Oh, no one’s around today anyhow; let’s those of us who remain draw up our chairs and bank the fire against the growing darkness and have ourselves a good chat before night comes and all things end.
We talk a great deal about the books we are reading here, and also the books we love to reread, and the books we aspire to someday read when we are the right kind of person, but I think we should set aside today to the books we hate so much it makes us glad to exist, that we can play host to so pure and so fervent a hatred it feels like a blessing.
I don’t just mean books we object to or find philosophically disagreeable; I personally find John Updike very silly but he doesn’t bother me, the lost little lamb. There are certain genres and styles that I know as a rule I’m unlikely to care for, and in general I don’t go out of my way to read something I know I won’t like. But every once in a while, finding something you hate and finishing it anyhow for the sole purpose of hating it more thoroughly is like coming across a pearl of great price.
A book doesn’t have to be bad or objectionable or even poorly written in order for you to hate it. You just have to hate it. Wanting to hate is enough.
As a girl, the book I hated more than anything in the world was Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson, with “the entire back catalog of Avi” running a close second. I no longer remember what I hated about Jacob Have I Loved or why; the substance of the-thing-itself has melted away and only the outline of the thing remains, like a footprint in the snow.
As a young woman, the book I hated more than anything in the world was The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I wanted to love it. I was prepared to love it. I opened the book expecting to love it (the cover is of a woman in a gown carrying a sword riding a majestic white horse! I wished to love it), and was horrified by my own disgust when I began to read it. It is ten million pages of nothing happening over and over again. Powerful witches sit around casting no spells while the world falls apart around their ears. A great many characters almost have sex, and then don’t. Eventually someone has sex in a muddy field, then for about four hundred pages Queen Guinevere (Gwynhywywhfarre in the book, I believe) is afraid to go outside. Then she does not go outside. Then Christianity ruins everything, and Morgaine continues to do absolutely nothing with all the magic she’s full of. I read the entire thing in a weekend, such was the force and urgency of my hatred for it.
Sometimes, when I have the time, I like to take a minute or two to hate Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook. I cannot quite bring myself to hate The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, but I think another year or two will do the trick in shoving me out of profound annoyance and into light hatred. I casually hate, in equal amounts, Ender’s Game, The Lovely Bones, Prep, and everything written by Stieg Larsson.
I hate Wide Sargasso Sea and I hate Jean Rhys; I am glad that I am alive and she is dead. She was allergic to fun and she sucked eggs.
Having reached woman’s estate, I choose to hate Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water more than all the others. There were times, reading it, that I had to shut the pages and close my eyes in order to focus every cell in the weak and mortal vessel I call my body on hating it.
Please share with me the books you hate. Hold nothing back.
Tags: books, hatred, the mists of avalon
Dave Eggers’ YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY. barf.
I scrolled down to the comments with the sole purpose of naming Dave Eggers’ The Circle as the book I hate the most. It’s like one day he thought to himself “Hey, what if Google took over the world?” and then farted out 500 pages about it.
I don’t know anything about You Shall Know Our Velocity but after reading The Circle I am inclined to react with only grimacing and vomiting noises.
Is that the one where the synopsis is basically “shallow woman needs disaffected man to show her how fucked up the world is”? Because I read that and was like, nope, Fringehead out.
Pretty much, yes. Also very “YOU MILLENIALS WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA! CAN’T YOU SEE HOW THIS WILL LEAD TO THE END OF THE WORLD! GET OFF MY YARD ETC ETC”.
uuuuuuuuuugh why.
THE CIRCLE MADE ME SO ANGRY. It’s basically Ayn Rand for technophobes. ‘Everything bad you ever thought about technology is true and you are sooo much smarter and wiser and less shallow than all the people who care about social media and hashtags and digital sharing god what pitiful sheeps let us despise them all together’
uuuuuggggghhhhh
The circle was also completely stolen from Kate Losse’s book Boy Kings – http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Kings-Journey-Netwo…
Worst worst worst worst book. Almost made me hate every other thing that dude does.
Also, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius a.k.a ‘Because I’m White and Middle Class, Caring For a Younger Sibling While Coping With Grief Makes Me a Martyr.’ What an incredibly self-indulgent, pretentious waste of ink.
Oh god i hate that book. “No one has ever suffered more than me, a white rich white dude,” the book.
agree
I hated, hated, hated the only China Mielllvillelerkjlfkjlagkl (or however he spells his dumb name) that I ever read. I can’t remember its title now, but it had a giant squid in it.
By a third of the way in I hated it so much I finished it out of spite. His writing reminded me of a spoiled little boy showing off how smart he was, like as he wrote it he was shouting ‘Look! Look, mummy, look! Look how clever I am! Mummy! Mummy! Look at all the long words I can use! Look! They are completely unnecessary and unnatural within the prose, but I used them anyway! Look! Mummy, look!’
By the end of the book, I hated it, I hated him, I hated all my friends who like his work, and I hated myself.
OH GOD THAT FEELS GOOD. I HATE YOUR BOOKS, I HATE THEM.
I HATED THAT BOOK TOO! I’m pretty sure I actually just hate modern urban fantasy by men? I read another one by some other guy which was very similar, with a worthless male protagonist and the end of the world and eldritch horrors and some characters who were direct ripoffs of Croup & Vandemar from Neverwhere, and the big climax was that the eldritch space horrors wanted to use Earth to archive their boring office data because HA HA HA CLEVER SOCIAL SATIRE, OR SOMETHING. And I remember the author’s bio was like “Whiteguy McSelfobsessed studied at Oxford and reviews books for Some Publication” and it made me so mad. The man was clearly in his 30s. If you are in your 30s and the only interesting thing you can say about yourself is that you ONCE COMPLETED AN UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE A DECADE AGO, you have failed. Are you trying to dazzle me with your credentials? They cannot distract from how abysmal your book is.
I do like some Man Writes Urban Fantasy, like Ben Aaronovitch, but he is FUNNY and does good social commentary. He is not BORING AND OVERWRITTEN AND IN LOVE WITH THE SOUND OF HIS OWN PROSE god.
But for genuinely good, upsetting, brilliant urban fantasy, it’s the women every time. Kate Griffin, with her Matthew Swift novels and her Magicals Anonymous series. Oh, so good.
Men need to have their writing egos crushed a little more, and then maybe they’ll write better.
Oh! Oh! I’m just reading Rivers of London now! It’s The Bill with wizards, properly English, I’m loving it…
But wait, this is not the time for love
Also, I hated Her fearful symmetry or whatever it was by whatserface who did Time Travellers Wife. People who don’t read spec fic shouldn’t write it, because you end up squatting out a load of old tropes that the silly, unliterary genre writers gave up 30 years ago.
Seriously. The plot hinged on TWIN CONFUSION.
My friend loathes Time Traveller’s Wife with an absolute deadly loathing. I love nothing more than listening to her complain about what a heinous book it is.
I read it a few years ago and was just confused as to why so many people loved it. It was so creepy and the main female character was a doormat.
But I didn’t loathe it with the intensity I loathed Her Fearful Symmetry/whatever it’s called.
I have a soft spot for TTTW, but HFS is appallingly awful. I’d blanked it out, it’s so bad. It feels like an immature author’s first attempt, littered with that naive cynicism that often precedes a broader compassion and empathy for human foibles. I kept thinking she must have written it years before, then pulled it out of a desk drawer in the wake of TTTW’s success.
It’s also laced through with an obsession with a very particular kind of female allure, one I was susceptible to when I was a teenager, so perhaps that cut closer and made me even less patient than I would have been otherwise.
Your friend and I are the same. There are only a couple of books in the world I will admit to absolutely passionately hating, and Time Traveller’s Wife is one of them. (Gone Girl is the other.)
I have a blanket commitment to never reading or watching any creative work entitled “The [exciting-sounding male occupation]’s [female relative].” I am, in fact, very appreciative of them bothering to give it a title that tells me right up front to walk away.
That book is the type of book that I enjoy while reading it because I get swept up in it, but then when I finish it and take some time to think about it, I realize that it didn’t make any damn sense.
Like, how did the twin who was the mother of the younger set of twins think “My husband will not be able to tell the difference between the body of a woman who has just been pregnant and given birth to twins and the body of a woman who has not done those things.” How did the husband not tell her for like 20 years that he knew she had switched places with her twin. How did that girl get a prescription for OCD medication just by plucking out her eyebrows and telling the doctor she had OCD.
I did like the twist at the end where the dead aunt’s ghost possessed the body of the twin who killed herself (in the hopes that she would come back to life but be able to get away from her overbearing sister who would think she was still dead???? how does that work).
None of it made sense in any way at all. At all! It was like someone published the first draft, before any research and plot-hole stitching was done.
I think I love you. I hated Perdido Street Station and didn’t understand all the fuss. After I finished Time Traveler’s Wife, I wanted the author to give me back those hours I wasted on her godforsaken book.
Ugh, Perdido. Nasty, brutish, and long.
I abandoned Perdido Street Station about 1/4 of the way in. His writing feels too masturbatory and I couldn’t get into it at all.
Absolutely right. I think that’s why I’m not a Potter fan.
Thank you, yes. I borrowed the audiobook for a lengthy road trip and it has taught me to always have a back up book just in case.
I DIDN’T LIKE THAT SQUID BOOK EITHER. it was so boring!
no book with an undead giant squid should be dull, but oh, he managed
It should have been so good! It had LOC subject entries for “giant squid; museum theft; cults; end of the world.” HOW DID YOU MESS THAT UP, CHINA, HOW?
(I’m very meh on Embassytown, but I really liked The City and the City *runs out of the room*.)
Me too. The squid book was tedious, and his other works are the sort of thing I need to be in exactly the right frame of mind to read (and it’s a frame of mind that doesn’t come along all that frequently).
But I love love love The City and the City; it’s not like any book I’ve ever read before, and the concept is just brilliant (and the story is good enough to not kill it, which doesn’t always happen with speculative fiction).
ok WHEW I really liked The City and the City also, but haven’t read anything else by him, and I was wondering if I had just happened to be completely out of it and not noticed while I was reading it or something.
oh you guys, this penny arcade cartoon about Mieville will satisfy http://www.penny-arcade.com.au/comic/2012/05/14
I’ve tried reading The City and The City approximately 4 times before admitting to myself how much I hate his pretentious airy fairy writing style and giving up
it’s very, very rare that I don’t finish a book but I could not get through his Embassy Town! I saw all these people on the T reading it so I assumed it must be good but I just couldn’t do it. I thought maybe I was just missing something but it’s reassuring to hear other’s were similarly unimpressed.
It was soooo boring. I got through it, but that shit should’ve been a short story, not a whole novel.
Oh dear. I–uhm–he’s one of my favorites. Are we still friends? I HAVE MORE PICTURES OF MY CATS
We are still friends, despite your appalling lack of judgement in this
WHEW
Now get to the open thread and post cat pictures in teh cat thread.
Would it help to know from someone who has met him that he’s just as insufferable in person? He’s super pleased with himself and spends as much time surrounded by young, attractive, fawning lady-fans as possible. We were at the same con a few years ago and at every meal I would see him with a different table full of young women hanging on his every word. Bleh.
He’s widely believed to be That Abusive Guy from that essay a year or so ago, right? CERTAINLY IT SEEMS TO FIT.
I’m SUPER late to this thread because of the holiday weekend but am morbidly curious about this essay and it seems too vague to google–link??
The original post seems to be behind an invite wall now 🙁 It’s been a long time since I’ve read it, but basically it was about how a certain C, a highly regarded SFF author, had been emotionally manipulative and abusive toward her, how she had come to realize this was a pattern with him, and how this reflected the larger misogyny of the whole scene/establishment. That he could essentially prey on up and coming female writers, their need and nervousness and awe of him, and then toss them aside, and carry on with no consequences while these women were emotionally run over. Most people seemed to figure it for Mieville.
i felt exactly the same way. I read that book and never finished it because he was SO INDULGENTLY SELF IMPORTANT AND IMPRESSED WITH HIMSELF.
OH GOOD MY TIME HAS COME. So many, many books I hate!
I hated Atonement with a red-hot fiery passion. Hated it so bad. I got it as a gift and threw it IN THE GARBAGE.
I read, inexplicably, One Thousand White Women and it wasn’t even good enough to hate. It was just trash. I had to return it to the library but what I REALLY wanted to do was cross out every single line with a black marker so no one else would ever have to read it even accidentally.
I will happily cosign Prep and The Lovely Bones and also Lucky by the same author as being horrible. All of them.
I also hated Gone Girl. Yes, yes, I understand the concept of “everyone in this book is horrible and trying to trick each other,” thank you, but I still didn’t like it! Because it sucked!
Oh dear, I have a lot of negative opinions about books, I see.
I have very strong opinions about books, and alas, my main place to talk about books is a writers forum and (understandable) has a Respect Your Fellow Writer rule, which means all I can say is the insipid ‘not really my thing’ rather than unleashing my true, unreasoning, blind hate.
ATONEMENT WAS MY #1 HATE BOOK FOR YEARS. When I finished it spitefully, DARING it to get better (spoiler, it got more terrible) I THREW IT ACROSS THE ROOM. The sound of the crash against the wall woke up the significant other. It was difficult to explain exactly the triggering act. And yet #noregrets #justified
Oh, I just lied in my last comment replying to you, above, sort of. I hate the premise of Atonement so much that I won’t even go near it. And I, too, perfectly well understand Gone Girl and still find it utterly repellent. I actually wish I could have the hours I spent finishing it back.
Every time I say I hated Gone Girl someone goes “But the point is the characters are supposed to be loathsome!” OKAY THANKS I GET IT, I understand the concept, did not need you to point it out, thank you! But when the characters are loathsome AND there is no point to the damn book AND the writing is awful, then it’s not about the horrific characters and it’s just MY HEAD IS EXPLODING OH MY GOD BRAINS EVERYWHERE.
YESSSSSSSSSS. Also, Amy is really just an embodiment of every single bad thing the MRAs say about us. Every goddamn dishonest trope they’ve got. If you can’t do loathsome and believable in the same character, you shouldn’t even try.
One friend tried to tell me I just hadn’t read enough books of its genre. What fucking genre?! It does not bother to honor any genre.
“psychological douchecanoe horror”
They’re right! I have never read anything else in that genre. Thank god.
YES TO THIS TIMES A MILLION.
I just finished “Gone Girl” a few days ago and was like, “Great, the only character with “feminist” beliefs in this book is an insane murderess who fakes a pregnancy to get her husband to stay with her.”
And runs up his credit cards and frames him for shit he didn’t do and on and on. She’s everything those guys are afraid of in their limited imaginations.
And she falsely accuses some guy of rape! How do you know? Because he is just a computer geek, not a macho alpha male at all!! ::rolls eyes::
EDIT: How I felt reading Gone Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92IkddsjtAA
Don’t forget faking being raped! That was the real shit cherry on that turd of a book.
Haha – I haven’t read Gone Girl but I have JUST THIS MORNING read that very conversation on another thread about books you hate.
I also hate Atonement, and also The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which I somehow associate with it.
Oh, Atonement. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t particularly like it, it was whatever to mild dislike.
However, when he wrote the same stupid book again and called it something about Sweet, I really hated that. And The Lovely Bones, yes, that is a good book to hate.
Yes yes yes to the Atonement haters. Who even was that main character? And the septicemia sequence, oh my god.
I loved Atonement. The whole opening sequence was all “wow, dude’s writing Briony like he’s writing about me as a child, for better or worse.” And then Briony does [SPOILER] and it becomes a cautionary tale.
Also I think Ian McEwan writes sex very well, many of his other books are just pure saucy smut. Sweet Tooth, for example, I described as “sex with a very loose plot about spies.”
Everything ever by Ian McEwan. Although I remember liking “Amsterdam” while I was in high school.
One Thousand White Women is so, so, so bad. I’d call it racist, but it is racism when every single ethnic group is portrayed negatively, or just stereotyping and piss poor writing?
I THINK IT’S BOTH. I think it is everything. Everything bad, that is. How is it possible to be both startingly racist against EVERY SINGLE ETHNICITY, wildly presentist (and I mean just wildly bad), and ALSO just shitty, shitty writing? And plotless? There is not ONE SINGLE redeeming factor in this entire book. Not a single one.
Presentist, YES. I stayed up really late to finish this one because I kept thinking something would redeem it. Nope, nope, nope, nope.
I had really high hopes for it, because I loved the premise, and I did find myself enjoying the process of reading it because something was always going on. But man, those characters, what the heck.
If you go to Goodreads or Amazon and click to read all the one-star reviews, they’re HILARIOUS. Goodreads especially. I’m rereading it right now and the discussions of all the millions of ways in which this book is atrocious and awful is amazing.
Oh my god, I share your opinion on all of these (except Prep and Lucky, which I haven’t read). One Thousand White Women is so bad. So bad. And Atonement, Gone Girl, and The Lovely Bones are all like “look how clever and twisty I am! Be astounded!”
I hate Gone Girl with a firey passion; this is intensified by the fact that a) everyone I know loves it and b) I loved it until I hated it. The first half was wonderful, and then it reveals itself to be a meanspirited trick, a trap to make the reader feel the fool, a prank at the expense of the person who just dedicated hours to this gross little world. It blames women for rape and abuse with the fervour and enthusiasm of an MRA, and it does it with a self satisfied smirk that makes me want to scream.
THANK YOU! I thought I was the only person in the world who hated Atonement…hated it so much I skimmed it in 3 hours. 3 hours of my life wasted that I will NEVER get back.
UGH YES I HATE HATE HATE IAN MCEWAN. I tried to read The Cement Garden when I was about 14 and a quarter of the way through I was so repulsed by it that my main reaction was to put as much distance between myself and the physical book as I could. I think I hid it somewhere in the school library. I watched the film of Atonement just so I could be annoyed by it (though I do covet Keira Knightley’s famous green dress). Whenever I see Ian McEwan’s name a part of me SEETHES.
YES! Atonement was terrible. My Goodreads review read something like this: “Boring drivel. Extra long for maximum boredom.” It was painful to read.
In grade 12 french class we had to read Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). I only understood about a third of it, and thus, hated it. I especially hated the whimsical illustrations.
This is fun! There’s something very satisfying about giving in to hating something after valiantly persevering in trying to like it because you have led yourself to believe that you should.
I also hated Le Petit Prince, in both languages.Yes yes whimsical, blah blah, meditation on the nature of love, I DO NOT CARE UGH I DON’T CARE.
Also The Catcher in the Rye, if we’re discussing High School Books I Loathed.
I have completely blocked Catcher in the Rye from my brain, I hated it so much. I know I read it but I remember only the fact that I hated it.
GOD I HATE CATCHER IN THE RYE SO MUCH. I read it once when I was a teenager and was convinced I must have read it wrong (??) because people seem to love it so much but then I read it again a few years ago and I still hated it so it turns out I was correct the first time.
I HAAAAAAAAAATE CATCHER IN THE RYE.
I was told, upon expressing that opinion, that “you must not get it.”
I GET IT. I HATE THAT I GET IT, AND I HATE YOU, AND I HATE IT, AND I HATE EVERYTHING.
Oh dear god, yes! I’m so bloody fed up with people (usually women, to be fair to our fair sex;)) trying to pass The Little Prince up as some profound, deep, PROFOUND wisdom. Puh-lease. Pretentiousness incarnate.
Ditto on The Catcher in the Rye. Only remotely palatable when you’re a teen (and not a modern teen either).
For me (other than the “books” I translate for a living (think YA and urban fantasy) but I get paid for this, so it helps with the irreversible damage being done to my mental health on a daily – and nightly – basis;)) it was Little Women. Luckily, I’ve suppressed most of it, so don’t remember much, other than I hate, hate, HATED it and the self-righteous, holier-than-thou Puritan bilge it was peddling. God, I’ve wanted to say this since forever!
THE OUTSIDERS. Why on earth that book is so popular, I will never know.
So many turgid descriptions of X’s icy blue eyes or Y’s panther-like physique. Not at all surprised that the author graduated to slash fic.
Oh god, The Outsiders. I was the only person in class who didn’t like that book and I thought something was wrong with me for ages
Ordinarily I try to keep books in as pristine condition as possible, because you know, they are precious objects.
I hated Catcher in the Rye so much that on completion I threw my paperback at the wall repeatedly until the spine broke.
I was so disappointed by Catcher in the Rye, and then my dislike for it quadrupled when the dumbest bros in my high school English class swooned over it. “Holden is like….me, you know?”
PUNCH.
I hated Catcher in the Rye so much from the first five pages I never finished it (and I was the type of student who read everything she was supposed to), but I just couldn’t with that book. I wanted to punch Holden Caulfield so much, and will forever be upset that his fictional existence prevented me from doing that.
Catcher in the Rye — gosh, we share book hatred a lot — was the ONLY book assigned in high school that I didn’t finish. Still don’t know how it ends because I refuse to find out.
I hate The Little Prince too! UGH THE WHIMSY!
I hate The Little Prince in the same way that I hate The Alchemist. YES. I GET IT. YOU ARE MAKING A POINT WITH THIS. STOP HAMMERING ME OVER THE HEAD WITH IT.
I hate The Alchemist with a passion.
I feel a huge relief that other people hate Le Petit Prince as much as I did and that I don’t just have a heart of STONE.
Catcher in the Rye is one my friends in general hate, but while I obviously don’t Like it, I kind of feel sorry for Salinger. I feel like he didn’t mean it to go this far.
For so long I thought I was the ONLY ONE who hated Catcher in the Rye. MY PEOPLE. I just HATE Holden Caulfield so so much.
YEEEES.
SHUT! UP! HOLDEN! CAUFIELD! SHUUT! UUUP! With the wallowing in white-boy angst and convincing himself that everyone who’s actually functional is “phony” and holy shit I dated like one and a half of those guys and HAAAAAAAAAATE JUMP IN THE GODDAMN DUCK POND AND DROWN PLEASE YOU PRETENTIOUS PRE-EMO LITTLE FUCK.
…also I do not like most of Charles Dickens.
Oh how I hate CITR! So full of whiny privilege masquerading as, as, as what? Thought? Insight? Rebellion? I cannot even.
HIGH SCHOOL BOOKS ARE THE WORST. We had to read James Michener’s The Source (too lazy to italicize and also fuck that guy) and I still haven’t recovered.
Delurking just to reply to this comment. I hate that book, and I was a French major so I was expected to love it.
It’s not nearly as deep as it pretends to be? I feel like it stole its good lines from Candide. And I always sensed this sneaky sexism somewhere in its protagonist. Boo hoo, I must settle for an ordinary rose, and roses are vain and selfish or whatever (women amirite???)
It’s therapeutic to hear other people also hate that book.
I HATE THE LITTLE PRINCE. Other books I had to read for school that everyone loves that I hate: The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle In Time. (I don’t actively hate the Phantom Tollbooth, really; it’s just that I’ve had everyone else’s adoration of it shoved in my face MY ENTIRE LIFE AND I’M TIRED OF IT. IT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME. TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.)
I thought The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was one of the worst books I’ve read in recent years.
Oh thank you! Me too and everyone I know loves it.
I liked the book a lot, though it lacked things like “plot” and “character”. (What can I say? I like settings. It was a setting that deserved more, but since I just love setting, I can live without a novel having any actual characteristics of novels.) I’m surprised as many people liked it as did, actually.
Yessss. I lacks them so hard. The settings are great and they go way further than you could ever expect settings to in making the book worthwhile, but not far enough, ultimately, I think.
What was weird was that the circus was beautifully drawn, but the cities it stopped in were Here Be Generic City In Any Time That Preceded Cell Phones.
I actually don’t recommend this book to anyone at all because, well, if you aren’t really obsessed with short pieces about fictional settings, it doesn’t work. Luckily I am!
I agree–I so enjoyed the setting, but I finished it and realized that I still didn’t know anything about the characters, really, the conflict was never explained to satisfaction, and people were just magic-ing things left and right, with no apparent limitations except their own…wherewithal? There were no rules of this magic! Also the two protagonists should have been way more irate at their fathers/teachers for involving them in that contest.
They would need to have had personalities that were at least one full dimension to be angry.
Couldn’t finish it.
Oh god it was just so dull and everyone loves it! Why?! I thought it started out very promisingly, in fact I recommended it to my friends. I then retracted that recommendation, because SO. DULL. One of you must win or else you’ll die? NO1CURR.
ETA There was not enough story in the story.
oh god, same. The only thing in it I enjoyed was the sentence where she says “He walked toward it… like a moth to a flame” and I got to laugh for a full minute at her lack of awareness that MOTHS DON’T WALK
Sometimes they do.
Way back in film school, I had a teacher who would decry ‘style over substance’, which is exactly how this book struck me. Lots of style, ultimately no substance and the utter waste of some very cool world building.
THANK YOU oh my god. I could not finish it, the writing was so appallingly bad. Pages and pages and pages of fucking NOTHING HAPPENING. Tone-wise, it came off as “middle-schooler wordvomits thousands of words of overwrought metaphors, posts it to Tumblr, pats self on back for writing something ~deep~.”
YES. GOD.
I hate-finished it. Then told everyone I knew that it wasn’t very good because the people whose love we were supposed to care about succeeding WERE IN FACT NOT PEOPLE. They weren’t even sketches of people. They were just an excuse to describe ice-flowers.
this is a great game. I deeply, profoundly hate: Oliver Twist, Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, everything by Terry Goodkind, The Alchemist, 100 Years of Solitude, and The Goldfinch. But I hate, almost to the point of obsession and craziness, one book above all others. And that book is Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It is the worst. the most awful. Just thinking about it makes me angry. (viewpoints are the bartedner’s own and do not reflect any general opinions held by the-toast. though the bartender feels this is a fine list and urges anyone who may actually like Tess to strongly reconsider).
p.s. Mallory, I like your list. and I forgot to include Ender’s Game on mine, but I hate it too.
I hated The Alchemist so much and found it to be so completely full of bullshit that now whenever people tell me that its their favorite book I immediately dislike them and cannot get past it. It’s instinctual.
Hello, toastbartender! How lovely to see you here!
ALSO my beloved piano teacher gave me The Alchemist as a gift for my high school graduation and it sat on my shelf for years (may still be at my parents house, I don’t know) because I tried to read it and then could not get past how stupid it was. BUT MY PERSONAL LEGENDS. No, brb horking.
Oh, me too with 100 Years of Solitude! That’s a confession I normally only dare whisper! (I hate it for a few reasons–too long, not interesting enough–but the main one is that I have issues when there are many characters in a book whose names begin with the same letter. My poor little brain finds that confusing and I mix them up. Imagine how it copes when the characters ALL HAVE THE SAME NAMES.)
Yep! I really like 100 Years of Solitude, but I had to make a cheat sheet for myself with the full names, name variants, and descriptions of all the characters because yes, way too many Buendias.
the ending is the worst.
I HATE 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE. The billion characters have three personalities between them, and every thirty pages something picturesquely weird happens, and it affects nothing and means nothing and that’s it. It’s all inconsequential blah, inconsequential blah, murder, inconsequential blah, ooh yellow flowers fell from the sky or whatever, shall we react? Nah. Blah, blah, paedophilia, blah, PORTENTOUS END concerning characters you have no reason to give a damn about!
Glad I’m not the only one who thought “The Goldfinch” was just terrible. It started out promisingly, if implausibly, enough, but it was the druggy non-odyssey in Las Vegas that killed me. So dull.
Fool me once, American book critics, all of whom seemed to have raved about it. One British critic called it “a turkey” (LOL) and I’m sorry I didn’t see that review first.
it’s the worst. she needed an editor. and maybe another 5 years. and not a storyline where the end only makes sense through a set of coincidences, and not 15 year olds who speak like they’re, well, donna tartt, and I COULD GO ON FOREVER. and forget the art historical inaccuracies and the very boring and incorrect idea that art is only good because of aesthetic value, and UGH
I am not-in-the-least-perversely proud of the fact that, in my 3 years of writing an obscure blog about books I read, my post about SERIOUSLY, HOW DUMB IS THE GOLDFINCH? is the one with the most hits. People are constantly googling ‘Goldfinch ending’ and finding me. And my wrath.
Let’s talk about Theo and fucking technology, can we? I mean, I don’t know about you, but when I’m trapped in a fucking hotel room with a fucking fever and no phone or understanding the local language, I tend to, like, turn on CNN International, or drag my ass down to the business center to check my email, or ask them to send me a fucking International Herald Tribune with my breakfast tray. I’d even flip through the local TV channels just to distract myself from the boredom of the fever and the boring-ass fever dreams about my mommy, and you know what? I’D PROBABLY NOTICE A GIANT-ASS NEWS STORY ABOUT THE VERY THING THAT HAS DRIVEN ME FOR YEARS AND PUT ME IN THIS PLACE. AND MAYBE I’D ASK A FUCKING QUESTION OR TWO.
Or alternately, I would stop even pretending to be the protagonist to my own story and just let all the action happen off-screen, like always, because I am a useless tool of a human being. Whichever.
This comment makes me want to read your blog.
Ha! Feel free: http://dakimel.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-secret-fee…
Also hated it, although I was done with it pretty much from the get-go, what with the tragically beautiful (she has to be beautiful!) mom, and the dithering-ass writing style.
TERRY GOODKIND. Agreed.
Yes. Every word Terry Goodkind writes is RAW SEWAGE.
Ditto Piers Anthony.
PIERS ANTHONY
I wasted so many of my high-school reading hours on Piers Anthony and the thought of it makes me tired and depressed.
Thanks. I had forgotten how much of my life I wasted on that man, and his weird pantie obsession.
I hate the Alchemist and EVERYTHING by that Paulo Coehlo so, so much. Here, enjoy several hundred pages of leaden metaphors!
THOMAS HARDYYYYYY *wails and gnashes teeth from force of hatred*
BLESS. Well read ladies who like English fiction are supposed to like Hardy and I will never ever be over my hatred of Tess. EVER.
Hardy: FUCKIN’ WORD.
OH GOD OH GOD YES YOU SAID IT Tess IS THE WOOOOOOOOOOORST
We did some extracts of Tess at school when I was about 13 (comprehensive schools – let’s not read the whole book, just do a few extracts and watch the film!) and I loathed it with a passion. For weeks I couldn’t stop talking about how much I hated it. The only good bit is the blood dripping through the ceiling.
Actually, thinking back, my teacher gave us the extract of the rape scene and just called it sex not rape, ugh.
I’m always embarrassed to admit that I never finished 100 Years of Solitude because I know so many people who love it so I usually just pretend to have read it properly. In reality, however, I just got bored.
Tairy freaking goodkind. Ugh. His awful mix of Objectivism and misogyny. All of it manifest in (I shit you not) a chicken that is evil given form. Also long descriptions of how a little girls face collapses when the “hero” brutally attacks her. Don’t worry, she had it coming, for stupid Tairy reasons.
Also while I am not a fan of TotD, I have the first line of that book memorized thanks to Monty Python. “A Saturday afternoon in Noooo Noooo, November. November’s spelt wrong”
I think you might be my soulmate when it comes to hating literature. Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist…but the clincher is your deep, unrestrained hatred of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I hate it more than I hate any other book I have ever read. It’s been over ten years since I had the misfortune of reading it, but the rage is still with me, smoldering like a pile of angry little coals. I hate it more than Sense and Sensibility, The Grapes of Wrath, and Wuthering Heights combined. I hate it MORE THAN I HATE TWILIGHT.
For me the real measure of hating a book is a willingness to stop reading it halfway through, because usually I soldier on damnit to the end, and then convince myself I at least tolerated it. Pretty much the only two books I’ve stopped reading, slammed shut and thrown across the room as a semi-adult are Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell and The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. George Orwell was amazing at creating imaginary worlds, whether run by big brother or talking pigs, but when he tries to do realist contemporary fiction you just get Keep the Sodding Aspidistra Flying, whose protagonist is dedicated to spending the entire book whining on and on and on about how much he hates, in no particular order: small change, his family, his friends, his girlfriend, books, his landlady, customers at the bookshop where he works, the owner of the bookshop where he works, everyone’s writing except his own, the town and the country, while weirdly stopping sort of hating himself as heartily as the reader does. Then there’s a scene where he starts getting rapey with his girlfriend, who’s called Rosemary, and we’re clearly meant to think his actions are justifiable, and I had to put the book down mid-paragraph because my stomach was churning and I didn’t want to see how this turned out, especially involving someone with my name (this is also why I’ve never read or watched Rosemary’s Baby – I mean, apart from the Roman Polanski connection.)
As for The Well of Loneliness – yeah, when I started figuring out I was queer and excitedly reading every Important Lesbian Novel I could, it was quite a dampener to my youthful enthusiasm to instead dive into a turgidly-written rant about how I’m a bitter, thwarted freak who really wants to be a man, everyone hates me and I’m destined for a life of misery and doomed relationships. By someone who was meant to be on my side. With side dishes of racism – the point where I threw it across the room was the point where Hall literally calls a black character a ‘slowly evolving animal’. At the risk of being tediously self-promoting, here’s my blog post in which I talk about all the problems with The Well of Loneliness at greater length: http://rosemarynotroses.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/…
Also ooh, I’m super-glad to find another feminist who doesn’t care for Wide Sargasso Sea, since I always thought liking it was sort of joylessly compulsory to show you’re sufficiently aware of post-colonial theory and so forth. And yeah, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books only purpose is to contribute to deforestation.
THE WELL OF LONELINESS. I made myself read the entire thing because it is an Important Lesbian Novel but oh god it was so terrible. For all the reasons you mentioned, PLUS all the weird sentimental purple-prose flowery shit about her horse. That goddamn horse, I was happy when it died. Its eyes were as clear as an Irish morning! His canter was as musical as an Irish jig! His mane flowed like the long grasses of an Irish meadow! BARF.
Loved the review. Thanks for the link!
Why do you dislike Wide Sargasso Sea? I liked it, but enough people whose opinions I respect have told me they hate it that I’m a little embarrassed about liking it.
So I didn’t miss much by never getting around to The Well of Loneliness. Good to know.
This is super late, but I recently gave up on reading Keep the Apidistra flying for exactly these reasons, and want to high five you over the internet! Comstock must be the first MRA in fiction, and his head is just too unpleasant a place to be in for a book. At first I gave Orwell the benefit of the doubt and assumed we were meant to hate him and his pretentions, but it really feels like we’re not. Everything about it sucks, but the thing that really made me angry was the way Orwell and his protagonist seemingly hadn’t noticed that a constant desire for casual sex and a hatred of “french letteres” (condoms) are a pretty stupid set of beliefs to hold at the same time. (If you want to be truly disenheartened I could spoil the ending for you, which I flipped to the back to check up on.)
“I’m super-glad to find another feminist who doesn’t care for Wide Sargasso Sea, since I always thought liking it was sort of joylessly compulsory to show you’re sufficiently aware of post-colonial theory and so forth.”
YES. Oh my goodness, yes. Being an academic in lit just exacerbates this. I don’t care, I like Jane Eyre and not Jean Rhys!
The Crying of Lot 49. So pretentious. At least it is very short and now saves me from reading Thomas Pynchon ever again.
I tried reading Prep, as my mother told me it was good, but I could not get into it. I feel better now and can just give up on thinking I will ever get around to it.
Never read The Man of My Dreams unless you want to waste your life.
Having a short book make you give up on Pynchon is definitely the way to go, if something is going to make you give up on Pynchon.
I thought Gravity’s Rainbow was the shit, but I can’t imagine how awful it would be to read if you weren’t delighted by it’s weirdness. Nobody who doesn’t love it from the beginning should ever try to read that book.
God I hated The Crying of Lot 49. Yeah, I get that you’re all ~~~postmodern and ~~~quirky, but is a goddamned well-rounded character too much to ask for?
Gravity’s Rainbow is my Great White Literary Whale. YOU ARE MAKING NO SENSE, SIR! At least have the decency to do it in fewer pages.
My brain just couldn’t latch on to The Crying of Lot 49. I felt like that book just kept happening in my direction, rather than me reading it.
I *WISHED* I’d hated Crying of Lot 49, but liked it well enough to let the slobbering Pynchon fan boys I was friends with in college convince me to read Gravity’s Rainbow and I will never, ever be able to get that month of my life back. I tried to convince my husband not to do it to himself, but he didn’t listen. And as a result, I found it impossible to sympathize with him when he loudly complained about how miserable it was making him most of the time because I TRIED TO WARN YOU.
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED
JUST
fuck it all
YES. HOW COULD I FORGET TO ADD IT TO MY LIST. “oh, it’s just like p.g. wodehouse,” they said. “you’ll love it, because it’s hilarious,” they said. THEY ARE EVIL AND THIS BOOK IS THE WORST
‘yes, my child, i understand you wanted a book published in 1945 with a functional bisexual hero to actually deal with any of the issues facing him, but isn’t this catholic morality tale about deliberately choosing a sterile unhappy life in the name of ‘divine grace’ SO MUCH BETTER?’
NO, EVELYN. IT’S NOT.
i always stop reading after the first half and pretend sebastian and charles run off and open a B&B
Yes!! The first half is great. Especially the scene where Charles’ dad pretends to think their dinner guest is American purely because he can.
I love Angela Carter’s snarky take: “Cara, mistress of the noxious father of the noxious Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited put her finger on it: ‘Sebastian is in love with his own childhood.That will make him very unhappy. His teddy bear, his nanny…and he is nineteen years old.’ Flyte, thank God, is presumably long dead in a Carthaginian cloister, disembowelled, I trust, by a boy, but the Sebastian Flyte syndrome lives on.”
Oh fuck yes, I forgot about Brideshead Revisited! WE GET IT, DUDE. YOUR SUBTEXTUAL BOYFRIEND’S FAMILY USED TO BE MEGA-WEALTHY AND ARE NOW MERELY SUPER-WEALTHY BECAUSE THE COUNTRY IS INTRODUCING A WELFARE STATE TO TRY TO STOP SO MANY POOR PEOPLE FROM DYING. THIS IS A TRAGEDY. PLEASE WAX ON AT GREAT LENGTH ABOUT HOW TRAGIC IT IS.
And I did really want to like Brideshead Revisited, because I owe my very existence to it – my mother saw the 1980s ITV adaptation and thought it made Oxford look so beautiful she decided to study at Oxford University, and she met my Dad while they were both undergraduates there. Also my uncle, who is one of the best people I’ve ever met in a slightly eccentric way, says Evelyn Waugh is the greatest writer of the post-war period, possibly because he is an Evelyn Waugh character himself. But… just shudder.
I live near Castle Howard, one of the houses which was meant to have inspired Brideshead, and I’ve visited it a couple of times, and my favourite part is always the exhibition about The Great Fire Of 1940, which mentions “Fortunately, thanks to the prompt action of a school full of evacuees who were staying at the castle at the time, most of the paintings and antiques were saved from destruction.”
If my house was on fire with a bunch of children in it, I’d like to think I would encourage the children to get out rather than recruit them into a human chain to save my expensive shit. But I suppose that’s not the attitude that made the British aristocracy great, and worthy of being eulogised in really fucking boring novels.
for that whole last paragraph, i love you. NEW RICH PERSON’S CURSE: may the evacuee children staying on your estate in wartime save none of your art.
that’s the thing, waugh is such an incisive critic in everything pre-brideshead that like, is that really what a catholic conversion did for you?? helped you see that it’s not your job to criticize the ultraselfish and irresponsible among the aristocracy, but content yourself that god will take care of it later?! ok pal you do that but like, include a handjob every 50 pages or so if you want me to give even a singular fuck.
WE GET IT, DUDE. YOUR SUBTEXTUAL BOYFRIEND’S FAMILY USED TO BE MEGA-WEALTHY AND ARE NOW MERELY SUPER-WEALTHY BECAUSE THE COUNTRY IS INTRODUCING A WELFARE STATE TO TRY TO STOP SO MANY POOR PEOPLE FROM DYING. THIS IS A TRAGEDY. PLEASE WAX ON AT GREAT LENGTH ABOUT HOW TRAGIC IT IS.
This is basically why I cannot love Debo Devonshire*. Yes, she is a Mitford and writes well and is funny and interesting, but she goes ON AND ON about how awful the death duties were on Chatsworth and all of the stuff they had to pour into the maw of the Inland Revenue, blithely ignoring the fact that this is a ducal family who own multiple stately homes, acres and acres of valuable land, great works of art, etc. When you compare them to almost anyone else in the world, they are not suffering at all.
*That, and talking about what a saint Diana was. She was a Nazi.
Ha. I live very close to Chatsworth and it’s the most efficiently run money-making stately home I’ve ever been to. They are absolutely raking it in. Also the idea that anyone could own something that unbelievably massive and beautiful and filled to the brim with ridiculously expensive things…and then complain about being poor is just…yep.
The prevalence to this day of that kind of attitude amongst people like that is partially why I cannot stand the fawning over e.g. Waugh/Mitfords/British aristocrats generally (looking at you, Downton Abbey) and the whole “but I *ironically* like your royal family!” thing.
The popularity of Downton Abbey makes me uncomfortable.
thats is a frightening / horrible story but i can actually HEAR the tour guide saying it in a mild tone and see myself nod in agreement.
I’m in love with this entire comment thread, just wanted to make that clear. And too, your last paragraph (kisses air with fingertips).
Pre-war Evelyn Waugh is okay if you like books about horrible things happening to rich people, but once he got super-Catholic it all went to hell.
Yes, it’s terrible. Not fun. It alone would be enough reason to hate the Catholic Church and the English Aristocracy.
The last book I read that I hated was Seoul Survivors. Generally, I stop reading a book if I don’t like it (John Updike, hello) but this one I definitely hate read, from the minute I read its terrible pun title to the moment I read the last crappy word of the crappy ending.
also every single thing charles dickens ever fucking touched
paid by the word, my worthless dick
It feels so good to read that! Fuck that guy! Keep your head high, and keep on hating him. I support and agree with you.
Kinda agree. _David Copperfield_ is the worst, but I love _Great Expecations_ and Bleak House_ (among others). Dickens the man though — THE. WORST.
I love Dickens but this made me laugh out loud with glee, because sometimes he is just so… himself, in the worst possible way.
I hate Charles Dickens as a person, and pretty much cannot read his books.
I have hated him since 8th grade. Even hearing or seeing his name makes me want to spit.
Funny – I’m actually reading David Copperfield right now (on page 634) and I’m loving it! It is my first Dickens book.
Mists of Avalon might have been the worst thing I’ve ever read. Although it’s a tie, really, with Wolf Hall and Game of Thrones, which is upsetting and confusing because I was a European History major, at Smith! These books really should have skyrocketed right to the top of my OMG LOOOOOVE list. The aforementioned Alchemist and Divergent are up there, too. There’s nothing worse than hating a book, but nothing better than talking about that hate.
The only good thing about Game of Thrones is that it was made into a TV series starring some really stellar actors whom I love to see on screen. Other than that, I have little patience for the books or for the author.
Same. I like the show, and I started trying to read the first book and maybe ten pages in I just COULD NOT HANDLE John Snuh’s whiny inner monologue anymore. And it was very clear to me that this is what these books were going to be like. So I noped the hell out of there.
This whole post is really validating my decision to not finish that book (Mists of Avalon) a few chapters in and it wasn’t grabbing me at all.
I read it as a teenager and loved it. Tried re-reading it a couple of years ago and couldn’t for the life of me give a single fuck about any character.
GoT was too boring for me to hate. I mean, I did finally stop listening to the books (they were good audio to have on while doing my day job) because I was too bored to go on. The Wiki could tell me plot points in 1/287th of the time.
Mist of Avalon, though: HAAAAATE. Also: rage, and betrayal, because the audio were narrated by one of my favorite narrators (Davina Porter, who is currently reading me the new Diana Gabaldon book, because she loves me is why), and I was falling asleep every time I listened to it, and it was excruciating and BAD BAD BAD. Worse because of the ‘theoretically you’ll love this because look at all of these Mel-catnip-elements!’ GRRR.
I am reading Bring Up The Bodies right now (I gave Wolf Hall a miss because I couldn’t find my copy) and I’m torn between being VERY ENGROSSED and VERY IRRITATED by it.
You can’t dislike Bring Up the Bodies without reading Wolf Hall first. At least try it! Cromwell makes a lot more sense in BUTB after you read WH.
This! I second this! (I also just like Wolf Hall a whole lot.)
It’s just like, I have read all of the Tudor things, I love that era, I took a seminar on Elizabeth I in college, and I just felt like Wolf Hall sapped all the interest out of it. Just, completely jaded me on it. Is BUTB engrossing enough to really warrant me picking it up? Or too irritating to bother?
If you didn’t like Wolf Hall, I am fairly confident that you are a monster will not like BUTB.
you can’t read Bring Up The Bodies without Wolf Hall!!! geez.
I hated Wolf Hall, too, and I feel like an ignorant rube every time I think about it. But, like, WHAT IS SO LITERARY AND GROUNDBREAKING ABOUT CONSTANT PRONOUN CONFUSION?????
CROMWELL IS SO CHARISMATIC THAT NORMAL RULES OF SYNTAX WARP AROUND HIM. Ahem. Sorry, apparently I am a reflexive Mantel apologist.
I hated it, too. You could never tell who was talking, or who to.
Historical fiction isn’t ever really my jam, but boring endless indecipherable run-on sentences are REALLY not my jam.
I agree completely. MoA is terrible, GoT is boring, but Wolf Hall I just don’t get. I read Mists in its entirety (I was a teenager!), but gave up half way through Wolf Hall and just after the beginning of Book 2 of GoT. I can’t even figure out why these books are popular, apart from the fact that readers want to give the impression of being smart and/or current. But that’s a cynical view.
I too was a European history major at Smith! Did you study with a certain Canadian professor of social history who only ever wears Converse?
I have tried with Wolf Hall, but I don’t know if I have the stamina to try again.
Wuthering Heights, without question.
I know!! How is this a romantic book? I was terrified the whole time. My main problem was nobody dies soon enough.
My God I have never wanted any literary character to die as badly as I wanted Heathcliff to die, just fucking die so this book can be over already, every other character is dead anyway, take the hint and hurry the fuck up aaaaaaagh.
Die die die! And not some long drawn out fiery or malingering death that will just mean MORE DAMN TIME DEALING WITH YOU. You + herd of rampaging cattle. Done, over, the END already.
I was so shocked, because Cathy and Heathcliffe’s “love story” is so revered. I thought it would be sweet and romantic! Then I read it and was like…..WTF.
Ooo yes, I will climb aboard this Hate Train.
OH MY GOD, YES.
I read it when I was, like, 12, and either I didn’t understand it (but thought I did), or I am actually not even related to the person who inhabited this body back then. I tried to re-read it in my early 20s, and it was a terrible mistake.
First of all, I couldn’t follow all the timelines and bloodlines and narrative threads without drawing a series of diagrams. “Ok; which Catherine is this? Which Linton?” On top of that there was the pure spitefulness of the characters — what a nasty, cruel, sullen group of people! I did not have the patience to get beyond about a third of the way through.
Someone needs to write “Wuthering Heights and Zombies” and have the first generation euthanized by the undead before they manage to breed.
I have never loathed characters in a book as much as I loathed the characters in Wuthering Heights. It was the Gone Girl of its time. May they both be one day forgotten in favor of worthier works of literature that don’t make you want to gouge your own eyes out.
THANK YOU the people in that book are terrible and DESERVED TO DIE.
I SHALL VOICE MY DISSENT. I LOVE Wuthering Heights. I agree with others who’ve said it’s not a love story–at least not the kind of love one should aspire to. But I love the atmosphere, I love the narrative form, I love getting to hate all the terrible characters and feel sort of sorry for some of them. I love the use of archetypes and the rather mythological feel it has (to me, at least).
It’s weird, because it is exactly the sort of book I would normally hate, but here we are.
Oh dear me, yes! It is a loathesome book, full of selfish, self-indulgent narcissists and dysfunctional people.
The only thing to redeem it for me was a scene in Jasper Fforde’s “The Well of Lost Plots” where he makes all the characters attend a weekly 12-Step meeting to deal with their rage at Heathcliff.
Jasper Fforde has a great power to redeem other people’s characters.
The Corrections. I don’t hate books I read thoroughly as a general rule, but I read that for a summer contemporary lit class in grad school, and all I could think was, this wanker is wanking to this hateful family zomg make it stop who likes this crap?! I never like books about people who enjoy hating each other. Well, nonfiction about the Tudors, maybe, but the line is there. I’m delighted to meet my fellow Prep-haters. When I can feel the author working out issues from high school, that is not good. Hated the narrator. Hated the people she went to school with. Hated them all.
I’m actually reading Maggie Sefton’s books for the joy of how much I hate them. I write scathing reviews on Goodreads. I look forward to it. They’re terrible. I can’t believe she gets paid for them.
ENDORSED. The Corrections is terrible. I want to build a bonfire out of every known copy.
The Corrections is as horrible as its author
I hated hating The Corrections, because it was so well-written, and inventive in parts, but I HATED IT NONETHELESS. I think the first ever piece I read on The Toast was Mallory’s Jonathan Franzen satire, and it was a real ‘hallelujah’ moment for me. Anywhere where I can hate The Corrections as part of a collective is a Safe Place for me.
No problem! Let me assure you that, truly, it’s not even well written and that it definitely averages out to well shy of inventive. Hate The Corrections forever and always and with a clear heart!
I’m reading this right now after a recommendation from a colleague and I’m really struggling.
“The Corrections” was great compared to that piece of shit “Freedom,” which I hate so much it makes me hate freedom itself, by association.
