Author Topic: DON'T READ THAT!!!  (Read 1514 times)

Offline Surly

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #30 on: May 26, 2018, 11:01:38 am »
I'm sure people will shoot me, but dear lord did I hate Outlander.  I don't understand how people enjoy it.

First, I hated the main character.  Second, I was originally so excited to see how this woman would adapt to suddenly finding herself in the past.  But she pretty much just seamlessly adjusts.  Like imagine going back in time, just the smells alone should take some adjusting.  But nope.  And she accepts incredibly quickly that she just time-traveled.  Like she doesn't periodically express much wonder or excitement or awe that this crazy miraculous thing has happened.  Nope.  It's like someone told her that her doctor's appointment got moved from Tuesday to Thursday.

Then of course, there's the ****.  And while yes, I know that **** is an issue in that time, and an issue in romance novels, but **** was the constant plot progression.  Need to move the story along?  Let's try to **** someone.  Okay, let's do that again.  Now again.  Okay let's try to **** someone else.

I loved the idea of this time traveling romance, but it had none of the interesting elements of that kind of story.  Just lots and lots of **** and a main character I wanted to punch in the face.

Hah!  I love Outlander and yet agree with everything you've said.
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Offline avoidingthedrama

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #31 on: May 27, 2018, 06:14:07 am »
Can’t read Virginia Wolff, Dickens, Tolstoy......

Offline BLZbub

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #32 on: May 27, 2018, 08:58:29 am »
I usually finish books, even if I'm not enjoying them. The one that I just couldn't even get past 100 pages was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I am convinced I am the only person in the world who hated this book.

Offline Allyson

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #33 on: May 27, 2018, 01:05:01 pm »
The series that made me not read any fantasy for 10 years - Wheel of Time. Hated the main character so much but I liked the writing/story enough that I kept reading for 8 books, which was an error because my loathing of Rand only intensified as the books continued, and now I can only think of the series with a "dammit Rand." I know some people absolutely love that series so no insult intended to those in that category!

I read a lot of romance/mystery and some of them have been real stinkers, but they rarely stick out in my head after I read them, probably because I typically gave up and forgot about them. So the ones I tend to remember are ones that have enough redeeming qualities I keep reading despite a major irritation.

Offline Apis Mellifera

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #34 on: May 27, 2018, 01:31:48 pm »
Code Breakers (Colin F Barnes)
Boring.  It was free for my Kindle, and still overpriced.

Invasion (two authors)
Total lack of logic, unlikable characters.

Blood of the Lamb (Michael Lister)
OK, you have a chaplain who is intent on using female pronouns for God and decides to make a political point about it at a child's funeral.  Plus a whole lot of unrealistic plot points.

Catch Me  (Lisa Gardner)
Redundancies about, plot as described was interesting--plot as executed was horrid).  Also, badly executed "head hopping".

Offline Free Range Hippy Chick

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #35 on: May 27, 2018, 01:37:05 pm »
Free for Kindle: The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Treat it as herd immunity: I read it so nobody else needs to.
🔥 ☣️
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Offline thebushiestbeaver

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #36 on: May 27, 2018, 06:07:01 pm »
Unpopular opinion: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

I'm all about true crime, but this is one of the few books I couldn't finish. I struggled till about halfway through and then said screw it. The parts about H.H. Holmes were ok, but the parts about the World's Fair were so painfully boring and so much longer than the exciting murder bits.

I agree about Into The Woods, too. It was such an unsatisfying ending. I haven't read anything by Tana French since.

Offline GloryAndCrumpets

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #37 on: May 27, 2018, 06:26:04 pm »
Unpopular opinion: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

I'm all about true crime, but this is one of the few books I couldn't finish. I struggled till about halfway through and then said screw it. The parts about H.H. Holmes were ok, but the parts about the World's Fair were so painfully boring and so much longer than the exciting murder bits.

