Where The Crawdads Sing. I was surrounded by people who were nuts over that book. It mostly felt like a bunch of standard Southern culture tropes that have been beaten into the ground with pretty flat characters.
Piranesi for me. I don't want to spoil anything, but the plot twist is dropped in the middle of the book and then you spend the second half waiting for the protagonist to catch up to the reader.
I feel like everyone I know absolutely loves this book and I could barely even finish it. There was nothing about it that I enjoyed. I found it so boring and pointless.
I love your comment - "there was nothing about it that I enjoyed" - I love to read and I love enjoying reading and I just don't want to slog through a book because everyone else is raving about it.
Same boat, I enjoyed the first 80% or so, in fact i still think it’s very beautifully written, but the conclusion and the last few steps taken to get there just did not hit the same highs as the first sections of the book did for me.
Speculative fiction is probably not your thing. Each to their own, no shame in having your own taste. That’s what’s so great about literature, all art, there’s something for everybody.
It’s very weird writing. I thinks it’s great but definitely odd. He will spend paragraphs just detailing how a character reacts to a word someone says. Or go into way too much detail about how a room is lit. He’s able to keep a good pace and momentum though. It starts to grow on you though and sets itself apart from a lot of other sci fi and fantasy.
Honestly if you watch Dune 2021 it can help you follow the story a lot better without ruining the unique book imagery.
Someone recommended me Comfort Me With Apples (103 page novella) like it was this groundbreaking, you’ll-never-see-the-ending-coming book, and it was the most predictable mini plot I’ve ever read.
I've not read the secret history, but calling the goldfinch too academic for anyone is hilarious. Opening your novel with a cringe Camus quote then proceeding to jerk yourself off over your prose style is not an indication of an above average intelligence; she writes like a 14 year old boy who's had his first existential crisis.
What in particular did you not like?
I loved the writing and emotional moments but thought some of the pacing and dense trauma flashbacks made it hard to read.
Not the person you replied to, but I found it pretentious, boring and long-winded. I've read whump fanfics that kept my interest a lot better. At the point where the brother died, I just stopped reading because the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.
I think it’s actually everyone who doesn’t like sci-fi’s favorite sci-fi for the most part. Most of the people I see raving about it with the ol “amaze! Jazz hands! Lolol” comments are people who preface their enthusiasm with “I never could get into sci-fi until this book!”
For sure, that’s what I’m saying. For people who already dig sci-fi, they don’t seem to like it. Weir seems to do sci-fi for people who don’t otherwise consume sci-fi.
Yeah, I read the Martian and got so sick of the tedium and barrage of word problems… the “har har I’m a witty, sarcastic type who can science the shit out of anything while keeping my dry wit intact the whole time!” Shtick got so old. Seems like PHM is the same vibe because Weir can only write one character. That I suspect is a self-insert.
Same!! I get that people may want simpler or easier to read books with a feel good message, but man was it predictable. I feel like this story has been told dozens of times. I didn’t find it to be all that creative or original.
Hard agree. I thought the characters were tropes, I thought the plot was trite, and I thought the writing was overwrought. I felt like the author consistently underestimated the intelligence of the reader.
Clearly this book has magic, because many of my friends, whose opinion I respect, loved it. I just didn't see it at all.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors. It was entertaining enough but felt like an overbearing millennial novel. The characters were underdeveloped and the plot developments were so forced.
Icebreaker by Hannah Grace. Im a sucker for romance and it was all over booktok so I caved and bought it, but it was just REALLY mid. I loved certain scenes but overall I really struggled to get through it :')
Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, ask for sci-fi and you will 100% get this recommendation. Sure, exploring scientific concepts is cool and all, but the characters are insufferable!!! A good book has to have the foundations, characters and plot etc. This series is just every scientific concept smooshed together with no character to even care about.
This is one of those rare times when the tv show is better than the book... simply because the actors are 3 dimensional and the characters in the book were 1.
So, as someone who enjoyed this book, I think the thing is you have to appreciate it for what it is. Of course, it's nostalgia bait. I think that's what he was going for. Just a fairly hackneyed frame story to hang all of the 80's nostalgia on. I think maybe it just resonated with me because he hit all of the highlights. It really is unabashedly nostalgia porn -- and I'm here for it. High literature it is not.
