Books that weren't all that good.

[the Dept of Science]

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens was the worst piece of shit I've ever had the displeasure of reading. It was long-winded, excruciatingly dull, and insultingly pompous.

Damn I just bought that today...

 

[Jordi]

The bloody Harry Potter series.
"...Harry said cooly"

I really don't like reading, but I really enjoyed those. Although the later (bigger) books can get a bit long-winded.

There are some Dutch classics I really hate (Max Havelaar to name one). And also every book we had to read for English class. Angela's Ashes, Stone Cold, Disgrace, About a Boy and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are the ones I have yet to repress.

 

[Acaroid]

I have been reading Bran Stoker's Dracula lately and I really don't like it at all. It's very dry, slow, and I get what's going on chapters before the actual characters do. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever read a piece of classic work of literature and found it to be very bad?
Aside: Please don't focus your posts on my opinion on Dracula, just give your own.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

I really didnt like these books, I know alot of people who go on about it and I just didnt understnad why...
Snow crash I understand its place in history and sci-fi (inventing the term avatar for virtual bodies) and various other things, but it doesnt mean it was a good book.

Oh and I have to say....

Lord of the rings

I know I know, I just didnt like it ok...

 

[GrinningManiac]

Anything by Ernst Hemingway...it just dosen't work for me

Harry Potter and the Deathly Thingymajig - I mean, I grew up with all the books and enjoyed them at the time, but this one was just utter drawn-out drivel with a bunch of Deus Ex Machiana (sp?) moments and a lousy anticlimax

Romeo and Juliet - I think Shakespeare is actually really good, which most of my schoolmates find really weird, but R&J just sucks. Romeo's an obsessive, desperate little douche, and Juliet's a rich airhead

And Jane Austin, because it's so damn boring. Similar in style to War and Peace (which I am reading and enjoying), but the plot goes nowhere, the characters are all dull and everything is sorted out by having gossips amid that stupid do-se-do dance they do every fecking night

 

[Sovvolf]

I wouldn't call it classic literature but I read a book called hardest bastards by Kate Kray and well it was just shite. A book profiling the apparent hardest bastards in the UK and well only about three could be called hard. The rest were just thugs... look Kate I know your husband was a gangster but people who shoot other people are not hard, don't make a book about hard bastards and fill it up with people who's reasons for being hard are "I shoot people" or "I've shot some one". There was some people I can call an hard bastard in there, like a man who got stabbed in the back then walked in the pub, sat down, had a few pints and didn't realise he'd got a knife in him until some one pointed it out to him.

Another book was one on Lenny Mcleans life (The bare knuckled boxer) I just put it down about 6 chapters in... the book consisted of Lenny stating the following "I'm hard", "No body wanted to mess with me because I was hard" and "Every on respected me because I was hard". Sorry Lenny you was a good Bare Knuckled boxer but get your head out of your arse.

 

[Jamiemitsu]

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. 400 pages of tedium.

Oh no you diddont!

 

[aseelt]

The latest book by Richard Morgan, Steel Remains

Usually I'm a fan of his works, but the latest one is dull, with unlike-able characters, and is difficult to read.

 

[The Heik]

I have been reading Bran Stoker's Dracula lately and I really don't like it at all. It's very dry, slow, and I get what's going on chapters before the actual characters do. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever read a piece of classic work of literature and found it to be very bad?
Aside: Please don't focus your posts on my opinion on Dracula, just give your own.

this pretty much happens with every book, movie, game, comic strip, theatre show, and TV show I've seen/read/played. Maybe we're just good at extrapolating the plot?

 

[GeekFury]

Anything by Dan Brown, entertaining as hell but when you're done reading it you feel ashamed of yourself for reading it.

 

[Daniel Cygnus]

I never could bring myself to get more than halfway through The Two Towers before giving up on The Lord of the Rings. I know there's a good story hidden in there somewhere, and that's why it hurts me to have never finished it. There's way too much singing and way too much description of things that aren't even that important to begin with.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I really, really, really hate Ethan Frome. It's particularly poorly written, but its characters are all horribly unlikable and completely unrelatable, which makes it impossible to care about anything that happens to them. I think a big part of the problem is that someone as rich as Edith Wharton just didn't know enough about impoverished farmers to write them believably. I don't really like any of her books, because they're all character driven narratives about people I can't relate to in the slightest, but Ethan Frome is by far the one I hate most.

Also, The Scarlet Letter is boring as hell, except for about five pages about Chillingworth, and the entire first chapter (which is more than twice as long as any of the others) is completely and totally unnecessary.

 

[electric_warrior]

Heart Of Darkness

it's only short, but damn does it go on forever.

 

[Armored Prayer]

That book 'Night' by that famous Jewish Holocaust survivor.

It was just way too depressing for me. It sucked even more because my High School had a weird fascination for books about the Holocaust and Racism in America, and it felt like reading the same depressing story over and over again.

 

[Toaster Hunter]

Ulysses by James Joyce
It is considered the greatest piece of literature of the 20th century. If I wrote like that, I would be put in an asylum for insanity.

 

[Byrn Stuff]

The Great Gatsby
Catcher in the Rye
Frankenstein

 

[Valksy]

I sort of suspect that I should slip into some fire retardant garments before I say Lord of the Rings.

I hated it. I hated the huge passages where feck all happened and I hated the appalling doggerel every five pages. One of the few books I have never managed to read to the end.

Every time I hear someone whine that the movies left out Tom Bombadil, I have the desperate urge to slap them...

 

[hermes]

I have a hard time reading some really old books (I think my lower limit is in the XVIII century), with some exceptions.

I didn't enjoyed Dante's Paradise (descriptions were boring and too generic) and Purgatory; neither I did like the Oddisey (situations were ridiculous, and I am not talking about the mythological parts) or Moby Dick (the book is 80% uneventful)

Also I enjoy a good Lovecraft story as good as any but sometimes he just gets tiringly verbose.

My main issue with Lovecraft is that most stories felt the same (even when they are not the same). Its kind of weird, and can't point out why... I read a stories collection and the first stories were incredible, but after 5 or 6 I just had a very strong deja vu feeling...

 

[Cheeky Marmoset]

Frankenstein. Ugh.

Also I enjoy a good Lovecraft story as good as any but sometimes he just gets tiringly verbose.

I agree. It seems like he gets paid by the word in some stories.

 

[Frenger]

Hmmm, not many.

Why? I can't recall them. Bad or mediocre books I simply do not pay much attention too once I stopped reading em'. I guess the same goes for games and music.

I did loath "Old man and the sea", but I was like 11- 12 when I was forced to read it and books in general was boring as hell. Quite the opposite now.