Books you thought you would like but didn't?

Atonement - Ian McEwan
Pretty much anything by David Nicholls

Jaymz Connelly said:

Hmm, I looked up about both Skulduggery Pleasant and Alcatraz... I might give the first book in each of those series' a go. If I don't care for them, I'd be willing to bet #2 son will enjoy them. Thanks for the recs! (lately my choice in books has really sucked)

Truthwitch sounds rather like it would be a waste of time and money. I always thought one of the basic rules of writing was 'don't give your characters similar sounding names'.

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BTW, I recommend stopping at #3 of Skulduggery Pleasant. Around book four I felt like the following things all happened at once:

- Jumped the Shark.
- Serious case of Cerberus Syndrome.
- Books got longer and longer as the pace got slower and slower.
- The author developed Golden Word Syndrome.

All of which combined meant the ultimate sin: This "screwball fantasy" wasn't funny anymore. I made it through book five and stopped. Still sad about it, because I wanted to see the end--but then a bunch of my favorites (SPOILERS) died or became evil in a way that meant they were going to die in the end. In the same book. So I stopped caring.

Also, to add to this list--DREADNOUGHT by April Daniels. It's actually quite a good book, and I'm so pleased to see a transfemale superhero in a book that I can snag off my library shelf. I didn't not like it because it was a bad book--I didn't like it because it was too good at demonstrating the effects of emotional abuse, too good at showing the reaction many parents have when their child comes out, too good at dealing with the real things that impact a transwoman coming out. Lately I'm reading purely for escapism, and this book wasn't good for that. So it's a very good book and I recommend it, but I won't be reading book two. At least not yet.

The Land of Painted Caves - Jean Auel, I loved the original three novels, but the last three were hard to read and by the time the fifth and final came out it was a horrible read.
Fifty Shades of Grey-E.L James, this book was hyped up and when I finally read it I couldn't finish it.
Willow brook road- Sherryl Woods, it is the only book of hers I've attempted to read and if her other novels are similar in nature I'm shocked she's considered a best selling novelist. When she was describing one of the characters it was so cliche and corny, I didn't make it past the first chapter. I'm shocked this is a series on tv.

JetFueledCar said:

No thank you. I'll go read Tamora Pierce for the bazillionth time.

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It's funny you should mention her, I was just about to post complaining about Tamora Pierce. After years of everyone and their niece recommending her to me, I finally started the Protector of the Small quartet, finished the first book (First Test) and thought it was really bad. I wanted to get sucked into her world so badly, but the writing was awful, the setting was lazy, half the characters could have been cut, and the plot was almost nonexistent. And yet I seem to be the only person on the internet who feels this way. People even call her a master of worldbuilding and character development, which is making me wonder if someone snuck another book behind this cover.

Will I find the same flaws if I keep reading? I was so excited to finally experience Tortall, and I'm just reeling from how bad this first installment was. Not to mention the friend that lent it to me told me to start with Kel's series because the writing has improved from Alanna. What is going on?

Isaac Bashevis Singer's The King of the Fields. I like his short fiction, and I wanted to like the novel because it had all the things that interested me... a Dark Ages tribe living in Southeastern Poland, societal changes that come to them, a simple tone, a meandering that plot that isn't so meandering after all, humor and irony. But after a while I grew tired of the misogyny. And the end was a cheat! Won't reveal all of it, but it was along the lines of "Life's a bitch, and then you die." Oh Isaac, Isaac, you could have done better!

Right now, READY PLAYER ONE. Highly recommended by several friends. What a pile of unimaginative tripe.

Why does everyone love this so much? I'm continuing reading only because I'm perverse like that.

The Night Circus.

I so wanted to love this book. It was the only one I took on a long haul flight. Fifty pages later, I'm just...bored. Months later, I still haven't picked it up again. Maybe it'd make a better movie. I'm sure the special effects with all that magic would be stunning. But the story and characters were meh.

I actually started reading Atonement pretty recently. It's so well written but really really (really!) slow.......

Atlantic12 said:

I actually started reading Atonement pretty recently. It's so well written but really really (really!) slow.......