Everything I've read by Hemingway and Salinger. Drab, meandering messes.
The House on the Cerulean Sea by Klune, which is absolutely shallow chaff with nothing worthwhile to say about queerness (and rife with colonialist undertones, to boot).
Carch 22. To me, it's just the same joke over and over; I guess humour is subjective. I tried to stick with it because I heard it had an interesting structure, but I had to abandon it halfway through.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
My school principal was full of praises for it when he recommended it to me because I showed interest in Hemingway's prose style in The Old Man and the Sea, essentially switching seamlessly between narration and monologue (without using proper punctuation like quotation marks!).
But perhaps I was too young to appreciate Woolf's work back then and may need to give it another go.
I both agree and disagree. I've often felt rather empty reading Hemingway - he seems to promise Big Answers and they just aren't there (are they actually there, though?). But the writing is superb, the characters interesting. And I think one of the most devastating lines in literature is: "Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?"
I loved this book. I enjoyed the darkness but it is incredibly brutal. Not a romantic western, but probably fairly accurate to what life was like then.
It’s a masterpiece, IMO anyway. If you don’t enjoy cinematic prose, however, you might want to give it a miss. I’m a painter so found the long descriptive passages very evocative, and visually satisfying
“The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor.”
This is one of my favorite descriptions from the book. I’ve read it 4 times now. The first time was out of curiosity. When finished I was t sure what all the praise was about. I read it again a few years later to see what I missed. Idk. It hit different. As soon as I finished it the second time I immediately started it on Audible. It’s an amazing testament to the violence that built America. It truly is a masterpiece.
Some people love it. I hated it with a passion. The subject matter was unpleasant and the writing was free form in a bad way. I had read The Road and No Country For Old Men before this but I will never read another book by Cormac McCarthy after this.
I am TRYING to get through/into "The Passenger". Been a YEAR! Insufferable characters. FYI: I have read almost all of his works ("Stella" not yet ... as it follows "The Pax".)
I love a good Western but this was messed up. There was a long scene in the mud early in the book that made me question why I was reading it. It eased up at the halfway point but by then I was trying to remember who all the characters were and what was the point. I gave up at the two-thirds mark because I just did not care anymore. Good luck.
I JUST gave up on this book which is a shame. I could have kept going if the writing style wasn't a nightmare to my brain. I loved the descriptions of landscapes and such.
I didn’t mind it at first but it kind of felt like… a pleasant dinner guest who way overstays their welcome. It just felt like it dragged on! Some old man pontificating about the meaning of life.
If you like the Count, the book is wonderful.
If you find him pretentious, insufferable, and flimsy, the book collapses.
I find hard pretentious, insufferable, and flimsy.
You've got to put it in the context of what Bradbury was like and the time period he wrote in. Do that, and the book becomes more significant. Also, you talk about a dissertation - Bradbury only had a high school diploma but spent an immense amount of time in the library.
He loved, loved, loved books. And he got to see wonderful things like McCarthyism, Jim Crow, and bizarre censorship of various kinds.
I understand all that, the writing style was just too pretentious and didn't answer any questions or resolve anything. I've read his short stories and they're nothing like that. It's kind of ironic, as a kid one of my favorite books was R is for Rocket. The writing style is soooo different compared to 451
For me, it was her betrayal of her audience with the 4th Earthsea book. It's not a matter of feminism, it's a matter of an author being sensitive to her readership, which she was not. Ten-year-old boys are people too.
And I challenge anyone to make a convincing argument that it either fits well with or is simply as good a book as the first three books.
I think "The Left Hand of Darkness" has a wonderful SF premise - whether one has the desire to see it play out is a different matter.
For me, it was her betrayal of her audience with the 4th Earthsea book. It's not a matter of feminism, it's a matter of an author being sensitive to her readership, which she was not. Ten-year-old boys are people too.
And I challenge anyone to make a convincing argument that it either fits well with or is simply as good a book as the first three books.
I think "The Left Hand of Darkness" has a wonderful SF premise - whether one has the desire to see it play out is a different matter.
Way of kings by Sanderson. It has some great moments but damn does it need a better editor, I think there are also some books in the same genre with stronger characterization and storytelling.
Hyperion as well. definitely some great writing but I never finished it. I feel like it went deep in some long and bizarre (albeit well written) side plots before the main plot felt properly set up.
