit by his own rebounding curse. That was the same situation that destroyed Voldemort when he first met infant Harry. Shoot, we waited seven books for that? The battle between Molly Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange was more exciting!
Oy. I won't deny Rowling's writing style is excellent. I just think this whole seven-book saga really isn't worth the hype.
Landline - I have never read a more unbelievable and infuriatingly juvenile supposedly-married relationship. I do not believe this relationship dynamic for a single second. I have also never read a book where the male character "growls," "chuffs," and lifts up one corner of his mouth so often.The Return of the King - If I'd had to read one more sentence about how hard it was for Frodo to put one foot in front of the other, I SWEAR. It was agonizing for me to read about Sam and Frodo's journey. Their trek was so boring and arduous and every step and stair got its own paragraph of description.
Wuthering Heights. I read it for the first time as an adult, expecting this grand sweeping love story that everyone talks about. And all I could see was that Heathcliff and Catherine were both incredibly shallow and self-centered, and I wondered how anyone could fall in love with either of them!
As a preface, I want to say that when I last read this book, I was young and pretty sure I knew everything in the world about everything in the world, but I really, really, really didn't like The Scarlet Letter. It might simply be the way it was taught to us, but I didn't see Dimmesdale as a sympathetic character at all. I might have mentioned in the paper we were required to write that I thought Hawthorne never meant for him to be sympathetic, and that Dimmesdale was a play on the word dimwit. If I actually wrote that, it might explain my grade because our professor (God rest his soul, he was a good teacher) practically gushed when he discussed that character.I've thought that maybe I owe it to the book to re-read it, but somehow always find something else I want to read more.
Charlotte (Buried in Books) wrote: "I really didn't like Room, not in any rush to read anything else by that author."I agree about Room. I didn't hate it, but I didn't have the love for it that my friends did. I do appreciate the fact that it made me slightly paranoid about walking alone, and very suspicious about what my neighbors might be keeping in their sheds.
The books I hate are the ones I can't even bring myself to finish, so I can't say I hated it, but I didn't like the storyline and couldn't understand why everyone seemed to love it.I've got no interest in watching the movie either.
A Hundred Years of Solitude !!! Worst book ever! I can't be friends with you if you liked it. All the characters had the same name, all the guys had large penises, some chick ate dirt.
Yuchamashe I love your description of this book. Has me chuckling. I've never read it and now, I never will. I salute you. :)
Lobstergirl wrote: "Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "The Little Prince"Oh, I have to agree with you there. I don't even remember much from it except a vague awareness of stupidity."
Nailed it. Ditto. :)
Never been a great fan of Thomas Hardy. Any of them. Long-winded, self-indulgent, badly in need of a good editor.*Whispers* Not too keen on C.D. either ;)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West- I was so excited to read the book and when I finished I was so upset and hated it so much I put it on a shelf at work with a "take me" post it on it. I also have issues with Jane Austen books. I read plenty of modern takes of her stories and love the movies but for some reason I can never finish the books. I keep trying and keep failing. The only one I ever finished and enjoyed was Northanger Abbey
Yefim wrote: "Dune"How could you? I hate you. 93% of readers like it. It's the single best SF novel I ever read. Well, one of the best. *Clearly* you have no taste. Okay, it's long. And, unlike the Hollywood version, doesn't have a satisfying ending. It's still really really good. Remember it was wrote a long time ago, when it was original. You have to make allowances. Philistine. mutter. mutter. mumble. ;)
David wrote: "Yefim wrote: "Dune"How could you? I hate you. 93% of readers like it. It's the single best SF novel I ever read. Well, one of the best. *Clearly* you have no taste. Okay, it's long...."
There is more to quality than mere originality. Dune is aggressively stupid. From the Earthworms to the "Shield+Laser=Boom, so everyone uses knives instead," to "growing up on a deathworld makes super-soldiers" (I guess this is why Amazonian tribesmen are in such demand by the special forces of the world, right?) it's just so godawful, it would fail even as a fantasy novel where all of this can just be hand-waved away as magic. But I would be willing to forgive this, had the story been a gripping, or exciting, or emotionally satisfying one. What we get, however, is tedium. Pages and pages of mind-numbing tedium, with flashes of headdesk-worthy stupidity. Which is not surprising, because it was basically Frank Herbert's Wonderful Magic Mushroom Trip: The Book.
I think I've enjoyed the film version better. At least it was entertaining. And it had Patrick Stewart in it, which is always a good thing.
I know im going to get slammed for this, but Harry Potter
Danielle Rose wrote: "I know im going to get slammed for this, but Harry Potter"Hahaha... I loved the story but I thought the writting was not the best in a few of the books. My familly still jokes about me reading HP. For a couple of years I was re-reading the books continously. :)))
The Hobbit. Little House on the Prairie series. Can't think of more but I just think some books are boring. Then there are the classics I refuse to even try, like Anna Karenina.
Connie wrote: "Gone Girl"I haven't read this book or seen the movie, but from what I know about it I think I would hate this book. It seems to be kind of anti-feminist? Guess I can't judge, but I have no intention of ever reading it.
Danielle Rose wrote: "I know im going to get slammed for this, but Harry Potter"I don't know if I had liked it if I had started reading it when I was maybe 8 or 9 but I was too old when it came out and when I tried the first book, I thought the writing wasn't good or interesting enough for me to continue.
