Did you ever read a book that you really hated?

[Tina]

I hated Saving fish from drowning. I love the other Amy Tan books but this one needed more editing.

One hundred years of Solitude. Read halfway through when I realized I didn't care about any of the characters.

I usually try to give a book 5 chapters. If after that I have no interest then I just stop. I have other GOOD books to read instead of wasting my time.

[Michele]

Usually if I'm not enjoying a book I will stop reading, and then I don't feel justified in saying I hated it.

But I did finish the last book of Jean Auel's Earths Children and I wanted to hunt her down and damage her it was so bad. The first two were the best and they gradually went downhill but this last one jumped off a cliff.

God Emperor of Dune I skip over when I re-read the series.

Oh and Bram Stoker's Dracula. I hate this one and find the entire story stupid.

[Xara]

The Sword of Shannara. I bought the first three books but I read the first and hated it. It was a waste of money. I don't know if I'll read the other two. Also Eragon. I really really hate Paolini

[Phil]

Too many to list them all but some lowlights are:
Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Terribly written and just about every name, scene, and plot point is "borrowed" from Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, or David Eddings.
Speaking of Eddings; The Redemption of Althalus. I loved his other series but this seemed very juvenile.
It by Stephen King. I think he is popular beyond his merits but I read a few of his books because of a book list I was going through. This was long and boring and I couldn't wait to finish.

[Michal]

The only book that made me enter a fit of rage after completion was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

My review here: http://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/20...

[Dharmakirti]

Once upon a time, I was dating someone who convinced me that The Celestine Prophecy would be a life changing experience. I thought it was the worst book I ever read. Then I read the sequel.

[Rick]

not genre but I threw David Baldacci's Saving Faith at a wall... does that count?

[Marshall]

I finished 2312 a couple weeks ago and I absolutely HATED it. Uninteresting characters, a plot that made no sense and the 'lists' and 'extracts' took me out of the story more than the book did. The only reason I finished it is because I don't rate books until I finish them and the only reason I finished it was so I could give it one star. By far the worst book I've ever read.

[Heather]

This is not Fantasy/SF, but I immediately thought of the book, "The Weight of Heaven," by Thirty Umrigar. It was well written and surprising, but it was the most depressing book I have ever read in my life. I absolutely adored her book, "The Space Between Us," so I thought I was getting into something similar. I wasn't. It was a sad book that got progressively sadder, then shocked you by getting even sadder.

[Paul]

I'm probably opening myself up to all manner of scorn from my peers, but I'll say it: I absolutely despised every second I spent reading Dune. Same goes for Infinite Jest, which I think might be the literary equivalent of a hazing ritual.

[Nils]

One of the later Thomas Covenant books - I refuse to look it up, because it isn't even worth that effort.

Metro 2034 - didn't help that I realized it was a sequel after ca. 300 pages, but it was so utterly boring and stupid. First book ever I left in a ferry, not even bothering to throw it away.

[Pickle]

i really didnt like The Name of the Wind which i think was down to disliking the main protagonist Kvothe, he was a complete ****. I found the book to be incredibly boring and a scene at the end of the book with a dragon was absolutely stupid, childish imo

[Mpauli]

I don't think I ever truely hated a book. In general I love books to much as to hate one.
Of course, there are books that I don't like, but in my opinion, if a book is too light, sad, brutal, scary, romantic, badly written etc. for you, there will always be other people that see it the other way round.
So, then this book is just not for me, but I wouldn't really say I hate it.

I think the only situation in which I would hate the book, is when it's just a tool to transport racist, fascist or similar ideas, but fortunately I never read one of those.

[Magda]

I've never really hated a book I've read from one simple reason - if I don't like it, I won't read it. There were many books I've started but they just weren't for me. Or maybe I wasn't in the right mood at the moment.
I did disliked some of the school reads, the ones telling stories of war, occupation etc. I basically try to keep myself away from sad/horrible stories, there's enough of these things in the news every day, I don't need to read more.

[Dara]

New Moon and Twilight. I gave them a try to see what the hype was about. Needless to say, I hated them.

[Katherine]

I hated every minute I listened to Deadline, I started wishing that everyone in the book would just be eaten by zombies. And then I realized I didn't *have* to finish listening to it, I was under no obligation at all. So I made a "did not finish" shelf and stuck it in there. In my opinion, Mira Grant only wrote one standalone zombie book, and that's that.

[Magda]

now that you mentioned audiobooks... I listened to whole Beautiful Creatures. I can't say I hated it, but I had plenty of "facepalm" moments and some when I didn't knew if I should cry or laugh.

[Lit Bug (Foram)]

Anthem by Ayn Rand - I found it pretentious, boring and lacking in common sense, most of all.

Vanity Fair - it was so wordy, elaborate, with nothing much happening...

The entire set of works by Indian writer Chetan Bhagat (sigh... now I'm thinking I can definitely bear Anthem or Vanity Fair but not this guy)

[Jeffrey N.]

