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I feel a bit strange asking a question which sounds so negative, but I thought about it this morning and I wondered what other people have to say about it. I also figured that it might be interesting to hear what it is that makes you really dislike a book. Is it the story, the way it's written, certain topics or just the book being a waste of time because it's so damn boring?

I'm usually one that finishes the book they started even if I don't really like it. But I'm a fast and avid reader and I figure that not every book can be amazingly awesome and great, so I just read whatever comes my way to find the gems among them.

So, out of the hundreds of books I've read there are only a couple that I really actively hated. I still finished those, but I won't hold back my opinion when asked for it.

So, let me tell you what those were. I know at least one of them is pretty controversial as I've seen people share the hate but also people who loved it.

1. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. This is the controversion one because I know others liked it a lot. A lot of it has been religious debate, but the main reason I hated the book was that I just thought the story was a mess. Plus, I found that the whole love story with Lyra was utterly out of character especially since she was only supposed to be 12 or 14 or something. I loved the first book of the series and I thought the second one was okay, but the third one just was a mess. Maybe another reason why I felt so strongly was exactly because I really liked how the story started and I was disappointed to see it go down in a way that didn't really fit the atmosphere of the first book.

2. The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable byNassim Nicholas Taleb. I like the premise of the book and I read non-fiction regularly but aside from the fact that the book just took more than 400 pages to describe a phenomenon that isn't that hard to grasp, I just was annoyed by the author most of the time. He sounded like a whiny kid who always wanted to sit with the cool kids and then years later he still hasn't gotten over it. It was all about how the academics weren't right and he was so much smarter than them. Meh. The writing style also put me off, because I believe it was meant to be funny, but mostly came of as patronizing.

3. Sommerhaus, später. by Judith Hermann. A collection of German short stories that were just annoying as hell. It was like the author knew one kind of person (herself) and deduced that everyone in the world was the same. All the characters seemed like bored, nicotine-addicted twenty- or thirty-somethings. They tell you the dry writing style is amazing, but I thought it was just lazy. I think it was also because she was highly recommended and supposed to be a literary wonder or something and I just thought it was a waste of time.

So, there. What are yours?

I'm with you regarding Pullman, only i started hating it a little ways into the not-so-subtle Knife. I read Spyglass just for completion sake. I guess part of me wanted it to see if it would go back to being as decent as the first novel. It didn't. And thus, my 'strong dislike' for Philip Pullman was born. However, that strong dislike was slightly reduced with the first two Sally Lockheart books.

To be honest, i thought this topic was more along the lines of "have you ever read a book you knew you would hate in spite of it all". If that were the case I don't think i have.
Life of Pi i haven't touched yet for the reason that i feel i will detest it greatly (from a plot synopsis i was once told), though i may cave and read it one day to check. Hopefully i hate it with a mighty passion, so that it will be a good example to test against for future moments of weakness. Should i be proven false, the consequences could be most dire, re: going off the deep end and reading Twilight. *shudder*

I was a huge Terry Brooks fan as a kid.

Recently I was reading through the remainder of my paper books collection so I could get rid of it all, those books I'd had forever and never got around to reading, and one of those was First King of Shannara.

I can't say I hated it, but if it is anything like the other Shannara books, I was vastly deluded as a child. It felt very shallow, reading like a synopsis from the back of the book expanded into a novel.

I have at least one other Brooks book awaiting me at my parent's home, and I have to say I'm tempted to leave it there with my other childhood loves, where it can't do me or my memories any harm.

Edding's elder gods series. It was just awful. Every book seemed like all the characters just standing around explaining the same thing from different points of view. The enemy was never any threat all the main characters were like superheros and several were literally gods just beating the crap out of sad handicapped monsters. Somehow I stupidly kept reading every book in the series waiting for it to get better.


It really pains me to say that. My introduction to fantasy was Eddings's The ruby Knight and I love the all 4 Sparhawk and BelGarion series including the Belgarath and Polgara back stories. To this day I name all my electronics after Eddings characters.

A couple years back, I had just finished up the 6th Malazan book, but wanted to read something else before diving into a reread of that series. I didn't know what to read, so I asked my wife, who recommended The Belgariad, which I pretty much ended up hating.

This doesn't exactly fit the bill but I got within 80 page of the end of Atlas Shrugged (mired in the monologue) and just quit. Never finished it. Never had my experience with a book change so suddenly since.

First of all Anne, I was also deeply disappointed by the end of the His Dark Materials series. I still can't say I hate them because I listened to the audio versions, which were really well done.