I couldn’t even finish the shitiness that is The Corrections.Probably only the third book I have EVER not finished.
Oh MAGGIE SEFTON, her books are so terrible but it’s kind of fun to witness their terribleness. Did you read Dropped Dead Stitch? The worst, the worst, the worst, the worst.
I hated Catch 22. I can’t tell if it’s because I left it to the last minute and read it all in one night and by the end my eyes were on fire or if it’s just truly terrible but I don’t intend to reread it to find out.
I don’t know you, so I can’t say you are wrong and you must love it. But it is my favourite creation ever. It is the funniest and most painful book, and so smart and good, and also has some really interesting things going on with structure if you’re into that.
I ask that you try to read it again – but only the first two pages, and if you don’t like the prose style by then, then stop immediately and joyfully.
(or don’t do this because strangers on the internet don’t get to tell you what to read)
I hated it too but I almost never admit it to people. It isn’t funny and the characters are so poorly defined. The whole time I was thinking “Why am I supposed to care about these people? Because they’re in the military?” It is always held up as this Funny Book for Smart People but dammit I’m smart, give me some less stupid “high-jinks”
I feel very guilty but it is one of the few books I’ve ever given up on halfway through. It just never stopped being a slog for me.
Elegance of a Hedgehog. Slogged through the philosophical essays for a million pages, the story picked up in the last fifth of the book, and then the ending was a big ol’ dramatic fuck you. Useless.
Totally agree! Hated it.
Sure, use the lower-class woman you’ve been kind of making fun of for the entire book as a prop in this young rich girl’s moral development. Why not.
Yes! Elegance of the Hedgehog is THE WORST. The horrible concierge, the horrible child, and the saintly Magical Asian who loves them both. Muriel Barbery can EAT ME.
I read that and kept thinking, “well it has to turn around at some point” and it didn’t and I feel like the author should pay ME MONEY for reading that thing. And then the author should be slapped for writing it. THAT IS HOW MUCH I HATE THAT BOOK.
10,000 POINTS OF AGREEMENT
My grandmother and I both stopped half way through it. I wanted to tell all the characters to get over themselves.
I remember nothing about this book except for how much I HATE IT.
I couldn’t get through that book I hated it so much. It was so hateful I don’t get how people can love it.
I have never agreed with anything more. A friend recommended it to me because she thought I would like it and now I don’t think we even know each other.
What a pretentious, classist barf of a book.
I really passionately hated the Willa Cather I had to read in high school.
My Antonia makes me want to set everything on fire. What a disaster.
Things by Lionel Shriver. Particularly the one set in the UK (The Post-Birthday World) in which her British character talks like NO BRITISH PERSON EVER. All of her characters are so dislikeable, and the writing is so self-consciously stylised. “Oh, look at me, I’m doing some wordplay! Look at how clever I am!”
Also, Sugar Rush by Julie Birchill. Look, I definitely want to read books set near my hometown about teenage girls exploring their sexuality, but I want books in which the characters aren’t hateful and annoying and don’t behave in completely implausible ways. I hate-read this repeatedly throughout my late teenage years.
All the Gossip Girl books. And this is more “author” than “book”, but I find Caitlin Moran completely infuriating. I hate the way she pulls an “I’m so wacky!” face in all pictures.
(This is great. It feels so satisfying to let the hatred spill out.)
Also she is a transphobe and not as funny as she thinks she is!
UGH YES. I loathed her book. Hated it. Hated it and found her deeply upsetting and terrible.
My husband asked if he should read her book (I have a copy I picked up for 50p) and I said ‘Only if you want to know how to do self-indulgent, white-girl, over-simplistic feminism’ and he didn’t.
I am so glad it’s not just me.
The transphobia is also really shit.
(It feels concerning that my justification for disliking her is “THAT FACE SHE PULLS” and not her transphobia. I hate the transphoba too! But still, argh. self.)
Shriver is incapable of writing Americans who sound American also. Arguably she just cannot write people who sound human.
But the Post-Birthday World makes a lot of sense (still a terrible book) once you realise she had just left her husband for a darts player or something so she needed to write a book proving she made the right choice. Did you catch the one about the horrible fatty fatso who lost weight but ha ha whoops it was all a dream? That was also a bad book.
I did not know she had left her husband for a darts player when she wrote that! That does make sense (although I feel a bit uncomfortable now I feel like I’ve just read a whole book of her Relationship Thoughts). I have seen the one with the fat character, but couldn’t bring myself to read it. She did the “it was all a dream” thing? Wow.
(And yes, I thought her American characters did not sound recognisably human, but it wasn’t quite as infuritating as all of the horribly misused UK colloquialisms.)
Lionel Shriver one that LITERALLY has half the book being a dream. You can’t do that past 3rd grade people.
I loved the TV series of Sugar Rush – well, the first series – picked up the book and was immediately like “What is this shit?” It’s Julie Burchill though, it’s like she goes out of her way to infuriate me.
Julie Birchill is the worst.
Oh god, the Post-Birthday World. I read it on the recommendation of a friend, and what a brainless self-absorbed bunch of people. If she wants to be with the other guy (who did not sound all that great either), BE with him. No patience for the indecisive mooning around over Mr He’s Not That Into You. And if you’re hungry in a bar – order some food – problem solved.
I haven’t read Sugar Rush, but seeing ads for the Channel 4 miniseries way back when put me right off. Which is a shame because I would have really liked to see teenage girls exploring their sexuality in a non-exploitational way.
Also Julie Burchill has written some truly vile transphobic shite in the Guardian in support of her equally nasty transphobic TERF friends who should not have that kind of media platform to promote their hate. I have a lot of issues with Caitlin Moran as well, but I hope she might actually learn from people calling her on her idiocy.
Fall On Your Knees. Everybody loves it, but it’s the one book I wish I could scrape back out of my brain.
OMG, yes! Read great reviews, bought a used copy at a local bookstore, set aside time to devour it…what a miserable fucking read.
*sniff*
CANADA
I only got a few pages into that one.
YES YES YES.
YES.
We hate very few books and almost any book there is at least ONE person who likes, but that book? Oh god it was awful, awful, awful. Misery tourism! HATE.
Read it for a book group, struggled to finish, hated it, then hated that everyone else in the group liked it.
Yes! It belongs in that genre of books where families from small towns molest and/or rape each other and there is random violence and a lot of turgid prose and it’s supposed to be deep. “A Cure for Death by Lightening” anyone? Even the sheep get raped.
Exactly this! Why did the cat have to die?!
I HATED On The Road. You know that masturbation gesture people do? I sort of hate that, too, but I think it is appropriate for that book. Maybe because I went to a small liberal arts college and was just too surrounded by people who thought they were so bohemian and whatever, but I find it insufferable.
Also it was loaned to me by a person who thinks she is great with dogs but actually is mean to dogs, and who called it “literally my bible.”
UGH, that BOOK. That whole generation of books, that whole ‘oh, bohemia! drugs are fun! we are wacky and free and you idiots aren’t!’ thing.
Seriously, go jerk off in private and leave me out of it, please.
UGH I couldn’t even make it through, what an absolute wet shit of a book.
On the Road should go fuck itself with another copy of On the Road.
Or with Catcher In The Rye.
God forbid. They might spawn children.
Never trust anyone who thinks they’re great with any category of living thing they’re actually mean to.
This is amazing life advice.
On The Road is one of those books where my hatred of the thing itself tends to spread to dislike of the people who enjoy it (if they are men). I am not usually That Person, but for this book, I am.
Like oh yeah, it’s so greattttttt to be “free” and “creative” when women are footing the bill for that freedom (or raising your children, alone) and when that “creativity” is actually just appropriation from culture(s) you dismiss or treat with racist condescension. Go away, Jack Kerouac, and take with you all your white male fans.
YES. My then-boyfriend and his bff were going on and on and on and onnnnn about this and the Dharma Bums. I got halfway through Dharma Bums in an effort and hated it so much that I got into a heated argument with the two about exactly this point. Yes HOW WONDERFUL it must be to be so freeeee and boheeeeemian and, oh, also, a white male.
Actually, it was one of the first times I remember being honestly surprised that I could read the same book and have such a different reaction than someone else, that these guys knew these boos so intimately but didn’t see that a women reading it would not identify with the protagonist at all and in fact might think they’re selfish jerks. In other words, it was one of the first times I really realized that “male” really is considered (by far too many people) to be the default.
I had to read The Dharma Bums for a book club. For a while I was convinced it was a vicious satire of a certain type of male writer because surely no-one could be so oblivious to how wretched and vile the main characters were! But I was wrong. Thankfully everyone else in the book club hated it too.
It was the first book to make me feel physically angry, I mean face flushed, heart racing angry. Not only is “male” considered to be the default, women just aren’t really people to them.
My first regret is reading it. My second regret is downloading the ebook so I had no physical copy to destroy.
I am glad to unite with you in Dharma Bums hatred! During the afore-mentioned heated exchange, one of the guys said “well I think you might like it more if you were a dude.” I was flabbergasted. It was the first time I’d heard the male-as-default sentiment so succinctly–and personally–expressed.
So, thanks I guess, Dharma Bums, for helping me become a feminist.
Yes to all of this. On The Road is garbage, the dudes in it are garbage people and the book is a garbage story of white dudes treating women like shit and taking advantage of people to have selfish road trip drug adventures.
But it was so DEEP and the dudes were so REAL and TRUE and they were, like, REBELS against CLOSE-MINDED SOCIETY.
oh, I have the opposite. I didn’t care about the book one way or another, but invariably, if someone tells me On the Road changed their life, is their favorite book, will change MY life, whatever, it is a guarantee they are going to be a sack of shit and the next words out of their mouth are going to be, like, “Paying rent is just a way for the soulless and blind to shackle themselves to the conventions of society. Also, can I crash at your place for a while?” Or similar.
I totally misread On the Road as “The Road” and was incredibly confused about how it could be anyone’s Bible.
The masturbation gesture is a PERFECT description of “On The Road.” MY Bible is the fact that “Jack Kerouac” is an anagram for “U: a cock, a jerk.” I bring that up whenever anyone mentions him or his horrible books.
On the Road is true garbage but it is helpful in discerning people you should avoid at all costs (i.e. people who love On the Road).
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Oh my god. It was despicable. It was trying to Tackle A Serious And Profound Story in a relentlessly twee, unnecessarily strangely-structured way, and it failed, FAILED, I TELL YOU, to be anything but a mediocre story about a [young person of ethnic background X] revisiting the history of his grandparents and finding [insight about life X]. It is BANAL. It is formulaic and SHALLOW. The protagonist remains as stupid as the writer, cover to cover. He does not evolve as a person even though he is straining to do so like he’s trying to crap a brick.
And can we talk about the way he writes about Ukrainians? How they are so QUIRKY and so RIDICULOUS with their broken English and their dumb everyday life things that they do in dumb and bizarre fashion instead of properly, like civilized Americans? Oh my god. As a Ukrainian immigrant, I know this treatment so well. Before I became fluent in English and lost most of my accent, people insisted on exoticising the bejesus out of me while simultaneously treating me as a sort of developmentally delayed munchkin person, or like the strange and silly foreigner character in a sitcom.
And a peasant woman who lives on a farm with no running water, and has hair down to her ankles? Fuck you and your magic realism. It is not magic realism, it is STUPIDITY ON A STICK.
I want to punch Safran Foer so bad.
I didn’t like it either, I don’t recall much of the details now but I remember thinking, “Everyone jizzed themselves over this book and I don’t get it, should I feel dumb?” Oh yeah, and the main Ukrainian character (Alexander?) was such a caricature.
All I remember from the book was the dog farted a lot.
Why are women supposedly always growing their hair so long, anyway? I mean ‘olden time’ types, or rural / no running water types?
Only damn way I’d grow hair to my waist or butt or ankles or whatever is if I had a houseful of servants and water and plenty of product and also morphine because that much hair is HEAVY, dude.
I have hair this long and I can testify that it is both heavy and warm if not secured properly
You plait it. And you have lots of hairsticks Admittedly, virtually any time you DON’T plait it you have a disaster on your hands, and especially god help you if you don’t plait it before bed, but it’s not painful, or really THAT inconvenient (and you don’t have the inconvenience of bothering with haircuts). I had hair down past my hips and I kind of miss it sometimes, but I got bored of always wearing a plait or a very plain hairstick bun.
Waist-length is no big deal at all.
If my hair gets longer than mid-back, I can’t wear it up any more because it gives me headaches. I love the notion of waist-length hair, but if I can’t put it in a bun I can’t be bothered.
YES. ALL OF THIS. Using every literary trick you’ve ever heard of in one novel is not writing, it is masturbation.
Love this comment and your username. I really really liked Everything is Illuminated, but I was young, impressionable and dumb when I read it.
Lol, comrade, don’t be so hard on yourself 😀
I love both of your usernames! And your comments.
Have read only the opening page of Everything Is Illuminated but couldn’t read the rest because I loathe Jonathan Safran Foer on general principle. Can’t explain why. Something something overly smug literary male, probably.
If you hadn’t posted this comment, I would have, except nowhere near as well-stated. Also I am not a Ukrainian immigrant.
He clearly has some weird issues with women, too. It was kind of funny the first time Alex referred to his dog as his bitch, but it got old almost immediately and after a hundred pages or so I started feeling as though Safran Foer just liked having an excuse to use the word with impunity. And then there was his relentless heavy-handed sexualization of Brod, the only female character with any kind of depth whatsoever (to be fair, none of the male characters aside from Alex have much themselves), starting when she’s a child and literally every man and several women in the village ask her father for her hand in marriage, and leading to the point that the worst thing about her husband’s brain injury that makes him so violent that they can’t even be in a room together is that they have to get creative with their sex life.
YES it is a terrible book, so immature and condescending to Ukrainians/non-English-speakers and terrible depictions of women, but also when you read the books he likes (e.g. Bruno Schulz) you see that he slavishly imitates other writers but does it badly so he’s not even particularly original.
I hate Podkayne of Mars. Hate. HaAAAAAATE. Don’t even try to ask me to explain my hate, I just devolve into frothing incoherence.
… I ALSO HATED TAM LIN THERE I SAID IT. THOSE PEOPLE ARE ALL INSUFFERABLE, I DON’T CARE THAT THEY’RE COLLEGE STUDENTS AND MIGHT SOMEDAY GROW OUT OF IT, I HOPE THEY DO GET KILLED AND EATEN BY FAIRIES.
lollllllllllllll I LOVE TAM LIN but I know better than to defend it, you are NOT WRONG
I don’t know why its magic didn’t work on me, honestly. I read it as a 20-year-old English major at a weird insular college! I owned a faerie-themed Tarot deck! It was written EXACTLY FOR ME, and I hated it anyway!
That’s the problem, I think. The golden age of Tam Lin is *right before you go to college*, when it’s still a fantastic dream of a magical world. When I read Tam Lin, I had all the brainy banter I wanted. I didn’t need Blackstock College.
Yes I think so, we read it when a few years before college age and were like SIGN ME UP FOR THAT.
I am OBSESSED with that book but I say that not having re-read it since college and being reasonably convinced it has not held up well. Like I was all excited to find the whole Mercedes Lackey “Oathbound” series for super cheapsies last summer and I was like “YAYYYYYYYY THE DEFINING HOMOEROTIC LADY ADVENTURE FANTASY NOVELS OF MY ADOLESCENCE ARE BACK IN MY LIFE THERE IS LITERALLY NOW DOWNSIDE HERE” and then I got ten pages in and the writing just became paaaaaainful and it felt like a tiny piece of my childhood died. So I WILL (and HAVE) written a musical adapting “Tam Lin” in the present day but I will NOT re-read that book because I’m afraid it will give me a sad.
I think Pamela Dean holds up much, much better than Lackey in terms of prose style and such, she is a much better writer, but sadly she just cannot structure a book in such a way that the plot moves at an even pace. I love her work anyway but oh, I wish someone could get her to figure that out.
Ha ha ha! I just finished Tam Lin (because friends I trust in real life/people on The Toast love it so) and I just couldn’t stand it. I hate-finished it. Everyone in it is a jerk except Tina, so I’m completely unsympathetic to all the eyerolling about how dumb and annoying she is. No one’s decisions make any sense (why take birth control when you can take some weird herbal thing that your boyfriend won’t tell you what it’s made of?). Everyone fiddles around with their course requirements for four hundred pages, then there’s ten minutes of exciting Faerie stuff, then…that’s it? We’re done? Janet and Thomas will just get married and have a baby? Janet’s father will continue to teach at this weird haunted college? Medeous will keep on teaching Classics, going to faculty meetings, and riding around at night with her fairy band? Nobody grew, nothing changed? Ugh.
Podkayne of Mars was my first Throwing Book. I remember being so angry, and complaining to the children’s librarian about it. It’s all their mom’s fault for working instead of being home with her kids? Really? And Podkayne spends too much time describing how big her own breasts are – that weirded me out.
I too hate Podkayne of Mars. I’ve hated it since I read it as a kid, and since I read the William Patternson Biography of Heinlein (last week) I hate it more. Patterson explains in the biography that Heinlein wrote the novel explicitly to “prove” that working mothers and absent fathers ruin children. “Latch-key” kids were going to be the downfall of America, Heinlein believed. That’s what he was writing about. Podkayne’s lack of sense and her brother’s sociopathy came from their parents’ neglect.
I don’t know what explains Heinlein’s sociopathy, in that case.
I love Tam Lin but I love it BECAUSE it’s insufferable. It’s my most beloved Stupid Book, the one I hate-read lovingly. It’s one of the few books of my own that I dragged from country to country during a much more exciting time in my life, and the paperback copy I bought as a teenager just fell apart so badly that I bought another one. (DAMMIT Amazon, it’s late–where is it??) To hate-read lovingly some more. I even did a preliminary graphic novel character list of the characters. But they’re awful. I only really like Tina at all.
Uuugghhh I had to read The Mists of Avalon in an anthropology class in college for some reason. We were supposed to read it in a week. It took me all semester because it was sooooo booooooooring.
Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing, by Ian Bogost. If you took that book and subtracted all the philosophical name-dropping, purple prose, and self-consciously pompous enumerations, you would have a moderately interesting twenty pages. In its true form, it is the only book at which I have ever physically rolled my eyes.
Consolation prize to Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, was a tragedy. Very cool book, written by a very cool guy, but that book was just dripping with self-satisfied confidence that its author was /blowing your mind/, yae, even as it was describing the degree to which your mind was to be blown.
I think you might enjoy (setting fire to a copy of) the Illuminatus-with-an-Exclamation-Point-for-No-Reason trilogy.
Ian Bogost, the video game philosophy guy? I can’t imagine that kind of prose stretched to novel length
The very same! I hit the ground with a side-eye trained on him because his Atlantic article on why the Internet as it presently exists should be allowed to burn up and blow away seemed inflated and myopic. I now yearn for the happy days when that was all I knew.
Because yes: long-form Bogost is like like eating a fruitcake the size of a mattress.
Jane Eyre. She is such a drip the book might as well be about a leaky tap.
Wide Sargasso Sea is terrible only in that it is _based on Jane Eyre_ and had _awful source material to work from_.
I also hate the guts of Jane Eyre. She’s an insufferable prig; Rochester’s a bastardy dickface. When the relig dude starts to look appealing, you know you’ve made a wrong turn w/ yer characters.
I love Jane Eyre passionately, but that turn of phrase is delightful.
THANK YOU. ALL MY ROOMMATE LOOOOVE THIS DAMN BOOK. UGH. JANE. UGH.
I HAVE ALL CAPS FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.
I’m with you all the way apart from you are so, so wrong about Jean Rhys. She was a drunk bitter chorus girl with and outsider accent and she understood that everyone hates each other or do the sort of damage to each other where it might as well be hate-fuelled even if they actually mean no harm. Also, reading not-very-between-the-lines of Wide Sargasso Sea, she fucking hated straight white men especially and makes them look oppressive and stupid. Surely worth a pass!
Oh yes, she definitely had all the right ideas, but I find something about her modernist and dreamlike style really off-putting. It’s not her, it’s me!
cosign. I reread WSS a few months ago and it’s so deliciously bitter. Plus she hates Jane Eyre as much as I do, so clearly she’s the best.
I refuse to like her shitty books just because she was miserable.
I can’t read Wide Sargasso Sea, I even tried a couple of times. BUT her complete short stories are the best things to read at night, on a train, in the dark, on your way out of a city where you have failed to thrive, when unemployed and a failure and not suicidal so even that way out is barred to you. All her female characters sort of turn around in the mind and stop being worthless dishrags when you understand that not having a lover IS THE SAME THING as being unemployed for them, literally not metaphorically. thank you, recession of a few years ago, for teaching me to appreciate Jean Rhys. I haven’t read her in about six years and I don’t know, I might be too old and weak to take it now. I bet that people who hate her would also maybe hate Tanith Lee and Jane Gaskell because they do that same thing of women combining total passivity with total hostility in a way that is not sympathetic to a lot of people for reasons I cannot understand. It seems to have limited appeal but I get it all the way.
In my freshman English class, I wrote a long and angry paper about how Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester are racist prigs who are both afraid of female sexuality because Jane is obviously jealous of Blanche Ingram/Bertha Mason (and I believed that she had that “I’m not superficial like other girls” thing going on), and they both can’t handle female sexuality and associate non-whiteness with an excess of it. (For a backstory, I resemble Charlotte Bronte’s perpetual evil curvy dark villainess much more than I do the heroine and it was made clear to me growing up how awful of me that was, so I took it kind of personally.) My professor pointed me towards Wide Sargasso Sea, and I tried, but I hated it so very much that I couldn’t finish it. But you make her short stories sound so intriguing that I now have to try–thanks! I now want to try seeing that thing that bothered me the most (the passivity and hostility) in a different light.
I read 20 pages of Ulysses, put it down, and promised myself never to touch anything by Joyce again.
I took a master’s seminar to try to understand Joyce (thinking that I hated it because I just didn’t get it). Nope. I get it. And I hate it.
I hate him in a complicated way but this makes me sad because so much of Dubliners is really lovely.
Dubliners is all right, but Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man makes me want to slap him. Had to read those in high school, never bothered to look any further.
I don’t even know if I’m advocating for reading Joyce at all ever but he got progressively more insufferable as he got older
The Dead is pretty good, tho.
When I think of Joyce I always think of Jean Ralphio’s “The Worst Person in the World” rif.
OOO, strongly echo Stieg Larsson hate – I read that first one and what was up with all of the Apple product placement and the constant descriptions of cups of coffee and the sandwich-making and then all of the fervent misogynistic violence coupled with long screeds about how awful men are for brutalizing women? Also, what the EFF, Stieg, why did you start your book with the longest description of white collar banking crime in the history of the world? Terrible. Also, I hated that 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window. Also also, hated that Major Pettigrew.
I used to laugh out loud when I got the parts when he would describe the computers they used. He was such an Apple fanboy it just cracked me up. Not to mention that I always think it’s stupid when people go to so much trouble to give a detailed list of specs–in a couple of years, they’re obsolete so it feels jarringly dated when you read it. (Or see it. Think the mobile Neo uses in The Matrix…)
YES OMG the Apple product placement! That was so weird! I asked some people about that later like…is it some cultural thing I don’t understand, but apparently not and it is just totally bizarre. I didn’t like these books either (I read …2? Can’t even remember) but don’t hate them in that comforting all-consuming way. However, I do give the side-eye to people who love them uncritically.
I was so baffled when everyone hailed Stieg Larsson as some kind of feminist hero. Lisbeth Salander was the most developed character in the book, but still a MPDG through and through.
Oh yes, this exactly describes all my problems with Stieg Larsson. Plus the ‘Oh my God, my heroine is bisexual! And has piercings! And autism! And knows how to use a computer! Surely no woman in the world has ever done any of these things and she is so freakish and unique! Watch her be horribly raped!’ attitude.
the cups of coffee and the stupid sausage and the stupid running and running around the lake. I do not care! I hate all your characters! also I really did think it was a hateful portrayal of most women and the crimes were just so VIVIDLY AWFUL FOR NO REASON. I don’t understand why anyone liked it. I threw my copy away.
“all of the fervent misogynistic violence coupled with long screeds about how awful men are for brutalizing women”
This is the perfect way to describe that series. I hated it thoroughly.
I really enjoyed it, but YES, it was such a Dude Book in that product-placement way. Like how Dan Brown always has to drop in the brand names of cars/watches/suits. NO ONE GIVES A FUCK WHO MADE THE SUIT, BROWN. THAT IS NOT A TELLING DETAIL.
Oh, we read 100 Year Old Man in book club and unanimously haaaaated. (Which was odd because we can usually get a lively discussion going because we split down the middle. Not this time. HAAATE).
I just went to my old Livejournal to see if I could find the title of the book I mentioned hating upthread, and now I’m delighting in how my teenage self wrote that Hunter S Thompson “sounds like your dad complaining.”
As a child I hated Joanna Hurwitz for reasons I don’t recall. Then in college I was forced to read Charterhouse of Parma by a biology instructor, because I went to a liberal arts school where the academics were free to be as worthless and pretentious as they wanted, and I hated it so much that I’ve completely blocked it from my memory.
Also, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. GET AN EDITOR.
I HATE HUNTER S THOMPSON
I want a tshirt that says HUNTER S. THOMPSON SOUNDS LIKE YOUR DAD COMPLAINING and I don’t even hate his stuff.
HPGOF is the only HP book I never finished reading. I was all “ehhh, skim skim skim, here I’ll read the last 40 pages and then go watch the movie.”
Heh heh, I thought GET AN EDITOR for GoF and every Harry Potter book thereafter. I like the stories, but they really didn’t need to be 800 pages.
I haaaaaated Life of Pi. I hated it all the way through and finished it anyway. Still makes me mad to think about it. Mallory, you’re so right – it feels amazing to revel in the hate.
Yes. I wanted the tiger to eat him.
I was just going down thread to post this one. A friend loaned it to me and I had to do the awkward, “It was okay I guess” dance instead of giving way to the depths of my wrath. Ugh. All that floating, and the tiger, and it was just all so pretentiously clever in that way that really isn’t clever at all. When the movie came out, people kept asking if I’d read it and it was so freeing to say, “Yes, AND I HATED IT.”
COSIGNED. The mere reminder of the existence of this book causes waves of rage.
It was so awful!
I was about three quarters of the way to becoming an atheist when I read it, so I was sort of intrigued/hopeful about the cover quote suggesting that it would make you believe in God. And then I read it and basically thought, “fuck it, if that’s what counts as a brilliant argument in favour of God, then it’s atheism for me.”
And that was on top of everything else about the book being awful.
Yes. Thank you. I was trying to think of a book that I hated and was having trouble, but you are correct — Life of Pi is it for me. Everyone made it out to be this beautiful, inspiring story, and I was just horrified by it, until I got to the end and then I felt horrified AND betrayed. What an emotionally manipulative piece of crap.
The only other book that came close to that was The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which had more to due to the major depression I was going through while I read it — no way I would have touched that with a ten foot pole if it hadn’t been required reading for a class. I ended up throwing it at the chalkboard during a class discussion.
I don’t hate Things They Carried but it really really bummed me out when I found out Tim O’Brien made most of it up (to make his point about true war stories) and is a real real real asshole about that and people not ‘getting it’
I hated it too. We were strongly encouraged to read it for work and I just forced myself to keeep going with it. I too wish the tiger had eaten him!
Anything by Hemingway. Except A Movable Feast. What I like most was him admitting he was a jerk to his first wife Hadley (depending on the version you read). Henry James is my enemy. I hate his run on sentences. I think he wrote them just to annoy me.
I stopped reading the recent Herman Koch book Summer House with Swimming Pool. The protagonist, a doctor, is the creepiest.
I hated Old Man and the Sea so much when I had to read it in high school. Fishing is boring enough without having to read 100 interminable pages.
Word.
Hemingway is a jerk.
Hemingway makes me die of The Bores.
I also like Hemingway reassuring F. Scott Fitzgerald about his penis in “A Moveable Feast.”
I already disliked Hemingway, but then I had a college professor who went on and on about how when anyone complained that Hemingway was a misogynistic macho jerk, it only made him love Hemingway more. And that only sealed my eternal hate for Hemingway.
Completely and totally agree on the Hemingway. First tried reading it when I was 5-6, tried again in my teens, again in my 20s…A Moveable Feast was the only decent one in the lot.
YES on Hemingway. Movable Feast is so lovely. The rest of his books as such inflated CRAP.
Agree on Hemingway. pretentious dull tripe. But Henry James is my dream! His books changed my life, my thinking, my DNA>
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept
The Devil All The Time
The Sun Also Rises
Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
ALSO The Chronology Of Water.
there are definitely many more but I’m drawing a merciful hate-blank.
THE SUN ALSO RISES i think that book ignited my fervent misandry, so i guess i respectfully loathe it.
It was the only book I brought with me to a long medical appointment and after a few rounds of café, bullfight, bar, café, bullfight, bar… I decided my time was better spent staring at the ceiling, thinking about how much I hated Hemingway, and how suspicious it was that enough dudes loved him for me to think I was required to love him, too, else I be a lady who doesn’t get it.
I will take any and every opportunity to broadcast how much I HATED “MaddAddam” i.e. the conclusion of the Orynx & Crank trilogy. I have done this now twice on the Toast and once to Mallory on Twitter. I hate this book so viscerally and so deeply I think my reading of it broke something inside me. Atwell built a misogynistic dystopia w humanoids which was fascinating initially for the origin story and subsequently for how a scrappy collection of female character navigated it. IT FINISHED HOWEVER on the perspective of what is supposed to be a “lovable misogynist rockabilly” who turns one of the strongest characters into a Cathy cartoon, IGNORES every other female character (who exclusively populated the sequel) and blames the fall of humanity on a CARTOONISHLY EVIL & SIMPLISTIC GOV-RELIGIOUS CONSPIRACY . #Hate #hatehatehate #vitriol
I feel you so hard. Also, it reads not even like first draft, but preliminary notes to a first draft. I read an interview with Atwood where she admonishes that you don’t have to write full-time to be good, and she wrote the same amount when she had a day job as she does now. Which is a bit of a fuck-you to everyone who has to suffer a day job. But then she goes on to say that, look, for example, I wrote most of MaddAddam on a train as I was travelling between one speaking engagement and another.
I was like, Mags, IT SHOWS! It sucks harder than any sequel has ever sucked! And who the fuck is Zeb? Why am I supposed to care about him? Why is totally metal Toby obsessed with whether he loves her? Why does nothing happen for the entire book? Why was it even written?
Duuude.
I want to give you a million thumbs up for this. Also, “Mags” (giggles).
NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE POST APOCALYPSE?!!! WTF?
Also, this entire book reads EXACTLY like she wrote it btwn gigs on a fking train.
Don’t even get me started on the non-resolution of the STANDOFF THAT WAS THE CLIMAX OF THE OTHER 2 BOOKS. Reeeeaaaaaalllllllly phoning it in there, Mags.
Oh God, I’ve had MaddAdam on my to-read pile for ages and I was really looking forward to it and now I’m scared.
oh dear, I just started reading Orynx and Crank. This bodes ill.
*Atwood
I found the critical acclaim over the Oryx & Crake trilogy really puzzling and I actually love some of Atwood’s work (she’s super uneven though). It was as if most mainstream critics haven’t read any SF or fantasy and found all her ideas to be so exciting and fresh! When really as a long time fan of genre writing they felt quite stale to me.
Exactly so. And the economics of O&C didn’t make any sense. If you’re going to write “what if” fiction, you are required to actually ask yourself, “what if?”
(Big plus to China Mieville in this respect, incidentally, so reviled upthread.)
I would be so gratified if you would read my list of phrases that made me cringe in MaddAddam. http://tvpuppy.tumblr.com/post/82978007921/an-inc…
See, my brain couldn’t even get started on the deeper stuff because I was SO DONE with having to force my gaze over “AnooYoo” like nails over a blackboard.
I read this and I LOVED IT even though it triggered my hatred anew for words I purposely forgot. PIGOON. MOFO PIGOONS (read is Sam Jackson voice)?! And PROSTIBOT?! are you even trying? Upon consideration, the worst crime of the global mega corp is downsizing the Creative Team in the Advertising department.
Oh, while I’m at it, when I was in high school someone lent me Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, and I read all those damn books and hated them. HATED THEM. Yes, Jessica Darling, you’re a wonderful unique special snowflake, so much more special than all these other high school girls! SO SPECIAL! So very different! But mostly because I hated Marcus because there was never a worse character than “white boy with dreadlocks who Understands Other Cultures and smokes weed and is super brilliant and writes shitty poetry and sleeps with tons of girls but YOU, you are Special and Different, he loves you!” and blah blah DUDE MARCUS SOUNDS LIKE A TOOL. Marcus grows up to live in a dingy apartment smoking weed for breakfast lunch and dinner and wears horrible white-boy dreads and doesn’t subscribe to Your Bullshit Norms, Maaaan!
Then the fifth book was just so horribly, egregiously bad. It was worse than the first four books put together. NEVER READ THESE BOOKS CHRIST.
The fifth book was worse than the first four books multiplied together, or exponented together. Even for the genre (shitty YA by the numbers), it was bad. SO BAD. I don’t even remember why it was bad. I think because Jessica was such a nasty shit to all her friends, I was like, you know, you deserve Marcus the asshole.
Oh my god, no kidding. Yes, you’re so special and deep and unlike all those other high school students and college students! Don’t go around trashing them, though, you horrible piece of human garbage, you are not better than them because you are not blonde and popular. Yegads. They deserved each other and they could have a garbage wedding filled with garbage serving garbage and attended by giant piles of garbage in a fetid swamp in August.
Didn’t she do something horrible about a friend’s wedding too? I almost want to reread it just to see how horrible everything was again but I am not quite that much of a masochist.
Doesn’t she miss her friends’ wedding in one book because she’s too damn busy hanging out with Marcus in an airport doing stupid shit or something? It’s either that, or her acting like a heinous brat at her sister’s wedding. I don’t know, she’s horrible in most of the books to everyone, so.
I still haven’t read the Fifth book, even though I still kind of like them. But I can’t tell if I like the series and have re-read because of familiarity or what. But I realized at some point that I do not really like Jessica. And while I liked Marcus, I realize that he might be the Actual Worst.
I think I kept waiting for Jessica to be self-aware of all the ways she is a shit person, but I don’t think she ever really does.
Don’t read it unless you want your entire month to be ruined, and unless you want your dislike to colour all the rest of the books, too. Awful.
Yeesh. Maybe I’ll just keep never getting around to it.
Those first books were so good at the time.
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch a late response, but YES. I enjoyed them the first time through, but then did a re-read, and was like “holy shit what was I thinking”. I never read the fifth, though, and that sounds like a good call.
I know this isn’t really *literary* but I hated Bossypants because it made me realize that Tiny Fey is kind of terrible and casually-racist-for-humor’s-sake and now I can’t really enjoy anything she is involved in. Amy Poehler can still do no wrong.
oh no, really? I thought the casual racism on 30 Rock was cause she was making fun of Liz Lemon’s awkward middle-class white feminism
If a man talked about how much he hated “whores” as often and gleefully as Tina Fey does, we would rightfully call him a misogynist.
This too! Misogyny and racism. Not a good look for you Tina.
I still like Tina Fey but thought her book was so terribly written! It was like no one considered editing it (or even proofreading it) because she’s so famous. Same with Mindy Kaling’s book.
Yes! They were both so “eh, okay, whatever” to me. At least they were short.
I also hate Bossypants, because it is the blandest, blandest thing.
Ugh! Yes. And always referring to people as ‘the gays’ and all her millions of ‘gay friends’. Why not just call them your friends? I got about halfway through that tripe before I realised it wasn’t all some clever joke – it was just bad.
I liked a lot of it but the story where she brings up a lot of racist stereotypes about black dudes just to prove how “cool” her dad is was very, very uncomfortable.
I know! I was so sad to read it and have my respect for Tina Fey fall a little bit. But it was just so boring and some parts so boringly problematic.
My world changed for the better about ten years ago when I realized I didn’t *have* to finish a book if I didn’t like it. My Goodreads list is full of titles marked “did-not-finish.” In fact, just last night I got three paragraphs into Lisa Gardner’s Fear Nothing and tossed it right back into the library basket. Having said all that, I finished Where’d You Go, Bernadette and cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone loved that book. I hated it, didn’t find it funny at all, and every time I see it on someone’s list of favorites I give them the side-eye just a little bit.
I realized I could do this when I started working as a bookseller! Life’s too short.
I have only recently started doing this mercilessly and it is so great.
Although interestingly (maybe only to me) ruthlessly not finishing books has made me realise that style is the most important thing for me. I just bailed halfway through a book about Houdini working for the Secret SErvice and I want to know how it ends and what happens, but not enough to sit through the writing.
Just flip to the end! You can do that, and no one will ever know. It’s so freeing, I can’t even tell you.
I made the same discovery a few years ago and every time I add something to my equivalent list on LibraryThing, I think “There should really be more things on this list. Like 25 years’ worth.”
I hated She’s Come Undone so much that I wanted to call the book review column I wrote for my college paper “Bring Me the Head of Wally Lamb.” They wouldn’t let me.
I implore you to write this review anyway. It’s never too late.
My teenage self liked She’s Come Undone enough to make my adult self read We Are Water, which was so horrible that I had to go back and reread She’s Come Undone and now I have yet another example of how tortured and clueless my teenage self was. (sigh)
YES. yes.
Oh thank god, I hated this book so much! What a relief to have partners in vitriol.
I hated this book more than any book I have ever read. I hated everyone in it and refuse to read anything else by Wally Lamb because of it. I am so glad to find someone who hated it as much as I did!
That book changed my life. I read it on a trip with my dad to visit a law school and the whole trip was so tainted by that train wreck of a book that I could not bring myself to stop reading because I was too young and stupid to understand I was allowed to do such things (seriously, am I remembering rightly that there is 1) death by tollbooth and 2) a new age-y rebirth reenactment in the same book?) that I ended up picking one of the other schools I got into mostly so I wouldn’t have to think about that book every time I saw the school.
I hate Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman, which is always recommended to me with an ‘ooh, you’ll love this!’
I also hate Mansfield Park. I’m sorry but Fanny you are the worst and when people get dinner invitations from you and your boring cousin/husband they will sigh and roll their eyes.
Ugh, yes I forgot about Mansfield Park. I didn’t hate it all the way through, but the end made me SO MAD. Sill makes me mad, now that I think about it.
Ugh, I couldn’t even finish Mansfield Park. I don’t know how it ends and I don’t care.
And I love me some Austen.
I ALSO DID NOT LIKE NEVERWHERE
I love Mansfield Park but I LOATHE Fanny, she is the drippiest of all possible drips.
See, I love Mansfield Park because the ONLY PERSON in the book who gets what she actually wants is shy, underrated, overanalyzing-everything-because-nobody-else-cares Fanny, who has been told explicitly for most of her life that she does not matter as much as other people because she is Not Privileged and they are Privileged and she should be grateful for any attention they give her. When I felt shy and mousy and overlooked in years past, it was a very important book for me. I still love it for that even as I’ve embraced my inner Mary Crawford a little more.
…Plus it has an anal sex joke. In Jane Austen! Who knew!
I love MP and Fanny!
Rears and vices INDEED.
And Fanny was probably the only person living at Mansfield Park who actually *got* that joke, what with the perpetually drunk father in the marines and all…
I like Pride and Prejudice just fine, but Elizabeth Bennet kind of ruined it for all the other protagonists, being so constantly witty and badass and not-technically-beautiful-but-darn-it-there’s-just-something-so-attractive-about-her and whatnot. The next one I read after it in high school was Sense and Sensibility and I was all YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE INTERESTED IN THESE PEOPLE. Until I realized that I basically AM Elinor Dashwood. And experienced my first late-blooming sexual awakening as a result of seeing Alan Rickman play Colonel Brandon.
I apparently have many feels about Jane Austen.
Yes, yes, this! I love MP and Fanny more than any of the other Austen books and heroines for these reasons and also because I kind of think that the ending is supposed to be kind of a horror.
I read Mansfield Park at 14 because my little brother got the only copy of Goblet of Fire that my parents would buy us, and he was such a SLOW reader that I needed to distract myself. It did not improve my mood. When I studied it in college, I liked it much better, but there’s a reason why there hasn’t been a really convincing adaptation of that novel.
Ugh, Mansfield Park is the worst. My pity for Fanny keeps me from hating her too much, but what about her terrible cousin/husband? How he grooms her into his perfect woman and then ignores her for years before he’s finally like, “Oh, the hottie that I actually wanted is gone, better go after my backup.” Ewwwwwww.
I love Austen, but Mansfield Park is definitely my least favorite of her novels. I just can’t get behind a heroine who finds amateur theatricals morally objectionable.
I tend to hate pretty much all Neil Gaiman novels, and feel like I will be socially ostracized if I confess as much. I was all up on American Gods at first, but the last hundred pages or so made me SO GODDAMN FRUSTRATED I COULD BREAK SOMETHING
OH SO THE ENTIRE BUILDUP OF THIS BOOK IS GONNA FIZZLE NOW
THEY’RE JUST GOING TO DECIDE *NOT* TO FIGHT
OR DO ANYTHING AT ALL, REALLY
IS THAT HOW IT IS
OKAY
COOL
YEAH
GREAT
I hate Neil Gaiman and everyone recommends the books to me since I’m “intelligent” and “quirky”. I also hate Terry Pratchett. Well, not hate. They are just so BLAH for how famous they are. I’m tempted to just start writing something that’s actually funny whenever I happen to read one of their things. I bet Gaiman is totally insufferable in real life too. MALLORY WE NEED DIRTBAG NEIL GAIMAN.
I dated this guy once and I pretty much figured it wouldn’t work out as soon as he told me “Good Omens” was his favorite book.
It’s an excellent tell. Right up there with “I don’t accept the scientific theory of evolution”.
The only thing of Gaiman’s that I like is Sandman, and even that has some really iffy spots. I got two pages in to American Gods, encountered a character called Low-Key Lyesmith, went “Uh-HUH”, and that was pretty much how the whole book went.
I really like Neverwhere, but will be the first to concede it’s kind of a mess as a book. The BBC miniseries is much better.
– The Dune books written by Brian Herbert. They are PAINFULLY BAD. I really liked the original Dune series (okay, I never read the last 2 books) so when I saw Brian’s House Atreides prequel for 25 cents at a yard sale, I jumped on it. Then I got to a passage where the Emperor says of one of his counselors “He is my ears” – and then stops to wonder out loud if it should be “He are my ears” instead. Then someone whispers to him and he goes, “I have just been informed that it is ‘He is my ears.'” I couldn’t go on after that.
– I read Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman series when I was in high school and really loved it, but Seventeen Against the Dealer fucking blows. Dicey is supposed to be street-smart and level-headed and practical. Then she lets a random drifter with a gambling problem help her out with her fledgling home business, decides he can be trusted to deposit an unendorsed cheque for her, then is utterly shocked when he cashes the cheque and skips town. NICE GOING THERE. Again, it was a stupidly clunky sentence that really sealed the deal and put me off the book for good – in this case, “He sounded careful, as though he were being careful.”
Yes! All of those prequel books (and I’m enough of a Dune fan to have endured them all) are the WORST. Thankfully Frank Herbert wasn’t alive to see his son butcher the stories he had imagined. It has to be the exact reason the phrase “rolling over in his grave” was ever conceived.
The existence of those books offends me. I want to use so many hyperboles whenever I think about them.
I’ve picked up two of them on different occasions, read the first page and had to resist hurling it at the nearest bookstore employee. I know it’s not their fault. Bad writing is one thing, but bad writing/plotting/everything shoved into the hollowed out shell of something I genuinely value… UGH. I checked out the wiki for the plots when I like…I don’t know, forgot what my own bile tasted like or something. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or very, very afraid that you were able to make it through all (!) of them.
Seventeen Against the Dealer is worse than Jo March marrying that German professor.
Seventeen Against the Dealer was the worst! It drove me nuts that Dicey was so incredibly stupid. And then she goes back to her boyfriend all humbled because she screwed up at life, and he buys her a tree to show he still loves her even though she had the arrogance to think she could succeed on her own. If I’m remembering correctly, through my haze of teenage fury.
Not to defend the books but they weren’t really written by Brian so much as licensed by him they written by noted hack Kevin J. Anderson.
Anderson is a hack but he always meets his deadlines so he is always getting hired to write adaptions and shit. Avoid them all.
Oh, I tried to read something by him once. It definitely gave the impression of being written by a hack.
Kevin J Anderson is my personal rage button.
I spent the whole book thinking the drifter was her deadbeat dad finally turning up, but too much of a coward to say who he was. Then that ending happened.
I too used to love the original Dune books but recently reread them AND THEY ARE AWFUL TOO. The things that people ~mystically intuit~ are COMMON FUCKING SENSE and all the characters are so patronising.
I was just reading this thread in amusement, wishing I had a hate read, and then I remembered – OH RIGHT. I hate Dune so much I ended a relationship over it.
I had completely forgotten how much I hate Dune until I read this! SO MUCH. Almost as much as I hate Heinlein’s Glory Road.
Fill us in a bit more!
please.
OH and all of the damn Game of Thrones books, even before he jumped the shark (no spoilers, don’t worry) in the last one. UGH!
YES. Ned Stark was Too Stupid To Live and I’m glad he didn’t, yet I am still annoyed at how dumb GRRM seems to think we all are. Plus all the weird creepy shit with women.
The creepy woman shit turned me off completely. My husband read the entire series so I just mine him for spoilers and ruin everyone’s day on Twitter.
Wait, down here safely in the replies, can you tell me what part of the last book was the shark-jump for you? I have a little hate mixed into my love for the series (especially any time a POV character starts having THOUGHTS) so I’d love to know.
sure! WARNING: GoT SPOILERS. So there are many things that irritate me about the books, more as they go on. But the one really specific shark-jump is bringing back Catelyn (so not last book, but the one before). It’s a copout. Ok, so kill everyone anyone likes. Fine. But then DO NOT BRING THEM BACK. That makes all the deaths following seem stupid, Jon Snow. Dead. fine. but chances of him coming back? greater than zero. effect lost. and the whole Brienne and Jaimie thing? Her death? yep, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
wait Brienne died? I…didn’t even notice that happening. (I am a terrible skim reader)
She didn’t. She was given a choice to either betray Jaime or be hanged/watch as Pod is hanged and the book ends on a cliffhanger. In the next one we learn that she apparently chose the first option.
that’s what i mean! he’s not committing to deaths in the same way anymore, it’s as if he realized that by killing off main characters he’ll have to make secondary ones more important and he has said on his blog that he’s lost track of a bunch of those anyway. I wonder if he’ll actually finish the series. the pressure must be insane.
Oh god, Game of Thrones. I wasted too much time trying to like/read Game of Thrones and now I hate it, with a poisonous spite. My hatred of those books now exceeds all logical bounds and extends to the television show and all the actors in it. In fact, I hate Game of Thrones so much I have developed my own Game of Thrones curses:
May the book series never be finished.
May the television show be cancelled abruptly.
May neither the books nor the television show ever be discussed 15 years into the future, expect in a footnote, where a critic politely but tellingly writes “they did not age well.”
May every person everywhere be suddenly struck with the writhing second-hand embarrassment I feel upon considering the existence of Tyrion Lannister.
May Martin develop boob-blindness, and never again be able to see or imagine a woman’s breast.
THIS. a million times this. Can you please go read and hate T. Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and write some curses?
That book is full of loathsome characters, and yet I think the curses would be better directed at Hardy (who, full disclosure, I do not exactly hate per se, but rather like and loathe complicatedly all at once). Sadly Hardy is dead and therefore impervious to my curses, but were he alive, he would need only one:
May the Tess you have created spring fully to life and then may she snub you, never giving you the opportunity you so desperately desire to both punish and adore her. May she live happily and long with a man who treats her well, and never think of you again.
Hardy wrote some decent poetry. but Nothing excuses Tess. Good Curse!
Tess can be summarized thusly: “Woman exists, is punished for it, is beautiful, is punished for it, accepts this as her due, dies.” And it’s so damn voyeuristic; Hardy seems to enjoy the prose about her pain in exactly the same way he enjoys the prose about her beauty.
I forgot about Tropic of Cancer! I read half of it and had to stop because the sex is so boring. How in the world can someone make sex so boring.
TROPIC OF CANCER SUCKS SO BAD.
I have an ex who thought Henry Miller was an amazing writer and Tropic of Cancer was his favorite book. I had no idea what that meant until it was too late.
“Women in Love” This was so bad I tortured my roommates with random quotes. My personal favorite “she had a full mystic knowledge of his suave loins of darkness.”
Anything by Herman Hesse.
AHHH WOMEN IN LOVE DH LAWRENCE YOU UNDERSTAND NEITHER WOMEN NOR LOVE AND PROBABLY NOT “IN” EITHER.
Suave loins of darkness! I must read it now.
See, I read that quote and think ‘Amazing, I have to read that book!’. I have questionable taste…
My best friend was gifted Women in Love by her boyfriend. He said it was his favorite book and would help her understand him better. So it was really no surprise a few months later when she had to call the cops on him for stalking and breaking into her car after she broke up with him.
