What made you dislike a particular published book you've read?

I was reading a blog post the other day and the poster (a well known writing guru) said how much she disliked the 'Girl' series of books. At first I didn't know what she was referring to; I thought she was referring to female YA in general. But then I figured out she was referring to the 'Dragon Tattoo' books.

And since I'm a huge fan of that series, I was curious as to why she said that. But she didn't elaborate.

So this set me wondering what causes a reader to like or dislike, or outright reject a given work and how much of that is hugely subjective. I'm just curious.

(BTW I have also heard many people ridicule a certain series of books which starts with a number (50) and is about kinky bedroom practices.)

Yet, these books are huge sellers.

And at a writers conference I attended a few months ago, one of the instructors tossed out a few very well known names (Grisham was one) and just ripped 'em apart. (I wondered if that was due to jealousy on the speaker's behalf). He said he is 'unreadable' which I disagree with.


Regarding Dragon Tattoo, I found that book very well thought out and original. I saw no issues with the structure or writing per se, so I don't get (other than tastes) why someone would strongly dislike it. I'm baffled.

Questions:

Is there any other huge seller that you found you didn't care for, in spite of its huge monetary success?

Do you think the general body of readers today is less or more sophisticated than two decades ago?

 

I think there's always going to be books/movies/TV/games/music that a lot of people love, and others hate. I have a love/hate relationship with my favorite author, Tolkien. I just wish he didn't have to drag on endlessly over the most minor of details...and practically a whole book of Frodo and Samwise crawling through Mordor? Really? I love the guy, but that last book I sorta skipped a bunch and got to the good parts.

As far as 50 Shades of Bad Writing, it's mostly just a lot of corny, almost creepy porn, ehem! erotica, dressed as edgy because a bunch of highly conservative ladies have never heard of bondage before. And from what I hear it's not even real bondage, just some light stuff that uses elements of it. I do like Gilbert Gottfried's rendition of it though, and that's actually the most I've read of the book, so maybe my judgement is a bit skewed...but if he can make it sound that terrible, then it couldn't have been great from the start.

 

I used to read a lot of James Patterson's Alex Cross series, and eventually had to quit after probably 10 or 11 books. The first one I read was excellent and kept me on the edge of my seat, a genuine quality thriller. But since then, with a couple of very good exceptions, I began to tire of his style and his predictable plot. The title character was just constantly doing the same things. His family were in danger from X serial killer who hated Cross for Y reason, but of course he saved the day every time and no-one was hurt. Every other book he'd meet a new woman and have a brief relationship with her before something went wrong. A couple of the antagonists he wrote were actually pretty scary, but for the most part they began to blur into one.

As for 50 Shades, I never read it, but have no desire to. I wrote something in the style for someone I was interested in a few years back, and it went down very well, but I felt stupid doing it and never include detailed sex scenes in my own work. They tend to make me cringe a bit when they're overblown, and make me wonder if the author is a bit frustrated.

 

Although I thought The DaVinci Code was okay, I've never been able to enjoy another Dan Brown book. They're all extremely repetitive to me in regards to plot and style, I really don't connect with his protagonists and all the religious/symbolic mumbo-jumbo flies right over my head. My MIL, who is a big fan of Brown continues to buy me his latest release every Christmas even though I've told her I don't like them. I put them in the Half-Price Books box we keep handy and eventually I trade them in for books I do want to read.

 

What is a MIL?

The underlined part of your post kinda sparked something for me...

Which is, ironically that is what most 'in the know' purport as being what readers crave; a series built on a boilerplate with commonalities among the separate stories etc etc

And I always found that the boilerplate series thing had a 'cheap' feel about it, like rinsing and reusing yesterday's coffee grounds. (nod to Paul Newman there) (actually, it's a nod to William Goldman. Maybe he saw that... Are you here, Bill? lol)

I'm not saying a series is a bad thing. Not at all. I like certain ones, which resonate with me. But what I DON'T like is solo works are treated as the step child now.

I guess what I'm saying is I think both are valuable. I enjoy a truly inspired, entertaining solo work as much as I do a good series.

(yes, all of this came of your Dan Brown comment. Just needed to vent I reckon, lol)

 

Mother In Law.