I do a lot of award-nominee reading, which is usually where I find the books I'd say I hated. In my day-to-day reading, I give a book 50 pages, maybe 100 if people swear it ends up good. But I try to push myself to finish books that get nominated for awards, thinking they *must* have some kind of merit. That has led me to read books I hated such as Lord of Misrule, Freedom (and I know people who love this book! Ugh!), and In a Strange Room.

Most books that I started out hating, like Wetlands (seriously? don't bother, so terrible, not sexy, just disgusting), don't make it very far. I put them aside, don't finish them, and try to block them out. :)

Naked on Roller Skates by Max Bodenheim. So bad it is a parody of itself.

69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess - Yes, you'd think with that title I would've stayed away, and I *would* have, but it was the monthly pick in a bookclub I was in with several friends - I read enough of it to hate it and its author. Aimless, pretentious junk hiding behind lazy avant-garde rationales and pseudo-edginess.

Also, Wuthering Heights drove me crazy (never finished) - I wanted to shoot both protagonists in the head with a historically-accurate-for-the-time pistol. I think I will try that one again at some point, but in general I have so much on my to-read list that I have no problem putting a book down unfinished if I'm really not liking it.

I liked when I first red the Sword of Shannara, but now I hated because it was Lord of the Rings just with new characters.

I do have a "rubbish bin" shelf here on GR for books i'd happily give minus stars to. Usually it has to really rub me up the wrong way to get so extreme a reaction; there are ten books on the list. (obviously, not on my actual shelf, as i will get rid of a book that has that effect on me, usually in the bin rather than inflict it on anyone else).

Some of the books on the shelf:

Rancid Aluminium by James Hawes
Usually I don't get when people don't take to a book because it doesn't have any likable characters, but that was one of the things i hated about this. The protagonist was just an utterly loathesome city wanker who frankly deserved whatever happened to him. of course, had the writing been any good that could have made the story, but everything about the book was completely painful. I think I waded past the halfway mark before chucking it. Genuinely some of the worst prose I have ever come across.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Again with this one my problem was the prose. It was like being choked on purple rose petals - fake ones made from polyester and drenched in cheap perfume. I know a lot of folk love her, but I really couldn't stand this book. But hey, I think His Dark Materials is one of the greatest works of modern fiction.

Merlin by Stephen Lawhead
This is an example of something I hate because of the disappointment it caused me. It's the second of a trilogy and I loved the first part, Taliesin, but this book threw all that good work away. I read them because I'm a huge fan of the Arthurian legends, but Lawhead did something that I think unforgivable; he threw away the story to write a tract. Afterward i found out that it was put out by a christian publisher, and this didn't surprise me in the slightest. The whole book is one long excoriating attack on paganism and celebration of how christianity rescued Briton's from barbarism. The worst thing he does is turning Merlin into a christian missionary. The thing is, many of the Arthur myths are christian stories anyway (the fisher king and search for the grail amongst others), so hijacking the character who is traditionally a link to the pre-christian heritage i found both pointless and offensive.

O-Zone by Paul Theroux
I generally like Theroux's writing; his thrillers and contemporary fiction are well written, tautly plotted and literary. When I found out he also wrote SF I figured it for a winner. Boy was I wrong.

First, he obviously doesn't understand the genre at all. You don't have to be steeped SF to write it, but as with any genre a passing familiarity helps. Worst of all, it reads as though written by someone else. It's as though he thinks he's slumming it so doesn't have to put any effort into plot, characterisation or even the way the prose reads. Because, hey, it's only SF right? And he's a Great Writer so he can do better than those genre hacks in a single draft without breaking sweat. Fuck you, Mr Theroux. Not his fault, but to add further insult the cover sports quotes from literary book reviews about how "sparkling" and "original" it is, when if any of them had ever read anything by, say, William Gibson or Bruce Sterling or Ian Watson they'd know just how turgid and derivative O-Zone is.

I usually try to finish a book that I've started and find that I usually like something about them... but there are a couple I just couldn't get into and stopped reading.

Flood - Stephen Baxter... for some reason, I just couldn't get into the book. It's supposed to be part of a trilogy but I won't be reading it. The characters, the prose, the setting... I didn't like at all.

Red Mars - Kim Stanley robinson... another book I simply couldn't get into. I tried over the course of 2 weeks to scratch the surface but it didn't hold my attention and I lost interest.