It’s weird that I like that book, but there is a part of me that cackled at how utterly fucked everyone found themselves at the end and I took enjoyment in it. “SEE, you suffocate that poor woman, of course she is going to tell you off. I am GLAD you ended up the way you did you lousy man.”
sweet Christ is it as bad as Lady Chatterley’s Lover? CAN it be? you know the bit in LCL where he tells a woman he has only just had sex with how completely disgusting it is when a woman has an orgasm because it feels like A BIRD PECKING AWAY AT YOU WITH ITS BEAK which unmans a man so it is very inconsiderate of a woman to try and have one. and I read this book when I was thirteeeeen and never reread it since and I can still never forget that passage. among others. . serves me right for trying to be a junior fancy pervert with D.H. Lawrence and Anais Nin and all that crap. AND HENRY MILLER. who can rot in hell, see if I care. if I ever have to bring up an adolescent girl my best piece of sex talk advice will be, never think you are too good to get your kicks from Jean Auel and Flowers in the Attic like all the other girls, or you will be sorry later.
I am now writing that down to use in casual conversation. Thank you.
DH Lawrence is just the worst. One of the few authors I’ve actually studied who I hated.
Basically everything about Herman Hesse and the menfolk who expound on his profundity.
Similarly, Life of Pi and The Alchemist.
Haha, agreed on both accounts! I really tried to love Lawrence, but just couldn’t (though *Sons and Lovers* isn’t half bad). Hesse just bores me to tears (except *Siddhartha*, but maybe because it’s short so it’s over before you know it).
Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel. Overwrought and sloppy. Boring to boot.
I’m loathe to even mention these here because OF COURSE, but I hate-read the Fifty Shades trilogy and haven’t stopped weeping for humanity since.
I once went to a party where the host read quotes from Fifty Shades so we could all laugh at how bad it was. So very, very bad.
I was going to post about Beatrice and Virgil too! So bizarre, and horrible, and left me feeling really super weird.
Oh, and Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.
Geographical mistakes are my particular hobby horse. I can’t help it. They are catastrophic book ending errors.
Yiddish Policeman’s Union? No moose on Baranof Island, Mr Chabon.
Jhumpa Lahiri, you can’t have a house in east Seattle (like that’s even a thing) with a view of downtown and Lake Washington from the same side of your house. I wanted to read your fiction collection, but how can I trust you after this?
I recognize this is petty and not as good as hating Grossman’s The Magicians because of the girlfriend who is only there to provide a man’s sexual awakening and then killed. (Though I hate that too.)
Or Love in the Time of Chlolera where a female characters sexual awakening is achieved through rape. It was my first Marquez, I had wanted to read him. I loved that book until that moment, and I put it down never to pick it up again, or any other Marquez either.
I hate those things, but I really hate geographical errors too.
Love in the Time of Cholera is one of the only things my husband and I really disagree about. I couldn’t possibly bring myself to finish it (though I didn’t care enough to say I hated it).
You can hate the Magicians, too! The characters, who are camped out in the Catskills, go to Buffalo one afternoon for supplies. It’s a 7 hour drive in real life.
They do have magic, though.
Yay! I’m a West Coaster and my grasp of New York geography is spotty, but I am delighted to have another reason to hate The Magicians.
Hate the Magicians!!! HATEHATEHATE – all fancy and misogynist and hateful and snotty – the worst of Narnia and Holden Caulfield in one self-obsessed, badly behaved, entitled crap-fest. Hate.
yeah. definitely.
Oh man, cosign. This isn’t a book, but I was devastated when I learned that “he’s a-headed west through the Cumberland Gap / ta Johnson City, Tennessee” in the Old Crow Medicine Show song “Wagon Wheel” is totally impossible.
I feel similar about Russian mistakes. I know not everyone speaks Russian, but if you’re going to throw around Russian words in your book, get an editor who does. Turned Ian Frazier’s “Travels in Siberia” – otherwise just a very dull book – into a hate-read for me, and I still roll my eyes anytime I see his work in the New Yorker. I also stopped reading some historical fiction about the Russian revolution (I think it was called “Sashenka”) a few years back because they named a servant ‘Pantemelion’. NOPE IT’S PANTELEIMON, I mean JEEZ didn’t you read His Dark Materials?
I know how you feel. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read that mix up Spanish and Italian words. It’s not like it’s hard to find a dictionary or a speaker of those languages!
I threw a romance novel across the room once because an Italian character referred to soccer as “futbol”.
Oh! I speak (some–I’m a 3rd-generation Belarusian-American but I’ve studied it on and off forever and have a Russophone husband) Russian and I *HATE* the current trend of putting fake Russian in fantasy novels, or setting them in a fake Russia-like place. Even Robin McKinley–et tu, Robin McKinley? She took the trouble to put some real Japanese in her latest novel, Shadows, but the cultural placeholder for the Slavic speakers was full of painful, embarrassing gibberish. I wish people would either do proper research or knock it the f@ck off.
Nooooo, not you too, Robin McKinley!
In Lolita, Humbert and Lolita have a fight on the corner of two streets in Phoenix that do not cross. This has always bothered me, since I read that passage while sitting at a bus stop on one of them.
I bet if you called Nabokov out on that he would pretend like he did it on purpose.
I have a (much older, almost retired) colleague who had Nabokov for French Literature as an undergrad. Apparently, Nabokov used to give tests with questions like “what was the color of Madam Bovary’s dress on page 39”.
When I told him about my experience at the bus stop in Phoenix, he laughed for a good 10 minutes. I have rarely seen a person so full of Schadenfreude.
This is an incredible story. My heart is filled with Schadenfreude-by-proxy.
In a zombie novel called Devil’s Wake by Tananarive Due and her husband, where the zombie plague starts with people taking both a flu vaccine and Japanese mushrooms, and then the zombies get rooted to the earth with some red fungus after a while and there are surprise psychic abilities; the thing that bothered me most was the geographical error. Where in one chapter the characters, in a horrible snowstorm, take an hour to get out of the mountains after crossing the border going south from Oregon to California. The next chapter, they drive 40 miles across the border and stop in Weed. One-you’re in the mountains for something like 130 miles after crossing the border there, which obviously takes much more than an hour even without a snowstorm. And two-Weed is very much still in the mountains.
Geographical errors, yes. I read Annabel (Kathleen Winter) a couple years ago, which is partially set in a very fictionalized version of my hometown. I kept telling myself, this book is fiction, it doesn’t HAVE to be accurate – but it was too jarring. The historical inaccuracy didn’t help much, either. Kathleen, do your research – by 1968 there were exactly ZERO towns (and very few individuals) in this area whose entire economy depended on hunting and trapping.
The Magicians was horrible. The pacing was very strange, and the incorporation of a book that was almost The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe really put me off.
I heard somewhere that it was actually going to be the Narnia books, but for legal reasons he had to write in a fake placeholder book instead.
I went through this whole thread thinking that I couldn’t remember finishing a book I hated, but then you mentioned The Magicians. Man, that was godawful. An insufferable protagonist is miserable all book long and, though life throws magical opportunity after magical opportunity at him, nothing gets better. Eugggh.
I read the first two chapters of The Magicians and put it aside. Oh hey a coming of age story about a boy in a new england prep school who is angsty about not getting laid, yawwwwn. There’s probably going to be at least one paragraph about masturbation before the fifth chapter.
Not at all surprised to hear about the girlfriend getting killed. I’m glad I stopped reading it.
Not precisely a geographical mistake, but in John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief, Grisham has his main character, whose name I have blotted out, go into the Cafe Du Monde and order a bagel and a seltzer. I howled in fury and threw the book (which frankly I was already hating, because Grisham writes for crap) across the room.
As we all know, you can order three things at the Cafe Du Monde: beignets, coffee, and milk. Four, if water counts.
You sure as fuck can’t order SELTZER and BAGELS. Fuck’s sake.
I THINK MARGARET ATWOOD IS REALLY, REALLY OVERRATED.
There, I finally said it.
If you absolutely want to read novels by a Canadian author named Margaret, try Margaret Laurence.
I hate her groups of women being horrible to each other books.
Yeah, yeah, the patriarchy poisons everything, but do we really have to let it poison our fictional relationships too?
Lady, I have enough to be
mad about in real life without the creeping, beautifully written paranoia that my friends are betraying me.
Oryx and Crake is one of those books that haunts me and not in good way. On the strength of that I refuse to read anything else she’s written.
also it took me a long time to realize the robber bride was super racist, ie this thing where you have one ‘ethnically ambiguous’ character and she creates chaos in the lives of these bougie white women and they all have their personal fantasy about her but it’s lies, all lies, until she dies in the end. ugh.
I hated the portrayal of Oryx in Oryx and Crake – innocent/sexualized Asian girl/woman with a mysterious past. Maybe there’s a more charitable interpretation of this character, like she’s trying to make a point about something, but it was full of overplayed tropes about Asian female characters.
I really like her work, but I get where you’re coming from – she’s not as good as some of the acclaim suggests. I liked The Blind Assassin, but I didn’t love it, and I saw the twist coming several hundred miles away!
I still don’t know what to think about the twist in Alias Grace, or the ending. Look, I was released from prison, then married a dude who had testified against me, and now I’m pregnant even though I’m in my mid/late 40s! (Which I know is not a biological impossibility, but it’s still pretty unlikely, and seemed like an unnecessary and desperate attempt to cram a happy ending in there.)
My mother has your Canadian Margaret opinions too. I vehemently disagree but we’ve stopped fighting about it.
Penelopiad is honestly one of the worst, worst things I have ever read. Nothing about it is good.
Omg, my friend recommended that one to me because she loved it, and I always think of that as an example of how we just have very, very, very different taste in books.
Lady Oracle was drivel.
Aargh! I have had such conflicting feelings about her for years! I just – I don’t – I don’t like them! I like her opinions. I like what I’ve read of her speaking as herself. I just – pigoons? PIGOONS????
Oryx and Crake and accompanying series is just not very good and she’s clearly so proud of writing this ~unusual setting~ about ~issues~ without considering that genre writers have worn out those tropes decades ago and done it better.
Bing bing!
Yes. I can admire the craft of some of her novels (The Blind Assassin, not the sfnal ones which are just horrible), but I just really, really, REALLY do not enjoy reading them.
I did like Surfacing somewhat, which was her very first; I think whatever direction she ended up deciding to go in got rid of all the things I liked about Surfacing, sadly.
I do love the one volume of her poetry I have read.
Her poetry is glorious.
THANK YOU. I’m an aspiring Canadian and have tried SO HARD to like Margaret Atwood (and Alice Munro–we had to read stuff by her in my freshman English class, which was about the female bildungsroman/kuntslerroman). But I CAN’T. She’s a riveting public speaker, but reading her stuff gives me a lingering bad taste in my mind. Monsieur Siniichulok knows my feelings about her work and announced the other day that he’d seen a stack of her books out by the dumpster in our building. His theory is that immigrants (we live in a high rise with mostly other immigrants) try to like her because they’re “supposed to” and nobody does but nobody will admit it.
As an aspiring Canadian (and what a delightful way to put it) in a relationship with an actual Canadian, one of our uniting stances is anti-Margaret Atwood’s fiction (we are cautiously pleased by her poetry at times).
Man, I really want to like her but aside from one of her short stories I can’t really do Atwood. I read Oryx and Crake and her characterization of the Southeast Asian trafficking survivor kind of bugged me. I don’t know, she just never came across as human to me, and while I know that there was awareness to the way she was exotified, it was still a bit much.
Sigh.
I thought Handmaid’s Tale was really compelling, in its way.
So, when I picked up Oryx and Crake, expected to find it to be brilliant . . . or I thought I was supposed to find it brilliant . . . but I didn’t. I found it dark and twisted and vile, with no redeeming value or especially interesting insights into the ethics of bioengineering, which is what I’m told it was Supposed to be All About.
Oh god, His Dark Materials really pissed me off when I was a kid. In the first book you’ve got this amazing self-sufficient, brilliant girl living by her wits as the protagonist and I LOVED it. Then, in the second, suddenly I’m supposed to give a fuck about this whiny little boy and his daddy feels? 10-year-old me was appalled by this bait and switch.
Oh yeah I remember being annoyed by that as a kid too! But Lyra does eventually come back.
I forgot how annoyed I was by the pov in the second book! I still love the trilogy as a whole though.
That threw me for a such a loop when I red it in 7th grade. Gah.
…Yet I refuse to hate the books purely to spite my very religious family.
I fucking love Will.
But the third book is a such a mess.
I love Will too (and Lyra, of course) but #3 is a total shitshow. My husband read it aloud to me in the hospital after my daughter was born, and we had to keep stopping and WTF’ing every few pages.
Yes! I was so into this series at first, and then…
I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE THEORETICAL EVOLUTION OF DIAMOND-SHAPED WHEEL-COWS, PULLMAN
The theoretical evolution of diamond-shaped wheel-cows is my favourite bit!
Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one. *basks in Is Not Alone feels*
I hate-read the entire series JUST so I could say “No, I read the whole series, IT NEVER GETS ANY BETTER.” That man can not write a believable character, and he has absolutely no idea what a normal conversation sounds like.
No lie – I know I’ve read all three books, but only remember what happened in the first one. I have zero recollection of the plot, characters, description, ANYTHING from the second two books, save that the author seemed to have climbed up his own ass. And like you, I loved the first one.
Same! I tried to reread recently and copped out partway through the second one because I just didn’t care anymore.
The first book is so great! And then…
I’m sort of glad that the first movie didn’t do well enough to warrant making the whole trilogy, tbh.
Yes! I came to read about armoured bears and the nature of souls, not a crisis of modern masculinity.
I only read HDM a few years ago and I was severely underwhelmed.
Also: The Woman in White. One of my great disappointments in life was when Laura turned up alive.
Why is she the love-interest? Does she have a personality? These mysteries will NEVER be revealed.
Marian, with her corset free awesomeness and weird chemistry with Fosco, is the only redeeming thing in this. I wish Collins had done a series with Marian, crime solver.
Exactly! When Laura “died” I really hoped that meant the hero was going to wise up and get with Marian, but no. Plus Collins kept harping on how unattractive Marian was, because obviously any intelligent, self sufficient woman is a hag.
And basically she was unattractive because she had a strong jaw and a big nose? Like, wow.
Wilkie Collins — so adept at creating awesome characters surrounded by terribleness.
However! The best thing is that Collin got lots of letters from men describing themselves and their fortunes and asking to be introduced to the lady that Mariane was based on.
I love this book but hate that Walter narrates so much of it instead of Mariane.
The only book I think I’ve ever read that has been so bad it actually made me happy instead of annoyed is:
James Clavell’s Gai-Jin. There is a French woman with a KILLER VAGINA (mostly sort of metaphorically?) in it.
It is super racist, and Orientalist, and you can tell it’s written by a dirty old man, and has the weirdest rape scene I have ever read in my entire life in it, but it is just hilarious.
Oh, I also am pretty into this YA historical romance series called His Fair Assassin, which is about assassin nuns in Medieval Brittany.
I did not realize that I needed this in my life, but I do.
I HATE THE ROAD. I HATE IT. OH GOD, HOW I HATE IT.
I hate its turgid prose, I hate its masturbatory grimness, I hate its laughable literary pretension, and oh yeah – I hate its goddamn MISOGYNY.
I want to tie Cormac McCarthy down and force him to watch me burn all copies of it with the fire of my loathing.
YES, this is another one I forgot too. So turgid, and so ashy.
Ugh, yes! Torturous.
I liked The Road, but I *love* your hatred of it.
I want to tie Cormac McCarthy down and force him to watch me burn all copies of it with the fire of my loathing.
While you cackle “How’s this for ‘We carry the fire,’ McCarthy? HOW’D YA LIKE THIS FIRE?!”
A+++ this is beautiful. Bless you for completing the fantasy.
OMG YES, PLEASE REPEAT THIS SOME MORE. I am so tired of people telling me what a towering achievement it is and how beautiful and meaningful and…. argh. A guy I spent far too much time on would wax lyrical about it, claiming it made him want to become a father someday and how he valued life more blah blah blah. I’d never read it. When he ended things, I couldn’t read it for a while, but when I eventually did… well, let’s just say I could have read it earlier, and I wouldn’t have wasted six months of my life.
I spent a lot of time convinced I was just reading a not-so-good translation. Turns out, The Road was originally written in English. I distinctly remember the phrase “autistic darkness” being used to describe the night and being confused about what McCarthy thought he was saying.
VARY THE LENGTH OF YOUR SENTENCES, CORMAC MCCARTHY.
He could not vary the length of his utterance and he could not cow himself to the laws of punctuating or naming for the ease of some imagined imaginary reader. It was cold in the writer’s room and he would make no fire. No fire to warm his cold hands where the skin cracked and bled against the typewriter keys, no fire to warm his heart to any but the white man who stood all but nameless at the center of his story, a pole on which the gaunt remnants of a person draped in the sepulchral twilight as the sun went down. Went down for the last time maybe, he didn’t know.
+1 genius
UGH CORMAC MCCARTHY. UGGGGGGH.
I hate any book with an author who considers themselves above basic punctuation. The Road, Blindness.
OH MY GOD THANK YOU.
It’s BLINDNESS, dude. THEY SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO TELL WHEN A NEW PERSON IS TALKING.
I like The Road. But there is a bit where it takes three paragraphs of word-wallowing to convey the information: “He stood up. It was very dark.”
This website is old hat, so forgive me if you already know of it, but Yelping With Cormac is a blog that writes yelp reviews (something I hate) in the tone of Cormac McCarthy (something I also hate). And like how gin and tonics combine two things that are gross on their own and makes something awesome, the end result is lovely. Tho it is difficult to process feelings of positivity about both yelp and cormac. http://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/post/11950502…
YES. YES. 10000 times THIS. GOD what an overrated book by an overrated writer. GOD.
Yes. Oddly enough my mom loves this book and it kills me. What is so f-ing awesome about a dad who drags his kid though some of the worst physical and emotional shit any kid should ever have to experience/see, just to leave the kid with some people he met for 15 minutes who seemed like they could see the light in the kid? Sorry for the spoilers, but WTF, that kid is going to be such a broken human being after that. I have the same issue with zombie books, too. I just don’t get why living means you win if living is going to suck shit for the rest of your lifetime. Please just give me the sleeping pill the mom takes at the beginning of The Road.
Yes! The Road. Awful. If you want to read a father-son existential journey narrative, read The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban. If you want to read a post-apocalyptic journey narrative, read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. There is never any need to read Cormac McCarthy.
Portnoy’s Complaint and by extension every dude who tries to convince me otherwise. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. And most especially Brave, New World.
Oh my god, arguments with dudes about Portnoy’s Complaint are the worrrrssssst. Why is it that every dude who reads that book also gets *super defensive about it*??
Because they really need to believe masturbation is that interesting.
Yesssss I finished that book and was like “wait, what was that even about, at all?” Apparently jerking it. Wooooooo.
oh god Portnoy’s Complaint, in which one sad erection is practically an axis mundi. WE GET IT, the protagonist’s most important and difficult relationship is with his penis.
I probably should not have read that as a teenaged girl. It did bad things to my head for a while.
It took me like, 4 tries to finish Brave New World. And then I was like, “how did I not know that this massive racism was going to spew forth??”
The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy makes me want to throw-up.
See, as a native Dubliner, everyone keeps telling me I should read this and that it’s a “modern classic” – but why? Everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound terrible to me.
If it wasn’t on my Kindle I would have pitched the damn thing into the fire!
Oh man, this is the best idea. 😀
As a child, I hated Pride and Prejudice. I thought, later in life, that perhaps I had just been too young to appreciate it, so in late high school I tried it again. Twice. I simply cannot bring myself to care about Lizzie Bennet, and it ruins everything. (I also tried Persuasion, and hated that, too. Austen and I were just not meant to be friends.)
As a teenager, I hated The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kozinsky. It was assigned reading by a teacher with otherwise impeccable taste, and I still can’t figure out why it exists. Abundant pointless and confusing sexual violence, and a narrator who never really grows or has a personality, and also it turns out all those people in Poland were actually really nice to the author, so why and how did this catastrophe happen?
Thank you! Pride and Prejudice was the first book I gave up on before finishing. All these boring, shallow, sheltered women sitting in their stupid drawing-room, gossiping — and I’m supposed to care about them why??
It was a bonding moment for me and my dad when we realized that our hatred of this book was something we had in common. I think my mom lost a lot of respect for us both. Her disgusted response was something along the lines of “You people don’t understand satire! And here I thought you were clever!” Yeah, whatever, mom.
Right? People think Austen is like this paragon of social commentary. Perhaps she is, but I do not care *at all* about the people on whom she is commenting. xp
If you feel like trying another, I’d recommend Northanger Abbey – it’s deliberately based on Don Quixote (DQ has read too many tales of chivalry; the protag in Northanger Abbey has read too many gothic novels). So it’s a bit of a parody of gothic novels. And the love interest? He is warm and likeable and funny, and you can totally see why they like each other and would make a good match.
Also? It has an odious man mansplaining to her about carriages in a way that reads delightfully/distressingly modern. Seriously dudes have not changed.
Wait, that sounds like it might be kind of charming. I’ll give it a shot! I’m getting an MA in literature, and I’ve always felt a little bad about my dislike of Austen. (To be fair, my specialization is in early medieval lit, so she isn’t exactly the most relevant, but still. :p)
Had to read it for AP Lit in high school. Got to the lest section, said FUCK THIS, and refused to finish. SO. BORING.
I’m sorry, AP Lit teacher.
I tried to read a bunch of the classics a few years ago and bought Pride and Prejudice for my Kindle. Not only did I find it incredibly boring, there was absolutely no paragraph formatting. Just one endless paragraph that lasted for the entire chapter. Couldn’t take it.
THANK YOU, I am not alone in my blerghness re: Pride and Prejudice. ARE THESE PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO BE LIKABLE? WTF IS THE APPEAL OF DARCY? WHY DO WE CARE?
I marginally enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because Lizzie and Darcy at least had some redeeming/useful qualities.
Oh my God, The Painted Bird! A woman in my book club suggested it, so we all slogged our way through the shit and mud and torture. Then when we met, she said, “You know, I didn’t mean to suggest this. I was thinking of Being There.”
Life of Pi. My God, Life of Pi.
“Which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?”
I PREFER THE STORY WHERE I BUILD A TIME MACHINE AND PREVENT MYSELF FROM READING THIS BOOK,THANKS.
Yay now there are three of us! I don’t even know WHY I finished it, but WHEN I did I slammed it shut, threw it down, and yelled “I hate this book!” I so vividly recall the feeling of mounting rage as I neared the end, realizing it wasn’t going to get better. It’s comforting, in a way.
Ugh, that was the worst. It was so precious, so “look at me, I am using narrative devices to subvert your expectations, aren’t I cute and ethnic!” Shut it, there are books that are actually good at those. I vote we consign Life of Pi to the YA ghetto for having a teen protagonist and also being dumb.
“The YA ghetto” doesn’t want it, take it back.
My English honors society made us read the book and have a goddamn debate about which version we preferred. I voted for anything that made that goddamn quirky Magical Indian more miserable.
Life of Pi. Seriously, what did Yann Martel think he was doing? Did he want me to set the world ablaze with my rage? Because that was my feeling upon closing that book. Why do people love it? What is to love? Nothing.
For contrast: I loved Freedom. Jonathan Franzen’s book about a-holes made me cry real human tears, and yet this book about spirituality and whatever other metaphorical/real garbage enraged me. ARGH. I still feel so angry that I wasted my beach reading time on it. Beach reading time is most precious.
LIfe of Pi is SO OVERRATED and apparently the author is also a rich douche who is terrible to women (one of my profs had a friend who dated him), so.
If only there were a third option where the damn Tiger just ate the protagonist. It would be a better world wherein the wikipedia entry for “Life of Pi” read-
“Instead he immobilizes a female Bengal tiger with tranquilizer darts while her cub escapes to hide in a bush. Parker names the cub Thirsty after its enthusiasm when drinking from a nearby river. The paperwork that accompanies the shipment of the two tigers to Pi’s family’s zoo in Pondicherry states that the cub’s name is “Richard Parker” and the hunter’s given name is “Thirsty” and his surname is “None Given”. Pi and his father find the story so amusing that they continue to call the tiger “Richard Parker”. Then the Tiger ate Pi because, while amusing, Richard Parker was a Tiger and not a metaphor.”
Oh! I remembered one. I really tried to get into 2666 by Roberto Bolano because I loved The Savage Detectives, but I’ll be damned if at the end of each chapter I wasn’t just screaming “You people are all terrible and boring and I don’t really care what the fuck even happens to you!” Maybe important to note that all the main characters were “in academia” which I guess was part of Bolano’s point, but by gosh I don’t need 600 pages of that. No one does.
YES, THAT IS ONE I FORGOT. I finished the whole thing (so got past the shithead academics) and still haaaaaaaaated it.
What happened to the academics? Were they killed off in a fiery plane crash? Cause maybe I would pick up where I left off to read that. (Except, no, you just said the rest of it was terrible, so.)
It actually switches for a long while to clinically describing the murders of dozens and dozens of Mexican women, in a move that replicates the coverage of violence against women and fatigue/helplessness related to the same without meaningfully critiquing or contributing to conversation about the issue whatsoever, and later it switches back to the (academic-free IIRC) story of the Mysterious Author, which has a half-assed tie-in to all the murdering. So, if that’s what you’re into.
No, definitely not into ANY of that. But I am so grateful to you for sating my (waning) curiosity regarding the book. It still occupies space on my shelf and now I can donate it without a shred of guilt.
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH BOLANO IN THE WORLD? WHY IS IT STILL COMING OUT? ISN’T HE DEAD?
Bolano writing zombie COMING TO EAT YOUR BRAINS!
I’m convinced he was a zombie the whole time.
I despise Strangers In Paradise to a degree that I actually threw various volumes of it across the room, went over, picked them up, continued to read, and then threw them again.
This was a generalized experience the year I tried to consume the Gay Lady Canon, because oh my fuck those are some boring-ass NOTHING HAPPENS books.
Sarah Water’s Affinity is the book I hate more than any other, though. I would read it in intervals with my Art History courseware, and whenever one volume became too entirely eye-glazingly loathsome I’d swap to the other, and that’s how I finished both, stuck in a suburb in rural Ontario, it was the worst.
Wide Sargasso Sea’s Caribbean bits were great, as they distantly recall the less-boring parts of the Witch of Blackbird Pond, which I _also_ enjoyed, chiefly due to descriptions of blueberry-based desserts and plain pine flooring.
I despise the Lord of the Rings. It is a travelogue of New Zealand. It is the dullest, longest, boringest, awfullest thing to ever generate a nineteen-ton pile of other awful, non-snappy, unclever things with swords the weight of butter churns. The Hobbit remains perfection.
Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise? I kind of had a love hate/thing when I tried to read it. There were some fun hanging out parts, but Francie’s life was just every-thing-bad-that-happens-to-straight-women-regularly. And I’m not sure if there was a statement being made with the Parker Girls, but it sure felt like one and I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with it.
Heart of Darkness, now more than ever because I have a clue about ZOMG raaaaaaaacism.
The Grapes of Wrath because jiminy christmas kill me now. I can’t take the deadly boredom and depression. “Important” and “literary” can go screw.
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Racism and sexism, sure, but how do you manage to create one of the most amazing genres in existence and immediately have it become boring?
Haven’t yet read Gone Girl, but did make it through Sharp Objects, which is dumb and the worst.
We hate many of the same books, although I really enjoyed Gone Girl (Sharp Objects was HELLA dumb, though).
[High five for Spenser-reference user names.]
Agree, Gone Girl was much better than Sharp Objects.
I was so mad when we read Heart of Darkness in high school. What was the point of reading 99.5% of talking about how evil Kurtz was and we spend what, the last three pages with him? What a letdown.
I struggled through Lord of the Rings, god help me, until I reached the ENTS. Just what that interminable bloody series needed – slow, contemplative TREE CREATURES.
Forgot Sartor Resartus (the only assigned book I didn’t finish during my English degree, I read 2 pages) and Madame Bovary. I don’t believe Flaubert knew any women.
I hate Sartor Resartus. Madame Bovary was the first book I remember detesting.
Let’s be friends!
Yes! Let’s.
My prof said Madame Bovary was supposed to be Flaubert himself, if that helps.
“Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”
“Moi” being a deeply annoying male.
Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina share a place in my mind reserved for that burning irritation you feel on a packed commuter train when you’re forced to overhear a lengthy cellphone conversation, which by the end of your ride, makes you want to force-feed the speaker the phone, and each of her teeth, individually.
Ooh, yes, Anna Karenina, what a silly cow. Seems to me that Tolstoy is perpetually saying to his readers, “But she is so wonderful and fascinating that you have to forgive her for the way she messes other people around.” And if you don’t find her alluring and fascinating then you just think she’s a drama queen, and rather selfish to boot. In this respect she’s similar to Eustacia Vye. “I could have done much..” Yeah? Like what? I’ve got more sympathy for Emma Bovary because Flaubert knows full well that she is silly, and selfish, and not nearly as deep as she thinks she is, and gives her plenty of interior life so that you understand (though you may not necessarily condone) how her youthful romanticism and boredom leads her to a disastrous marriage and then to dalliances, debt and messy suicide. Madame Bovary c’est moi, too, to a certain extent.
I’m into Victorian sensation novels, so the other day I picked up The Doctor’s Wife by M.E. Braddon (better known for Lady Audley’s Secret) and a few pages in I got the horrible feeling that I was actually reading Madame Bovary. And then Braddon introduces a hack writer of sensation novels who goes on a long explanation of how he doesn’t come up with new plots, he just takes the classics and rewrites them as thrillers. And I was like, Okay, I’m out. Thanks for the warning, but no thanks for giving me Madame fucking Bovary when I just wanted a nice book to read.
She’s Come Undone! An Unbearable Work of Heartbreaking Genius (or whatever it was called)! Those Sloppy Firsts books which I kept reading because UGH. Catcher in the fucking Rye.
Among Others and Half a Crown by Jo Walton and the last chapter of My Real Children by her, too. Everything by Emily Giffin. CJ Samson’s Dominion. Everything by Lionel Shriver but “We Need to Talk About Kevin”.
My hatiest book ever was Charity Norman’s The Son-In-Law because sure, he killed his wife but he only meant to hit her and anyways he wasn’t that bad because he didn’t sleep around.
Oh, or the Flavia de Luce stories, because the first was awesome and then after that she was no longer solving things with science but with her womanly woman’s knowledge.
Pretty much all my hate is misogyny related.
YES on the loathing for those awful Sloppy Firsts book, which I described my hatred for upthread. God, I hated those things. Hate hate hate hate hate.
Anyone who calls THEIR OWN BOOK ‘A heartbreaking work of staggering genius’ should be forced to sit in a small, hot, stale room and read terrible fan-fiction for eternity.
I think I let my Freudian slip show when I misremembered the title there.
Yeah, but it was self-aware irony and simultaneous meta-textual commentary, you know, so that alone make it a total masterpiece. Of unbearable genius.
ugggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh
Waaahhh I loved Dominion! But on the other hand – Lionel Shriver is my very favourite hate-read.
I got partway through and saw manly men doing important man stuff, including new recruits to the spy agencies, and important women spies serving the new recruits coffee and I said fuck it and DNF (also the whole scientist who didn’t keep records thing didn’t make any sense). But I could be convinced to give it another try; spoilers are fine, if you think they’ll help. I’d be happy to hear why someone else loved a book I hated!
Oh, I couldn’t agree more about the man issue, and frankly if that’s going to piss you off (as well it may) then maybe don’t bother. I enjoyed what I always enjoy about these alternate universe type things – the setup. I found the way he’d worked out the details of the British surrender and the roles of each significant (and even sort of delightfully less significant) public figure was wonderfully thorough. Basically I enjoyed it because I studied WWII at school. (Also now you’ve made me realise how much more aware I am of gender issues in media now than at the time when I read it – cool!)
Someone else who disliked Among Others as much as I did! I thought I’d love it because I too was a lonely nerdy teen who liked SFF novels but no, it was just wretched. It was boring – seriously, lengthy internal monologues of the protagonist’s opinions of other books do not make for compelling narrative – and when something exciting did happen it was glossed over. It also contained all the worst bits of boarding school fiction… Which is a genre I haven’t liked since I was old enough to be in school. But the worst bit was where the protagonist’s father attempts to molest her and she just shrugs it off as one of those things, then they go on to have a fulfilling father/child relationship. RAGE.
Yeah I totally DID NOT GET Among Others. The book just unhappened around itself. After this I tried to read the kings peace and it also unravelled and was humorless, which is a shame because I recall liking Tooth and Claw so much.
And The Art of Fielding with its shallow characters laid over with a veneer of superficially lovely prose. Pella is a manic depressive pixie dream girl. Sad, but sexy. Could not finish it. Also it takes place in a world where the ratio of men to women seems to be dozens:2
I didn’t hatehate it, but it was highly recommended to me by a friend who said, “This is a great book and the women characters are actually really well-rounded.” Uhhhh…
I kept thinking, “surely there are other women at this college who know guys who played baseball…”
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
&
The Alchemist, as mentioned above
Great big piles of nonsense, I tell you
Me too! Great big piles of nonsense is exactly right.
I couldn’t remember any books I hated reading that much until I read your comment. I’d just repressed the bad memories.
Dave Eggers, overrated. All those Brooklyn-esque dudes, the Jonathans and whoever else, with their navel-gazing, “awkwardness,” glasses, etc…thank you, ok, that’s enough now.
And not in the same category buuuut John Irving. I’m convinced The World According to Garp and Prayer for Owen Meany are novels for people who hate themselves. Some kind of forced and rotten magical realism that makes me feel like I need to take a shower or something. Tom Robbins too. I realize this statement might not make sense to anyone else.
I hated World According to Garp when I read it YEARS ago. I no longer remember why I hated it, and I am afraid to read it again to find out. I read a couple of his others and I didn’t hate them which is strange because even though I don’t remember anything about them, I sort of remember all of his books being identical. You know…this is way too much effort put in to thinking about John Irving. Forget it.
All of his books are the same. There’s a grid on his Wikipedia page tracking which elements recur. I find it comforting, but I can see how some would find him repetitive and a little twee.
Re: Irving, pretty sure good storytelling doesn’t just mean using a series of random nasty events to propel your characters along.
The other day in the store where I work, some older middle-aged men tried to impress me by name-dropping Irving because one of them knows him a little (sends his son to the same school as Irving does, they were once at a function together, etc). They kept looking at me and I kept looking blandly elsewhere until finally one of them said, “Do you know Irving’s work?” and I said, “oh yes, my ex-boyfriend liked him.”
Good lord, I hated John Irving’s books, all of them.
I was given A Widow for One Year for Christmas a while back, and it was awwwwwful. Only thing I’ve ever read by him; won’t be giving him any more chances.
There needs to be a Toast article about Books Dudes Like.
Robbins, Irving, Eggers, Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace.
I feel like every person I meet who says they loved Slaughterhouse Five hasn’t read anything since there. And is usually a dude.
Buzzfeed did an article like this but the Toast can do it better
http://www.buzzfeed.com/isaacfitzgerald/do-you-ev…
DO YOU EVEN ALICE MUNRO, BRO
All those Brooklyn-esque dudes, the Jonathans and whoever else, with their navel-gazing, “awkwardness,” glasses, etc…thank you, ok, that’s enough now.
EXACTLY. It was a Jonathan Lethem re-read that pushed me into assessing my reading habits and realizing how overwhelmingly I read youngish white male authors. Motherless Brooklyn might be the sensitive, thoughtful novel I thought it was the first time through, but halfway through, I realized I kept groaning out loud at the way all other characters operated in service to White Male Protagonist.
So I stopped reading it, went to the library, and got an armload of books by female authors, authors of color, authors at the intersection of any less-centralized populations. My reading habits are nowhere near as diverse as I was aiming for, but at least I’m engaging with those habits critically — and in a backhand way, I have Lethem to thank for that.
Motherless Brooklyn was my tipping point (ugh, not even gonna touch that one!) as well. I think we were just inundated with these “smart” books in the early 2000s and everyone was reading them and reacting to them and imitating them…but finally, like you, I found myself in a lonely self-referential literary corner where only a handful of stories was being told. And then I remembered my genitals and my own history and was just like PEACE OUT DUDES, you’ve all told me as much as I need to know, like, forever.
Which is the one where the protagonist is a small child and his dad dies on Sept 11 and he wanders around NYC on a scavenger hunt that he is convinced his father made for him? And then the book is inexplicably also about Dresden? And all the characters seem like various parts of one identity, instead of each being their own full person? Don’t actually tell me. I don’t wish to know.
But that one. I’m pretty sure it was written by a Jonathan from Brooklyn.
It was and I won’t tell you any more than that.
“Some kind of forced and rotten magical realism that makes me feel like I need to take a shower or something” – THANK YOU for so perfectly articulating my exact same response to these books. ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh
Ugh, thank you for reminding me how much i hated a Prayer for Owen Meany!
Also, a dude in college convinced me that Dave Eggers is the shit, so I bought a short story collection that I never got around to reading. You might have just saved me the effort.
I hate A Confederacy of Dunces. HAAAAAAATE. “It’s so funny!” No it’s not. It’s stupid and the characters are stupid and no amount of tragic authorial backstory will ever make me want to give it another chance and I am glad there has been no movie. GLAD.
Someone once recommended it to me saying “I think you especially will really like this book. It reminds me of your sense of humor.” I read the first chapter and was SO OFFENDED.
I am so sad about how much I hate this book because many of the very funniest, very cleverest comedians cite it as their favourite book ever
OH thank goodness someone else also hates this book! Two of my good friends really like it and kept recommending it to me and I could not stand it. It is the worst.
I ALSO HATED IT! Occasionally I am tempted to try again since there are SO MANY people that loved it but nope. I won’t.
OMG I hated this book. Sooo many friends said it was hilarious and I hated it so much I began to wonder if I had any real friends at all.
I HAAAATED A Confederacy of Dunces. Years later I very stupidly tried it again and HAAAATED it just as much.
Already mentioned upthread, but Old Man and the Sea is still a running joke in my family 13 years later because of how much I hated it in high school.
Madame Bovary was pretty terrible. The first half was fine, and then it just got worse and worse and worse.
This may sound pretentious (okay, it really does sound pretentious), but I hated Madame Bovary when I read it in English – then I read it in French and loved it. Maybe it was the translation that you disliked?
I hate Madame Bovary so very much, with such a fiery, burning passion. There is no one on earth that will convince me that this is good.
It is one of the reasons I hate ‘classics’. Just because someone said so, doesn’t make it so.
I remember reading Madame Bovary and screaming “die already!”
I have never hated a book as much as I have hated 1984. Read it, they said, it’ll change your perspective on the world, they said. LIES AND SLANDER. A whole lot of nothing happens and then brainwashing. Bah. I hated it when I was fourteen and I hate it now and I will hate it with my dying breath.
(Animal Farm is the shit, though.)
yesssss. I saw it on stage which was a mild improvement but uuuuughhh.
Did you notice that he can’t introduce a female character even as prole-scenery without specifying that she is not, repeat NOT, actually “intelligent”? Or that Winstonface Smarm Our Hero is totally cool with killing innocents for no reason but Orders but don’t threaten not-intelligent-Julia! And when he turns on her we’re supposed to believe he ever had a soul/brain to break in the first place. Right. NO.
(Though I also hated Animal Farm, I can’t remember quite why I hated it except that I was coming off of my most intensive late-Russian/Soviet history obsession to date, so of course there were WRONG allegories and how dare he boil down the complexity of it all or something.)
Kiss my feminist vegetarian arse, Orwell.
I was coming to this thread solely to talk about how much I hate hate hated 1984. I know it’s full of really important ideas that have become part of our culture and blah blah blah but what a TERRIBLE, OBVIOUS, HEAVY-HANDED thing it is. And so, so boring.
night film, by marisha pessl. i know it only came out last year, but. it is ASTONISHINGLY BAD. reading it was like staring into the sun. i knew it was burning my eyes out but i couldn’t stop
The random italics in that drove me absolutely insane. I thought my Kindle was broken or something.
i didn’t even notice these until somebody pointed them out to me, so gripped was i by how terrible everything else was. i spent most of it wondering if it was a joke that marisha pessl was playing on us and if she was going to suddenly pull the rug out and be like HA HA, I HAVE TRICKED YOU, THIS WAS MEANT TO BE A META-COMMENTARY ON THE TERRIBLE SEXIST CHARACTERS THAT MALE CHARACTERS LIKE TO WRITE ALL ALONG
but no, no it wasn’t. also i’m fairly sure she doesn’t understand how detective novels work.
Oh, I totally agree. I was hoping that all the italicized words put together would reveal some secret code for the ‘real’ story. But no. Everything was terrible.
On a related note, with that book I discovered the downside to reading ebooks is that you cannot throw them across the room. MOST UNSATISFYING.
That appears to be her “thing,” as I remember that from her first novel, too. Just casually ignoring the rules of emphasis, no big deal!
Ugh, let me jump on the train of dislike for the works of Marisha Pessl and add Special Topics in Calamity Physics to the hate list. It was just so precious and overly clever I wanted to chuck it 30 pages in, but I was on a plane (and I’m guessing that wouldn’t have gone over well).
It was a trans-atlantic flight, so I ended up finishing it, but there were a few stretches where I was VERY close to deciding that just staring blankly at the seat in front of me would be preferable to reading that insufferable piece of rubbish.
YES THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR AGREEING WITH ME ON THIS TOPIC THANK YOU
a vaguely hypocritical thank you because I once claimed to like it to keep a bad relationship together but YES
I love you both. Also, and I realize this is an incredibly small thing that probably no one else noticed given the awfulness of the whole book, but if your character’s so freakin’ well-read, perhaps she would be aware that the character in The Importance of Being Ernest is named Cecily, not Cicely? On account of she is a young girl in Victorian England, not renowned actress Cicely Tyson?
YES. I don’t usually write in my books, but I ended up annotating the second half of it just out of sheer frustration. Also, for a few chapters I counted similes/metaphors–I think it came out to about four or five per page. It’s like every time she thought of several different options for a description, instead of picking one she’d be like “eh, I’ll just throw in all of them.”
ME TOO. It is literally the absolute worst book.
Ugh, I wanted so badly to like this book. I was super into the mystery! I liked the mixed-media! But ye gods, the dialogue and the characters and the fucking italics and literally every other aspect were so. so. so. bad.
– Le Petit Prince/ The Little Prince. Never got why people love it so effing much.
– Paulo Coelho is not literature. Enough said.
– I was deeply disappointed with 1Q84 although I usually love Murakami.
– Don’t make me read fantasy. I am afraid it will make my brain rotten. Also I think I lack the perspective of being a boy, which seems really necessary to appreciate Tolkien.
Eh. I’m a girl who loves Tolkien. I have a very high tolerance for boring, plodding plots, and I first read LotR at the age of 11, before I found stories with no ladies annoying.
I didn’t finish 1Q84 because it got super boring while managing to also be creepy about sex, although I did read enough of it to think “Congratulations, Murakami, you finally managed to write another book that wasn’t The Wind Up Bird Chronicles.” Because seriously, every other book I’ve read by him was essentially the same book.
I got maybe 2/3 of the way through The Wind-Up Bird and then realized there really wasn’t going to be a plot, and I gave up. I JUST DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR BLUE MARK AND YOUR WEIRD PROBABLY ALLEGORIC FEMALE ACQUAINTANCES, BUDDY.
Every single thing written by Chuck Palahniuk – but especially, ESPECIALLY, Invisible Monsters. That book made me nauseous in a bad way.
And Jane Eyre. I know I’m supposed to love that book but I just cain’t. I CAIN’T.
Oh wait I keep remembering more!
I read Anne Lamott’s ‘Traveling Mercies’ and I loathed it. ABHORRED. It. She is the most whiny. It was just pages and pages and pages of her whining, peppered with really uncomfortable shit about race. Like, ‘I am suuuch a special snowflake for being friends and attending church with POC’ type shit. Awful.
I hate Palahniuk too. The more so because he has so many terrible books, all constantly in print. I am convinced that book sellers, to accommodate all that Palahniuk, shove worthier P- authors off the shelves. No Perutz, no Palliser, yes Palahniuk, Palahniuk, Palahniuk.
All of Palahniuk’s books are the same! Same characters, same preoccupations, even the flavour of grossness doesn’t vary that much.
like mince pies, but with random bits of gross trivia instead of random gross pieces of cow
EXCUSE ME MINTYPINS BUT HAVE YOU READ THE GAMMAGE CUP???!!!
It is my favourite book of all time and I haven’t met anyone who has read it except for the people who I have forced to read it. Those mushrooms…
If I read your username correctly – nice to meet you!
Ahh, Palahniuk. When I was in college, you had to read his books to prove you were a literary badass. I made it through three of ’em before I could unravel every plot twist and surprise ending, and I’m usually pretty easy to fool with stuff like that.
I loved Fight Club as a teen and wanted to read everything Palahniuk. Invisible Monsters quickly showed me how wrong I was. I hate that I remember parts of it.
Ethan Frome. That book was the absolute worst thing I have ever read. I remember being very upset that the characters tried to kill themselves in the absolute dumbest way possible. They were heading to a train station…and then tried to kill themselves by sledding into a freaking tree…ON THEIR WAY TO THE TRAIN STATION.
I was anxiously awaiting for someone to bring this up. HATED.
I also was not fond of The Awakening in high school, but them someone talked to me about feminism and I was like, OOOOOOH.
Still. Ethan Frome. Ugh.
I said Ethan Frome as well. Their suicide is also considered and decided in the course of about 4 seconds.
THANK YOU I think you have to be from a very particular part of the northeast to appreciate ethan from and I am NOT.
I HATED Ethan frome. we had to read it in high school and to this day I’ll never understand why my teacher had such a boner for it.
You have to be a true misanthrope to pick up on something like that! Well played.
I think all mentions of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work should be paired with mentions that she was a hideous child molester married to a hideous child molester who went to prison multiple times for it. This has been completely public knowledge for decades and yet I only found out two weeks ago.
Also I hate A Prayer for Owen Meany. I can’t even get past the shouting.
I’ve never heard that. That’s horrifying.
Anyone who is curious should google “Breendoggle” to learn allllll about her husband.
Just found out this year as well when my wife stumbled across it in reference to something else that I can’t recall.
I always knew of her as an author, but every time I came close to reading one of her books, I found something more interesting. Even though I had no specific attachment to her, it was still pretty shocking finding out something like that about someone who seems such a part of the field.
I just read that this week. I had also never heard it before, which seems impossible — though I also never thought much of her as an author. (That’s not even a diss; I read one book years and years ago, didn’t think much of it, don’t remember it, only remember the wide-eyed adoration of the family member who gave it to me and periodically brings it up even now with “Isn’t Mists of Avalonthe best?”)
We all must have read the same article. Yeah, I’m done with her. And she was the one gave me my first published short story.
Yeah – I assumed when I saw this story that it was going to be about MZB’s crimes. This is much more fun to read but I was seriously shocked.
Yes.
She was one of my favourite authors in my early 20s, so now I have something like 30 of her books, which I think I am going to compost.
I HATE LEV GROSSMAN’S BOOKS SO MUCH.
First I read Codex, which insulted me profoundly as a medievalist. What kind of grad student is an expert in fourteenth century English literature AND Renaissance printing and bookbinding AND everything medieval possible? There are so many factual errors while he makes the characters shallow and condescending and I HATE IT SO MUCH. HE CLAIMS VELLUM DOESN’T BURN.
I then repeated my mistake by reading The Magicians and I hated that book as well for different reasons (he seems incapable of writing characters that I can sympathize with or relate to in any way) and I shall never read anything by him again and I tell my friends that his books are terrible because they are.
YES to your hatred of The Magicians! My husband loved those books, and I just loathed all the characters. The only way I could make it palatable was to pretend the narrator was unreliable and the meta-characters were actually decent human beings.
I liked the Magicians once I decided all the characters were horrible, so I enjoyed seeing them suffer.
That seems like a good approach to take.
I saw someone recommend The Magicians to “readers who grew up with Harry Potter” and why. Why would you do that to a fellow human being.
That was why I gave Lev Grossman a second chance! Clearly I shouldn’t have.
I hate the Twilight books. I know that’s not shocking or revelatory, but I read all of them just make sure that i really did hate them. And boy howdy do I!
God I love those books. In 2008/2009 when the movie came out and people were aware of it but knew nothing about them, I had a great deal of fun telling everyone I met that the vampires sparkled. Then I had the same fun right before Breaking Dawn came out telling people about the teeth-biting-birthing scene.
Those periods of my life would be filled with a lot less joy had Twilight never existed.
YES. I call that game “Twilight means never having to say you’re kidding.”
I started to hate read the first one because I wanted to back up my hate screeds with “yes, I’ve read the books so can be as critical as I want,” but I couldn’t even get beyond halfway.
If it hadn’t been on my Kindle (and I hadn’t downloaded it like a pirate), I would have thrown it out of the car window.
That why I started reading them as well!
The worst part is that that second half of book four, when Bella finally has some power, was actually a little bit exciting. Then again maybe that was the Stockholm Syndrome talking…
I just read an advance reader’s copy of what is basically Twilight With Faeries and it’s just as poorly written and full of appalling linguistic tics (EVERYTHING, from schools to old houses to businesses, is named something along the lines of StarLight and TwinkleBerry and LeafStruck and BullShit) and is just…ugh. It is called Thorn Jack, it is “A Night and Nothing Novel” (no) and there will surely be a massive following as soon as word gets out about it. UGH.
