Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

Denerick · 17-02-2010 11:19pm

Someone mentioned Robert Harris. I loved Imperium and Lustrum, but thought Pompeii was very lacklustre! Maybe its because I think its not written particularly well, but he writes an interesting plot and creates interesting characters by way of compensation (His depictions of Caeser, Crassus, and of course Cicero etc. are fantastic) Sort of like a better kind of historical thriller. But I wouldn't place him among the pantheon of literary writers I'm afraid!

Eliot Rosewater · 17-02-2010 11:33pm

Denerick wrote: »

Lustrum ... lacklustre!

Intentional kind of pun?

Is Umberto Eco also in the same genre as Harris - historical fiction? Or have I totally misunderstood my cursory glance at Wiki? I got Baudelairo off of BookMooch.

Denerick · 17-02-2010 11:40pm

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Intentional kind of pun?

Is Umberto Eco also in the same genre as Harris - historical fiction? Or have I totally misunderstood my cursory glance at Wiki? I got Baudelairo off of BookMooch.

Baudalino (Sorry!) was really very enjoyable, but maybe not everybody's cup of tea. I'd recommend you read In the Name of the Rose too though.

Baudalino verges off into fantasy around half way through the book. Eco recreates the imagination and mythology of the medieval world. In that sense, it is historical fiction. But in an altogether more grand scale, he takes on human prejudices and a host of other themes I half understand. I'll probably have to re-read him to fully 'get' him, but he is really really thought provoking.

Eliot Rosewater · 17-02-2010 11:44pm

Apologies about the typo, that was the nearest thing Firefox threw at me!

I hear Name of the Rose mentioned a lot, but it wasnt on BookMooch. It will be interesting to read something different for a change.

Lollymcd · 18-02-2010 12:35am

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

Plowman · 18-02-2010 12:48am

This post has been deleted.

sexdwarf · 26-02-2010 3:51pm

On the road - Jack Kerouac: Dull dull dull, not to mention pretentious, poorly written, could tell it was thrown together in three weeks. All the pretentious nonsense surrounding 'the scroll' irritates me too!!

The Gun Seller - Hugh Laurie: Tried to read this on last year's summer holiday and left it on the train after strugging to care what happened to the boring main character all the way through. Avoid like the plague!

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry: Don't get the hype, another snoozefest

MUTINEER · 27-02-2010 1:10am

The Alchemist by paulo coelho, highly rated fiction about following your dreams and not giving up blah blah blah.Should have known better when there's a quote from madonna on how much the book means to her on the cover.

Millicent · 06-03-2010 12:21am

Dunno if it has been mentioned and this may be considered sacrilege by some but Crash by J.G. Ballard. My God, I've started it about five times now and I can't get more than five chapters in.

It's not the subject matter because I know I'm a slight depraved individual but the fact that someone could make kink boring!

allprops · 16-03-2010 3:47pm

Brooklyn by Colm Tobin

BarbaraAless · 19-03-2010 11:55pm

'The House of Spirits' because it has been rated as highbrow fiction and it's just another cheesie best-seller, poorly written.

'Far from the Madding Crowd' or Jane Austin's novels...oh...how boring!

'Everything is Illuminated' (Jonathan Safran Foer) I tried my best, but could not go on reading...zzz

patff · 28-03-2010 10:57pm

The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

I think this may have been his final novel before he died. Clearly, he'd already gone crazy. Now that I think of it, Why are we in Vietnam, also by Mailer is probably worse.

Great writer though!!

DazMarz · 30-03-2010 4:14am

I found the Hannibal Lecter books by Thomas Harris (Red Dragon, The Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal) all to be very tough going to try and read. The films (espcially Lambs obviously) were all good enough thrills (obviously Hannibal was a bit of a letdown) but the books were not of any great quality for me. Did not really like them and found them hard to read.

Black Swan · 30-03-2010 4:24am

BossArky wrote: »

How about a thread which highlights books to be avoided at all costs? - i.e. waste of reading time, no educational value, biased, waste of ink, paper and some poor writers nerves.

Sarah Palin's Going Rogue

Censorsh!t · 03-04-2010 4:21pm

Ok, well it was ok, but really only very mediocre - Nocturnes by John Connolly. I liked one of the stories in it, but the rest was so very meh.

If you are easily disgusted, don't read American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. If you like disturbing stuff, it's good! I read it when I was 12...bit of a shock to the system, but i liked it.:p

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...it really should have been aimed at younger children. Thought it was very over-rated

blue_steel · 05-04-2010 7:02pm

"The interpretation of murder"
Puerile psycho babble. THE worse book I have ever read.

"The historian"
Unbelievably dull and derivative. The second worst book I have ever read.

femur61 · 06-04-2010 8:49am

blue_steel wrote: »

"The interpretation of murder"
Puerile psycho babble. THE worse book I have ever read.

"The historian"
Unbelievably dull and derivative. The second worst book I have ever read.

Ditto (and I am avid reader). Actually thought I was alone because of all the rave reviews for both these books.

TMH · 06-04-2010 9:04pm

I'm gonna say Terrorist by John Updike.
Someone once called Updike "a penis with a thesaurus". Accurate description. Full of unnecessarily mealy sentences.

