While She Knits - Haters Gonna Hate

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

What are the books you love to hate?  Maybe a book had rave reviews but you thought it was awful.  Maybe you looked forward to a new release only to find it disappointing.  Maybe the book came oh-so-close to being awesome but then something happened to make you want to throw it across the room (yes, I'm talking about YOU, The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Manchee!!!)

What are the books you love to hate?

Edited to add:  You guys are awesome when you're hating.  Knew I could count on you.

Comments

[helle-d.livejournal.com]

For me it has to be Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett's Havemercy. It has a lot of tropes I really like, and a lot of concepts (mechanical dragons!) that should have been awesome. The romance was adorable and exactly my kind of thing - interesting gay relationship between a young and naive (but by no means stupid) tutor and a jaded older magician...
Also, dragons!

Unfortunatly, what spoilt an otherwise near-ideal book (for my tastes) was the complete and utter lack of women. The book was hardly set in a monastery; though one storyline depicted an extremely macho military culture, there wasn't plot justification to have about two female speaking characters, one of whom has maybe one line and the other is a Jealous ShrewTM whose sole narrative purpose is to create obstacles for the lovers. By the second book, there were eight point-of-view characters, all male and all (I think) unnecessarily so.
(And that's even before getting into the skeeviness of having one narrator a camp cross-dresser and another, described as being really feminine, having to disguise himself as a woman for a while. It's like, female characteristics are fine, but as long as they're on male characters?)

I might be over thinking this, but it did make me uncomfortable - I really, really wnated to like this series, but I just couldn't finish the second book.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I read Havemercy after hearing rave reviews and don't remember a single thing about it, except that it was ho-hum. (Ok, I'll admit to not being able to remember ANYTHING these days, but I do remember Havemercy being a big disappointment.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

A Countess Below Stairs.

Yeah, I know some of you love this book. The writing is what originally caught me and kept me reading, but honestly, for me the romantic relationship just got worse and worse as the book progressed, rather than better and better. One of the worst moments for me was (mild SPOILERS) when he forbids her from cutting off her hair. I mean, seriously? How could that ever be attractive or romantic? Let her make her own decisions for goodness sake. That wasn't the only moment that made me mad, but its the one that I remember most clearly.

Yeah. Ugh.

[brandy-painter.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on this one! I haven't liked either of Ibbotson's historical romances I've read.

[brandy-painter.livejournal.com]

I don't like Kristen Cashore's books. I know lots of people do, but I'm not one of them. I couldn't even bring myself to read the third.

Another that a lot of people seem to love and I just don't get is Shadow and Bone. I feel like such a rebel because every review I read people rave and I can only shake my head thinking ???????

A book that I nearly threw across the room-would have if it hadn't been a library book-was The Hero and the Crown. I know. Again lots of people love it. But I was so furious at the end I could barely see the words through the red haze. My husband had to listen to me rant for a full fifteen minutes.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

I tried to read Graceling, but I didn't get very far. I'm not sure why, but I've never been able to connect to Cashore's books.

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

Two books that I'd like to forget I ever read are Ghost Girl by Tonya Hurley and Hush by Donna Jo Napoli.

Ghost Girl mostly seemed to be about a recently deceased ghost girl stalking her high-school crush. It was creepy... and not because of the ghosts.

Hush started out on a good note, but quickly degraded into a depressing story about slavery that had no real ending, unless you count the protagonist resigning herself to a horrible future.

Also, I have a love-hate relationship with Maria V. Snyder's Insider series. I adored the first one, but the sequel...





You get my drift. XD

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Haha, just noticed that LJ had spammed your comment, but it totally deserves to be prominently displayed.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I am so glad that I'm not the only one who couldn't get through Mysterious Benedict Society. I started reading it to my oldest son and we both gave up around the 1/4 mark. I skimmed the rest to make sure I hadn't missed anything but... as far as I could tell, I hadn't.