Oh no! I just know I am going to find myself hate reading that.
I was nodding along, thinking “… yeah, I know I hate some books but I can’t begin to remember any at the moment…” when I read:
and everything written by Stieg Larsson.
BOOM YES HATE SNARLING SPITTING HATE
I remember flipping over my copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo partway through, seeing that the Swedish title was Men Who Hate Women and laughing a sick, sad laugh of irony at the author, whom I would include in that category.
His protagonist is an obvious self-insert into this viciously misogynistic world in which he’s a secret hero who has a no-strings sexual relationship with almost literally every named female character while uttering textbook white-male-grumbling phrases that could fill up a bingo card lickety-split. I HATE THAT BOOK.
WHY did any of the characters want to sleep with the protaganist?!? He was whiny, boring, and stupid. I hated how it was an excuse for the author to ramble about the coffee habits of swedes and write his own wish fulfillment fantasy. The worst.
It took me about two and a half books to realize it, but eventually I realized that he doesn’t hate abuse of women, he finds it deeply erotic.
Yeah, the protagonist-as-stand-in-for-the-author annoyed me too. Schlubby aging dude saves the day, bangs chicks! Right.
I also got super bored by the long descriptions of How The Swedish Gov’t/Justice System Works, but that may be a translation issue? Presumably Swedish people already know this stuff.
Yep. A thousand times yes.
Oh god everything by Neil Gaiman.
Okay I liked American Gods but not enough to ever reread it.
Ugh even his episodes of Doctor Who fill me with hate.
All hate.
Fuck you for ruining an idea like Anansi.
I have yet to finish American Gods – please, please tell me something happens, at some point. My friends and I picked it as our Book Club choice last year and none of us have managed to get through it. A few of us have tried multiple times!
I really like American Gods, and I love how the plots wrap themselves up at the end, but it’s not for everyone.
If it helps, I thought the audiobook was really good. It’s one of those with a full cast.
My memory of liking it came from my early twenties, and I am afraid that if I reread it now I will just abhor it, so I let it sit there.
No ma’am, unfortunately not a damn thing happens. Plenty of things ALMOST happen! But in true Gaiman form, not a’one of ’em comes to any sort of satisfying fruition.
Can we expand to graphic novels? I bought, like, five volumes of Sandman because large parts of the internet said it was so amazing and I was sure it would get good at some point, but it didn’t and I gave up.
Oh gods yes, and Marvel 1612, or whatever it was called.
I liked his stuff when I was a teen and now I’m kind of mad about it?
YES and apparently it’s HIGH NERD TREASON if you don’t like him and it’s like, Sorry that I like fully-developed plots and characters instead of poorly-executed ~*dark and spooky*~ high concept-shit that always runs completely out of steam before it’s really even begun?
For a guy with all these big ideas about STORYTELLING and NARRATIVE POWER and WHY WE TELL STORIES, his own stories do seem to fall flat on their faces.
This is a great post and I would like to list all the books I hate, rationally or not, but I am having to expend more energy than I ought to on a holiday in order to resist the urge to reply to each of you who hates a book I like.
When people here are hating a book I like, I just calmly think to myself ‘They are entitled to their terrible, ill-informed, wrong opinion’ and I hereby give people permission to think the same about mine.
I had enough energy to spare for Catcher in the Rye, but that’s just a testament to the fieriness of my hatred for that book. I shall now use your method to resist the temptation to defend the books I like.
I’m doing the same.
Also, I recognize that most of my love for the fantasy I read in middle school/high school is because I didn’t know any better.
I hated The Handmaid’s Tale, even though as a Canadian I am legally required to venerate Margaret Atwood. She would give interviews about the book, saying, everything that happens in it has happened to some women,somewhere, some time, as if that adds up to actual social commentary, NO MARGARET IT DOES NOT. In fact, I hate most of Atwood’s fiction, although I do venerate her poetry.
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
remains the most perfect poem about canadian domesticity I have ever read. Or just about anything, really.
Her poetry is amazing.
A good friend of mine mailed me a copy of American Psycho. In my whole life, it is the only book I have ever thrown in the trash. Tried to read it, but it had only two modes: utterly dry and boring sequences and hateful, misogynist torture fantasies.
That dude is always posing as Joan Didion.
“People did drugs. Then put on sunglasses. Then didn’t say anything. Then someone ran over a dog. Or maybe it was a little kid. Oh well. Let’s go back to our expensive homes and not talk about anything so people who somehow project something profound onto all this wordless idiocy.”
I hated the beginning of that book so much I didn’t even make it to the torture fantasies
I hope you don’t take offence, but it’s always a little jarring to me when people mistake intentional writing techniques as unintentional (former English Lit student, don’t hold it against me!) and then criticise the book for them. American Psycho is a HUGE one for this kind of thing. It’s not pleasant to read, but the excessive, turgid boredom, interspersed with graphic and visceral scenes of murder, is meant to reflect how Bateman feels about his life. It’s uninterrupted tedium, and the only time he feels truly alive and awake is when he’s killing someone (which says a lot about him).
As for the misogyny, well, it’s from the perspective of a serial killer. It’d be odder if there WASN’T hateful torture fantasies. Those scenes are incredibly, incredibly ugly, but that’s sort of the point, in that Ellis accurately depicts the mindset of a psychopathic murderer. It’s meant to be horrific and uncomfortable for the reader.
I can’t say I exactly enjoyed reading American Psycho, but I appreciated what it was trying to do.
There are two.
1. Catcher in the fucking Rye. I read it for the first time a couple years ago- I was 31 or 32. After the first few pages I wanted to punch Holden Caufield in his smug ugly face. I would constantly complain about how stupid and awful this book was to everyone around me and everyone would say, “If you hate it so much, then stop reading it.” They did not understand that I had to finish it so I could definitely state, without a doubt, that is the biggest piece of trash ever written in the history of the world. I still own the book just to remind me that something this awful and horrendous actual exists.
2. Ethan Frome. What makes me hate this book even more is that for years and years I avoided all things Edith Wharton because my hatred for Ethan Frome was so intense that I missed out on the wonderful Age of Innocence and Custom of the Country and House of Mirth and everything else Edith Wharton ever touched. It’s like someone asked Edith, “Hey, can you write a mindnumbingly boring novella that hits the readers over the head again and again with ‘foreshadowing’ so we can have idiot high schoolers grasp the concept? Kthx.” It’s awful. It’s boring. It’s not fun. It’s the exact opposite of everything Edith Wharton is and I continue to be angry and horrified that it is most people’s first introduction to her.
These are my EXACT THOUGHTS about Ethan Frome. I hated it SO MUCH in high school with its stupid “Let’s sled to our deaths!” and stupid red fascinator and stupid foreshadowing anvils and stupid snow. Starkfield! Because it’s stark, you see! Oh ho, how clever!
I was an English major, but managed to avoid Edith Wharton until grad school when I had to read of House of Mirth. I grudgingly began it, and totally fell in love with Wharton’s writing. Stick to the vagaries of New York high society and the horrors of millinery, Edith. Although, Summer is set in New England, and it’s actually good! The only logical conclusion is that Edith wrote Ethan Frome on a dare by Henry James.
Ethan Frome, yes! Almost bad enough to spoil everything else Wharton wrote for me.
I hate Ethan Frome so much that I’m pretty sure it feeds my passionate, semi-obsessive love for Cold Comfort Farm.
I hated For Whom the Bell Tolls so much I couldn’t finish it, despite generally really liking Hemingway. I mean, the female love interest is basically just BAMBI as a human. A stumbly weak little creature with little hair who just needs a big strong man to help her find her way after her GANG RAPE WTF. Fuck you, Hemingway and your bullshit Hemingway Stand-In.
Also the five pages of a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that I forced myself through might’ve been the worst five pages of my life.
Finally, Lolita. Sorry, Nabokov I get your deal here, but this is fucking creepy.
Right? He is like a pass-fail test for ability to understand the concept of an unreliable narrator! By which I mean I believe that it is entirely correct to read him as beautifully-written manipulative evil incarnate. But at the same time, he’s so effective that you do sympathize with him, even as he nauseates you, and that can be a very confusing place to be in.
Oh, God, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Yes to everything you said about the love interest, and when you add in the awful fake Spanglish and the overwritten sex scenes where the earth moves, it just becomes hilariously bad. I think For Whom the Bell Tolls might win the all-time Bad Sex Award for all of literature.
I hate The Handmaid’s Tale. I finally read it last year and I’m just as allergic to progressive heavy-handed morality tales as I am to any other variety. Plus, I did not find the actual writing all that impressive.
“allergic to progressive heavy handed morality tales” UGGHHHH YESSSS
see also: my post above on MaddAddam. UGH just UGH!
I hate the book “White Oleander” more than life itself
Worst book ever, threw it across the room then into the trash.
That book. That book. That book is one of the reasons why I no longer take book recommendations from my mom.
My ex-boyfriend was kind of an idiot and not nearly as much of a feminist as he thought he was, but he did have a few good moments, one of which was when some dude at a bar started making generalizations about women’s writing based on having just read White Oleander. My ex completely flipped out on him about that, and it was great.
Wow. I had forgotten that book. I think I saw the movie too.
The Wars – Of all the books you could make me read in high school, why do you have to pick the one about horses being shot and burned alive. That’s what this book was about, right?
Never Let Me Go – Boring, boring, boring. The characters are annoyingly insecure and unsympathetic. I was glad when their organs got harvested.
Straight to You – Apocalyptic books are my favourite. But not this one. No book has ever made me feel so depressed and hopeless.
His Dark Materials – Starts out interesting, quickly turns into WTF!?!
The Passage – Great first third or so. Then the characters, setting, and story completely change. Nothing more rage inducing than a waste of potential.
Romeo and Juliet. Catcher in the Rye. Anything by James Patterson. Any serialized (is that the right word?) fantasy-type novels – Dresden, Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse.
Wow, the hate is strong in this one.
Never Let Me Go–I know! All the book was good for was the organs.
I could actually rant for days about Harry Dresden. I read the first two thinking that maybe they would get less awful but my seething rage made me give up.
I juuuuuust finished the first one, and it was only bearable because I listened to it on audio and was able to force men to listen to me actively rant over at least 1/3 of it.
I don’t know if I just absorbed the plot twice to Never Let Me Go without realizing it, but the whole time I was exasperated that they didn’t know what their fate was. And it was boring.
Never Let Me Go, simultaneously boring and depressing. Perfect movie material!
Oh, The Wars. I try not to think about it, as I loathed it so much. (What I remember about it was that his father bought him the *wrong gun* and that was very symbolic and all.)
Also in high school, The Stone Angel which, while not actually a horrible book, should not be forced on 17 year olds (yes, we got it, she’s a bitter old woman who is dying, arrgh).
i’m so glad no one is defending the chronology of water
I really, really love that by and large we’re not (so far as I’ve read) defending other people’s hated books, even when we ourselves like them. I’ve seen a few variations of “I like this book but I love your hate of it,” which just warms my fuckin’ cockles.
I was strongly recommended that by someone I trust recently, read the summary on Amazon, and thought I might have a mini-breakdown if I braved it. THANK YOU FOR VALIDATING MY CHOICES, MALLORY.
Patti Smith’s Just Kids
You know what? I was in love with myself and my friends and my special snowflake existence, too, once. And that was fun and I’m glad and I will gladly tell you stories about how I fucked around in my youth, too. But I don’t expect you to give me a gold star because of it. And if you still expect me to give you a gold star, maybe there are 4 or 5 things you could learn about yourself still before you write your next memoir.
celebrity might just completely ruin people so that they are way beyond redemption. not that we should feel bad for them.
Guys, the vitriol for Super Sad Love Story on here just made my day! So many people who’s taste I respect have RAVED about this book but I could not get through more than 30 pages!! So racist and annoying but I thought I was the only person who hated it. Also, why does everyone love “Civilwarland in Bad Decline” by George Saunders so much?? ALL of the female characters in the stories are obnoxious ball-busting harpies who’s only point in life is to make the poor put-upon male characters’ lives horrible.
I just read a synopsis, blurb-type thing + maybe some lines from an interview with the author about it and was immediately convinced that I would loath it. I feel very vindicated now.
I read The Fault in our Stars once, and thought it was okay. Then I reread it (in the year and state where the book was written, to the point where I had friends from the schools it mentions) and realized, hey, I’m about as literary and precocious as a seventeen-year-old can get, and there’s not one fucking person in my grade who acts like these pretentious douchenozzles.
Then I tried Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns and was horrified by the author’s endless stream of unattainable, neurotic, underage babes. So, everything John Green has written.
People keep telling me about John Green books and I keep wanting to not read them because……nothing about him sounds appealing. Or his books. EVER. GOODBYE.
I keep trying to get into John Green books because I’m a high school English teacher and my students LOVE him. I just kind of nod and smile when they gush about him. I’ve been meaning to go back to The Fault in Our Stars, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. The characters all speak like no teenager ever. They’re all so precocious and pretentious, and believe me, I know my share of precocious and pretentious teenagers, and yeah, they still don’t speak like that. Which is actually my problem with a lot of YA books, come to think of it.
I think it’s aspirational, like Dawson’s Creek was when everyone talked all “clever.” But it’s insufferable to anyone over 20.
I like a lot about TFIOS (John Green knows how to turn a phrase) but I hate that it is supposed to be a love story when the characters are, at best, in the infatuation period of love. They sort of crush on each other and it’s presented as this infinite perfect love.
aka Romeo and Juliet/A Walk To Remember syndrome?
My younger sibling lent me paper towns, and I read it and responded with a stern discussion of how Nice Guys are generally Not Nice Guys and you should be on guard for anyone who’s most interested in you to make themselves more interesting. It is the closest to a BIRDS AND BEES conversation as I have.
An Abundance of Katherines is quite good, in that the male protagonist is considerably more neurotic than the female protagonist. Then again, there’s an awful subplot involving his best friend and… Oh, damn it. You’re fine as you are.
BUT THE ISLAMOPHOBIA
AND “SHE WAS HOT IN THE POPULAR-GIRL-WITH-BLEACHED-TEETH-AND-ANOREXIA KIND OF WAY”
*hissing noise* GET IT AWAY FROM MEEEE
Ugh I know, I know, I know – I’m sorry!!
Thank you. Augustus Waters is a total douche. He doesn’t even respect her name! Teenage dickbag. That said, I can’t decide which I hate more, TFIOS or the fact that I still want to see the movie.
I have a general impatience for teenage love stories that are supposed to be so deep and far-reaching and everlasting. Shut up.
None of it is groundbreaking. I don’t understand why it’s being hailed as a staggering work of genius when it’s been done before by scads of writers and the writing’s just ok.
John Green keeps insisting that he’s “sending up” the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope but in reading all his books I’ve found basically he fails really hard at “sending it up” and rather just… writes manic pixies.
It also drives me nuts that TFIOS jettisoned him to international stardom when he basically wrote the same book Lurlene McDaniel and Jodi Picoult have been writing for decades.
I hated The Kite Runner with the force of a thousand suns, with so much hate that I had to sit and think for a good thirty seconds just now before I could recall its title. I have never read a more formulaic and condescending book, and that includes my dad’s chess strategy manuals that I would dip into as a kid.
Ooh, I see what you did there 😉
The Kite Runner is one of only maybe 5 books that I’ve hated so much I couldn’t finish.
Upon finishing The Kite Runner, I immediately googled variations on “I hate The Kite Runner” just to confirm that I was not alone in my contempt. The characters are so one-dimensional: Hassan is so angelic he may as well sprout wings and Assef is so evil that I think he actually twirls his mustache at some point. The author actually manages to make the Taliban cartoonishly over-the-top evil, which is no small feat. The writing is also pretty awful–you don’t need to italicize every time you want to emphasize something, dude.
Assed literally goes DID I MENTION I AM ALSO A NAZI at one point.
Oh, I hated that book! And as far as I remember it deployed virtually every Hero Has Mainpain and Daddy Issues trope in the cheesiest, Joseph Campbelliest way, which was very odd for a literary novel. Like, “I, the VILLAIN who am a PAEDOPHILE and a NAZI and also GAY which is not problematic AT ALL, would like to observe that you, protagonist, ARE NOT HALF THE MAN YOUR FATHER WAS. I wonder if this will cause you MANPAIN and also MOTIVATE YOU. MUAHAHAHAHA.”
I know it is way too late to reply to this but I don’t care I would stab that book RIGHT FRIGGING NOW IF I COULD it was the worst it was formulaic and so awful that I didn’t have any sympathy for any of the characters.
I mean how BAD is your writing that I had basically no sympathy for a suicidal, sexually abused child who was being held by the Taliban, bro
so bad
I just want you to know how happy I was to have found this because so many of the other posts are people hating things I love a lot and I was like “OH NO IM ALONE HERE” but I fucking hated the Kite Runner so much I never finished it. good GOD. the writing was AWFUL. that was the first time I picked up a book and was like “NOOOOOOOPE” after 100 pages.
What a good game and topical, am currently hating The Discovery of Witches on audio. I know it’s not supposed to be great art, but it has the most irritating protagonists ever – the essence of smug.
Have also hated: Heart of Darkness (I know.. a classic, maybe I will have to try again)
The Book Thief
Sons and Lovers
oh and My Sister’s Keeper – forced to read for book club, absolutely hated that.
GOD HOW COULD I FORGET MY SISTER’S KEEPER. Oh my god what a horrible jack Jodi Picoult is. And EVERY SINGLE ONE of her books is just absolutely terrible formulaic dreck. AWFUL.
Jodi Picoult is THE WORST. I had to read two of her books for book club, and it was excruciating. She must sit there and think, “OK, which horrifying child violence haven’t I used yet in a book?” before she starts writing.
Ooh, missed your comment first time round, but I also hated on Discovery of Witches further down the thread. I don’t remember the smugness so much, just the awful love interest. The “you married me secretly without without my knowledge or consent, how cute” thing, what?!
Oh GOD The Discovery of Witches. Apart from anything else, it is the most infuriating instance of series tease (i.e., it doesn’t resolve a SINGLE GODDAMN FUCKING THING because there’s going to be a follow-up) that I have ever experienced.
I am definitely hate-reading Discovery of Witches at this point. Plus, I find the male protagonist to be the most loathsome romantic lead this side of a 1980s historical romance.
_Is_ it supposed to be great art? Not Twilight with characters who are slightly older and not even a tiny bit more mature? Because [SPOILERS, not actual quotations but definitely actual plot events]…
“I drugged you unconscious, brought you out here, and locked your family in your house so I could literally try to kill you,” Matthew said, looking breathtaking in the most expensive brands of clothing I could ever have imagined.
“I don’t have to do what you say! I am a woman with agency and independence!” I said foolishly. How little I knew about how the world REALLY worked. Then Matthew tried to kill me and we made out.
In conclusion: Shuuuuut uuuuup, Deborah Harkness.
Discovery of Witches was so boing. And when will writers learn that having the narrator hate everything about themselves so that they can fixate on how amazing the love interest is just terrible to read.
I know it’s far from “Literature”, but the Dresden Files books make smoke come out of my ears. To be fair, they read like they were written by an absinthe-swilling undergraduate with a rather limited simile-generating bot as an editor, and so trope-bound they must drag their heavy burdens of cliches in wheelbarrows, and also casually misogynistic, so I’m a little shocked they ever got published, frankly.
😀 I kind of liked them as a teenager, and it just slowly turned into utter revulsion as I got older. I kept reading with a sick fascination until a few books ago when I finally just didn’t want to know anymore.
I enjoyed the first several as un-serious fluff, but then the internet pointed out that he’s written Chicago with basically no black people, and now I can’t ignore the many problems.
Also, I liked that aspects of the protagonist’s sexism were unjustified and got challenged in the early books, and he changed. But he didn’t change enough, and he’s not being challenged on it anymore, and the portrayal of female characters is generally not great, so the overall level of sexism is still way too high. Ugh.
I know it’s silly to get engaged with an open thread that was posted more than 48 hours ago, but I literally have been sifting through the comments to find someone who hates Harry Dresden as much as I do. I finished Storm Front two days ago and was so utterly disgusted at the author’s casual display of his own misogyny and his lazy attempt to disguise it as the character’s “gentlemanly” quirkiness that I can’t contain myself. To be fair, the flat characters, their paper-thin motivations, and the abundant cliches of Butcher’s writing “style” would probably have been enough to ruin the book for me without the sexism…but I guess we’ll never know?
I said this up-thread already, but I think the only reason I was actually able to finish the book was that I listed to it on audio, and so was able to drown out at least a third of it by ranting loudly over the reader. When I was attempting to describe it to my bf, he eventually cut off my stream of vitriol with “So it’s as if Elliot Rodger were a wizard P.I.?” And I said “Yes. EXACTLY.”
Hahaha I just saw your reply and now that no one is watching I can admit that I only made it about 20 pages in. I think I only made it as far as the second or third time that one character’s eyes were described as “money-colored” before I nopetopused out. I have no regrets.
My sister may have dumped a guy partly because these were his favorite books.
I also hate everything by Ann Patchett, and I can’t even begin to explain why.
Because she cannot do plots? She had to write a book set in the jungle because she couldn’t figure out how to write a story if there were smartphones.
This made me laugh out loud, and I also can’t explain why, exactly, but yes.
I had to read Death of a Salesman in high school, and I HATED it. I hated Willy Loman and I hated that we were supposed to see him as some kind of tragic figure.
I didn’t quite hate Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but I did want to punch Angel Clare right in his stupid smug self-righteous face.
I HATE THOMAS HARDY
Ugh, I forgot about Jude the Obscure. That book is THE WORST.
Hatred Squared! When we read that in high school, I remember making strong intersectional feminist counter-pts into why the reader should be emphasizing with Willy Loman and his mourning of White Supremacy in America. I did not understand any of these words as concepts yet, but am now high-fiving past self. #YoungMisandry
ROBINSON CRUSOE.
I’m sorry Defoe, I tried to like you, but maybe you should work on your sentence structures a bit. There, I said it.
OH YES. Awful. Doesn’t even have the sex scenes that Roxana has.
Is it worth reading? Because Crusoe kinda put me off Defoe for life.
The only book I didn’t finish in my 18th century lit course. Which included every work of fiction written in the 18th century, so that’s saying something.
And then I found a Stick and I took the Stick and I sharpened It with a Stick that was of a Smaller Size and then I set It down upon the Ground in a Northerly Direction and then I took up Anothzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
And on the Fifth day of the Twelfth month I found a Stone that was Larger than a Mouse but smaller than a Breadbox and I Placed it in my Collection of stones forthwith; whereupon my Collection had grown to the Size of an Ark and I prepared to Place my Collection in a more Suitable Locale; verily I Sought to find a More Improved Locale and ajsfkasfhaksjhakjghkjsdkdshgkdiughoisagds,dhsjkdg
Robinson Crusoe, thinking we’re interested in every goddamn detail of his boring life. Not to mention his colonizing. He is the worst kind of dude.
Nothing will ever surpass my deep, burning, passionate hatred for Charles Dickens. HE WAS STUPID AND OH, MY GOD, EDIT.
For my 21st birthday my mother bought me one of those leather-bound, fake gold leaf editions from Barnes and Nobles. It was the complete works of Charles Dickens. She thought it was hilarious. I have never felt such rage.
I also loathe Dickens. You’re entirely correct. I just forgot, because I’ve never made it through a Dickens.
YEEESSSSSS. I hated Great Expectations so, so much. I read it after a guy I was crazy about said it was his favorite, and wow, was that a BLINKING NEON RED FLAG.
I tend not to hate-read, so most of the books I remember having a burning hatred for I never finished.
But:
– Wuthering Heights. I seriously could not get past the northern accents, written out, of the servants.
– The Mystic Masseur, V.S. Naipaul. I guess I did hate-read this one, but I was stuck on a long car ride between Boston and Toronto. Just… the titular character is pretty much absolutely odious and we don’t much care what happens to him, unless it involves dying in a fire.
– Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Pretty much every word of this title is a lie. And I prefer my Faulknerian to my Joycean stream-of-consciousness.
In fantasy/sf, which I read the most, we have:
– The Magic of Recluce, L.E. Modesitt. The entire first book seems to revolve around “Main Character Has Something Secretly Wrong With Him, which everyone around him seems to know and torment him with.” It was infuriating. I hear it gets better after that, but I’ll be damned if I have fucks to give.
– Ironhand’s Daughter, David Gemmell. Why yes, I love your Mary Sue main character who sleeps around because she has this tragic past and some guy loves her so he hangs himself, and then there’s character development through rape and something about a falcon. That was as far as I got.
… I could probably go on for a while with books my old book club forced me to read, but I think I’ll stop there, because I have better things to do.
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in addition to being sucky, was one of my first stirrings of grumpy feminism. Book chronicles dude’s evolving new of women as objects. First women are mothers, then they are whores, then they are art objects. My 12-year-old brain suddenly started shouting “BUUULLLSHIIIIIIIIIIIT” and a tiny feminist was born. Also, all that goddamn stream of consciousness and Catholic angst . UGH.
Portrait of the Artist induced me to scream, out loud, in high school English class, “HE JUST! WANTS! POON!!!!”
I think I would have gotten in trouble if I hadn’t happened to be that teacher’s favorite. (Hey, at least I admit it.)
The only V.S. Naipaul I’ve read was A House for Mr. Biswas. I could tell he was a violent misogynist from that and never tried to read any more of his work.
What’s that book where a bunch of kids live on a compound and find out partway through that they’re being kept as test subjects? For some unethical scientific something-or-other? I hate that book.
I also hate The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: a story of an author/”researcher” taking advantage of a poor family BY WRITING ABOUT HOW AWFUL IT WAS THAT OTHER PEOPLE TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THEM. And people LOVE that book for how INSIGHTFUL and ILLUMINATING it is and how GENEROUS the author was with the family, which makes me hate it that much more!!
THANK YOU! That narrator did Henrietta’s family and legacy no favors. What a heartbreaking story she had no business telling because SCIENCE. And who cares about your husband? He has no place in this story. None! That seemed so indulgent for her to include anything about her stupid personal life.
YES, all this about Blah blah blah Henrietta Lacks. So strongly disliked that book, but everyone seemed to love it.
Also (because I read Henrietta Lacks & this book for the same (terrible) book club): The Help. Oh my goodness gracious, I think I was the only one in that club with any inkling of how problematic that shitty book is. No wonder that’s the last meeting I ever went to.
(I liked Never Let Me Go.)
I used online sources by African-American writers writing about how The Help was terrible to explain to my (mostly white, socially and politically progressive, upper-middle-class Canadian) book club why The Help was terrible, and they STILL didn’t get it and continued to think it was awesome and not-stereotypical. I stayed, but that was painful.
You mean: Never let me go, by a Japanse Writer I’m Too Lazy To Look Up Now
*Never Let Me Go, by English writer Kazuo Ishiguro, who was raised in and has lived in England for almost his entire life.
Yes!! Ugh!
God, and can we talk about how she insisted on spelling all the black characters’ words phonetically? Psst, author: You don’t have to transcribe the actual sounds they made as if they weren’t words. They were speaking in English, just like you do. Wherever you’re from, you have an accent too and I didn’t notice you transcribing YOUR words phonetically, or those of any other character with a perceived upper-class accent. (And I’m talking to you too, Dickens and anyone else who only does that when it’s someone _else’s_, perceived lower-class, accent.)
THE FUCKING HELP, FOR INSTANCE. Yeah, whatever asshole wrote that book, only black people in the south have accents.
House of Stairs, by William Sleator, is a much more entertaining version of “kids in a compound being experimented on.”
I had a hard time getting around the fatphobia in that. It was interesting that it was the two kids with nontraditional gender that end up avoiding the brainwashing, though.
On all the “what was that book” sites I’ve been on, House of Stairs is guaranteed to come up at least once a year. Apparently it left a hell of an impression.
We read After the First Death at the end of freshman year honors English. That book is twisted and despite reading it in its entirety and writing a paper on it, I have completely blocked out all details except a bus, a gun, and some screaming teenagers. Twenty years later I’m still convinced our teacher was trolling/projecting.
ALSO, Garrison Keillor. Just stop. (Why did I even read his short stories in the first place? I was such a grandma at 12 years old)
A few years ago I decided to read a bunch of the fake memoirs. I don’t know, I was kind of poor and had a library card. I started with James Frey’s A Million Tiny Pieces which still remains my most hated book. I was young and naive and didn’t realize that Mary Sue fanfiction could be legitimately published and loved by people. Book is just bad in every way. I moved on to The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, The Night Listener, Confessions of an Opium Eater, and probably a few others I blocked from memory. They were all terrible, but Frey takes the cake.
Also already been mentioned, but: Ethan Frome!!! WTF with that book. Life is awful then you make it worse with your attempted sled suicide. Thanks Edith, i’m going to go stick my head in the oven and hope I don’t screw it up.
John Irving. All John Irving ever, but especially The Cider House Rules, which I definitely snapped shut halfway through and never opened again, and A Widow for One Year, WHICH IS SO TERRIBLE that I felt like the reporter hiding behind the curtain as the prostitute is murdered the whole time I read it. Just hiding and watching a crime being committed against the English language.
*slow clap*
You are my people. I dated two guys in a row whose favorite book was The World According to Garp. I should’ve known better by the second one. Never again.
I’m sorry.
Howard’s End by E.M. Forster which was COMPLETELY USELESS. Why did anyone in that book even do anything they did? What was the point of it? Why did I read it? (For English class.) Also, I’m 100% sure I will hate Game of Thrones if I read it and I almost want to read it just to enjoy hating it as much as possible.
The literary world needs a lot more haters, but Updike is the best.
I HATED Jane Eyre when I first read it as a preteen, and I haven’t been back since (except for muttering balefully whenever it’s mentioned). Then, convinced I was just being prejudiced against the Brontes, I read Wuthering Heights in university. HATED IT TOO.
If you ever feel like you might want to try the Brontes again, Anne actually is very different from Emily and Charlotte (like, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is specifically about how Byronic heroes are the worst).
As always, Kate Beaton has an applicable comic for the occasion.
Yes! Anne Bronte is my 19th century literary feminist heroine.
Philip Roth! I innocently picked up The Humbling in the library a few years ago, and DEAR LORD. I mean, because of the terrible transphobia, misogyny and arrogance of the whole thing, but also it is JUST SO BORING. Self-centred powerful white man has relationship, feels insecure. WOW GRIPPING STUFF. The prose isn’t worth it, either.
I was in a state of glorious anger after that, and will never read anything by him again.
See also: those (arrogant, white, male) authors who think themselves ‘edgy’ for using misogyny and swears. Here’s lookin at you, Martin Amis.
Holy shit, Matin Amis. I hated LONDON FIELDS with all the kinds of hate.
YES YES YES YES YES. I had to read American Pastoral in the second year of my English degree… I just didn’t care. I was practically advocating the terrorism in that novel.
Yes, you say it perfectly: “American Pastoral: DON’T CARE [FART SOUNDS/THROWS BOOK]”
Oh thank god. I’ve never been able to finish a Philip Roth novel and I’ve tried a few–Sabbath’s Theater, American Pastoral, and Portnoy’s Complaint. I’m not even necessarily against the self-centered white male literary canon (I readily admit to enjoying every Updike novel I’ve ever read, and Catcher in the Rye). But I just cannot stand Philip Roth. His plots are really boring, his writing is really boring, even the sex is really boring an un-sexy.
I hate-read Cassandra Clare’s CITY OF BONES (first in the Mortal Instrument’s series) with such fury I think I permanently damaged my hands due to clenching. Two chapters in I got out a red pen so I could annotate everything she stole, copied, or otherwise lifted from other, better (SO MUCH BETTER) writers and creators. Then I tore out all the pages and threw the mess in the garbage and spent a good week or two trying to articulate my hate. I’m a teen librarian so I made a “Books/Movies/TV Shows Cassandra Clare copied from for Mortal Instruments” booklist though sadly I couldn’t actually distribute it. Made me feel a little better, though. Maybe she came up with her own ideas for later books, I don’t know. I was so disgusted by CITY OF BONES I’ll never, ever know.
I also HATED Maggie Stiefvater’s SHIVER, and didn’t read any of the other books in the series, which is weird because I absolutely loved SCORPIO RACES and her RAVEN BOYS books. But SHIVER…man, I hated it so much.
But can you put some other title on that list and distribute it anyway? Just make it a generic summer teen reads thing and then secretly delight in it?
That’s some good sneaky-librarian-ing right there. Second the vote for this course of action.
I’ll admit that at the time (I read City of Bones when it first came out) I did make a display with all the books she cribbed from, including tie-in books for stuff like Star Wars and Buffy (she stole from everywhere!), and labelled it “If you liked City of Bones…” and I felt good about it because it got people checking out great books they might have missed otherwise, like the Prydain Chronicles, Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines series, and even the (totally serviceable fantasy series) Deathgate cycle by Weiss and Hickman.
Cassandra Clare was the source of many a shitstorm o’ wank in the Harry Potter fandom back in the day, because she wrote really popular fanfic that… wait for it… plagiarized from all over the goddamn place.
I remember when the MI series came out being very surprised that she used the same pen name as she did for her fanfic. You’d think she’d want to avoid having her mediocre YA ripoff books associated with her ripoff fanfic of the most popular YA series in history.
Yesssss. I was hoping someone would bring this up. Cassie Clare, blech!
For anyone who’s interested: http://www.journalfen.net/community/bad_penny/898…
That fanfic was so insanely popular it probably helped her get her publishing deal…
IIRC, she started going by Cassandra Clare instead of Cassandra Claire so that fans of her fic would know it was her, but people who only knew about her from her books would be less likely to stumble across her fandom history!
A FOOLPROOF PLAN, UPON MY WORD
I actually wanted to slap Cassie Clare’s editor. And send her a thesaurus.
This is GREAT and also TERRIBLE because half the books you guys are trashing I also hate, and half of them are my favorites, and of course I’m taking it personally and why don’t you like me?
BOOKS I HATE:
Death Comes For the Archbishop
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Catcher in the Rye
The Rules of Attraction (Bret Easton Ellis)
The Infatuations (Marias)
A Friend of the Family
The Corrections
Freedom
I find it a bit baffling that Franzen and David Foster Wallace were such good friends. Wallace’s work is incredible and touches on some universally human experiences. Franzen writes Being A White Middle-Class Male American is Hard fiction and his characters are terrible and have their heads up their asses and it’s so goddamn boring.
I read bits of Freedom over my husband’s shoulder on a plane ride, and spent the entire time going UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh. Couldn’t get through it. The scene with the stray dog…. ughhh… my life is worse because Welsh made me imagine that. A friend recommended this book, and I consider that recommendation a betrayal.
Deathwatch by Robb White. Anyone else have to read that in school? It was awful.
The Pearl by John Steinbeck. I liked the story, but I just cannot with his minimalist writing style. It’s just way too “See Spot Run” for my taste.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I enjoyed most of it, but the ending was bad enough to actually make me regret having read any of it.
Pride and Predjudice and Wuthering Heights as discussed above.
Hmm….. My list is loooong. Do I even like reading?
Murakami’s IQ84- god I had to stop myself from flinging it across the room. Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, I do recall flinging across the room after struggling through 3/4ths of his “fuck you dumb reader” thing, I was like, ok, I give up, I cannot take one sentence more. You have defeated me, are you happy now? Man, I’m still bitter. It’s been a decade at least?
I tried reading The Name of the Rose by Eco, because I loved the movie. The book just keeps wandering off into pages of explication intertwined with tangential, navel-gazing asides. I gave up.
Ecoooooooo oh YES, by which I mean NO.
(triggerwarning, pretentious me-so-smart-talk ahead).
SO, I dare say I am clever, especially when it comes to languages. I speak Dutch and English, know French & German, understand General Mediterranean, have a grasp of Hebrew, and am aware of Kaballah, Gematria & Medieval Church Crap…
and STILL I could only understand 2/3 of it. The whole book is one big pamphlet of Eco showing off his Superduper Erudite Self. So, that annoyed me.
BUT, to make it even worse, there are all these people who I know for a fact have less knowledge in the above areas than I have, and they’re all like: ermargerd, I loved it so much…NO, you can’t, unless you adore books you don’t even understand half of. (yes, I’m outing myself as horrible, whatever)
and FINALLY. The other day I was sitting in the train, and some dude accross from me was reading the Accursed Tome, and he was GIGGLING. Like: Oooh, I’m so amused by all these amazing inside-jokes Eco is making in LatingItalianGerman, teehee. I gave him DEATHSTARES.
p.s. I’m also not interested in political infighting between popes.
YES. I got like fifty page into IQ84 and was done. I was so shocked when it was more highly regarded than any of Murakami’s other work, especially since I had really enjoyed most of his other works, despite their moments of bleh and meh.
I HATE WITH THE FIRE:
The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez because there are 10,000 rape scenes to which the women react semi-enthusiastically or sympathetically to their rapist because he is obviously troubled. Very realistic.
The Alchemist (and everything by Paulo Coehlo) for being heavy-handed and gross and like he’s trying to punch the reader in the face with the force of his DEEP THOUGHTS.
Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco (which I just read) because ALL of the female characters SUCKED and all of the men were important and smart. Many pauses to text furiously about how much I hated it.
Les Miserables, which my mother made me read when I was in grade eight. I hated it I hated it I hated it. I still hate it. I HATED IT.
I have a bookshelf on Goodreads called Books I Have Loathed, and The Mists of Avalon sits on that shelf with:
* The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, although Fountainhead is worse because of the rape secretly wanted by the female protagonist, who marries her rapist by the book’s end
* Couples by John Updike, who is a bad person and he should feel bad
* Jude the Obscure, which I read while depressed
* Another Roadside Attraction, by Tom Robbins, but really, anything by Tom Robbins could go on that shelf, I am not picky
* The Catcher in the Rye, because if you don’t like it you endure people telling you you must not have understood it, even though you read it multiple times and are a pretty smart person
* The Shipping News, because Annie Proulx does not really seem to like women very much and I hate her writing
* One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has a title I can get behind, but the actual book made me feel weary
* White Oleander, which I read for a book club, and which is about a beautiful blonde girl and what it’s like to be in foster care by a woman who has no fucking idea what it’s like to be in foster care. I don’t either, but I am not trying to write a book about foster care. Also, it was set near to where I grew up, and it ruined beloved childhood hangouts by setting seedy blow jobs in places I liked to go.
* Anything by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler- I think he is snide and unkind to his child readers, and he doesn’t even respect them enough to do the most basic of research. He referred to amphibians as reptiles in his book The Reptile Room, and in an interview I heard with him, he dissed Harry Potter without having read it, and went on to get major plot points and character descriptions wrong about the books he said were his favorites. Like, he said The Great Brain books were about a Mormon family in Utah when one of the big important things about those books is that they are about a Catholic family in a primarily Mormon town. Stop reminding me of better books I could be reading, sir.
Whew.
I’ve only read the first Lemony Snicket book, but I really disliked it, so I am glad to hear it was not just me.
Tom Robbins kept publishing the same book, just with different titles and character names.
Nice! My Goodreads shelf is called “Hall of Shame.”
I have a LibraryThing, not a Goodreads account, but thank you for the best hashtag idea EVER.
Couldn’t have said it better re Handler. Re Jude: Well, at least you were ALREADY depressed.
Oh thank God. I thought I was the only one who couldn’t see what on earth all the fuss about Catcher in the Rye was all about.
I always feel a bit guilty about not liking Lemony Snicket, as he’s a former student of my aunt’s and she’s very proud of him. But I just…I am all for dark stuff in kids’ fiction! I think it’s really important and necessary! But those books are so UNRELENTING and there’s no one to LIKE.
Am I the only one who found House of Leaves more than incidentally fucking irritating? It just felt like it was trying so hard to be self-consciously clever that I couldn’t like it as much as I wanted to.
If I dissect my fondness and loathing for House of Leaves into partitions, can we agree that I am not trying to persuade you that you do not hate it, that I honor and celebrate your hatred of it? Okay, then. [SPOILERS ahoy.]
The main body of HoL really worked for me, and so did some of its framing devices, especially since it hit an odd intersection of things that appeal to me (architectural-inconsistency horror, dry academic notes contrasting w/the main text), but I loathe the Johnny Truant layer of meta-text with a skin-prickling intensity. I hate him, I hate the fake-out, I hate the smugness and the trickery, I HATE IT.
Whenever I’ve mentioned this to fans of the book, they start to tell me how I just didn’t get it. NOPE SHUT IT, I got it. I understand how unreliable narrators work, I understand the many layers of collusion, agreement, and confusion that are larded in here. I just hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it so much that on some of my many re-reads (because yeeeeah I like the book and its scary bits enough to reread it feverishly) it poisons the whole. It’s like eating a baked Alaska and discovering a spider’s nest in the innermost layer.
YES THANK YOU. I wanted very much to like the book, and I did like some things very much – I like horror that builds from a jarring sense of wrongness to a gradual reveal, and I appreciated the footnoting and the degeneration of the usual book format into chaos (although it was a device I occasionally found annoying as hell), but I feel as though all that would have been more effective presented without external commentary.
I don’t even have an argument based on its effectiveness, I just hate that portion of the meta-text. I don’t hate the reveal or the extra layer of duplicity; I hate the smirking aren’t-I-clever tone with which those things are revealed.
I don’t mean that I hate Johnny Truant, because I think we’re intended to dislike and mistrust him as much as we might empathize with and fear for him (and fear his actions against others, too). I can get into a character I hate or a character I don’t trust or a character who inspires both fear for him and fear of him.
I mean I hate the delivery mechanism, the smug, gleeful satisfaction with which everything we’ve just read becomes arguably meaningless. I don’t mind the author revoking reality, I don’t mind the character who’s so twisted up in his own head that he could be the conduit for that reversal. I hate the self-satisfaction with which it is done. Initially, I tried to tell myself that simpering self-congratulation was coming from the character, not the book, but I tried reading Danielewski’s Revolutions and found I hated its tone just as much.
I object to that aspect of HoL the same way I object to Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. [SPOILERS FOR FUNNY GAMES.] I see and thoroughly understand both the shock value and the deeper thematic importance of reneging on previous narrative. I get it, I do. I even admire the idea. But the smirking, scolding condescension — the tacit presumption that this reversal is both staggeringly novel and utterly mindblowing for we puny humans — with which it’s delivered makes an otherwise interesting piece of work feel sophomoric and naive.
YEAH! If you’re going to write a book made of layers of crazy cross-referenced documents and footnotes, and hold out the promise that at the center of this tangle is the solution to some great mystery, then you had BETTER ACTUALLY DELIVER.
You aren’t alone, it’s one of my most hated books of all time. Being enchanted with the idea of using more than one font doesn’t make your book interesting, it makes you me when I used a computer for the first time in the late 80s.
yep! another HoL hater on board. this is another one that I hate primarily because of how much other people liked it and will harass you for not liking it.
The Lovely Bones! I bought it in Paris to read on the plane home, planning to keep it as a keepsake with its Shakespeare and Co. stamp, but…no. Why does the ghostly narrator have to be so ghostly and anemic? I don’t hate it enough to think other people shouldn’t like it, but it went to Goodwill when we got home.
Weirdly enough, my husband got a Chuck Palahniuk book (Damned) with a dead teenage narrator for the ride home. After paging through, it seemed pretty hateable itself.
I have many, but I definitely want to jump on The Time Traveler’s Wife hate-train. I don’t get why this is a grand romance. Henry basically molds Clare into his Perfect Wife and she never gets a chance to really develop any healthy romantic or sexual interest in anyone else or really develop much of a separate identity period. I was seeing red by the time she *SPOILER SPOILER* sleeps with ONE OTHER PERSON and she starts beating herself up when he SCREWED A BUNCH OF WOMEN before he meets her and I hated the way he devalued his other relationships because they weren’t his ONE TRUE LOVE. And I hate that she never even gets to live her own life after he *SPOILER SPOILER* dies because of his time-traveling. Also, the book deals poorly with poor and non-white characters. Ugh.
YUP.
That was one I LOVED while I was actually reading it, and then after I put it down I was like, “Wait, what?”
And then I read the same author’s Her Fearful Symmetry, which is the stupidest book of all time, and I hated it so much it made me retroactively hate The Time Traveler’s Wife.
THIS. I did enjoy the actual reading of it, but it left me with so many uncomfortable feelings afterward. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. There were some really perceptive passages in the book though, while the film just looks stupid.
One of my friends warned me off Her Fearful Symmetry, despite my love for Victoriana, so I’m glad I dodged that bullet.
“Also, the book deals poorly with poor and non-white characters. Ugh. ”
…..
………Everyone in that book wasn’t white and wealthy?!
It has been a very long time since I read it but I don’t remember a SINGLE non-white character. Unless it was something like “and then the black janitor asked Henry ‘why are you always naked at work? i’m comfortable.'”
I know Clare’s family was super-rich but all of their friends were also wealthy, right? I don’t like the way you are making my brain feel!
I think Clare’s roommate was a POC? And the landlady was Korean. But other than that, yeah, it’s pretty much wealthy white people.
I absolutely agree that it wasn’t a grand romance and it was creepy and the fact that after he died she waited every day in the same sweater for him was a miserable unhappy ending (to a book I liked because I thought that it was a fitting unhappy end to an unhappy story). But was that not the point? Was it INTENDED to be a romance? I am sort of horrified now.
So I totally agree with you on the unbalanced nature of their relationship and Audrey Niffenegger’s total unwillingness to write about actual human problems like “not having obscene amounts of privilege in every way imaginable,” but I actually think The Time Traveler’s Wife has one of the more well-thought-out systems of time travel I’ve encountered. It also touches on some of the more compelling aspects of time travel narratives; at one point, Clare wonders how their relationship can exist when neither of them really started it, which is a neat existential question that I wish had been explored more. But yeah, why have that when we can have a bunch of domestic angst?
Also it weirded me out that Henry was (usually significantly) older than Clare in all but two scenes in the book, and in one of those two he was only a little bit younger. Like, this is a romance where one person is a time traveler. Exploring the dynamics of all different kinds of age gaps between the parties should be part of the fun.
THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND HATE-SUNS to this book. The twee privilege is nauseating, the characters are loathsome, I have the feeling that the author wants mad feminist cookies for mentioning that the female protagonist likes getting oral sex, it doesn’t do anything new or interesting, and it rips off the long and rich legacy of science fiction time travel novels–and time travel romances, even–while acting like they never happened, which I guess they didn’t, because “genre” lit isn’t real. Or something.
White Noise by Don DeLillo. That book is so far up its own ass and so convinced of it’s own importance, it’s like the whole thing runs in unctuous slow-motion while the author’s head floats over your right shoulder screaming GET IT DO YOU GET IT ITS A SYMBOL BECAUSE MODERN LIFE IS SO EMPTY. A guy who likes Don DeLillo is an automatic no.
I didn’t dislike White Noise, but the Dude who recommended it to me was a little perturbed when I kept referring to its metaphors as “silly” and “cute.”
OH GOOD LORD, YES. I actually scrolled all the way down here to see if anyone else hates White Noise as much as I do.
I hate Don Delillo so much. I have always felt alone with that.
I actually despised How Should a Person Be. I hated the stupid people and their stupid entitled little lives and their stupid pseudo-drama about nothing. “Oh, I think I will just dick around for several years and then tell this person I am not going to finish the play I said I would write, FOR MONEY, like being a writer is THE JOB I WANT, but like, now I don’t feel like it? because writing is harrrrd. OMG how should a person beeeeeeeeee???” A person should get their shit together and follow through on their commitments, maybe? Also if your friend is going to hate you forever because you happened to buy the same sundress, maybe just let them go, they kind of suck.
Also a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Self-Indulgence or whatever. Just all David Eggers.
LOL. I loved How Should a Person Be, but your description is spot-on.
Also, it’s totally about people I’m kind of tangentially connected to, so that was sort of fun to read. ‘Oh hey, that’s my buddy’s band!’ sort of stuff. As a side-note, my buddy whose band is in the book is like “yeah Sheila is pretty weird”.
I wanted to like it, out of Canadian solidarity as much as all the positive hype (though I live far from Toronto, but still). Alas.
EDIT and speaking of failing at Canadian solidarity, I’ve never finished anything by Margaret Atwood. I try, because *feminism* and *Canada*, but every time about twenty pages in I’m like “what is the big deal?” I don’t even find her writing style to be particularly good.
Last of the Mohicans – if i had read the book before watching the movie, I would never have watched the movie (which I liked overall). Natty Bumpo in the book is a terrible human being who takes every opportunity to assure white folk that although he may trade with Indians and maybe sometimes live like them, he is most assuredly Not Like Them.
Nikolski – a book club read that crystallized in my mind the necessity of a likeable character for me to like a book. None of the characters were likeable and the book is totally pointless.
Up and Down – I loved The Best Laid Plans and enjoyed The High Road, so I picked up Terry Fallis’ next book with gleeful anticipation. Then the new-to-the-industry man solved all the problems for his female superiors and of course ends up dating one of them.
Debbie Macomber – a friend gave me a stack of romance novels she no longer wanted. Not my usual go-to read, but I had no TV at the time so I tried a few. I think this is the first time I actually threw a book across a room. Apparently a woman is sad and empty until she becomes a mother, no matter what else is going on in her life. (Not a mother)(also not sad and empty).
Have you read Mark Twain’s vicious written beating of Fenimore Cooper? Because it’s pretty much the greatest thing ever.
I have not but will definitely look for it. Thank you!
