It’s banned books week.
This is not about that, not exactly, not really much at all, but just the same, I wanted to ask two questions. Two questions about your taste in books and how they relate to the taste of others.
1.) What book do you love that other people seem to hate?
2.) What book do you hate that other people seem to love?
I don’t just want names and authors listed — I’d love to hear your reasons.
And this isn’t meant to start a war on taste or to suggest in any way that Your Opinions Are Wrong, but rather, quite the opposite — to see how one reader’s Holy Bible is another reader’s cup of Hot Barf. It’s meant to show how our tastes in books wildly deviate, how the norm is rarely the norm, how we all get to love and not love things and that has to be okay.
So. Two questions.
Let’s hear your answers.
Lee says:
I seem to be the only person in the world that detested “Gone Girl,” but man, that book chapped my ass unlike any other. I won’t give spoilers, but the plot twist halfway through infuriated me. As a reader, I felt betrayed, as if the author were pointing at me, taunting, “Ha ha, fooled you.” I literally threw the book across the room in anger. I finished the book in the hope that, at the end, there would be some form of redemption for the reader, but there wasn’t.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I love “A Mouthful of Air” by Amy Koppelman. However, if you read the Goodreads reviews, I appear to be in the minority. I find her prose to be elegant and her voicepowerful, but many readers are turned off by the “is-it-poetry is-it-prose?” style she uses. Plus, the ending is incredibly sad, angering many a reader, though I don’t think it could have ended any other way.
September 22, 2014 — 7:48 AM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
Your comment reminded me of Divergent’s third book (Insurgent? Allegiant? One of those ents) , which had a similar effect on me. I also ended up finishing the thrice-damned thing in the hopes that it wasn’t true, but no such luck :/
September 22, 2014 — 8:57 AM
Hannah says:
I had a friend tell me the Divergent series wasn’t worth it…seems like this opinion holds pretty true.
September 22, 2014 — 9:20 AM
Katie Doyle says:
I loved the Divergent series, especially the end that everyone seems to hate.
September 22, 2014 — 9:44 AM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
You know what, read the first book and pretend that it’s the only book. Because the first book? Is really rather good. The second one is a bit meh and the third one is…well.
September 22, 2014 — 10:40 AM
Rogan says:
Nope, I thought Gone Girl was awful as did a friend of mine who usually like that “kind” of book.
September 22, 2014 — 8:59 AM
MikeH says:
You’re not alone in your hatred for ‘Gone Girl.’ Gets more and more preposterous as it goes along, and the ending is beyond stupid. I have no idea why so many people have gone nuts over something that reads like a novelization of a Lifetime movie.
September 22, 2014 — 9:30 AM
pmillhouse says:
I felt the same exact way about that horrible story. The writing style was good, I thought, but man, that story blows in so many ways. I read fiction looking for justice, change, empowerment. I didn’t find it here.
You are not alone.
September 22, 2014 — 10:17 AM
colleenlindsay says:
I completely agree. I actually hated Gone Girl. I was hoping at some point she would introduce a character I gave a damn about.
September 22, 2014 — 10:31 AM
boydstun215 says:
I’m reading Gone Girl right now, and I’m in sort of the same boat. I think it’s a wonderful, gripping piece if writing, but it’s hard to feel fully invested in a story told in the first-person by someone as detestable as Nick.
September 22, 2014 — 12:39 PM
Paula says:
I wanted to LOVE Life of Pi. I didn’t. After 3 times trying to get past page 40, I gave up. But I enjoyed the movie!
September 22, 2014 — 7:49 AM
jk says:
I did the same, but my friend (from which I had borrowed the book) forced me to read it all. It’s actually like two separate books IMHO. The first one did nothing for me, but the second half was so much better. Still not a favorite, but it did get better.
September 22, 2014 — 9:41 AM
Cari Hislop says:
I borrowed it from the library some years ago because it was “recommended”. I found the story boring and frustrating. It was never clear if it was an allegory or if the reader was expected to believe the series of events as something that actually happened. I couldn’t finish it. I just found it so annoying.
September 22, 2014 — 9:46 AM
sarah says:
I brought life of pi for my ex-mother in law and was held accountable for feeding her crap. Awesome movie…didn’t enjoy the read either.
September 23, 2014 — 6:02 AM
Jenn Lyons says:
While I have many on these lists (I apparently have ‘eclectic’ taste or something) I’ll go with two in particular, because they’re both fantasy books which feature many POVs, a sweeping plotline, massive wars, and people doing ugly things to each other, including a whole lot of rape. One series I love (but a lot of people can’t seem to get into) and the other I hate (and everyone else seems to love.)
Love? Steven Erickson’s Malazan’s Books of the Fallen. Hate? George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice & Fire.
Both books have good points and bad points. I’m not claiming the first series is perfect and the second is terrible…clearly not the case. Here’s my problem with the second series: I didn’t find many of the main POV’s interesting enough to care. Certainly not enough to keep going when in the middle of grim dark fantasy. So by the third book I found myself skipping huge swaths of story to return to people I cared about, except after a while, I didn’t even care about them so much either. Reading that series starting to feel like a chore, so I stopped.
That never happened with Erickson’s books. The story I was on was always interesting enough, the people interesting enough, the world interesting enough, that I never lost interest in their fates, even when those fates were horrible and ended with death for everyone. The last book in the series had some flaws (big ones, let’s not kid ourselves) but in the end I enjoyed it quite a bit…where as I don’t think I’ll ever finish Martin’s series, even if he does in fact, finish it.
September 22, 2014 — 7:57 AM
AJ says:
Loved: anything by Erich Maria Remarque, but especially Spark of Life. What can I say? I like books that turn me into a blubbering wreck, that I canNOT read the last 50 pages in public and keep my dignity. It’s a bit of a downer, so, yeah, maybe I get why people don’t like it.
And. Okay. Here’s a serious confession. I mean, the low hanging fruit would be 50 Shades of Grey, but I’m going to really put it out there:
Tolkein. I can’t read him. I can’t make it through any of his books. I appreciate the richness of his worldbuilding and all, and I even read him BEFORE the fantasy world was overtopped by imitators, but yeah, I still don’t see the big deal. I don’t connect with his characters, and so it’s hard for me to get invested or to give a damn. End of the world? Yeah, okay, as long as I stop having to wade through pages of hairy toed hobbits and their eating habits, I’d be okay with that.
September 22, 2014 — 8:03 AM
Hannah says:
I really enjoy The Hobbit, but I’ve only made it through the Lord of the Rings once…and I still feel guilty about it. Love the movies, though.
September 22, 2014 — 9:12 AM
Marlene says:
I can’t read Tolkien either. Too much description that I don’t care about. The one I tried to read as a kid taught me to skip from quote marks to the next, looking for the action.
September 22, 2014 — 11:21 AM
Wendy Christopher says:
Ooooh, SO with you on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings! Yes, the guy was a genius, respect to him and all that, and I loved the actual STORY – y’know, the bits that came in between the metric crapload of backstory…
But ye gods, did everyone really HAVE to fill every bit of down-time with long, rambling songs that the reader a) would have no clue as to how the tune goes, and b) struggled to give a monkeys about, because they’re mostly about scenery? And the first THIRTY-FOUR pages of Book 1 devoted to the Origin of Hobbits? REALLY?