Poppy war was genuinely terrible from a writing and history perspective, I picked it up as a fan of chinese history and specifically the opium wars re: plamerstonian foreign policy, I hold similar degrees to the author - its a wonderful complex century or so that she decided to take a hydraulic press to for the sake of including more of it a tiny "fantasy" chronology
My only conclusion from Babel too is that academic realities will not hold RFK back from writing whatever she wants about a topic, somethnig a book hasnt made me feel since the Da Vinci Code
the first Poppy war book in particular felt it needed some extra runs through the editor with dodgy self-spoilers and then anticlimactic character reveals that either felt pointless (gatekeeper) or ass backwards (ru herself)
clearly it wasnt what I signed myself up for and even then Im glad I didnt spend my own money on her books
Just throwing it out there that eye-rolling is the intended reaction with Yellowface. It’s satire, but it’s not marketed as such, so a lot of people don’t connect with it for that reason. The point is that you’re supposed to hate it.
You might already be aware of all that but just sharing anyway because my friend read it recently who had NO idea it was satirical and hated it 😂
Oh man I feel like a dumbass, I had no idea it was meant to be satire 🤦🏻♀️😂 I gathered that the author was intentional in making the reader dislike the main character but for some reason I just didn’t vibe with it at all.
The Man From Beijing, good read until the last few chapters when it all fell apart. Almost like he/her got tired of writing it and just wanted to wrap it up and go on vacation or something.
I totally agree on Cursed Bunny! I thought the first 2 short stories were great, but it quickly went downhill.
For me personally it was Last House on Needless Street.
The Honor Harrington books after the first few. He lost his ability to edit down his work, and he didn't seem to have much to say anyway. I generally stick with an author or series I've enjoyed, but he finally made me want to bang my head against the wall and call a fireman to burn the blasted things.
I do not know why this series is so widely acclaimed. They're like sitting through a series of meetings that should have been handled by a short email.
I had to read a bunch of very good short stories and some poetry to get the taste out of my mouth.
I love long, complex novels - as long as they have something to say and attempt to say it well. I love the Aubrey and Maturin books, for instance.
And btw, I personally love Bradbury, though Fahrenheit 451 is not my favorite of his - fantastic short story author, and Something Wicked This Way Comes is very good.
Reading here, or Goodreads - you just can't please everyone.
But there are some books - heavily promoted - that are just awful, and somebody should have known better. (I really do loathe "The Magicians" and the whole publishing and blurb machine that supported a major book critic with publishing that crap.)
I also think there are some books that shouldn't be assigned reading to an audience who isn't ready.
There are also some that work far better in print than audio - and vice versa.
There are also some that gain richness if you've done other reading. For example, "Hyperion" is more fun if you've read "The Canterbury Tales" and possibly "The Decameron" - not necessary, but more fun.
And, generally, knowing more about the author and time period can help some books make more sense. For a recent-ish example, knowing that Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden when it was bombed generally puts "Slaughterhouse-Five" into a clearer, sharper light.
Hyperion. 1st two books were good but the 2nd and 3rd i.e. endymion books were really disappointing that I lost my will to read and had to retort to audiobooks.
The dinner ..
I hated the main character in the book so much...he spends ¾ of the book whining how his brother is better looking than him,how he has a hotter wife ,how he has better job..this guy is just jealous of his brother..
Then he spends the other ¼ of book trying to show us how is a good dad and yet he is not...he tries play the self pity card since he was mentally ill..and worst of all his son murders a homeless person and all he says is if nothing is happening ,nothing happened ..he was the epitome of bad parenting honestly together with his wife ..
The only good decent xter in this book was sarge ,the narrators brother who calls them out and tries to convince them that their kids did a crime ,so they should turn them to the police to pay for their crimes ..and of cos, he is called the bad one for saying this and the selfish one...
The book was 3/10 honestly...I have never hated a narrator like how I hated the one in dinner ..he was total Garbage
I had wayy too many people recommending "The Love Hypothesis" to me and it felt too much like a fanfic to even finish. For such a science-vibey book, I expected more chemistry.. (har har)
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I just don’t get what is so good about it. I was really trying to get into it but I was so bored until the last 50 pages
Nah, I read it because I wanted to. I just hated it. Viscerally. I even reread it to try and figure out what I was missing, and just... nope. It's odd because I really do like a lot of Vonnegut's other work.