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/o…. It is definitely the greatest thing ever. My favorite is #13: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.” Oh snap.
I agree with you on Jacob Have I Love. I found it utterly repugnant. I have not reread it as an adult, and do not intend to. Oddly, I am very fond of her children’s books set in Japan, so it’s not the writer I object to.
Also, I have no love for Giants In the Earth, a nineteenth century American novel written in Norwegian. An immigrant family move to the Great Plains and sit around in a suicidal funk for 400 pages, when they could have done so perfectly well back in the Old Country and saved themselves the trouble.
Books I hate:
The World According to Garp- he’s like Jonathan Franzen where he just writes about the tedious lives of wealthy families in New England, but without the weird fixation on lesbians. Does anybody want to talk about what’s the deal with Jonathan Franzen and lesbians, and he doesn’t get it, and I think he thinks he does.
(Also when I was in social work school our “practice client” was someone who was supposed to a character from The World According to Garp, it was the very most boring thing.)
I also hate the combined works of Jonathan Franzen, except for that one essay about birds.
He just does the thing that Zadie Smith does, with the writing about a small group of people over a long period of time, which I love, but I love Zadie Smith, and I can’t stand Jonathan Franzen.
Also I hate How is A Person Supposed to Be, I think Sheila Heti is Canada’s Miranda July in which everything is tedious but also precious and I am supposed to follow her down this goddamn dreamscape porthole and it is infuriating how little it makes sense.
I also recently tried reading ‘Committed’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is my own stupid fault really, but I had this vague memory of reading Eat Pray Love when I was sad on a train one time and finding it vaguely amusing- and then being very, very sorry. Every goddamn person in the world is ambivalent about marriage, but somehow you get to wahh-wahh your way through 300 pages about it? Lucky fuckin you.
I have tried to read a number of Deborah Tannen books. I can’t bring myself to do it. Bleh.
Also I recently read this book called The Midnight Sun, and once I realized what it was I didn’t stop, because I am a dummy. It is about a lesbian cop doing a canoe race in Alaska who falls in love with another sporting woman who is on the run from some criminals who want to kill her. Lots of 80s lesbian romance novel sex (there’s pools of liquid everywhere, always) in rustic environments and running away from bad guys with guns.
This is also a very bad book.
CAN WE TALK ABOUT ELIZABETH GILBERT
Her life story has been made into TWO ridiculously successful movies: Coyote Ugly and Eat Pray Love.
YES COYOTE UGLY WAS ABOUT HER. SHE WAS COYOTE UGLY.
How does one person get this life that is so special that they make two feature films about it?
WAT (re: Coyote Ugly)
yes! there is an article confirming this I read long ago!
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/199703…
Ok, thank you for sharing this but I am not actually going to read the article because Elizabeth Gilbert is terrible and today is a holiday and I generally like to enjoy my holidays BUT I just need to comment on the fact that “sexy bartender on bar pouring cheap liquor down some dude’s throat” is wearing a ribbed short sleeved turtleneck and mom jeans! I love how refreshingly prudish we were, collectively, in 1997.
UGH SHE MAKES ME SO ANNOYED SHE IS THE REASON THEY MADE THAT EXPRESSION WHITE LADY TEARS
Wait, Coyote Ugly was about her? NOW I KNOW WHY I HATE THAT MOVIE
Also I hate Julie Ann Peters’ books, she has written only queer YA novels and they are ALL TERRIBLE.
I may want to read The Midnight Sun. Terrible lesbian romance is right up my alley. (Extra points if it’s a Xena-uber!)
“Men are like this! Women are like that!”–Deborah Tannen
This might be my favourite comment thread of all time.
– The Circle by Dave Eggers. I will give a billion dollars to whoever is able to stop this man from ever writing another book again.
– The Land of Painted Caves (#6 in the Clan of the Cave Bear series). After Ayla invents everything (like sewing and animal domestication) she figures out procreation. Then her boyfriend Jondalar (JONDALAR) literally yells “HE’S MAKING MY BABY” and then beats someone up. That’s pretty much the whole book, it’s so terrible. I mean, they’re all terrible but it seems like the author and her editor wrote this during a bender.
– Tampa by Alissa Nutting. There are no words.
– Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun
I forgot about the Clan of the Cave Bear series when I commented earlier but it definitely makes my list too. Everything went far downhill once Jondalar appeared. In my reimagining, jondalar is killed by the lion and Ayla meets up with the Mamutoi and lives happily ever after as their healer and seer and does not partner up with anyone except for summer meeting flings when she feels like it.
Rob Sawyer’s books. I read Calculating God, and it was only sort of awful but I thought maybe I was missing something, so then I read the whole Hominids trilogy.
Things I hated about these books:
– If you are going to write hard science fiction of the sort where you try to justify your changes from real science and you eschew FTL travel, you cannot throw in Star Trek-style implausible holograms. You can’t have a single point hologram projector that projects an image and forcefields around itself like the doctor in Voyager. You also can’t have a single point hologram recorder that records a complete 3-d image of its own surroundings, including the facing-away-from-the-recorder sides of things, even when the recorder is covered. No, no, no, no, no. Bad hard SF writer, no cookie.
– When the aliens are trying to convince humans that a powerful being created and now tinkers with the universe, they should maybe lead with the stronger, more easily understood evidence (mass extinctions on widely separated planets were synchronised), rather than the dumb evidence (the universe’s physical constants are nicely aligned).
– The society without sexism is not very convincing, especially when the behaviour of the character from the society without sexism is taken into account.
– There is just something really grating about how he handles religion. I think it’s because he presents it as a debate where the two sides are one specific human and another character who is aware that there are other human religions but doesn’t really bring that up when debating the one main character human and also has better (fictional) evidence for their side anyways.
Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch, which started out as a fun seafaring historical novel and then made me almost nostalgic for Life of Pi.
Also, the Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, for being long, insufferable, and deeply homophobic.
Just want to pop in second “anything by Steig Larssen” or however you spell it. You get ripping drunk if you down a shot every time someone ate “coffee and sandwiches” .
The Lord of the Rings. Or anything that can possibly be described as “Tolkien-esque.”
Anything by a Bronte or Austen or whatever lady is writing about the banalities of living in a mansion plus love.
I’ve never finished anything Tolkien or *Bronte or Austen. I’ve been told that I’m not “allowed” to hate books that I don’t finish but I don’t finish books that I hate. You don’t know freedom until you stop reading a terrible book and then return it to the library.
I never, EVER will understand the frenzy surrounding Pride and Prejudice. I couldn’t finish it. (Couldn’t even finish the Cliffs Notes!)
Possibly slightly unfair to write off anything described as Tolkienesque, because a LOT of things described as Tolkienesque bear as much resemblence to Tolkien as a cheese sandwich does to a lemon meringue pie.
My husband rants about Steinbeck’s Red Pony with very little provocation. He feels it’s abusive to make teenagers read Steinbeck. And there were 2 books I remember from my Canadian Lit course that I hated but I can’t remember the titles. One was about an immigrant on the Prairies. His horses or oxen die in a snowstorm. The other was about a minister’s wife who felt trapped in a small Prairie town.
YES! The Red Pony is awful.
I had to read The Red Pony in sixth grade, and I genuinely felt it was cruel and unusual punishment. I fear I would like it now, since my lit degree has made me appreciate things I once hated, but I haven’t reread it, so I can enjoy the memory of hating it.
Congratulations, you have just described 90% of all CanLit.
Once I hated a book so much that I intentionally left it on the subway in a fit of spite. It was Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.
That’s the pinnacle of Maggie sucking, I think. Sometimes she rocks it, but that book had everything bad about her writing all at once. Boring AND formulaic AND twee, you say?
Has anyone read The Half Made world? I fucking hated that book. Maybe it’s because I went into expecting hard scifi (as it was recommended) and ended up getting I don’t even know what. A slow dull mess. I didn’t like it from page one but keep thinking I’d get into it, something exciting would happen or I’d at least start to care about one of the characters but no. Nothing happened, I hated the characters and I wasted many commutes on getting through it. I wish I could remember more about the plot so I could more thoroughly impress upon anyone reading this how bad it was but I can’t. And I guess that’s probably for the best. Don’t read the half made world – it’s not nearly as compelling as it’s title. I’ll bet he didn’t even think of it himself.
I liked some bits of it, but it there were definitely annoyances with the plot, and also a lot of the stuff with the magical people who inhabited the west first struck me as pretty racist.
And it’s definitely not hard sf.
I loathed both Watchmen and Charles Burns’s Black Hole because that art was so effing hideous.
I hate Watchmen but love Black Hole despite an underwhelming conclusion.
I try to use Watchmen as an example where the writer seems secretly on the side of everything he’s supposedly against.
Fantastic topic! My most hated books have all been on audiobook – I think maybe they’re emotionally closer?
I hated but couldn’t stop listening to A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. It starts off well and the protag seems competent and likeable and independent. Then a guy comes in, and after an ok start, he starts setting off red flags left right and centre about being possesive and stalkery and potentially abusive. And of course she goes all meek and just does and agrees with anything he says, while I’m mentally screaming at her to get the hell out of there fast. Argh!
Other books I have hated included Leviathan Wakes, Retribution Falls and Throne of the Crescent Moon, all because I couldn’t stand at least one of the viewpoint characters.
Your are 100% correct about A Discovery of Witches. So disappointing.
Yessss. So I love Deborah Harkness’s scholarly work and was looking forward to A Discovery of Witches like it was going to be Christmas for my brain.
And then the book is like about the triumph of a creepy and abusive relationship which I, as a reader, am supposed to totally support. BUT MATTHEW IS ACTUALLY THE WORST. He:
(a) tricks her into getting married without her consent.
(b) watches her sleep like a huge creeper.
(c) is a controlling asshat (oh hey girl you better not be trying to KEEP YOURSELF FROM GETTING PREGNANT WITH MAH BABAY).
And there’s also the stuff about like how he knows everyone from the Renaissance ever and is also into VAMPIRE YOGA.
Finally, one of the queer characters dies. Fuck that noise. Oh my God I hated those books so much, but I am totally going to hate-read the final book in the trilogy when it comes out (soon, soon … so soon).
I’m just entertained by the Vampire Yoga, but the whole marriage thing, what? And there’s a bit towards the end where she’s thinking about how poor Matthew is weighed down by having to care for six people (or however many, I forget), and I’m just like they’re all adults and no one asked him to take charge, why can’t he let them all alone. Grr.
And yet it’s easy reading and the mystery is interesting and I too may read the later books and that just makes it even more infuriating.
Has anyone read Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss? Everyone else I know fucking loves it and raves about it. It has 4.6 stars on Goodreads and I really don’t understand why. The main character is the most perfect specimen of a Mary Sue that I’ve ever come across. His entire existence is just an excuse for wish fulfillment.
To be fair, I only got through about 50 pages of him being a terribly precocious, talented, beautiful child and barely anything happening before throwing the book across the room, so maybe it gets better. But I really also hate how the book treats women. There were sooo many references to “beautiful lasses” either as a prop to make things more interesting or a punchline to a bawdy joke. BARF.
I actually personally rather enjoyed Name of the Wind, and found the prose and worldbuilding of the first book quite to my taste. I thought it was a really promising start to a new series.
HOWEVER.
I agree with every single thing you say in this post for the sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. IT GETS SO MUCH WORSE. Nothing much happens for the first half. But then, the entire second half of the book is about how awesome he is and how he bangs all the chicks. He seduces an immortal Fairy Queen with his music and dick and becomes the Greatest Lover Ever. Then he travels to a matriarchal ninja society and impresses them with his deepness and learns to be a super-awesome ninja and sleeps with some chicks. Then he comes home and continues to pine after his Manic Pixie Prostitute With a Heart of Gold. I am not joking. This is the plot. It speaks poorly for fantasy audiences that people have not realized what a load of bull that book is.
The protagonist LITERALLY says #NotAllMen to two rape survivors in Wise Man’s Fear. LITERALLY “NOT ALL MEN ARE LIKE THAT.” Sorry for the caps but that was one of the worst things I’ve ever read in a book.
WAIT SERIOUSLY. Wait. Wait I think I remember that scene. OH FUCK THAT BOOK.
SAME. I enjoyed the first book but the second was a misogynistic train wreck.
I ALSO HATED IT! I felt so alone in my hate until now! 😀
The best (bad) review ever of the second book in that series: http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-751
“, I just really think it’s important to remember that Kvothe’s social interactions make Bella Swan look well articulated”
I love that review so much, and every time I read it, it makes me smile. *Lets the hate flow through her, and sighs happily.*
This is magnificent.
I was totally with The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, until the last three pages when we learn that SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Nathaniel P’s relationship problems are all just because he hasn’t met the right woman yet, and as soon as he meets the right one he learns how to communicate, decides to compromise, integrates another person into his life, and does all of the basic human decency things that he should have been doing with ALL his partners.
I kind of loved the ending because it was like “douchey dudes who should get their comeuppance actually don’t” which is depressing but pretty real. He just needed a set of bouncy tits to be subtly misogynistic around, I guess.
I had such a weird thing with that book. I kind of love it and kind of hate it and read it twice in quick succession and still can’t decide.
I didn’t hate it, but I absolutely thought it was totally overrated. And if it had been by a woman, about a woman, it would be in chick lit pink cover land, but because it was by a woman about a man it’s LI-TRA-CHA.
Ha, I love this. I rarely finish books I hate (or even get that far) – but a few I am sorry I ever wasted time on are:
The Lovely Bones (I’m not alone! That [spoiler] body switch near the end. ARRRGH.)
The Passage – Justin Cronin (I made the mistake of taking this book to the beach. Managed to not be traumatized out of my mind by descriptions of the incredibly superpowered, superstrong vampire monsters that either devour you in the most horrible way or turn you into one of them. Was still interested. Then he throws the characters I care about out the window and jumps way into the future and introduces a whole new group of people. what the hell? And when I read it, I didn’t know a sequel was planned (it’s not like it’s mentioned anywhere!) so I was even more furious. God, I hated that book so much.)
Infinite Jest (I tried to read that damn book 3 times. Under the spell of a guy who claimed it as his favorite book of all time and got a tattoo based on it. Ugh… that Buzzfeed list of single guy book reactions pretty much nailed it.)
I hated “The Passage” so muuuuuucccchhhh. I like scary disease stuff! I hate omg speshul psychic abilities stuff!
I loved The Passage, and was very excited about the sequel. And HATED IT. God, I hated that sequel. I was so sad, considering how much I really did love The Passage.
I loathed The Passage too!
I have a major weakness for post-apocalyptic stuff generally but I HATED The Passage. if I wanted to read something super poorly written and predictable there’s always Stephen King.
Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More than You.
I HOPE TO GOD I DO NOT BELONG HERE.
Fortunately, I have not heard of any forthcoming Miranda July works. Perhaps, she finally heard the giant “Fuck off” that the universe has been shouting at her.
UGH. Yes. I have hated her since You and Me and Everyone We Know.
Hateful characters all, except maybe the little boy. He can’t help it, his life is filled with hateful people.
I did not finish that movie. It was Napoleon Dynamite mixed with Little Miss Sunshine, and I saw/hated both of those already.
UGH YES I actually threw that book in a trashcan. I’m pretty sure that’s the only book I have ever thrown in a trashcan.
Dutch Literature. All of it. It’s ABSOLUTELY the worst.
Once I discovered the English language, I never looked back.
Though, tbh, I’m not good with “proper literature” in general.
I read my books for escapism, not for weird sentences & nothing happening.
I hated Stranger in a Strange Land so much I literally tore it into bits. I tore a BOOK into BITS. Can you imagine?
I also love how this whole thread is just people yelling into a void basically, with nobody reading each other’s shit.
I keep mistaking that book for the one I actually *did* read and hate, which is To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer (I had to do a wiki search to find the correct title/author). I did not even finish it, I was so angry.
Oh GOD, the Riverworld books. You made the right choice!
I was so ready to love them on the basis of the premise. I read two books rolling my eyes and saying “Is it too unreasonable to ask for like, even ONE female character who exists for some reason other than to be a sex-prize for the dude protagonists?” Well apparently that was also a contemporary criticism that Farmer had encountered, which he decided to address in the third book by introducing the most obnoxious “women’s libber” stereotype I have yet encountered in fiction. I mean even worse than the girl in David Brin’s The Postman, which is a book I otherwise mostly like. I mean come on Farmer, I know it’s the 1970s, but COME ON.
Yes – exactly! After the first sexytimes I was like, er, okay, maybe next time it will be okay? and then it wasn’t, and wasn’t, and I got tired of seeing myself as background decoration and there to be naked. I don’t think I threw the book, because: library copy, but I was angry enough to.
I am happily reading everyone’s shit! 🙂
Me too. I’m not replying all that much, because with many of these books I already guessed that I would hate them from what I learned through cultural osmosis and I can just continue assuming that I’m guessing correctly. And some are books that I actually love, but I think getting all defensive about them in the comments would violate the spirit of the exercise.
I’m surprised to find that I don’t actually hate any of the books I had to read for school. Not even Richardson’s Pamela. It was a very unpleasant reading experience, but I do think I gained some insights from it.
You are a goddamn hero, Stranger in a Strange Land needs tearing to bits.
I’m reading the posts as well. I admire your little trick of getting us to admit it too. We’re reading you! 😉
I AM reading everyone’s ” shit” and I love it!!!!! Never laughed so much. I also feel “one” with a person who HATES the same books as i do. Stranger Ina Strange land? I had to tackle it twice to get through it..my rating…meh.
It’s cathartic, reading all of this . . . even when I disagree.
I used to read a lot of Heinlein, and was taken with some of his “future history” sequence, for a while. At some point, the scales fell from my eyes, though, and I saw him as the misogynist ass he really was.
Some of his really early stuff – Red Planet, Time for the Stars – is tolerable in a dweeby 1950s YA sf kind of way.
Jacob Have I Loved is the worst. Just the worst.
Hatchet will also bring back memories of bad books of my youth.
This post has reminded me of just how much I hated the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which I had somehow spent the last few years repressing, and now I am sitting here scowling at the computer in remembered fury at its existence.
I can’t remember if the book itself (like, writing or approach or whatever) is actually objectionable, but it doesn’t matter because I hate the subject of it so much I want to physically destroy things.
Yes! Terrible, terrible book. An awful work of journalism, too; he fudges over so much that reflects badly on McCandless, and he fills in gaps in his research with totally unfounded speculation based on his own life history. Also he’s a schmaltzy overwriter who never matches his word choices to his subject matter.
(delurking for the 1st time to throw my hate-hat into the ring)
Heart of Darkness SUCKED. Lord of the Flies SUCKED even if it did inspire a brilliant Simpsons episode.
Cry, The Beloved Country was also a snooze-fest and I remember my entire sophomore English class collectively hating it. Alan Paton is pretty much a knockoff John Steinbeck, no?
I HATE LORD OF THE FLIES.
I HATE IT with a BURNING passion.
I hated Lord of the Flies! And I was forced to read it twice for english class. Never would have been sufficient, once was more than enough, twice is just mean.
Yes finally I can say: I hate it too!! LOTF, grrr
Thank you! I have never admitted most of these aloud, as I assumed that for many of them I just wasn’t clever enough. I’m surprised we have an open comment thread and no one has said anything like “How can you hate that book, you moron!” Which is nice.
I also hated The Wide Sargasso Sea, but somehow felt compelled to recommend it because it was “important” I guess?
Margaret Atwood, I’ve tried to read three of her books. Just can’t
A Tale of Two Cities. This was required for AP Lit, but my teacher took pity on me and let me read the Cliff’s Notes. Probably because she knew it was shit as well.
A Super Sad Love Story! Or whatever it’s called. I was trapped on a plane with no alternate reading so I just stared out the window for two hours rather than keep reading it.
Thank you to the person who said “Shiver” was bad. I LOVED The Scorpio Races and really like the Raven Boys series, so I have been contemplating (against my better judgement because Werewolves) trying that one out. Bullet dodged.
One Hundred Years and Love in the Time. I tried. I really did.
I’ve not read The Road, but I hate most of the men who talk so fervently about it.
This is really liberating, you guys.
Prep is TERRIBLE.
I’ll go read comments now, but I really need to lodge that complaint.
My ex gave me Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace and I had a viscerally negative reaction to it and couldn’t finish it. He also tried to get me to read Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon is his favorite author), and I didn’t hate it but I couldn’t get into it. He would get really annoyed when I’d refer to them as “boy books” too, for some reason.
Oh god I seriously repressed my memories of starting that book. Picked it up a yard sale, got to through some of the nasty anti-women stuff, and never picked up again.
This one is so obvious, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned it, and therefore I have to bring up my deep and eternal hatred of The Da Vinci Code. The only good thing about the several hours I spent reading that junk is that now I know better than to trust anyone who expresses admiration for Dan Brown.
An ex-boyfriend of mine loved The Da Vinci Code and looking back, it was only one of many gigantic red flags that I really did not care about him even a little bit.
Loving The Da Vinci Code is definitely a MAJOR character flaw!
I read it in high school and as soon as I finished it, I proceeded to rant and rave about how shitty it was. I side eye anyone who says they like it.
Renowned author Dan Brown is really good at what he does: write shitty stupid books that are poorly written and plotted and researched and that sell a zillion copies each. It’s sort of admirable to be so good at being a bad writer that you’re a zillionaire.
Hee! Your use of ‘Renowned author’ there leads me to believe that you’ve read the wonderful and hilarious Language Log posts on Dan Brown?
Or if that was just a coincidence, oh my lord, can I suggest you do? I cackle automatically when I see the words ‘renowned author’ now, thanks to them.
Agreed, but I have a soft spot for Inferno because it gets so fucking wild at the end. It might also be because I, like every woman ever, cannot help myself when it comes to Robert Langdon, that stud.
But it’s kind of accidentally hilarious. Dr. whozhit Tom Hanks person is a professional SYMBOLOGIST! wtf hahahaaaa
Anything by Eco Umberto. I read the synopsis and think it will be great then I fall asleep reading. Just. Make your point man.
You just reminded me that I had to read The Name of the Rose in high school, and mostly it was boring and slow and then it goes COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS, but not in a good way, just in a frustratingly whackadoo way as I’m struggling to remain lucid at 2 am the night before I have to write an in-class essay. *shudder*
“Gone Girl” – HATED IT. What was the point? Two loathsome characters, then she jerks you around, then she doesn’t even give you a satisfying resolution to the hatred she stirred up. Blech.
“One Day” – This was made into a movie with Anne Hathaway which I didn’t see because Anne Hathaway. I read the book first. Don’t want to spoil it, but it caught me completely by surprise, sent me rapidly through the five stages of grief and then I got into my car, drove to the library and flung it into the donation bin.
“WOLF FUCKING HALL” – Unreadable. Never even got halfway through it. My 85-year-old aunt, who is very literary and Anglophilic, called me to tell me that she couldn’t get through this book and wanted reassurance that it wasn’t because she was old. She still sends me newspaper clippings about “Wolf Hall” with snarky comments written in the margins.
“Telegraph Avenue” – I generally like Michael Chabon’s writing but this book made me want to kick his digressive, look-how-clever-I-am ass to the moon and back. Particularly loved the chapter written from the perspective of the parrot.
I also hated “Mists of Avalon” and that Eggars book (any Eggars book). And “Atonement” – YES, GAWD, YES!
This felt good. I’ll probably be back with more.
I loved Wolf Hall, but I choked on my drink laughing at you and your aunt. Y’all are awesome.
OH MY GOD, ONE DAY. ONE FUCKING DAY. FUCK THAT BOOK. FUCK DAVID FUCKING NICHOLLS.
MORAL OF THE STORY: men are assholes who live forever. women who are decent people and work for every inch of success they have will get hit by a bus. life is beautiful. ~fin
You nailed it. *mic drop*
I once had a roommate who I was a little bit in love with, but then he lent me Richard Brautigan’s A Confederate General in Big Sur and, not knowing any better, I read it and hated it so much and was cured of my crush immediately. Also, a hearty second to the Don DeLillo hatred. TIRESOME!
MALLORY, HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO ME, THIS IS AGAINST EVERYTHING MY USERNAME STANDS FOR!!!!
(Not really.)
And yes, yes, I loathe My Booky Wook, you would think that someone like Russell Brand would be able to write well, but NO, he cannot ration his language, everything is flowery and Dickensian or not at all. It made my head hurt. I think I got about two chapters in and threw it away.
Also:
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell – TOO traumatic. I’m not sure how I feel about trigger warnings about novels, but dear God, this book needs one, especially because what happens is so unexpected, and argh. Also it’s unrelentingly depressing for most of the second half of the book.
The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe – THAT was your ending? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! Just read The Group instead, for God’s sake, read The Group instead.
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa – There is a way to write an empathetic, moving account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Palestinian side without painting an utterly black-and-white, melodramatic, propaganda exercise like this. It made me hate EVERYTHING, especially the author.
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk – Because feminism exists. It could have been amazing. But women = people. ALSO THE ENDING, WHAT THE HELL
*inhales and exhales, slowly*
Oh no… I’ve been trying to get through Swamplandia! for about a year (not because it sucks, but because I downloaded it on my phone and I almost NEVER ready any of the Kindle books I own b/c I learned I hate reading on my phone/computer plus I forget I own them until I’m stuck in my car for some odd reason). I’m about halfway through, but I was already getting the sense that something horrible is close-at-hand: particularly with the Birdman. Ugh. So many creeped-out feelings.
**spoiler**
Ohh, that was kind of the thing I loved about Swamplandia! though. RIGHT WHEN YOU DECIDE okay, maybe this isn’t going to turn out as horribly as I thought, IT DOES. I really like books that make me feel things, even bad things.
If you haven’t read Vampires in the Lemon Grove, please don’t let Swamplandia! stop you. That was one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time, maybe ever.
Ok, so it’s days later, but just chiming in to say that My Name Is Red blooooooooooows.
Thanks for the downvote on Swamplandia, it looks like it’s right up my alley but I hate that sort of bait-and-switch WHY WOULD YOU EVER THINK THINGS WOULD BE OKAY ending. blech.
My mom has been in the same book club FOREVER and is such a book club hater. I would say she enjoys 2 , maaaybe 3 of the 12 books they read each year. There are a couple bossy and opinionated ladies in the group who have a predilection for dry historical tomes (like all those presidential biographies). My poor mom, it’s like she is stuck repeating a terrible White Male American History seminar. She would have SO MANY BOOKS to add to this list, if she could just figure out the internet.
My mother in law has just abandoned her book club. She got sick of them insisting on proper “literature”. Her taste runs to lurid crime novels, which she reads by the palette-load. I’m trying to convince her to get into an online book club of like-minded people.
When I was a youngling, those Frances Hodgson Burnett books (~The Secret Garden~ ~The Little Princess~) and EE Nesbitt’s The Railway Children… “We only have two servants now, we are so poor!” I’LL TAKE YOU DOWN FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE WORKING MAN, YOU EDWARDIAN PRICKS
Also, Stephen Fry wrote two books that I read. The alternate history one was fine, ok. But The Hippopotamus was so sickly, irredeemably smug. Reading it you can just imagining him thinking, Oh how clever I am! I’m so much more intelligent than anyone else!
Similarly The Accidental by Ali Smith. Middle class English people and their insufferable problems make me want to rend things.
Oh, the Secret Garden is really hard to go back to as an adult. I reread it after loving her books as a kid, and… whoooo there are some class problems, and I say that as someone who’s pretty well accustomed to Victorian novels. Nesbit actually has some relatively progressive ideas in some of her later books–maybe it’s just as well I haven’t reread The Railway Children, since that does sound like the whole “you can tell when the servants are good people who know their place, because they continue serving you even when you can’t pay them!” deal.
I don’t think they still had servants in The Railway Children after they moved to the country. Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I thought the mom did the cooking and the kids helped out around the house.
The odd thing about The Railway Children is that the movie (the original one, with Jenny Agutter as Roberta), is actually better than the book, and I like the book a lot. Nesbit was a very episodic writer, and the movie trims out the episodes that don’t really belong in the story.
Dennis Rodman’s Bad As I Wanna Be
egotism as it’s finest
Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” and THE GREAT GATSBY JESUS CHRIST HOW DO PEOPLE LIKE THAT BOOK.
*gasp* I thought I was the only one who didn’t like Gatsby.
I FUCKING HATE GATSBY SO FUCKING MUCH. I even escaped being made to read it in high school, but my high school boyfriend LOVED it and so I read it, and it is. USELESS.
Also, My Side of the Mountain. I was filled with an indignant, burning righteous rage that the author thought I could EVER in any conceivable world be induced to identify with the protagonist, a limp TV-addled whiner who we are supposed to believe turns into some REI-Davy Crocket by the end.
REDWALL.
Phew. That was hard. I loved those books so damn much as a kid, but now they are a pile of garbage and I want to steal the ones my sister has in her house so that my nieces never have a chance to think they are good books.
They are DUMB. Evengiving them the premise mice can run around with swords hey make no sense. I’m sorry but no matter how talented a mouse warrior is, it cannot beat a badger in a duel. It just can’t.
And all the female characters are kind and cry and wear floral prints. Some of them do fight and kick ass, but do so in a way that still makes me uncomfortable about gender roles.
And the moles feel vaguely racist in a way I can’t pin down.
Oh man, I just remembered Narnia. I love them as a kid, but Narnia will be banned in my house evermore, and my kids will be embarrassed by me. Narnia is awful.
Oh, if we’re including things we loved when we were young, I’m going to have to bring up Xanth. And the Anita Blake books.
And probably Pern, but I haven’t actually re-read any to see whether I hate it now, and I plan to continue to avoid doing so.
You had to bring up Xanth…
I stubbornly refuse to hate Pern. If I read them for the first time now I would be side-eyeing Anne McCaffrey so hard, but probably still wouldn’t hate them. I cannot imagine a world in which I hate Pern. I would never judge anyone who does, but my love will never die.
That’s why I’m not re-reading them!
Xanth and Perm both I own like 20 of each and will never throw them away because destroying books is a great irrational taboo for me but I very carefully don’t think about them.
Yeahhhh I’ve read some pretty dubious stuff about Mr. Anthony on the net in the last couple years that’s made me a little uncomfortable. I should probably throw the books out but I’m with you on that…and I’m more than a bit obsessive about my book collection. Must. Purge. Someday.
Same about Pern. They were SO IMPORTANT TO ME when I was growing up, and even now having done VERY MARGINAL rereads of a couple of short stories I can see where the trouble is (although some of them remain legitimately excellent–The Velvet Fields is one of the creepiest sci-fi colonization concepts I’ve ever seen), and I don’t want to ruin my memories. So I won’t reread the rest, love them dearly though I did.
Good idea. I too will never re-read Pern and just remember it as it was when I was an adolescent and it was perfect.
These lists of books people hate are really helping me out with my “books I remember enjoying as a child/ teen but should probably not re-read now” list.
You could think of these as books to avoid because they have been got at by the Suck Fairy. A very useful concept to take the blame for why things that used to be awesome and important are now problematical and horrible.
“I’m sorry but no matter how talented a mouse warrior is, it cannot beat a badger in a duel. It just can’t. ”
True words, these!
Oh Redwall, I am still desperately avoiding revisiting you, my adored childhood fandom… *Remembers realizing that the books were racist even when she was a kid. Sticks fingers in ears.* La la la la la!
I was always amazed at the kids who liked the Redwall books. Even as a child I found them unbearably twee.
Anything by David Sedaris. Anyone? I wrote a negative review of When You Are Engulfed in Flames on Amazon and I think nobody has agreed. But he is the worst.
Also, The Alchemist, anything by James Michener (I find him really readable but I hate his books), and The Magicians (same).
Thank you, all my other hates have been covered and I was wondering if anyone was going to mention Sedaris! I have never so much as gotten through a whole book by him, I read short essays or chapters or excerpts and am FILLED WITH HATE. Any time he writes about his estranged sister it’s particularly smarmily horrifying!!
Also The Lovely Bones. Hate hate hate hate hate. Hate.
I couldn’t finish it. I hated the husband.
David Sedaris is loathsome and in love with himself. A huge superiority complex. his voice is really grating too.
His book with “chipmunk” in the title is beyond horrible. Like, seriously misanthropic and depressing (as opposed to Sedaris’ usual overrated, past-its-sell-by-date semi-funniness).
I can get this. I hate all of his stories that are like explicitly fictional and shit. (Usually about animals, seem vaguely fable-like, and are just PAINFUL.)
I hate David Sedaris so much that I actually have a hard time forgiving Amy Sedaris for being related to him.
Putting my hand up for David Sedaris too. Tried the book about corduroy and denim three times and just shrugged. Can’t understand his massive appeal. When he tours here in Australia he sells out every time. (Shrugs again)
Anything with Vampires after Carmella
The Dive From Claussen’s Pier
The Crimson Petal and the White
And HATE John Steinbeck. ALL OF THEM
ugh, The Crimson Petal and The White!
Just because it’s ‘literary’ doesn’t mean you can skip out on an ending.
Carmilla is the business; all other vampire lit should take note. My Kindle copy is copiously illustrated with ’90s mall-goth girls, which makes me unspeakably happy.
The Dive From Claussen’s Pier really is the pits. Ableist and just plain dumb.
I read through all the comments to see if anybody mentioned Island of the Blue Dolphins. What a tedious sack of shit. My childhood best friend, who’s now an elementary school librarian, told me she’s never read or recommended the book solely because of how much I hated it.
We had to do it as a book report in grade 6. I read it a year early (I was intrigued by the cover in Gr 5) and consequently had an easy semester. All I remember of it was how much abalone there was and I had no idea what it was (landlocked state).
Everything ever written by Nathaniel Hawthorne or any Bronte sister. It’s bad enough reading about horrible whiny people without having to do it in turgid prose.
In more recent books, I have to say The Glass Thronow by Sarah Maas. I so wanted to love this book. Everything in the blurbs and plot summary scream “YES THIS IS THE BEST CRACKIEST CRACK YOU WILL LOVE THIS” and then the book utterly fails to deliver on any of it. I’m sure my hate is based in profound disappointment at that failure. Had the book been described/promoted more accurately, I probably wouldn’t care so much.
Young Goodman Brown, tho. I will give Hawthorne that.
All books by Jen Lancaster. “Such a Pretty Fat” is one, and others are like “Oh My God I am So Stupid and Racist, Let Me Tell You About That Purse I Bought one Time Or The Indignities of Living Near Brown/Poor People.” Because our names are both Jen, and we both live in Chicago, and we are both funny (though, only I am actually funny) stupid people are always recommending her work to me or saying my blog reminds me of her books. No.
I hate The Fountainhead, too, but that’s a given, right? Ayn Rand is terrible? Too easy.
I hate the Fountainhead mostly because when I first started my architecture major everyone kept asking me if I had read it, so I finally gave in and discovered that a) it makes exactly the same point as anthem (required school reading), but in a bazillion more pages and b) she has no idea how architecture works, really, at all. If you want to write a book about your terrible philosophy, fine, but maybe don’t pick a field that basically requires collaboration with other people all the time (or at least women to make beautiful watercolor renderings, FLW. And maybe if you’d listened to your structural engineer your pretty balconies wouldn’t have started falling down.)
Someone got me that book because I am also a Jennifer, and funny, and it was so terrible I couldn’t get past the first chapter. She’s awful.
Jen Lancaster–yes!!!! Same!!!! I think she thinks it’s not racist if she just refers to the people she’s making fun of as “immigrants”
Can there be a thread where we talk about things that we know we should hate but secretly love? Because now I feel the need to defend some of the books mentioned here…
Ooo, yeah. I recently read The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, who is like the dudeliest of “modern” fantasy writers. It’s grizzled warriors and scoundrels and Anti Hero Guys all the way down, with sickening violence and mostly white dudes. On paper it’s everything wrong with modern fantasy. But god damn it I loved it. It was so damn sardonic and roguish. It’s still probably too gritty for its own good, and there are some super-questionable bits, but I consumed it enthusiastically.
Same! I’m not responding because I believe this thread should be a safe space where we can hate books judgement free, but at some point I’d like to defend my love of Catcher in the Rye.
I don’t love it, but I liked it fine. At this point, though, my feeling tends to be that I could just watch Igby Goes Down again instead, which will be more fun and include Jeff Goldblum.
ME TOO. I loved “Catcher in the Rye” as a kid, and then I read it again after I found out I was supposed to hate it, and I still love it. And then I read it again because I loved it so much. You can love “Catcher in the Rye” and hate Holden!
Also, “Portnoy’s Complaint” isn’t the most feminist book in the entire world, but it’s hilarious. Someone should write a girl version though.
There are two books that I unreservedly loathe with the fire of a thousand suns:
1. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
One word, EDITING. First off, we don’t even get to meet the protagonist until 100+ PAGES IN. WHAT. Plus there are the numerous 50+ page random diatribes on subjects that have almost no actual relevance to the plot and are boring as shit. No one wants to read 75 pages on how the Parisian sewer system worked in the mid/late 1800s, NO. ONE. The unedited version is almost 2,000 pages long, but should actually be only about 400 pages, max. Every page made my inner editor’s eye twitch. RAGE.
2. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
I had to read this for a Romantic Lit class in college and my roommate and I were the ONLY ones who HATED IT and thought that Werther was a whiny piece of shit who deserved everything he got. For real, Werther is the original Nice Guy TM. I don’t understand how someone has not already written a modern satire of it, because it is RIPE for parody. In fact, the minute I can figure out the right medium for it, I will fucking pitch the shit out of it for here because you wonderful, wonderful people deserve to revel in the righteous anger you will feel towards this shitty, shitty story.
With you on the Werther hate! Goethe in general writes horribly unsympathetic male protagonists. I also hated Elective Affinities.
I actually love Les Miserables for all those flaws. It breaks all the modern rules of pacing and tight plotting and good editing, but I kind of love the character that gives it. I mean, every time I pick it up and read the line “Although it has no bearing on this story, we must examine the tale of the bishop…” I yell “DAMN IT HUGO, this is PAGE ONE” but I do it affectionately.
I also yell “Why don’t you just go and MARRY NAPOLEON, HUGO?” a lot while reading it. So, I love it, but in doing that I have to embrace its flaws by yelling at it a lot.
All books by Jen Lancaster. “Such a Pretty Fat” is one, and others are like “Oh My God I am So Stupid and Racist, Let Me Tell You About That Purse I Bought one Time Or The Indignities of Living Near Brown/Poor People.” Because our names are both Jen, and we both live in Chicago, and we are both funny (though, only I am actually funny) stupid people are always recommending her work to me or saying my blog reminds me of her books. No.
Reading the comments has really reminded me of my hated books of yesteryear.
(1) Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I had to read this in Religion class in high school and loathed it once I realized that it was only 80 pages long (40-50 of which were pictures of seagulls in various stages of flight) but cost (approximately) a hundred thousand dollars. SO MUCH RAGE.
And then the entire book is an extended Jesus-metaphor with lines like, “They say you are not the son of the Great Gull, Jonathan!11!!” And Jonathan teaches everyone the secret of flight (i.e., everlasting life). When I wrote an angry book report for my teacher, his response was, “But Layla, it can’t be a Christ metaphor, because Richard Bach was an *atheist.*” AUGHHH. I’m still mad about this one.
(2) Dear Mr. Knightley (Katherine Reay). I picked this up recently because I was curious about the Austen / Daddy Long-Legs combo in a contemporary setting. But there is a sekrit ingredient in this book, and it is Jesus. There is also bonus slut-shaming and the Worst Heroine Ever and like creepy stalking and manipulating that is framed as just a normal part of a loving relationship. I will not be mad at this book forever, but I am mad right now.
(3) The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides). Men have interesting thoughts and deep philosophical journeys. Do women have thoughts, too? Unclear.
Also also: A Discovery of Witches and its sequel (Deborah Harkness, you are so awesome, but this book is so bad); Chris Bohjalian’s Trans-Sister Radio; anything by Cassie Clare, ever; Ender’s Game (is it still genocide if I didn’t know it was genocide? YES, IT IS); The Time Travelers Wife; My Sister’s Keeper; anything by Nicholas Sparks (except The Wedding, which is hilarious, because Allie from The Notebook is DEAD but REINCARNATED AS A SWAN. Who likes WonderBread. It’s the best).
WHAT EVEN IS JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL? (i picked it up as a 10 year old and thought I was *deep* and *spiritual* cause, like, seagulls and thoughts. i don’t truly remember reading it though)
All I remember is stuff about flying and sacrificing yourself for the other Gulls and like leveling up when you fly.
That, and thousands of pointless pictures of seagulls.
In 14 words you have perfectly summarized everything terrible about The Marriage Plot ; thank you for your service
Thank you – I’m about forty pages into The Marriage Plot. You may have just saved my life.
Friends don’t let friends read The Marriage Plot.
The insufferable fact-checker in me couldn’t get past the main female character being an alum of Lawrenceville, which didn’t go coed until the mid 80s!
I had to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull in grade 8. I went to a Catholic school, was in the ‘smart kids’ (ie the ‘let’s give everyone another a reason to pick on you’) reading group and it was supposedly a treat for us. That was how much they didn’t like us.
I also read this in Catholic school in an honors Religion class! Catholic school knows how to make you suffer.
When I read this in high school, I don’t think anyone was impressed, and I remember the teacher getting super upset with us and like storming out of the room because we all didn’t love life enough or something.
“anything by Nicholas Sparks (except The Wedding, which is hilarious, because Allie from The Notebook is DEAD but REINCARNATED AS A SWAN. Who likes WonderBread.”
What? WHAT?? That sounds amazing. And by amazing I mean NUTS.
This is real! In the film version of The Notebook they die hand-in-hand, but this isn’t what happens in the book. Noah lives on! Allie dies and becomes a swan. Because if you’re a bird, I’m a bird.
And so there is this wonderful scene in The Wedding where Noah is hospitalized and tells his kids to remember to feed the swan WonderBread, because it is actually their dead mom.
MARRIAGE PLOT UGH
Swiss Family Robinson
just… UGH. (I was forced to read it for school. would not have chosen it by myself.)
Atlas Shrugged, which I tried to start once and put down again five pages later because my GOD those people are insufferable
also The Fountainhead, which, again, is populated entirely by truly awful, awful people.
Eragon (which is LITERALLY the plot of star wars transplanted to middle earth, written by a smug little shit of a teenager, and it is TERRIBLE.)
anything by James Joyce
the later books in the Merry Gentry series, which seriously make me want to sit Laurell K Hamilton down and explain to her that a mystical and improbably hot sex scene every three pages is NOT NECESSARY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WOMAN. (it’s a shame because the first book was actually alright, it just… went downhill a bit after book three or thereabouts)
oh, and then there’s the Left Behind books. which are about the Rapture & the ensuing events. I don’t know why I decided to read them. possibly i was bored. but they are awful. really, really, truly awful.
Eragon is just the Belgariad plus dragons! And the Belgariad is only good because of nostalgia!
wow, how many other people did Paolini rip off? (I’ve not read the Belgariad)
I once did an experiment where I took the synopsis of Star Wars: A New Hope and switched the names/places with the ones in Eragon.
It fitted a little TOO well…
He pretty explicitly rips off Pern as well… I really, really hated Eragon.
I haven’t read Eragon, but I upvoted this comment for the mention of Belgariad nostalgia.
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT read Eragon.
Left Behind is the worst worst worst. I invite you to come hang out with us over here, where Slacktivist is doing a page by page review of the Left Behind Series, aka the Worst Books In The World: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/tag/left…
I started a re-read of the Merry Gentry books (I’ve made it up to #6), and I think her problem isn’t so much the sex, it’s that she thinks that sex + gratuitious recapping + characters standing around repeating each other can make up for doing literal nothing with the actually interesting court politics/return of wild magic plot going on in the background.
Did you read the most recent book?? There are only three sex scenes and STILL nothing happens, it’s incredible.
I love how long this comment thread is. I can’t think of many books that I hate because at this point I just don’t read a book if I don’t like it by the first fifty pages, but that being said I totally forgot how much I hated Jacob Have I Loved until you mentioned it in this piece. As far as I can remember, it’s about a girl who’s sister is prettier and better loved than her, marries the boy that the protagonist loves, and nothing good ever happens to the protagonist ever the end. I picked it up thinking it would be a sort of sad love story without realizing (heathen child that I was) that the title is a reference to God hating Jacob’s twin Esau for no reason at all.
I will always have sympathy for Esau because of this book though. Why, no idea except that I was 11 when I read it.
I didn’t like Jacob either. I wanted to, b/c I so love the author.
Like you, though, I generally don’t finish reading if I am not drawn in, so I can’t say I hate the book. Maybe it got really good on the next page and I didn’t stick around to find out.
Ah! To The Lighthouse! I respect Virginia Wolf as a person, but that book. I had no idea what was happening for that entire book, it was one long string of pronouns.
Folks have already talked about Mists of Avalon and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I’ll throw my hat into the ring for Saul Bellow’s Herzog, however. It was on the shelf in my mom’s library, and college-aged me wanted to delve a little further into the 20th Century Canon.
Jesus Christ that main character hates women. They’re all harpies and whores and idiots.
And so I remembered why I never read any of the Serious Dudes of the 20th Century, and never went back.
I have an above average tolerance for serious dudes of the 20th century, and I guess that’s why I picked up that one. But wow, are you ever right about it. Insufferable. I wanted some musings about alienation and fragmentation and stuff like that, not the dirty laundry from your last break-up. The sad thing for me was you could see how he might have been almost worth paying attention to, as long as he was not talking about women.
Michael Swanwick’s THE IRON DRAGON’S DAUGHTER. It was such a very very very wonderful title and then the book was just horrible. HORR. I. BLE. It had nothing of the promise of the title and I still desperately want to write a book of that title myself just to redeem it. Haaaaaaaaaaate.
OH MY GOD that book was awful. I made it about 100 pages in on my first try and just noped the fuck out of there. A few years later, I had the book, I was out of reading material, and was promptly reminded why I put it down the first time. It was the first book that taught me never to power through a book you hate – it just turned into a huge mess of a train wreck. The further I got, the less it made sense and everyone was terrible forever. Reading that book added nothing to my life except a grim determination never to finish a book I hate again.
That is such a good title I went and looked up the wikipedia for the book. And the summary didn’t look that bad! But I trust my fellow Toasters, and picked up this review from the author’s own website:
“Melanchthon argues that the universe is fundamentally malignant, that, if there is a nautilus goddess at the heart of the spiral castle that a constantly self-reiterating fractal universe resembles, she glories in pain.”
I was wrong to have doubted you.
Anything by Mercedes Lackey. ANYTHING by Piers Anthony. OH MY GOD I HATE PIERS ANTHONY. I read them at the behest of an ex-girlfriend, and to this day, I am stunned that such a brilliant woman could reread-until-the-book-falls-apart any of that appalling, disjointed, cardboard DRIVEL.
I’ve also very recently added to the list anything and everything by Laurell K. Hamilton. She writes the same book 30 different times, each book contains roughly a hundred pages of DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE LAST BOOK, nothing is ever resolved, there is never any character development, it’s always the exact same sex scene, and OH MY GOD GET AN EDITOR.
HAMILTON HAS INTERESTING PLOTS BUT SHE BURIES THEM UNDER RECAPS AND HACK WRITING IT IS SO FRUSTRATINGGGGGGG and when plot movement does happen, it’s shoehorned into the last chapter and a half of each book’s falling action and gets no resolution whatsoever. AUGH.
also I can’t disagree on Anthony being absolute drivel, but I read so many of them as a kid, I will have to agree very quietly, out of shame.
I tend to simply put the book aside if I’m not feeling it (call me a gentle and amiable creature of words if you must, but I have yet to encounter as an adult a book that could motivate me to finish it from sheer cussedness), so the only books I *really* loathe tend to be ones I was assigned in school.
Fuck off, “Lord of the Flies”, and fuck junior high school English for even suggesting that I should see humanity–let alone myself–in this pack of cruel, selfish boys. In my secret heart of hearts, I firmly believe that if it had been a *girls” choir that had crashed on the island, they’d have made it back to civilization by, like, page 50.
Step forward, “A Separate Peace” and “Catcher In The Rye”. You are pushed onto adolescents as “real lit”–with themes and symbolism and shit–that is adolescent-friendly, but in fact you combine the great taste of bland wholesomeness with the health benefits of sugared lard. The Natalie Babbit oeuvre is wiser and subtler.
OK, one exception. “Eragon” I read as an adult–and, though I did not finish it, I have rarely loathed a book so completely. Fuck the stupid cliched plot, fuck the godawful dialogue, fuck the Gary Stu “hero”, fuck the oil-film-thin worldbuilding, fuck the misogyny and racism, fuck that this piece of shit was published when so many more talented and accomplished writers don’t have parents who own the fucking publishing house, and most of all fuck that time I attended a convention panel on epic fantasy and the author of this drivel was *on* it, on the same panel as George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, answering questions from the audience as if he had any right to be there. At least his… um… magnum opus seems to not have had much staying power.
Nothing has ever made me feel as energetically hate-filled as Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy.
So much misogyny! So much weird quasi-intimate-partner-abuse construed as Good Leadership! So many monologuing villains! I made a bingo card once I hated it so much. I’ll probably reread it in a year or two just to keep the fires burning.
I liked the first book (decently paced! interesting concept!) before the friend lending me the books sat me down and went “You know she’s *actively* writing them as incestuous fuck buddies, right?”
