Books everyone seems to love, but you just can't

[Ralif Redhammer]

Within genre, Butcher's Harry Dresden series' popularity just baffles me. Abercrombie's The Blade Itself left me cold for about 75% of it.

Outside of genre works, just about everything Hemmingway and Steinbeck wrote springs to mind.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Within genre, Butcher's Harry Dresden series' popularity just baffles me. Abercrombie's The Blade Itself left me cold for about 75% of it.

Outside of genre works, just about everything Hemmingway and Steinbeck wrote springs to mind.

I quite enjoyed Steinbeck; but if we're talking about American classics; the author I cannot read is Jack Kerouac. Tedious. It does indeed read like he splurted his books out while drunk and never bothered to revise anything. That's supposed to a virtue. It's not - the final product is unreadable crap.

 

[payn]

Atlas Shrugged, ugh. So many break out of nowhere 30min diatribes about how awesome capitalism is and the main character bangs all the best dudes at it. Rand caricaturizes socialists, while offering zero solutions to the problem of government other than magical gulches...

Bored of the Rings. I loved Fellowship, the next two where absolute chores to read through.

 

[the Jester]

David Eddings' work- I read the Belgariad, though I thought it was pretty awful, because of how much people had talked it up. I kept expecting it to get better. Ugh. Then I started the sequel series, egged on by its fans- but it read like the same story over again, so I tossed them aside and gave up a few chapters in.

 

[Mercurius]

The Name of the Wind. The worst kind of self-indulgent fantasy wrapped in the world's most tedious framing device.

Yeah, me too. I tried two or three times, made it about 100 pages in, but found the viewpoint character annoying.

Also, Harry Potter. Good for what it is, but just not my thing.

 

[cmad1977]

After my Dad read it all, I started the Dune series. But I couldn’t get past the 2nd novel in the series.

They stop being good right about there as I recall.

 

[Gradine]

Oh, and also Taran Wanderer in the Prydain Chronicles. I loved the rest of the series, but this one bored me to tears. I kept wanting them to bring Eilonwy back. There was something about boy-becomes-a-man narratives that I just could never connect with.

That should have been the first clue for me, honestly.

 

[RangerWickett]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Couldn't get into it.

I'm mixed on Neil Gaiman, too. I keep enjoying the setup of his stories but every single ending I'm left sort of shrugging. (I've read some Sandman, American Gods, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, listened to Neverwhere's BBC radio drama, and watched Coraline.)

 

[Dioltach]

Oh, and also Taran Wanderer in the Prydain Chronicles. I loved the rest of the series, but this one bored me to tears. I kept wanting them to bring Eilonwy back. There was something about boy-becomes-a-man narratives that I just could never connect with.

It's definitely the weakest in the series, but I think it serves mostly as the basis for Taran's development in the final book. If you've read it once, you can skip it next time you reread the series, or at least only read the final confrontation with the outlaw at the end, for all the symbolism.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm mixed on Neil Gaiman, too.

I read most of American Gods, and while it was a good story, I couldn't see what the super big deal about it was, or why so many people lavish all over Gaiman. I'm more of a fan of him personally than of his writing.