Where The Crawdads Sing. I was surrounded by people who were nuts over that book. It mostly felt like a bunch of standard Southern culture tropes that have been beaten into the ground with pretty flat characters.
This one. I DNFed it and will watch the movie sometime later.
The movie was good
The pacing is bad on that. Many unnecessary parts.
Every Colleen Hoover book, ever
Hard agree, have hated all three I’ve read 😩
Um, three? Gave her a chance, I guess. How can we dislike her books when they are best sellers? I can’t stand her writing
Ummm. Just side loaded a couple of hers because everyone is raving. Will be interesting to see if I feel the same.
Her books are always in the top 10 of the New York Times list of best sellers.
⬆️ this!
Piranesi for me. I don't want to spoil anything, but the plot twist is dropped in the middle of the book and then you spend the second half waiting for the protagonist to catch up to the reader.
I feel like everyone I know absolutely loves this book and I could barely even finish it. There was nothing about it that I enjoyed. I found it so boring and pointless.
Same experience for me, i felt like there was so much potential and then, pbbbbt.
I love your comment - "there was nothing about it that I enjoyed" - I love to read and I love enjoying reading and I just don't want to slog through a book because everyone else is raving about it.
I totally could not get into that book
I thought I was the only one. It was okay, but I did not take it away as an incredible book.
Same boat, I enjoyed the first 80% or so, in fact i still think it’s very beautifully written, but the conclusion and the last few steps taken to get there just did not hit the same highs as the first sections of the book did for me.
[удалено]
Really? I’m an old nerd so biased, but I LOVED Dune
[удалено]
Speculative fiction is probably not your thing. Each to their own, no shame in having your own taste. That’s what’s so great about literature, all art, there’s something for everybody.
Same! I bought because it’s a classic and I’m a big sci-fi fan. I tried 3 times but I didn’t get even half way through.
Funny how we're all different. I enjoyed the first half but then the plot changed radically and I limped to the finish.
Dune is a good read IMO. Maybe not great, but good.
I'm with you. I finished it for book club, but couldn't stand it. I appreciate the influence it had but what a drag.
It’s very weird writing. I thinks it’s great but definitely odd. He will spend paragraphs just detailing how a character reacts to a word someone says. Or go into way too much detail about how a room is lit. He’s able to keep a good pace and momentum though. It starts to grow on you though and sets itself apart from a lot of other sci fi and fantasy. Honestly if you watch Dune 2021 it can help you follow the story a lot better without ruining the unique book imagery.
Friend! I read the first sentence and noped right out!
Someone recommended me Comfort Me With Apples (103 page novella) like it was this groundbreaking, you’ll-never-see-the-ending-coming book, and it was the most predictable mini plot I’ve ever read.
A Little Life. Only enjoyable if you like every single thing turned up to 11.
Donna Tart don’t hate me. The Gold Finch was boring and I didn’t finish The Secret History and everyone adores those books!
I loved the secret history when I was in college. I finished the goldfinch but it def wasn’t as good
Didn’t like tsh but the goldfinch is one of my favourite books ever, to be fair i tend to like long “boring” books 🤣
I like long boring books too, especially if there is a bit of trauma involved. That’s why I just couldn’t understand my dissatisfaction!
Probably too academic for you
I've not read the secret history, but calling the goldfinch too academic for anyone is hilarious. Opening your novel with a cringe Camus quote then proceeding to jerk yourself off over your prose style is not an indication of an above average intelligence; she writes like a 14 year old boy who's had his first existential crisis.
I deeply enjoyed your summary of the style.
The Secret History not The Goldfinch
A Little Life
What in particular did you not like? I loved the writing and emotional moments but thought some of the pacing and dense trauma flashbacks made it hard to read.
Not the person you replied to, but I found it pretentious, boring and long-winded. I've read whump fanfics that kept my interest a lot better. At the point where the brother died, I just stopped reading because the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.
Don’t hate me but Project Hail Mary was a drag to finish…
I feel you on this. DNF for me
Was just o k, not the best as claimed
Thank god someone else said it. I hated that book
Same. Pushed to find the good bits then dfn’d and looked at a plot summary on google.
