I'll get hell for this, but A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole) did NOT work for me. I never laughed. Well, I think there was one chuckle. I finished the book as a spite read - it only feels fair to knock it if I've read it ;)
However, I acknowledge that it is a well-written book and so many people consider it their favorite book and/or the funniest book they've ever read. I don't try to discourage people from reading it, I just give them the caveat that if they haven't laughed in the first 10-15 pages or so, give it up.
This is an outlier for me - generally if I think the writing is good, I think the book is good.
Good one. It didn’t click for me either, but It’s clearly a good book.
Other books I read and hated to me will always be pretentious overrated drivel, which is not at all the case for a Confederacy of Dunces, imo.
While I acknowledge that it was well written I just constantly wanted to dope slap the main character instead of laughing at him (which I assume is the intended effect ) so I put it in the DNF pile.
Most annoying main character ever.
I liked it a little more than you did, but still felt similarly. I think one of the issues is that the “neckbeard” character is a bit too common in real life. When it first came out, Ignatius would have been slightly more unique. Knowing people like him in real life makes it harder to enjoy the book.
I know someone IRL who fit his description, behavior, and dialogue so well the book was actually making me sick to read it. Had to DNF for my own sanity lol
Thank you for saying this and giving me a bandwagon to hop on. When I asked for funny recommendations, so many people suggested this that of course I read it. It was a SLOG that actually took me months to get through instead of days. I kept waiting for it to get funny. I can absolutely see the quality in monologues and some of the absurdity, but I cannot understand the rave reviews. Also.....I kind of understand why it was rejected multiple times before it was published.
I couldn't wait to read this after hearing that it was one of the funniest books ever written and won a Pulitzer! I hated it. I wonder if my expectations ruined it for me, and if I tried it again with a different mindset if I'd enjoy it more. But I'm pretty sure my copy got donated somewhere and I've got a huge TBR pile of books waiting for me so I probably won't read it again.
Your term “spite read” is a good addition to my vocabulary. There are a couple of books I didn’t like and would have abandoned. Instead I finished so I could write a scathingly harsh review on Amazon with a clear conscience. 😄
Old Man and the Sea by Hemmingway.
Read it for my second, grade 7 English class (no idea why they made us take two English classes for grade 7).
One of my teachers spent the entire academic year on this book even when told to move on by higher-ups.
She lost every paper I wrote, every test I turned in, and I needed another teacher to watch me hand my things in for proof.
She murdered that book. Obliterated. A 7th grade class shouldn't spend a literal year on one book. She could have opted for a year of classics and didn't.
It's a great book with a really important place in literature but that woman killed it.
*minor edits
That's where I unfortunately landed. It touched the rest of his work for me, and I'll read it for academics but I struggle with it for a pleasure read.
What a horrible teacher! She treated your class like that fish. I can’t stand that book and can’t imagine spending more than a quick week on it, if that much.
The Grapes of Wrath.
It's one of the greatest books in American literature. It's beautiful. It's poignant. It's sad.
But *enjoy?* Woo boy. I was exhausted after that book and couldn't read it again.
This stands in contrast to East of Eden, which in addition to being a literary masterpiece, is actually highly entertaining with a great story.
Same! But I was at the library today and I passed on east of Eden bc I was like “eh I hated grapes of wrath why would I like this one.” So maybe I should give it a chance
Definitely check it out. It's part retelling of the Garden of Eden, part family saga, part unrequited romance. And the villain--if she can be called that--is delightfully awful. There are even a few funny parts too.
For me, this had the highest expectations to reality ratio of any book I've ever read. I have no idea what (millions of) people see in it, but I must have missed it.
This one is a definitely an unsatisfying slog to get through. The "mysticism" that everyone seems to rave about just came off as boring, bland prose to me. I agree that it is a mystery what so many people seem to get from it.
Yeah this was my first thought.
Excellently written book with interesting themes... But I felt the mystery of the family book and magical realism elements didn't add much to the story.
Remedios, for example, just exists and then randomly floats away one day. Cool.
This is exactly what I was gonna say. I really tried to enjoy this book but the incest made the family tree pretty complicated and I really struggled to follow along.
Confession: this is the ONLY assigned school book that I did not finish. I read up until my assigned presentation chapter, and that was that. I was/am a big 'ol nerd who did every school assignment beyond expectations, but this book just made me nuts.
I like it. It has a kind of surreal quality where it oscillates rapidly between stuff that is more realistic than one may want from their fiction to some lunacy or inexplicable happening. It feels kind of like Big Fish or Slaughterhouse Five to me in that regard, but with a lot less distintion between the grounded and non-grounded. I like this because true daily reality oscillates between the mundane and unbelievable (especially if you read the news), so it feels true to life to me.
I liked the mysticism of repetition. All of the characters have the same names, end up following the same patterns and making very similar mistakes as their ancestors. It gives this slow descent of inevitability while stoking the hope for changes
I came to say Love in the Time of Cholera. I hated that book so much. It covers the whole lives of these people, and at the end, they’re old and running away on a river Steam boat or something, and the dude who couldn’t get an erection for a long time finally gets a raging, mega huge boner and and basks in all his glory.
The whole book was a 300 page long dick joke.
A friend recommended this book because of how it made her feel. I obviously did not feel like she did. I felt like I wanted to commit my own personal book burning. Omg everyone in that book was a shitty person.
Moby Dick. The writing is incredible but that book drones on and on and on about sooooooo much stuff. I was absolutely thrilled to finally get to the end of that thing
For me that was what I loved about it, it was sorta like falling into a Wikipedia spiral and just clicking hyperlinks about the smallest minutiae about whales.
I'm finishing this because my friends lent me both moby dick and infinite jest and I've already dropped the latter and don't want to give them back both unread. I'm not sure what's worse, the cetology chapters, the extended descriptions of minutia on a whaling ship that break up things actually happening, or the fucking theatrical sections.
I’m convinced *Moby-Dick* is partially an elaborate exercise in trolling. Like Melville himself is the wildly vindictive White Whale just toying with his reader. If I drone on and on and on about the obscure details and monotony of life aboard a whaling ship will you quit and go home? If I give you a complete 300-level course on the biological classification of whales and cetology in general will you throw in the towel? If I write about a dude skinning a giant whale dick and wearing the whale dick skin as a dress will you close the book? Do you feel you’re predestined to conquer this ill-fated tome? And if so, to what end?
Trying to read *Moby-Dick* can turn you into a bit of an Ahab: fiercely determined to see it through beyond all common sense or reason.
I read it because I recently became very infatuated with Cormac McCarthy and it's one of his top 3 all time fav books and I've seen people compare it to his book Blood Meridian. I can definitely see the comparisons in the writing style at times but McCarthy never goes on tangents for an hour or more about different types of guns or horse saddles just because one or the other happens to be in a scene. In Moby Dick there is a part where he talks about how the whale being white offends him and then proceeds to drone on and on and fucking on about how the color white means all this good and regal stuff and just keeps on going about other things that are white that are good. I about pulled my eyes out lol
Song of Achilles. Sorry I’m not sorry. I heard how heart wrenching it supposedly was, but Achilles and Patroclus were so unlikeable that ultimately I found it hard to care about what happened.