Still, on the plus side…. everything I know about skim-reading, I learned from Lord of the Rings.
September 22, 2014 — 12:02 PM
Peg says:
A Simple Plan by Scott Smith I could not figure out why there was a bidding war over this book. I found it boring and didn’t care what happened to any of the characters.
Books I love that everyone hates, I don’t think I have any. Someone always loves it, somewhere. I work as an asst editor and all day I spar with other people in the office over what to accept and find I tend to love what seems like an ordinary tale that goes to a bizarre place and I’ll fight for acceptance with my co-editors who hate when a story gets weird. But even then, someone always loves it as much as me.
September 22, 2014 — 8:03 AM
alyssabethancourt says:
I love an opportunity to be contrary, and my listed of loathed favorites is long.
1.) I love Dickens. I can’t say this in polite company without people making gagging noises. I especially love GREAT EXPECTATIONS. This makes people nervous to continue the discussion. I’m honestly not sure what people have against Dickens. Yeah, he’s wordy. Yeah, he can be unexpectedly brutal, and his sense of humor can be vicious. *glances sidelong at a certain long fantasy series with its own popular t.v. show.* I’m pretty sure modern consumers are not inherently averse to these characteristics. Personally, I love word cleverness and dark, off-beat humor, and Dickens is a champ at those.
2.) That being said, I *loathed* A TALE OF TWO CITIES. It just set off every squick alarm of which my brain is capable. I had a similar reaction to Ken Follett’s much-loved PILLARS OF THE EARTH. Hated it so much that I felt literally physically sick after reading it. It got its own show??? But it’s so *ugly*. I figure the real world is full of enough people actively hurting each other and generally being evil slime; I don’t need an entire giant book to glorify that and present the worst of it to me on a lovingly detailed platter and conclude with the overall message that trying to be a decent human being is ultimately a waste of a lifetime. On top of that it’s just poorly constructed and full of so much text wall infodump that I don’t know how the people who like it for its salacious qualities can even stay awake long enough to get to those parts.
Hated OUTLANDER, to continue my theme of sticking my chin out at what’s apparently popular enough for t.v. It was recommended to me specifically as a teaching tool for writing sexy bits, but I found it frankly laughable in that regard. For a novel that contains *so many* sex scenes featured so *prominently*, it’s surprisingly embarrassed to talk about what’s actually happening in any of them. Until the SUDDENLY GRAPHICALLY DESCRIBED rape and torture near the end. When *that’s* where the author suddenly finds her candor after several hundred pages of playing coy? Gross. She also suffers from Follett’s text wall infodump problem. Yes, you did lots of impressive research, we get it. If you can’t find a way to integrate it into the story that doesn’t hurt the flow and make it obvious that you’re just showing it off, it’s not actually all that impressive.
Let’s see. Also hated DUNE. Really my reasons for this one are unfairly biased. I come from a desert world myself (Phoenix, Arizona,) so reading an entire novel about how awful such a place is, well. It didn’t exactly require my imagination, and was a little too close to home. But also I never could get on an empathetic level with either of the main characters (neither Paul nor his mother.) If I can’t connect with the characters, it doesn’t matter how creative or well-written a book is. It just won’t work for me.
September 22, 2014 — 8:08 AM
Katie Doyle says:
“I *loathed* A TALE OF TWO CITIES.”
THANK YOU! I’m so glad I’m not alone on this!
September 22, 2014 — 9:46 AM
alyssabethancourt says:
*fist bump*
There are plenty of classics that don’t deserve the distinction, which is especially disappointing when you consider how many underrated gems are out there.
September 22, 2014 — 10:29 AM
Kay Camden says:
I got about 3 pages in. Someone told me it’s a “page-turner.” I thought it was me. This is good to hear. I’m not stupid after all!!! Always good news. LOL
September 22, 2014 — 10:43 AM
Kathryn Goldman says:
Loved GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Thought it was hysterical from page one with Pip looking at the world upside down while being held that way by an escaped criminal.
Hated THE GOLDFINCH. There was just no *there* there. I put it down after 400 pages. (I tried, I really tried.) Time I could have spent reading something else.
September 22, 2014 — 10:42 AM
ReGomes says:
I love Great Expectations! One of my favorite books ever.
Never read A Tale of two cities…
September 22, 2014 — 12:44 PM
Terrie says:
Well, I love Great Expectations AND A Tale of Two Cities. Love Dickens. On that thought: the miniseries of Our Mutual Friend is utterly fantastic. Beautifully filmed. Great acting. Can’t recommend it enough. It’s four parts and some people might find the first part a little slow (there’s a lot of characters to introduce) but it builds speed from there. Great story — strange and wonderful as only Dickens can do and an impeccable production.
September 22, 2014 — 7:21 PM
boydstun215 says:
I just bought Pillars of the Earth the other day after more or less being pressured into buying it by friends and family. I was tired of the prodding: “Have you read Pillars of the Earth yet?” and the scolding: “What? You haven’t read Pillars of the Earth?! OMG. You have to make that your next read.”
In a strange way, hearing both the positive and negative reactions to a book makes the reading more worthwhile since it forces you to read the book a little more critically in order to suss out those aspects that other readers have found (un)likable.
September 22, 2014 — 8:07 PM
Justine says:
I loved Pillars of the Earth. Couldn’t put it down. However, I think The Eye of the Needle was Follett’s best.
September 23, 2014 — 1:45 AM
Fi Phillips says:
Good questions. I love sci fi, horror and fantasy but most of my female friends prefer literary fiction and chick lit. In fact, most of them look down on my taste because they see it as not being ‘serious’ or ‘normal’. I like the possibilities of spec fiction – the what ifs combined with the real stuff of life and relationships (but not romance).
So flipping that around, I don’t like romance novels, or novels about people suffering terribly through abuse or illness. That’s normal life to me. I’m surrounded by it, day in, day out. I want to rise above it when I escape into a novel and find the magic. I’m quite a good judge of character when it comes to choosing books so I don’t often dislike what I choose. I eventually gave in to reading the Harry Potter novels (my husband brought his copies to our marriage) and I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters of the first novel because I found them so badly written. I think she’s created a wonderful world, I just couldn’t stomach her writing. I daresay she improved with each book.
September 22, 2014 — 8:09 AM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
She really has. An editor friend told me about JKR that “a first book shouldn’t read like a first book’ but Philosopher’s Stone really did read like a first book, awkwardness and all.
That being said, I’m counting the months till my kid is fluent enough in English that I can read it to him.
September 22, 2014 — 8:54 AM
Badger says:
Oh dear God.
HATE:
Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time. I admit I’ve only read about half of the first SoIaF book, and only three books of the WoT series, but I hate them with a fury so pure it could set goats alight. Ice and Fire I detest because it’s just. So. Dark. Jesus. Just grim, politics politics, drunkenness, grim, grim. Wheel of Time was just such a formulaic fantasy ripoff of Tolkien that I couldn’t read it anymore.
LOVE:
The Silmarillion. Yes, it took me eight tries to get all the way through it, but once you come at it as a history, not an actual fictional work but a history of a world, it’s much easier. At least it was for me. And my GOD the worldbuilding. If you step away and look at it from that perspective, and realize just how deep Tolkien went to build this world, it’s fascinating.