I absolutely love the entire His Dark Materials series, but that is because of the universe and the magic-esque things in the first bit and the religious things in the last bit. But yes, I was not much a fan of the ending.

As for hating a book, the last that I could not finish was 'Deamon'; unfortunately, unlike with the book that Tom mentioned, I could not enjoy the terrible and abhorrent prose in the book.

Or, as Daniel Suarez would say; I could not finish 'Daemon'. I did not finish it. Unlike the book Tom mentioned I could not enjoy it. The writing was pretty bad.

Couldn't get past the first 150 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Kind of disappointed considering how highly recommended the book came.

I generally don't force myself to read something. It reminds me of how difficult school had been for me. All I remember about my English classes were reading stories that were incredibly difficult and irrelevant to me. Now, I read all the time, but only what I want to read.

Elie wrote: "Couldn't get past the first 150 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Kind of disappointed considering how highly recommended the book came.

I generally don't force myself to read something. It..."

The same thing happened to me, I thought I was reading historical fiction, but I wanted the science fiction Stephenson is known for.

Elie wrote: "Couldn't get past the first 150 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Kind of disappointed considering how highly recommended the book came."
Oh yeah, I forced myself to finish that, wish I hadn't. Frustrating because of how many people who I really admire love that book!

Until very recently, I was in the "finish a book regardless" camp. But I've read a few that were absolute turn-offs, which are filed under "abandoned" on my GR shelf. They include:
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time (too preachy and too rosy...and now it seems maybe partially made up?)

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (too repetitive)
Watership Down (one of two S&L book picks I started and didn't finish)
Dune (the other S*L book I started and didn't finish)

I also read and really disliked Daemon and Freedom (TM). After disliking Daemon, I'm not sure why I tried Freedom (TM), but fool me once....

I'm sad to see so many people didn't like Quicksilver, though I suppose I can understand that it's not for everybody. The entire Baroque Cycle is one of my favorite book series. So much so that I'm not holding Anathem against Stephenson, even though I really hated it, especially the second half or so.

I kind of had to force my way through the first two books of the Baroque Cycle as well, haven't read the third one. I can totally see people giving up on it, but I grew to really enjoy Stephenson's writing style and the characters. I didn't realize that until late in the second book, but then I just noticed how very distinct his style is and that's not something you can say for every author - and in a good way in this case.

I really had trouble getting through Vanity Fair so I lovingly call it The Book That Still Owes Me Four Freaking Months Of My Life. I had trouble keeping all the characters apart, or rather, together, since the same person has up to three or four different names depending on title and whatever. And the names/titles change. I didn't hate it, though, and I actually liked it in the end, it was just hard getting through it and it wasn't particularly gripping.

I actually removed Against the Day from my currently-reading list back to my to-read list. I was in about 200 or 300 pages in the book, but was only going at a couple of pages per sitting, so I kept forgetting what had happened 50 pages earlier and couldn't keep track of anything. A very frustrating reading experience and I just gave up and will either start from scratch or just leave it. But that also is more a slight disappointment than stirring strong emotions. I'm actually waiting for the book to be released for the Kindle. I find that I can read better on the Kindle, so if I ever give that book another shot it will be as an eBook. Or maybe never.

Reverman wrote: "Edding's elder gods series. It was just awful. Every book seemed like all the characters just standing around explaining the same thing from different points of view. The enemy was never any threat..."

I sent the link to this thread to an ex-colleague and she said the same thing. She didn't exactly hate the books, but was disappointed and thinks (and I quote) "the belgariad and mallorean were kick ass". So, apparently you're not alone.

terpkristin wrote: "Until very recently, I was in the "finish a book regardless" camp. But I've read a few that were absolute turn-offs, which are filed under "abandoned" on my GR shelf. They include:
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time (too preachy and too rosy...and now it seems maybe partially made up?) "
Haha, yes! Vindication is mine! I thought the entire thing was completely unbelievable and I knew so many people who were so moved by it. I was like - Mother Theresa, really? is a pretty good overview. James Frey, anyone? (At least James Frey wasn't running a faux humanitarian organization to line his pockets)

Jenny wrote: "At least James Frey wasn't running a faux humanitarian organization to line his pockets."

No, but he is running a sweatshop.

Mockingjay.