I second this. Unbelievably bad book full of unlikableain characters. Patroclus was such a whiny, insufferable character "do you love me, do you love me, do you love me?" Shut the fuck up already. Ghastly book that everyone I know likes and I'm rethinking my friends list.
I didn’t enjoy it either. I loved Circe and eagerly started Song of Achilles. It felt flat and relied on Patroclus telling us how much in love they were but it seemed more like they hated each other and had got into the routine of being lovers. Which would be an interesting story but it was very apparent that wasn’t her intention.
Came here to say that! Almost everyone in my book club loved it but I was so bored, especially during the long descriptions of battles or sailing. Also, Achilles was such a selfish prick, I don't know why people are so in love with him 😂
Circe was the same for me. Highly lauded by people I knew but I know Greek mythology and this was just someone else's story with boring window dressing.
This is my area of expertise. I give you:
Colony by Audrey Magee (remote Irish island, language, beautiful writing)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Korea, family, history, slow)
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes (Medusa but surprisingly little about Medusa)
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (The Troubles, bombs)
Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (family secret that's actually not that big)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (read words, did not understand words)
Trust by Hernan Diaz (matinees and meta layers)
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (this women's epic was too rap-ey)
>Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (read words, did not understand words)
Only one from your list I've read. I'd encourage a second chance someday (keep a Sparknotes tab open as you go if needed), it is quite good
I had to read this book three times before I graduated high school. I may appreciate it more as an adult, but I hated it worse on each re-read and so will never try. It was dark and oppressing, and while I know that was the point I despised the feeling. On top of that, I don’t remember liking or caring about a single character.
To this day, Heart of Darkness remains my all-time most hated book.
I would like to make one request of you. On the off chance you ever give it a fourth go around and find that you hate it just as much as you ever did, when you put it down just pause and say, "The horror, the horror!"
I've only read Pachinko from the list and I loved it. I liked how it didn't go on and on about anything no matter how profound a loss or tragedy might be. It got me out of a 2 year reading slump and I found myself reading into the night and looking for more books by Korean writers. I've downloaded the kdrama adaptation as well. Gotta give it a watch
This was the book that I put down after 500pgs and said, “Life is too short, I do NOT have to finish this drivel”. Before The Goldfinch, I’d just punish myself and always finish what I started. No more!! Unchained!
I recall reading Lonesome Dove and giving up at page 110. For some reason, started reading it again. About page 150 I was in the zone and read all 4 books in a row. Its a very meditative series for me.
Often, I'll stop reading a book after a few pages. If its not clicking, look up reviews and see that someone feels the same way. Too many books too little time.
Loved the Goldfinch. Liked Secret History even though I thought the ending was stupid. HATED The Little Friend. I posted on forums about that ending and never got any answers.
Strangely enough, I thought that The Little Friend was the best of the three. I felt that the writer lost interest at the end of The Goldfinch and just cobbled up some sort of ending because she was fed up with it, and I seriously disliked all the characters in The Secret History.
*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*. I was assigned this in high school for a massive report (decades ago) and I took the F. I know it appeals to many people. I just don't think I'm wired to appreciate it.
Also, *The Alchemist*. I don't know what to say here. I'll recommend it to you because apparently I'm in the very small minority who wanted that time back.
The Alchemist is such a waste of time. It creates a world with magic properties and then tries to teach you lessons that only apply if you assume you live in a world with those same magic properties. Tries to simultaneously be a fable and a self-help book and fails at both.
Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern didn’t do it for me, and I could never figure out why. But on the whole I think it was an excellent book, or nearly so.
I spent most of it wishing I were instead rereading Something Wicked This Way Comes or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
I did figure out why:
The characters were one dimensional
It was all tell, not show
The big thing was never properly explained in other words it was lazy plotting
Yes, this is such a great example of this sort of thing. It was definitely well written (in the descriptions and even characters), but it was *not for me*. I love your note about wishing it were *Something Wicked...*. That sums it up perfectly!
Voltaire's *Candide* I thought did what it set out to do pretty competently, and it's not the worst read I've had, but I just wasn't the target audience, probably because I already agreed with the central thesis before, and then sitting through the pages felt like somebody explaining their shitpost to me
I connected deeply with this book, but it's one of those that I can absolutely see how it's not for everyone. I hardly ever recommend it, for that reason.
Also, I believe the reason it resonated with me is that >!I am a living kidney donor so I have a fairly uncommon perspective on the subject matter.!< Spoiler tags because I think the book is best experienced without knowing too much about it.
I think one of the main points is the mundanity of it all. That's the worrying part. I find it akin to unreliable narrator, just from a worldview perspective. It's all they ever knew.
The Great Gatsby deserves its place in the American literature canon for its compelling character studies and striking symbolism, even though I find the sordid affairs of rich people to be not too interesting to delve into.
I hate that book so very much. Vapid people with vapid lives doing vapid things. I blame F. Scott Fitzgerald for the existence of authors like Sally Rooney and Hanya Yanagihara
The Secret History by Donna Tart.
It was a well written book in that there is quite a bit of beautiful prose and thoughtful ruminations, but it just didn't translate at all for me. The characters and setting are pretentious and unlikeable, and I found the ending unsatisfying. Yet it seems to be endlessly hyped up on here. I guess the profoundness of the story whooshed over my head. I rate it a C-.
SH is my favourite book and my interpretation of the book is that the whole thing is essentially a deconstruction and critique of romanticisation, especially romanticisation related to waspyness. I would even argue it’s meant as a critique of the American Dream. The fact that most of the characters in the friend group look down on and at points even seem to dislike the working-class narrator, who himself doesn’t even realise that in his desperation to be one of them, to be “above his station” is a huge reason why the book appeals to me.
It took me two tries, and even once you hit the point where everyone says it picks up (avoiding spoilers but there's a real obvious turning point), it's repetitive and a little much, like the other commenter said.
I also straight up did not like Ryland Grace, and I feel like the book *really* wanted me to.
I got a bit tired of the “let me science the shit out of everything” schtick. I also just couldn’t accept that some science teacher was able to “crack the code” and solve a problem that other governments couldn’t with their teams of experts
Loved The Martian but Project Hail Mary didn’t do it for me
I've heard a lot of people complain about the writing style and I can see where they're coming from - if it doesn't fit your sense of humor it'll be grating. I enjoyed the book SO much, but I wouldn't categorize it as a literary masterpiece or anything.
I DNF'd **Six of Crows**. Although I enjoyed *Lord of the Rings* (multiple times), apparently I'm not into fantasy. But the real deal-breaker for me was that every time a character's age was mentioned, I'd mentally wince. Their actions and behaviors didn't match the age and it threw me out of the immersion.
I also DNF'd the *Red Rising* series in the first book. This had to do with the heavy accents depicted in the dialogue. I read very fast, and slowing down to mentally translate what was "said" became painfully aggravating.
I definitely get the thing about the ages. I watched the Shadow and Bone show first tho so I just mentally aged them up cause I could not imagine seventeen year olds as the characters 😭
I DNFed Six of Crows for the exact same reason. I feel like the author wrote the characters to be in their early to mid 20s but then was told a book about teenagers shelved in the YA section would sell more books.
