@Sue22 , agree on The English Patient. I started it many, many moons ago while newly breastfeeding my son … switching the book from side to side and finding myself falling asleep midpage and needing to reread. Later on, no longer quite such a new mom and with more sustained brainpower, I tackled it again and realized … the problem wasn’t me.
Also persisted through Franzen/Freedom. That’s time I’ll never get back. Such tedium. I kept thinking I’d like it better.
Any thoughts about Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Here I Am”? I had mixed feelings about it. I liked it overall but some aspects really annoyed me.
I tossed The Goldfinch after one chapter. I also tossed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after about 50 pages. I finished the Poisonwood Bible because it was on the suggested list for HS seniors in my town; I hated it and actually complained to a friend on the school board about it.
I despise any and everything by Tom Robbins (who my H loves!)
I loved A Man Called Ove but it took awhile for me to get into it.
Life of Bees.
You LIKED Oryx and Crake? OMG! Two of my children had to read it in school. The older one took a D for the required paper rather than finish it and I only wish that I had found out earlier how horrific that thing is so I could have intervened and gotten him an alternate book I hesitate to call it a book, it’s driveling, functionally illiterate and poorly written pornography. I tried to get the younger one to take a different elective but that class also read Animal Farm, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, all of which my son wanted to read. He wound up with a C+ on his O and C paper. Every parent in my SD who encountered that book, that I know of (including my H, who loves Tom Robbins) thought it was horrible. I know several parents who refused to allow their child to take the class at all.
Just so that people don’t think I am anti-Margaret Atwood, I loved The Handmaid’s Tale and tried to get the teacher to assign instead.
Where’d You Go Bernadette? Got rave reviews here in Seattle where it’s set, but from many friends elsewhere. I disliked every single character, even the kid, and only finished it to see where she had gone.
@techmom99 I was adamantly anti-Tom Robbins until, at the urging of a friend, I read Skinny Legs and All. Great book.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, like The Goldfinch, was desperately in need of major editing.
I cannot read Barbara Kingsolver. (I actually got farther into Poisonwood Bible than anything else.)
Agree with “The Kite Runner” - just horrible!
I was “meh” about “The Goldfinch” - the part in Las Vegas just droned on and on. For that matter, I thought out in the wilderness on the run section in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” could have been edited down.
Huh! Barbara Kingsolver is one of my idols!
She wrote something else? LOL
I kinda put her in the same group as Anita Shreve; the only reason we know the Poisonwood Bible or the Pilot’s Wife is because of Oprah. (You wrote a book and you wrote a book and…)
FWIW, I actually likes the Pilot’s Wife, but then I started reading another one of her books, and stopped after a few chapters because it was so bad.
OK, since a bunch of you have hated a few books that I really enjoyed, I’ve decided to do an experiment. Did any of you hate Cold Mountain?
I put Anita Shreve in the category of Suffering Woman Books. I can’t stand SWBs.
I prefer boys’ books. Give me Patrick O’Brian or Cormac McCarthy any day. Well, except for Blood Meridian. That one is just too much blood. (Kind of like The Red Tent in a different way, LOL.)
Speaking of Anita Shreve. I read her new one- The Stars are Fire. Bad, just really bad.
I should have known better. I read her book the Weight of Water while I was in labor waiting for the pitocin to kick the contractions into high gear, and one of the characters died in child birth!
Me! :-h Although hate might be too strong a word. It was a struggle for me to get through it. I found it very plodding. Didn’t care for the movie much either despite being a huge Jude Law fan.
I found it very hard to get through “Cold Mountain,” too. It was one of my “sympathy reads”: books I read only because my children were reading them for school.
I was not bowled over by “The Unseen World,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” “My Name is Lucy Barton,” and “When Breath Becomes Air.”
LOL. I have a secret fondness for boy books - Patrick O’Brian, the Hornblower books, military sci fi, Alistair McLean…
Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule. Barely an original fantasy idea in 600 pages, of which 250 or so are the main character (who is an idiot) getting tortured in graphic terms. 18 books in that series now, it’s unbelievable.
I think I actually did throw My Sister’s Keeper across the room.
Eat, Pray, Love - I may have actually thrown it across the room.
Hard to read some of my favorites trashed, as I have really liked most of Kingsolver’s books and loved the Poisonwood Bible. I hated Gone Girl, however, and the Light between the Oceans.
I enjoy the Ferrante books, but agree that editing could help. Some of the writing is brilliant, but some overly detailed.
“Eat, Pray, Love - I may have actually thrown it across the room.”
Oh, yes! Horrid. I think it is books that are self-indulgent and whiny that I have an issue with. Which reminds me of another - Julie & Julia (and I like cooking and Julia Child!).
Agree on the dislike for The Poisonwood Bible. Also not a fan of Vinegar Hill.
I read A Man Called Ove, and kind of liked it. I’m also a fan of Moriarty (Big Little Lies) and Flynne (Gone Girl, etc.) for quick reads. I was not thrilled with Ferrante, but got through the first book. And Nutshell by Ian McEwan was ok but tried too hard…
The one book that I leterally threw onto my coffee table and stopped reading was Into the Wild. I dont even know WHY I hated it, I just did. I cringed when both boys had to read it for high school…