<p>Da Vinci Code–bad writing, impossible time line, scads of horribly unresearched information, paper thin characters, and, again, bad writing.</p>
<p>I can forgive really great books for being difficult, but I can’t get behind stupidity.</p>
<p>^^^As my son said when told that Dan Brown had a third book out “Great, now he has written two more books than he’s read.”</p>
<p>LOL, lololu!</p>
<p>(and *that *was fun to type!)</p>
<p>Never read Catcher in the Rye in my youth - I was born in another country. Picked it up a few years ago when my daughter raved about it. I told her I want to smack Holden Caulfield! Maybe I had to read it back when I was an angtsy teen to get it…</p>
<p>Love Moby Dick! Love Of Human Bondage! Love War and Peace! (I clearly am not getting book recommendations from VeryHappy!)</p>
<p>Classics I hate: </p>
<p>Catcher in the Rye, never understood why anyone would want to spend time with such a whiner.</p>
<p>Hundred Years of Solitude. Ugh, I’ve tried several times as it was my high school best friend’s favorite book, but I get stalled at the same point every time.</p>
<p>I thought The DaVinci Code was appallingly badly written, but like potato chips, hard to put down.</p>
<p>The Help.</p>
<p>I just thought the voices of the “help” were off. It sounded like a white educated somewhat privileged lady trying to sound like a poor Southern black lady. And I felt the pacing was really off, as well. Also, was uncomfortable about the big drama being about the protagonists publishing career and not the “help”. The story was really those ladies, they were the interesting ones.</p>
<p>I read it in a book club and I thought I was going to get beat up when I said I didn’t like the book.</p>
<p>In terms of classics, I have a lot of trouble with Conrad. I just don’t get Conrad.</p>
<p>Terrible book by Jonathon Franzen. Title ? “The Corrections”. </p>
<p>Just started “The Known World” and don’t like it.</p>
<p>“Cavalier and Klay” won some sort of award. Terrible.</p>
<p>Couldn’t stand “The Poisonwood Bible”. Waay too preachy (no pun intended).</p>
<p>Love your son’s comment, lololu!</p>
<p>I also hated Sundays with Morrie and The DaVinci Code.</p>
<p>I attempted to write an acclaimed “Life and Times of Sorghum” but it sucked so bad I couldn’t even get it published.</p>
<p>Another one: William Burroughs Naked Lunch. Hard core pornography not really my thing. Didn’t get far. Book is now lunch for the worms.</p>
<p>I’ve tried many times to read Conrad – Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, etc., etc. – and have never been able to get past the first 10 pages or so.</p>
<p>Moby Dick: again, I’ve tried several times, but have never gotten past the lengthy section telling you everything you ever wanted to know about whales. I suppose I could skip it, but my compulsive nature won’t let me.</p>
<p>I consider Jodi Picoult to be a rather typical middlebrow popular novelist, and don’t expect anything more. I thought the one about the Amish (I forget the name) wasn’t bad.</p>
<p>I read both Ulysses and War and Peace in high school, and still think of them as being among the best books I’ve ever read. I’ve never gotten very far into Anna Karenina, though.</p>
<p>I’ve never gotten far with Proust, either, although that was with the “old” translations, years ago. My son loves Proust, so maybe I’ll try again one of these days.</p>
<p>Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis – all those muscular, intellectual, complex postwar authors. Too male for me. (Or maybe I’m just not smart enough.) Although I’ve liked some books by Saul Bellow. Philip Roth? Sorry, no. Not counting Goodbye Columbus (which I liked), and Portnoy’s Complaint, which I read when I was about 14. And thought was kind of boring, after the early, funny parts. </p>
<p>Norman Mailer. A vastly overrated writer, at least 20 or 30 years ago. Now, he already seems to be largely forgotten. Disgustingly ridiculous pig that he was.</p>
<p>Harry Potter, The Story of Edgard Sawtell, Shadow Country, Wolf Hall, The Alchemist, Parrot and Olivier in America, The Help, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, anything by Nicholas Sparks or Dan Brown :)</p>
<p>Oh Mathmom I SO agree about Dan Brown! His poor writing was distracting, but I coudn’t put the books down. Now I save myself by not picking them up. </p>
<p>I was 15 when I read Portnoy’s Complaint upon recommendation from my aunt. Hated that thing. But I dragged it to summer school every day and got some pretty interesting looks from the HS teachers. Clearly that was a looong time ago!</p>
<p>DonnaL, I have similar takes on most of the books you list, and this summed up Mailer perfectly for me –</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Conversely, I think Updike was vastly underrated.</p>
<p>Glad to know someone else out there doesn’t really understand the Harry Potter franchise. I have a friend who wouldn’t speak to me for a month because I didn’t love Harry Potter.</p>
<p>Can’t stand Mailer. Definitely a disgusting pig. Hated women. Actually, I get a lot of women-dislike from Updike, too.</p>
<p>Pynchon’s not in that category at all for me. loved Gravity’s Rainbow when I was 17, but I think my abilities to persist through difficult stuff have weakened as I’ve gotten older, and I haven’t made it through the last couple, even though individual moments are great.</p>
<p>Love Moby Dick, always one of my favorites. Also love One Hundred Years of Solitude. Like I said, I don’t mind books making me work, and if I don’t make it through, my first thought is not to assume it’s the book’s fault.</p>
<p>I really hated The World According to Garp–another woman-hating book. Also thought that The Firm was cheaply manipulating.</p>
<p>Sewhappy–what you describe is my impression of The Help–white woman co-opting black women’s experiences, and I’ve resisted all insistence that I should read it.</p>
<p>A disclaimer: I almost always finish the books I start, no matter how dreadful. I’ll soldier on until the bitter end, suffering every step of the way. That said, the book that cause me the most pain to finish (and boy did it take a long time to slog through) was Stephen King’s interminably long “The Dome”. It started off with great promise, then diddled around for hundreds of pages setting up the the villains (one-dimensional, uber-evil, uber-stupid or uber-violent) to meet their welcomed ends at the hands of the heroes (also one-dimensional but all-good, all-compassionate). I ALMOST abandoned the book halfway through (!!!) except the sci-fi elements kept me mildly intrigued. Sadly, these were virtually lost amidst the endless scenes of graphic senseless violence perpetrated by the villains on the good people. </p>
<p>This was one hackneyed effort by an author whose books I used to devour.</p>
<p>Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy.” A short story’s worth of ideas padded into a fat novel with pointless description. Do I care how the machinery operated in the collar factory? No. They didn’t have to cut anything from the book to make it into a (pretty good) 2-hour movie.</p>
<p>“have never gotten past the lengthy section telling you everything you ever wanted to know about whales”</p>
<p>No kidding – especially given that that section begins by resolving the fish-mammal controversy by stating that the whale is a fish. What a bait and switch that book is. The first few chapters are so exciting and promising, you think it’s going to be another “Count of Monte Cristo.” Then…not so much.</p>
<p>MD was definitely not an adventure novel. It’s about how people think, really. Especially the destructive ways they do. (Can you tell I wrote a master’s thesis on it? 
)</p>
<p>People of the Book…Geraldine Brooks…</p>
<p>I actually tried twice…</p>
<p>I haven’t had the time to read in years, but just picked up The Help. Now I don’t know if I want to finish it if it’s just about her publishing the book. I want to hear the stories of the “the help”. Maybe I will see the movie before finishing the book now.</p>