September 22, 2014 — 8:36 AM
Jenn Lyons says:
*laughs* This was exactly how my husband answered this question when I mentioned it to him.
But seriously, Wheel of Time didn’t restrict itself to Tolkien. That series was a pastiche to make C.S. Lewis blush.
September 22, 2014 — 10:30 AM
Badger says:
Oh? Which bit, the setting goats alight? 🙂
I barely made it through the first three books of WoT, and that was ten years ago. I can’t even remember the actual story anymore, more just the rage at the audacity and the “THIS is a BESTSELLER?” thoughts.
September 22, 2014 — 10:59 AM
Jenn Lyons says:
Pretty much. He couldn’t get through the first WoT book without throwing it across the room in a pure fury. (I managed to get through 7 of the books, but I’m stubborn like that.)
September 22, 2014 — 12:22 PM
Badger says:
I bow in your general direction. Much more stubborn than I am, then. Was there an actual original story anywhere in there?
September 22, 2014 — 1:11 PM
Jenn Lyons says:
Oh I’m sure there was in there somewhere if you searched through the pastiche for long enough. But personally I don’t care much about whether or not the story is original per se. I’m quite capable of loving a story that’s been done to death as long as the new version is told well. (No matter how many times someone retells Red Harvest, I’ll probably love it every time.)
Honestly, the reason my husband couldn’t get through the first book (that he felt it was a dreadful hack pastiche without any originality at all) was exactly what amused the hell out of me at the beginning. Just how many fantasy cliches could Jordan fit into this series? Could a drinking game be crafted?
Sadly, around book 7 I started to realize Jordan had no exit plan for this series and would die before it ended. Which is exactly what happened.
September 22, 2014 — 1:42 PM
gilmiller says:
Song of Ice and Fire I like. That dark setting appeals to me. Aww for Wheel of Time…I managed five of them. I enjoyed the setting and the story, but my God, the whole battle of the sexes stuff finally made me want to scream at the character to sit down and fucking TALK to one another. I actually quit partway through book five because I couldn’t take one more scene where a male/female character thought a male/female character was acting stupid busy because they were of the opposite sex.
September 24, 2014 — 3:21 PM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
I don’t like A Song of Ice and Fire. It’s well-written, but by the middle of the latest book I put down the Kindle and asked myself why I was still reading it. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that despite the addictive writing, I didn’t like the way GRRM squandered his characters.
I don’t have a problem with writers who kill off characters per se, but I like to feel that it was necessary for the plot, and some of the deaths in ASoIaF are not necessary (the red wedding comes to mind – that really just read as though GRRM had asked himself what the most horrible thing that could possibly happen was, and then did that) and I came to the point where I didn’t want to invest in any of the characters because they would probably die horribly.
Also, it may be naive of me, but I like to have good guys and bad guys. It doesn’t seam like there are any people in the series who genuinely try to be good people, even if they fail, except Ned, and we all know what happens to him.
I answered the second question first because the first one is a little bit hard – I tend to filter a lot so I’m not really sure what other people hate.
I get the impression, though, that a lot of younger people and especially feminists don’t care for Heinlein. I’ve seen quite a bit said about his portrayal of women, which I don’t agree with – Heinlein’s writing was very progressive for its time and his portrayal of women with sexual agency and quite a bit of badassery as well as sensitive-flower characteristics appeals to me because I’ve never felt that it was necessary to give up things that were traditionally ‘feminine’ just to assert my independence, such as it is and what there is of it. His ideas on homosexuality, as expressed in A Stranger in a Strange Lang (basically more a essay of R. A. Heinlein: His Thoughts than a novel) I will grant is unflattering and a bit stone-age, although ‘deluded’ is much kinder still than the prevalent theory of the times.
September 22, 2014 — 8:39 AM
Badger says:
I am so glad I am not the only person who can’t stomach ASoIaF.
September 22, 2014 — 9:21 AM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
We should form a club 🙂
September 22, 2014 — 10:47 AM
Badger says:
High-five
September 22, 2014 — 10:59 AM
Jenn Lyons says:
I will join your club!
September 22, 2014 — 1:42 PM
JJ Toner says:
Two “classics” that everyone drools over, but I hated: Lolita and The Great Gatsby. What’s to love in either book. The first was written in “superior”, educated English by someone whose first language wasn’t even English. The subject matter turned my stomach from chapter 1, paragraph 1. Gatsby is a meandering mess, a vapid story about some rich dudes. The edition I read had a 45 page introduction explaining why this was god’s gift to literature and the greatest American novel of the century. Not my cup of latte. I hated The Finkler Question and Everything is Illuminated. Both of these books were praised as supreme examples of Jewish humour. Finkler won the Man Booker Prize. Go figure!
Can’t think of any that I love and others hated.
September 22, 2014 — 8:51 AM
Hillary says:
LOLITA is Nabokov selling out and he confessed as much. He wrote a bunch of other books that were beautiful and smart and . . . they didn’t sell. LOLITA was penned purely for financial gain. Go figure.
September 22, 2014 — 9:59 AM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
I don’t understand the problem with writing in educated English if English isn’t your first language. Are second-language users supposed to be worse at English than first language users, because if so, we’re setting the bar awfully low…
September 22, 2014 — 10:46 AM
JJ Toner says:
I expressed myself badly. I meant pretentious English, using fancy words and complex sentences when simple words and sentences would have done the job. A sort of attitude that says: Hey, look at me, I’m a clever author.
September 22, 2014 — 2:57 PM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
Oh my God I just thought of another thing that I loathed that was very popular. I was reminded of it by Lee’s comment on plot twists.
DIVERGENT!
I loved the first book. The second book was okay. Kind of meh, but that happens in trilogies. The third book actually made me sorry to own a Kindle because if I’d had a physical copy I would have cheerfully chucked it out the window or some similar act of violence. That ending…I can’t even with that ending.
September 22, 2014 — 8:52 AM
JJ Toner says:
Thanks for that, Bernice. Divergent was on my to-read list. Not anymore.
September 22, 2014 — 2:58 PM
Rio says:
Ugh, I HATE the first book. It’s all so stupid and contrived, and the characters are the same generic teenage boy and girl that you find in pretty much any YA dystopia.
September 22, 2014 — 4:32 PM
Laura Quirola says:
I’m not sure what book I can say I loved that others hated. My taste generally meshes pretty well with the rest of the world. I loved Harry Potter. And the Odyssey. A Clockwork Orange, Wuthering Heights, Dune, A Song of Ice and Fire, you name it, odds are I liked it.
…
Ayn Rand’s Anthem, I suppose. I never realized how many people hated that book, mostly because it was required reading in high school, I guess.
I’d read it before, when someone had lent it to me. It’s short, it’s to the point, and the story is pretty poignant. Anthem’s ideas stayed with me for a long time and had me examine what it meant to be an individual for even longer. I daresay it’s shaped how I view the world, to a degree.
But a book that I hated, that is almost universally applauded? The Hobbit. Tolkien in general.
The language was hard to deal with, and it bothered me that a lot of the action appeared to happen off-screen, so to speak. I liked the story, but the structure it rests on made the book a chore from beginning to end.