I only heard about The Hunger Games trilogy when it's final book came out and I devoured the first two. Then I got to the third and all the character and relationship building went down the toilet. The main character spends the entire book wallowing and/or in hospital beds and every time something interesting starts to happen, Katniss would get knocked out and the next chapter would be her back in the hospital where another character would then tell her what happened. It was the most irritating thing ever. The love triangle was also not very well tied up: (view spoiler)[ Since the ending jumps ahead and we're just told that Gale left to another district and Katniss is living with Peeta. She doesn't make a choice, or at least one we see on the page. (hide spoiler)]

I loved the first two books, but the finale soured me on the entire series to the point where I'm not sure I'll be able to enjoy the first movie when it comes out.

Kevin wrote: "Elie wrote: "Couldn't get past the first 150 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Kind of disappointed considering how highly recommended the book came.

I generally don't force myself to rea..."

Anne wrote: "I kind of had to force my way through the first two books of the Baroque Cycle as well, haven't read the third one. I can totally see people giving up on it, but I grew to really enjoy Stephenson's..."

Jenny wrote: "Elie wrote: "Couldn't get past the first 150 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Kind of disappointed considering how highly recommended the book came."
Oh yeah, I forced myself to finish that,..."

Wow guys, thanks. I feel much better. I actually was a little disappointed I couldn't get through Quicksilver because of the amount of geek love bestowed on it. Thought I would love the book, but after 100 pages, it seemed like a trudge, by 150, I decided to give it up. Nice to see I wasn't alone.

I've tried to finish Quicksilver on several occasions but just not been able to. But I have not given up . . . yet. I was disappointed with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Wave by Susan Casey, the ending to Tapping the Source. I could not finish The Mysterious Benedict Society, A Shadow in Summer. They were too slow for me. Also agreed with the previous assessment of Mockingjay. I also did not like the Amber Spyglass. A lot of stuff that did not need to be in the book. These were all books I was disappointed with. The only books I have come close to hating were The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and most by Stuart Woods.

Oh, I forgot about The Lost Symbol. Yes, that was baaaaaaad. I didn't mind the other Dan Brown books. I always thought that they were a nice enough read for a lazy weekend and didn't much bother with the fact that *naturally* they're not of genius material, but entertaining enough.

However, The Lost Symbol was different. That just sucked. I didn't really hate it though, just majorly annoyed by the fact that I wasted my time with it. Maybe if I'd expected more, but since I already knew kind of what was expecting me, I couldn't have cared less.

Someone in my at-home book group had us read The Overton Window. Believe it or not, this is fiction, and some of the worst written fiction I have ever come across.

Glen Beck may be a charismatic television personality but he is also one of the worst fiction writers in the world. The high point of this book was his prose, which was stilted and boring. After that it gets worse. A weak, improbable, and cliché plot. And then there was dialog which was staged.


I hated this book.

Wow. The Overton Window at a book club? That's the most sadistic idea I've ever heard of.

Jenny wrote: "A funny review of The Lost Symbol"

That's a good review. And to the point. It reminds of where I claim that The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End are basically the same book. Only they're building a church in one book and a bridge in the other. And the names are different.

Funny review of Lost Symbol. I agree with it, and also I was annoyed that every other line was related to social media/tech. Don't think I've seen Twitter and BlackBerry mentioned so often anywhere, much less in fiction...

I couldn't finish Good Omens. It seemed as though it was written via mad-lib.

I have 2 books that spring to mind. Both were first books a series and I disliked them both enough to swear off the rest of the series. First is Bio of a Space Tyrant - Refugee. Even though I like Piers Anthony, I disliked pretty much every character in this story. The other was Mission Earth - The Invaders Plan. The pacing was awful. 600+ pages that, except for one chapter where the protagonist was lost in the woods for a month, spans about 4 days. Looking forward to 9 more novels of this sort, I tossed in the towel.

The Windup Girl...I found it to be a collection morose and unlikeable characters in a boring and haphazard setting. It was almost like Bacigaulpi took two short stories and shoved them together.

I finished it because of all the glorious reviews...I kept expecting some sort of pay off...it never came.

I hated how Iain M. Banks's Use of Weapons turned out. And there were some pretty disgusting images along the way.

D wrote: "The Windup Girl...I found it to be a collection morose and unlikeable characters in a boring and haphazard setting. It was almost like Bacigaulpi took two short stories and shoved them together.

I..."

Oh, good. I'm about a third of the way in, and I have been feeling this way too. There are no protagonists I care about, or can sympathize with, and I've been waiting since it started for it to get as great as I was told it was.

Neanderthal by John Darnton: Good Neanderthals and bad Neanderthals living in the present day in a tropical valley in the Himalaya. Enough said.