 

Right after I posted previously, another came to mind. I read the entirety of The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell last year. and honestly probably should have stopped after the first book. They're not badly written or anything, but I prefer my sci-fi to be much faster-paced than what I got. There were plenty of ship battles and engagements, but they were bogged down in vast quantities of strategy, and the overall theme of the series was a little too political for my liking. The frustrating thing was that I actually thought the universe and protagonist had potential, especially regarding developments that the fleet slowly awoke to over the course of the books. I figure that's why I kept reading even when my eyes were passing over the politics and militaristic strategy and not really absorbing much of it. There's a second short series following this one up, but even though I own one of the books, I'm not sure I want to bother.

I loved Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, but found The DaVinci Code slightly less enthralling. Haven't read any more of his work but would certainly be up for trying out another book.

 

Yes, sorry about that! I sometimes forget not everyone lives in my brain and understands my shorthand. Thanks, Chicken!

 

I confess that I have never gotten past page 34 of Game of Thrones. I may be the only person in the organized world that way.

 

A Mexican student at the university told me that I had to read Love in the Time of Cholera, his favourite book. He eventually bought it for me as a parting gift when I retired. Having experienced being stalked, I found the protagonist repulsive. Am I missing something?

 

I remember disliking The Time Traveller's Wife. I found the constant interjection of tedious description mind-numbing; every conversation was interrupted by the most banal and irrelevant descriptions of the character's actions.

 

Yes. I'll just quote myself since I've mentioned this before:

tl;dr

Lord Foul's Bane

I know that the thing that repulsed me in this book ends up being the catalyst for all the bad things that come in the later books. I know this. I don't care. I was asked to wait too long, through too much random, boring nothingness for the payoff for skeeving me out. Also, when this well-known set of books was new, and it was just the first book in the series there on the shelf, the other books yet to be written, this future payoff would not have been a known known. Skeeve-o-matic. The author knows how to string a sentence together- I'll give him that - but there was an issue with the general delivery.

 

I liked 50 Shades. The first one; after that they got more ridiculous. A lot of self-proclaimed authors (who may or may not have published even a moderately successful book) have highly criticized the writing. I thought it was fine. The stories are eroto-romance pulp but the sales figures sure would indicate they aren't horrible books. And I don't think they are. Great literature? No.

I used to idolize Stephen King but anymore I find him...I don't know...somewhat high school English class in quality.

People like what they like. Books wouldn't be best sellers if they truly sucked. I think sometimes we authors tend to bash those we feel are inferior despite their success. Maybe not jealousy per se but we may feel our skill level is higher. And sometimes I don't doubt that it is.

 

I used to read him a lot as a kid, but likewise, I find his style very surface-y these days. I'm sure if I went back to Carrie or It, I'd still enjoy it though.

 

I dislike The Princess Bride

Kind of like how Wreybies read & reacted to Lord Foul's Bane, the more I read the more I felt convinced that the author was a serious sexist douche who just hated women.

First, there's his bitch, nagging (ex)wife. Okay, that can be a thing.

Then there's the hot Hollywood bimbo who is flirting with him to get a role in his next flick, and who he is considering screwing while in & out of calls from said bitch wife about their son's birthday present. Yuck, but sure, yeah, okay.

Then the princess obsessed with beautiful hats—which is a front for being bald, that disgusting treacherous liar. Um. . .

And the Duchess oogling sexy farmhand Westley like a hot hunk of man-meat she'd like to take home in a to-go box.

And obnoxious, bratty, entitled, hyperbolic Buttercup who treats the farm boy like dirt until another woman eyes up her goods and then she in melodrama fashion decides she must absolutely love him (the extreme exaggeration hinting that it's not true or else clearly built up beyond proportion)

Basically every woman is somehow scum—with the sole possible exception of Fezzik's mom who is only equally as somewhat-heartless as his father.

And you know he knows what he did too. Because the author wrote the screenplay to the cult classic film. And somehow, all of Buttercup's lines & reasons are completely changed (because woman bashing in a fairy tale film—even a parody of one—would be undermining the obvious audience/consumers, the core of which being made up of women).