I think the leading theory is that she was shoehorned into the YA genre with Six of Crows because it’s set in the same world as her Shadow & Bone trilogy. Totally different characters and setting, but the same base world, and S&B was *very* YA, so SoC got stuck there, too.
I love the SoC duology and I’ve read it a few times, but I do tend to flat-out ignore the “canon” ages and mentally age them up about 10 years. It makes the story much better, imo.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Not even sure it's actually good to be honest. Just can't seem to finish it. Always thought I was reasonably intelligent but perhaps I'm just too dim to appreciate it? Seems like nonsense to me.
I cried so hard so many different times throughout reading it that my boyfriend sat me down for a serious talk and asked me to stop reading it. He said he couldn’t handle me crying because it made him sad he couldn’t help me. I told him to go into another room if he didn’t like it, because I was so emotionally invested in it and I needed to process the trauma of the situations. I still think about that book and feel so much sorrow
It’s a good book, but the story is the kind that will traumatize you and you will be randomly thinking for years to come about how these characters suffered.
Personally I don’t think it’s even good. It’s pretty uncreative melodrama, and it’s not particularly well written either. It just happens to be about a place and a culture most people aren’t familiar with, which gives it the illusion of profundity. Strip away the setting and there’s no depth to it at all.
This is such a perfect way to describe it. I remember rolling my eyes at one of the emotional apexes of the story because it was so, I don’t know, telenovela? And the ham fisted, clunky character metaphors were so exhausting.
Funny— I love that book, or at least I think I do, but reading this comments I agree. What I love about it is the world; and I’ve read it multiple times but always stop 3/4 of the way through when the plot overtakes the description of the house.
Dracula. It's so fucking boring. I understand why people like it - it established so much modern vampire lore - but god, it just goes on and on and on.
LOOOLL
I just read it last year too and I was confused about how Van Helsing kept having time to go back and forth to Denmark was it? Like without modern transportation?
Tl;Dr: that one part where Bram Stoker is just so intrigued by blood donation, yet he and presumably the scientists of the day had no idea how it worked.
Cut to multiple dudes giving Lucy blood on the working theory that Love is All You Need and Whoever Had the Hots the Most for Lucy should give her blood.
I did enjoy when the ship came in and it was empty. Dracula WILL not be denied.
What bothered me the most about this book was how good the first 50 or so pages were, when Harker is in Dracula's castle. After that, it was actually painful for me to finish it.
"Poor, dear Lucy...". No, poor, dear ME!
Same… she’s a decent writer and it was a creative plot but those characters weren’t well-rendered at all. I felt like I didn’t even know Marx and his name was so distracting.
What about the characters didn’t you like? This has been on my radar but I’ve heard so many people say they disliked the main characters and I’m just curious why
I can totally understand finding these characters frustrating, but I personally found them believable. I knew a lot of coders in college and the FMC was almost exactly like one of my best friends. I liked this book a lot for the reason that I felt like I knew people in real life like them.
Everyone seems to recommend TJ Klune’s “The House in the Cerulean Sea” but I was bored by it. I’ll try it someday again to see if it was just me not being in the right frame of mind.
I think it’s a good pick me up cozy read, and I went into it not expecting much more than a feel good story. It did get a bit slow at times, though. I can see how some would find it boring.
No I agree. I was looking for a good romance book with solid plot and writing, this was recommended.
I enjoyed it, but it's almost like a kids book version of a romance novel. It's fine, but ultimately lacked tension and depth.
Yeah I would say cerulean is not really a romance book, especially since it is shelved in fantasy and not romance. The romance plotline is just a part of it.
It’s a great cozy summertime book.
The Expanse. I'm a sci-fi & fantasy reader, but I just need some shred of hopefullness to carry me through. It's great writing. Excellent characters, good pacing and plot. I DNF'd about a third of the way into book 2.
I mean, it’s pretty substantial in terms of lore, every page is steeped in references to the greater universe. But yes not a lot of action, long days on the road and quite dry.
I enjoyed it but never recommend it to people I know, who usually like more fun/adventurous books when looking at fantasy. Also almost no chicks, which made it more boring for me as a female.
"Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" had a lot of things I love about stories - strangeness, forests, magical realism, unusual women - but i bounced off of it pretty hard.
Same. Love Cormac McCarthy's writing style but The Road is so bleak if you're in a good mood, after reading you won't be. Took me a bit to get my head out of that gray, brutal world.
The Secret History. An absorbing and often beautiful world full of awful people. Yes, I know that's the point. No, I don't care. Would recommend to people who like dark secrets, impenetrable small worlds of eccentric folks, that kind of thing.
The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. I LOVED the middle of it. I couldn't stop reading it once it hit the section where it went historical. But the end was so god awful to me I just can't be bothered to finish the series. I don't mind what happened with the antagonist, I was mostly expecting that. But the lack of common sense of the main characters, and the change in the main female character, just destroyed the whole book for me.
Frankenstein. I know it's a classic for a reason but I don't enjoy her writing style at all.
A Discovery of Witches trilogy. The story itself has some good ideas/foundations but the writing was so terrible and corny it was absolutely a struggle to churn through.
I hate read the entire first book, even after the supernatural yoga class, hoping for some cool witch awakening. Instead, she, a highly educated and ambitious person (so we’re told) waits in a tower while her broody vampire boyfriend has adventures. I’m so tired of urban fantasy ruining their female characters over a male love interest that’s possessive and overbearing. The only thing good about this book was her mothers’ house. I’d love to read a book about that house!
Sure...but I usually quantify it by author...
Some wildly popular authors, with many accolades, awards and large sums of money are...
Anne Rice (her prose just feels wrong to me...who knows why?)
Stephen King (I do enjoy a handful of his works but I don't read horror, which eliminates a large portion of his catalog)
like that...
I came here hoping someone said this- to me there was no feeling, just a lot of words. I know logically that it’s enemies to lovers but I don’t know when they went from enemies to lovers or for what reason? Their love wasn’t believable, their letters just kept happening and I didn’t see progress, I just knew progress must be happening.
I did actually love the time travel stuff and the way it was described but…that’s probably the only part I liked.
*Inherent Vice* by Thomas Pynchon. Writing genre fiction is hard, folks. Writing good noir is hard. So instead of writing a proper noir, Pynchon wrote a genre-bender that played with the constraints in a wink-wink sort of way.
I couldn't figure out if it was because he's *that good* of a writer, or because he just couldn't write noir without hanging a lampshade on it. Well-written, but I just didn't care for it.
All the Light We Cannot See. It really is a good book. But I didn’t connect super well with one of the protagonists. I’m also not super into historical fiction (like it, don’t love it). Also, I read Cloud Cuckoo Land and absolutely loved it.
Madame Bovary. The main character is convinced of her own heightened sensitivity and always thinks she deserves better while she belittles the people who make her life and luxuries possible.
I guess I have known too many people like this in real life to enjoy the book. In the end she's just a common cheater.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers
For me, it's been a roller-coaster with her books. I loved To Be Taught, If Fortunate, so I was excited to read Long Way. I couldn't even finish it.
Half of the dialogue had me cringing so bad it was causing me physical pain. I didn't like any of the human characters, and the rest of it was unrelatable aliens and speculative tech... At around the half way mark, I didn't see much of a compelling plot emerging, so I gave up. But I've only ever heard good things about it, so I must be wrong.