I couldn't stand "Gardens of the Moon." But I finished it because all my friends said it was incredible. There were a lot of missteps in that book that drove me up the wall.

[Dara]

Jeffrey N. wrote: "I couldn't stand "Gardens of the Moon." But I finished it because all my friends said it was incredible. There were a lot of missteps in that book that drove me up the wall."

I just finished that myself and it was a slog. I enjoyed it but not until about halfway through.

[Ariel]

I hated The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Got 200 pages in and decided I hated everything about it.

Cloud Atlas drove me crazy for the first third, then I enjoyed the second third, and just didn't care about the last third. I kind of hated it.

There were a few books of The Wheel of Time that I thought were utterly pointless and hated, but read anyway just to get through the series. I think it was books 6-8 that were the crappy ones.

[Rob, Roberator]

Inheritance. I wish I had never started the series, but forced myself to finish it. The success of the first book went to his head and he badly needed an editor. There was no need for a fourth book.

[Sky]

Rob wrote: "Inheritance. I wish I had never started the series, but forced myself to finish it. The success of the first book went to his head and he badly needed an editor. There was no need for a fourth book."

I only made it through the first 2 books, and just barely at that.

DragonSpell. I mean, look at the title. Dragon. Spell. Those are both things I like.

You know what I didn't expect? Self-righteous evangelical Christian fiction. Worse, it didn't even have the decency to tout an uplifting message like "Think for yourself, then do the right thing because it's the right thing to do." No. The moral at the end was "Blind faith will get you out of any bad situation. Don't think. Believe. BELIEVE!" The hell, I say. This was the first and last book I bought on a whim because I liked the cover and the title. So in a way, thank you, DragonSpell; you taught me to always read reviews and download the sample first.

[Rik]

Mockingjay. Hunger Games was a shallow but enjoyable read. Catching Fire was much lower in quality but still okay. Mockingjay though was just tedious and made me hate all the characters. I was happy when a major death happened near the end of the book because major deaths usually mean the end is near and I wanted it to be over.

[Shaina]

Fifty Shades of Grey. I've read some badly written books, I've read some bad stories, I've read some bad characters, and this book had them all. Also, the Twilight parallels were just too much. Throw in the fact that it's unbelievable that a college student today would have a car but wouldn't have, not just a computer, but an email address..... Utterly ridiculous.

[Micah]

Shaina wrote: "Fifty Shades of Grey. I've read some badly written books, I've read some bad stories, I've read some bad characters, and this book had them all. Also, the Twilight parallels were just too much. T..."

That's because it started out as twilight fan fiction.

[Belle]

I very rarely quit a book before I have finished it. Usually, I will finish reading a book, even if I don't like it, because I don't like to give up on anything. Mostly, the only thing that will cause me to quit a book is that it is badly written - errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, word usage. If I can't get or stay involved in the story because I'm noticing all the errors, it would be a waste of my time to finish reading it.
One of the books I really dislike, possibly even hate, would be Jane Eyre. Yes, I know it is a classic, but I still can't stand it. I have often seen her listed as a strong, independent female character, but she wasn't. She was weak, whiny, totally dependent on others, and utterly annoying. The entire scene where she is lost & "starving" made me roll my eyes, not feel any amount of sympathy for her. I found the entire book boring, and I truly felt like it had been a waste of my time.
I know there are other books I hate, but short of the Twilight series, I can't think of them right now

[Daniel]

I have to say that I did not like Kraken by China Mieville, which is a shame because I really like City & the City and some of his other books too. But I found Kraken to be a big Lumbering mess of a book, it had interesting characters but the story just went to slowly for me

[LegalKimchi]

gardens of the moon was one. shadow ops control point was really bad.

[Misti]

I know this will be an unpopular choice but It took three tries for me to get through Ender's Game. I just didn't enjoy it at all.

[AndrewP]

Even on audio book Sandworms Of Dune was painful. I really wanted to see how it all ended up forced myself to listen to this. Truly bad, even worse than Hunters Of Dune.

[Gary]

I don't know if I hated it exactly, but Infinite Jest is a book that I put down, which is something of a distinction for me. I almost never give up on a book once I get a chapter or two into it. That book, though... it just struck me as a highly indulgent pandering to academia, and I just couldn't make it through a thousand page job application for pedantic credibility, so I gave up about half way through. I guess that means I missed the intergalactic war with psychic robots. Maybe I'll revisit it.

[Nathan]

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Oh how I hated that.

I am just a sucker for punishment so I read all nine of the Fate of the Jedi series, three of which were OK, six of which were horrid.

Kevin wrote: "Kevin wrote: "While we're bashing Neil Stephenson - I hate Cryptonomicon. I read about 3000 pages (maybe a 1/3rd) and absolutely nothing had happened so I relegated it to the waste of time pile. I ..."

Oh. Sorta like Snow Crash. I still don't know why people hype that book.

[Alex]

Aww so much hate for books I love. HDM particularly.

That said, I suppose I'll throw in a few of my own.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
and similarly the girl who played with fire, by the end of these I felt all the characters were all cut from one big piece of cloth, and five of six paragraphs were filler.


