Ugh! Why did I read that book?!??!?!

Ooh, just remembered another one: The Harrad Experiment. I forget who wrote it.

It was supposed to be 60s counterculture, lots of sex. I read it while in High School, I think I may have found a way to hide it from my folks. It had sex in it, which kept me reading, but there was also a boatload of wacky sexual philosophy and really no clue about things like rape or even dating. Despite being allegedly enlightened, everyone ends up married (albeit to each other in a weird 6-person marriage thing) and a huge amount of the book is actually dedicated to some pretty traditional roles, e. g. men doing the pursuing and women being coy and getting pursued.

Tripe with occasional spice. Oof.

It was made into an even worse movie, starring Don Johnson, I think it was back when he was married to Melanie Griffith the first time around. Oy.

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There's a book in my car.

I've taken it with me on mmmmmmmm oh at least 5 or 6 trips/mini-vacations with the intention of reading it. Something to do with Western Mythologies about the Moon. <yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwn> I don't think I've ever made it past 5 or 6 pages. Better than a prescription for sleeping pills. Not even the illustrations help it.

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ahhhhhhhh
this is the thing

http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/graphics/1269.jpg

the cover is the best part of it

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jespah wrote:

Quote:

For me, the most recent book like this was Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I really couldn't stand it, because it was overly long (hundreds of pages probably could have been trimmed with no loss of, and probably a huge improvement in, quality), plus, the way Stephenson wrote about women it was as if he'd never actually met any. Plus the ending really stank; the book just stopped dead, like a car that had run out of gas. Or perhaps the writer had.

I read this one over the course of a few months and had a love-hate relationship with it. Some of the historical inaccuracies still make me cringe. After I finished , I passed it on to a friend and he flat out loved it . I think it was a trendy kind of book to read, it got good reviews in ultra-hip journals and such, and the hipsters and wannabees bought it up.

sozobe wrote:

Quote:

I'm currently half-heartedly struggling through "The Life of Pi" -- I almost always like Booker Prize winners, and I'm a fan of magical realism et al (which this isn't quite, so far anyway, but it's not that I don't have a tolerance for the fantastical). It's just badly written -- the Indian "voice" is especially grating to me, and patently false -- and the whole religious struggle part is deeply boring (and that's before we had the recent fun and games here...!) It strikes me as sloppy and lazy and just poo.

I couldn't have said it any better myself. I finished it, hoping for something worthwhile to come of it...I guess it depends on just how much free time you have, and are willing to invest. I was deeply disappointed.

Some other stinkers I have suffered through in the last few years include Dave Eggers "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a couple of Ayn Rand's works, and anything by Ann Rice.

I have opinions about books...strong ones.

I'll be back.

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See, I adored AHWOSG. It lives and dies by Eggers' voice, which I really identify with (we were born in the same year, were both raised in the Midwest, etc.). If the voice doesn't get you right off, I can see how the whole thing would be annoying.

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AHWOSG was one I really really tried to get through it, and just couldn't.

Trying to think why I found it so annoying....well, the part about his mom and dad dying was fine, and he goes off on his own I seem to remember, but then, well, that's as far as his emotional maturity seems to go.

Actually, he reminds me of this guy that just walked into our house right now, who works for my husband finishing up the everlasting remodel. He's 30 something years old, and after about 5 minutes of conversation, you realize he's got the content of most 16 year old boys.

Good, he's gone to the back of the house to work on the moulding.

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But there are layers, he's self-aware and self-mocking and then goes deeper and deeper and then comes back up for air...

But again I can see how it would be annoying, was just absolute manna for ME. (Adored it.) (Not him, necessarily, but the book.) (And definitely an element of jealousy -- maaaan, that's the book I wanted to write!!!)

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If I stopped after the first chapter or two of a book I wasn't really enjoying, I would not have finished Lord of the Rings. In that case, I was glad for my perseverance. It was thirty years ago but I still remember eagerly trying to get book two and then book three.

There have been a number of other books I'm glad I finished, too. Though I may not have loved them, they left an overall good impression, or resonated differently than I had at first anticipated. Hmmm. I'm trying to think of one when there must be a score.The Shipping News was purposely redemptive at the very end, if I remember. I finished the Stone Diaries thinking, "please don't let life be like that," but kind of despairing that it really is that way. Part of me is glad that I rarely remember plot, or other detail, and usually just retain a sense of whether I "liked," hated," or felt "indifferent," to it.

Almost without exception I finish what I start, but I have heaved more than one book at the floor once I was done with a "that sucked!" exclamation. A few others I've put aside for later for a variety of reasons. I don't always get back to them.

I really can't remember the title of a book I stopped reading because I hated it.

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sozobe wrote:

See, I adored AHWOSG. It lives and dies by Eggers' voice, which I really identify with (we were born in the same year, were both raised in the Midwest, etc.). If the voice doesn't get you right off, I can see how the whole thing would be annoying.

That's interesting, soz. My brother gave me the book because the protagonist reminded him of me. Maybe that's why I disliked it so. I kept muttering to myself for the whole book. :wink:

Has anyone read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace ? That's one that took me a long time to read, because I kept getting disgusted with one chapter and putting it aside, and then I would pick it back up and discover three or four chapters of genius.

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I completely understand Joeblow's position on this. I read and despised every one of Jean Aul's books.

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Jean Auel's books should not be cast aside lightly.... They should be thrown with great force.

(with apologies to whoever I'm paraphrasing there.)

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Quote:

I really can't remember the title of a book I stopped reading because I hated it.

I stop reading when I'm bored. Hate can be an engaging emotion. Boredom is alienating.

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LTX--

You are quoting/adapting/plagerizing Dorothy Parker.