Moby Dick was a slog as was The Satanic Verses. You could also pull away the scenery of Red Mars and set it in a soap opera, a college campus with a road trip, a construction site, the suburbs, ... and tell the same story.

Brian Ruckley's "Winterbirth." What a boring plod of a book. I savaged it in an Amazon review and people complained I only read 75% of it or so.

Such a lack of on-page personality. Ugh.

Like many others here, I grew up a bit on Terry Brooks but have since moved on. I think he's a good foundational fantasy author, but for the most part, you grow up and move on to more complex and rewarding authors. Seems like an awesome guy, he'll always have a palce in my heart, but you see it all coming and there isn't much to it.

I really hated Norwegian Wood and pretty much everything I've read by Murakami. Ironically, I read NW twice on accident! The first time I read it as my first Murakami and disliked it. Then I forgot that I read it and years later, read it *again* to see if I would want to watch the movie. I completely forgot I read it already till the end of the book.

I know there are a lot, a lot, a lot of Murakami lovers here, but I just don't *get* it. I'm not a big fan of his whiny, slacker, navel-gazing characters. While I do have some post-modern books I did like, his style just turns me off because I'll read pages and pages and feel like nothing really happened.

Jonathan wrote: "Like many others here, I grew up a bit on Terry Brooks but have since moved on. I think he's a good foundational fantasy author, but for the most part, you grow up and move on to more complex and rewarding authors. Seems like an awesome guy, he'll always have a palce in my heart, but you see it all coming and there isn't much to it."

I agree with you, Terry Brooks is one of the authors that you discover after you've read Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and you really like fantasy, and want to dive right into fantasy. He to me is the first step into fantasy mainly because he was the first author to crack open what is known as epic fantasy.

The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams. I bought it off Amazon from the blurb and tossed it halfway through. I didn't even try to sell or donate it because I don't want to inflict it on anyone else. See my review for details.

Twilight. I read a sample chapter and wasn't able to finish it--it was so poorly written it nearly made me gag...

I enjoyed Daemon and Freedom. I thought they were entertaining reads.

Alastair Reynolds' Absolution Gap was an unfathomably dismal end to an otherwise spectacular series. Jettison the characters from past books in the most perfunctory manner, leave most of the plots that have been building since book one ignored, and then wrap everything up with a truly absurd deus ex machina endings ever. It would have merely been a terrible book if it was stand-alone, but as the final entry in an otherwise exceptional series, it was even worse than terrible.

Also, I got through six books of Wheel of Time. Books five and six were so unreadably awful that I decided there was no point to finishing the series.

Tina, I can't understand how anyone out of high school likes Twilight. The story is threadbare, the world is a skeleton, and Bella is one of the most unremarkable and uninteresting heroes I've ever run across.

It's a sad thing indeed that the movies are actually BETTER than the books.

I truly hated Doomsday Book. I would have stopped reading it, but since it had won the Hugo and the Nebula, I kept thinking that it had to get better. Connie Willis continues to suck me in. Blackout and All Clear look so good, but I've already been fooled once.

I read a Vince Flynn book awhile ago. It was awful. The story line was easily guessed and the characters were just hollow shells. Really disliked that book. A LOT.

And the last Tom Clancy book was awful too. But I think somebody wrote that one for him because the entire tone was different from any other book by him.

While we're bashing Neil Stephenson - I hate Cryptonomicon. I read about 3000 pages (maybe a 1/3rd) and absolutely nothing had happened so I relegated it to the waste of time pile. I did enjoy Anathem, but I only tried that because of S&L.

Kevin wrote: "While we're bashing Neil Stephenson - I hate Cryptonomicon. I read about 3000 pages (maybe a 1/3rd) and absolutely nothing had happened so I relegated it to the waste of time pile. I did enjoy Anat..."

3000 and 1/3 the way through? You must have the REALLY unabridged version.

Ken wrote: "3000 and 1/3 the way through? You must have the REALLY unabridged version."

I'm pretty sure that's how long my version of Vanity Fair was.

Kevin wrote: "While we're bashing Neil Stephenson - I hate Cryptonomicon. I read about 3000 pages (maybe a 1/3rd) and absolutely nothing had happened so I relegated it to the waste of time pile. I did enjoy Anat..."

I really hated that book too, I did not understand the book or the hype.

Well, I'll take the opposite view: I loved Cryptonomicon, but I liked Anathem in the sense that it wasn't as much quicksand to get through as the Baroque Cycle was.