I also LOATHED Twilight. I understand that this one has a fairly even split among people as being either loved or hated, so maybe it’s not that extraordinary for me to dislike it.
The things that bothered me the most were that the writing itself was poor and reminiscent of a 14-year-old girl on Quizilla (anyone remember Quizilla?). Heck, I WAS that 14-year-old girl at one point.
The premise and plot are lukewarm at best. The characters are flat and the conflict is fairly pointless and seemingly only thrown in so that our supposed heroes have something they can say that had to deal with.
September 22, 2014 — 8:56 AM
WeSweatInk says:
I’m with you on both. I liked Anthem too but never could get through more than a third of The Hobbit and don’t suppose I ever will. Never tried the LOTR books either because of that.
September 22, 2014 — 12:29 PM
thatcalamity says:
Love: Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. Maybe it’s the Aboriginal sense of humor, and the meta-narrative or the storytelling voice that turns people off but it’s the same things that made me eat it up. I love the off-the-cuff references to how Coyote made God (no spoilers, it’s on the first page). Or how between the main story of ‘current’ Alberta King weaves in creation tales from different Nations only to parody pop culture. It’s just… I love it.
As for strongly dislike: Tolkien. He might be the granddaddy of all fantasy, but I can’t understand how I’m supposed to care about these boring hobbits and elves and dwarves (who are the most interesting imho) when all they do is walk for a novel and a half. And walk. And walk. The pacing is only one factor though. I’m never sure what’s so evil about the Sauron aside from the fact that he’s a giant angry eye and lives in a volcano. Maybe he’s just trying to migrate his peoples to a safer land with more arable soil? But no, he’s just evil.
Plus, the lack of any ladies to identify with meant as a kid I had nothing to glom onto. The ladies either seem to be elf-witches or love interests.
September 22, 2014 — 9:01 AM
Bernice Mills (@jaggedrain) says:
I’m going to check out that book you mentioned loving. It sounds fun, and I’ve always loved stories that dealt with mythology, which it sounds like this one kind of does?
September 22, 2014 — 10:49 AM
LittleBlackDog says:
I love Green Grass Running Water too! Awesome book.
September 22, 2014 — 7:09 PM
Jessa Lynch (@chichenpizza) says:
Loved: Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. OMG, loved loved loved. Great anti-hero whose self-loathing and yearning for normalcy, determination to survive, his adoration of the Land and everything it represented that he could never have but would save at all costs… He broke my heart every time, even when the choices he made would turn my stomach. And the Land itself! I want to live there so hard. It’s epic, everything is larger than life, grander than grand, more than more. The mountains more majestic, the magic more mysterious, even the horses are horsier and the plants are plantier.
Hated: Anything by Tolkien. I just can’t. I can’t. Everyone needs to stop saying fucking ‘alas!’, ok? And do I really need three pages about the color of the grass in the Shire? I do not. There’s a whole section of The Hobbit that reads like the begats in the Bible. Worldbuilding: A+ Writing: F
September 22, 2014 — 9:03 AM
Emily Wenstrom says:
High five for a fellow Tolkien hater.
September 22, 2014 — 9:12 AM
OzFenric says:
High-five for a fellow Donaldson-lover. Best fantasy works ever written… I love Tolkien, but Thomas Covenant taught me English. Along with my thesaurus.
September 22, 2014 — 9:26 AM
Marlene says:
I loved the Thomas Covenant books as a teenager, couldn’t get through the first one as an adult when I started writing portal fantasies. My true favorite of that type is Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber. I so want to live in that world (and be able to walk in Shadow or course. Right there with you on Tolkien.
September 22, 2014 — 11:27 AM
Alan says:
Another Donaldson fan here; really loved the series at one point, though I’ve cooled off toward them over time. Donaldson is (or maybe was, before the Last Chronicles) really good at building these complex, flawed characters and putting you right inside their heads. I’m not quite so praising of his prose these days, though.
(Aside: Do you know of the Kevin’s Watch message boards? Long-standing community of Donaldson fans there. Don’t know how our host feels about links; it’s the top google result.)
September 22, 2014 — 3:49 PM
tamara says:
HATE: Lord of the Rings books. So much description, so much angst…so much “just a little guy against the big bad world.” I am not rational about this. I JUST DON’T LIKE THEM. And Twilight series. I read the first and I swear I could feel it doing me damage in my brainparts.
LOVE: The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. Love the world, love the characters, love the plot. Love love love. I could just keep on writing that over and over, but I won’t. No rational reason, just that she spun a good story when I needed one once, and I’ve just bought every book since.
I also love ridiculously formulaic YA sci-fi/fantasy fiction. (except twilight!). Divergent trilogy rocked. Especially the ending – unexpected, brilliant!! (Which yes, does contradict my demand above that it is formulaic) Made me cry, which the genre generally does not.
September 22, 2014 — 9:04 AM
Sarah Bewley says:
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES. I tried to read that book. I got through 150 pages and still hated it, so I finally stopped. And it was championed by my favorite writer, Walker Percy, who wrote the book I love most, THE SECOND COMING.
Go figure.
September 22, 2014 — 9:08 AM
Laura Lippman. says:
CONFEDERACY has aged very, very badly.
September 22, 2014 — 9:10 AM
Laura Lippman. says:
There is a certain Man Booker winner considered to be one of our greatest living novelists. Hate. HATE. Beautiful beginnings, okay middles, terrible endings. I can’t help feeling that literary novelists sometimes get away with just throwing in the towel at the end because a well-structured, three-act story is considered too neat, too pat. It’s more literary to confound the reader with an ending that feels abrupt or makes no sense or takes enormous license with the story that has come before.
I love EMMA WHO SAVED MY LIFE by Wilton Barnhardt and remain firm in my belief that anyone who loves it will feel the same way. One of the best coming-of-age novels ever written, but with a very specific time and place. (New York in the 70s and into the 80s.)
September 22, 2014 — 9:09 AM
Steve says:
I couldn’t make it past page 60 of Twilight. It was infuriatingly awful. I like one of Stephen King’s least-liked books, The Tommyknockers, a lot. I see some of the flaws but buried in the novel is a pretty depressing and compelling portrayal of breakdown and redemption. I concluded some time ago I didn’t have the patience for James Joyce and I stopped trying.
To be more concise: outside the Harry Potter series, I have not been able to enjoy any of the YA I’ve picked up. Some of it is surprisingly well-written–better prose style than Rowling–but Harry Potter was about all I could do. I feel like this is a failing.
I wish I could give more specific answers to such questions, honestly, but when I don’t like a book, I so thoroughly push it out of my head I end up with no mental list of ‘that’s awful.’ Closest I can come? Catcher in the Rye. Never remotely identified with Holden, hated him, didn’t like it. Might read it differently now that I’m older, but not sure.
September 22, 2014 — 9:11 AM
Emily Wenstrom says:
I really enjoyed Twilight and still insist that it is highly underrated and too quickly dismissed because it’s liked by pre-teen girls.
I really did NOT enjoy The Lord of the Rings. I know. I fail as a fantasy geek. But really, what’s with all those slow, minute descriptions.