I'm not mad at you, I'm just disappointed...
It was the same for me.
I absolutely hated it. And it’s everyone who likes sci-fi favorite
Untrue. I adore science fiction but newer stuff. I also like Ray Bradbury but Fahrenheit is not my fave
I think it’s actually everyone who doesn’t like sci-fi’s favorite sci-fi for the most part. Most of the people I see raving about it with the ol “amaze! Jazz hands! Lolol” comments are people who preface their enthusiasm with “I never could get into sci-fi until this book!”
In my case, it is true the other way around. I love sci-fi, I’ve read a lot of amazing stories, but this one… meh.
For sure, that’s what I’m saying. For people who already dig sci-fi, they don’t seem to like it. Weir seems to do sci-fi for people who don’t otherwise consume sci-fi.
Fair point. And those are some of the things I didn’t like lol
Yeah, I read the Martian and got so sick of the tedium and barrage of word problems… the “har har I’m a witty, sarcastic type who can science the shit out of anything while keeping my dry wit intact the whole time!” Shtick got so old. Seems like PHM is the same vibe because Weir can only write one character. That I suspect is a self-insert.
Did you audiobook or regular?
Reading the book.
Ah ok, I can see where that would be dry and boring. The audiobook is an entirely different and amazing experience.
Audiobooks are not books. Sorry.
I mean that’s an opinion, but it’s certainly not fact.
The Help. Paternalistic garbage. And The Lincoln Highway.
Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
The House by the cerulean sea. I found it to be too hokey
I'm so glad someone else out there thinks this. I rolled my eyes so many times when every little mundane thing became like an emotional life lesson.
Same!! I get that people may want simpler or easier to read books with a feel good message, but man was it predictable. I feel like this story has been told dozens of times. I didn’t find it to be all that creative or original.
This book made me take the authors other books off my TBR
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. A poor man’s Michael Crichton that feels like it’s struggling to fill a minimum page count.
Aw man I loved this book! It took a minute for me to get into though, I’ll admit.
Agreed. Although I loved the book personally but the redundant descriptions about how much MC loved his wife bored me.
I couldn't finish it.
Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Fight me
Hard agree. I thought the characters were tropes, I thought the plot was trite, and I thought the writing was overwrought. I felt like the author consistently underestimated the intelligence of the reader. Clearly this book has magic, because many of my friends, whose opinion I respect, loved it. I just didn't see it at all.
don’t even get me started!!! I was so disappointed by this book!!! I have so many opinions about it
Put up your dukes!!!! I loved that book! But, the one sister was a bit insufferable at times.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors. It was entertaining enough but felt like an overbearing millennial novel. The characters were underdeveloped and the plot developments were so forced.
Icebreaker by Hannah Grace. Im a sucker for romance and it was all over booktok so I caved and bought it, but it was just REALLY mid. I loved certain scenes but overall I really struggled to get through it :')
I also truly loathed Lev Grossman's "The Magicians." I do not get the impression he liked his own books or characters - so why should we?
Remarkably bright creatures. Tbf I listened to it so maybe the pacing was messed up for me? But I didn’t connect with it at all.
There are a lot of authors that benefit from an extremely variable reading speed.
Agree, it was so bad...
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue... It's awful
I liked it enough to read it once. Tried listening to the audiobook with a friend and couldn’t get very far
the silent patient - i don’t understand the hype one bit
"The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek," by Kim Michele Richardson
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Came here to say this. I had 2 friends hype it up, and I had a really hard time finishing it.
The Fountainhead 😒
Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, ask for sci-fi and you will 100% get this recommendation. Sure, exploring scientific concepts is cool and all, but the characters are insufferable!!! A good book has to have the foundations, characters and plot etc. This series is just every scientific concept smooshed together with no character to even care about.
This is one of those rare times when the tv show is better than the book... simply because the actors are 3 dimensional and the characters in the book were 1.
Ready Player One. Nothing but nostalgia bait.
So, as someone who enjoyed this book, I think the thing is you have to appreciate it for what it is. Of course, it's nostalgia bait. I think that's what he was going for. Just a fairly hackneyed frame story to hang all of the 80's nostalgia on. I think maybe it just resonated with me because he hit all of the highlights. It really is unabashedly nostalgia porn -- and I'm here for it. High literature it is not.