I wouldn't say I hated it, just that I couldn't see the appeal.

[bluejayfic.livejournal.com]

*looks around furtively*
Game of Thrones. No, I know, I know, I know. I know. Everyone loves it. I read the first book, and stopped. Here's the thing: I like (a)reading about sympathetic characters, not just complete assholes, and (b)having them survive at least sometimes. GoT killed off every character as soon as I started to like them, which was apparently the point.

Do I even have to mention Twilight? What about Eragon?

Even Twilight doesn't annoy me that much, though. For whatever reason, I very rarely have a strong negative reaction to books. Strong positive reactions, on the other hand... well. The list of really awesome books just keeps getting longer and longer. For example, I recently (very recently) discovered Martha Wells. She's not quite the best thing since sliced bread, but she is, very possibly, the best thing to happen to me since I discovered Lois Bujold. Wait, no, I've also discovered Lymond since then. Whatever. Point being, I don't dwell on books I feel meh about, so I don't work up negativity.

[peanut13171.livejournal.com]

Yes! LOVE LOVE LOVE Martha Wells!! She has a new YA book out, Emily and the Hollow World. Intrepid heroine ends up on a ship that travels to the center of the earth and encounters adventures.

[manderelee.livejournal.com]

I actually got tons of books that fit the bill, but one of them is Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. The thing is I loved Heart's Blood so I couldn't wait to hop on to her more popular series. Oh boy, was I in for a surprise. Not the good kind. Maybe it's just me though; I'm quite sensitive to sexual content, and that thing that happened to the MC in the middle of the forest, in the middle of the book, by some random characters that have no relevance to the story whatsoever who showed up for two pages in order to just do that to her, yeah that thing bothered the crap out of me. And oh wait, the worse part is when this lady of the forest or some such decided it was time for the MC to stop sulking around and told her to get over it. Best motivational speech ever.

[brandy-painter.livejournal.com]

Yes! I love Heart's Blood and Wildwood Dancing, but Daughter of the Forest I could not handle for the exact same reasons.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

(to the tune of "John Brown's Body")

Dan Brown's story is a-moldering in my brain…
...

tl;dw

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Ha! You read more than two pages of his terrible prose? I pity you.

[dina786.livejournal.com]

I got the Delirium series by Lauren Oliver and the first book was good in the beginning, but then they weren't! Why did they have to have so much killing and violence? I guess that is what put me off! I know a lot of people will be disagreeing with me tremendously, but I don't know I just didn't like the series much. Sorry Delirium fans!
:(

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I really liked the first book in Delirium. The second was ok. But the third--all the sudden f-bombs, and the action was so...small, I guess. No changing the world through an epic battle or at least by government overthrow. It was just all told from the characters' POV as they remained out in the wilderness or at the hospital. IDK, it just seemed anti-climactic. And speaking as the middle school librarian, the language in the third book was jarring after the lack of in the first two.

I may be getting Oliver's books mixed up the the Matched series. I read them all at the same time, which was a mistake. Now I'm burned out on dystopian books.

[hazelwillow.livejournal.com]

Daughter of Smoke and Bone... And I know some of you loved it.

I didn't hate it on purpose. I promise.

It just drove me up the wall by accident. I liked the magic and the portals to other places and the mystery with the teeth, but I didn't like that when describing the real-world setting (Prague) the author had this tendency to mention all the magical and beautiful and charming and interesting and bizarre details, without also mentioning the normal things in between. Everything was fantastical, the cobblestone streets were magical, the cafes were morbidly interesting, the whole place was like something out of a fairy tale... which is wonderful, but I can't picture a real city. Where was the grit? The traffic? The locals? I love romance, and I look for it in real places, but for me to believe it, I can't be wondering when the real city is going to appear, and whether this is set in another world because it seems so different from a present-day place. (When I read the book, I hadn't been to Prague, but since then I have been. It's very beautiful, a medieval city, very romantic...and commercialized. Full of tourists. Made even better because it has streetcars, Soviet-era tenement houses, graffiti, modernist, dirty subway stations, etc. Busses. Normal things.) That's just an example... everything had this ungrounded quality to me.