September 22, 2014 — 9:11 AM
Kay Orchison says:
A close friend of mine insisted I read Hyperion by Dan Simmons. My friend came over one afternoon and found me reading it at the kitchen table, idly stabbing the page with a carving knife. The worst thing was that the setting and the monster were both incredibly cool, which I suppose is why he wanted me to read it, but the whole Canterbury Tales conceit was so pretentious and the characters so forced and artificial that I wound up in this awful state of hating it but being entirely unable to stop reading. This goes no way toward explaining the knife, it’s true. Do not ask me any more questions.
September 22, 2014 — 9:16 AM
Kay Camden says:
My husband read Hyperion. I’m glad there were no knives nearby when he was reading it on my Kindle. From the passages he read to me, I think I share your sentiment. Must be a thing with people named Kay.
September 22, 2014 — 10:53 AM
jonathan Zero says:
I dislike (hate is such a strong word) “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R. R. Martin. Have tried 3 times to read it. Maybe got through half of it the last time and gave up. I saw no hope. Just things getting worse and worse and no hope for anything to get better, Most of my friends have read and love the entire series.
September 22, 2014 — 9:18 AM
Hannah says:
Dislike: I hate Wuthering Heights. I don’t understand why people tout it as one of the “greatest love stories”—I loathe every single character, I don’t understand the purpose of the frame story and I’ve never fallen asleep so many times while reading one novel. I think it’s the first non-textbook book to literally put me to sleep. Pretty much anything by Dickens, but especially Great Expectations.
Like: Apparently GRRM’s ASOIAF is not a favorite here. I really enjoy the series–I read books 1-4 and immediately went back to re-read from the beginning again. That said, I can see how the story is spiraling out of control, and I think the second book was probably the best. I really liked A Separate Peace, but looking back, I don’t remember why. Cormac McCarthy’s the Road is another favorite and it seems to get a pretty raw treatment.
September 22, 2014 — 9:19 AM
OzFenric says:
I also find it easier to list popular books I… dislike (hate being such a strong word)… than those I like that are generally scorned. I disliked Dune – couldn’t get into it despite several tries. There’s all the standards that many of us writerly-types despise – the Dan Browns, the David Eddingses, the Terry Goodkinds (which, heaven help me, I read all of). I loathed Michael Crichton’s ‘Micro’ (cowritten with Richard Preston) – it’s that rarest of creatures, a science-fiction novel written without adjectives. But apparently some people really liked it.
Are there really any books that “other people seem to hate”? If a book makes it to my shelf, it’s a given that enough people will like it to make it worth publishing. That said, I might nominate Steven King. I find that most of my favourites are the ones most commonly dismissed as minor works. I loved Tommyknockers, the book that King doesn’t remember writing. And almost my favourite of his is Needful Things, a contained masterpiece of supernatural horror and pitch-black comedy.
September 22, 2014 — 9:24 AM
aileenmiles says:
Hate: Catcher in the Rye. Soooooo overrated. I could not sympathize at all with the protagonist even when I was an angsty teen. Get over yourself, Holden Caulfield! Anna Karenina, despite it’s promising opening, with one exception the characters are all victims of their own stupidity and weak will.
Also most modern fantasy fiction. Usually the back cover text is enough to turn me off completely. If the protagonist is clearly a self-insertion because they are oh-so-special, or if the cover text starts off by having to explain the setting, or if it includes any non-self explanatory jargon, or if it is gritty for the sake of being gritty, fuhgeddaboutit.
Love: Burroughs’ Barsoom series (A Princess of Mars, etc.) Yes, it’s problematic and pulpy. I still enjoyed it. (I even enjoyed the movie, John Carter, though there were a lot of missed opportunities in it, where if they had hewed a little closer to the text (make John Carter embrace his destiny, add more Tars Tarkas and Kantos Kan) or veered a little farther from it (give Deja Thoris even more agency), it would have been a better, more joyful movie.)
September 22, 2014 — 9:26 AM
colleenlindsay says:
Yes, I also despised Catcher in the Rye. Spoiled rich kid whining about his privileged life. And then he loses all his school’s fencing stuff on the subway, because REASONS. Why is this book considered a classic, and something like THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton – which hits home for many more people – is not considered a classic?
September 22, 2014 — 10:35 AM
rjjoseph says:
I absolutely love Gone With the Wind. Yes, I catch a lot of flak for that, being a black woman living in the South and all. The slavery thing does suck. But that’s what was going on at that time and it is what it is. The crafting of Scarlett is some of the most masterful character birthing I’ve ever seen and that’s why this is one of my fave books of all time.
Hard to think of any books I really can’t stomach.
September 22, 2014 — 9:31 AM
Kay Camden says:
Another Scarlett fan here. Did you read Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley?
September 22, 2014 — 10:24 AM
Dale Long says:
1) The Great Gatsby. To be honest it took a while after I had finished the book before it sunk in and I loved it.
2) Dacre Stoker’s abomination, Dracula the Undead: a Harlequin romance starring Fabio as Dracula. Sacrilege. I actually drove a stake through it and burnt it. Strangely, that wasn’t as satisfying as it may sound.
September 22, 2014 — 9:33 AM
Dale Long says:
Oops forgot my reasons.
1) There was a depth of character that only appeared after the book was finished. On the surface, the characters were just that, on the surface. But it had a great “after taste”. Plus, seeing New York in the 20’s through the author’s eyes was amazing.
2) Over reached and under delivered. The author tried to add too much to the Dracula myth and in the end the story got away from him. Pantomimed, is the word that comes to mind.
September 22, 2014 — 9:36 AM
Valyssia says:
I disliked Divergent enough that it was difficult to finish. The world building was shoddy, the premises were thin, it was poorly cobbled together in a purely predictable way. I wouldn’t know about the other books in the trilogy. I wasn’t feeling that masochistic.
I disliked Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan, though people seem to like it. It has 4.15 stars on GoodReads. I thought it wasn’t all bad, but the way the author dealt with his female characters set my Bechdel test-o-meter on edge.
My reaction to Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series was similar. The first book, The Warded Man, was pretty good, but the second and third books were abysmal. Sex became a lobotomizing force. In the end the characters were just behaving like idiots over a little bit of nookie (particularly the primary protagonist).
I loved The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan. It isn’t for everyone. The story really doesn’t even have a proper ending by common ‘Law and Order, serial of the week’ reckoning. That is to say that very little is tied up in neat bows. The story is more of an experience — a slice of life — and not a pleasant one.
September 22, 2014 — 9:40 AM
Heather E. (@MssHeather) says:
Hate: (ABSOLUTELY HATE) “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, for so many reasons. I hated the use of fragment sentences so rampantly. I hated that there were no quotation marks for dialogue. I hated that every character was nameless and you’d have multiple he said’s in one conversation with very little indicator who was saying what. Maybe my thoughts stray too much when I’m reading bad books, but I just didn’t want to dig back through paragraphs to find out who was speaking or what the fragment sentences were referring to. And as for the plot, I found it incredibly repetitive and boring and felt that nothing ever happened. I also felt like the ending was a huge, huge disappointment after forcing my way through it.
I also hated the Hunger Games book. I couldn’t make it through it. There’s something about present tense that I feel is absolutely lacking in the emotional bond between protagonist and reader. I didn’t care about the character because she was so uninvolved. I also have an issue with the number of fragment sentences int his book as well. I’ll admit I couldn’t finish it, despite starting it 3 different times. So maybe I should refrain from passing opinion on something I didn’t complete.