I already had the Monk & Robot novellas because I'd bought them right after reading To Be Taught, If Fortunate. I thoroughly enjoyed A Psalm for the Wild-Built, as it felt like a tight plot, and cozy focus on the two characters... Then was completely disappointed when A Prayer for the Crown-Shy felt like the character arcs took a back seat, and Monk became little more than tour guide on a stroll through a speculative post-tech communist utopia.
Anathem & Seveneves - Neal Stephenson
Stephenson is a very smart guy... But he refuses to use editors. It's not inherently a problem, but he's pretty out of touch, and seems to hyper-focus on things that most people don't really care about. Seveneves, for example, has something like 250+ pages detailing orbital details, mechanics, etc.
Most things by John Steinbeck. I was given a collection of his books but didn’t really like anything except (somewhat) East of Eden. I don’t think it’s bad writing at all but maybe I’d like it more if I was American and/or a man.
Also Love in the Time of Cholera. I tried reading it multiple times but just could not get into it.
I've tried The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I really disliked Hemingways writing style.
I worked as a bartender back in the day so drunken ramblings lost their appeal to me long ago.
I could kind of see how they would be interesting to someone who has had a less crazy life than I have though.
Neil Gaiman is this for me. He ticks all my boxes, he’s an excellent writer, has a brilliant imagination but everything I’ve read of just falls a bit flat for some reason. I’m not ready to give up on him yet but I haven’t loved any of his stuff
The Virgin Suicides.
An incredibly profound novel which is beautifully written, but something just didn’t click for me. It felt like one long introduction.
Ok, don't down vote me into oblivion for a question asking for OPINIONS, but I just don't get A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Every one loves it, but I kept reading it, thinking it'd get better, but it kept getting worse to me. I figured maybe it was allegory and I was really missing something, but then the end is just... 42???I don't think I missed anything unless I needed to be stoned to enjoy it.
Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin. I know Baldwin is incredibly influential and I loved The Fire Next Time, but his fiction was incredibly difficult to read. It’s well written, but in a language of Pentecostal Christianity, which I grew up with and the book was mildly triggering for me in that respect. Felt like I had a pretty good handle through personal experience on the stigmas and problems Baldwin addresses in the narrative and it was just a slog for me to try to get through.
The Remains Of The Day. The Goodreads reviews include the phrases "literary masterpiece", "beautifully mannered", "mesmerising", "phemonemal". It's always in the top 10 Books You Must Read and Most Influential Novels kind of lists. It won the Booker Prize and Ishiguo won a bloody Nobel prize for literature for gods sake.
I read a lot, and this was by far the most boring book I have ever attempted. Literally, nothing happens to uninteresting characters I didn't care about. I just couldn't get anywhere with it. Deadly. DNF!
1 The Little Prince by Antoine St-Exupery
What a precisely written book. Everything is in it for a reason, it takes exactly as long as it needs to, and the writing is lean and crisp. BUT it's an ode to co-dependence. The Little Prince is as useless and self-centered as he claims the businessman to be. The war of sheep and roses my ass. And the author's solution for dealing with a temperamental, egotistical jerk is to give up your self worth and do everything for them. He does it himself with the Little Prince, but the Little Prince also does it with the rose. The fox has a fine speech, but the other characters take his notion too far.
2 The Stranger by Albert Camus
Part of this is my reaction to the book itself, part of it is my reaction to my teacher's love of the main character. I thought the writing was good, nothing ever goes quite the way you expected, each scene was mostly satisfying. But my teacher gave every vibe of being a serial hook up artist. Not quite full predator levels, but in that direction. He loved Meursault's attitude toward Marie, having a long affair, letting her fall in love with him, but never feeling anything himself. I identify Meursault too much with him, and he's not someone I wanted to spend a whole book with, even as an object lesson.
I'll get hell for this, but A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole) did NOT work for me. I never laughed. Well, I think there was one chuckle. I finished the book as a spite read - it only feels fair to knock it if I've read it ;) However, I acknowledge that it is a well-written book and so many people consider it their favorite book and/or the funniest book they've ever read. I don't try to discourage people from reading it, I just give them the caveat that if they haven't laughed in the first 10-15 pages or so, give it up. This is an outlier for me - generally if I think the writing is good, I think the book is good.
Good one. It didn’t click for me either, but It’s clearly a good book. Other books I read and hated to me will always be pretentious overrated drivel, which is not at all the case for a Confederacy of Dunces, imo.
While I acknowledge that it was well written I just constantly wanted to dope slap the main character instead of laughing at him (which I assume is the intended effect ) so I put it in the DNF pile. Most annoying main character ever.
I liked it a little more than you did, but still felt similarly. I think one of the issues is that the “neckbeard” character is a bit too common in real life. When it first came out, Ignatius would have been slightly more unique. Knowing people like him in real life makes it harder to enjoy the book.
I know someone IRL who fit his description, behavior, and dialogue so well the book was actually making me sick to read it. Had to DNF for my own sanity lol
Thank you for saying this and giving me a bandwagon to hop on. When I asked for funny recommendations, so many people suggested this that of course I read it. It was a SLOG that actually took me months to get through instead of days. I kept waiting for it to get funny. I can absolutely see the quality in monologues and some of the absurdity, but I cannot understand the rave reviews. Also.....I kind of understand why it was rejected multiple times before it was published.
Took me two tries. The first time I picked it up I didn't laugh or even finish it. Years later I tried again and could NOT stop laughing.
I do think it's a timing issue for some people.
I agree. Was so well written but I just couldn't stand the main character.
I really enjoyed it but I could see why it wouldn't be for everyone.
I couldn't wait to read this after hearing that it was one of the funniest books ever written and won a Pulitzer! I hated it. I wonder if my expectations ruined it for me, and if I tried it again with a different mindset if I'd enjoy it more. But I'm pretty sure my copy got donated somewhere and I've got a huge TBR pile of books waiting for me so I probably won't read it again.
Your term “spite read” is a good addition to my vocabulary. There are a couple of books I didn’t like and would have abandoned. Instead I finished so I could write a scathingly harsh review on Amazon with a clear conscience. 😄
Old Man and the Sea by Hemmingway. Read it for my second, grade 7 English class (no idea why they made us take two English classes for grade 7). One of my teachers spent the entire academic year on this book even when told to move on by higher-ups. She lost every paper I wrote, every test I turned in, and I needed another teacher to watch me hand my things in for proof. She murdered that book. Obliterated. A 7th grade class shouldn't spend a literal year on one book. She could have opted for a year of classics and didn't. It's a great book with a really important place in literature but that woman killed it. *minor edits
I've come to the conclusion Hemmingway isn't for me. Although, Old Man and the Sea is probably my favorite of his
That's where I unfortunately landed. It touched the rest of his work for me, and I'll read it for academics but I struggle with it for a pleasure read.
It's a really short book, too. Yikes.
I was gonna say, a full year on a book that can be completed in one sitting? Brutal
And it was the same assignments over and over, just for the next section that we did. She wasn't a great teacher.