Zooey · 25-04-2010 1:03pm

Dues to whoever that was who dissed On the Road. Its genius is totally illusional and the narrator irksome. I read this while travelling, too *cringe*. My contribution to the list is Follett's the Pillars of the Earth, impressive only by its sheer bulk (1000+ pages of utter tripe). That said, I finished it...

TMH · 25-04-2010 1:22pm

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Sarah Palin's Going Rogue

You didn't actually read that tripe did you? I pity you if the answer is yes.
:pac:

blue_steel · 25-04-2010 4:45pm

Zooey wrote: »

Dues to whoever that was who dissed On the Road. Its genius is totally illusional and the narrator irksome. I read this while travelling, too *cringe*. My contribution to the list is Follett's the Pillars of the Earth, impressive only by its sheer bulk (1000+ pages of utter tripe). That said, I finished it...

On the Road is very much of its time. Not fair to judge it by 2010 terms.
It was written in a more innocent and idealistic age (and ok, a more sexist one as well!)
For the revolutionary departure in style and subject it represented in the 50s it deserves it's place in any list of the greatest books of all time.

WesternNight · 05-05-2010 4:34pm

I just finished The Spanish Game by Charles Cumming.

It was awful. Self-indulgent, not very well thought out, inconsistent tripe.

dazza_480 · 05-05-2010 9:43pm

generation kill a badly written with disgusting content and that book that obama wrote memories of my father such a boring book

FoxT · 09-05-2010 12:46am

+1 on that, unreadable
Also, 'Good as Gold' , same author. After Catch 22 I did my best with both of these but could not finish either.

James Joyce is unreadable also, unless you have had the (dubious) benefit of a 'classical education'

And finally...anything by Orhan Pamuk. I bought a couple of his books in a sale at waterstones after reading a two of Paul Theroux's wonderful train travel memoirs - he mentioned Pamuk in one of them - anyway, I tried hard but couldnt finish. I dont think Pamuk is a bad writer, I think the problem is that, as a Turk, his cultural background makes his work inaccessible to me, a philistine engineer by trade..

PS if anybody wants 'snow' or 'my name is red' - PM me & I'll post them to you if you'll cover the stamps. Better than recycling...

-FoxT

FoxT · 09-05-2010 12:54am

I thought that it was pretty good. Massively, massively overhyped though. Noteworthy that all of the hype ( that I have seen, at least) has been written by hack writers who would have been incapable themselves of producing anything comparable. Unfortunately, as a result of this, anybody who reads it today is bound for disappointment.

-FoxT

mcgovern · 11-05-2010 2:46pm

dazza_480 wrote: »

generation kill a badly written with disgusting content and that book that obama wrote memories of my father such a boring book

Generation Kill was very enjoyable, and it certainly doesn't have disgusting content, unless you are some sort of vehement anti-war pacifist, who can't bear to read a book which is actually quite anti-war....

questioner · 11-05-2010 2:51pm

mcgovern wrote: »

Generation Kill was very enjoyable, and it certainly doesn't have disgusting content, unless you are some sort of vehement anti-war pacifist, who can't bear to read a book which is actually quite anti-war....

havent read the book, plan to though. very taken with the series.

gagiteebo · 11-05-2010 7:32pm

Perfume by Patrick Suesskind - I read it after a friend said it changed her life but it was the biggest load of crap I've ever read, I actually felt physically ill after reading it :mad:

First prize goes to The Life of Pi :rolleyes: People were raving about it for ages before I got round to reading it and oh how I wish I hadn't bothered, that's a whole chunk of my life I'm never getting back. I was actually angry after reading it because it was so bad. It just flatlined the whole way through.

kerash · 12-05-2010 6:33pm

sexdwarf wrote: »

On the road - Jack Kerouac: Dull dull dull, not to mention pretentious, poorly written, could tell it was thrown together in three weeks. All the pretentious nonsense surrounding 'the scroll' irritates me too!!

Sorry I have to post this

By the River Piedra I sat Down and Wept - Paulo Coelho - Such a waste of precious reading time I very nearly did sit down and weep.:rolleyes:

Coriolanus · 17-05-2010 9:55am

questioner wrote: »

havent read the book, plan to though. very taken with the series.

It's ten times better than the series, and I quite liked the series!

femur61 · 17-05-2010 1:21pm

I second "Life of Pi" load of cr*p

thebullkf · 18-05-2010 3:31pm

anything by james patterson....

the man should be up on crimes against nature for the amount of paper his books waste.

every second/third page is a 'half-page'....[i.e. half the page is blank]

every chapter is a 'half-page'

and his writing stinks.

REPSOC1916 · 24-05-2010 11:26am

TMH wrote: »

You didn't actually read that tripe did you? I pity you if the answer is yes.
:pac:

I read it on the toilet.

Reading **** while taking a ****.

Curl52 · 24-05-2010 11:51am

No Ordinary Love by Anita Notaro- terrible in so many ways, really wanted to stop reading but I had hope that it would get better but no.........

storm2811 · 24-05-2010 12:04pm

thebullkf wrote: »

anything by james patterson....

the man should be up on crimes against nature for the amount of paper his books waste.

every second/third page is a 'half-page'....[i.e. half the page is blank]

every chapter is a 'half-page'

and his writing stinks.

