Gone Girl - Hated every character, put it down after 20 pages.
The Goldfinch - The Las Vegas section was a slog. Generally liked the first half, but could’ve have quit halfway thru and been happier.
The Interestings - They were NOT interesting, they were deadly dull except for one character who was killed of.
Into the Wild - What a dumb***.
I think Into the Wild goes hand in hand with Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm - interesting reads about people who do stupid things. I thought they were idiots, but I thought the books were fascinating.
As far as my experiment went … Cold Mountain is one of my all time favorite books. I loved the language, the interesting array of characters, both good and evil, the trials and tribulations, the love story, the historical setting (Cold Mountain is a real place) and surprisingly the ending. I don’t see how anyone could find a fault in it. So I guess it just proved that we are all unique individuals with wildly different interpretations of things - which plays out everyday here on all the other threads on CC. When I start a thread and ask a question, I get a slew of answers, with viewpoints in every direction, but most are good thoughtful comments that make a lot of sense. Seeing things from different perspectives is an enriching experience and I think that is what we hope for our kids during their college years - that they can appreciate that everyone is unique with valuable insights that they can learn from even if they don’t agree with them.
Now on to the book bashing - I’m loving it!!
Loved Into Thin Air and liked The Perfect Storm. At least they had a reason for being in a wild place. Into the Wild was just stupidity.
“I think Into the Wild goes hand in hand with Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm - interesting reads about people who do stupid things. I thought they were idiots, but I thought the books were fascinating.”
Totally agree. I love this genre. Very gripping but I find myself thinking “dummy” many times while reading them. But, I’m only and armchair adventurist so I really don’t get the thrill of risking one’s life. 
I read Skinny Legs and All. When we moved, I tried to throw out the Robbins books, but H found them. I wouldn’t even donate them because I don’t want to inflict them on anyone else. H thought he could change my mind by taking me to see the movie version of Even Cowgirls get the Blues. OMG! I had never walked out of a movie before. To this day, whenever H does something awful, he says, but it’s not as bad as when I took you to that movie for YOUR birthday!
@rosered55 - I enjoyed the Curious Incident, perhaps because it reminded me of a less functional version of my oldest son. I thought the author did an amazing job of capturing the nuances of an Asperger’s person’s quirks.
As for Into the Wild, my kids also had to read it. We all agreed that there was something seriously wrong with the protagonist, whether it was mental illness, narcissism, arrogance or just stupidity, there was something seriously wrong with him. My Eagle Scout son thinks the book should be required reading for anyone who is planning a camping trip of any length!
I think I read The Goldfinch - if there’s a small painting of a goldfinch involved in the plot. If so, that’s literally the only thing I remember from the book. If not, I have no idea what book I read.
Gone Girl - I was so mad about how it ended that it ruined the entire book. I wanted the author to give me back my wasted time.
Thank you all for helping me take a firmer stand on The Goldfinch, which I haven’t read. I have been getting pressure from a good friend to tackle it. Nope.
I read Gone Girl because I watched the movie on a plane, and the movie ending was so infuriating that I read the book looking for some character motivation that would make that ending make sense. Nope.
I quit The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Twice. People kept telling me I just had to suffer through the first part, that it would get better. Nope.
I despised Me Before You. (or is it You Before Me?) I read it for a book club. Awful, awful, awful.
I’ll happily read a book that gives me a good plot and at least one character I like. I’m not always looking for great literature.
What a great thread! I did not like Gone Girl, Jodi Picoult (anything), Barbara Kingsolver; but loved the Elena Ferrante books, loved Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
I am in a smallish bookclub where the taste is more of the Jodi Picoult type, so my selections (my last was “let’s not go to the dogs tonight”) are generally not well received
@LeastComplicated - I loved “Cold Mountain,” too, but I think it’s because I grew up near the real Cold Mountain. Every once in a while I could identify the real-life locations based on the descriptions in the book.
I liked “Gone Girl” but it infuriated me too. Unfortunately, it appeared to have spawned a deluge of “unreliable narrator” novels, none of which are as good (IMHO). “The Girl on the Train,” I’m especially looking at you.
“The Other Einstein” by Marie Benedict - the first third is wonderful, shining light on brilliant Mileva, but the author took so much liberty crediting Mileva with Eintein’s theories. Ugh
When someone said “Vinegar Hill” I thought at first what was meant was Ann Tyler’s take on “Taming of the Shrew” called “Vinegar Girl.” Which I hated and could not finish. So disappointing because I love Tyler, but I thought it might be a modern, anti-“taming” redo, but it wasn’t. It was still about a “shrew” who needed to be taken down a peg, by a guy. Plus, Tyler’s characters are not keeping up on the contemporary world. The teenage sister shouts “I’ll get it!” when the house phone rings, because she’s waiting for a call–seriously? It’s like it’s set in the sixties.
And I love, love, love, Ann Tyler, so this was a big disappointment.
I liked A Curious Incident too, but I can see being annoyed by the autistic narrator. We saw the play as well and thought it was even better than the book.
DH read all the Girl with the Tattoo books. I saw the movie versions with him and decided that was good enough coverage of the topic.
I refused to read* The Goldfinch* after a reviewer compared it with Catcher in the Rye, as though that were a good thing.
Catcher in the Rye was so much better!
LOL.
I must be in the minority, as I’ve liked most of the books that others have hated here. So, having not read The Goldfinch, based on the negative reviews here, I’ll have to check it out. 
Misery by Stephen King, I wanted to finish it just to find out what happened to the character but then I felt like I needed to take a long, hot scrubbing shower. Other books in that category are Gone Girl and Girl on the Train.
I don’t like poorly written books and won’t read them anymore- The Da Vinci Code, James Patterson, John Grisham. Don’t understand the appeal.
I loved Tony Hillerman’s early books, later not so much.
Anyone read anything by CJ Box? He writes detective novels about a forest ranger in Wyoming that gets dragged into murder mysteries. I liked some of his earlier books but then later books got more and more graphic and sensational and are not as good.
I loved Cold Mountain, one of my all time favorite books. I thought the writing was so beautifully descriptive.
Also loved Into Thin Air, Into the Wild less so.
The Gold Finch really needed a good editor, there was a good story in there and she writes well but what a slog!
A lot of people like Patricia Cornwell. I think her books are just awful.
My book club has read several books by Isabel Allende, I can’t get through them. I think they are just boring. Same with The English Patient.
Although to be clear, how many of these books does he even write these days? Other than the Alex Cross series, he seems to be just lending his name to the cover and raking in the royalties.
Agreed. Another on my can’t stand list is Sue Grafton. I’m waiting for her truthful title series: P is for Piece of Crap.
Rare is the book from which I get nothing useful, so I don’t consider any of the books I listed to be ones that I actually wanted to throw across the room after reading. Any that I literally feel that way about, I don’t finish.
I hated " Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". The first part was boring, the characters were unlikable and the plot was gruesome. I can’t believe I finished it.
The discussion of “Into the Wild” got me thinking of “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. To me, she was an idiot, who got way too much mileage out of her ill-advised trek.
YES re “Wild”. I felt like I was the only human who hated that book. I also felt like I was the only human to hate Ove; glad this thread helped me find some compatriots lol.
Good series, esp detective series, usually devolve imo into formulaic blahblahblah and resting on laurels. Especially when the writing wasn’t great to begin with but the ideas were fun (see Patterson, Davenport, Cornwell, Grisham, etc ad infinitum.) The series I like are ones where there are few of them and you have to wait a long time (French, Hayder, etc). I can see where the prolific writers’ books are comfort food, but life is too short and there are too many great books out there.