Love: “The Witches of Eileanan” by Kate Forsyth. This book, and the whole series, are remarkably underrated. It’s just a fantastic book with fantastically powerful female characters and some fantastic storytelling.
Also love: “The Name of the Wind” and “A Wise Man’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss, though I totally expected to hate them because initially, the first book of the series seemed misleading and slow. Starts out in one place, then flings you back in time to the start of the character’s story, and I found I’d rather know what was happening when the book opened. However, as I read, I ended up caring less about what was happening in the “present” and far more about what was happening in the character’s story, as intended, I suppose.
September 22, 2014 — 9:47 AM
Whitney says:
I really liked “The Da Vinci Code.” I thought it was well written and clever. I’m not religious so I didn’t have this wall in front of me before reading it, which I think a lot of critics do/did. I HATED the “Shades of Gray” trilogy. Poorly written pieces of crap. After reading “The Story of O” and “Belinda,” “Fifty Shades of Gray” just seemed boring. And unrealistic. Yes, from the person that really enjoyed “The Da Vinci Code,” “Fifty Shades” did seem unrealistic.
September 22, 2014 — 10:08 AM
Hillary says:
1. I’m a sucker for Anne Rice and I know A LOT of people hate her. The biggest criticism seems to be her long descriptions of inane things, like . . . drapes. Except I like her long descriptions and feel it goes with that heavy, gothic style.
I did a lot of defending of THE HUNGER GAMES to horror fans who insisted it was a BATTLE ROYALE rip off. It’s different enough that it’s not a lift. Also, the idea of teenagers battling to the death isn’t so knock-your-socks-off that two people couldn’t have the same idea. Didn’t like the sequels that much, but the first book was rock solid.
2. TWILIGHT. Bella Swan makes every bone in my feminist body quiver with rage. THE HOBBIT and most of Tolkien beyond the trilogy because he managed to make really fun concepts boring somehow. THE WHEEL OF TIME books because too many of the female characters tugged braids and swooned over boys when the world was ending. Narnia anything because YES WE GET IT, IT’S JESUS CAT.
September 22, 2014 — 10:09 AM
Kay Camden says:
“Bella Swan makes every bone in my feminist body quiver with rage.”
Me too. But I loved that damn book. I wish I could explain why.
September 22, 2014 — 10:20 AM
Kay Camden says:
Is our host going to give us his answers?
Mine: Loved Twilight. I can understand why people hate it. For all the attention it’s gotten, well, the writing isn’t very good, and the story isn’t all that great. Parts of it are pretty darn annoying if you think about it too much. So why do I love it? I have no idea. But when I was reading it, I was *glad* to be stuck in a hospital bed after an appendectomy. Twilight is just straight entertainment. Don’t think about it. Just consume it. Like Cheetos.
Hated? Hmm. Such a strong word. My problem with books I don’t like is usually due to expectations. So, it’s not them. It’s me. 🙂
September 22, 2014 — 10:16 AM
Laura Quirola says:
I know what you mean about not hating books, and how you blame your expectations etc.
I know EXACTLY how that feels.
But here’s a thought:
High expectations are awesome! Make a book work for your love! You’re allowed to not like a book based on any damn reason you choose 🙂
September 22, 2014 — 10:50 AM
Kay Camden says:
Good point. Because sometimes my expectations are high, and the book TOTALLY DELIVERS.
Although, sometimes I have very irrational reasons for putting down a book…
September 22, 2014 — 11:08 AM
spinnersinclair says:
Oh man. Okay… I’m not very versed in what people love and hate generally, but here goes.
Loved: The Hollow Kingdom trilogy. However, it’s a case where I understand why other people who usually share my opinions don’t like it – it brings up very dark topics and doesn’t deal with them in anywhere near the depth and seriousness it might, the style is very tell-y and odd, and the narratives can be strangely structured. Yet somehow, I love it. The world is fascinating and it has a couple of my favorite characters ever.
Hated: So many. I can scarcely begin to count the number of books I tried to read based on glowing praise they got that I wound up throwing down in disgust. I guess a special mention should go to ‘The Lovely Bones’ because I literally read two excerpts and then wrote an entire book myself based off my ‘I-could-write-a-better-book-than-that’ feelings.
September 22, 2014 — 10:26 AM
Davide Mana says:
I loved Lyon Sprague De Camp’s “The Treasure of Tranicos” – and in general his Conan pastiches.
Just for that, I have the death sentence wherever Conan fans gather.
And I positively hated The Little Prince. And Jonathan Livingston Seagull. And Siddartha.
There, this basically puts me outside of the human commonwealth.
September 22, 2014 — 10:45 AM
Michael E. Henderson says:
I love “A Clockwork Orange,” by Anthony Burgess. The writing is wonderful, and the main character is a hoot.
I hated “The Great Gatsby,” and “Infinite Jest.”
Gatsby seemed to go on and on about nothing, and I had to read the scene where Gatsby was killed about six times before I understood, more or less, what had happened. I thought the writing was decent, but there was little story.
Infinite Jest was just a kid fucking off, smoking dope, playing tennis, smoking dope, fucking off, and then some woman doing pretty much the same thing. I gave it 375 pages before I gave up, took it down to the used-book guy, and (to his joy) traded it in for two Euros credit on my account.
By the way, a close runner-up on the hate list was “Atlas Shrugged.” I finished it, but as William F. Buckley said about it, I had to flog myself to do it.
Let me add this: The list of hated books we have all provided contains some pretty great works. Makes you realize that it don’t make a shit if some schmuck or other hates your book. I’m like, fuck you, people hate “The Goldfinch,” and it won a big fat wonderful prize.
September 22, 2014 — 11:09 AM
Cari Hislop says:
A book I love that many others hate… The one that comes to mind is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I first read it at 17 and over the last twenty plus years I’ve read it three or more times. I find Rand’s dissection of the main characters (none of whom is very likeable) very powerful. I re-read it again last year and I was gripped again from the first to the last page, but for me as a reader and writer I’m interested in the unfolding of a complicated character rather than a complicated plot. I really hate pointless subplots (red rage hate them). For some people stories are about what happens, but for me it’s all about revealing who the characters are while things happen.
Books others love that I found deadly dull/unreadable… This may be illegal to admit, but I loathe several of Jane Austen’s novels. Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park….I found all three painfully boring (probably because I found most of the characters so annoying). Saying that one of my favorite books is her last novel Persuasion which is a masterpiece of character stripping (and a very gripping read once you get in past the first few pages). I’ve given up trying to read Tolstoy. I spent so much time trying to figure out which characters he was referring to that I’d start to forget what had just happened. I once asked a Russian friend about it and he said (I’m presuming he wasn’t pulling my leg) that in Russian there are five different ways of saying peoples names (or something like). Another book I couldn’t finish was The Shining. I kept coming across people commenting on how great The Shining was. I bought myself a second hand copy and cracked it open…I didn’t get far…I just couldn’t sink into the word flow. I flipped to the back of the book to find out what happened and it was all so unsatisfying. I adore King’s On Writing. I love listening to him speak. I love reading articles he’s written, but his stories just aren’t for me. Another book I couldn’t finish was Stendhal’s Red and Black. The translation/writing was beautiful, but it was so depressing I had to stop.