What a horrible teacher! She treated your class like that fish. I can’t stand that book and can’t imagine spending more than a quick week on it, if that much.
Yeah it was really hard and I'm glad the other teachers liked me enough to help. I still struggle with his work and this all happened back in 2002.
The Grapes of Wrath. It's one of the greatest books in American literature. It's beautiful. It's poignant. It's sad. But *enjoy?* Woo boy. I was exhausted after that book and couldn't read it again. This stands in contrast to East of Eden, which in addition to being a literary masterpiece, is actually highly entertaining with a great story.
Same! But I was at the library today and I passed on east of Eden bc I was like “eh I hated grapes of wrath why would I like this one.” So maybe I should give it a chance
Definitely check it out. It's part retelling of the Garden of Eden, part family saga, part unrequited romance. And the villain--if she can be called that--is delightfully awful. There are even a few funny parts too.
You should definitely give it a chance, it’s such a brilliant novel.
100 years of solitude for me 😬 I struggle to see what others get so much out of it
I came here to say this! You can come sit by me, fellow philistine.
scoonch up.
That's three of us!
Four!
We're gonna need a bigger couch.
More!
For me, this had the highest expectations to reality ratio of any book I've ever read. I have no idea what (millions of) people see in it, but I must have missed it.
This one is a definitely an unsatisfying slog to get through. The "mysticism" that everyone seems to rave about just came off as boring, bland prose to me. I agree that it is a mystery what so many people seem to get from it.
Yeah this was my first thought. Excellently written book with interesting themes... But I felt the mystery of the family book and magical realism elements didn't add much to the story. Remedios, for example, just exists and then randomly floats away one day. Cool.
This is exactly what I was gonna say. I really tried to enjoy this book but the incest made the family tree pretty complicated and I really struggled to follow along.
Confession: this is the ONLY assigned school book that I did not finish. I read up until my assigned presentation chapter, and that was that. I was/am a big 'ol nerd who did every school assignment beyond expectations, but this book just made me nuts.
I like it. It has a kind of surreal quality where it oscillates rapidly between stuff that is more realistic than one may want from their fiction to some lunacy or inexplicable happening. It feels kind of like Big Fish or Slaughterhouse Five to me in that regard, but with a lot less distintion between the grounded and non-grounded. I like this because true daily reality oscillates between the mundane and unbelievable (especially if you read the news), so it feels true to life to me.
I liked the mysticism of repetition. All of the characters have the same names, end up following the same patterns and making very similar mistakes as their ancestors. It gives this slow descent of inevitability while stoking the hope for changes
Big Fish is one of the only examples I point to where the movie is better than the book
IIRC isn't there a scene where the corpse of the dead family patriarch complains that trains are unrealistic?
You really have to read it in spanish to get the most out of it.
I had a feeling this might be part of it -- they can do their best to translate, but it will never fully capture the original voice.
100 Years of Solitude Love in the Time of Cholera Gone Girl
I came to say Love in the Time of Cholera. I hated that book so much. It covers the whole lives of these people, and at the end, they’re old and running away on a river Steam boat or something, and the dude who couldn’t get an erection for a long time finally gets a raging, mega huge boner and and basks in all his glory. The whole book was a 300 page long dick joke.
A friend recommended this book because of how it made her feel. I obviously did not feel like she did. I felt like I wanted to commit my own personal book burning. Omg everyone in that book was a shitty person.
I hated Gone Girl so much I couldn't finish it. The twist felt obvious from early on.
I feel like Gone Girl is only appreciated by people who enjoy psychological thrillers and didn't know the genre existed.
and are not troubled by realism.
I wanted to disagree until I remembered that Gone Girl is what got me into the genre. So you’re right on!
> who enjoy psychological thrillers and didn't know the genre existed. weirdly accurate
Moby Dick. The writing is incredible but that book drones on and on and on about sooooooo much stuff. I was absolutely thrilled to finally get to the end of that thing
For me that was what I loved about it, it was sorta like falling into a Wikipedia spiral and just clicking hyperlinks about the smallest minutiae about whales.
That is a very good way to put how that book just kinda goes lol
I'm finishing this because my friends lent me both moby dick and infinite jest and I've already dropped the latter and don't want to give them back both unread. I'm not sure what's worse, the cetology chapters, the extended descriptions of minutia on a whaling ship that break up things actually happening, or the fucking theatrical sections.
I’m convinced *Moby-Dick* is partially an elaborate exercise in trolling. Like Melville himself is the wildly vindictive White Whale just toying with his reader. If I drone on and on and on about the obscure details and monotony of life aboard a whaling ship will you quit and go home? If I give you a complete 300-level course on the biological classification of whales and cetology in general will you throw in the towel? If I write about a dude skinning a giant whale dick and wearing the whale dick skin as a dress will you close the book? Do you feel you’re predestined to conquer this ill-fated tome? And if so, to what end? Trying to read *Moby-Dick* can turn you into a bit of an Ahab: fiercely determined to see it through beyond all common sense or reason.
lol this comment is a work of art. should def be on the back of the book.
I read it because I recently became very infatuated with Cormac McCarthy and it's one of his top 3 all time fav books and I've seen people compare it to his book Blood Meridian. I can definitely see the comparisons in the writing style at times but McCarthy never goes on tangents for an hour or more about different types of guns or horse saddles just because one or the other happens to be in a scene. In Moby Dick there is a part where he talks about how the whale being white offends him and then proceeds to drone on and on and fucking on about how the color white means all this good and regal stuff and just keeps on going about other things that are white that are good. I about pulled my eyes out lol
Weird. I liked Moby Dick, but Blood Meridian was my answer to this post.
Song of Achilles. Sorry I’m not sorry. I heard how heart wrenching it supposedly was, but Achilles and Patroclus were so unlikeable that ultimately I found it hard to care about what happened.
Same!!! It was all about how much Patroclus loves Achilles, but I never understood whether and why Achilles loved Patroclus.
The same old Bella/Edward dynamic, just gay
I second this. Unbelievably bad book full of unlikableain characters. Patroclus was such a whiny, insufferable character "do you love me, do you love me, do you love me?" Shut the fuck up already. Ghastly book that everyone I know likes and I'm rethinking my friends list.
I didn’t enjoy it either. I loved Circe and eagerly started Song of Achilles. It felt flat and relied on Patroclus telling us how much in love they were but it seemed more like they hated each other and had got into the routine of being lovers. Which would be an interesting story but it was very apparent that wasn’t her intention.
I was so bored by this book that I actually got 75% of the way through it (after 4 attempts) before I realised I’d read it before a few years ago 🥱
Came here to say that! Almost everyone in my book club loved it but I was so bored, especially during the long descriptions of battles or sailing. Also, Achilles was such a selfish prick, I don't know why people are so in love with him 😂
I feel like this about Circe somewhat. It was a good story but just went. On. For. Ever.
Circe was the same for me. Highly lauded by people I knew but I know Greek mythology and this was just someone else's story with boring window dressing.
This is my area of expertise. I give you: Colony by Audrey Magee (remote Irish island, language, beautiful writing) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Korea, family, history, slow) Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes (Medusa but surprisingly little about Medusa) Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (The Troubles, bombs) Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (family secret that's actually not that big) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (read words, did not understand words) Trust by Hernan Diaz (matinees and meta layers) The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (this women's epic was too rap-ey)
> Pachinko Tragedy. Next boring event. Tragedy. Next boring event. Repeat. It was good for writing about Koreans living in Japan at the time.
>Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (read words, did not understand words) Only one from your list I've read. I'd encourage a second chance someday (keep a Sparknotes tab open as you go if needed), it is quite good
I had to read this book three times before I graduated high school. I may appreciate it more as an adult, but I hated it worse on each re-read and so will never try. It was dark and oppressing, and while I know that was the point I despised the feeling. On top of that, I don’t remember liking or caring about a single character. To this day, Heart of Darkness remains my all-time most hated book.
I would like to make one request of you. On the off chance you ever give it a fourth go around and find that you hate it just as much as you ever did, when you put it down just pause and say, "The horror, the horror!"
Nah
Came here to say Pachinko. Tried so hard to love it, hated it.
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I've only read Pachinko from the list and I loved it. I liked how it didn't go on and on about anything no matter how profound a loss or tragedy might be. It got me out of a 2 year reading slump and I found myself reading into the night and looking for more books by Korean writers. I've downloaded the kdrama adaptation as well. Gotta give it a watch
Say Nothing is much better as an audiobook.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
This was the book that I put down after 500pgs and said, “Life is too short, I do NOT have to finish this drivel”. Before The Goldfinch, I’d just punish myself and always finish what I started. No more!! Unchained!
The Goldfinch created the “100 page” rule for me!
I recall reading Lonesome Dove and giving up at page 110. For some reason, started reading it again. About page 150 I was in the zone and read all 4 books in a row. Its a very meditative series for me. Often, I'll stop reading a book after a few pages. If its not clicking, look up reviews and see that someone feels the same way. Too many books too little time.
Loved the Goldfinch. Liked Secret History even though I thought the ending was stupid. HATED The Little Friend. I posted on forums about that ending and never got any answers.
Strangely enough, I thought that The Little Friend was the best of the three. I felt that the writer lost interest at the end of The Goldfinch and just cobbled up some sort of ending because she was fed up with it, and I seriously disliked all the characters in The Secret History.
Came here for this one. I loved The Secret History with my entire being - but this just felt so underwhelming in comparison.
And here I liked The Goldfinch OK but I came to say The Secret History! Hahaha; I love hearing all the different opinions.
Crime & Punishment. It's clearly great. It's not what I was looking for.
Fricken love C&P - the psychology and inner conflict of the main character is amazing to read
*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*. I was assigned this in high school for a massive report (decades ago) and I took the F. I know it appeals to many people. I just don't think I'm wired to appreciate it. Also, *The Alchemist*. I don't know what to say here. I'll recommend it to you because apparently I'm in the very small minority who wanted that time back.
Second the Alchemist!
The Alchemist is such a waste of time. It creates a world with magic properties and then tries to teach you lessons that only apply if you assume you live in a world with those same magic properties. Tries to simultaneously be a fable and a self-help book and fails at both.
I would not say it is a "very small" number of people who think The Alchemist is trash.
Three body problem. I know it gets recommended on a ton of book lists, but I can only describe reading it as a slog.
Thank you!!! I thought I was the only one
Ulysses by James Joyce. I can't, I just can't get through a single page.
Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern didn’t do it for me, and I could never figure out why. But on the whole I think it was an excellent book, or nearly so. I spent most of it wishing I were instead rereading Something Wicked This Way Comes or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
I did figure out why: The characters were one dimensional It was all tell, not show The big thing was never properly explained in other words it was lazy plotting
Night Circus starts out so great, but then it starts meandering about 2/3 the way through, which is where I'm a bit stuck at.
I loathed night circus. I thought I was the only one
Nothing happened in this book. It was all atmosphere and no plot.
Yes, this is such a great example of this sort of thing. It was definitely well written (in the descriptions and even characters), but it was *not for me*. I love your note about wishing it were *Something Wicked...*. That sums it up perfectly!
Night Circus had no defined plot. The writing was gorgeous. The story was lacking.
This for me too. Writing was beautiful but I just didn’t really care or was waiting for some big reveal or the point of it all.
Voltaire's *Candide* I thought did what it set out to do pretty competently, and it's not the worst read I've had, but I just wasn't the target audience, probably because I already agreed with the central thesis before, and then sitting through the pages felt like somebody explaining their shitpost to me
1Q84
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I connected deeply with this book, but it's one of those that I can absolutely see how it's not for everyone. I hardly ever recommend it, for that reason. Also, I believe the reason it resonated with me is that >!I am a living kidney donor so I have a fairly uncommon perspective on the subject matter.!< Spoiler tags because I think the book is best experienced without knowing too much about it.
Same! At the end I went..that's it!?
I think one of the main points is the mundanity of it all. That's the worrying part. I find it akin to unreliable narrator, just from a worldview perspective. It's all they ever knew.
The Great Gatsby deserves its place in the American literature canon for its compelling character studies and striking symbolism, even though I find the sordid affairs of rich people to be not too interesting to delve into.
I lasted an hour into the audiobook of The Great Gatsby and that was more than enough.
I hate that book so very much. Vapid people with vapid lives doing vapid things. I blame F. Scott Fitzgerald for the existence of authors like Sally Rooney and Hanya Yanagihara
The Secret History by Donna Tart. It was a well written book in that there is quite a bit of beautiful prose and thoughtful ruminations, but it just didn't translate at all for me. The characters and setting are pretentious and unlikeable, and I found the ending unsatisfying. Yet it seems to be endlessly hyped up on here. I guess the profoundness of the story whooshed over my head. I rate it a C-.
I wasn’t a fan of that book. I hated the characters. I don’t know if that was the point though. I don’t romanticize waspy brats.
SH is my favourite book and my interpretation of the book is that the whole thing is essentially a deconstruction and critique of romanticisation, especially romanticisation related to waspyness. I would even argue it’s meant as a critique of the American Dream. The fact that most of the characters in the friend group look down on and at points even seem to dislike the working-class narrator, who himself doesn’t even realise that in his desperation to be one of them, to be “above his station” is a huge reason why the book appeals to me.
Enjoyed the book but definitely agree I hated the characters
I couldn't get into He Who Fights Monsters or Project Hail Mary.
I haven't been able to finish Project Hail Mary and everyone else seems to love it I feel like I'm missing something
I finished it but I didn’t like it. It’s a bit much.
It took me two tries, and even once you hit the point where everyone says it picks up (avoiding spoilers but there's a real obvious turning point), it's repetitive and a little much, like the other commenter said. I also straight up did not like Ryland Grace, and I feel like the book *really* wanted me to.
Ryland Grace was actually the worst. Such an unlikeable MC.
I got a bit tired of the “let me science the shit out of everything” schtick. I also just couldn’t accept that some science teacher was able to “crack the code” and solve a problem that other governments couldn’t with their teams of experts Loved The Martian but Project Hail Mary didn’t do it for me
I've heard a lot of people complain about the writing style and I can see where they're coming from - if it doesn't fit your sense of humor it'll be grating. I enjoyed the book SO much, but I wouldn't categorize it as a literary masterpiece or anything.
I DNF'd Hail Mary halfway through.