Mockingjay
I disliked all 3 of these books, progressively more and by the third one I ought to have lemmed it, but I just wanted it finished and done. Katniss could have had so much more character development, but she remains largely the same insecure, vapid girl.

[Karl]

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

I forced my way through eventually. Much worse than Hyperion.

[Scott S.]

The Quantum Thief
I was eager to love this book, but instead I hated every second of it.

Karl wrote: "Revelation Space by Alastair Reynold"

The Revelation Space series is weird for me. I don't usually enjoy the books while reading them, but after a couple of weeks of reflecting I get a greater appreciation for them.

[Valerie]

I totally agree with Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Beautiful Creatures. Of course, I kind of read them against my better judgement, so I guess it serves me right.

Others that I could not finish:
Ringworld
Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus
Minion

Finished but hated:
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - it was a book club thing
Taltos
Children of the Mind

[Andrew]

It shows how different peoples opinions can be as a lot of the books mentioned so far (Norwegian Wood, Good Omens, Amber Spyglass) are among my favourite books.

The only book I can think of that I hated was The Fall of Hyperion. I loved Hyperion and immediately started reading this to see how it would end but found it totally uninteresting. It barely spent any time with the characters I'd grown to love and added new characters and a plot line I hated. When I started it I wanted to read the rest of the series but by the end I couldn't see myself reading another book by the author ever again.

[Tina]

I forced myself to finish reading The Cuckoo's Calling , and only because it was by JK Rowling, and because of all the hype, but really, it wasn't very good. (Then I read a wonderful little detective novel by a lesser known author right after that, and wondered why I had wasted my time on Rowlings, aka Roger Galbraith's book when there are better things out there,)

I recently heard about an agent who will read about 50 pages of a mss before deciding to reject it (if they get past the first page, that is) so I've decided to try to give myself 50 pages before lemming a book.

[William]

If you don't like it and you choke it down anyway, you'll despise it.

[Scott]

Two examples
Gone Girl - hated it so much because I just despised everyone in the book but the writing was so damn good I couldn't put it down.

The Shack - probably the worst book I've ever read - the writing makes even V.C. Andrews looks like Dickens - the plot is abysmal - the characters are so unbelievable as to be almost the punch line of a bad joke - just hated hated hated this book

[Chad]

Sometimes I'll grit my teeth and finish a book I'm not enjoying, but it's rare for me to give up on one. Recently, though, I've run into 3 - Kraken by China Mieville, I disliked almost from the beginning, and at one point was so ridiculous I just couldn't take it anymore. Considering how popular he seems to be, maybe it's unfortunate that that was my first, because I probably won't give him another shot. I used to like Dean Koontz a lot, not the most cerebral of writers, but his stuff was entertaining. Forever Odd though I was just so bored with from the beginning, I just couldn't make the slog. Then there was Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus - I just kept waiting for something to gel and finally lost patience about halfway in. Maybe I'll try that one again someday, but with the ever increasing pile ahead - probably not.

[Valerie]

Scott wrote: "Two examples
Gone Girl - hated it so much because I just despised everyone in the book but the writing was so damn good I couldn't put it down.

The Shack - probably the worst book I've ever read -..."

Scott, Gone Girl made me realize that I could hate every single character in a book, but still love the story. It was weird. I was so sucked into the story that I actually had to decide if I liked it or not, despite my feelings about the characters.

I used to push through books, no matter how tedious. A couple of years ago I realized that I will never have enough time to read every book in which I am interested, so life is too short to continue reading crappy books.

I know that some books are slow starters, so I try to stick with it at least a quarter of the way.

[Dara]

I had issues with Gone Girl too. I hated Amy and didn't really care for Nick all that much either but Gillian Flynn's writing was so fantastic that I couldn't put it down. I read it in about 9 hours.

[Bee]

Shadowmancer for being self righteous "Magic is evil you can only be happy with christ" bullpoo.

The Golden Compass series because I felt the "God and religion is evil!" was just as annoying.

The first time I tried to read The Last Unicorn I threw it across the room. Reread it recently and really enjoyed it. Was surprised.

[Matt]

Phil wrote: "Speaking of Eddings; The Redemption of Althalus. I loved his other series but this seemed very juvenile."

For me Eddings began to slide in the second Sparhawk series. It read too much like the Three Stooges melded into fantasy . . . the omnipotent slap-stick heroes versus the incompetent and pathetic villains. I forced my way through Althalus, but have not read the Elder Gods series for fear that the trend continues.

I still re-read the Belgariad / Mallorean books every few years.

[Dara]

Assassin's Quest.

[Clyde]

The Number of the Beast. Couldn't finish it. It soooo isn't the Heinlein I love.
Stonehenge. I read most everything Bernard Cornwell writes, but I couldn't get through this dog.
And Dara, yes, Assassin's Quest was hugely disappointing.

[Dara]

The only reason why I pushed through it is because it's the last in the trilogy.