I got so fed up with the fantasy of it all that I couldn't stand it. And then it didn't have an ending. That was the last straw.

I'm so sorry. :(

I also hate The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Blech.

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

I think tons of people loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone, but I'm with you. I didn't hate it, but it was so teen-paranormal-romance-WHY. And I thought it had so much potential in the beginning!

I didn't hate The Poisonwood Bible, but it did make me hate myself for a little while.

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

Ooh, a chance to rant! Exciting :) Thanks for this prompt, checkers!

I recently started and could not get through a gritty sort of alternate-reality fantasy called The Left Hand of God. Not as religious as it sounds; in fact, their dominant religion diverges from Christianity in a couple important ways, part of what makes it alternate reality. Or... maybe it was post-apocalyptic? I was never quite sure, and that irritated me. But that was pebbles compared to the fact that the author could not get over his sneering contempt for pretty much every character who wasn't the protagonist. Every other person in the story was described in the most uncharitable, reader-leading sort of way. The hero's sidekicks are dull and unimaginative, or conniving and cowardly; the girl they're rescuing from the creepy convent environment where she was raised is stupid! because she's inexperienced and naive! and also physically weaker than them, which makes her horrible!; the noblemen of this extravagant court are all backstabbing snakes with hidden agendas; the noblewomen are all catty, petty, and selfish; the commoners in the city they rule over are all either stupid, criminals, or both. Tons of sexist assumptions heaped onto every male/female interaction that occurred (a professional assassin decided to betray her [male] partner at the last second and kill him instead of their target--the hero--because she fell in love with the hero at first sight? which just made my BLOOD BOIL.)

Basically I felt like we were supposed to just hate everyone who wasn't the hero, and I don't like when an author tries to tell me what to think.

Also, seconding what some of you above have said about Graceling. I finished it, and it was fine, but utterly forgettable. To me, it felt like the entire setting of the four fantasy kingdoms was just a cardboard cutout. I couldn't picture it in my head at all. Also, [spoiler!] Cashore took away one character's sight only to give him awesomer, better magical sight for his Grace, as a consolation prize, which to my mind means she does not get to act like that is a real sacrifice, the way she did at the end of the book.

[lizzyazula.livejournal.com]

Cashore took away one character's sight only to give him awesomer, better magical sight for his Grace, as a consolation prize, which to my mind means she does not get to act like that is a real sacrifice, the way she did at the end of the book.

Kristen Cashore has realized this. I listened to her speak when she came to town, and she said she regretted her mistake, but unfortunately wasn't in a position to fix it (what with the book already being published). She also put in an apology for it in her Bitterblue acknowledgments page.

[madclairvoyant.livejournal.com]

I hated Dracula. It just did not speak to me.

I mean, the plot had plenty of potential, seeing how much of the story is constructed much like a chase.

The front was alright, with the typical derelict manor, and kind helpful villagers who know more than anyone, and the creepy owner with more secrets than a catacomb. But the pull was not there, and it made the story lag quite a bit.

After Jonathan becomes stricken with a temporary mental affliction, the focus was shifted to Mina Harker and her friend Lucy. And there in lies the problem; I found the whole situation rather stupid. Obviously, if Van Helsing could recognise the problem later so easily, would he not have realised in the first place that Lucy was losing blood rather quickly? Other than that, after he suspects and believes that he had been right about Lucy becoming a monster too, would he not have take steps to ensure both the fact that the garlic is not removed, being firmly secured in the room, and to have at least two or more people watching her to prevent the girl from leaving the room? And the same sort of problem recurs with the patient under John Seward, and even Mina herself, simply because they were not as careful as they could be. Which made the whole story really boring and frustrating.

