What Popular Book/Series Can You Not Stand?

I have to go along with a couple of people in this thread and say Game of Thrones. Never watched the show, never read a single line of any of the books. I can't stand how much hype the series got and have to admit that I was actually a little relieved when I heard the show ended horribly. It confirmed what I suspected: it was a tits and dragons, dog and pony show that was poorly written and marketed for the masses. That is, of course, coming from someone who never watched the show. I base(d) my opinion off of reading reviews and talking to people who actually watched the show. Some tried to convince me over and over to commit to the series, but plenty told me not to bother. I'm glad I listened to the latter.

As far as a famous, overly-hyped book series I actually read... well... I tried really hard to get into 50 Shades of Gray and just couldn't do it. It was terrible. I think I quit a few chapters in.

 

This. After years of people telling me I 'need' to watch it, I finally gave in and borrowed the first season box set. I was bored shitless and irritated to such a degree I wanted to hurt people. I didn't even make it to the end of episode one.

Same goes for all these hyped-to-fucking-hell-long-running-TV-shows-with-attitude-you-can-shove-up-your-arse-and-fuck-off-with.

"Ooh, did you watch (insert latest hyped TV show here) last night?"
"No! Did you see my fist coming to your face?"

 

I feel like everyone in this thread looks like this:

 

Even the ladies?

 

Me three for Hairy Potter.

I don't know if the Wheel of Time is "popular" or not, but it's terrible. Robert Jordan was clearly working on the theory that a high word count means a better story. All the female characters were basically identical, and he just kept throwing in more and more subplots that I believe were never resolved. Unfortunately, I only came to this conclusion after book 7.

 

Seems probable.

 

Vampire Diaries. Its like, as soon As I picked up the book in 9th grade, EVERYone was talking about the tv series that was coming out. I never finished the book and avoided the tv series like the plague.
To this day, I havent picked up the book again.

Sorta the same thing happened with the Twilight Saga. I picked it up in 7th grade, and, for a while, it seemed like I was the only one reading it and that was perfectly fine with me. Then, right around the 3rd book, is when the hype started coming about and the "team jacob/team edward" came about. then I started getting teased because I was reading it, and the other girls were fawning over robert pattinson and taylor lautner and asking me which team I was on and etc. That killed it for me.
I still finished the series, and even went to go see the movie the opening night (big mistake... girls were screaming and clapping and making fools of themselves in the theater and i high tailed it out of there).

Hunger Games, I dont dislike, but following the same vein as the other two series i mentioned, I read the entire first book and had even preordered the next book..... then the hordes came and it got really popular and talks of a movie was circulating around... so I canceled my order and never went back to that series lol.
The movies were cool, though.

 

Now I feel old, and I am but in my early 30's.

 

It's been discussed to death, but I refuse to watch or read Hunger Games, as my view is that it's a rip-off of Battle Royale.

 

I dress more like a drug dealer than a Brooklyn hipster. No wonder I hate having a 9 to 5.

 

I must say that’s some perseverance you have there, for a book series you didn’t like.

 

I can't stand Harry Potter ...
I do read fantasy a lot - and not all of it is the classical high fantasy style as the lord of the rings but even some books I never really came to understand I dislike none as much as Harry Potter... I just can't tell you why.
I've tried reading it in english as translations often lose in details but still I just don't like it...

 

There came a point where I'd put so much effort in to it already, it felt like I should try to carry on.

 

Well not that it deterred millions of other adults, but it was aimed specifically at the very young as far as I understand. Maybe that’s the reason.

 

You know, Harry Potter was cool when I was in like fifth grade. I couldn't imagine trying to read it now. I'd actually have a hard time getting into any sort of fantasy now, to be honest.

 

I First read i

I first read it during 5th grade... Still I didn't like it back then...

 

Yeah, I mean I never thought it was anything special, even back then. It was cool, but I wonder how much I liked it just because it was "in" at the time and I just wanted to see what the hype was about.

 

ASoIaF. I have no interest in reading edgy teenage fantasy fiction... In fact, I really just don't care for most modern fantasy though I claim to be a reader of the genre. Give me lyrical and complex and understated, not gritty, sexual and provocative. Most fantasy is not to my liking at all. If it has dual-wielding dark elves who spout "badass" one-liners, it's not for me. If it has the line, "Her cunt became the world" it's definitely not for me.

 

I love George Martin , he's nice, he's a very good writer, I love his writing style, I love his book "Nightfly".
I hate Game of Thrones, book and tv-show sorry
I don't like history.
I struggled to finish the first book.

 

not exactly true. Dune Messiah does not dwell on Bene Gesserit mysticism, per se. it does, however, have Paul dwell a lot (at wearingly length about his struggles with destiny.

 

I have TV Tropes permanently blocked on my browser, but if you look through it, I think you can find many antecedents to the central trope.

 

The Thomas Covenant books. The most pointless backpack trip ever.

 

I read Dune recently and thoroughly enjoyed it; one thing I would say though is that Frank Herbert's prose style is merely functional for the most part. He's not a bad writer by any means but memorable turns of phrase seem to crop up mostly in the dialogue. I tend to love flowery prose like Gene Wolfe, and it seemed to me that would have fit the subject better.

A series I wanted to love in middle school, but ended up hating, was Brian Jacques' Redwall series. Not only were the books repetitive but the fairly strict identification of species with moral inclination, to the point that a ferret with a good mouse upbringing will still turn bad, struck me as encouraging the worst kind of stereotyping. "Oh, but it's just fantasy" is an argument that does not fly- our fantasies the center of life, not the periphery.

 

I'm gonna say Hunger Games because of the ending where Katniss goes against her character completely . I was with her until she had kids. You don't spend an entire series saying you'll never have kids because the games could always come back and you don't want to subject your children to that and then have kids. I know people can change their minds, but for me, it rang false and like a way to end on a supposedly sweet note for Katniss and Peeta. Katniss didn't love him or Gale/Dale/Liam Hemsworth, not really. Her primary concern was to keep her family alive and safe. No one else mattered.

I guess I feel pretty strongly about the ending. I didn't think I did.

 

There's antecedents, and then there's rip-offs.