I think different people read stories for different aspects. Some people love description (they want to be shown a different life or world) some people hate it (presumably these people want to imagine their own world). I know several writers who can’t bear reading stories with a lot of description. I, on the other hand, find it quite beautiful if well done – for instance Elizabeth Bowen or Philip Sidney…who both excelled at painting mental pictures. A modern example would be The Ghosts of Kerfol by Deborah Noyes (which I found beautifully written – five haunting short stories all woven together by one house). Whether a book is great or rubbish really is completely subjective depending on the individual tastes/needs/preferred mental word flow of the reader.
September 22, 2014 — 11:20 AM
Robert Sadler says:
LIKE (Love is too strong a word for this pic): Atlas Shrugged – Wait, wait, wait! Hear me out! Yes, it’s way longer than it needs to be. Yes, Ayn Rand is waaaaaaay too overbearing with her beliefs throughout, and slugs the reader over the head with them over and over again. But at its core, it’s a pretty cool story that starts as a mystery and lets you in gradually to see the truth of what’s going on behind the scenes. If that story could have been written by someone less thick-headed and close-minded than Rand, it would have been far less divisive.
DISLIKE (Hate is too strong of a word for this pic): HP Lovecraft. His concepts and style are iconic and haunting, and because of that, I like the IDEA of Lovecraft. But reading his prose is like walking through quicksand.
September 22, 2014 — 11:22 AM
Dangerfield says:
Lovecraft would be soooo much better now, when he could write the source books he was born to write and not try to put stories into them. (And, uh. Hopefully be less racist and stuff)
September 22, 2014 — 1:00 PM
Badger says:
The only two Lovecraft stories that I have ever really enjoyed, and one took me probably a dozen rereads to get through; The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward and Cool Air. The rest of Lovecraft I can pretty much skip, though I agree with the other commenter about the source works et cetera.
September 22, 2014 — 1:06 PM
Robert Sadler says:
I began reading Charles Dexter Ward. I got about thirty pages in and realized I wasn’t retaining half of the information being presented. Very dense and wordy.
I did listen to an audiobook of The Shadow over Innsmouth (it was more of an audio PLAY, with different actors and sound effects) and I enjoyed it. Very atmospheric and enjoyable. I just don’t know if I would be able to get through it without all the theatrics.
September 22, 2014 — 1:16 PM
Badger says:
Yeah, that dense and wordy is why it took me a dozen rereads to get through. Also, there’s very little action, it seems, until the end of the story.
September 22, 2014 — 5:33 PM
Phil Mordue says:
A few people dislike the Great Gatsby here… very surprising for me because I loved it. The inner conflict for Nick and his experience of getting to know Gatsby is just captivating for me. Felt like it gave such emotional depth in such a short piece that you could see and feel the characters having a complete real life outside of the story.
I think Crime and Punishment has to be my pick for something I didn’t like that others loved. I was recommended it by friends and they heaped praise on it. Unfortunately I only made it halfway through (really kept forcing myself to keep reading…) because the pace was just too slow for me. I kept screaming in my head at the page “get on with it!!!”
September 22, 2014 — 11:38 AM
mikes75 says:
One I like that everyone seems to hate is hard for me to peg, it’s too easy to assume something fits that description because either A.) I want something to be more outsider than it deserves, or B.) the people who also love it don’t LOVE love it.
For one I hate but everyone seems to like, I’ll go with American Tabloid by James Ellroy. I find it really difficult to like any of his characters, even in the noir-sense of finding them fascinating. They’re just cold to me, I can’t connect with them, and it made the book a dark slog for the sake of a dark slog.
September 22, 2014 — 11:45 AM
donnaeve says:
LOVED: THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, by David Wroblewski – I loved this book because it was, in my opinion, a brilliant coming of age novel about a boy, his parents, his uncle, and the dogs they trained which were called “Sawtelle dogs.” There were parts where, as a reader, you have to suspend belief – mysticism and fantasy bits – but all in all, it was a heartbreaking story, with an ending most people probably would hate. The book made me cry and I don’t necessarily want to get all emotionally wrung out when reading, but I couldn’t put it down. And, I can’t go without also mentioning COLD MOUNTAIN by Charles Frazier. I loved it because it Frazier did a wonderful job of capturing the lives of people in the Blue Ridge Mountain region (in my home state) as well as telling a powerful story of love, resilience and hope. Bittersweet, and yeah, another ending that’s not what we’d want perhaps, but another strong message that life goes on, even for those who believe it’s impossible.
DISLIKED: There are two here…, John Grisham’s SYCAMORE ROW, and Greg Isle’s NATCHEZ BURNING. In re: to Grisham – I have read a few of his books and honestly, this one reads like someone else wrote it. It was such a weak plot, predictable, and self-serving in my opinion. Who cares to read about how cases move through a court system with all the ins and outs of a piece of paper and where it needs to go next and who needs to get it there? Like a bunch of filler pages describing the legal process. Blech. I got the sense that Grisham’s writing placed him back in the courtroom – but if he misses his old profession that much, and is really living vicariously through the characters, while taking his readers for a long tedious court process, I say drop the writing gig and go back to practicing law. The story was like watching paint dry.
For Isle’s book, I only got to page 103 and I stopped. That darn thing is over 600 pages and it’s going to be a trilogy??? OMG. There were already a ton of characters intro’ed (which was also the same issue with Grisham’s book) and my head was spinning. Conversations galore, with all these people and I was like get it going! Another self indulgent slog if you ask me. Thumbs down on both. I actually got ticked off when I saw them in the top ten lists in the Sunday paper. I was like, are you kidding me???
September 22, 2014 — 12:17 PM
Drew Shiel says:
LOVE: I really like Raymond E. Feist’s Rise of A Merchant Prince. It’s a terrible book, written long after he’d gone to write-by-numbers mode, and only slightly before he started writing down the plots of videogames and calling them books, but it goes straight to my unholy love of historical and fantastic economies, and stays there, plugging away at it in little bits and pieces.
HATE: Thoreau’s Walden. Thoreau was the original hipster, and I don’t mean that in a benevolent, kindly sense. He was an over-privileged white dude who thought he was really STICKING IT TO THE MAN by living in a cabin a short stroll from Boston, and nipping back in every second day for coffee and newspapers. Made all the worse by the way in which he tries to lecture people around them on how everything would be just grand if everyone wandered off to the woods. I hated the book so much that I enjoyed hating it. I even have a not-very-frequently updated academic blog called “Dismembering Thoreau”.
September 22, 2014 — 12:19 PM
Jen Donohue says:
I HATE the Kite Runner, and based on it, will not/have not read other books by that author. Everybody thinks it’s some bullshit story of redemption and enduring friendship or something. I think it’s tiresome self-perpetuated guilt based on cowardice preventing the narrator from doing such a simple right thing. Oh yeah, and an irrationally perpetuated cycle. It makes me so angry. Fire and venom spittingly angry.