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Chai Tea wrote:

AHWOSG was one I really really tried to get through it, and just couldn't.

Trying to think why I found it so annoying....well, the part about his mom and dad dying was fine, and he goes off on his own I seem to remember, but then, well, that's as far as his emotional maturity seems to go.

...you realize he's got the content of most 16 year old boys.

....

You're speakin' my language. That one just annoyed the hell outta me. I finished it, hoping to realize why other people loved it, and still could not figure out why. Oof.

Jean Auel - yes - doctor's waiting room fare. I'd rather read Highlights for Children.

And, I'm such a philistine, but I'm no fan of Return of the Native. It just out and out bored me, and so did Wuthering Heights. I suppose I have little personal context for either, even though I realize England, at the time, was repressive and classist and all of that. Didn't make me like either book.

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Oh man am I a stickler about this!
I hate when people quit in the middle of a book. It's like a pet peeve of mine. Two reasons:

1. YOU NEVER KNOW HOW GOOD A BOOK IS UNTIL YOU'RE ALL THE WAY THROUGH!!
There are some books I've read that had a terrible beginning, but in the end shaped up into a decent book. The book I'm reading now, for example, Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury is very, very hard to understand in the beginning 75 pages. This is because it's told from the point of view of a person who is mentally retarded. It's hard to understand it because he doesn't see things the way we do, but you've just got to push on and see how it turns out. And it's great, so far.

2. If you are a writer, a bad book can teach you more than a good one. This is because it shows you what NOT to do. This is effective in that a writer will learn not to make the mistakes that make a bad book, thus making him a decent writer, who knows how to write because he know how NOT to write.

Okay, I think it's fine if you quit a book in the middle or beginning. It's really not that big of deal. But, what I really hate is when someone tells you a book was bad, when they haven't read the whole thing. How do you know if you haven't read it all? I hate when people critique books they have read all the way through.

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I think I give a book more than an adequate amount of time to prove itself. If the author hasn't made his purpose known by the middle, sorry charlie.

I have less years left to read too, like relationships, you get to figure out both books and people faster when you've been around.

I will give an author another chance if I've never read them before. Can't think of one right now, but I've made a second attempt with an author on another book, and learn more of his style. Then I might go back and give the first one another try.

Also, tastes change.

I used to think Kurt Vonnegut was all that.

Today, I can appreciate where his coming from, but basically consider him a silly old man. But when I heard his message, I needed it.

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Hello fellow book-lovers:

I hate Margaret Atwood (Cdn - the Edible Woman, The Handmaid's Tale, blah blah)... I hated The Underpainter by Rebecca Urquhart - I literally threw it across the room after 2 pages - blech.

Love: Peter Hoeg - He wrote Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Woman and the Ape (very enchanting book), and The Borderliners - all three very different from one another...

I am shallow - I like happy books. I do not like things like Angela's Ashes or James Joyce - sorry, but there's enough of that in life, why read about it? Not for me. I want to feel good, to experience joy and laughter and those are the books I gravitate to.

I am sick of Maeve Bloody Binchy - she is like Dick Francis - same old same old... nothing new here at ala...

Captain Corelli's Mandolin was a decent read - better than the movie... Oh, and Jitterbug Perfume? Fantastico!

And comedy plays - Moliere, Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Shakespeare - love them! The more ridiculous and farcical the better Smile

anyway, that's it for my first book post! Smile

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Hey, Mame, welcome to the he-person book haters club. Or, something like that.

Smile

Actually, I tend to try to finish books I don't like in the beginning, mainly to see if there's anything redeeming about them. I didn't enjoy the first segment of Founding Brothers but now I'm getting into it. So what I'll probably do, once I finish it, is go back to the first segment and reread it, knowing what I know now. It might be better. It might not. You never know.

But I do give away, to charity, usually, books I haven't liked at all. I gave Cryptonomicon to my Dad because I figured he'd like the code-breaking parts, and he did. So all was not lost.

I also didn't care for The Handmaid's Tale. Too odd, I dunno, I just didn't care for it. It seemed like a wacky sexual fantasy or dream committed to paper. And that's not always something that should see the light of day.

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I think Chai Tea brought up the point of liking different stuff at different ages... I read "Handmaid's Tale" as a HS student I think, I thought it was very deep and telling about gender roles et al. I still think it's an interesting book, especially for its time (it's much more cliched now, as a subject), but it's kinda HS level.

Same with Jean Auel, I read it in I dunno 7th grade or something and it was GREAT then, but...

In the opposite direction, I absolutely despised "Lolita" the first time I read it in HS/ college, hated the dirty old man aspect, sickened me, then later on read it a couple more times and just love Nabokov's writing, his language, and saw more about how he was condemning and not glorifying HH.

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I almost always finish a book once I start it, on the "it might get better" theory. Sometimes that pays off, sometimes it doesn't. In the past year, I had to force myself to finish two novels that turned out to be big disappointments: On Beauty, by Zadie Smith, and A Way from Home, by Nancy Clark. (Oddly, on the Amazon page for A Way from Home, they suggest buying it together with On Beauty!)

In both cases, my disappointment may have had something to do with the high expectations I had for the books (in the case of On Beauty, I had high expectations because it had received so much critical praise, and in the case of A Way from Home, it was because I had loved Clark's previous novel, The Hills at Home), but I doubt that I would have liked either one even if I had had no expectations at all. I found both books boring, in large part because the characters were so unsympathetic that I couldn't care what happened to them. (I still heartily recommend The Hills at Home, however, and will read Clark's next book in the hope that A Way from Home was just a fluke.)

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Ugh! Why did I read that book?!??!?!

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