Oh man, after book one I made a joke to a friend lending them to me that you could *almost* read George and Shaun as dating but wouldn’t that be weird and I have never seen someone make a face that so clearly said “you sweet summer child.”
(The first book is easily the best. All the weird abuse stuff really gets going in Deadline.)
I hate Terry Pratchett with a fiery passion. I have masochistically made myself read several of his books mainly because of peer pressure since many of my friends fangirl over him. Honestly, I tried making myself think it’s “alright I guess”. But the truth is, it’s just godawful. He tries, he really tries to be clever and funny, but he’s not. And no amount of obnoxiously random bullfeces, distracting you from whatever is or is not happening in the plot, can ever compensate.
I also vaguely remember hating The Catcher in the Rye since the main character was so whiny all the time, but that was long ago and I should probably give it another shot.
I feel like we could be good friends.
This is only fresh in my mind because I read it this week, but The Three by Sarah Lotz drove me nuts. 99% of the book made Christians into such cartoony caricatures that I couldn’t help rolling my eyes despite my longtime antipathy towards Dominionism and religious hypocrisy. Also, get someone to localize your dialogue, Sarah! American’s don’t say “x is down to y” as a means of attributing cause. We also don’t say “I should have done,” we say “I should have.” That book wanted to be World War Z and just… whiffed it.
Also, I couldn’t finish The Right Stuff. Say “edge of the envelope” again, Wolfe, I dare you.
I just read The Three and couldn’t agree more!
I tend to like nearly everything I read, but there have been a few exceptions.
I managed to read an entire chapter of Catcher in the Rye before the narrator got too irritating for me to stand anymore. Possibly it gets better later, but there are so many books that are enjoyable right from the start that I’m not going to spend my time finding out. Cat’s Cradle might be going the same way; we’ll see if I ever get back to reading it.
I enjoyed the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire well enough, but then I got the second book and it sat on the shelf for about a month until I realized I wasn’t actually interested in reading any more about all those horrible people. If the second book was “Arya, Daenerys, and maybe Tyrion team up to feed everyone else to the dragons,” then I would be delighted to read it. Sadly, I doubt this is the case.
His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, etc.) was similar – I loved the worlds and creatures and technology of the books, but kept finding myself wishing that someone besides Philip Pullman was writing the actual story. Maybe someone who could write characters that I actually liked.
The worst by far, though, was The Smoke Thief, by I forget who. The premise (SPOILERS) seems like it should be a great story: a shapeshifting woman in the Regency era fakes her own death to escape her oppressive home town and uses her shapeshifting powers to become a world-class burglar. The book is just as amazing as that sounds – for the first few chapters. Then the Male Romantic Lead shows up, and he is such a pompous, manipulative bastard that I spent the entire rest of the book waiting for something to kill him. Sadly, he completely fails to be eaten by crocodiles or fall from a tall building; instead, he and the heroine end up stuck in a thoroughly implausible romance with each other, despite the fact that he also fails to improve in any noticeable way by the end of the book. It could have been such a satisfying story if she’d just turned into a dragon and eaten him.
Then again, maybe I just want more books where the arrogant noblemen get eaten by dragons.
I hate “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein. It was a tri-county reading program pick one year that I worked at an Indy bookstore, so I got a free copy from the owner and was encouraged to read it so I could promote the program and sell the book. Selling it was an exercise in putting aside my personal feelings to get the job done, and I still feel dirty and like I probably should have burned all the copies.
It’s written from the perspective of a dog. No one else participating in the reading program noticed that there was a part in the book where the dog is watching the main character (his owner) have sex and the dog casually expresses regret that he can not satisfy his owner like that. WHAT?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Dogs, amirite?
No.
I’m filled with joyous hate today – I will add both Blackout and Deadline, by Mira Grant. I like the first one, but uuuuuhgh.
Noooooo why? (Was it the noncest? Because that would be a fair shout.)
I probably need to reread them to pinpoint the burning heart of why I hated them so much, but at least 60% of it is the part where they undid the death at the end of the first book with MAGICAL CLONE TECHNOLOGY, thus not only being bad themselves, but retroactively ruining a book I’d enjoyed. I didn’t care so much about the noncest.
…damn, I kind of see your point. I think at the time I was too surprised by it to really look at it as an Artistic Decision, but actually, that’s really not great. What bugged me at the time was the Talking Villain, particularly as Grant had LAMPSHADED THE TALKING VILLAIN AT THE END OF BOOK ONE.
(Fan love is dumb love, and I would follow Seanan McGuire to the ends of the literary earth, but it did have problems.)
I really used to like the Toby Daye books, but lately I’m realising that maybe her writing style is just Not For Me. I practically threw the last InCryptic book across the room – I couldn’t finish it.
Mutant Message Down Under. This earns my special ire because the writer is still trying to claim it’s a true story even though they have to put “Fiction” on the binding. Reasons include Australian aboriginals pointing out the representation of a group of people they’ve never heard of is crap and others pointing out her timelines for her time there were wrong and her medical procedure doesn’t exist. Her group have no contact with “white” culture except for her half-aboriginal guide, who would have had to have one white parent and one parent of that aboriginal group, so there must have been some contact. (She can’t tell anyone the name of her guide because he’s guilty of tax evasion and she doesn’t want to lead the authorities to him.) Also, at the end of the story she’s taken to a secret cave that’s full of magazines and a bunch of other garbage that clearly isn’t aboriginal.
That game that has no winners or losers is known as a puzzle around these parts.
I’m thinking if a group is going to disappear a la the elves in Lord of the Rings, they’d leave their story with someone who wasn’t so damn dumb. She lets a stranger drive her out in the middle of nowhere for hours without clueing in that something was really off. She mindlessly let’s them strip her of her stuff and agrees to go on a walk, deciding to walk for a day and thinking she’ll be able to go back. I guess her time in Australia prior to that point hadn’t taught her anything about heat stroke.
She’s also a thoroughly obnoxious person, continuing to call the “Real People” uncivilised while she’s supposed to be learning to respect them. Also, in the foreword she wrote herself, she claimed that even if the reader didn’t believe the story, the writing was so powerful it would punch the reader in the stomach. Well, it didn’t, and I want my money back.
Also, the “Real People” are supposed to be spiritual, yet they refer to everyone who isn’t them as mutants, which doesn’t seem too spiritual to me.
Other books include every single thing I had to read in high school.
Oooh, I think I remember having to read that in high school for Religion class!
Yay! I’m so happy someone else hates that book with passionate disgust. A friend lent it to me while we were living in Japan, and I read it because books in English were like GOLD, and ewwww, it was terrible. My friend was convinced that the book was 100% truth and contained deep spiritual insights; she was angered by my dismissal of the author’s claims. THAT BOOK WAS SO AWFUL.
JPod by Douglas Coupland. Apparently his other books are like this, too? He clearly thinks he’s being funny, also delivering incisive social commentary, and also creating quirky hilarious characters, and he’s really self-satisfied about it, but it’s just a huge pile of lame, unoriginal, pretentious, unfunny, bland, recycled tropes. “Humans are an assemblage of pop culture influences and neuroses! I’m so cool and jaded about humanity! I’M A CHARACTER IN MY OWN NOVEL BECAUSE HAVE YOU HEARD OF META. You are so impressed right now.” Ugh. Hate hate hate.
I know this is an old post but registering just to say OMG yes yes yes, JPod is the WOOOOOOOORST!! I have a complicated relationship with Coupland (in my mind – I don’t know him or anything – thank god because he seems like a dick if JPod is any indication) because MicroSerfs is actually one of my favorite ‘light’ reads and I really like Generation X even though a lot of people hate it and I totally get that. But JPod is just pure unadulterated crap from start to finish. Just thinking about it now is making me hypervenilate with rage.
Chuck Palahniuk (in general)
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho is the only one I’ve attempted but…. no. just no.)
also, honourable (?) mention to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, which is WEIRD and tbh Blade Runner is the best thing that could have happened to that book. see… the electric sheep of the title are NOT A METAPHOR. book-Deckard’s greatest, wildest dream is to own a non-electric sheep (because animals are so scarce and have become a status symbol. he has a replicant sheep instead), and… yeah it’s just weird.
Should the end times come, Chuck Palahniuk’s books will be the first to feed my survival bonfire.
All of Eggers: yes
Heart of bleedin’ Darkness: yes
Crime and Punishment: yes, that’s my experience of reading it, for sure.
I have read AS Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden twice (second time by mistake, thanks for nothing, memory) and thrown it against the wall three times.
Also: goddamn Song of Ice and Fire. Uuuuuuuuuuuugh
1: This goes without saying, but FUCK Twilight. I read all of of them when I was at the beach, because I love a good trash read. I kept waiting for those books to get good or interesting or sexy, but they just got racist. Had I had any other books to read on that trip (Including Instruction manuals and the Oxford English Dictionary), I’m sure I would have abandoned them. They’re trash, yes, but they’re not even GOOD trash. Give me a vintage Kathleen Woodiwiss or Anne Rice over that nonsense any day.
2: Fuck all of the “important” 19th century literature I was made to read in high school, and in college as a German major. All of it. Every last one of you moralistic, imperialist, heavy-handed assholes. It took me years to discover that there are 19th century novels worth reading. Specifically: the only Bronte worth reading is Anne. The names Schiller and Thomas Mann will never again be uttered under my roof. Dickens is revolting.
(Austen is cool with me, though.)
3: Any of the “dude classics” mentioned already, except Vonnegut.
4: Even though it falls under #2, and has been mentioned a million times before, it bears repeating: FUCK ETHAN FROME. There is NOTHING REDEEMING about that book. It is ridiculous.
I almost forgot! Death Comes to Pemberley. HAAAATED this book. Terrible attempt to cash in on the love for Jane Austen; terrible book in general. It was intolerable.
Elizabeth randomly becomes a massive misogynist! Seriously there is loads of “Elizabeth had never been like Other Girls, who were all stupid and shallow, only Jane was tolerable and even she in moderate doses” that is just not in the original at all. And the blurb on the back promised me “Mr Wickham gets MURDERED”, which — awesome. And then its all “No, whoops, misunderstanding, someone made up got murdered, none of the main characters know him, but we have to get Mr Wickham off the hook for his death by proving he was murdered by another original character, even though we don’t like or care about Mr Wickham, that was the whole point of P&P, but if he is hanged it will be slightly embarrassing.” WHAT HIGH STAKES THERE ARE IN THIS MURDER MYSTERY.
I mean, for God’s sake, at least frame Mr sodding Darcy and make Elizabeth have to become a detective to save his life and then maybe she finds out Lydia did it and TRAGEDY she must choose between her husband and her sister!
Yes! Such a disappointment – and it made me reassess PD James’ other books. Now I can’t un-see how contrived all the mystery plots are, and how the characters are all weirdly detached from modern life.
Lord, yes. In the dedication of the book, the author says something like, “if the shade of Miss Austen were here, she would say she could have done this better”, and by the end, my reaction was, “YES. YES SHE WOULD HAVE.” God, there is not an ounce of wit in that book, and no one’s characterization is right.”
I hate every word written by Ernest Hemingway and I hope in vain for a zombie apocalypse so I can station myself next to his grave so I can kill him again.
EDIT: More things I hate, now that I have read most of the comments.
Cities of the Red Night, by William S. Burroughs. Jesus. I was dating a guy who was SUPER into Burroughs and oh god all of my hatred for Burroughs is wrapped up in the deep hatred I have for this ex (emotionally abusive untreated bipolar alcoholic, woo hoo!). I just had and still have this visceral distaste for Burroughs.
I also recently read and hated In The Woods, by Tana French. I was really into it until [SPOILERS] the narrator slept with his female partner and then just turned into this giant douchecanoe and totally ruined their friendship and his life. He was such a hateable character; the female partner was way cool and I wanted to reach into the book and uppercut him for treating her like he did. Also, the central mystery of the story NEVER GOT SOLVED and it was frustrating and infuriating and overall just an exhausting book.
I adore Tana French’s books for the atmospherics and the devastating emotional payoffs, but god am I glad I read The Likeness before I read “In The Woods. A fantastic quasi-supernatural mystery with no ending and a bunch of sad cops bouncing off each other like destructive ping-pong balls.
Wow, everyone here has hated really Important Literary Works which I tend to avoid with all my might. Well. I guess the book I most hated (enough so that I marked it up with criticism and gave it away at Goodwill or something) was David Eddings’ The Diamond Throne. Not only is it racist and sexist, it’s also badly written really lazy fantasy that just cribs from everything without doing anything interesting to the material and situations he stole. Also the jerk hero is supposed to be redeemed by his frankly creepy adoration of a comatose (by Eville Spell) white, blond, blue-eyed adolescent queen. It’s gross.
The rest of Eddings’ output, what little I tried to get into, just bored me. But this I hated.
I had a girlfriend once who used to force Eddings on me with unquenchable perseverance. The best thing about it was that I have forever after been able to articulate what I hate about bad fantasy.
That reminds me! I hate Stephen R Donaldson and everything he’s written, he is gross and rapey and I took great pleasure in consigning one of his hardcovers as a window prop.
I hate, and I cannot believe it hasn’t been mentioned already, eat, pray, love. I wish anyone who was unhappy in their marriage could just escape to another continent to “find” happiness.
David Copperfield.
I would rather stab myself in the eyes with a fork and throw myself off a tall building than ever read one sentence from that book ever again.
Gabriels Inferno by Sylvain Reynard. I hated this book so much, I actually read the second book because I was so pissed off at how insulting it was toward readers. I’ve never had a book imply, by the arrogant esoteric drivel its characters spew out of their mouths, that I will never be half as intelligent as the author. Jesus. I get it. Reynard knows big words. Woohoo. I actually ranted for hours as I forced my way through these books (I did not read the 3rd book because I feared for my sanity if I had to endure another word). If I could bring myslef to burn a book, these would be what I’d throw on the fire.
When I was little I hated the Elsie Dinsmore books, which are basically morality plays wrapped up in an antebellum bow with a protagonist who marries a man her father’s age. BLECH. Thankfully most of the books I’ve hated have been ones I read for college:
– Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead: Because I went to a Christian college this was assigned to me in at least THREE separate lit/creative writing classes. I think I need to give it another try because I recently read Housekeeping and adored it beyond measure. Maybe I just care about the slow-boiling, interior lives of women more than those of men?
– T.C. Boyle’s The Inner Circle: This book is about sex researchers having sex and that is literally all it is about. Plus there was a lot of pressuring people to do things they didn’t want to do (which is interesting in and of itself, but I feel like horrible things just happened and then the plot moved on and left them unexamined) and I felt uncomfortable most of the way through.
I have to second The Corrections. I wouldn’t say I hated it, but it was recommended enthusiastically to me when I was 21 by a shopkeeper in a “cool” NYC bookshop. Let’s just say nothing about the book lived up to the hype he used to sell it to me.
De lurking for the first time ever.
I hated with a fiery passion Saint Maybe. I was forced to read it in high school and was not prepared for the amount of loathing and vitriol that I felt welling in my breast every time I was forced to join group discussion. My teacher loved it. I hated it so much I was willing to FAIL English that year by refusing to write a paper on it. The teacher could not comprehend my hate, which manifested in us having shouting matches in front of the class, punctuated with me using lava filled arguments while using overly violent arm waving. The book revolves around poorly constructed characters, awful writing, the main character suffering from “I’m a snowflake” syndrome which is basically the entire plot, and the ego stroking narcissism each other character displays is mind numbing. I blacked out the authors name so I would never have to remember the person I so wished death upon in my second year of high school.
Possession. How such a fuss was made over something with paper-thin, unsympathetic characters, a hackneyed love story and historians, I’ll never know.
And yet The Children’s Book was so good! Byatt, you have a serious case of the Edith Whartons.
I love *Possession,* but God, *The Children’s Book* didn’t grab me at all. I was about 50 pages in andI never bothered to finish it, so I can’t list it in the hate column. It was more of a “Meh” of disappointment.
Nothing will ever be as boring as Possession.
HATED this book. Read it in grad school and the thought of it now still makes me shake with rage. I was so glad the movie was hilarisad.
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. There, I said it. I thought it was boring as shit and I hated the constant resets and I stopped reading about halfway through, which says a lot because I usually ALWAYS finish books.
the magicians! it made me SO ANGRY. Why is there no real plot? Why is Quentin the worst? WHY IS THERE A SEQUEL?
Great news! It’s going to be a trilogy!
(Quentin gets even worse in book 2; I assume in book 3 we find out he’s literally Hitler. Though I won’t know because I will not be fooled a third time NO I WILL NOT.)
(Of course I’ll hate-read it, I can’t lie to myself.)
you have a strong soul!
So many books to hate: The Fault in Our Stars(you’re a teenager with cancer just smoke that fucking cigarette), The Life of Pi(so terrible that the previews for the movie gave me rage flares), magical realism of any type, The Crying of Lot 49, and anything by that post-modern douche who wrote Crash.
However, this post is filling me with a deep foreboding as I have inflicted Light in August on my book group, and as I read through this SO MANY books that I also loved when I read it first sound legitimately terrible, that I fear that I have foisted a dense, terrible book on lovely ladies that was chosen by the pretentious 19 year old version of me.
As it is said, we only hurt the ones we love.
“Light in August” was so dull, I can’t remember a single thing about it, except the cover.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by by Catherynne M Valente. The writing style is unbearable.
People tell me to read this all the time and I have not yet been able to get past either the title or the author’s name. I can do a pretentious title, or a silly spelling of your first name, but not both.
Yes, thank you.
I read a novella by her recently because it’s a Hugo nominee. I didn’t hate it, but if it was representative of her writing style, then I don’t think I could have taken more than a novella’s worth. And a novella’s worth was pushing it.
People keep telling me to read her Palimpsest but the sample chapter on Kindle was enough to tell me that I wouldn’t get through the prose. Her writing style seems insufferable.
Palimpest was dreadful. I almost met her one time at a con – I was invited to a room party she was at, but she was sitting in the middle of the bed surrounded by friends and steadfastly ignoring anyone she didn’t already know so…
I’m surprised by all the hate for Dickens! But this is coming from a woman who devoured David Copperfield in two days. So my Dickensian love is well noted.
You’re not alone!
I hate Dickens whenever I’m not reading him. I hate his cardboard characters, his blatant emotional manipulation, and his contrived plots. But goddamn if I don’t go exactly where he’s leading me once I’ve started actually reading one of his ponderous tomes.
I had to read Anthem by Ayn Rand for my ninth grade English class. That was a decade ago, and I’m still angry.
“Twilight”
I read it because I work in a bookstore, and I do not critique what I have not read. God! it sucks! OOOh, Edward is SO CUTE! *brood* I just want to kill you, and I follow you around. Ohhh you are so cute and you want me! *brood* I just want to eat you so I stalk you.
“50 Shades of Gray”
I have written better porn. I picked up a copy at a friend’s house while bored and skipped around. *gag*
“Number of the Beast” by Robert Heinlein.
A guy invents a time machine (only one in the universe) then someone comes after him, so these 3 or 4 couples run of fin the time machine, only to be chased, BY SOME ONE IN A TIME MACHINE! After half way through and I don’t know how many cocktail parties, I threw this one across the room.
YOU FORGOT THE PART WHERE EVERYONE IS NAKED, LIKE, ALL THE TIME
(I actually love Number of the Beast but I am fully aware of how absurd the entire thing is)
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. I had to read it in high school. I have never hated a book as much as I hated that one. I was moved to tears by the torture of it. If it wasn’t owned by the school I would have burned it. I wanted to go back in time, find Joseph Conrad’s mother, and pull a Terminator.
I remember in class the teacher remarked on how extraordinary is was that Joseph Conrad wrote in English yet it wasn’t his native language. I screamed (in my mind), “I know! I can tell!”
I love this thread.
I hate Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius so very very much. I hate read until the frisbee bit (“we’re throwing a frisbee, everyone is watching us throw the frisbee, we’re gods of frisbee or some shit”) and i just couldn’t take it anymore. Similar to my 2d hated book, On the Road, it is just self congratulatory masturbation on how awesome it is to be a dudey-dude. Hate.
I also hate Into the Wild – the book was well written but i hated the story, hated what the guy did and thought he was selfish and stupid.
The Turn of the Screw. Never have I been so disappointed in my entire reading career. And Daisy Miller’s awful, too. I don’t think Henry James knows how to write a climax or how to end a story, or maybe he just got lazy, but the whole 80-pages-of-exposition-and-suddenly-the-children-die thing doesn’t work.
Is it just me, then, who cannot stand Murakami? The women are ciphers, the men are paper dolls buffeted about by their own anomie, and the cats are always mysterious and stuck in a well… or some such. (It’s all the Same Book. Am I taking crazy pills?) I just, as the internets say, cannot with that.
Also Don DeLillo. You are not clever, but I am clear that you think that you are.
Nope, Murakami just really cannot do characters.
I do love Murakami, but more for his writing style and tone than his characters. I admit, all of his stories have blended into one in my head :/
All of this is true about Murakami. But the cats keep bringing me back.
Nope, I’m with you. What even is the point of Murakami. I made it most of the way through The Windup Bird Chronicle or whatever it’s called solely because it was all I had to read on the commute to work. Eventually I said uncle. I’m still convinced on some level there must be an allegory at work because it’s the only possible explanation for the total one-dimensionality of the women, but the thing with allegories is that they can’t go on for hundreds of pages for precisely this reason.
Yes! If he just wrote one short story called “The Women Are an Allegory,” I would (probably) read that. 10 pages max, including all descriptions of spaghetti and mysterious men in glasses. That’s the deal, Haruki-san. Take it, or leave it.
He did. It’s called “The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day.”
I kept seeing people saying “I love Murakami, but [this book] was just awful!” but really, I liked The Windup Bird Chronicle because something about the way it was written just got me hooked (and I read really quickly, so I read the whole thing in a day, so there wasn’t enough time to get bored), but the characters were all super one-dimensional, particularly the women. “Norwegian Wood” was just awful, and 100% goes in my “I hate this book!” thought it wasn’t well written, the characters were boring, but what bothered me the most is I’m almost certain at one point the girl was like “I feel like I can have sex again your dick has saved me thank god for your penis” and I immediately wanted to puke.
Totally agree about Murakami. I think it was the girlfriend with the overpoweringly beautiful ears who turned me off Murakami for good. But even without all that, is there any point to any of his books? Does the mystery ever add up to anything at all? It’s like the Counting Crows imitating Dylan; it’s so painfully obvious that all the psychedelic wordiness goes no deeper than the page.
Tolkien, both Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. There, I said it. Long and boring and I didn’t care about any of them. (I just can’t do that sort of fantasy stuff. At all. I can do Harry Potter type fantasy and I love hard science fiction. But no elves and goblins and trolls or whatever.)
wait but aren’t elves and goblins and trolls in Harry Potter
wait but aren’t elves and goblins and trolls all in harry potter
Yes, but they aren’t the same *type* of elves, goblins and such. (I am horribly inconsistent.)
Hard core fantasy reader here and I don’t think I’ve ever been able to make it all the way through any of the Tolkien books. They are kinnnnnnnda boring. <.<
Inkheart, and its sequels. I’m sorry, they are about a book and I love books and my mother loves this series, but I can’t. Just can’t.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I couldn’t get more than about a third of the way through this. It’s like someone said, “you know what there aren’t enough of? Really dry history textbooks! Let’s write a fictional one!”
It took me like four or five tries to read Jonathan Strange and finish it, because I kept hearing people say that it was awesome, and I LIKE Jane Austen and long-ass historical novels with massive infodumps, and Stephen Black seemed like a cool guy, so…
Yeah. Read it. Not reading again. Ever. Although — SPOILER — I might read a sequel if it had nothing to do with Strange/Norrell but about the impact the new magicians have on the social history of nineteenth-century England.
You might enjoy Susanna Clarke’s “The Ladies Of Grace Adieu.” Short stories, limited Strange and Norrell, lots of magicians in nineteenth-century England.
This has been such an interesting thread to read.
Crime and Punishment is a big one for me. I just couldn’t Have the main character, which was a huge problem because the vast majority of the book is him writhing around on his bed in an existential froth, while everyone cries to express every emotion.
Lionel Shriver. The Post-Birthday World (oh lord. Never have I cringed so constantly than at her depiction of British snooker society and especially Ramsey’s phonetically represented accent). That one about terrorism (a subject on which she has my invitation to refrain from further comment). Her books truly appal me.
&Sons. Did anyone read this? Hello, there’s suddenly a whole plotline with CLONES introduced 1/3 of the way through but then everyone just CONTINUES TO ACT LIKE THEY’RE JUST EXPERIENCING THE BREAKDOWN OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY LIKE EVERY OTHER MODERN NOVEL??
There was this particularly ghastly ‘women’s novel’ I read recently called One Step Too Far in which there is extensive racial tokenism, the main character gets divorced and remarried three times in the last 20 pages, and the twist is that she wasn’t leaving her husband and son – it was her husband and DOG all along.
Lord of the Rings. Eragon. Mortal Engines. The Abhorsen Trilogy.
Any of those tell-alls about childhood abuse or diseases. While I have nothing but sympathy for their authors, the sort of vulturish fascination with other people’s misery is just horrible. This is also part of the reason why I no longer read or watch media pertaining to the Holocaust (or other horrors of the 20th century) except if I am intending to seriously learn and think about what I am watching.
Anything by Jodi Picoult, bless her! When I think trite and formulaic I think of old Jodes!
Personally, after loving books, hating books is one of my favourite pastimes! Sometimes I read one book by an author, realise I loathe them, but then really need to put my finger on exactly what is So Wrong with them, which I do by reading every single book they’ve ever written. End result – glorious hatred, and a very clear list of the exact things that are so horrible about every single book of theirs. It was in this spirit I read all the Twilights and Fifty Shadeses (I realise I sound incredibly mean, but I love so many books and authors too! This just isn’t that thread!)
Ugh. Ramsey’s accent.. What even is it?
It’s the sort of thing you snigger at one minute but then are totally enraged by the next. People in other countries will think this sort of thing is real! They’re going to think we’re all snooker loopy!
I forgot her absolute worst one though! So Much For All That. Wow. All I can say is, I hope for the sake of many a man with fragile self-esteem that her depictions of penis-enlargement surgery are as realistic as Ramsey’s accent.
And Irina telling her mother that people in the UK love snooker and Ramsey is really famous. NO WE DON’T. (I mean, as a general rule. Some people do.)
I have not read So Much for That, but I think my mum has; maybe I should borrow it and hate-read it. (I have done this multiple times with her tennis-themed book, Double Fault. It is dreadful, although at least there are no fake Brits.) Penis-enlargement surgery? :/
Ok, thank you for the opportunity to get this out of my system. *Steps into confessional*
I hate, in backwards chronological order of my lifetime,
The Life of Pi. Actually just the first 15 pages. Hated it that much.
Eat-Pray-Love being a rich woman with fake problems = OMG I ATE SO MUCH PIZZA BUT SOME GUY SAID IT MAKES ME SEXY WOW MEDITATE ON HOW I AM BEAUTIFUL EVEN AS A SIZE 6! Bitch, please. Setting us back a million years. Fake rich buddhists, please return to your normal life and don’t bother us anymore. PS, I can see your underwear through those yoga pants. No, really.
The Happiness Project = I am so lucky but miserable anyway but because I admit that I am an entitled self aware mess it makes it cool for me to embark on an endless project to get happy despite my perfect life – I’m so buddhist! I am america and so can youoooouuuoo!! (Shut up and go back to being rich. This is the worst happiness book out there.)
The Wind in the Willows. Hated it so much my dad taught me how to cheat on book reports for this one. First book I ever started and couldn’t finish. As a voracious child reader, this felt like a real failure. My dad assured me it was dull as dirt, and that life wasn’t worth spending on books that you hate. No matter their merit. Thanks Dad! I finished ‘The Shining’ that week instead of this fourth grade assignment. Also got an A on my book report, bahahaha!
Anne of Green Gables, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Not even worth discussing, just hated them both.
Anne of Green Gables? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
My heart swells with love for your hate. I picked up Eat Pray Love and The Happiness Project because my then-gf left them by the side of the bed and any book she was reading was of course much more interesting than any book I was reading, but even so I had to put them back down after reading the back cover because my blood had already started to boil just from the description.
I actually read Life of Pi at some point and didn’t exactly hate it, but considering that all I remember about it is “some kid was on a raft with a tiger except oops, there wasn’t really a tiger” I must have found it pretty dull.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghesse. Everyone seemed to love it but I thought it was pure overdone literary trash, the main character was insufferable, and I felt very bad for his girlfriend.
The Steel Remains and The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan. and honestly anything “grimdark” fantasy. I’m supposed to like it, but I hate it.
I grew up hearing my dad tell, many times, the story of his worst college paper-writing experience, where he took some European literature class where they had to read some excruciatingly, soul-crushingly boring book that the whole class, as one, basically gave up on, and everybody was convinced they were all going to fail. My dad had spent most of the past couple weeks flirting heavily with a girl who sat next to him (NOT MY MOTHER, SPOILERS), mutually commiserating about how hard the paper was and the book was so awful and did you finish it because I couldn’t even finish it and why is this class the worst and we’re all going to fail, etc. etc. My dad couldn’t even get more than two chapters in and decided to throw a last-minute Hail Mary by ignoring the book entirely and writing a biographical paper about the author – for which he got the only A in the class and was publicly singled out by the professor as the only person in the class who had done something interesting with the assignment. Needless to say he was NOT popular with the rest of the class (including cute girl). Anyway, so I never knew or remembered what this book was, but I knew my mild-mannered dad had hated it with a burning fiery passion. Fast-forward to a few decades later, when I myself was a junior taking a Masterpieces of Renaissance Literature class (coincidentally at the same college my dad attended) and I had brought a stack of homework back to Portland with me for fall break, and was venting to my dad about this shitty garbage book we had to read in class and write a critical essay on, and he was like “Ha ha! That’s the worst! Well, it can’t be any worse than “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais!” AND IT WAS. WE WERE UNKNOWINGLY UNITED THROUGH THE DECADES BY THE SAME LEAST FAVORITE BOOK. It is the WORST. The WORST. As my father put it, “There is really only so much you can do with codpiece jokes.” YOU WOULD NOT THINK THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS TOO MANY CODPIECE JOKES BUT IT REALLY IS A THING. THAT BOOK IS A STEAMING PILE OF GARBAGE AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO PUNCH ALL THE THINGS. I GAVE IT A RANTY HATE-FILLED REVIEW ON GOODREADS AND IT WAS SO SATISFYING, LIKE DEAD RABELAIS GIVES A SHIT BUT WHATEVER.
Ahh, that one! I never took a Ren Lit class (I never took a lit class, for that matter), but I remember that it would always crop up during annual celebrations / promotions of banned books, given the Church’s antipathy for it at various points through history
I love this comment.
this is how I feel about Frankenstein. Suck it, English 110!
When my father was young, his father told him never to read the story “The Monkey’s Paw,” because it was creepy and unpleasant and would scar him for life. This of course backfired, my father rebelled, read “The Monkey’s Paw” and was duly scarred by it. So he decided that he would take the opposite approach with me: just not tell me about it and figure I probably wouldn’t find it on my own. When I was in second grade – second grade! – a storyteller came to our class. The story she chose to tell? “The Monkey’s Paw.” I was afraid to go to sleep for a month, for fear I would have nightmares about it.
The moral of this story is that you can never escape the family curse. It will find you, no matter what you do.
I’ve referenced Gargantua and Pantagruel in so many papers, I had no idea they made anyone actually *read* it, I’m so sorry.
thesecretherstory’s post has reminded me that I hated Room by Emma Donoghue. It was the sort of thing where you expect that the only reason someone would write it would be to say something about human nature, but then it doesn’t say anything about human nature, or at least not anything interesting and non-obvious. There wasn’t really a plot, the characters are all obscured by the choice of narrator, and awful things happened for no discernable reason except to make the book edgy.
I think the same book club member suggested both Room and The Windup Girl.
I’ve been consciously avoiding Room! But now tempted just for the righteous indignation?
Trust me, it’s not worth it.
OMGGGG YES ROOM.
I had entirely forgotten about how fiercely I hate Room. First-person narration by a child = the worst.
That said, I quite like some other books by Emma Donoghue – Hood! Stir-Fry!
Also, peeps, how can we have the “Mists of Avalon” conversation without discussing how I literally just learned like LAST WEEK that Marion Zimmer Bradley WAS A MOTHERFUCKING CHILD MOLESTER?!?!? Did everyone else know this but me? I stumbled upon this on a bunch of fantasy lit blogs like last week and was fucking nauseated and now I can’t read that book ever again EVEN THOUGH I LOVED IT AND WAS HELLA PROUD THAT 500 PEOPLE HAVE LIKED MY REVIEW OF IT ON GOODREADS AND IT LIKE DEFINED MY TEENAGE YEARS AND NOW IT’S ALL TAINTED.
That she defended and possibly aided her husband in his molestation was known from trial transcripts and her husband’s incarceration; and I’ve seen that info floating around on the internet, but also seemed to be kind of brushed aside/glossed over/ignored in fandom. Bradley’s daughter just came out about how Bradley had molested her a few weeks ago; so I think that part, that Bradley herself was also doing the abusing, is new info. But yeah, all of it is disgusting and nauseating.
I also loved that book (and also The Firebrand) when I was 12 or so and it made a huge difference in my life and — because I was a kid, in Canada, who wasn’t part of fandom at the time — had no idea about any of this until whenever it all exploded two weeks ago or so (I’d never even heard of her husband). (I think that if you don’t read the book at the exact right age, with the right kind of background reading, it will never work for you.)
The book was important to me, and I can’t make that change, and I don’t think I should. But MZB was a horrible person — I won’t buy her stuff because the money goes to someone who was also complicit, and not to her daughter, say — and I am sad that she was a horrible person, but not sad that her daughter has spoken up to tell us all about it.
I didn’t know until last week either! I have pretty much all of the Darkover books, even the super weird-ass ones. I guess many things about Darkover traditions have become clear.
Same. I LOVED Mists of Avalon back in the day, but I’m pretty sure now I can never pick it up again.
Stranger in a strange land, by I think Robert Heinlein or something (fuck googling that guy). My brother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told him to get me a sci-fi novel. It started off with such promise- an expedition to Mars finds wise aliens, and all the astronauts die, leaving behind an infant to be raised by Martians. The book starts around when he’s back on his way to earth, having never known humanity. Great premise, right? And I love the title. He’s also got cool Martian powers. But every page is worse than the one before it, by the end it’s all just about the author ‘s messed up belief system, an awful combo of hippie free love and misogyny. A female character says that most of the time when a woman is raped that she is the one at fault. Women are allowed to have multiple sex partners, but they just aren’t capable of doing man things. And gay men (apparently there are no lesbians) are pathetic and unmasculine. In my brother’s defense, he had not read it either, and when I saw him last week he informed me that he’d just read it and did not like it himself.
I loved the mists of Avalon, I read it a few weeks ago. I think that every time I picked it up I was high as a kite and just got lost in musings. I like really slow paced stories though, I also loved 2001 a space odyssey.
oh god I also HATED Stranger in a Strange Land. I read it in college, before I started really identifying as a feminist and reading thru a feminist lens, so I could never quite articulate WHY I hated it to the person who loaned it to me (a Man, obviously). And now I just can’t bring myself to reread it.
I hate the Hunger Games II and III with a passion. It felt like brave, strong Katniss was turning into weak, soft, wimpy Katniss. Also, there was no reason for Primrose to die. Gale could have died, resolving that love triangle thing, and it would have been so much better because he was stupid anyway. And how in the world could Katniss marry brainwashed I-want-to-kill-Katniss Peeta? Who marries a guy who is likely to strangle you while you’re sleeping?
I also hate George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire a little bit because I got stuck somewhere in book 3 because there’s this huge boring part that I can’t seem to get past even though I keep telling myself that it’ll be worth it…
Well, I’m afraid I just managed to attract the hate of everyone, so I’ll probably go hide under a rock somewhere…
I have been spreading the Hunger Games hate within my family, and getting no traction. The first book wasn’t bad, disliked the second, and absolutely hated the third. Especially that Gale becomes “evil” out of nowhere, which is the laziest and stupidest way for an author to write themselves out of the insipid love triangle they created. And also I hate that Katniss marries Peeta mainly because he keeps hanging around and won’t leave her alone; sure let’s perpetuate the “if you stalk a girl long enough, she’ll love you back” belief. Hate that Katniss has children only because “he wore her down” over years of harassing her about it. If she had the kids and had been okay with that decision, it would have been one thing; but she talks about how every time she looks at them she’s terrified, so clearly never made peace with the decision. Mostly I hated it because we had the very rare YA heroine who didn’t want kids and didn’t really want a boyfriend; but fuck that she’s got to wind up hitched and babied anyway.
ALSO…why are there only two eligible men in all of Panem? (I hate love-triangles that do this. If both choices are terrible, maybe try okcupid)
Or maybe Katniss could have stayed on her own. It isn’t as though she liked other people. And then she never would have been pressured to have children.
She should have stayed alone and maybe gone into politics. Uncover the truth about who really killed those kids and become a strong female leader or something, or moved to the outskirts of civilization and lived all by herself and secretly hated everyone… Or at least married someone who would not sometimes want to kill her and who hadn’t killed her sister?
That’s exactly how I felt! Oh, quick, let’s get her married, wouldn’t want reader to think girls can survive without a husband and kids! In the first book, I absolutely loved that there was this badass female protagonist, and I hated it so much when she just got married (to weirdo brainwashed Peeta!) just because he was there, and the main reason why she couldn’t be with Gale seemed to be that he moved away – sure, he was kind of responsible for Primrose’s death, but I got the feeling that if Peeta had moved away and Gale had stayed, she’d just have married him after a while. I felt so cheated when that amazing heroine turned into some kind of meek soft woman stereotype. Aaaaargh I’m getting all angry just thinking about it.
I actually liked the Hunger Games because it made it clear that the stupid love triangle was actually an engineered thing and not something she actually wanted to be in. I agree it’s disturbing that he wore her down about the kids, though–and oh, the guilt he puts her through.
The first book was okay . . . just okay. The second was nearly tolerable. The very end of the third was a betrayal of the whole premise of the trilogy, and the whole reason people got all excited about this trilogy with its Strong Female Lead . . . when she (SPOILER!) effectively gets sort-of damseled and has to be rescued by a bunch of old men pulling legal strings so she isn’t executed for assassination . . .
If it makes you feel better (angrier?), Suzanne Collins stole Peeta’s brainwashing wholesale from another book, so you can add plagiarism to your charges against her.
Tangent: Did anyone else start reading this thread thinking, “gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever really hated a book,” and then realize through reading other people’s hatred that you were totally wrong about that?
It brought a few old wounds to the surface: Possession, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Ethan Frome, all of which I had blocked out as traumatically dull.
As I Lay Dying – a little part of me dies inside whenever I think of that book and the torture it was to read it.
I second TFIOS – pretentious teens in real life would be annoying as anything.
Jane Eyre – I hate, hate, hate that she goes back to her dysfunctional/slash abusive love affair. Just awful.
Northanger Abbey – I like most of Austen’s work but that one always felt incredibly tedious.
The Brothers Karamazov – I tried. How I tried with this book, because I know so many who loved it. But I couldn’t get past the prose and how identical all the characters seemed.
Animal Farm – nothing more needs to be said. Parsing through this in high school English sucked.
The Chosen – I don’t remember the book very well – perhaps I would even like it now – but was forced to read it as a girl and loathed it.
Thank you for reminding me of my hatred for The Chosen! I forgot that book existed, but I had to read it in high school, and lo, I loathed it too.
This thread is amazing. Everyone is so vicious!
Jodi Picoult is insidid, clunky, and dull as dishwater.
The Shopaholic series and that godawful P.S. I Love You book had me frothing at the mouth. How does this dreck get past an editor?
The Abhorsen saga. It’s just not very good. It’s solely sustained by one kind of interesting idea and the rest is insufficiently sketched, that is not enough for even one book.
Dune and sequels forced me to put it down to groan “oh, fuck’s sake” at least once per chapter.
Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth is also just not very good. It’s just lazy and all the characters are amazingly dim.
100 Years of Solitude. Why is everyone such dicks? How does it manage to be so boring?
EDIT: IAN MCEWAN. GET OVER YOURSELF.
Inkheart and Strange/Norrell had cool premises that didn’t really come to much. I’m just sad about them. Actually, I’m not sad about Inkheart after the sequels, it kept beating the reader over the head with its own cleverness (“cleverness” here meaning “has once heard of metaphors and of people lying”).
The Shopaholic books made me so angry. No, your main character is not charming and whimsical! She’s selfish and immature with no impulse control!
I once saw a person on the Tube reading a book in a brown paper cover. It was a Shopaholic book. Clearly she felt it was too embarrassing to be caught reading it in public.
Exactly! She’s not cute, she’s just a terrible person!
ohhhh, I want to move all my possessions into this thread and live here forever. Most of yall have already covered my top five worst hated books ever, but… since this is a safe space… can I just say that I haaaaate everything Stephen King has ever written? I particularly hate him for teaching all other horror writers that apparently the only way to express the fact that a situation is frightening is to have a character lose bladder control in EVERY SINGLE BOOK, and while we’re on that subject, WTF, The Strain? Please, give us even more detail on your vampires’ explosive defecation because THAT’s what I’m looking for in a book.
I also hated Wideacre and Flowers in the Attic, but I think both of those were my mistake for accidentally reading what I did not realize were going to turn out to be romance novels. Also, psst, Philippa Gregory? The word “pointy” is not erotic. I don’t mean _usually_ or _to some people_, I mean TO ANYONE EVER.
The most recent book I abandoned was by The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. I had read one of his other books and kind of already suspected that he wasn’t aware that women are people, but I decided to give him another chance right up until the scene where a woman is assaulted and wonders why none of the other major characters (all men, natch) haven’t rescued her. And then she realizes: “The answer, of course, was her own insisted-upon independence, and their willingness to grant her that.” Yeah, how are women ever going to learn not to INSIST on being independent if they don’t get assaulted every so often?
Thank you so much for mentioning Stephen King. I have yet to get through one of his books and I managed to get through Brothers Karamzov. That’s how bad I find him.
Oh, _anytime._ I read once that he’d said “My work is the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries” and thought, “I think you’re being a little hasty with your use of the word ‘literary.'”
I really loved GGK as a younger girl but I tried to re-read Tigana and his latest and it was just too wtf women and casual racism for me 🙁 🙁
After months of me complaining loudly and often that we hardly read books written by women in class, my English teacher assigned Ethan Frome, which sucks out loud. I tried to disguise my hatred as I was grateful he had at least listened to me, but I hate it with a passion.
My hatred of Garret Freymann-Weyr’s My Heartbeat, which is as complex as its stupid clip art cover (seriously, google that cover), is also significant.
I complained loudly that we didn’t read enough books by women in my AP class and my teacher countered with “But we read The Fountainhead!” to which the only rational response is “BUT AYN RAND IS AWFUL AND THAT BOOK IS AWFUL!”
I liked The Princess Diaries as a kid, but have since realised they were the main reason I came home from school most days crying that “no boys want to kiss meeeeee is it because I am tall and have big feet like Mia??” which just, the misery of that year, I cannot forgive.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I have tried multiple times and cannot get through it at all at all.
Strumpet City! Just unrelenting sorrow from start to … like halfway through, where I stopped.
The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out A Window (or whatever it’s called) – ughh your protagonist is not as likeable as you think he is.
ohhhh, I want to move all my possessions into this thread and live here forever. Most of yall have already covered my top five worst hated books ever, but… since this is a safe space… can I just say that I haaaaate everything Stephen King has ever written? I particularly hate him for teaching all other horror writers that apparently the only way to express the fact that a situation is frightening is to have a character lose bladder control in EVERY SINGLE BOOK, and while we’re on that subject, WTF, The Strain? Please, give us even more detail on your vampires’ explosive defecation because THAT’s what I’m looking for in a book.
That is also what I dislike (HATE) about World War Z. There is recurring narrator who is a soldier, and I swear in each of his sections he finds it necessary to tell us about how he soiled himself. Yeah I get it, zombies are scary, but keep it to yourself, geez
Short story, not a book, but there’s this one Harlan Ellison piece where gargoyles kill everyone in ridiculously gruesome ways, like shitting acidic gargoyle diarrhea down on them (which I mention because it’s gross, but also doesn’t require a trigger warning like most of the other examples I can think of). I will never forgive Harlan Ellison for it, even if he was really fun on Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated.
Also Rant by Chuck Palahniuk, who I like sometimes, but really, really not this time. And House of Leaves. I hated them even more because I liked the concepts and the ways they were written, but I hated everything else about them.
I read exactly one collection of Ellison’s stories, found him terrible in so many ways, and decided Never Again. I posted a review on Goodreads and was surprised how many people came to his defense–I get that he’s a Huge Deal but I’ve also heard he’s a Huge Jerk.
Oh my god, all the amazing books that people hate! What a great comments section!
My hates: Atonement, Ian McEwan. ALL THESE CHARACTERS ARE SHITTY PEOPLE AND YOUR WRITING STYLE IS JUST THAT – STYLE NOT SUBSTANCE. On Chesil Beach was EXACTLY THE SAME, and I read that WILLINGLY, so fuuuuuuuuck you McEwan.
*god that felt good*
Also: Hardy, Samuel Johnson, and Nicholas fucking Sparks. Proscriptive, verbose white men with attitude problems. BAH.
Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Patton
It’s about a white South African man who is attracted to a black woman during apartheid and it’s so boring. My hatred is compounded by the fact that I read it for a high school “world literature” class in which I learned that apparently world literature is basically just Shakespeare/Dickens/Mark Twain – oh and for diversity let’s have one book set in Africa and it can be about how apartheid hurts white men. We literally did not read a single novel/play that wasn’t written by a white guy.
Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls
The title intrigued me, most of it was ok, and then there’s a horrible, ignorant, transmisogynist story about a trans woman.
Also glad to see fellow haters of Heart of Darkness, The Fault in Our Stars, and Bossypants.
In addition to my previous post – David Eddings and Leigh Eddings, anything they’ve written. Awful, incomprehensible, vapid writing. First fantasy book I ever put down after struggling through two chapters.
Actually, wait. The first fantasy book I ever put down before finishing was one of the Pern books. I was so pissed off because what I thought was a strong female character got all sexual and weird and disempowered and the dragons sucked somehow and the gender roles really pissed me off and gaaaaaaah no no no no no no. Awful. Such a disappointment too, because I love dragons :'(
I’ve been wondering what would inspire me to delurk here!
SIDDHARTHA by Herman Hesse. Hated it in high school & had to listed to my imbecilic English teacher go on and on about its profundity and I was all Hell no, this is Orientalist bullshit and BORING Orientalist bullshit to boot. My poor daughter just read it too–it was on her Sr Year summer reading list–and also hated it. I worried for a while that my hatred of this book (still incandescent after 30+ years) had unduly influenced her. But then I looked at the back cover and realized that no it is just as awful as I remembered and my kid is right to despise it as I did. I have raised her well!
She read Catcher in the Rye this year and is still mad at me because I managed to get through high school, college (English major) and graduate school in American Literature without ever having to read this book. To which I replied “Ha Ha, it sucks to be you!” I plan to see if I can go to my grave with this record intact.
Also hated Jonathan Livingston Seagull and The Help.
JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL IS THE WORST.
I’m so glad that so many other people in this thread hate The Catcher in the Rye. It’s horrible and people just need to stop making teenagers read that terrible book.
I absolutely hate Madame Bovary. I had to read it in 10th grade, with a teacher I adored and whose taste in literature was usually rather similar to mine, and he loved Madame Bovary. I don’t think he ever forgave me for how much I despise that book despite his best efforts. It’s just the dullest, most frustrating novel ever. Can’t stand Anna Karenina for the same reason, although Anna Karenina has at least some interesting parts while Madame Bovary is terrible from the first to the last page.
Many of mine have already been mentioned:
“Special Topics in Calamity Physics” , “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”
and I’d like to add:
Dahlgren
ugh yes I did not finish Dahlgren for obvious reasons and I have no regrets
The only thing that got me to finish it, was I bought a used copy and the previous owner wrote “Kidd is such a dick” in the margins. I kept going to see what else they wrote.
bless your hateful heart, only other person I’ve met who’s read Special Topics in Calamity Physics. bless you.
Of all the books I’ve actually read all the way through? I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe. It’s eight hundred pages of bullshit. Haaaaate. It’s the only book I’ve ever finished that I honestly wish I could say I’d tossed aside (or hurled across the room) after the first few chapters.
I fucking DESPISED I am Charlotte Simmons from like, page 2, and I read that whole long piece of utter trash with gleeful hate in my heart. I think about it sometimes even now, 6 or so years later, and get so angry about the fact that it was ever written. Tom Wolfe can go fuck himself along with every character in that book.
Runners up include:
The Fourth Hand by John Irving – I love Irving, but this book was garbage
Stephen King’s Dark Tower series – so painfully boring
Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes – had to buy this for a class, took great joy in flinging it in the dumpster at the end of the term
so far, anything by Saul Bellow
That book was so bad I almost remember it with fondness. This is going to get obscure, but there’s a really terrible Victorian cautionary children’s book called Eric, or Little by Little, about a good boy who goes off to boarding school and is slowly corrupted by the Evils of School. And there’s a bit in Kipling’s Stalky and Co., also set in a boarding school, where the characters are gleefully hate-reading Eric, or Little by Little. “Oh, naughty Eric! Let’s get to where he goes in for drink.”