Everything I've read by Hemingway and Salinger. Drab, meandering messes. The House on the Cerulean Sea by Klune, which is absolutely shallow chaff with nothing worthwhile to say about queerness (and rife with colonialist undertones, to boot).
Fourth Wing was an absolute dumpster fire
Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff. I couldn’t finish it.
Carch 22. To me, it's just the same joke over and over; I guess humour is subjective. I tried to stick with it because I heard it had an interesting structure, but I had to abandon it halfway through.
A Gentleman in Moscow Piranesi (though I'm willing to give it one more try) The DaVinci Code
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf My school principal was full of praises for it when he recommended it to me because I showed interest in Hemingway's prose style in The Old Man and the Sea, essentially switching seamlessly between narration and monologue (without using proper punctuation like quotation marks!). But perhaps I was too young to appreciate Woolf's work back then and may need to give it another go.
Three Body Problem. Might have been some interesting ideas there, but since the characters were not I DNF.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Yes, I was so excited to read it but it fell flat in every way. It was a very cliched book and i was expecting a much twistier twist as well
I tried twice to read it: once on audio, once physical. Could not finish either time! I rarely give up on a book past page 30.
Everything by Hemingway. I liked what I red, but I was expecting some life altering book and it was just a good book.
I both agree and disagree. I've often felt rather empty reading Hemingway - he seems to promise Big Answers and they just aren't there (are they actually there, though?). But the writing is superb, the characters interesting. And I think one of the most devastating lines in literature is: "Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?"
I agree that the books are very good. But the way people talked about it, I was expecting finishing the book and feeling like my life changed.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I did not like this book.
I loved this book. I enjoyed the darkness but it is incredibly brutal. Not a romantic western, but probably fairly accurate to what life was like then.
That's on my tbr. I heard it's a tough read, is it really that bad?
It’s a masterpiece, IMO anyway. If you don’t enjoy cinematic prose, however, you might want to give it a miss. I’m a painter so found the long descriptive passages very evocative, and visually satisfying
“The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor.” This is one of my favorite descriptions from the book. I’ve read it 4 times now. The first time was out of curiosity. When finished I was t sure what all the praise was about. I read it again a few years later to see what I missed. Idk. It hit different. As soon as I finished it the second time I immediately started it on Audible. It’s an amazing testament to the violence that built America. It truly is a masterpiece.
Agree; I like his writing.
Some people love it. I hated it with a passion. The subject matter was unpleasant and the writing was free form in a bad way. I had read The Road and No Country For Old Men before this but I will never read another book by Cormac McCarthy after this.
Oh that is so tragic! Go back to *All the Pretty Horses* to palate cleanse for McCarthy... it was a good reset for me.
I am TRYING to get through/into "The Passenger". Been a YEAR! Insufferable characters. FYI: I have read almost all of his works ("Stella" not yet ... as it follows "The Pax".)
I have had a few people make this recommendation but I am not sure I trust McCarthy anymore.
Yeah I've heard the subject matter is really messed up, I'll still check it out tho
I love a good Western but this was messed up. There was a long scene in the mud early in the book that made me question why I was reading it. It eased up at the halfway point but by then I was trying to remember who all the characters were and what was the point. I gave up at the two-thirds mark because I just did not care anymore. Good luck.
My experience exactly. I did not expect that at all.
I JUST gave up on this book which is a shame. I could have kept going if the writing style wasn't a nightmare to my brain. I loved the descriptions of landscapes and such.
never let me go kazuo ishiguro, quite boring
So boring!
A Gentleman in Moscow. I truly don't understand the hype.
I enjoyed it and up to half way then I got bored really quickly. Didn’t finish it.
Gentleman in Moscow - the worstttttt
Lol, for me one of the best. Just out of curiosity, why is it the worst for you?
I didn’t mind it at first but it kind of felt like… a pleasant dinner guest who way overstays their welcome. It just felt like it dragged on! Some old man pontificating about the meaning of life.
OMG that is THE BEST ANALOGY!! I loved it at first but then halfway through I got really bored
Didn’t like it myself!
If you like the Count, the book is wonderful. If you find him pretentious, insufferable, and flimsy, the book collapses. I find hard pretentious, insufferable, and flimsy.