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So slow. McEwan's schtick is he sets a great hook, and then drags you through 27 pages of pointless, dull descriptions of daisies nodding in the breeze and the filigreed lacework of grease in a pan of roast potatoes before he finally writes anything plot worthy. It's one of those books where the movie is actually better because the movie doesn't have time to navel gaze ad nauseum about pretty scenery. (And I say that as someone who can't even stand Keira Knightly).

Ha, yeah Keira is on the cover of my copy because it was one of those reprints after the film came out (bought cheaply in Dublin).

I think it took like 10 pages for a character to enter her house. I need help with slowing down pace a bit in my writing, but that was just ridiculous.

Well, I couldn't wait to get my grubby little hands on Alice Hoffman's new novel, The rules of magic, and sadly I could not get into it. So back to the library it went.

Brightdreamer said:

Magician: Apprentice, by Raymond E. Feist - Another "classic" epic fantasy. Nice ideas, but the execution didn't do it for me.
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I didn't finish this, found it very generic

cmi0616 said:

I'd heard great things about Love in the Time of Cholera but I still hold that that book is pretty turdish.

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I couldn't enjoy LITTOC either, the racism, sexisim and lack of anyone likeable did it for me. I did at least finish.

I just finished 'The Stars are Legion' by Kameron Hurley and I thought I was going to love it. It was all female Warlords back stabbling each other on planets that are living oraganisms and all the tech is biological and disgustingly oozy. But the main character had insomnia and I hate that as a plot device. A drip feed on information that might or might not be reliable. It turned out to be a quest story and not particularly exciting for me, lots of hemming and hawwing. A kind of boring journey of self discovery. I finished it, and I'm glad I did but I was dissapointed. Others have LOVED it. I listened to some podcasts to try and understand if I was wrong about this book. Turns out I must be.

The Riddlemaster of Hed by Patricia McKillip. Most of the other fantasy fans I know rave about that book, but it had somehow flown under my radar (in spite of most of my favorite SFF writers being women). So I picked it up and gave it a try, and I couldn't get past the first chapter. It was completely "WTF" for me. I didn't get the pov, the voice, the setting, or the motives of the characters (or even who the protagonist was). I guess the title says it all--it's supposed to be puzzling and elusive, but I guess I'm not "bright" enough as a reader to sort it out. I've been told you have to "submit" to the narrative style and then it's the best book ever, but I guess I'm not a literary submissive

Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell. The blurb got me hooked, and said the book was humourous. I found it one of the most depressing reads ever! And the first part was boring, a confusing backstory about the three main characters' grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather.

Meh!

Iain Banks' Feersum Endjinn. I couldn't get past the phonetic spelling (one of the POVs is written that way). Doubly annoyed because the character in question seemed to be awesome, from what I could read. But I had to read it out loud, very slowly, and that was too much.

I breezed through Clockwork Orange, so I thought I could adapt... but it's not quite the same.

The Jazz Palace by Mary Morris. It had the two elements that always draw me in immediately: Chicago and the Jazz Age.

I love the history of that city. Adore it. But I don't want the narrator yammering on about the 1893 World's Fair when it has absolutely zero to do with what is going on currently.

Further, I don't want to hear about the first "manhood" a mother ever felt immediately after she just lost over half her children in one maritime disaster. And I don't want to know about how the corpse of a victim in said disaster stirred something in a teenage boy pulling her from the wreckage. No thank you.

I only made it 4 chapters before giving up.

Traitor of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton. It lacked something. Also, I thought I'd be somewhat intrigued by The Selection Series, but i just...no. Not going there. I don't want to offend anyone! I'll save that for a ranting video. Haha. I just started Caraval, and i have a stack of books to get through that i just bought.

The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult. Really frustrating and disappointing book all-around. It had a powerful, thought-provoking premise; but the execution felt much more like a first draft. It was very tonally-confused and, IMO, the main character was very whiny and self-pitying. Granted, maybe she was supposed to be that way; but the big change she underwent right before the end didn't feel believable. It felt very forced and tacked-on. I don't think this book really knew what it wanted to be, and there were so many contrivances and absurd moments.

