<p>Ah, Schmaltz … so deep (and I do mean DEEP …).</p>
<p>I had to add to my list after reading some of these but I totally add a vote to “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” “Le Petit Prince,” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” All terrible books. Diamond couldn’t write a book without sounding like the dullest professor you ever knew (it killed the material for me). Saint-Exupery made a six year old seem suicidal. I hated the ending, hated the book, never got into it at all. And apparently “Their Eyes…” was supposed to be a book about feminism, but all I saw was a pathetic little girl looking for acceptance in men and getting the **** beat out of her for being so needy. I hated her as a character, so much.</p>
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<p>^^^ Ahh -That’s the “Death came on square toes” book. And as my daughter says, “It’s not just the ‘Death came on square toes’ bit, you have to consider the ending in which her third husband gets rabies and she shoots him - and the other two husbands weren’t that great either.”</p>
<p>The reading passage in which she recognized ZNH occurred on a SAT II. She says she read something almost as bad as the ZNH ‘death’ metaphor - and sure enough, later in the passage, the author refers to herself as Zora.</p>
<p>No offense meant to any who love the book. Actually my daughter’s favorite English teacher ever assigned the book. So I guess it could have been worse experience, overall.</p>
<p>No offense taken. I like the fact that everyone has different views about different books. Some like books others hate … some are lukewarm about books others adore. The fact that we all view things differently makes the world more interesting!</p>
<p>“A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole.</p>
<p>A blurb on the cover proclaimed it “the funniest book ever written”. Uh, no.</p>
<p>Oh, I looooooooved that book! A little tough at the beginning, to like such a gloriously lazy protagonist … especially if Fortuna, that wretch, spins your wheel the wrong way. </p>
<p>OK, I’ll stop now.</p>
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<p>I loved it too…thought it was brilliant but not the “funniest book ever written”</p>
<p>For Whom the Bell Tolls is also my favorite Hemingway book.</p>
<p>Not to derail this thread but loved the movie Midnight in Paris…Owen Wilson is the best Woody character since Woody stopped acting in his own films and the rest of the ex pat artists were portrayed brilliantly…even if you don’t like Woody you need to see it.</p>
<p>I absolutely could not get into “The Time Travelers Wife”…OMG! When you have to make notes to try to figure out the storyline, plot, characters, etc, it’s time to put it down! I had never not finished a book I started but I could.not.finish.this.disaster.</p>
<p>Me too, laxmom…but I did enjoy the movie a whole bunch!</p>
<p>I’m no longer even picking up a book with the word “wife” in the title. I couldn’t get past the first few pages of Time Traveler’s —, or Ahab’s —.</p>
<p>Amy Tan’s “The Kitchen God’s Wife” made me cry so hard that I’ve never read an Amy Tan book since…</p>
<p>Speaking of books being upsetting, I loved Paul Scott’s “Raj Quartet,” but the ending of the third book, “The Towers of Silence,” made me very unhappy and uncomfortable.</p>
<p>When I was a teenager, I tried to read Daphne du Maurier’s “Jamaica Inn” (after liking “Rebecca”), and the beginning scared me so much that I abandoned the book and asked my mom how the story played out.</p>
<p>I think the only book that has really scared me as an adult was “Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders.”</p>
<p>Read In Cold Blood. Absolutely chilling.</p>
<p>No modern work can compare with Silas Marner. 50 years later, I still cringe. </p>
<p>Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using CC App</p>
<p>“Read In Cold Blood. Absolutely chilling.”</p>
<p>I read it while cooling my heels on a frosty morning in Coldwater, Michigan, listening to Coldplay and drinking a few cold ones. I thought it was pretty cool.</p>
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<p>We read it for our book group. I had a lot of trouble getting into it, but enjoyed it more at the end. I agree it’s longer than it needed to be.</p>
<p>* Time Traveler’s Wife * – I started this on vacation 2 years ago, H picked it up and read it; then he watched the movie. I never went back to it after I learned how it ended. Ugh.</p>
<p>Book I disliked the most, and don’t know if anyone has mentioned this: * The Red Tent *.</p>
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I loved it. I thought the way it was constructed really helped one understand what it would be like to be or to love a person who wasn’t living in a normal timeline. In a similar vein, the way the movie Memento was constructed allowed one to experience what it would be like to have no short term memory. I also thought it was one of the few time travel books that resolved all the temporal paradox issues.</p>
<p>^^^ Agree with mathmom.</p>