And the part about making the boxes holy were just unspeakably lame to me, plus the fact that the emphasis is placed so heavily on religion, that the book risks alienating the greater audience that is not Christian.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Well to be fair, it was written in 1895, you're looking at it through long familiarity with tropes that this book was the start of popularizing, and the author really wasn't thinking about the possibility of a non-Christian audience (and the use of Catholic folklore is really interesting when you consider that this was an Irishman writing for an English audience and exactly how fraught the portrayal of folk-catholic beliefs and superstitions would be for him even if he's presenting them as Eastern European rather than Irish superstitions).

(Also to be fair, I taught Dracula this year, so I've been doing a bit of pulling it apart to see how it ticks. The first time I read it, I was just kind of shocked at how blatantly rapey it was. And I still prefer Carmilla for early Vampire narratives. Anyhow, the shifts in focus are kind of the best part of the book, because you need to stop thinking of it as a straight narrative. There's no 19th Century omnipotent narrator informing you. It's a patchwork of different narrative voices and styles, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, and it refuses to be reduced to a single voice or plot, while it exposes a lot of fears, desires, and obsessions.)

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

Okay. This goes strongly against my "focus on the positive" approach to books, but I decided I'm going to take the plunge, get it off my chest, make my confessions, etc. ;P

*deep breath*

I really did not like the Chrestomanci books. *ducks*

N. D. Wilson's intrusive, snarky, pompous, ain't-I-cute-and-clever-oh-yeah-the-story author voice drives me absolutely insane.

Despite a life-long admiration for (read: obsession with) all things C. S. Lewis... I'm not real hot about his Space trilogy. I mean, I do like it. It's very memorable. But it took me three tries to get through the series, and parts of it are just weird and kind of boring.

Tithe by Holly Black. UGH. Why is this so popular? Seemed to me like a particularly bad case of 'Too make up for my sub-par plot, clipped writing, and steamy-daydream characters, I shall henceforth make this story as gritty as possible, you know, to keep it real and get awards for daring".

There. I did it. I feel so... light. And yeah, feel free to challenge/disagree with any of these opinions. I'm totes fine with that. I know the individual-to-book relationship is intensely personal and I've certainly wholeheartedly loved books that other readers didn't take to, at all. It's not always a straightforward business, explaining why you love what you love and dislike what you dislike.

[lizzyazula.livejournal.com]

WHAT IS WITH CHRESTOMANCI? I love those books to the death, and yet I've given Chrestomanci out to all of my best friends (so, uh, two people haha) and they didn't like them either, despite enjoying Howl. I think it's because Chrestomanci lacked any romantic element for the main characters (or if there was a romantic element, it was very subtle. DWJ doesn't exactly write romance like romance), but that doesn't feel like enough to me. Can I ask what you didn't like about it?

[tiegirl.livejournal.com]

Not gonna do details 'cuz I suck at reviewing, but I really, really, really disliked A Handmaid's Tale. The writing was fine, but I just hated everything about the story.

[agentmaly.livejournal.com]

Me too! Back in high school I switched schools and I was going to have to read Handmaid's Tale for AP English. I got about halfway through, and then I was approved to join the IB programme instead. Now that I think of it, some portion of my motivation to join the IB track involved not having to finish that book. It was just so bleak, and for reasons I didn't find sensible. I don't like dystopia for the sake of dystopia - the concept is only interesting to me when it's either super creative and entertaining, like Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, or postulating a society that's a clear extension of disturbing trends in our current world. But I wasn't even sure what Margaret Atwood was driving at on the current trends front - obviously she was concerned about women's freedoms and reproductive rights, but I really don't see the society she describes as any sort of logical extension of women being denied birth control or abortions.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I have a good few. I'll start from the academic side of things, just because I have to deal with it more:

Ulysses. Joyce is kind of a big deal and I have to teach him, and I like Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners fine. I respect what Joyce did with Ulysses, but part of what he did was scamming the academics. (Fair play, but now I have to deal with it.) And I do not like Leopold Bloom as a character. I do not want to spend lots of time in the head of Leopold Bloom. Why does everybody love Leopold Bloom? I'd rather spend more time in dirty, scared-of-women, arrogant failure, insomniac, insecure Stephen Dedalus' head.