That’s how I feel about I Am Charlotte Simmons.
I tossed aside “Bonfire of the Vanities” after the first few chapters and regrets I have none
Yes, Heinlein — awful, misogynist, awful.
Similarly, The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Abbey … I so wanted to love it, eco-warriors on fantasy missions, but the only human beings are men. In college, I couldn’t even articulate why the book bugged me so much, but I never finished it, and was deeply disappointed.
Monkey Wrench Gang is interesting only for its place in the history of radical environmentalism. The deep misogyny of the thing is all but intolerable: all three of the men in the gang are pigs. I’d have trouble saying which of them is worse.
The sequel (!) is even worse, “Hayduke Lives!”
Some of Abbey’s non-fiction is actually pretty good. Desert Solitaire is a sideways sort of nature literature, setting him up as sort of an anti-Thoreau.
I actually don’t *hate* many books. I dislike the usual suspects–Holden Caulfield is a whiny privileged ass who needs to grow the fuck up; adolescent boys at a British public school are probably not a representative sample of society; Augie March needs to fucking follow through with something for once instead of careening around depression-era Chicago like a pinball. I started Atonement once but didn’t get through much of it, and since hearing that the plot of the story is a lesson on Why Eyewitness Testimony Sucks I’ve decided not to bother because TBH, I’d rather just rewrite the damn story and have a good defense lawyer tear Briony’s testimony to tatters in deposition.
That being said, there is one book which I will hate to the end of my days, and that is Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs In Heaven. Let’s take a character who was sensible, intelligent, and resourceful in a previous book, threaten her legal right to her daughter, and have her lose ALL COMMON SENSE. Let’s not have her consult an attorney; let’s have her move a thousand miles to a city she’s never been to. Let’s shoehorn in allegories about lactose intolerance and a romantic subplot that actually provides the key to resolving the whole legal shebang. (Let’s also have the main character forget the family legend that they’re part Cherokee, which, if true, could also help resolve the situation, but anyways.) Finally, let’s have the book not be a short novella (which is just about all the plot could sustain) but three hundred and fifty odd fucking pages long.
TL, DR; I require something more from a plot than “characters act irrationally and/or fail to get adequate legal counsel”.
YES. Also let’s have a fiery young misguided Indian activist who is misguided about how white people shouldn’t take Indian babies, because LOOK THEY GAVE HER TO ME IT’S NOT THE SAME.
There was this Sherman Alexie interview once where they said, “What do you think about Barbara Kingsolver?” and he said, “Who’s that?” It was really satisfying.
From time to time I have had the following questions about A Clockwork Orange:
1) Would I appreciate this book if it didn’t so happen that virtually every dude I’ve met who was a fan of it was a creep? No, 17 year old boy (and worse, 40 year old man) I don’t really need to hear any more of your analysis about how the Ludovico technique is JUST AS BAD as rape.
2) Would I be so thoroughly unimpressed by the author’s construction of dystopian slang if I were more familiar with British slang in general? I can’t sign on and agree to take it seriously. It annoys me more than the idea of a vampire sparkling in the sun.
You would definitely be less impressed if you spoke Russian!
ooooh, in my (apparently inexplicably double-posting) excitement I forgot to talk about We Need to Talk About Kevin! The book where a character writes the words “it permeated my ablutions” instead of “I thought about it in the shower”! Someone let me know if that character was later revealed to be an alien who had never interacted with humans in real life because that is the only way that is remotely believable.
All of her characters seem to talk like this. It is infuriating.
I tried my damndest to read this book, because the premise seemed interesting, but after about 50 pages I was exhausted and had to stop.
I’m a little late on this reply, but (unless you are one of the people who’s already chimed in hating Wally Lamb, in which case disregard everything I’m saying) you can find a _somewhat_ similar theme in his _The Hour I First Believed._ I personally loved, it, but as with all his books, it’s only good if you don’t mind seeing characters get just brutally pummeled by life.
Wuthering Heights. Everyone in it is an awful person and there are too many similar names so you can’t even tell which terrible person they’re talking about half the time anyway. If they were actual people I would smack them all across the face.
Gone Girl, for much the same reason.
The Iliad. I love The Odyssey and I want to love The Iliad but I can’t get past all those pages of who’s on what boat, followed by all the pages of who died what kind of horrible death.
Dare Me by Megan Abott. Where are these children’s parents? What kind of a coach behaves that way? Everyone in this book needs an adult, stat.
Divergent. “I’m not even going to try for symbolism, let’s just go with some SAT words and blatant stereotypes. Oh, and maybe a pointless ceremony and some dead children for no reason.” Didn’t finish it. Lois Lowry did it better.
And speaking of, last but not least, all of the sequels to The Giver. You might think you want to know what happens to Jonas, but really, you don’t. She should have left well enough alone, there. It was perfect on its own.
What really irritated me most about Divergent doesn’t become clear until the third book. Before that I was like, “Okay, their society is divided up into people who embody or try to embody weird virtue stereotypes, that is stupid but I will try to suspend disbelief even though it’s SO stupid, wouldn’t everyone get inconclusive results on that test?” And then in the third book you find out that the regular Faction people are all genetically-modified to be weird stereotypes, but this was a disaster and now they’re trying to get the gene pool back to “normal” again. So the “Divergent” turn out to be….neurotypicals. Neurotypicals are magically resistant to mind control. Neurotypicals will save us all. If we could only breed more neurotypicals.
Your collective hate is so inspiring it brought me back to hate all of James Patterson’s adult fiction. Like him as a person and a YA/MG author, but his adult books are flimsy and full of pointless violence and completely unsatisfying stories, as well as gratuitous sexual violence against female characters. Huge waste of paper IMO.
I loathed A Simple Plan. Had to read it in college. I ended up loathing the professor also.
Save Me by Lisa Scottoline. What awful, awful characters. I wanted to smack all of them. But finished the effing book because I wanted to know what happened. Then I promptly threw it in the recycling bin.
Pat Conroy Prince of Tides.
Read at the tender age of 15 and still (20 years later) remember the furious, tearful, throwing-it-in-the-trash-compactor-because*Christ!-the-garbage-is-too-good-for-it response. God! HATED THAT BOOK still!
Twilight and 50 shades.
I’ve read some crappy books, some mentioned here, but I read them. Twilight I started, flicked though read a bit here and there. And then did the same with the next 2 books in the series.
I was given the 50 shades books, read 50 pages and used them to start the fire when we ran out of news paper, well,no we had the paper, but it was a more interesting read.
Oh my, this thread is the best distraction from the ‘Fireworks or Gunfire’ game.
1. Anything and everything by Piers Anthony.
He has a book where the physical appearance and mental capacities of the protagonist’s love interest cycle between being ‘the ugliest woman alive’ who is incredibly intelligent and the most attractive woman EVARRRRR who is as dumb as a brick. The protagonist describes this as the perfect arrangement, because while he can’t stand having a conversation with the dumb hottie, boy howdy does he want to fuck her, and while the thought of gettin’ with the ugly woman is physically repulsive to him, at least he can have a decent conversation with a female for once in his life!
It’s also presented that OF COURSE the protagonist is ashamed of herself when she’s ugly, because duh.
RAAAAGE
2. Why I Run by Haruki Murakami.
I do not get the point of this book, and I lost a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for reading any of his other work because of the casual, unnecessary and incessant fat shaming. I stopped reading it about half way through because it was making me so mad.
Now I’m having hate flashbacks of A Spell for Chameleon. Like when the protagonist first meets the love interest it’s at trial for rape where a man is acquitted on the basis of “She knew the guy, and would have run away if she disliked him, so this sex was probably consensual”. OH MY GOD how did I go on to read more of these books when I was in junior high???
I didn’t understand any of that when I first read it at age 12 or so, so I skimmed that part. Now I’m horrified and also confused. How could anyone think that NOT FLEEING IMMEDIATELY WHEN YOU RUN INTO AN ACQUAINTANCE could be considered consent to sex? Even for rape apologists this is pretty thin. If it were anyone else I would think he was trying to make a heavy-handed statement about rape culture, but no, he has no idea. Piers Anthony’s stuff is both fascinating and horrifying because the puns and logic puzzles and symbolic thinking that permeate his books and hook in all the nerdy 12-year-olds also extend to the characters, at least the female characters. He really seems to think that women–and to some extent all people–are just symbols, avatars, paper dolls.
Going back and re-reading the Anthony books now that I’m not 12 would probably be a huuuuuuuge mistake, wouldn’t it.
“My Brother Sam Is Dead”. Know what else is dead? My love of literature.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Not all women are either evil, castrating bitches or whores. Also, sexual assault as rebellion is not cool, man.
Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy made me angry for years.
I think what made me angriest about Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy is that there were two or three brilliant memorable visuals tucked in three thousand pages of nonsense. And sometimes I want to reference them, and I can’t.
YES. How offensive it is to see a heroic non-conformist white dude getting ordered around by that emasculating bitch and her childlike black orderlies who, if I recall correctly, manage to be both infantilized AND deemed sexually threatening. Ugh.
I hated Gone Girl. I got to maybe chapter 2 or 3, figured out what was going to happen, read the end to be sure, and then threw it across the room. If you can’t figure out the ending after the male narrator mentions that his wife likes to play games on their anniversary of whatever… I have no use for you.
I also hated Chronology of Water. Something about it just got under my skin. I feel the same way about Your Voice in My Head, which is a memoir about being Colin Ferrell’s ex-girlfriend, and also crazy. But above all I hate Prozac Nation and everything else by Elizabeth Wurtzel. She is The Worst.
If it helps, my theory is that Your Voice in My Head got under your skin because it was terrible. It’s strange, that writer’s first book (Namedropper) is one of my favorites of all time, and then everything she’s written since then has been _so_ bad it’s like she’s doing it on purpose to troll everyone. I guess some people do only have one good book in them. (Or maybe her first book isn’t that great either and I have a blind spot for some reason.)
Am I the only one who hated Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
I’d have set The Lovely Bones afire had it not been from the library. Same goes for Catcher in the Rye – whiny little brat. I’ve tried getting through Confederacy of Dunces several times over the years and failed.
I’m with you on Zen . . . the book adolescents read in order to make themselves feel like sophisticated intellectuals. Bad as intro to philosophy, worse as memoir.
A Separate Peace. We read it out loud in 8th grade. When whosit finally died I cheered out loud and got in trouble.
I seriously hated Of Mice and Men. I don’t know why. I just did.
I also hated the Smile by Donna Jo Napoli (it’s a long story – the book is a lie!!! Giuliano de Medici is not who you think!!))
And Immortal by Traci Slatton was also terrible.
Most of my fiction hates have been covered and are fairly obvious: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, all of Piers Anthony, The Little Prince, Game of Thrones. To this list I would add Peter Pan and A Wrinkle In Time; I can’t now remember really anything about it or why I hated it, but I did, and everyone else loved it (we read it for school), and so many people still love it now, and CAN IT JUST GO AWAY. Also, while I generally love Bill Bryson, I could not handle Notes from a Small Island. It was unbearably self-indulgent. Generally speaking, I do not care for the poetry of Emily Dickinson. The dashes enrage me. Oh, and here comes the true blasphemy: Keats. I can’t stand him. He’s so drippy and overwrought all the time, I have no patience or interest. (This does not, by the way, extend to a general dislike of the Romantics, whom I tend to enjoy. It’s just sniveling little Keats in particular.)
However, when it comes to fiction at this point I read almost entirely sci fi or fantasy and am very good at determining whether I am going to like something, so I don’t have a lot of recent hates in fiction. The rest of what I read tends to be all social science stuff, and OH BOY DO I HAVE HATES.
I cannot remember the title of this book, but it was some sort of economic history volume, and it is the only book I have actually, literally thrown across the room upon finishing it. (I couldn’t deface it because I was reading it for work and it technically belonged to my boss, but it ended on this weird racist-colonialist coda about the value of time vs. labor in different countries and about how Indian people don’t understand productivity, or didn’t, or something.)
FICHTE. “On the Linguistic Capacity and the Origin of Language.” It is such completely bizarre pre-Nazi German nationalist nonsense, and the only reason I can remember it at all (it was impenetrable) was that I had to give a presentation on it and so really had to drill it into my skull. This living vs. dead language based on migration determining whether a people was superior and truly alive nonsense. I ask you. WE ALL MIGRATED, DICK.
Generally: classical philosophy. You are always, if you study politics much at all, forced to read some Plato and some Socrates and whatnot, and I hate it on multiple levels. First, it simply does not interest me. (This goes for Descartes too, for the record.) The actual questions they are asking have no value to me as a human and are not, in fact, very useful in one’s reading moving forward, or in understanding/criticizing politics pretty much anywhere or when else, because the Ancient Greeks were fucking weirdos. (Great mythology! BORING PHILOSOPHY, absolutely bizarre politics.) Secondly, I hate it because it represents part of what’s fucked up about the whole state of the curriculum. We read all this Greek shit and then skip straight to Hobbes, generally, with never a care for the massive body of work that was produced in the Islamic world in between and that absolutely was part of the whole thread of thinking that then popped up with the Europeans and is now Our Canon. I only found out like LAST YEAR that Adam Smith straight up stole a bunch of his parables/examples from various Arab writers. WHY COULD IT BE THAT WE SKIP ALL THIS, I WONDER???? GEE. It goes along with the ridiculous insistence on counting Greece as part of Europe. But that is an essay for another day.
i studied classics and very early on decided that though i loved aspects of graeco-roman civilization, grad school would never work out because i couldn’t process that amount of ancient greek bullshit.
<3
Guys I was thinking about this thread last night in bed and I remembered another book I hate! WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. So highly recommended, and so awful! How do you take a story about a circus, set it in the great depression, and still make it so, so boring?! This is one of the few books I’ve written a one-star Goodreads review for, such was my hatred.
Hate it so much
1. all neil gaiman, murakami, ondatjee
2. THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES oh my god it’s so awful that i despise anyone who actually finished reading it. i believe in finishing books that i’ve started but if you kept going with this one then i don’t want to know you tbh.
3. a wrinkle in time, wayside school, judy blume – i didn’t hate many books as a child but these were such garbage, flames on the side of my face
4. how should a person be – oh stfu. everyone is unbearable and unjustly convinced they’re intelligent.
5. your face tomorrow – what is it with this book?? it’s fucking appallingly written and boring as hell. how do people like it? just looking for the next bolano?
6. anais nin and henry miller both.
ALSO sebald. maybe i just dont get him. BUT I HATE HIM. I HATE HIS STYLE. I JUST HATE.
i feel bad about this but an untamed state was garbage. i wanted to like it but … the ending. the dialogue. everything.
Oh I forgot about books i read when younger, I definitely need to add “The Westing Game” to my list. What was the point? I don’t even remember how it ended because I kept getting mostly through it then too frustrated by it and skimming the rest.
I forgot how much I hated The English Patient. And the movie was just as bad.
Pretty much anything I ever tried by D H Lawrence.
I hate Lord of the Flies. Human nature, blah, boy feelings, blah, fat people are tragic, blah, no people of colour in the book but they’re probably savages, blah. My sister’s ex’s brother gave her it for Christmas one time and she was so offended (“How could a person like me receive a book like this? Me? How could he? Why do bad things happen to good people?”). I also hate:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (neuro typical people writing autistic characters badly blah)
The Number One Ladies Detective Agency (white people writing black people badly blah)
Disgrace (as above, plus a terrible rape scene for which there is no consequence)
But the worst book I’ve ever read is something my dad got me called The Time And Space of Uncle Albert which is theories of relativity condensed into a readable, fiction format ideal for pre pubescent girls. It’s the worst writing IN THE WHOLE WORLD.
re: that last one, SOPHIE’S WORLD
jfc what COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE. it was recommended so heavily by everyone and it was unreadable and it totally got philosophy wrong and it was just WHY IS THIS A THING.
Sophie’s World is *terrible*. I assumed that it was brilliant in the original but just bad in translation, but I really don’t think so.
I only read one chapter of Number One Ladies, for the white people writing black people badly reason. Mind you, I read one of Alexander McCall Smith’s other books and he doesn’t write white people very well either.
“Disgrace” by J.M Coetzee. Yes, I know the protagonist is not supposed to be a great guy, but sweet Jesus, J.M, you could have included at least one major character that the reader didn’t wish to be torn apart by the stray dogs in the story.
Anything by Tolkien. I would honestly read Ayn Rand in preference, or better still have a root canal.
things not seemingly covered yet in this thread:
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Interesting premise, rave reviews, UGH SO BORING all your children speak like forty year old men and I legitimately keep forgetting they are meant to be children
Tomorrow When The War Began, I’m sorry, the first one was alright but you really gave me no interest in picking up the next 10 okay thanks
Pamela. I haven’t even read this one, but had so many impassioned rants targeted at me by trustworthy friends having to read it for class I will never pick it up
Actually I’ve never read any of the “Classics” like Austen unless they had zombies included because yawn so boring, ditto romances, any of them, they’re all terrible, please stop
I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting and things if I were to read them older and wiser I would hate and things I would add if I had more time to read things but this will have to do for now
it has been most cathartic reading everyone’s hate though
Miss Peregrine’s is THE WORST. Pointless books that are all (bad) style and no substance – the Quirk Books way!
Miss Peregrine’s is what happens when bad authors (Ransom Riggs) get publishing contracts because they are friends with mediocre authors (John Green.) HAAAAAAAAAATE.
I ABHOR Jane Eyre – I read it in high school and had to go to cliff notes because I COULD NOT BEAR reading another damn word, then everyone recently was all “oh I love Jane Eyre blah blah blah” and I tried again, and now I hate it even more fiercely than before.
I also hate hate HATE Tess of the D’urbervilles and Beloved. I can’t even bring myself to talk about how fervently I hate Tess of the D’urbervilles. I know I shouldn’t hate Beloved, but it just creeps me out so much and god I do I hate paranormal ghost shadow creature thingys…*shudder*.
Also D. H. Lawrence’s novella The Fox. BARF.
I wanted to like Mists of Avalon, and I couldn’t even get myself past the first chapter. What a waste of space.
Late to this thread (and haven’t read through everything so this may already appear) but EVERYTHING by JM Coetzee. ESPECIALLY Disgrace. *ducks and hides from the Literary Establishment*
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and anything else by Dave Eggers, though I don’t hate McSweeney’s.
I HATE THE CELESTINE PROPHECY PLEASE STOP RECOMMENDING IT TO ME
But above all things, The Red Tent can go die in a fire.
Anything by Ian McEwan.. especially Atonement. Amsterdam..that won awards? I think he had a schizophrenic break halfway through this one. The one about the couple who had a lousy wedding night and it ruined their marriage ? Give me a break. Enduring Love ? Enduring hate is more like it.
Oh yes…my pet hate , the 1300 plus pages of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, that I had to read for a bookclub. Yes I did I read it all, all 1300 boring pages of how a women in India decides on a boring husband who works for a shoe company. After i read the book I saw a 90 minute documentary on Seth ( 89 minutes too long ) . He is as boring as his book which was loosely based on his mother’s life.
As a final stab in the back, when i got to my book club meeting there were only 3 people who had actually finished the book. I was going to use the book as a door stop but got rid of it for a cup of coffee.
I also hated that book of Hemingway’s..The Old Man And The Sea that I had to read in my final year of highschool UGH! That put me off Hemingway forever.
i hate with depth and heat Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. i have no patience for White Men’s Problems; they are boring to me and it is not a sensitive or well-written book. also I hate Henry MIller’s The Tropic of Cancer because it is vile, worthless and disgusting. no redeeming qualities whatsoever. i spit on their graves.
The first book that came to my mind was “Sons and Lovers”. Oh, that was bad. I still get mad when I think about it.
I remember hating “Pamela”, but I rather love to hate it, because I love summarizing it to friends. Plus it’s a great cure for insomnia.
The last book I threw was Andrea Levy’s “Small Island” — I liked a major portion of it, but the last few chapters were just so BAD, that it did make me a bit violent.
I hated “The Little Prince” (though I like the illustrations), especially that most of my classmates ADORED it.
Catcher in the Rye. Bleh. Even at 13 I thought it was juvenile. But I was a stuck up kid.
Ya Ya Fucking Sisterhood.
The worst book ever written is The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Late to the party, too busy watching French and Indian War reenactments yesterday.
Books I hate:
Anthem – fuck that book. The big ‘reveal’ at the end made me throw it across the room. Even at 13 I knew objectivism was bullshit.
Old Man and The Sea: yes, Hemingway, we know you have a penis and want to penetrate nature. Shut up.
Lord of the Flies: god what is wrong with people.
Catcher in the Rye: grow the fuck up, Holden, no one cares.
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash: I loved Burning Bright and was super excited about this collection. Reading it was like a window into hell: nothing remotely hopeful. Just people making unredeemable decisions over and over. Ugh.
The Great Gatsby: it’s about class warfare but the whole damn thing is like a preacher telling you that sex is bad while naming every excruciating detail of every sexual act.
I had a hard time thinking of books I hate but I came up with two: Snuff by Terry Pratchett, and Home From The Sea by Mercedes Lackey (who is a terrible author I realize this but her books are comfort reading).
Snuff felt totally wrong as a Pratchett book, I felt like the characters were out of character and the ending was uncomfortably preachy/patronizing on the subject of goblins. I disliked it so much that I’m probably not going to continue reading, since I kind of doubt the books will get better now, considering that PTerry is ill. This makes me sad, because some of his books are fantastic.
Home from the Sea (from the Elemental Masters series) was just BORING. The supernatural threat wasn’t big enough to engage my interest, the unsupernatural threat was dealt with in a ridiculous manner- I’m sorry, you call in an ancient nature spirit, the last remaining in Britain to deal with a POLICE SERGEANT? Misty, Puck doesn’t have to appear in every book now.
So I guess what I most dislike in books is when the quality of a series I’m enjoying goes down. It’s so disappointing. 🙁
Snuff felt totally wrong as a Pratchett book, I felt like the characters were out of character and the ending was uncomfortably preachy/patronizing on the subject of goblins. I disliked it so much that I’m probably not going to continue reading, since I kind of doubt the books will get better now, considering that PTerry is ill. This makes me sad, because some of his books are fantastic.
It felt really jarring. None of the characters seemed to be speaking like themselves anymore; I found it really clunky and strained. (And why have contractions suddenly disappeared from the writing?) The whole non-human race is treated shittily thing has been done lots already in Discworld, much better (like Feet of Clay!).
Yeah, the dialogue felt just plain weird in that one, to the point where I didn’t get past the first couple pages. I suspect it’s a side effect of either the Alzheimer’s or having someone else actually transcribe things–I noticed the weird lack of contractions* in I Shall Wear Midnight, too, but it wasn’t as bad.
*If I could physically beat one idea out of the heads of all fiction writers everywhere, it’d be the cock-stupid idea that “you can’t use contractions in real writing,” or whatever the fuck is up with that.
Yeah, I Shall Wear Midnight was definitely lacking in contractions. I found it weird, but I found it even more jarring in Snuff (we’ve seen more of Vimes than of Tiffany, and it’s part of the main series rather than a side branch).
Don’t read the new train one. It’s so sad what’s happened to him and his writing. He’s totally lost hold of who the characters are and I had to imagine the whole thing was mediocre fan fiction to get through it. Vetinari does not beam, or bound, or explain himself! Those are like, core pieces of his character.
I hate Flannery O’Connor, despite the few good lines in A Good Man is Hard to Find. And I hate the more current gothic lady authors, like Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood and (although this opens a whole new portal of revulsion) Anne Rice. Hate them all, wish I could take a massive red pen to them.
I used to be religious and so I read the Bible a lot. One day I was reading something in the Prophets about how someone’s girlfriend was murdered and chopped up into pieces, then those pieces were mailed (I guess they weren’t technically sent via the Post but you know what I mean) to a bunch of different dudes. I forget if Yahweh was trying to teach the first guy a lesson or the bunch of different dudes a lesson, but I threw the Bible across the room.
Like I said, I was religious at the time, and that remains the only book I have ever thrown.
FORESHADOWING
I hate EVERY book John Updike ever wrote, although in the interests of full disclosure, I admit I’ve only read “Rabbit, Run”, “Couples”, and “The Witches of Eastwick,”. I have periods of masochism where I force myself to read books for exposure, or to broaden my horizons, which is why I read 3 of these books. If I want to hear from upper middle-class white misogynists I will turn on the news. Whiny navel-gazing should be punished by a hard slap, not a book contract. OK, I feel better now.
1. Anything by Tolkien. (Sorry, Toast.)
2. Gone Girl (Horribly written and the twist was not worth slogging through the book.)
3. Life of Pi (zzzzzzzzzzz)
4. Meaty (and all of the other books chosen by Emily Books except for Cassandra at the Wedding, you guys subscribing was a terrible mistake don’t do it SAVE YOURSELVES.)
5. Drift (I liked the concept but I hate Maddow’s writing style.)
6. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (how anyone can read this book and not come away thinking Kaling is a smug, shallow toolbag is beyond me.)
7. Icelander (pseudo-clever nonsense)
8. Young Men and Fire (Again, sorry Toast. Parts of the book were amazing, but overall I found it repetitive and tedious. I suspect that if you are or were raised Christian it might be more readable.)
I never read that Kaling book because in some ad or other for it she was saying, “friends make friends get laser surgery” or some g-dawful sh!t like that. It was like, “way to support the women-shouldn’t-wear-glasses drivel, you twit!” Or the Lasik industrial complex, or the system that only allows some people to afford it….And she said it in this smug, shallow, toolbag voice too.
I wanted so badly for Emily Books to be awesome, and some of them I liked, but I won’t be subscribing again.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me has tainted all of Kaling’s other work for me. That book is so goddamn smug.
Old Man and the Sea
I despise you completely
Fuck you, Hemingway
A Haiku!!! Amazing!
+5 for the haiku. Yes.
Late in the day but is is a shout-out for Australian toasties: anything by Tim Winton. Jesus the man seems like a nice guy and he does important conservation work but his books just make me feel awful and bored. Dirt Music was incomprehensible to me – it felt like a Mills and Boon plot extended over several hundred pages. Cloud Street was set mere blocks from where I lived in Perth, Western Australia, but even that couldn’t get me through more than the first 50 pages. There was another one about whales, but I never even finished the first page.
Dearest Mallory, you have unleashed the Hounds of Hell with this topic. So many bad books, so little time.
Let’s see… Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Roastbif–just plain awful and as phony as her name.
Heart of Darkness and anything else by Joseph Conrad…worse. Polish, he never learned to SPEAK English and his attempts to WRITE it are some of the muddiest prose ever.
My pet hatred however is Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Pummeled by his pomposity, verbose style, misogyny,boring characters and generally repulsive meanderings, I am certain he was the impetus for that trendy statement ,”Just shoot me!” I literally burned the book in my fireplace page by page…now THAT dear is hatred.
(But it felt so good)
Tatiana De Roastbif is the name I’m going to use for magazine subscriptions forever more!
I hated The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Maybe it was actually good and I was just mad because I felt like I was being forced to read it. It was supposed to be about greed or imperialism or whatever, but it’s just a sequence of awful things happening to this guy, and by the second one I was thinking “OK, I get it, now wrap it up.” It came across as “don’t try;” too many of the characters were horrible humans for me to care about the main character’s greed, and it focused to much on punishing the main character for me to care about imperialism.
East of Eden (are you kidding me with the “classic” status? AWFUL.)
The Feast of Love, by so-called “writer’s writer” Charles Baxter
Let the Great World Spin (so much UGH)
The Secret History (a shame, because that kind of thing is normally right up my alley, but I JUST COULD NOT)
Anything by Robert James Waller, of Bridges of Madison County fame (I’ve hate-read them all)
“The Mill on the Floss,” by George Eliot. I just absolutely hated reading that thing. I’t get through a page without violent convulsions.
I also couldn’t finish the Dark Materials Trilogy because it began to offend me on a religious level. It was probably the first story that presented “God is Evil,” to me and I couldn’t finish it. Now I just put it in with the whole New Atheist movement, which I generally see as being on equal footing with most religious fundementalists.
Also, “The Age of Innocence,” by Edith Wharton. I couldn’t get past it without wanting all the characters to die horrible, horrible deaths. It’s just a bunch of rich WASPs, who are so stuck up they see other rich white people as a threat to their social stability. I wanted the poor to rise up and eat the lot of them. The problem was that I had to do a project on this for University, nothing major, just an introduction, so I did it on how much I fucking hated this book. This book may have been what began my subtle and ongoing transformation into a communist, I hated the characters in it so much.
“By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept,” by Elizabeth Smart was just overblown flowery language about how much she loved this guy who she is having an affair with and by all accounts is a man-slut. I guess you could make the case that this is the reverse of those Hemingway books people have already mentioned, but I just hated having to read this book. It’s only a hundred pages I think and I still couldn’t finish it.
I find a lot of 17th century English poetry to be the tweeist shit I have ever come across. It came
A few of these on this list I can totally see hating, but for the most part they’re just boring to me. I tried to read “Factotum” by Bukowski, but it just seemed boring. I’ve always found Bukowski to be dull and boring. I think he knows he’s dull and boring too, and just goes on with it. “Anthem,” which is the only Ayn Rand I read, just struck me as logically inconsistent, the hero’s built up to be some great liberator but the woman immediately submits herself to him. Ayn Rand is the Queen of Willful Ignorance.
Ooh, ooh, this is my first Toast comment and I hope I’m not too late! All of this hatred is warming my heart.
The Boxcar Children. A brother and sister live in a boxcar together and NEVER fight?? BORING and unrealistic to boot.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. This pains me because I love most of Judy Blume’s books, but the last thing I wanted to read at age 10-11 was a book about girls who couldn’t WAIT to get their periods so badly they even PRAYED about it! The Agony of Alice was a little more matter of fact about getting your first period. I preferred the scene in The Long Secret (sequel to Harriet the Spy) where Harriet and her friends talk about how horrible periods are and, IIRC, why do you keep having them if you don’t want any kids?
The Great Gatsby. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters, and the surprise gory ending made me gag.
Hemingway. All of it.
The Fortress of Solitude. I bought the hardcover edition of this book because I liked the cover art and title. This is what happens when you work in a bookstore with an insane employee discount. Every single sentence landed with such masturbatory gravitas, I couldn’t make it halfway through. I think Jonathan Lethem tries to write “tomes,” not books. I ended up selling it to some poor sap for a dollar, and from then on never judged a single book by its cover.
se… sequel to Harriet the Spy? [drops everything to search my local library and make sure they have a copy for me] How many OTHER books I loved as a kid had sequels I had no way of knowing about in my small-town pre-Internet childhood and didn’t think to research in adulthood?! I kind of hope it’s all of them.
Right there with you on Are You There God. I read it at the same age and it was like trying to sympathize with a character who wanted gangrene.
I know this thread is about books we hate, but The Long Secret is AMAZING. And so freaking realistic about how confusing and depressing it can be to get your period for the first time.
The Da Vinci Code is the first that comes to mind. When I first read it, my reaction was just somewhat disdainful: the prose is overwrought, the pacing relies excessively on end of chapter cliffhangers, the characters are boring, and even at 17 I was pretty sure that “symbology” wasn’t a real academic discipline. But whatever, some of the puzzles were fun, and it was light and easy, generally inoffensive. Not like hacking your way through something like Ulysses or Infinite Jest only to realize you don’t like it.
Thing is, though, when I got to college I decided to major in religious studies. As I learned more about actual biblical-era history and Catholic doctrine, my hatred aged like a fine wine. Because Dan Brown isn’t content to set his novels in a world much like our own, but with certain counterfactual details. He has repeatedly gone on record saying that his novels are impeccably researched, and that most of what he depicts therein (excepting obviously fictional elements like the protagonists) is bona fide fact. This is such obvious bullshit that, for example, there is an entry on TV Tropes entitled “Dan Browned” which means something along the lines of “a claim by a creator to have conducted thorough and accurate research, which could be debunked within minutes by anyone with an acquaintance with the given field of knowledge.” He makes claims like, say, that the practice of Communion came into the Catholic church via the Aztecs, because, y’know, it’s not as if there are hundreds of pre-1500 historical sources discussing or depicting communion. I guess that just shows how deep the conspiracy goes, man.
So, in review: I knew from the beginning that Dan Brown was a bad author on a lot of levels, but it wasn’t until I realized that he’d made millions of dollars blatantly lying about one of my primary areas of intellectual interest that I came to properly hate his work.
Super-late to the party, but my degree is in English and Medieval Studies. I hate Dan Brown with the burning passion of a thousand inquisitions.
Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. It was so terrible I had to get drunk to write 10 pages on it in college. Oh how I hate that story. I deeply hate Possession by A.S. Byatt also. I rarely cannot finish a book even one I hate, but that one made me simmer in my own hatred for it before I even hit halfway.
Mmmmm embracing the hate to keep me stone cold on this hot summer’s night.
Henry David FUCKING Thoreau – at uni I met several guys who loved Thoreau and they can never redeem themselves in my eyes. What made me rage was that despite all his stupid being a Man Alone in Nature individualism crap, he still allowed his mother to do his laundry and make his food. Self-reliant my arse.
The Sun Also Rises – I forced myself to read this for my American Lit paper while I had tonsillitis. I would take tonsillitis over reading Hemingway any day. Naturally my deeply unpleasant supervisor loved it, and when I raised the misogyny he basically said it couldn’t be that bad because his wife loved it.
Patience by John Coates – loathed it.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – insufferable, self-congratulatory, pretentious crap. I almost liked it, at least, I could see why it was celebrated, up until he decided he was a genius and then I just rage-read until the end because I was supposed to write an essay on it.
Self by Yann Martel – I was 11 when I read Life of Pi and I liked it (I liked tigers) so moved onto Self. Mistake. The only thing I remember about it now, other than disliking it, was that at one point the protagonist’s boyfriend puts his hands on her breasts and says they feel like cool yoghurts. My breasts have never felt like cool yoghurts.
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner – Couldn’t get past the first few pages. A disaffected shallow self-absorbed young man who is, of course, a brilliant poet struggling with existential ennui? There just aren’t enough books about that.
Moby Dick – Men on a boat. Fascinating.
Books I had to read at school and hated:
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland (that book went on forever and the only highlights were when my overly-keen English teacher read the word ‘rump’ and said ‘His rrrrrump, girls, his RUMP’ while smacking her own rump)
most of The Lyrical Ballads (can books of poetry count?)
The Monster Garden by Vivien Alcock (I can’t remember why I hated it, but I did)
OK, I think I have raged long enough!
I read every page of this (with delight – you are my kind of people, Toast commenters) to see if anyone mentioned Galore by Michael Crummey. I think I’m the only person alive who actually liked it. My book clubbers hated it so much that it’s been three years and they still bring it up every. single. meeting.
I am guessing that his last name is really appropriate for the book, then?
GONE GIRL. it is the worst book ever on the planet. Anne of green gables, close second.
Fall On Your Knees is the first book I can think of that we really HATED, not just disliked because it was stupid or badly written. We read all the way through to the end and then were like… what? What was that? Why is this supposed to be so amazing?
I also really hated Cold Mountain when we had to read it for school.
Twilight. We hate-read it but had to stop halfway through because Bella was such an unpleasant human being we did not want to be around her any more. I mean we did not even get to the point of caring about all the horrible Edward stuff, Bella herself is such a misogynistic nightmare.
I haven’t even read through all this glorious hatred, but this is the place for me because I hate so very MANY books. Off the top of my head:
Jacob Have I Loved (yes–I was the scapegoat rather than the just less loved one, and the “but the narrator was immature too” message rankled because it was often assumed by outsiders that our situation was the same and not something more malignant);
The Mists of Avalon (which I hate in the same way as Daughter of the Forest, except with DOTF I take it out of the library every so often to hate-read, which I can’t even with TMOA);
The Little Prince, The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, Anthropology of an American Girl (urggh), Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, anything in the Big Stone Gap series, The Spymaster’s Lady, anything by Michael Chabon, His Dark Materials, anything by Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro (I suck at being an almost-Canadian), Wolf Hall (I keep it because I love the cover. I seriously just gaze at the cover sometimes, but I hate the book. HATE), anything by Cynthia Voigt, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (I was early-developing and was somewhat reviled for it by teachers/parents/peers and I thought she was stupidly whiny about the privilege of her “normal” body), anything by Hemingway, anything by Safran Foer (I think as a Jewish woman I’m just prejudiced against navel-gazing American Jewish male writers), anything by Gary Shteyngart (ditto). Anything by Joan Aiken. Game of Thrones and all of that thinking about one’s own breasts or whatever. Anything by Avi. The Fitzwhatsis series by Robin Hobb. Everything I’ve read so far by Terry Pratchett (I tried!).
There are really many, many more books that I love, but I hate these books so much that I can’t even hate-read them.
Super late in here, but:
– The Historian: like watching paint dry for 1,000 pages, while someone tells you of a weeks-long trip they took to the paint factory, where they looked through file cabinets, and eventually learned how the paint was invented. And then proceeds to quote the patent verbatim. Dear God, how can a vampire book be this excruciating. To add insult to injury, I got it wet on the bus and had to buy the library a new one. My book club is reading this this fall and I am going just so I have people to commiserate with.
– The Fountainhead: everyone is awful, and there is rape, but really the rape is fine because she secretly wanted it and experiences her sexual awakening because of it.
– Heart of Darkness: almost incomprehensible; super racist.
– The Name of the Rose: I talk about this in one of the responses above, but 3/4 staggeringly boring with a sudden left turn into incomprehensible and whackadoo.
– the third book of His Dark Materials: I’ve mostly blocked this from my memory, but such a disappointing betrayal of the promise of the first book. And fucking elephant people on seed wheels and killer geese invaders or something, idek.
– Wuthering Goddamn Heights: I don’t even think I came into this thinking it was a love story, but everyone was so completely horrible and awful to each other.
– Gone to Earth: this book is terrible. I fblessedly forget about its existence except when I see or hear about currants, because there is an important scene in a current patch. Let’s see, sheltered half-gypsy girl gets married to minister who is determined to protect her from sex, for some reason, which leaves her sexual education to the local asshole nobleman, and then it gets all rapey, and then for some reason she dies.
Another one that should be as obvious as Twilight but isn’t: World War Z, because it’s gotten so many accolades. It’s presented as a UN report yet spends a ridiculously disproportionate amount of time on Americans, there are 5 women to balance out 37 men, and it validates South African apartheid and paranoid/authoritarian Israeli policy. On top of that, all the different characters sound like they’re the same person, none of them has a distinct voice.
I just read through all of these comments to see if anyone else has some strong words for “The Awakening” and “The Stranger.” And…nothing! Do you all actually like those two boring, evil, boring books that elevated selfishness like they were exposing a universal human condition, were overlong at under 200 pages, and were SO GODDAMN BORING? Or are you just lucky enough to never have read them? Please advise.
The Stranger needs to die in a FIRE. I hate that book SO MUCH. We had to read it in AP Eng in high school, I had no fucking idea what it was about so I basically repeated myself 3 times in my 5 paragraph essay about it..and i got the highest grade i got on a paper in that class. Figures.
I had to read “The Stranger” in French…twice. I think I’d have hated it even more in English, but I was honestly kind of relieved that I could at least understand what I was hating, and also that it was not too long. On the topic of books I read for French class, however, Foucault’s “Moi, Pierre Riviere…” can use an axe to chop itself up (preferably in the spine, since that the closest thing a book has to a neck), and then add a chapter about what it looked like from its own goddamn point of view. (Basically, my mother is terrible, so I should kill her AND my 18 year old sister and 7 year old brother.) Ugh. Madame, if you didn’t want us all to totally fail at discussing what Foucault/the murderer’s memoir itself said, maybe you should’ve given us more than a week to read more than 400 pages. (Looking it up, the translation I had is 432, and the first English version I found is 288. WTF EVEN MORE HATE.)
Yeah, early Camus is hard to take, and the late Camus is even worse. Ever read The Renegade? Don’t. Just don’t. The middle period of Camus is a little better. The Plague at least has a bit of hope in it, and some amusing characters.
Oh my gosh, Mallory! I despise Prep! Finally, I don’t feel so alone anymore! You and I are bonded – bonded in hatred! Yay!
Also hated: Megan McCafferty’s entire Sloppy Firsts series. I so desperately WANTED to love it that when I didn’t I was almost personally offended, like the plot somehow KNEW where I was hoping it would go and purposely diverged, just to be a dick.
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. My question is how did they turn this depressing book into the musical Wicked?
Chiming in for Madame Bovary–I wish she’d died in the first chapter. I also hated–and didn’t quite finish–The Grapes of Wrath. Whenever I think of that book, I get an image in my mind of the color of wet newspaper. It’s so dismal and horrible and grey. I respect the attention that it brought to survivors of the Dust Bowl, but it is a SLOG. I realize that this is probably completely sacrilegious, but I HATED Anne of Green Gables with a fiery passion. She was such an irritating, pretentious, little snot that I couldn’t get through the book. Granted, I was probably around eight or ten when I tried reading it, and maybe I’d like it better now, but I remember keenly sympathizing with all of the baffled adults in the book who just didn’t know how to interact with this annoying little kid.
I’m not sure if this one was big enough to attract much hate, but The Knife of Never Letting Go made me want to throw it out of the window. I appreciate that the phonetic spelling was an artistic decision, but it was SO ANNOYING and VAGUELY OFFENSIVE, I wanted to stick forks into the author.
The Bible! No context in the history of the world! If any book was ever the nakedest emperor, this is it, folks! Chaotic, sociopathic ramblings written by a committee of idiotic scribes claiming to channel the voice of the creator of the universe, and contradicting themselves in every chapter an verse. Opening the covers is like walking into the bak ward of a snake pit insane asylum. Dreadful beyond belief. Literally and absolutely.
No-one mentioned Haruki Murakami yet?
His books lurk at me from every second bookshelf and they are an shuffling spectre of male ennui and grinding tedium
Ohh! I totally agree! I forgot to include his work in my hate-fest! People have told me over and over again that I will love his books, and I have tried a number of them, but it seems like he has this formula. Add:
*World-War-II-era atrocity;
*Some kind of Western food like spaghetti or something else;
*A large dollop of incest;
*A light-headache-inducing “mystery” that you stop caring about pretty early on if you ever did in the first place;
*Everybody inexplicably wanting the author insert BAAD like in a Steig Larsson novel;
And stir into a big pretentious mess. Male ennui and grinding tedium indeed!
Memoirs by malignant narcissists, like Eat Pray Love. Remember when God talks to her in her own voice?
All the Jew-hating so-called classic lit of the early twentieth century. Lots of paranoia about rich Jewish men corrupting pure white womanhood, as seen in F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dorothy Sayers, Willa Cather. But House of Mirth is the absolute worst. I hate that book.
Oh, I hate that anti-Jewish stuff too! And THANK YOU for saying you hate Dorothy Sayers! My mother loved her books, and my sister loves them, and I went to a women’s college full of people who love them, but they are annoying as f@ck to me and I can never say so IRL without causing a sh!tstorm.
I love Sayers myself but completely understand the hate. I spend a lot of time yelling at her in my mind. I love Gaudy Night, but a few of her books are so bad I wish I could erase them from my brain. Especially Busman’s Honeymoon. Argh! These two people are on their honeymoon; of course they’re going to act like schmoopy morons, so why can’t Sayers just give them some damn privacy? The book makes me feel like a voyeur, and not in a good way.
However, I don’t think of her as particularly paranoid about Jews, at least not in the Lord Peter books. Lesbians, yes, but she seems to get over that one at some point in the series. The victim in the first book is a nice harmless middle-aged Jewish man, and his daughter eventually marries one of Peter’s friends, so if Sayers was anti-Semitic – and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that she was – I think she did a decent job of keeping it out of the books.
Anything by Joyce Carol Oates; anything by Joyce Maynard. WHY ARE THEY BOTH IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ALL THE TIME AAAAAH
By the time I finished Joyce Maynard’s memoir I found myself sympathetic to JD Salinger. Pretty sure that wasn’t her intent.
I sincerely thank you for your hatred of Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea. Hate hate HATE IT but I have been too cowardly to express it.
AND JACOB HAVE I LOVED. THE WORST.
I went through a painful few years in college where I read Murakami after Murakami because I felt I SHOULD love him, but I HATE HIM. Thankfully, I got over that weird compulsion and realized he’s got too many issues with women for me to waste any more effort on him. I also have a deep and intense loathing for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Like, I’m not about parody writing when the author clearly hates the source he’s poking fun at.
The English Patient. I will never get that time back and I resent that. Awful book.
Atonement was another overrated book.
The Time Traveler’s Wife….ick.
The Heart of Darkness was interminably long and boring to be a short book. Never again.
I hated 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Grapes of Wrath and the Giver. It is really rare for me to dislike a book, but these three…oh my God. I hate them for making me hate them! Gah! Never ending circle of hate! And I WANT to like the Giver in particular. I adore the concept.. It should have been a shoe in for making the list of favorite books ever! But holy crap I hate it!
At least now I feel better about hating them!
Wow! Fantastic thread, this is going to save me so much time not having to read all these books now, thanks for pre-reading them for me.
Most recently read and hated The woman who went to bed for a year by Sue Townsend, potentially a good idea but irritating names, dialogue, plot and characters etc.
Aged seven I hated The Otter’s Path. I skim read it and lied to the teacher just so I could move on to the next book hoping for humans and dialogue.
Abandoned The Hundred Year Old Man, it was like a Just So story, what rubbish.
I found it in a holiday cottage, left by someone else.
Aged seven I hated The Otters Path, a schoolbook with no conversation, I skim read it and then lied to the teacher just so I could move on to something about people instead of animals.
I liked Wide Sargasso Sea…
But I hate The Name of the Wind. I am not done with it, but every one of my friends thinks it is a masterwork of the English language and will not stop talking about it. The book is about a guy who is awesome at fucking everything. He has a natural talent for magicks (and also singing and acting, I think? and being super smart. and I think he may be a really skilled fighter), and he is so impressive he gets to go to magicks school for free because even the stuffed-shirt magicks deans are like, “whoa, this kid is awesome at fucking everything.” But he doesn’t finish magicks school because…I don’t remember or know yet. Probably because he was too busy doing really important magicks to stay on task. And then he meets a wild, untamed woman that he is probably going to have sex with once and then not see again for many years because the two of them are so wild and free and impressive. And at some point he chooses not to help the world with his awesomeness but instead run a bar because the author seems to think that shows humility.
Also, someone said Catch 22. I didn’t finish it, but I just couldn’t believe anyone published something so bad.
And the only one I’ve finished: The Fountainhead. I hate-read the living SHIT out of it. I couldn’t put it down. It was so infuriating. I’m not sure what I expected–maybe I thought at the end would be a little note from God saying, “Don’t worry–no one has ever agreed with Ayn Rand about anything.”
I wish to join you in The Name of the Wind hate. 2 out of 3 boyfriends made me read that thing and I closed it and just sat there hissing for ten whole minutes. Now they’re both insisting that the NEXT BOOK is better, no really, Jen, you’ll like the next one! NO I WILL NOT READ ANOTHER 500 PAGES OF THIS THING. WHAT EVEN IS THAT. The protag’s character flaw is that he is perhaps TOO special and wonderful? #NOPE
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper is maybe the worst piece of trash I have ever read. It is foul, it is misogynistic, it is unfunny. I actually got 3/4 of the way through because I wanted to hate-read it and I had to stop.
Heart of Darkness, Lolita, Drown, NIGHT FILM, TWILIGHT. Bastard out of Carolina. Chuck Palaniuk. Dave Eggers.
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper is maybe the worst piece of trash I have ever read. It is foul, it is misogynistic, it is unfunny. I actually got 3/4 of the way through because I wanted to hate-read it and I had to stop.
Lolita, Heart of Darkness, Twilight, Drown. NIGHT FILM. Dave Eggers. Chuck Palahniuk.
But most of all, WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME. IT IS THE WORST. IN EVERY WAY.
The Book of Thomas by Robert Boyczuk. The hero rapes a woman and then spends the rest of the book whining about how she’ll never fall in love with him. He is also the saviour of mankind. At the end of the book we find out he knocked her up. This book is one of those cases where I actually wanted to track down the author and shake him by the shoulders while screaming “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?“
Wait, this is also the plot of the Thomas Covenant books!
Murakami. I’ve keep reading his books because people I know and love and respect will fawn and croon and flail around over his poetic brilliance, so I read book after 1,000-page book looking for said brilliance and still haven’t quite found it. Generally a guy with no personality feels okay-but-not-great, then he sits around and thinks for a while, and often there is a hypersexualized teenager somewhere. Hate is perhaps too strong a word, but continuously perplexed.
OH MY GOD a friend and I just tried to read Murakami and we both made it about fifty pages before we gave up. I still have the receipt so I might actually return the book for the first time in my life.
Oh, and The Awakenings. Lady has sex, eats a chicken sandwich for 200 pages, takes a nap, drowns self. HOORAY FOR FEMINISM— wait, wha?
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb. Most. Overrated. Book. Ever. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Painful.
Joining in the hate for Catcher in the Rye, especially because every third geeky guy takes it as some kind of inspirational text and decides that developing tact and social skills and the general ability to be someone people want to spend five minutes around makes you “a phony” NO HATE ROT IN A BARN.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: I remember reading The Scarlet Letter when I was ten because I heard that This Book is About Sex. Tried to read it on the sly, too, and my mom was all “…enjoy, kid,” which should have clued me in.
