Anything by the Bronte sisters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:50 Shades. All my friends loved it. I flipped through and what I read made me sick to my stomach. That kind of garbage is why so many women end up in abusive relationships.

Agree. Terrible. Even worse that my mother in law gave me the books and raved about them. I can’t even watch the movies.

For me, anything by Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters. I don’t get how people can read those books over and over.

This is the most fascinating post I have read in years. Your MIL gave you not just one but all the 50 Shades books? Your MIL??? Can you tell us what, do you think, she was intending? Why would she give you these? Was it encouragement? Was her thinking, My son tells me he needs to spice things up a little in the bedroom, or what? This post just made my day! I do hope you’ll follow up.

Honestly I think she just really likes the books and thought I would enjoy them. I had no idea what they were about when she gave them to me as it was when they were first becoming popular. We pass books back and forth often and she reads a lot so giving me books to read wasn’t strange in itself. I was just a bit shocked when I started reading. Sometimes I pass the books she gives me to my mom after I’m done. Not this time!

Anonymous wrote:The Vanishing Half. Remote narrator, zero passion. Great plot she did not do justice.

Agree. I had high hopes for this one!

The Devil Wears Prada. So much whining.

Confederacy of Dunces. There was a reason this wasn’t published when the author was alive. It’s probably worst book I ever read. I have to finish every book I start, and I thought this would be the one to break me. It was a Herculean effort to finish it but I was motivated to so I could definitively talk about how bad it is.

Jane Eyre. Awful.

Anonymous wrote:Untamed by Glennon Doyle! Unreadable.

Same. Couldn't get through it.

95% of the fiction on the NY Times bestsellers list.

Anonymous wrote:Harry Potter

I waited 20 years to read the series. I completed it in a month. Overall, I enjoyed it, thought it was creative and wondered what would happen next. A month after that, I reflected on the series and had to admit JK Rowling plucked ideas from the Holocaust and Lewis Carroll, to give but 2 examples. There are themes, ideas and events in her books which can be traced to history, other writers and well known works. She got insanely rich, so kudos, I guess.

Anonymous wrote:Harry Potter

+1 I started the 1st book 20 years ago and got through 2 chapters. Picked the same copy up again last year when my kids got into the series and I’m still only halfway through the book.

Harry Potter

The Secret History

Pretentious, affected, and tiresome.

Atonement
The Great Gatsby

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A Little Life. I put it down before page 50. I'm detention to read it some time in the future. I just hope my impression of the writing style is wrong (seemed really basic, and I'm no literati.)

I'm "determined" not "detention.

Agree. Tragedy porn.

For me, interestingly some of the books that you guys hate I really loved.
The books for me

Cloud cuckoo land. The beginning was a slog and then I finally did get into The three or four stories within the book and was able to finish it for my book club. But if it wasn’t for book club I might’ve put it down and not finished
Gone girl. I don’t know why I did not like it but I just did not.
50 shades. I read the sample on my Kindle and the writing was so poor in that first chapter I couldn’t imagine paying and buying that book and trying to read it.
Educated. I just couldn’t get into it. It was just another memoir about somebody who had a rough childhood and succeeded. I felt like I’ve read the story when I read the glass castle- which i loved, hillbilly elegy - which also makes this list as a book I did not enjoy, etc.