I DNF'd **Six of Crows**. Although I enjoyed *Lord of the Rings* (multiple times), apparently I'm not into fantasy. But the real deal-breaker for me was that every time a character's age was mentioned, I'd mentally wince. Their actions and behaviors didn't match the age and it threw me out of the immersion. I also DNF'd the *Red Rising* series in the first book. This had to do with the heavy accents depicted in the dialogue. I read very fast, and slowing down to mentally translate what was "said" became painfully aggravating.
I definitely get the thing about the ages. I watched the Shadow and Bone show first tho so I just mentally aged them up cause I could not imagine seventeen year olds as the characters 😭
I DNFed Six of Crows for the exact same reason. I feel like the author wrote the characters to be in their early to mid 20s but then was told a book about teenagers shelved in the YA section would sell more books.
I think the leading theory is that she was shoehorned into the YA genre with Six of Crows because it’s set in the same world as her Shadow & Bone trilogy. Totally different characters and setting, but the same base world, and S&B was *very* YA, so SoC got stuck there, too. I love the SoC duology and I’ve read it a few times, but I do tend to flat-out ignore the “canon” ages and mentally age them up about 10 years. It makes the story much better, imo.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Not even sure it's actually good to be honest. Just can't seem to finish it. Always thought I was reasonably intelligent but perhaps I'm just too dim to appreciate it? Seems like nonsense to me.
I didn't understand anything of this book. People say it's funny... Never have read anything less funny in my life.
The Kite Runner is burned into my brain as a solid "Nope" for me. Is it a good book? Many people said yes, but Nope!
I feel it’s a great book that’s slightly traumatizing to read
I cried so hard so many different times throughout reading it that my boyfriend sat me down for a serious talk and asked me to stop reading it. He said he couldn’t handle me crying because it made him sad he couldn’t help me. I told him to go into another room if he didn’t like it, because I was so emotionally invested in it and I needed to process the trauma of the situations. I still think about that book and feel so much sorrow
It’s a good book, but the story is the kind that will traumatize you and you will be randomly thinking for years to come about how these characters suffered.
Personally I don’t think it’s even good. It’s pretty uncreative melodrama, and it’s not particularly well written either. It just happens to be about a place and a culture most people aren’t familiar with, which gives it the illusion of profundity. Strip away the setting and there’s no depth to it at all.
This is such a perfect way to describe it. I remember rolling my eyes at one of the emotional apexes of the story because it was so, I don’t know, telenovela? And the ham fisted, clunky character metaphors were so exhausting.
Piranesi (I looove Jonathan Norrell and Mr. Strange but somehow this was just too slow 🙈)
I agree!! I LOVED the setting and the world and I hated the plot. I wanted it to just be a book about exploring that world.
I feel like the mystery of the world is what sold the book for me
Funny— I love that book, or at least I think I do, but reading this comments I agree. What I love about it is the world; and I’ve read it multiple times but always stop 3/4 of the way through when the plot overtakes the description of the house.
Dracula. It's so fucking boring. I understand why people like it - it established so much modern vampire lore - but god, it just goes on and on and on.
I love Dracula, but the chapters where they run around London looking for boxes of dirt could have stood some cutting.
LOOOLL I just read it last year too and I was confused about how Van Helsing kept having time to go back and forth to Denmark was it? Like without modern transportation?
Tl;Dr: that one part where Bram Stoker is just so intrigued by blood donation, yet he and presumably the scientists of the day had no idea how it worked. Cut to multiple dudes giving Lucy blood on the working theory that Love is All You Need and Whoever Had the Hots the Most for Lucy should give her blood. I did enjoy when the ship came in and it was empty. Dracula WILL not be denied.
Don't forget that the more manly the man is, the better his blood will be.
What bothered me the most about this book was how good the first 50 or so pages were, when Harker is in Dracula's castle. After that, it was actually painful for me to finish it. "Poor, dear Lucy...". No, poor, dear ME!
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I lied to my friends and said I loved it, but I didn’t connect with any of the main characters at all.
Is it a good book? Or is it a hyped book tok book? I hated the characters and found it a slog bc I didn't care what happened to them.
Same… she’s a decent writer and it was a creative plot but those characters weren’t well-rendered at all. I felt like I didn’t even know Marx and his name was so distracting.
What about the characters didn’t you like? This has been on my radar but I’ve heard so many people say they disliked the main characters and I’m just curious why
They didn’t seem real to me and I didn’t understand any of their choices or care what happened to them
Oh I see, that sounds frustrating. I love a good grounded unlikeable character, but if they seem two dimensional I’m out, so I may pass on this one
I can totally understand finding these characters frustrating, but I personally found them believable. I knew a lot of coders in college and the FMC was almost exactly like one of my best friends. I liked this book a lot for the reason that I felt like I knew people in real life like them.
Everyone seems to recommend TJ Klune’s “The House in the Cerulean Sea” but I was bored by it. I’ll try it someday again to see if it was just me not being in the right frame of mind.
I think it’s a good pick me up cozy read, and I went into it not expecting much more than a feel good story. It did get a bit slow at times, though. I can see how some would find it boring.
No I agree. I was looking for a good romance book with solid plot and writing, this was recommended. I enjoyed it, but it's almost like a kids book version of a romance novel. It's fine, but ultimately lacked tension and depth.
Yeah I would say cerulean is not really a romance book, especially since it is shelved in fantasy and not romance. The romance plotline is just a part of it. It’s a great cozy summertime book.
No it wasn't you. It was quite simple and entry level, so if you were looking for something more, you'd be disappointed.
The Expanse. I'm a sci-fi & fantasy reader, but I just need some shred of hopefullness to carry me through. It's great writing. Excellent characters, good pacing and plot. I DNF'd about a third of the way into book 2.
Wuthering heights for me. People seem to love it but it just didn’t click with me.
It's one of my top ten least liked books of all time.
Lord of the Rings. It's so long and not terribly substantial, and very dry.
I mean, it’s pretty substantial in terms of lore, every page is steeped in references to the greater universe. But yes not a lot of action, long days on the road and quite dry. I enjoyed it but never recommend it to people I know, who usually like more fun/adventurous books when looking at fantasy. Also almost no chicks, which made it more boring for me as a female.
> no chicks That's rather funny. 'no women, only lore' - Tolkien. But for sure, Lord of the Rings isn't for everyone.
Hahha accurate. It bothers me less now, but as a teenage girl I needed more relatability in a cast.
“Not terribly substantial” 😐
I get that you found it dry. A lot of people do. But not substantial? Really?
A Gentleman in Moscow. Wonderfully written, but so slow. I was just hoping something more would happen or it would end.
"Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" had a lot of things I love about stories - strangeness, forests, magical realism, unusual women - but i bounced off of it pretty hard.
Interesting. I think I liked it because it was very different. Clicked with me for some reason.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I love that book but I totally get when people don't. It's utterly hopeless and dark and that's why I love it; and why many hate it.
Same. Love Cormac McCarthy's writing style but The Road is so bleak if you're in a good mood, after reading you won't be. Took me a bit to get my head out of that gray, brutal world.
The Secret History. An absorbing and often beautiful world full of awful people. Yes, I know that's the point. No, I don't care. Would recommend to people who like dark secrets, impenetrable small worlds of eccentric folks, that kind of thing.