The most striking change is when Buttercupt turns herself over to the Prince when she & Westley are surrounded by his men, where you can't deny the impact of the film's "I can't lose you—not again, not when I can save you" and the book's chilling "I can live without love" as she is swept off & away on the prince's horse, ultimately abandoning her oft vigourously proclaimed "true love" to his fate.

Also, the film Westley (disguised as Dread Pirate Roberts) warns Buttercupt that he'll strike her if she lies about having ever been truly in love with Westley. In the book, he just flat out smacks her (then says how it's the punishment for when women lie).

I think the author was clever enough to know what he wasn't going to get away with in film. And it just made me think very little of him as a person.

Which is funny, because I had always thought growing up that feminists had been blowing up misogyny & sexism & the male gaze and all beyond realistic means, and just liked making big stinks out of nothing. I was always the one to doubt any assertions that film or literature or anything really had it.

But Princess Bride was the first book that I felt sick about every single depiction of a female character. I get it's supposed to be humour, but this was the first book I read where I thought there really are men who hate, dislike, belittle, and find women generally inferior.

I know people love the book—some of my close friends adore it. I just myself haven't been able to read it any other way than as disliking women.

 

Actually I'm with you, although I love the books for their depths of plot, character and theme (as far as I can tell, anyway). Something about how GRRM actually writes sentences just irks me, so I don't get very far reading his books. I don't know how to explain other than his syntax strikes me as consistently clunky, although I wouldn't know if it gets better in the later books. I like hearing/reading summaries of the series, and obviously watching the show, but I just find the books themselves aggravating to read, for all that the story fascinates me.

I have the same problem with Brave New World. Story fascinates me, syntax annoys me every second sentence and drives my eyes from the page.

 

Is it 30-50% of his dialogue tags being "he said adverbly"? Maybe spelling out sounds effects of wolves howling and trumpets blaring?

 

Damn, I loved Brave New World when I had to read it for school years ago. One of the few books assigned in school I actually enjoyed. It wasn't the easiest book to read but I attribute that to being a science fiction story written in 1931.

I hear you on GRRM though. As much as I love the show, the books never did it for me. Or at least the first 100 pages of the first book. I keep telling myself I should go back and give it another shot but I've yet to do so.

I find myself abandoning a lot of books half-read because I simply just lose interest. I'm not really sure there's a specific reason why I abandon books but I just reach a point of no longer caring for the story or its characters. Perhaps its my short millennial attention span? The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker is a recent example that springs to mind. I really enjoyed the first 150-200 pages but it just got so weird and crazy and I didn't really care for any of the characters. The premise was really interesting and it starts with a bang but it just wasn't enough to push me to finish the whole thing. That being said, some books I cannot put down and finish in a day or two.

 

Bah, that's a terrible excuse! Syntactically inoffensive science fiction had been written more than a century before that (if we count things like Frankenstein, anyway), and in every decade between.

It seems to me there's a trap in sci-fi/fantasy in particular, that authors and readers can get caught up enough in genre trappings, speculative ideas and imaginative world-building, that they don't notice the kind of basic language problems that would irritate the average person in a more straightforward contemporary story.

It's a pain when someone has genuinely fascinating, big, imaginative ideas, but hasn't mastered the language to express them (or found a good editor to fix it). In GRRM's case, I'm just glad that the show is better at being a TV show than the books are good at being books.

 

For me it was that he gave the 3rd person omniscient narrator a Prithee tell, Goody Smith, whither goest thou? voice. It was too much. I'm totally down for the characters having their vernacular. I'm not so much down for the 3PO narrator making use of t'was and widdershins and other archaisms. Again, it was of a muchness.

 

I loved the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. I hated the ending of the series so much however that when I think about the series now it's almost always negatively, which isn't fair because I loved the series until the end.

 

Don't shoot me but I just finished The Night Circus and I've got to admit to some disappointment.

I think it was the multiple povs. I am very much a character reader. I need to invest in the character and if I do then I'd follow them anywhere. But this (though very atmospheric) was all about the plot. And it left me wanting something more...

Pity.

I'd heard such great things.

Maybe I'd expected too much based on the crazy hype.

 

Glad it wasn't just me.

I get it. His clothes is fancy oOo.