Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

blue_steel · 25-04-2010 03:45PM

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 03:34PM

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 08:43PM

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

FoxT · 08-05-2010 11:46PM

+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 · 08-05-2010 11:54PM

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 01:46PM

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 01:51PM

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 06:32PM

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 05:33PM

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 08:55AM

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 12:21PM

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

thebullkf · 18-05-2010 02:31PM

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 10:26AM

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 10:51AM

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 11:04AM

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 06:15PM

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 02:55PM

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 04:27PM

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

Cherry.Blossom · 28-05-2010 10:26PM

Anne Rice - The vampire Armand. Self indulgent tripe.

Livvie · 17-06-2010 05:52PM

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 06:23PM

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 09:10PM

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 08:52AM

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 08:26PM

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 10:56PM

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 02:12AM

How did Ceila Ahern get published??seriously!

Chairman Meow · 13-07-2010 03:00PM

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 01:44AM

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 03:11PM

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 03:55PM

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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