Also, I feel like Mists of Avalon appeared primarily on the shelf of every freshman girl ever when I was in college, and they all treated it like some kind of spectacular revelation, all “What if God…was FEMALE? And Morgan le Fey was actually THE GOOD GUY OH MY GOD I JUST BLEW YOUR MIND.” Ugh. Fucking freshmen.
“I am Charlotte Simmons” — horrible, overrated, crap. What was the message? Don’t be an overachieving woman or you’ll be put in your place?
I also have to list “Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell” here. It is regularly reecommended as “Harry Potter for grown-ups.” What?!? I thought it was TERRIBLE. It was slow and lacked the magical feeling of the Potter universe. Blech.
Glad to see that otherrs have already covered “Prep” and “Her Fearful Symmetry.”
Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell is so boring, I have the audio on my phone and I couldn’t even finish it.
UGH I forgot about I Am Charlotte Simmons. That was the worst book.
Oh, so many books to be hated! I am so glad I am not alone in my hatred of all things Cassie Clare/Cassie Claire.
The books I really and truly want to burn include Tuesdays with Morrie (WHY DO PEOPLE LIKE THIS BOOK? He spends time after time describing the “happy way” food falls out of Morrie’s mouth because he never learned not to talk with his mouth full and all I could do was gag), The Scarlet Letter (3 pages to tell the reader that someone walked across the room and opened the door?! I HATE NEWSPAPER SERIALS.), The Stranger (it doesnt even make SENSE, NOTHING HAPPENS OMG RAGE AND HATE), but the first, the very first book I hated and threw across the room was Forever by Judy Bloom.
Oh! It’s so controversial! Oh! It’s teenagers being teenagers!
I read it as a teenager and I was pretty fucking sheltered but even I knew when I got to the part where the main dude starts whining about how his dick hurts now that she’s got him all wound up and won’t have sex with him was utterly fucking ridiculous and I threw it HARD.
CASSIE CLARE! OMG, I can’t believe no one has brought her up yet, NOR can I believe that The Toast has never officially addressed her nonsense! THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN, GUYS.
Gene Wolfe’s Castleview. Actually, I have never read anything by Wolfe that I liked, or even understood, and I’m sure it’s something wrong with me, because so many people I respect say he’s wonderful.
Castleview in particular, though. I could probably have put up with the perpetual ambiguity about which dead characters were actually dead if the live characters had acted and reacted like real people. The closing scene, in particular: a teenage boy who has lost his father a few weeks before sees the man who he personally witnessed murdering his girlfriend’s father, evidently about to go and sleep with his (the boy’s) mother, and rather than “I KEEL YOU” his reaction is to wonder idly whether he’ll mention it to his girlfriend.
It’s just a bizarre, inexplicable sequence of things that happen – though, in some of his books, it’s more of a bizarre, inexplicable sequence of not much happening – to alienated characters who seem to have learned how to be human from a poorly-written instruction manual.
Anne of Green Gables and chatty chat her way off a fucking cliff and take that horror show of a book, The Help with her. I hope on the way down there is some sort of B movie special effects and an inexplicable explosion kills them all.
Oh and Dan Brown with them.
Has nobody mentioned Lord of the Flies yet??? God I hate Lord of the Flies so, so much.
Co-signed.
AMEN. I just signed up to rant about how much I hate it.
Wally Lamb She’s Come Undone uhllllllllll….
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I don’t remember why I hate it, but I like to call it the Unbearable Lightness of Peeing.
Also Lee Smith. There are a couple of these Southern writers from where I live in North Carolina, she is one of them and they have ties to UNC, anyway I hate both of them and their dark, suffocating, sweaty garbage.
I do like Faulkner and Carson Mcullers so it’s not the Southern thing I hate.
I think the ones I hate most are the ones that start strong and then fall apart — sucking you in and then dropping like a rock. Year of Wonders was one that did that for me… started great, and then the totally historically implausible ending left me in throw-it-across-the-room mode.
— The Woman Upstairs.
— The Help
The worst book I ever had to read and have absolute hatred for is Upton Sinclairs “The Jungle!!” There aren’t enough words to discribe how much I HATE that book!! The book was suppose to show how poorly immigrants were treated. The main character was a complete and utter idiot. By the time you finish the book, that is if you can make it through to the end, you wished he would have died!
Agreed. Plus, they made us read it over Christmas break at my hippie middle school, which I felt was especially cruel.
The Jungle…it’s like the longest worst Christmas newsletter ever written. And then in July everyone I ever knew died from the creeping death…I made $10 though, so I invested in a jacket, and immediately it was stolen and I was beaten. I wanted to die by the end.
A.S. Byatt’s Possession. I read the whole thing so I could be more righteous in my complaints but now I barely remember what happened.
I also hated it because it was written for people who think literature is the only important thing in the world. I don’t judge people who live to read. I just think that book was a kind of mental masturbation for English majors.
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. Awful, awful, I loathed him, I couldn’t finish it, he deserved a terrible lonely ending.
I FORGOT ONE.
I hate hate HATE Mercedes Lackey’s Vanyel books. (I will freely admit that there are so many problems with her other books, but I love Valdemar), but omg VANYEL WHINES AND “OH POOR ME”S HIS WAY THROUGH THREE FUCKING BOOKS and i read them ALL because clearly I hate myself, too.
I got so mad at Foucault’s Pendulum that I literally ripped it in half and threw it off the edge of a fishing boat into the Bering Sea.
The only book I have rabidly HATE HATE HATED in recent memory was David Sedaris’s “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.” I picked it up from the library on vacation one year and I hated it so much I only begrudgingly finished it. Oh my god. What a smug shitstain on the tighty whities of humanity.
I also hated Jane Eyre so much I threw it across the room but *kanye shrug*
‘Freedom,’ Jonathan Franzen.
The whole novel is one woman’s THERAPY JOURNAL?! No. Add that to my list of infuriating/flimsy plot constructs next to time travel and “It was all a dream!”
Also, is it just me, or are all of the female characters insane/needy/conniving? I picked up ‘Strong Motion,’ and after 40 pages I needed to brush my teeth, take a shower, and look at the sun to wrest myself out of a crippling depression.
CLOUD ATLAS. Hated it so, so much and could NOT believe how many people loved it!!! I know no one is ever going to see my comment but I just had to add because it feels so good to say it.
Also, Beowulf. So boring, I just read the Cliffs Notes.
(I have gotten almost no work done today thanks to this post.)
oh god cloud atlas is the worst worst worst
I see your comment and I raise you Black Swan Green.
I have opinions, though I am 3 days late. LO AND BEHOLD:
I cannot stand Paper Towns by John Green. I read it and then put it down and felt like setting fire to it, and had I not had Very Strong Feelings about book burning I may have actually done it. I also never finished his An Abundance of Katherines and while not as bad as those two I feel like TFIOS is incredibly overrated and it kind of pisses me off that he got so freaking successful off basically a Lurlene McDaniel novel.
I hate-read the Song of Ice and Fire books at this point just because I want to know what happens to these characters but they are so badly written and I hate myself for giving money to GRRM. He needs an editor with a spine.
Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper pissed me off so badly that I will never again pick up anything with her name on the cover. I should have known better. Same with Nicholas Sparks.
My most-hated books, though? The Grapes of Wrath (GRASS GRASS GRASS FOR 150 PAGES AND THEN SOME MINOR PLOT AND THE END? FUCK OFF) and The Great Gatsby, which is just about terrible rich people draping themselves over furniture and being miserable all the time. Woo, show me why I should caaaare. Also I had to read it for like 8 different classes through HS and college, for some ungodly reason.
Reading through this I was gratified to realize how many books I hate are a kind of “out of sight out of mind” thing for me.
I don’t think I saw anyone mention Little Women, so I’ll mention it. There’s the romanticizing poverty, the way the March’s are able to guilt Jo out of feeling any accomplishment for her first literary success. Just abut everything in it is taken a a cue to be more self-flagelating.
My aunt pushed Christina Falls on me. I tried to turn it down. I read it. I don’t get what the appeal is. Why anyone one would want to read a series about this miserable ME/detective. Is it just to hate how bad the Irish Catholic Church was to unwed mothers and their children? Because if I wanted to go into that I’d read something about the Magdalene Homes.
OH AND ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Every time I meet someone who quotes him incessantly, I end up hating that person. It’s gotten to the point that I actually wonder if Chuck Palahniuk writes books in order to highlight jerks to the rest of the population, because everyone I’ve ever met that gushes about how great his writing is has turned out to be an unmitigated ass.
THE HANDMAID’S TALE IS A TERRIBLE TERRIBLE BOOK.
Margaret Atwood is hailed as this amazing author but the character’s voice was never consistent, she used a hundred gazillion metaphors all the time for no reason, the dystopia doesn’t time out at all, and it’s supposed to be all “yay women’s lib, men suck!” but Nick maybe rescues her at the end? The main character was spineless and whiny and terrible.
There, I said it. I feel much better.
Also, if whats-her-face in Divergent simply FOLLOWED THE CLUE PATH HER MOM TOLD HER TO then I wouldn’t have hated her so much.
Mom: Look, Daughter, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s probably important that you should talk to your brother about and research together.
Triss: Sounds good! *IGNORES GIANT CLUE FOR 300 PAGES AND IS PROBABLY THE REASON WHY EVERYONE DIED*
I see a lot of Steinbeck hate in this thread, which, for the most part, I can’t say I share. However, the Red Pony was seriously one slap in the face after another. That poor kid Jody just CANNOT catch a break. Also, lots of gross details about horse birth/infections and questionable veterinary practices. Overall, UPSETTING.
The OldMan and the Sea; overrated piece of crap
Ashamed to even admit I read it but The Bridges of Madison County made me vomit and filled me with rage because I had some friends who I thought had brains who read it and said it was so deep and moving and etc. It was worse than a diaper commercial (which is more moving by far
“How Should a Person Be?” by Sheila Heti, were it *just* narcissistic and self-indulgent, would only achieve the level of “really, really bad” – fortunately (?) it goes far beyond being impressed with itself, and constantly nudges and winks at the reader as if to say, “See how completely honest and unselfconscious I’m being, with all the self-deprecation and listlessness? See? Are you watching? MOM! MOM! YOU’RE NOT WATCHING!”
I hate, with the fury of a thousand suns, anything and everything by Charles Dickens. UGH. UGH UGH.
And I hate being told I should appreciate his works. Really? Art is subjective. Eat a dick sandwich, Dickens. (I am so witty)
Wow, you guys were right. It does feel good to admit that kind of stuff. MY SOUL IS FREEEEEEEEE.
My mom made me read The Potato Peel and Gurnsey Literary Society for her book club because she couldn’t get into it. I finished it because I always finish a book, but I really really really hated it. I hated it so much I literally cannot remember a single thing what that book was about. It was terrible.
I HATED Prep. Hated it. (SPOILERS) In which a young woman leaves for private school a classist asshole, proceeds to recount 4 years of experiences from which she learns NOTHING, and ends her recount still an asshole. SHE LEARNS NOTHING. What a wasted pile of shit. Sorry, Curtis Sittenfeld. I found An American Wife only slightly better.
Can I second everything Updike? My high school English faculty loved everything he did and I ended up having to not only read Rabbit, Run over the summer but then take a course called “Three Top Johns” that was 50% Updike. Cheever and Gardner were the other two, and both are so vastly superior to Updike I can’t figure out why they’re even in the same class. Updike should have taken lessons from Cheever in how to write an interesting, sympathetic everyman character- “Rabbit” is an asshole through and through, and I wish that he, or perhaps the entire novel, had been drowned in the bathtub.
I know I’m late to the game but: Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. I’ve never managed to read more than about 100 pages of it because by that time all I want to do is walk out the door and start murdering random strangers because the world is so hopelessly and irredeemably sexist that every person who has ever lived is complicit and deserves to die. The book turns me into a walking, talking pile of sheer radioactive hate. I do not like to feel like this, and so, for the sake of humanity’s continued existence, I will never read the whole thing.
I’m gonna get a lot of hell for this, Summer Sisters by Judy Bloom. I hated that book so much that I actively buried it at the back of my closet for years before I finally unloaded it on some poor soul at a yard sale. Gah, so much hate. I didn’t like the main character, or any of the characters, or the plot(if you could call it that).
Also, not so much a book, but Tooth and Claw by T.C. Boyle. I don’t even have that good a reason, I just hated it.
As. I. Lay. Dying.
Hated this book as a teenager so much that not only did I not finish it. Not only did I never pick up another Faulkner book. But I read every single Ernest Hemingway book in my school’s library to spite dead Faulkner.
I would like to read a different Faulkner book some day. But the memory of this tedious On The Road-esque death spiral has kept me from it for a decade now.
such an awful novel. lol @ rage reading hemingway. totally undestandable.
i fucking loathe of mice and men
of mice and men more like “mentally disabled man is treated horribly; woman without even the dignity of being named is killed for a shock factor; spoiled little white boys are injured”
that book is the literary equivalent of old white men blowing themselves and i hope it slowly fades from pop culture until it dissipates into the air like the under-bed dust that it is
Letters from the Underground, by Abbie and Anita Hoffman. Uggh.
Also, can we do a thread about books we love that it seems like no one else reads or likes?
Dhalgren. Straight up garbage, overwritten nonsense without a purpose.
Only Revolutions. I adored House of Leaves so I sure as hell hope this author finds the error of his ways soon. Gave up about thirty pages in.
There are certain authors whose short stories I absolutely adore and whose novels I can’t stand. They range from Herman Melville (Bartleby the Scrivener is one of my favorites, but I could not even feign interest in Moby-Dick) to Karen Russell (whose short stories are flawless, but Swamplandia! was irritating and fleshed out a previous short story that was already fine on its own–just because I ate a cupcake doesn’t mean I want to devour an entire wedding cake of the same flavor).
Also, there is no one who can deny the body switch/possession in The Lovely Bones was dumb as hell.
I’m glad this exists.
I HATE LORD OF THE FLIES. Hate it. Hate IT! HATE IT. I don’t like what happens in it, I don’t like how they treat each other, I don’t like whatever message about civilization I wasn’t sophisticated enough to pick up on in high school, and I am never rereading it.
Whoever hated The Alchemist, I think I may be joining you… I actually got the Jeremy Irons audiobook.. all the nothing-really-happening-as-far-as-I-can-tell-but-some-woo was great for falling asleep to. Unfortunately my mom liked it and I’ve made her read books so I have to read it. Trying to be open minded.. probably failing.
I have only recently become able to quit books halfway through (there are some I wish I had–The Lovely Bones and The Alchemist or Love in the Time of Cholera), and the one I quit with RELISH was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Hamlet as told by DOGS which should have at least been a little great, because dogs are great. NO. The author threw everything he could into that profoundly stupid (and long) book.
OH GAWD, Love in the Time of Cholera. UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH. I will never ever read another word by that guy ever again after that book, I hated it so much.
My mom made me read Metamorphosis- yup, the one by Kafka- for a BOOK REPORT when I was NINE YEARS OLD!!! I have never hated a book that much. I went to my teacher in tears; she called my mom, who tried more to get me to understand Kafka when I was NINE YEARS OLD by reading about him as well. My mother now acknowledges that I am allowed to never forgive her for this Kafkaesque reading scenario.
I hate hate hate modern litfic. Especially those by Asian authors set in a highly unrealistic exoticised setting. The characters are from 1950 and ape the manners of 21st century liberals.
Can you name names?
I know I’m coming to this much too late for anyone to actually read my comments (very sad that I was away from internet for the weekend), but I read through the entire thread and no one has mentioned my most hated book of all time.
Ishmael. Worst book ever. First of all, it’s not actually a novel, it’s just this damn gorilla talking. WHY A GORILLA? Second, he’s all, “I’m going to teach you to save the world,” and then all he does is recap a bunch of suspect Malthusian arguments and offer no solutions whatsoever so save the world, other than that we should stop giving aid to starving countries because we need to bring the population down. Third, everyone should just be nomadic, because nomads knew everything about population control and living in harmony with their environment. THAT OR THEY JUST DIED A LOT BECAUSE THEY LIVED A TENUOUS EXISTENCE, YOU MORON.
But the worst thing about Ishmael is that liberal white boys love it and get tricked into thinking it’s some kind of liberal bible, where in fact it is conservative propaganda. Words cannot express the extreme level of my hate for Ishmael. I had to read it for a high school journalism class taught by one of those idiot liberal white boys, and I had so many arguments with him about the obviously nonsensical “history” in that book.
Another book I hate: Possession. How do you ruin an academic literary love story? Easily, it seems. The book isn’t really about the characters, it’s about how clever and educated A.S. Byatt is, and look, she wrote reams of pseudo-Victorian poetry and we have to read all of it, and the book just sinks under the weight of all that unnecessary scrollwork.
Also, Lord Jim. I never use the term “special snowflake,” because I think we’re all entitled to a certain amount of self-pity, but I may have to use it here. Jim is just so special and tortured and nonfunctioning that everyone has to drop whatever’s going on in their lives and help him. Gaah! And I just willingly watched (and enjoyed) a movie where Ben Affleck inadvertently causes someone’s death and then spends a year sadly drinking in the shower, so I have a high tolerance for these things.
Y’all. James Franco’s Palo Alto. Blargety blarg blarg blarg. The whole time I was reading it I could hear in my brain the sounds of Franco violating himself as he read aloud his own awful awful prose. Buh. Larg.
The Giving Tree is HORRIBLE.
I agree with you so, so much. How could I have forgotten The Giving Tree in my list of most hated books?
YES.
Him Her Him Again the End of Him. Ugh. Also Moby Dick.
The Lovely Bones
The Witches of Eastwick
Catcher In the Rye.
Things I was supposed to like and hated: everything by John Updike and everything by Philip Roth. And Cormac McCarthy. My students almost universally hate The Awakening because they find Edna to be a simpering twit.
If we’re going with grammatical errors, how about that atrocity THE HORSE WHISPERER. Was there a worse book written in the 20th century?
Looking over my list of things I’ve read this year, I hated Daisy Miler, by Henry James. Fuck that novella.
Also, I hated The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, because of the treatment of the character of Alice. Any book by a dude that is in any way about punishing women, I will probably loathe.
ETA: Also, I’ve never been able to make it through The Fellowship of the Ring to even get to the rest of the trilogy.
I was super let down by “Gone Girl” and thought maybe it was just that book, but then I read “Sharp Objects” and it was even worse, and I’ve realized that I actually hate Gillian Flynn.
Also, I have never in my entire life hated a book with as much fire and spite as I hate “Me and the Devil” by Nick Tosches.
Despair, by J.M. Coetzee: I hated this book. I hated everyone in this book. The protagonist, whose name I can’t be bothered to remember or look up, his daughter, the student he seduces/rapes. They were all awful, boring people, and I didn’t care what happened to them. And don’t get me started on the dead dogs.
And I agree on Tess: I was so angry after reading the ending I actually threw it across the room. Then I sold it on Amazon so it wouldn’t poison the other books on my bookshelf.
I thought I had missed the party on this but thankfully it is still going! This feels SO GOOD to rant about. In descending order of most hated:
1. On the Road
2. One Thousand White Women
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude
4. Three Lives (this one is the only book I actually threw across the room, but the ones ranked above were still more insufferable)
5. Beatrice and Virgil
6. Island of the Blue Dolphins
7. Oryx and Crake
8. Sophie’s Choice
i’m so glad this is still going.
ian mcewan’s sweet tooth – RAGE, oh my god, the rage. having a twist that your female narratives were actually being written by a clueless male character is NOT AN EXCUSE for having a whole book full of flimsy female characters!
thomas mann’s doctor faustus – i can’t even get started about how much i hated this.
this one book translated from the french that i hated so much i cannot even remember the goddamn title anymore, about a “gifted” teenager who “falls in love” with a mentally disabled/developmentally delayed girl he sees waiting for the bus and spends the entire fucking book romanticizing and fetishizing her diminutive intellect and physical size and how that would mean their love would forever be in arrested development–OH MY GOD I HATED THIS WITH THE FIRE OF A GAZILLION SUNS. i would have never gotten past the first page if it had not been lent to me by a boy i was dating–and in the end i stopped dating him because we got in an argument over it. jesus.
Just remembered: Jincy WIllett! I read two of her books, and they’re both about how women who don’t get married become creepy and psychotic as they age. You know how in Gaudy Night everyone thinks that the Poison Pen is some elderly virgin who’s gone crazy from years of celibacy and deeply resents sexually active women? And then Lord Peter comes along and is like, Well, I haven’t been having sex lately and I’m not sending people threatening letters, so maybe this theory is totally batshit? (Possibly my favorite Lord Peter moment.) Jincy Willett’s books take the original psychotic-elderly-virgin theory and run with it.
i know this is the wrong thread for it, but my love for gaudy night is stronger than my hate for any book in the world
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I’ve read it twice: once on the recommendation of a boyfriend who said it was his favorite book, and a second as someone else’s book club pick. After reading it the first time and hating it, I thought maybe I just missed something about the humor. It all seemed just sad to me. Then the second time I read it, I outright hated it. I can’t even say what I hate about it, I just never want to even see that book again.
it really is up there with some of the worst fiction i’ve had the displeasure of force-reading. you are a better person than me though – there is no way in hell i could have read that more than once. it was suggested to me by 2 literature academics, one female one male, and i came away from the entire experience scratching my head, wondering what curriculum in formal education requires reading such a shite book.
All right, let me ask if anyone else has had this phenomena: There are books that I HATE to read, but I find that listening to them reduces my hatred. For example, I listened to :the Joy Luck Club,” and really thought I loved Amy Tan. Then I read “The Bonesetter’s daughter,” and couldn’t finish it. Someone gave me the audio book, (still laboring under the illusion that I loved Amy Tan.) I listened to it, and I actually liked it.
I have since discovered that I can get through audio versions of books that I would just hate to read. I suspect that I can zone out when authors become overly preachy or descriptive. But I’m not sure!
Yeah! That happened to me exactly with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I let the narrator read it to me for the first half of the book, and then I had picked up enough momentum to read the latter half myself, and enjoy it. But otherwise I think I would have just straight-up hated it.
That same narrator couldn’t save Drood for me, though. I’m thinking I might either have to try to read that myself, or I just hate it.
Awesome topic! My hate list: Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel (so glad to see I’m not the only one). Twilight – I kept hearing how it was in the same vein as the Harry Potter books, which is INSANE. Those series are in two different universes, one in which there is quality story crafting, and one in which there is just crap. Super Sad True Love Story. Great Expectations.
Infinite Jest. Or rather the first hundred pages of it, which is all I could stand to slog through before admitting I had no interest in the rest of that uphill trek. I got excoriated by all of my literary friends for it, but I just couldn’t do it. It was dull as dishwater.
you have made me feel so. much. better. with this post. thank you.
As an English major, they forced me to read Ulysses TWICE, and I hated every moment. Makes me sick-to-my-stomach just thinking about it…
I had the same reaction to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and most of Hemingway’s work.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras. I had to write a paper on it in college and I was GLAD. Every clickety clack of the keys punctuated my everlasting hate of that short book by tenfold.
ernest fucking hemingway. anything by. can’t even use caps
The book I’ve hated most in my life is Court of the Air. I hate that book with a rage that burns. It was derivative and lazy, based on some cool ideas except they all got jammed into a trite, poorly edited, casually racist, meandering plot whose climax was based on long descriptions of fictional parliamentary politics.
My Life as a Girl, on the other hand, fills me with a colder hate. I quit after a few pages, because the entire premise was tired and I absolutely hated the main character the way I would an actual person that I had to interact with. The kicker is everybody in college (profs included) fawned over it because it was written by an alum. It read like fan fiction of my college experience.
Finally, Proust. My hate for this was gradually dawning, in waves, until I quit halfway through the second book of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. First, I realized I wasn’t remembering what I was reading. Then I began to suspect I was bored. Then I began to think I might die of boredom, and finally, I wished that I were able to do so. Then I remembered I was just reading for myself and set it aside without a second thought.
“as i lay dying” by william faulkner. hands down the messiest piece of fiction i’ve read in years. 15 different narrators one of which is dull talking corpse. fuck off.
I had an entire summer ruined by trying to read “Gone With the Wind.” I have never hated a book so much — I couldn’t get through two chapters without shouting “fuck you, Margaret Mitchell!” But I tried to persevere. I tried to entertain myself by parsing Scarlett and Melanie’s S&M relationship. After 900 pages I finally gave up and tried to rebuild my life. And now I have to go through life having very complicated feelings about all the lovely women who will mention that was their favorite book growing up. It’s a cornerstone of white supremacist mythology and I wish we could erase it from our culture.
“The Man Who Loved Children” is also a terrible, terrible book. Sam Pollitt is one of the most HATEFUL characters ever. So, I guess brava to Stead for writing him, but why in the world does a reader want to spend hundreds of pages listening to this shallow monster? No. Deeply unenjoyable. I am convinced that Jonathan Franzen was trolling the whole world a few years ago when he recommended it. Like, that’s a pretty devious revenge plot, Franzen, because anyone naive enough to try to read this book will SUFFER.
I haaaate The Old Man and the Sea (thanks for giving away the /entire/ plot there, Hemingway) and A Day No Pigs Would Die. And while I’m not sure my negative feelings regarding Lord of the Flies are exactly equivalent to hatred, it did make me suicidal for a month and I’ve been too afraid to reread it since.
I completely forgot about A Day No Pigs Would Die until this comment. Ugggggggghhhhh.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Ridiculous letdown of a plot. To this day, if I see it in a bookstore, I am filled with the urge to start throwing things.
“My Horizontal Life” by Chelsea Handler. So many of my friends were talking about how great and funny her books were, but it took one line about her father touching “her supple ass” as a child as punishment for me to throw it in the NOPE pile.
Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. So deeply and terribly that I am afraid of the people who like it. Specifically, I’m afraid that I will someday become friends with someone and then will find out they like this book, and that will be a painful betrayal of trust and taste and friendship. Like the time someone at a party randomly rearranged my bookcases, subtly and slyly. I refused to sell my copy or give it away, and it’s disappeared somehow now and I’m afraid someone is reading it. Perhaps I am not good at hating, but this is what it does to me.
I had never heard of this book until a few years ago, when I met two people who had amazing taste, and who both loved it. I sought it out, thought it was ok at first, and then got to the last bit… and just wtf. What is up with the entire last section.
I HATED Grapes of Wrath. Had to read in high school and I was seriously convinced it would never end. Ever. Ugh. A whole chapter about a turtle crossing a street? That says it all.
Also, T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain. What an awful book! Had to read sth else after finishing another chapter every night, otherwise I would not have been able to fall asleep because of all the depressiveness!
I love this – and we often have the BEST discussions during our book club meetings when at least a few people absolutely hated the book. I agree with a lot of the posts here, but the books I hate with a fervor that is way past rational are Snowflower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love. Gawd do I hate those books and their vomit-inducing descriptions of foot-binding! I hated Snowflower when my book club read it years ago, then made myself forget about it..until years later another book club picked Peony, and I found myself gagging on the metro trying to read it. I hate those books so much it has made me resistant to reading anything set in China before modern times.
I’m sorry I’m late to the party!
It’s cathartic, reading this thread . . . though it’s hard to resist the temptation to jump to the defense of one or two that have been blasted here. I’ll always have an inordinate fondness for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, though 1) I can see why others would find it annoying, and 2) that’s not what this thread is for.
(I can also see the point about Tolkein. Again, I’ll always be fond of LOTR, perhaps in spite of myself, despite the racism – Numenorians = The Master Race, right? – and the almost complete absence of independent female characters and the fact that most of the characters, except for some of the sillier hobbitses, don’t talk but DECLAIM.)
(Those who hate Tolkein might be amused by this: When he first started reading the manuscript of Fellowship of the Ring to the Inklings, one of his fellow writers groaned and said “Not more fucking elves!”)
I used to pretend I liked Ayn Rand’s writing. I was taken by her ideas, for a while, at the end of high school and in my first year in college. (Yes, I was one of THOSE.) It was a phase, and it passed; I’m feeling much better now. In hindsight, all of her writing is just intolerably bad, but Anthem and the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged float to the top like . . . well, they just float to the top. Others have mentioned the rape-as-courtship trope which happens once in the Fountainhead and several times in Atlas Shrugged, but what about those final speeches? How much air time would John Galt’s radio bloviation have taken up? Three hours? Four? Way to hold your audience, Johnny boy! Also, her supposed heroes are cardboard cutouts; the only character with any depth or any humanity at all is Ellsworth Toohey, Howard Roark’s arch-nemesis in The Fountainhead.
That was all decades ago, though.
I hated all of Orson Scott Card’s Memory of Earth series, which is notable because, in at least two of his other series, the books are at least tolerable until the third or fourth, after which the whole thing becomes pointless. Memory of Earth just cut to the chase and became useless from page one.
But above all these, I have hated Tom Wolfe’s A Man In Full. Not one character in the book has a redeeming feature of any kind. Mere showering was not enough to make me feel clean after reading this book-length roll in the gutter of human depravity. I considered sand-blasting as a possibility.
Oh, and one more: Titus Andronicus.
Shakespeare is great, and all that, but this is just bilge written to draw an audience that might otherwise go off to a bear baiting.
Frankly, I’d rather attend a bear baiting than ever to have to read this again, let alone attend it.
Okay, I’d rather be the bear.
(Don’t even get me started on Euripides!)
I hate everything Tolkein. He’s boring. BORING. And when he isn’t boring, he’s an ass. The man basically invented high fantasy and I’ve had more fun reading tech manuals about the operation and maintenance of machines that test the material properties of soils. He made pearls and then he rolled them in shit and smashed them into powder and tried to serve them over instant oatmeal. (had an apology in here until I realized I was NOT ALONE. Shout out to my fellow hobbit-haters!)
I kind of hate the Harry Potter books. Not because they’re bad books, but because there are much better books out there and the praise the HPs get is blown entirely out of proportion.
I hate everything by Orson Scott Card, especially the Ender books. OSC is too stupid to write “genius” characters. OSC is too stupid to write anything, really. Somebody confiscate his word processor. I once read a review that said the man could construct beautiful sentences but was at a loss for everything else, I disagree, he’s not even very good at sentences.
I hate Vonnegut, especially Cat’s Cradle. His prose, his characters, his “morals”… they all make me want to swallow my tongue or set fire to something. Such a turd. This holds generally for white male US authors of “important fiction” from the 40s-70s. I hate those guys. The only major exception: Joseph Heller, I don’t know why, but I love him, yes, even the off-putting and generally pointless Closing Time.
I hated The Outsiders, though I was very young when I read it, so this might not be true anymore.
I hate romance novels set in the Scottish Highlands, they are A HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES WORSE than any other genre of romance novel. If I never read another story about “a brave young woman and a lord with a dark past who together find love and Christ in the harsh, windswept beauty of the Scottish Highlands.” that would be fantastic. Not only are these books extremely formulaic, but they are, every last one of them, UNFORGIVABLY LOOOOOONG. I was given a trilogy of the damn things by an aunt one year and they totaled over 5000 pages. Another (single book) I read more recently was 1500 pages and covered ONE WEEK (that’s literally seven days: book starts on a Monday and ends on a Sunday) of the protagonist’s life.
I hated the Da Vinci Code. I read it while travelling in Japan with my partner and for days I would turn away from the horrible mess that it was and whine, “He’s doing it AGAIN! Everything he just said about history and science is WRONG. And it’s wrong FOR NO GOOD REASON. AND a woman just asked a stupid question so a man could provide exposition.”
I hate all the Dune books. All of them.
And thank you, Toasters, for reminding me of my unending loathing of Neil Gaiman. I started reading Good Omens for the first time a few months back (under the impression it was a Terry Pratchett book) and was horribly sad and confused because I HATED EVERY GODDAMN MINUTE OF IT. When I realized Gaiman was the coauthor the world made sense again: he ruins everything he touches.
Totally on board with hating Murakami. While on that same trip to Japan, he was the only name offered when I asked chatty locals for book recommendations. Ugh. Though, his popularity makes a lot of sense in the context of modern Japan. Like Hemmingway does in the US.
I found Grapes of Wrath to be boring but bearable right up until the nursing scene. That pushed it right over into nopenopeNopeNopeNOPE for me. But anybody who doesn’t hate Steinbeck yet should read The Red Pony. It will fix that for you.
Also hated Stranger in a Strange Land. So much so that I have not read anything else by Heinlein.
And The Alchemist by Coelho! A friend said it changed her life, that everyone should read it, that it was brilliant. I am now convinced it is the only book she’s ever read, and that she’s not nearly as smart as I thought she was. I just kept thinking to myself as I read it, “This book? Really? THIS BOOK? Nooo, this can’t be it.” (text to friend confirms I am reading the correct “The Alchemist”) “Note to self, never. Never. EVER. trust X’s opinions in literature.”
Seconding the open loathing of Tom Wolfe. Can we also hate Tom Robbins? At least a little? Please?
And I didn’t hate but am still mad about Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. He clearly ended up with THE WRONG DAMN PRINCESS. I don’t care if the good one was 14′ tall, green and hexapedal, she LOVED HIM. She was capable, she was a whole person, she was critical to the story. The red one was just so… ugh… petite and conventionally attractive and boring and clearly just included as a prize for the hero.
I read quite a lot of Ayn Rand in college, not because I agreed with her, but because I was trying to make sense of the Young Republicans in my engineering courses. I feel like I should hate her, but mostly I’m just confused as to why anyone would take it seriously. It’s like seeing Star Wars and deciding to be a Jedi or using Lord of the Flies as a wilderness survival guide.
yOU’RE wonderful. Probably for a lot of reasons but the reason I’m saying that is the final paragraph re Ayn Rand.
PS to you and anybody else who’s interested: years ago the NY Times printed a short essay entitled IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S YOUR BOOKS which most of the people who commented here might enjoy. Oh what the hell I’ll get the link. Here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/books/review/Do…
Alright, I know you don’t do trigger warnings round these parts but I’m gonna be talking about rape, violence against women, whorephobia, racism and cluelessness about transgender stuff like, a lot…
The Red fucking Riding quartet by David “Male Author” Peace. The first one was sort of alright and it set things up intriguingly so I went and read all four of the cunts didn’t I, thinking it’s got to pick up at some point. Spoilers, it doesn’t. And it was hailed as the last word in GRITTY UNCOMPROMISING British neo-noir. Life is brief so I’ll make this a mere two-minute hate:
•Three of the books deal with the Yorkshire Ripper murders…kind of. Peace does this weird half-arsed thing where he changes the names of the victims and murderer but keeps every other detail identical, which kind of undermines any putative intent to spare the survivors further pain. You might ask if he’s particularly qualified to write about this subject, seeing as he just appears to be rolling out the same old Dead Hooker clichés hastily coated with some kind of History Ronseal. But maybe I’m being unfair because according to his little bio David Peace TOTALLY remembers hearing the Wearside Jack tape on the radio when he was a kiddy. Good for you, David. My mum remembers being terrified to walk near the buildings because you might get dragged into an alleyway, and terrified to walk near the road because you might get dragged into a van. My coworkers remember the knives and cans of hairspray in their handbags, the police advising women “do not go out at night unless absolutely necessary and only if accompanied by a man you know,” the chat up line “give us a kiss love, I’m not the Ripper.”
•Racist in ways that goes beyond GRITTY UNCOMPROMISING WORLDBUILDING. Having “paki” and “wog” thrown around like confetti is one thing, yeah, I am fully aware that people (would have) talk(ed) like that (in 1970s Leeds). Having no black or Asian characters of any humanity or substance, even adjusting for them being viewed through the filter of our racist-ass protagonists, is another.
•Closest we get? A superhot mixed-race sex worker, (the daughter of a white pro and a black pimp, obviously) who also informs on the side for Sergeant Arserape who secretly loves her because…well. We get no impression of her personality or why she’s so exceptional apart from being a good fuck and feisty and vulnerable. Did I mention vulnerable? So yeah in the fullness of time she gets beaten and raped by several other bent coppers as A Message to our bent copper (we get a good look at the aftermath of same, belt welts and bite marks on her sexy ethnic body so beautiful so soiled) and shortly afterwards Rippered and stuffed under a sofa. Which leads to MANPAIN
•Speaking of, there’s also a couple of abortions DEAD BABIES SUCH MANFEELS VERY GRITTY SO UNCOMPROMISE WOW
•Full of scenes where our protagonists who, to quote the blurb, “would be considered villains in most people’s books” (DOOD YR BLOWING MY FRAGILE LITTLE MIND) anally rape barely-sketched fridgebait women because anal rape is the grittiest most uncompromising kind of rape, they’ve done studies.
•Somehow both overwritten and underwritten. Full of repetition, mostly of the scenes mentioned above.
•OH! AND! Let’s not forget BJ (ayup), the “bad fucking Bowie” teenage prostitute who says at one point “D’you think I like being me?!? This body!…I’m not a poof. I’m a girl inside”…and then that’s just never, ever referred to again, implicitly or explicitly, by BJ (who gets a lengthy interior monologue in the fourth book) or anyone. Because, y’know, your gender identity is like a tie or something.
tldr: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/?p=1632&print=1
i hate love in the time of cholera so so so so so so much like yeah i get that the characters aren’t supposed to be likeable, but they are all so pointless. also the pedophilia just skeeved me out so badly i don’t think i’ll be attempting another GGM book anytime soon. i was stuck with the book over a plane ride and compelled by my hate to finish it. i’ve never experienced such incandescent rage upon closing a book before.
also disgrace by jm coetzee can suck a bag of dicks
Man, Beautiful Ruins was recommended to me highly so I read it and was just like "…meh?" I didn't hate it but like…it wasn't anything special. Why do people love it so much?
I've tried to read Austen NUMEROUS TIMES and I never get past page 10. Never.
I returned to this thread today just to see if anyone else had chimed in with Super Sad hatred and I am delighted to see that there are more of us!
When people ask if there are any books I recommend, Super Sad is the first book that comes to mind to NOT recommend, as in, "I'll have to think about that but here is one book you should definitely NOT READ." I was frankly surprised at my hatred for that book.
Words can’t express how much I loathe Of Mice and Men. Heavy handed, ableist, and just… ugh.
Other targets of my hatred:
Black Lamb and Gray Falcon by Rebecca West (a travelogue/history of yugoslavia from the 30’s) – read it for a college history class, and while I don’t recall the specific details of why it pissed me off so much, I thought the author was a judgemental, racist bitch.
Grapes of Wrath – like watching paint dry. (I’m not a complete Steinbeck hater- I adore Cannery Row)
anything by Terry Goodkind – protagonist centered morality and creepy misogyny? No thank you.
100 Years of Solitude
Name of the Wind. – I must be the only person not to finish this book. I really wanted to like it – the framing story was good and the setup was interesting, but I just couldn’t buy the mary sue protagonist. Maybe if the author had made him a few years older when he entered the university and slightly less of a prodigy at EVERYTHING it would have worked for me. The dissonance between the interesting world building and sloppy characterization made me ragequit 3/4 of the way through.
My most detested book has to be the Heart of Darkness. I had to read it in college and it was horridly confusing. Finishing that book is something I feel I can wear as a badge of honour. The Scarlet Letter was also painful to read, although not quite as bad.
I hate Pride and Prejudice. I hate it. I hate Special Snowflake Lizzie Bennet (I hate her so much I just had to Google how to spell her fucking name) and Asshole Mr. Darcy. I do not care if they fall in love why would I care about two insufferable people falling in love???? And they talk so much about talking and walking. “Why, let us walk over here” “No I shan’t. Let’s simply talk” “Do you like to talk?” “I much prefer it to talking”
Those are DIRECT QUOTES or at least they are CLOSE ENOUGH
GOD what horrible people. I don’t give a shit about your redemption stories, you little dicks! Lizzie just flounces around and is like “I’m hot AND I read books I’m not like other girls” and Mr. Darcy is like “I am a horrible, mean person, but I’m hot and rich and ultimately I’ll do the MINIMUM DECENT HUMAN THING by apologizing and for some reason that elevates my character to a heavenly tier”
that felt so good
I hated the Little Prince with all its ham handed symbolism, flat characters, and self-congratulatory pretentiousness. When I was reading it in French class in college, I wanted to throw that book out the window. I called the main character the little prance for years. I thought I was having a PTSD flashback years later when I started Life of Pi — those same loathing feelings came bubbling up and for the same reasons!
“The Drawing of the Three” by Stephen King. Don’t get me wrong, I love Stephen King… The first book in the series (The Gunslinger) is SO fucking good, then I eagerly began the second book, “The Drawing of the Three” and it took me ten years to finish it. I must have read four thousand books in between picking up “The Drawing of the Three” and finishing it– it’s the most self-indulgent, masturbatory piece of poorly thrown together mishmash I’ve ever read in my life. Follow up goes to “Concrete Island” by J.G. Ballard, an author who like Stephen King, I adore and a book that begins with SUCH a promising premise but takes a huge dip about eight chapters in when the “island” turns out to be “inhabited.”
Ender’s Game
A Nebula AND a Hugo?! Why oh why? I am baffled. The writing is INSIPID. I would rather read the dictionary rather than attempt this book again. I . . . HATE . . .IT. I couldn’t care less about Ender – die, Ender, die – end it all.
HEART OF DARKNESS, JOSEPH CONRAD YOU SUCK THANKS FOR RUING JUNIOR YEAR YOU TURD.
Also Canterbury Tales. Also, most of Shakespeare, except for like the little quotes that people use as titles and and epigraphs in poems. BUT EVERYTHING ELSE.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh also Rule of Bone. I don’t even know why, something about like, douchey young boy narrators…………………..I CANNOT I WILL NOT
LORNA EFFING DOONE.
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS it’s like The Secret History but it can’t hide itself behind the veneer of everyone’s longing to be an aesthete classics major and wear fawn colored sweaters and picnic on grassy swards.
Also Perks of Being A Wallflower, which has a special place in my hateful, deeply betrayed teenage heart and Sundays at Tiffany’s, because that was such a PHENOMENAL waste of a good premise.
The Black Jewels trilogy. I got it on the recommendation of a friend and hate-read it over a weekend. None of it made sense! Creepy tonal shifts all over the plots! And the stupidist names in fantasy.
Ulysses. The only Big Literary Book I genuinely hated. I read it to the end so that i could state I hate it with clarity and confidence.
The Chocolate War. Had to read this one in school and Hated It so much.
The Preacher comics. No, they’re not edgy and out there. They’re gross and terrible.
Hated the Biography of Carolyn Keene. Spoiler: did you know her and Franklin Dixon (Hardy Boys) aren’t real? A publishing syndicate paid various authors $125 to flesh out plotlines he gave them. The bio ruined memories of reading Nancy Drew mysteries. And don’t pick up one of the cheap newer versions published- absolutely no depth and descriptions. Run a quick Wiki on Carolyn Keene for the details. So sad.
I thought I would have a whole list and . . . nothing. Plenty of books I have not finished because I didn’t think they were worth finishing, but really nothing I have hated with a purple passion.
Mmmmmaybe the Wheel of Time series, which started out cracking and ended up, not only boring as shit, but a perfect example of an author in over his head. Then again, that’s more pity than hate.
Fuck The Alchemist and everything about it. It’s my acid test for whether continuing a conversation with a new person is worthwhile. Oh, you loved The Alchemist? Excuse me.
Much of my day has been absorbed by this awesome thread, and I’m going to stop lurking for the first time ever to add my two cents. My greatest hatreds have already been name-checked: D-(efinitely Dead From the Neck Up). H. Lawrence: I can’t decide which sexist bullshit made me more angry, *Sons and Lovers* with the repetitive sex in the out of doors while the peewits screamed incessantly amidst virgin-shaming and whore-shaming, that and the fact Paul had the most fully developed Oedipal complex, maybe even greater than Oedipus’ itself and it should be renamed after Lawrence, because all of his characters share it) or *Women in Love*, with its frozen body-as-phallus, dendrophilia, catfights [both literal and metaphorical], and the fucking racist African statue chapter. Him and Lessing’s *The Golden Notebook* because she is so obviously a Lawrentian thinker and 864 of that shit was bad enough the first two times. Lessing really cheapens psychoanalysis and Anna is such a total annoyance that I call it *The Brass Whinebook*.
My addition would be, and I can’t believe no one beat me to it: Iris Murdoch’s *The Black Prince*, which is the world’s worst rip-off of *Pale Fire,* homophobic, misogynistic piece of trash (I think Iris Murdoch despises everyone she writes about as a philosophical point of pride because they dare to be human, therefore, she must belittle them for their foibles); try as I may, I will never ever be able to forget Bradley’s fixation on his young lover’s dirty bra strap. Murdoch, even worse than loving Lawrence, loves Sartre, and though *The Bell* is similarly batshit insane/offensive but somehow more tolerable because it seems to be a deliberate inversion of *Middlemarch,* I would never read another of her works.
I also wanted to comment that I am perpetually disappointed by every Ian McEwan novel I have read since *Atonement* (brushing off the haters), because it never lives up to the dizzying heights of awesome that is *Atonement*. And if anyone has read it, *Black Dogs* in particular (though it technically preceded *Atonement*), baffled and frustrated me to no end [SPOILERS: Nazis, Communists, and bestiality, oh my!] and I would love to hear more thoughts about that hot mess.
I love this thread and maybe it's almost over, but I just have to share my hatred for Tom Robbins and Jack Kerouac.
I loved "On the Road" when I was 16, but I never actually read the whole thing and then I realized that all of his novels are so fucking full of "I am such a manly rebel and we are living such counter-cultural lives and women are such excellent props who do nothing but ride in our cars and have sex with us and nothing happens ever!"
I was browsing in the bookshop in TIntagel once (small town in Cornwall which has a spectacular ruined castle that’s in various King Arthur stories and so has lots of Arthur tourist stuff and also new age type people). The shop was kind of a mix of new age stuff and books about King Arthur too, and the owner was quite hippyish. There was an italian customer who asked the owner if they stocked any fancy editions of the Mort d’Arthur, maybe with some nice illustrations or done like a mediaeval manuscript? The owner said no, but what she personally recommended was Mists of Avalon. The italian guy explained that it was intended as a present for a friend who was a professor of mediaeval history back in Italy, so it really wasn’t what he was looking for. The book shop owner pretty much ignored that, and launched into a rant about how Mists of Avalon was *so* much better, because it was from the female perspective, and it was “more sensitive and progressive” than an actual mediaeval text, and this professor back in Italy could learn a lot from reading more books like Mists of Avalon.
I was browsing in the bookshop in TIntagel once (small town in Cornwall which has a spectacular ruined castle that's in various King Arthur stories and so has lots of Arthur tourist stuff and also new age type people). The shop was kind of a mix of new age stuff and books about King Arthur too, and the owner was quite hippyish. There was an italian customer who asked the owner if they stocked any fancy editions of the Mort d'Arthur, maybe with some nice illustrations or done like a mediaeval manuscript? The owner said no, but what she personally recommended was Mists of Avalon. The italian guy explained that it was intended as a present for a friend who was a professor of mediaeval history back in Italy, so it really wasn't what he was looking for. The book shop owner pretty much ignored that, and launched into a rant about how Mists of Avalon was *so* much better, because it was from the female perspective, and it was "more sensitive and progressive" than an actual mediaeval text, and this professor back in Italy could learn a lot from reading more books like Mists of Avalon.
the scarlet letter. . tedious unnecessary suffering, anti woman, puritan suppression. just take Pearl and leave them behind for gods sake, and quit being a martyr and protecting the phony preacher. get a life!
the scarlet letter. . tedious unnecessary suffering, anti woman, puritan suppression. just take Pearl and leave them behind for gods sake, and quit being a martyr and protecting the phony preacher. get a life!
Yup, I really don't think Atwood writes very interesting SFF and for some reason, these books are rarely cited as SFF, or, if they are, "SFF for feminists"?
Actually, no, I would rather read proper SFF with interesting plot and appealing characters, with an underlying feminist sensibility.
So that's why he gets hired. I can't say how much I detest his "writing".
Anything by Stein. Giving literary butches a bad name for over 100 years.
Yes, the Autobiography of Alice B. was an amazing achievement in getting coded lesbianism into the literary canon. It still reads like shit – c.f. pretty much all modernist writing, for me – and the egocentrism of the title is breathtaking.
With you on the Sarah Waters. I don't like turgid gothics, frankly. And so much literary gay fiction is soooooo boring.
As for LoTR, well, it's more accurately a travelogue of how Tolkien wished Great Britain to be (don't get me started on Peter Jackson, though).
Not all fantasy – thank god – is boring, plodding Epic Fantasy. But some genres, we're just allergic to. Like Water For Chocolate is the only magical realism book I've actually finished.
If you want a cute wee YA story, but a well-executed one with the same premises, read Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones. That's where Gaiman got the idea from.
There needs to be a word for art that is well-executed, but still crap.
All of Ellis' oeuvre seems to be about trying to get inside the head of deeply unpleasant people. I'm sure it's a great literary exercise, but I personally stick to non-fiction if I'm the slightest bit interested in criminal psychopaths.
(Not to say there's no place at all for the fictionalized account, but that kind of thing personally gives me the squeams)
This is the best diss of the Dresden Files ever. Thank you.
Any of Woolf's fiction, tbh. Her essays are so good, though!
Yup, it's fantastic that Blade Runner basically took one of the premises of DADoES, and made a completely different story from it. Thank god.
Can't be doing any boring PK Dick.