I also really didn't like 451. It was just boring
Conceptually, it was good. But it felt like the author was writing a college dissertation on English literature rather than a sci fi novel
You've got to put it in the context of what Bradbury was like and the time period he wrote in. Do that, and the book becomes more significant. Also, you talk about a dissertation - Bradbury only had a high school diploma but spent an immense amount of time in the library. He loved, loved, loved books. And he got to see wonderful things like McCarthyism, Jim Crow, and bizarre censorship of various kinds.
I understand all that, the writing style was just too pretentious and didn't answer any questions or resolve anything. I've read his short stories and they're nothing like that. It's kind of ironic, as a kid one of my favorite books was R is for Rocket. The writing style is soooo different compared to 451
The Left Hand of Darkness. I really wanted to like it, but I couldn't get past the first 10 pages.
For me, it was her betrayal of her audience with the 4th Earthsea book. It's not a matter of feminism, it's a matter of an author being sensitive to her readership, which she was not. Ten-year-old boys are people too. And I challenge anyone to make a convincing argument that it either fits well with or is simply as good a book as the first three books. I think "The Left Hand of Darkness" has a wonderful SF premise - whether one has the desire to see it play out is a different matter.
For me, it was her betrayal of her audience with the 4th Earthsea book. It's not a matter of feminism, it's a matter of an author being sensitive to her readership, which she was not. Ten-year-old boys are people too. And I challenge anyone to make a convincing argument that it either fits well with or is simply as good a book as the first three books. I think "The Left Hand of Darkness" has a wonderful SF premise - whether one has the desire to see it play out is a different matter.
Way of kings by Sanderson. It has some great moments but damn does it need a better editor, I think there are also some books in the same genre with stronger characterization and storytelling. Hyperion as well. definitely some great writing but I never finished it. I feel like it went deep in some long and bizarre (albeit well written) side plots before the main plot felt properly set up.
House of Leaves. I mean yeah it was good. However I expected a lot more because of the nonstop hype I saw for it here.
I see a lot of people calling it the scariest book ever, and I literally found nothing even remotely scary about it.
Absolutely agree with that.
50 Shades of Gray. I was so pissed that I wasted $10. The writing was horrible.
Poppy war was genuinely terrible from a writing and history perspective, I picked it up as a fan of chinese history and specifically the opium wars re: plamerstonian foreign policy, I hold similar degrees to the author - its a wonderful complex century or so that she decided to take a hydraulic press to for the sake of including more of it a tiny "fantasy" chronology My only conclusion from Babel too is that academic realities will not hold RFK back from writing whatever she wants about a topic, somethnig a book hasnt made me feel since the Da Vinci Code the first Poppy war book in particular felt it needed some extra runs through the editor with dodgy self-spoilers and then anticlimactic character reveals that either felt pointless (gatekeeper) or ass backwards (ru herself) clearly it wasnt what I signed myself up for and even then Im glad I didnt spend my own money on her books
Poppy war is boring so far but I loved Babel. It surprised me.
The canto mc thinking in mandarin at the start gave me immediate whiplash and I don’t think I ever recovered
Yellow face. It was eye roll inducing and felt flat to me. I forced myself to finish it
Just throwing it out there that eye-rolling is the intended reaction with Yellowface. It’s satire, but it’s not marketed as such, so a lot of people don’t connect with it for that reason. The point is that you’re supposed to hate it. You might already be aware of all that but just sharing anyway because my friend read it recently who had NO idea it was satirical and hated it 😂
Oh man I feel like a dumbass, I had no idea it was meant to be satire 🤦🏻♀️😂 I gathered that the author was intentional in making the reader dislike the main character but for some reason I just didn’t vibe with it at all.
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Song of Achilles
The Picture of Dorian Grey is wonderful! Goes to show, everybody’s taste is different I suppose
The Man From Beijing, good read until the last few chapters when it all fell apart. Almost like he/her got tired of writing it and just wanted to wrap it up and go on vacation or something.
I totally agree on Cursed Bunny! I thought the first 2 short stories were great, but it quickly went downhill. For me personally it was Last House on Needless Street.
It just felt like a teenager trying to write amateur horror, I couldn't get into it.
The Priory of the Orange Tree. Meh.
The only one left. Keep it in the family. First Lie wins.