+1
Tried to give him a chance after mam kept nagging me to read something by him,read The Lake House and The Midnight Club,nothing special about them imo.
James Herbert too,and Dean Koontz,both very predictable.

bp1989 · 26-05-2010 7:15pm

Raemie wrote: »

Probably been mentioned but i'm trying to read Twilight and i'm really stuggling. It's been flung across the room several times in frustration. I dont understand why so many people love it.

A warning to everyone: DON'T be dragged in by all the hype (okay, most of it comes from teenage girls, but still), I read it and was turned off reading another of her books ever again. The plot was overly drawn out and bored me to tears.

OxfordComma · 28-05-2010 3:55pm

bp1989 wrote: »

A warning to everyone: DON'T be dragged in by all the hype (okay, most of it comes from teenage girls, but still), I read it and was turned off reading another of her books ever again. The plot was overly drawn out and bored me to tears.

Agreed. I read Twilight a while back and thought it was awful. Such a bland, anaemic storyline.

HavingCrack · 28-05-2010 5:27pm

The Kindly Ones by Jonathon Littell. Possibly the most unreadable book I have ever read. Avoid, avoid, avoid!

Cherry.Blossom · 28-05-2010 11:26pm

Anne Rice - The vampire Armand. Self indulgent tripe.

Livvie · 17-06-2010 6:52pm

Zooey wrote: »

Dues to whoever that was who dissed On the Road. Its genius is totally illusional and the narrator irksome. I read this while travelling, too *cringe*. My contribution to the list is Follett's the Pillars of the Earth, impressive only by its sheer bulk (1000+ pages of utter tripe). That said, I finished it...

Pillars of the Earth is one of my favourite books ever - I'd never have thought it would appear on a list of books to avoid.

But each to his own.

I read a couple of books by Colin Forbes and thought they were just awful - the stories were OK, it was just the writing that was bad imo. Very amateurish.

femur61 · 17-06-2010 7:23pm

I read "Pillars of the Earth" Fab book, surprised to see it on the list. "The Historian" is one I couldn't get to grips with.

rubabbel · 19-06-2010 10:10pm

Shaybo wrote: »

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse - an absolute disgrace that this ever saw the light of day and a real indictment of the media mafia in the UK that Mosse's (who's a literary biwig at the Sunday Times and in the UK in general) book has been so lavishly praised. Bady written, badly plotted and badly edited.

It sold shedloads, so I guess that's reason enough for her publisher. Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, Let The Great World Spin (the Twin Towers in books is fast becoming like writing about the holocaust in order to gain some serious literary credentials without doing much).

Robbyn · 21-06-2010 9:52am

The lost symbol - Dan Brown. I know he has been mentioned already but that book was shockingly bad.

Although I really liked The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

Elliemental · 30-06-2010 9:26pm

I am going to get torn apart for admitting this, but Charles Dickens. I couldn't get into a single one of his books. I have tried and tried, but its' not happening for me and Dickens.

sentient_6 · 06-07-2010 11:56pm

I'm not sure have they mentioned cos i don't want to read through 30 pages but here's two i got recently that are going in the fire:

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson. The university physics student character at the start just pissed me off so much i gave up.

The Book With No Name - Anonymous, who by the looks of it is a 15 year old shoot em up/grand theft auto geek. Utterly stupid story.

MonkeySocks24 · 12-07-2010 3:12am

How did Ceila Ahern get published??seriously!

Chairman Meow · 13-07-2010 4:00pm

Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh. Complete tripe that i couldnt even be bothered finishing. Went out of its way to be as shocking and 'totally focked up' as humanly possible. Think i was only a few pages in and some guy was ****ing corpses in a morgue...that was the end of that.

epgc3fyqirnbsx · 14-07-2010 2:44am

Chairman Meow wrote: »

Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh. Complete tripe that i couldnt even be bothered finishing. Went out of its way to be as shocking and 'totally focked up' as humanly possible. Think i was only a few pages in and some guy was ****ing corpses in a morgue...that was the end of that.

Loved it at 19 after reading Trainspotting. Tried to re-read ot recently, put it down and then realised that I didn't really want it on my shelf for fear of someone else picking it up...

Warm Panda Cola · 19-07-2010 4:11pm

The Road-Cormac McCarthy. Maybe this had been hyped up beyond all known reason for me before I read this, but I honestly have never read a more depressing, self-indulgent book. The style of writing made it very hard to get involved with the characters, and the the ending..?? I don't know!! I personally thought it was a complete waste of time.

Also up there is Twilight-absolutely horrendous and anything by Marian Keyes-chewing gum for the eyes.

Oh the da Vinchi code, also another waste of time!

Busi_Girl08 · 19-07-2010 4:55pm

MonkeySocks24 wrote: »

How did Ceila Ahern get published??seriously!

Ahem...

Born Cecelia Ahern on September 30, 1981 in Dublin, Ireland, she is the daughter of the former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

:P

Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

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