I love..hrm. Like some others, I like Ayn Rand’s books, because I do dearly love the stories, especially Atlas Shrugged. And the characters. The philosophy…well, some of it is in keeping with my own views (like the Howard Roark-Ellsworth Toohey scene: “I don’t think of you at all.” That’s my zen.) But some books that I love, people hate them based on length alone (like Ayn Rand, but also things like Gone With the Wind, George R. R. Martin’s books, Dan Simmons’ The Terror, etc.) But then, I also love non fiction forensics books like Never Suck a Dead Man’s Hand. So.
September 22, 2014 — 12:25 PM
Duncan Idaho says:
The Dune series, well the original universe anyway by Frank Herbert, it was my first real Sci-fi book and I fell in love, the characters, the development of them, of the setting, the culture that existed, the clashes of culture that happened at times, the entire political intrigue ‘Is Paul about to play the baron, or the baron will play Paul?’
However I hate the expanded universe, the books written by the son of Herbert fall short if we use say Chapterhouse of Dune as the measuring stick, the kid removed one of the things that made dune so special, political intrigue and destroyed years of work by Herbert senior with three books. Basically Herbert had managed to reduced the action scenes to somwhere between none and few. Opting instead for lengthy charater development and once again developing the setting. The son is mostly about one or two poorly foreshadowed plot points and making the ruler of Ix Genre Blind.
September 22, 2014 — 12:42 PM
KVeldman says:
(Takes deep breath…)
Ocean at the End of the Lane was so boring I literally fell asleep reading it multiple times. I never could figure out what the theme was supposed to be. I don’t understand how anybody could have enjoyed reading it, and I am a huge Gaiman fan. NOS4A2 felt like a stoned version of a bad Stephen King novel. The Second and Third installments of the Hunger Games were non-stop Katniss whining and feeling sorry for herself. The ending of Allegiant ruined the entire Divergent series. A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin… did anything actually happen in that book before the last few chapters? I read 400 pages waiting for the battle at Mereen and… nothing. I hope they just skip that whole book for the TV Series. Good lord I won’t even go into American Psycho. Don’t pick that one up unless you’re planning on skipping half the text and reading one hell of a weird fantasy about Bono.
Sorry, I think I’ve been holding those back for way too long.
September 22, 2014 — 12:49 PM
David says:
I struggled through “A Winter’s Tale” after hearing much about its artful language. It certainly had some of the prettier prose I’ve read in a long time – beautiful imagery that defined my experience in the coldest winter I’ve lived though so far – but in the end it sort of got lost, eddied around, didn’t know what it was doing, and collapsed in a simpering fit of swirling incoherence. All the pretty in the world won’t save your ass if you didn’t have a story in the first place. If you did have a story…well, you certainly didn’t tell it very well. It was kind of like a three year old telling a long, complex joke. You may even know the joke, but by the time they get done – hoo boy, what the hell was that? I’m all for drug-addled, fear and loathing style psycho trips, but don’t cramp your style with some grasping attempt at MEANING in the end, ya know? It pissed me off to see that much pure fuckin’ word art turn into a circle jerk in the snow.
So anyway, i moved on.
I’m perfectly happy to like different things than other folks – hell, that’s half the reason I started reading sci-fi back in the day. I do find that if someone recommends me a book that I dislike, I take their future recommendations with a grain of salt and generally don’t share my own. I just assume we have different tastes, which is a-ok.
September 22, 2014 — 12:59 PM
Jenn Lyons says:
Oh god. I’d forgotten about Winter’s Tale. I agree with you 100%. Honestly, there was a point where I felt like the prose was so pretty it had drifted into mastebatory — just there to prove that the author could string words together nicely rather than serving any real function of storytelling. And by the time the story started to become interesting, it all burst apart into an extremely muddy, unsatisfying ending. I’m still not even sure what happened.
September 22, 2014 — 1:54 PM
ReGomes says:
For books that I hate it would be easy to say “Twilight”, or “Of Stardust”, that is twilight with fairies instead of vampires – SO boring! But since the theme is books everyone else loves but I don’t, I choose the award-winning “The Book Thief”, by Markus Zusak. I think the author wanted so bad to be innovative that he forced a kind of writing that is just pretentious and tiresome. Also, the I-will-make-you-cry plot really annoyed me. I only finished the book out of stubbornness, and after that I tried to read Zusak’s Underdogs and couldn’t read pass page 10.
As for books that people usually hate but I love I choose “Incident in Antares” by Brazilian author Erico Verissimo. Most people can’t stand the first half of the book, while the second half is so funny that no one can resist, but I love everything about that book, since the first half is important for setting the story.
September 22, 2014 — 1:05 PM
Tia Kalla (@tiakall) says:
Wow, lots of comments on this post already. We’re really passionate about what we like and hate, eh?
Generally, I like trope-twisting and unpredictability, which endears certain genres to me (hi there, twisted fairy tales!) and other genres, not so much (sorry, romance!) Since it’s a weakness in my own books, I’ve also become increasingly aware of pacing and when it’s bad, so I didn’t like Tolkien and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (I did enjoy Pride, Prejudice, Zombies and Unholy Night was *excellent*). I’m also pretty much a spec fic girl, so pretty much anything ‘realistic’ or ‘contemporary’ just doesn’t interest me, which puts me at the “meh” end of a lot of popular stuff.
The amount of people on here that didn’t enjoy Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye is kind of funny to me, since those are two of the few classics I actually liked. “Daisy was a careless person” and “I want to erase the ‘fuck you’s from the world” really somehow made those books for me and I don’t even know why.
September 22, 2014 — 1:15 PM
dleonard says:
While it’s not a novel that people HATE, I get frustrated that Nathaniel West’s _Miss Lonelyhearts_
is seldom mentioned when people discuss great books of the 20th century. The blackest of black comedies with a style unlike any I have read before or since, Miss Lonelyhearts is hilarious, sad, grotesque and beautiful. And Shrike is one of the most loathesome villains I’ve ever encountered. One of the most underappreciated masterpieces in literature.
I seldom read to the end of books I hate – so it was harder to pick something. Then I remembered Bruce Sterling’s _Island in the Net_ – a multiple award winning book by a writer I really like. I found the plot tedious and the characters bland. I kept thinking it had to get better, and after reading the last page, I threw it against a wall, feeling conned into wasting a huge amount of my time.
September 22, 2014 — 1:16 PM
Clancy Metzger says:
Good question, Chuck! I enjoyed reading everyone’s responses.
Love “Atlas Shrugged” and pretty much every main character who gets to see Atlantis, especially Dagny. I reread it every five years or so because it recharges my batteries. “Anthem” is also really good and I love Howard Roarke and “The Fountainhead” but the female lead irritates me. Other authors I love – Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Darkover” novels and Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonrider” novels for their world building and the way you can sink into the stories and enjoy your time there. Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher novels because Reacher is the coolest character ever. Most anything by Nora Roberts and everything by Victoria Dahl because I love romance.
Hate doesn’t cover it… BORED, BORED, BORED … I actually couldn’t even remember the author name or title (I had to look it up) – so unmemorable! “Harvest of Stars” by Pohl Anderson. My friend played a guilt card to get me to read it and it was the most painful weeks ever trying to trudge thru that drek. She thought his writing was beautiful, I thought it was pointless.
September 22, 2014 — 1:39 PM
Bird Freemanson says:
I love books who’s logic shows effort. I hate books where the authors opinion is authority enough to dismiss the books protagonist.
September 22, 2014 — 1:44 PM