Jill wrote: "It seems to be kind of anti-feminist?"I have seen the movie and I wouldn't call it that. Though it's probably not pro-feminist, either. I just don't think it plays any kind of part in the story.
Re: Connie wrote: "Gone Girl"Jill:
It seems to be kind of anti-feminist?
You will not miss anything, way overhyped.
But anti-feminist? Could not be farther (or further?) from the truth, a strong, scheming female lead and a weak husband who does not fight back but rather succumbs to her vile ways.
Rather empowering to a certain kind of radical feminists, I would think, which might explain in part its success.
But, as a member of a male species and living in a different society (EU, Germany) I may certainly be wrong.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. FrankweilerRead it as a kid and as an adult and didn't care for it either time.
The Great Gatsby Rather set my hair on fire and put it out with a hammer than read it again. But.... that's just me. The Girl on the Train I have to confess, this is one of the few books in my life a did not finish once I started. Can someone help me? Did it get better? The concept sounded great and it rated well, but man! I just felt like my day was ruined any time I read some of it.
In general, most hyped YA. Even the best of "YA" is just a good little quick read. However, I do read them. Not usually great prose but not horrible. I looove a chef cooked meal, but heck, an order of McDonald's french fries are good every once in a while.
As far as Harry Potter... I came into possession of the first one around 1999/2000 and read it to my young daughter a little every night right before bed. I do like them for what they are (except maybe the last 2-3), books for pre-teens. A wild guess is that the movies brought in a lot of adult readers. And hey - way better than the Hunger Games Series.
I didn't hate it, but The Man in the High Castle. Too many of the characters were unneeded and the lack of plot was annoying. The only thing I really liked about it was the world. I wasn't too big fan of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Neverending Story. They meandered around too much and there wasn't a plot. It was annoying.
Obligatory inclusion of Fifty Shades of Grey.
The wolf of Wall Street! Couldn't even finish it
Twilight. I tried to watch the movie first and had to stop after 45 minutes. It was too boring. Then I tried reading the book, because I often prefer books to their movie versions, but stopped around the same moment in the story. Again, too boring. I kept thinking: when is she going to figure out he's a vampire?
Throne of GlassIt's one of those that sounds like I should love it but I didn't, and it's so very popular among my GR friends.City of Bones I don't hate this series, but I tried to read it and lost interest half way through. All my uncharitable feelings towards it now are a direct result of how popular it got and how people are constantly recommending it as the best thing ever and... nah.
I don't like Little Women. They're sickeningly sweet and good, giving up their breakfast to a poor family (but now THEY don't have any breakfast, so aren't they just as poor as the family they just gave their breakfast to?). Too much estrogen in one household, I suspect. There's a boy named Laurie, I think, but he's no more of a male presence than Ashley in GWTW was.
Tricia, I didn't like Little Women either. I can't remember why, I just remember reading it when I was about 8 and being deeply unsatisfied with it.
The Goldfinch (Tart) and A Little Life (Yanagahara)
I never got into John Grisham. I dont' read crime novels and I generally avoid authors that mass produce books (one exception being Tamora Pierce).
Lina wrote: "Romeo and JulietI just don't find Shakespeare's' books to be good. Sorry!"
So glad some one else feels this way. What a stupid play.
Maybe I'm an odd reader. I really have affection for many of the books listed here on these 4 pages. And I agree with so many, too. Tolkien. I mean, I appreciate his goal, hate his books.
A book that made me furious, and you'll have to read my review to find out why, because I'll lose my mind if I start to talk about it again. It wasn't the topic, it wasn't the length (directly), but A Little Life left me wild with disdain. If you want to know why, https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
If not, that's okay.
A book that made me furious, and you'll have to read my review to find out why, because I'll lose my mind if I start to talk about it again. It wasn't the topic, it wasn't the length (directly), but A Little Life left me wild with disdain. If you want to know why, https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
If not, that's okay.
LOL, the book must be empty, as is the review.Regardless, after skimming other reviews and the blurb, I am not sure wether to read this or to skip it, might be one of the books I should read out of my normal comfort zone. But as there are so many books on my TBR, a lot already paid for, I will probably not buy nor read this one.
A bit more meat on the boneless review might help my decision (I tend to rely on 1-2 star reviews, they are more helpful).
(Edited: just to be clear, in case it is an error on Goodreads, there is no text in the review, only the rating 1 star).
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What's the Name of That Book???
Books mentioned in this topic
Dark Carnival (other topics)One Hundred Years of Solitude (other topics)
The Great Gatsby (other topics)
To Kill a Mockingbird (other topics)
On the Road (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Ray Bradbury (other topics)Thomas Hardy (other topics)
Josh Lanyon (other topics)
Gillian Flynn (other topics)
Gregory Maguire (other topics)
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Anyway, maybe you could say it was just the writing, but I just didn't care. Not about the characters, not about the story, nothing. I did not find it interesting or compelling. I read it because soooo many people recommended it, and I have no idea what anyone sees in it LOL.
κικκι. What doesn't kill me better run, because now I'm fucking pissed wrote: "Might I ask what aspects of the hobbit led you to disliking it? I know the writing style for example can make it hard to get into but i would love to know what it was for you ^-^"