The Riddlemaster of Hed by Patricia McKillip. Most of the other fantasy fans I know rave about that book, but it had somehow flown under my radar (in spite of most of my favorite SFF writers being women). So I picked it up and gave it a try, and I couldn't get past the first chapter. It was completely "WTF" for me. I didn't get the pov, the voice, the setting, or the motives of the characters (or even who the protagonist was). I guess the title says it all--it's supposed to be puzzling and elusive, but I guess I'm not "bright" enough as a reader to sort it out. I've been told you have to "submit" to the narrative style and then it's the best book ever, but I guess I'm not a literary submissive

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You're not alone. Not a fan of her other work either.

Cobalt Jade said:

Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyezsky. I didn't even make it to the murder.

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Lol, I've both adored and detested this book.

The first time I read it, I was in my early teens and I LOVED it.

A couple years later, I was like, "that book was so great, Imma scrounge up another copy and read it again!" So I start reading, and it was dreadful. The prose was stilted and confusing. The premise was boring. The scenes I remembered so vividly from my previous reading felt almost absent. It was like looking through a window at a spectacular view, and returning later to find the window cobwebbed with cracks, obscuring the view until it was nearly unrecognizable. I was like "what the heck did I ever see in this stupid book? It's nothing like I remember!"

Looking back, I feel rather silly for not realizing the problem at the time, but I'd never encountered this particular issue before, and just assumed my tastes had changed as I grew older.

A couple more years passed before I had a similar experience with a different story (in reverse, this time, loving a story I'd found dry and boring before) and realized what the problem had been:

It never occurred to teenage me that I actually WASN'T reading the same book, not really. I'd gotten one copy from the library, and the other from a used book store... and happened to pick up two different translations.

It taught me an invaluable lesson about exactly how vital good translations are. They can truly make or break a story.

Maybe I'm just too old for them, but I read all of the Harry Potter books, took the kids to the midnight release parties, took them to the movies, read together, etc. It was nice to talk about them and see kids prefer to read than watch TV or play video games. But the books themselves tended to just piss me off. Oh, here's some new magical element, it couldn't possibly be the way the problem at the end will be solved. Harry Potter and the Deus ex Machina anyone?

Also, Hunger Games just didn't really didn't feel like it was well written. Could just be I'm a few decades older than the target audience, but I didn't find Katniss's character believable and the plot seemed too forced.

Great Expectations I really want to be able to get through this one, I enjoyed Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, and Master Humphrey's Clock. I just could never get into Pip's story, even though I've probably watched every screen adaptation of it, just can't get the book read.

The Martian.

My local bookstore filed it in the mainstream fiction section, so I was expecting something...else. I respect the science of the book and the plot, but the writing was so bad. I see a lot of non-science fiction readers gush about how much they loved that book, which makes me want to give them a pile of well-written sci-fi to show them how much better the genre can be.

The Maze Runner. I wanted to like that book so much when I picked it up, but I kinda hated it. It just kept dragging out the questions and not giving me any answers. None of the characters were remotely memorable (I can't remember anyone beyond the role they played) and, though I finished it, I couldn't give more than a vague summery of the plot it was so forgetable. I do not forget books I've read, I'll remember the stupidest little things (like the type of wood Harry Potter's dad's wand was made out of for example) but I remember nothing about The Maze Runner.

The last book of the Hunger Games was this as well, I loved the first one, and I did enjoy the second one, (though I thought the fact that she reused the exact same plot as book one was really annoying,) I didn't like book three at all. I can handle a depressing ending, but that one just rubbed me the wrong way.

The Historian. So much hype and...nothing really happens.

Definitely agree on Throne of Glass. Couldn't get through it. Pissed me off too, because I loved the covers and intended it for my kids as a new series, but they didn't like it, either.

The Sharing Knife. Usually love Lois McMaster Bujold, but this left me dead. I think there was some weird dynamic in a relationship, too, where the guy was really old and the girl too young (?). Just overall had nothing interesting that kept me in the story.

Recently, The October Horse.

Roman history set during a height. I was CONVINCED I was going to like it.

Turned out it was very disappointing.

Cleopatra: A Life - Stacy Schiff Boring as hell.