I agree about Into The Woods, too. It was such an unsatisfying ending. I haven't read anything by Tana French since.

I read a couple reviews on Amazon saying that the ending was good because it was so realistic because in real life, not every case gets solved. Okay, that's true, but news flash! I don't read mystery novels so I can experience the realistic frustration of unsolved cases!

I did like Devil in the White City, though. And unlike a lot of people in this thread, I love me some Dickens.  :)
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Offline Kiwi Cupcake

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #38 on: May 27, 2018, 08:05:31 pm »
Unpopular opinion: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

I'm all about true crime, but this is one of the few books I couldn't finish. I struggled till about halfway through and then said screw it. The parts about H.H. Holmes were ok, but the parts about the World's Fair were so painfully boring and so much longer than the exciting murder bits.

I thought I was the only one. I didn't like or finish this either. I don't know how anybody was able to make the world's fair, architecture, and H.H. Holmes so boring but this author did it.

Offline Morrigan

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #39 on: May 28, 2018, 04:55:34 pm »
Whitefern - V.C. Andrews. This is the sequel to My Sweet Audrina, and i didn't think it could be worse. I was so very wrong.

Outlander: I did not like the first book. The second one seems okay (and I've been told that the series get better as it goes along). This book was sold to me as a historical fiction, rather than a romance. My experience with historical fiction is Leon Uris, so this was really not what I was expecting.

It's rare that I have to put a book down, but I am part of the way through The Child Finder, and the scenes are so disturbing that I haven't picked it back up.

Offline Chez Miriam

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #40 on: May 31, 2018, 03:06:07 pm »
Christmas at Carrington's by Alexandra Brown.  I wanted to shake the protagonist and scream "grow up!".  Everyone seemed to be behaving like adolescents - I don't have a problem about that, but let them be schoolchildren doing so, not (alleged) adults.  The flip side of that is Elizabeth George's series for young adults [Edge of ...]: they were wonderful characters, and I'm scouring the charity shops for more.

I mostly read murder-mysteries, but I take two weeks at Christmas to read Christmas themed books - most of which are chick lit.  I don't mind that brief window of that genre, but there's got to be some standards!  Last Christmas I managed to find a bunch of murder-mysteries with "Christmas" or "Advent" in the title, so I was a happy bunny. ;D  And I was more discerning with the "Christmas at the Little Tea Room" choices.
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."  - Julian of Norwich

Offline highpriestess

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #41 on: May 31, 2018, 06:29:55 pm »
Forest Gump. The absolute worst book I have ever read. I love the movie but the book was just awful. It was so awful I almost have suggested it for my bookclub so everyone can agree how awful it is. Or I can verify my friend's terrible taste.

Honorable mention is Stepford Wives.  When the afterword explaining the book is longer than the actual book, something seems wrong.

Offline Random Heroine

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #42 on: June 01, 2018, 08:39:50 am »
I usually finish books, even if I'm not enjoying them. The one that I just couldn't even get past 100 pages was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I am convinced I am the only person in the world who hated this book.

I didn't hate it, but I found it took way way too long to get interesting.  You have to get well past that 100 page mark.  I think that book could have benefited from some more judicious editing.
"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain, of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." - Charles Dickens
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Offline Random Heroine

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #43 on: June 01, 2018, 08:44:04 am »
I typically force myself to finish a book even if I hate it, but one I couldn't make it all the way through was "The Historian".  Somehow the author managed to make Dracula boring.  And she kept changing voice but the different narrators sounded like the same history professor - a really uninspiring one.  I don't know why she just didn't keep the same character narrating the whole thing if she was going to make them sound *exactly* the same...
"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain, of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." - Charles Dickens

Offline Morrigan

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Re: DON'T READ THAT!!!
« Reply #44 on: June 01, 2018, 10:35:58 am »
I love The Millennium Series, and I found The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hard to get into. One of my favourite books is The Girl Who Played with Fire, and was much more interesting than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (it's the second book in the series).