John McGahern. He's really trendy in the circles I'm in right now, and I find his work completely unappealing. And I'm going to have to read more of it.

James Fenimore Cooper. Anything by him. Ugh. Hate him, hate him, hate him. The only redeeming quality Fenimore Cooper had was that Mark Twain wrote a deliciously accurate take down of his novels.

Charles Dickens. I've had to spend far too much time with The Old Curiosity Shop, and it's the most painful saccharine pabulum.

On the more contemporary / stuff I don't have to be all literary critic about:

Steven King: I have friends who love him. I've tried a few books, and I just can't get into him. His style drives me up the wall . . . so many comma splices!

Robert Heinlein: Maybe I just started with all the wrong books (I started with Friday, then Job: A Comedy of Justice and then a few others) and I should never have picked up the version of Stranger in a Strange Land that advertised itself as "The Way Heinlein Would Have Wanted It . . . without being sullied by editors" (I think that taught me why editors are so necessary). But, the only Heinlein book I've found remotely enjoyable was Starship Troopers, and that was a rather odd meditation on war.

The Mists of Avalon: I was on a serious Arthurian kick and I thought I'd enjoy a feminist take on Arthurian Legend, but it was like getting hit in the head repeatedly and at great length.

Um, what was the first book in Robert Jordan's interminable Wheel of Time series again? Ye gods. 800 pages without the slightest attempt to make a character I could take the slightest interest in.

Interview with a Vampire: One of my close friends when I was a teen was so sure I'd love it. I got thirty pages in before giving up, because I really had no desire to read what felt like the author typing one-handed while jilling off with the other hand.

[lizzyazula.livejournal.com]

I second Mists of Avalon. I read that when I was a mere 13-year-old. Took me an entire month. Never again.

[bluejayfic.livejournal.com]

I love how a good portion of the discussion has mutated into discussion of books we love.

Oh wait... that's mostly my fault. Sorry.
(Notsorrynotsorrynotsorry.)

[(Anonymous)]

I have to say that I seriously disliked Wuthering Heights. It struck me as a particularly long, dramatic, and generally bad case of angst, with unreliable storytelling (not in a good way), and a character who is there simply because only if he knows the story, so do we. (He is also incredibly gullible to believe everything the housekeeper says, despite certain discrepancies.) And Heathcliff is just petty, Cathy is spoilt, and they could have resolved the problem with a talk, if they stopped avoiding each other.

[inkasrain.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed "The Hunger Games", but "Catching Fire" was pointless, and I fundamentally oppose many of the concepts brought up in "Mockingjay." I also think that Suzanne Collins is, to be honest, sort of over-rated as an author.

*ducks*

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

Ha, I thought The Hunger Games was pretty unoriginal, that Catching Fire was at least a better-told story, and that Mockingjay was absolutely terrible. And I definitely agree with you about Suzanne Collins.

[(Anonymous)]

Crown Duel (2-in-1 of Crown Duel and Court Duel), by Sherwood Smith. It's the *kind* of story I generally like, and want to like, but this specific one rubbed me the wrong way. The overarching reason was *SPOILERS* (though you could see this coming a mile away) Mel hated Vidanric through about 95% of the book, and I hated him too as I entered into her character (even though objectively seeing that she was way overreacting), but when she decides to love him at the end, her narration didn't back that up enough to make an emotionally convincing transition (not for me, anyway), so I was still hating him even though she was suddenly not.

--Handmaiden

[1221bookworm.livejournal.com]

SPOILER ALERT!

