I always think of the Harry Potter books as lifestyle reading, rather than actually plot driven.
Umberto Eco died the other day. It reminded me there is insightful, intelligent historical fiction. At least there WAS at one time someone who could do that. (you might not enjoy his books but DAMN he knew his stuff)
Well, I didn’t hate the Name of the Rose but seem to be one of the low number that actually read the whole darned thing.
I didn’t hate it either. Or Foucault’s Pendulum, but I was trying to not get off topic of hated books. 
Right! On to hate! ;))
@Pizzagirl You and I are exactly opposite readers. I love all of those you listed!
My hated book is The Grapes of Wrath followed very very closely by My Antonia.
nottelling:
The Dead. Yes, I read it. No, I am definitely not a Joyce fan.
OTOH I do not hate Homer’s Ulysses.
That was a pretty confusing couple of pages imho
Okay, Jude the Obscure and My Antonia.
Oh yes. James Joyce Ulysses. I understand why it’s a great book, but by the end of it I thought my head would explode. Required reading for the worst lit class ever.
I hated My Antonia - I wonder though if I might have disliked it less if I hadn’t had to read it for 9th grade English. I also hated Vanity Fair that year. (But not Antigone, The Crucible, and the scads of poetry we read.)
I loved The Name of the Rose, but couldn’t seem to make any headway in the next novel he wrote.
I almost forgot Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. I actually waited in line sometime in the '80s and got it autographed. I got somewhere past page 50 and couldn’t stand it anymore. I think I gave it away.
There are books I didn’t hate, but which still gave me nightmares. The nightmare provoking books seem to me a mix of good books and bad (probably should never have been written) books.
Billy Budd
You guys, I actually like Dan Brown’s books! That being said, I found The Lost Symbol to be anticlimactic at the end and Inferno a disappointment. The way the book ended… I just never saw him dive into deep science-fiction. Digital Fortress I found enjoyable and I liked Angels better than Code.
Fifty Shades of [Abuse] is a disgusting monstrosity that I read on a dare. Like some of you here if I start a book, I must finish it. I was ready to gouge my eyes out by the end. And the writing was just * bad *. I bet her and those “Demand” kids at Hamilton came from the same high school. I mean it was FAN-FICTION for Godsakes. How did it get published?
I love Harry Potter. Good, solid writing and a fun plot. And I’d take Hermione any day over an imbecile like Anastasia Steele.
ETA: I must say it’s refreshing to find people who dislike Tolkien’s work as much as I do. I’m an Epic-Fantasy nerd, but reading a book should never be a chore (which LOTR and The Hobbit were).
I liked Harry Potter’s themes of the power of love and forgiveness. The idiot part always bugged me though!
American Born Chinese and Maus. I wasn’t particularly fond of ABC from the outset because I found the allegory dumb, plain and simple. Maus was probably a casualty of “holocaust book fatigue,” as it was about the 10th book of its kind I was asked to read in HS.
It didn’t help that my English teacher insisted on calling both books “revolutionary” every other lesson, and emphatically claimed that graphic novels were books too, to justify replacing To Kill a Mockingbird with a couple of comics. They’re comics, as are fascinating works such as Watchmen, which I enjoyed as much as I loathed ABC and Maus - and I found this aversion to a label as pointless as it was tiresome.
My favorite thing about the Harry Potter books is the theme of mother’s love. I always pointed that out to my kids. No, really, I mean always.
Probably a topic for another thread but how about books that school ruined for you. I see some books on here that I read for fun when I was younger and just loved. Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye for example. But when I had to read them for a class with a teacher that had to torture and twist every sentence into something it might or might not have meant, I wound up hating them.
“Guns, Germs, and Steel”
Beware the man of One Idea.
For “The Iliad,” “The Odyssey,” and “Beowulf” for that matter, it makes a big difference which translation you read. If you can read them in the original then you have my congratulations…
I really liked the “Master and Commander” series by Patrick O’Brian, but I must admit that his writing of dialogue was a lot of work to read. He would go on for pages without reminding us who was saying what to whom, so it was easy to lose track. Sometimes, if it wasn’t obvious by context, I had to go back to the beginning of an extended conversation and practically chart the statements to figure out who was speaking at the end.
I truly detest The Giving Tree, and I’m so glad to know that I am not alone!
I can’t stand anything I’ve tried to read by Barbara Kingsolver.
I can’t stand Jodie Picoult’s book My Sister’s Keeper. I actually read the whole thing, all of the time wanting to reach into the story and physically strangle the mother/narrator. I’ve never read another.
The only book that I’ve ever actually thrown across the room is Bastard Out of Carolina. (Anyone who has read it might be able to guess when.)
I think that Nostromo by Joseph Conrad is the least readable book I have ever encountered.
@greenwitch, the Oprah book with twins may be I Know This Much is True. It’s a great book. Really. If you got past the first part, which has to do with the awful act of the mentally-ill twin–it took me two tries-- I think you would find it so. (BTW,Clancy is an Irish name, not an Anglo Saxon name. )