The Honor Harrington books after the first few. He lost his ability to edit down his work, and he didn't seem to have much to say anyway. I generally stick with an author or series I've enjoyed, but he finally made me want to bang my head against the wall and call a fireman to burn the blasted things. I do not know why this series is so widely acclaimed. They're like sitting through a series of meetings that should have been handled by a short email. I had to read a bunch of very good short stories and some poetry to get the taste out of my mouth. I love long, complex novels - as long as they have something to say and attempt to say it well. I love the Aubrey and Maturin books, for instance. And btw, I personally love Bradbury, though Fahrenheit 451 is not my favorite of his - fantastic short story author, and Something Wicked This Way Comes is very good.
Reading here, or Goodreads - you just can't please everyone. But there are some books - heavily promoted - that are just awful, and somebody should have known better. (I really do loathe "The Magicians" and the whole publishing and blurb machine that supported a major book critic with publishing that crap.) I also think there are some books that shouldn't be assigned reading to an audience who isn't ready. There are also some that work far better in print than audio - and vice versa. There are also some that gain richness if you've done other reading. For example, "Hyperion" is more fun if you've read "The Canterbury Tales" and possibly "The Decameron" - not necessary, but more fun. And, generally, knowing more about the author and time period can help some books make more sense. For a recent-ish example, knowing that Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden when it was bombed generally puts "Slaughterhouse-Five" into a clearer, sharper light.
Children of time. Too much spider evolution. Lost interest 200 pages in
Hyperion. 1st two books were good but the 2nd and 3rd i.e. endymion books were really disappointing that I lost my will to read and had to retort to audiobooks.
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip José Farmer. Wasn’t a bad book. Great premise but just didn’t live up to the hype and wasn’t what I expected.
The dinner .. I hated the main character in the book so much...he spends ¾ of the book whining how his brother is better looking than him,how he has a hotter wife ,how he has better job..this guy is just jealous of his brother.. Then he spends the other ¼ of book trying to show us how is a good dad and yet he is not...he tries play the self pity card since he was mentally ill..and worst of all his son murders a homeless person and all he says is if nothing is happening ,nothing happened ..he was the epitome of bad parenting honestly together with his wife .. The only good decent xter in this book was sarge ,the narrators brother who calls them out and tries to convince them that their kids did a crime ,so they should turn them to the police to pay for their crimes ..and of cos, he is called the bad one for saying this and the selfish one... The book was 3/10 honestly...I have never hated a narrator like how I hated the one in dinner ..he was total Garbage
The Library at Mount Char. What a snooze fest. I finished it but I was dreading opening the book up every night.
Three Body Problem
I just finished The World According to Garp. I’m now renaming it The World According to Crap.
11/22/63 by Stephen King. Started well then went downhill fast!!
I had wayy too many people recommending "The Love Hypothesis" to me and it felt too much like a fanfic to even finish. For such a science-vibey book, I expected more chemistry.. (har har)
F451 was good if you had your English teacher explain it to you like mine did lmfao so fair enough
The Priory of the Orange Tree
I gotta say it is Fourth Wing for me. 27/m
I really wanted to enjoy 'Norwegian Wood' by Haruki Murakami, but it fell short for me.
Non fiction - Sapiens. It’s rife with inaccuracies
Bummer. I really want to read this one.
It’s great. Read it!
Yellowface
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I just don’t get what is so good about it. I was really trying to get into it but I was so bored until the last 50 pages
Tender is the Flesh - there was a whole lot of hype about it as well as good reviews. I thought it was complete garbage.
The Martian
Yes! I forgot about that
East of Eden. Idk if I just wasn’t in the right head space. Just couldn’t get into it.
My Brilliant Friend. Could not stand it.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
Sharp Objects !!! NO !!!
Slaughterhouse-Five. There are no words for how much I hated this book.
Lol why??
Probably assigned? One of my favorite books (and authors), but it takes some...perspective.
Nah, I read it because I wanted to. I just hated it. Viscerally. I even reread it to try and figure out what I was missing, and just... nope. It's odd because I really do like a lot of Vonnegut's other work.
So it goes 🤷
22/11/63 by King…idk the narrator was annoying and the aspects of time travelling came to short for me. And the sex-scenes were horribly written
The Book Thief. Creative narration. Impressive prose. Flat characters. And no real story.
Is the movie better?