I absolutely LOVE both books, and one of my favorite pick-me-up scenes is when Danric reveals that he is her "Unknown." I can definetly see how it is not particularly backed up in the story. I always wished there was more of their letters back and forth to see more of her relationship with him changing. Also, from reading different comments by Sherwood Smith over on Athaneral - sorry, no link or lj will spam me *again* :( - Mel realized she was falling in love with him, and there were all these subtle hints in the book - I'll admit, I didn't see them. But they are still one of my all time favorite couples. I would also have liked to see more of them together *after* the big reveal, but, alas, there was very little of that in the bok.

I absolutely LOVE the last line of the epilogue *points to icon*

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

Anything Cassandra Clare has ever written because UGH, and Twilight, because of the phenomenon that it became, from mediocrity and a rather disturbing relationship. Also Hush, Hush (all thirty pages I read of it - a BAD thirty pages). And Lord of the Flies, and Going Bovine, and The Diviners, and The Time Traveler's Wife, and Farthing.

So. Quite a lot, apparently.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I feel like I'd have to touch something written by Casandra Clare to hate it . . . or can I just hate it because it's written by her and I had enough of her in Harry Potter fandom?

[queenofattolia.livejournal.com]

As I've said here before, I really did not like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell or Stardust, even though practically everyone I know loved both.

I also really did not love The Sister Brothers, which felt to me like a half-hearted riff on Deadwood. It was creepy and bloody, and the story served no purpose - it illuminated nothing, left a bad taste in the mouth, etc. Bleh. I finished it, but I also gave it away immediately afterward (something I almost never do).

I hate to admit this, but I've never been able to read the Sharp novels or Novik's Temeraire series. No interest after the first few pages.

And don't get me started on dreck such as Gone Girl or Stieg Larsson's Millennium books. I cannot account for their popularity. Terrible books about awful people with no redeeming qualities.

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

Temeraire was interesting for me. I adored the first book, so I think our opinions don't match there, but the series has gone pretty much straight downhill from that point, to the point where I'm not even contemplating reading the most recently published installment, so you're probably not missing much.

[elle-winters.livejournal.com]

I dont know if this was mentioned but Twilight. I tried to read that series because the urging of all my friends and how much they raved about it. Found it completely 2D with all the characters. I couldn't stand it after the first one I forced myself to read, I only got through a couple pages of the second and never bothered with the movies.

Another title I recall disliking was The False Prince, I think it had potential but it was TOO much of a mwt knock off, I imagine I *might* have enjoyed somewhat if I had not read The Thief first. I don't know, I found it very obvious and didn't like the way we were just "told" what was going on. Come on, let the reader do some figuring out!!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I felt the same about THE FALSE PRINCE. I think I would probably have liked it a lot if I hadn't read MWT first, but since I have read MWT, unfavorable comparisons were inevitable.

[elle-winters.livejournal.com]

PS: Nice badge, chex

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

[peaceloveninja.livejournal.com]

Ok...... So I'm mostly a lurker and wouldn't like to be executed for saying this...please forgive me.....(and don't kill me! I'm too young to die!!) But....A Conspiracy of Kings. *Bows head in shame for being such a terrible mwt fan*. The entire thing was so boring to me and I don't really even count it as a part of the series. I've reread the rest of the books about 8 times each, but with every reread of the series, i just skim that particular book for the parts with Gen. I just find it so boring. Maybe it's because I never really liked Sophos all that much. I guess it was okay the first time I read it, but if I ever try to reread it I am bored out of my mind.

Please don't kill me!

[manderelee.livejournal.com]

Aww, you're not a terrible fan. Some Sounisians also don't like a particular book in the series (I know several people have beef with QoA), but it doesn't mean that they don't appreciate the series in general. I also didn't love ACoK right away, because I was disappointed that Gen was such a distant character in that book. But after a reread, I realized how dynamic a character Sophos really is, and the book really grew on me. Now I even like it better than QoA, though KoA is still my fave. But I understand if you think it was boring; I don't think Sophos was meant to be as interesting as Gen anyway. =D