Girl on a Train
The Scarlet Letter - so slow!
Selena
Any James Patterson
I’m sure I’ll think of more.
1990, Sue22’s co-worker Matt mentions some obscure fact.
Sue22:
I read that same fact once in a book, The Day I Became an Autodidact. I couldn’t stand the author. She was so insufferable I wanted to throttle her. It’s the only book I’ve ever thrown away.
Matt: Ummm…
Sue22: She’s about our age, and come to think of it her boyfriend went to the same college as you. I can’t remember his name.
Matt: His name was Matt.
Sue22: Uhhhh…sorry.
True story, I swear.
So I also don’t finish books that I’m hating…
From some of the above: I like anything Ayn Rand, though I haven’t read/reread much since my 30s, loved Little Bee, refused to open 50 Shades, dislike Harry Potter, science fiction, liked DaVinci Code (couldn’t put it down).
I didn’t like Henrietta Lacks and didn’t finish. I found the premise fascinating, but the book boring once I was a third through it, so I just read the last few pages. The science was missing.
Like most of Barbara Kingsolver, not her food one.
Like Gone Girl and Girl on the Train. Just creepy enough to be fascinating. I like everything by Pat Conroy.
I stopped reading Jodi Piccoult after My Sister’s Keeper. I don’t like fiction books when the science presented is impossible.
I rarely see a movie that comes out based on a book. The movie never seems as good.
Regarding whether to give up on a book after a certain number of pages. I recently read Northanger Abbey and really hated the first ten chapters or so. I ended up sticking with it and really liked it in the end. It just took me a while to “get” it.
If I’m reading for fun, the book gets about 100 pages to reel me in or it’s back to the library. Books that I read to expand my understanding or aesthetic – books I know I “should” read ---- I soldier through no matter what. If I’m really stuck I will assign myself pages per day so I feel like it’s manageable.
I love Tana French, but Into The Woods (unrelated to the play) is the only book I have thrown across the room, although plenty of YA novels make me worry about adolescent girls!
I read all of “Big Brother” by Lionel Shriver but I was very annoyed by the story. I didn’t hate “Fates and Furies” but it didn’t wow me, either.
Like AND hate Dan Brown books. Liked Angels and Demons, Inferno, and Digital Fortress. Couldn’t finish Deception Point, disappointed with Lost Symbol, and DaVinci code was just OK.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. Did not like.
How can it be that no one has mentioned Swamplandia!?
And I hated hated hated “Endgame” (play) by Samuel Beckett. My daughter read it sophomore year in high school. She left it lying around … I picked it up … :-q
I hated Ethan Frome because it felt like we were totally supposed to be rooting for adultery, and I never could get behind that at all.
@zoosermom , I had an odd experience with We Need to Talk About Kevin–I distinctly remember not enjoying reading it and yet I was sucked in, and it’s stayed with me for years. So, I’m not sure whether I liked it or not.
Although I very much enjoyed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (the movie was a travesty, but let’s not go there), my mom and I narrowly avoided getting into a knock-down drag-out over the ending, which she thought was a shocking twist and I thought was so blatantly obvious that I literally looked at my copy of the book to see if it was missing any pages that might have contained the promised twist. I wasn’t even being snarky–it never occurred to me that that would have been considered a twist. Even weirder is the fact that she’s usually much better at guessing twist endings than I am.
A Separate Peace – not sure why it’s considered a classic. Were we supposed to feel anything for the two boys in boarding school?
I got three-fourths of the way through Mansfield Park and just quit. Fanny was like this inanimate object who just floated along being acted on by others, without any free will or opinions of her own.
It took me to page 13 to remember one of my most hated books: Beloved by Toni Morrison.
I know that slavery was terrible and have read some really moving and excellent books about it, like Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I know that it’s a topic that needs to be explored and recorded. But I was completely turned off by what struck me as the sheer pretentiousness of the writing and of the over-the-top horror plot. I had to read it for a postgraduate seminar and when it was over I refused to keep it in my home, the only time that’s happened to me.
Of course there are books I won’t even bring into my home just from what I’ve heard about them (and now reinforced by this thread) like The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades.
Oooh, I loved Beloved!
I realize now I hated The Secret History years ago and it was weird because a close friend loved it. Sometimes this like and dislike is not rational, it just is what it is. Anyway, years later the same author wrote something that became popular, something about a sparrow in the title? No way I’m reading that!
I read the DaVinci Code and hated the writing but felt sucked in by the plotting so I finished it. Some chapters were only 2 pages long and one of the bad guys was an albino! How bad can you get? That made me realize I should never start something like 50 Shades because the badness would be too similar.
I’ve read and liked other Jane Austen books, but, like someone above, I’ve never been able to get through Pride and Prejuice. I’ve seen several movie/TV adaptations. That’s enough for me!
I did like the first 50 pages or so of The Name of the Rose, but got bogged down in the abstruse discussions of medieval Roman Catholic theology, put it down, and have never picked it back up. Perhaps someday!
I thought Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room was a fascinating historical document about the lives of certain kinds of women in the 1950s and 1960s, but the latter part of the book left a really bad taste in my mouth, especially what I read as the strong implication that true feminist women shouldn’t have anything to do with their male children. Ugh.
Jodi Picoult’s books are so ridiculously contrived and predictable (including the plot twists). If My Sister’s Keeper is the one I think it is – that one especially!
I happen to think Jane Eyre is a wonderful book. But I admit that there are some truly preposterous scenes in it (which my son and I used to enjoy making fun of after he had to read it in high school) – like Rochester disguising himself as an old “Gypsy” woman, and nobody noticing that it’s him!
The only book I’ve ever refused to keep in my home after reading it was Bram Stoker’s Dracula: I read it when I was nine, and was so supremely terrified by it that I made my mother throw the book out. (Because how did I know that he wouldn’t come out of the book at night?)
I hated Lord of the Flies and Scarlet Letter. Also disliked Red Badge of Courage. Only read those 3 books because they were required reading. Ugh! I know there were others. Most of the required reading stunk!
My kids had to read books that stunk as well, but they persevered.
Wow, it was not just me! Apparently, HS and college classes turned some great classics into turnips for so many folks! I did not detest War and Peace because I went for what interested my 16-yr old at that time, i.e., romance, and simply skipped the battle scenes. I knew our teacher’s preferences, so I did my reading very selectively.
And then much later I discovered and watched this movie… Amazing. This scene was filmed in 1967 - pre-special effects and computer graphics. Warning. It is pretty depressing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SVC_9V8K5Y
And I agree about the Iliad - what a gory book. Some of the Goodreads reviews are hilarious.
I know some others will disagree, but both my kids and I hate Huck Finn. We love Tom Sawyer, but found Huck Finn to be drawn out, boring, and stretching credulity past the breaking point.
Required books our kids liked enough to want to keep included “Riffles for Waitte” and “Julie and the Wolves.”
Add me to the list of Gabriel Garcia Marquez book haters. Hard to say which was worse: One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera.
Possession by A.S. Hyatt and The Pale King by David Wallace Foster are both on my “hate it” list. Finishing The Pale King took more fortitude than running a marathon.
Also disliked Poisonwood Bible, but at least it was readable.