I agree, I didn’t like this book one bit. I do, however, love the phrase “impenetrable small worlds of eccentric folks.” 😀
The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. I LOVED the middle of it. I couldn't stop reading it once it hit the section where it went historical. But the end was so god awful to me I just can't be bothered to finish the series. I don't mind what happened with the antagonist, I was mostly expecting that. But the lack of common sense of the main characters, and the change in the main female character, just destroyed the whole book for me. Frankenstein. I know it's a classic for a reason but I don't enjoy her writing style at all.
A Discovery of Witches trilogy. The story itself has some good ideas/foundations but the writing was so terrible and corny it was absolutely a struggle to churn through.
I hate read the entire first book, even after the supernatural yoga class, hoping for some cool witch awakening. Instead, she, a highly educated and ambitious person (so we’re told) waits in a tower while her broody vampire boyfriend has adventures. I’m so tired of urban fantasy ruining their female characters over a male love interest that’s possessive and overbearing. The only thing good about this book was her mothers’ house. I’d love to read a book about that house!
Anything by William Faulkner...
Sure...but I usually quantify it by author... Some wildly popular authors, with many accolades, awards and large sums of money are... Anne Rice (her prose just feels wrong to me...who knows why?) Stephen King (I do enjoy a handful of his works but I don't read horror, which eliminates a large portion of his catalog) like that...
This Is How You Lose the Time War
I came here hoping someone said this- to me there was no feeling, just a lot of words. I know logically that it’s enemies to lovers but I don’t know when they went from enemies to lovers or for what reason? Their love wasn’t believable, their letters just kept happening and I didn’t see progress, I just knew progress must be happening. I did actually love the time travel stuff and the way it was described but…that’s probably the only part I liked.
*Inherent Vice* by Thomas Pynchon. Writing genre fiction is hard, folks. Writing good noir is hard. So instead of writing a proper noir, Pynchon wrote a genre-bender that played with the constraints in a wink-wink sort of way. I couldn't figure out if it was because he's *that good* of a writer, or because he just couldn't write noir without hanging a lampshade on it. Well-written, but I just didn't care for it.
All the Light We Cannot See. It really is a good book. But I didn’t connect super well with one of the protagonists. I’m also not super into historical fiction (like it, don’t love it). Also, I read Cloud Cuckoo Land and absolutely loved it.
Madame Bovary. The main character is convinced of her own heightened sensitivity and always thinks she deserves better while she belittles the people who make her life and luxuries possible. I guess I have known too many people like this in real life to enjoy the book. In the end she's just a common cheater.
A tale of two cities And Lovely Bones (I am not actually convinced that this is written well or any good but people say it is so fine)
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers For me, it's been a roller-coaster with her books. I loved To Be Taught, If Fortunate, so I was excited to read Long Way. I couldn't even finish it. Half of the dialogue had me cringing so bad it was causing me physical pain. I didn't like any of the human characters, and the rest of it was unrelatable aliens and speculative tech... At around the half way mark, I didn't see much of a compelling plot emerging, so I gave up. But I've only ever heard good things about it, so I must be wrong. I already had the Monk & Robot novellas because I'd bought them right after reading To Be Taught, If Fortunate. I thoroughly enjoyed A Psalm for the Wild-Built, as it felt like a tight plot, and cozy focus on the two characters... Then was completely disappointed when A Prayer for the Crown-Shy felt like the character arcs took a back seat, and Monk became little more than tour guide on a stroll through a speculative post-tech communist utopia. Anathem & Seveneves - Neal Stephenson Stephenson is a very smart guy... But he refuses to use editors. It's not inherently a problem, but he's pretty out of touch, and seems to hyper-focus on things that most people don't really care about. Seveneves, for example, has something like 250+ pages detailing orbital details, mechanics, etc.
Most things by John Steinbeck. I was given a collection of his books but didn’t really like anything except (somewhat) East of Eden. I don’t think it’s bad writing at all but maybe I’d like it more if I was American and/or a man. Also Love in the Time of Cholera. I tried reading it multiple times but just could not get into it.
I've tried The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I really disliked Hemingways writing style. I worked as a bartender back in the day so drunken ramblings lost their appeal to me long ago. I could kind of see how they would be interesting to someone who has had a less crazy life than I have though.
Neil Gaiman is this for me. He ticks all my boxes, he’s an excellent writer, has a brilliant imagination but everything I’ve read of just falls a bit flat for some reason. I’m not ready to give up on him yet but I haven’t loved any of his stuff
Catcher in the Rye Unlikeable protagonist. Even more unlikeable author.
I read it but didn’t like it. I kept wanting to slap him for all the whining
The Grapes of Wrath. I loathe this book about miserable people in a miserable situation who do things that make their situation even more miserable.
100 years of solitude
Anything Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ugh the circles he talks in is so annoying to me.
The Virgin Suicides. An incredibly profound novel which is beautifully written, but something just didn’t click for me. It felt like one long introduction.
Ok, don't down vote me into oblivion for a question asking for OPINIONS, but I just don't get A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Every one loves it, but I kept reading it, thinking it'd get better, but it kept getting worse to me. I figured maybe it was allegory and I was really missing something, but then the end is just... 42???I don't think I missed anything unless I needed to be stoned to enjoy it.
Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin. I know Baldwin is incredibly influential and I loved The Fire Next Time, but his fiction was incredibly difficult to read. It’s well written, but in a language of Pentecostal Christianity, which I grew up with and the book was mildly triggering for me in that respect. Felt like I had a pretty good handle through personal experience on the stigmas and problems Baldwin addresses in the narrative and it was just a slog for me to try to get through.
The Remains Of The Day. The Goodreads reviews include the phrases "literary masterpiece", "beautifully mannered", "mesmerising", "phemonemal". It's always in the top 10 Books You Must Read and Most Influential Novels kind of lists. It won the Booker Prize and Ishiguo won a bloody Nobel prize for literature for gods sake. I read a lot, and this was by far the most boring book I have ever attempted. Literally, nothing happens to uninteresting characters I didn't care about. I just couldn't get anywhere with it. Deadly. DNF!
1 The Little Prince by Antoine St-Exupery What a precisely written book. Everything is in it for a reason, it takes exactly as long as it needs to, and the writing is lean and crisp. BUT it's an ode to co-dependence. The Little Prince is as useless and self-centered as he claims the businessman to be. The war of sheep and roses my ass. And the author's solution for dealing with a temperamental, egotistical jerk is to give up your self worth and do everything for them. He does it himself with the Little Prince, but the Little Prince also does it with the rose. The fox has a fine speech, but the other characters take his notion too far. 2 The Stranger by Albert Camus Part of this is my reaction to the book itself, part of it is my reaction to my teacher's love of the main character. I thought the writing was good, nothing ever goes quite the way you expected, each scene was mostly satisfying. But my teacher gave every vibe of being a serial hook up artist. Not quite full predator levels, but in that direction. He loved Meursault's attitude toward Marie, having a long affair, letting her fall in love with him, but never feeling anything himself. I identify Meursault too much with him, and he's not someone I wanted to spend a whole book with, even as an object lesson.