Your favourite moments in otherwise rubbish books

[hitmouse]

The point in Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M Auel where I finally gave up in disgust and threw it over the side of the Patras - Brindisi ferry into the Adriatic Sea.

 

[Sean A. Guynes]

At what point in the book was that? Could you elaborate?

 

[hitmouse]

It happened in Summer of 1988, so I am a bit hazy on the exact details, but I have a clear memory of the feeling of disapointment and outrage. Must have read about 80% of the book. Little else to do since I only had a towel-sized patch of deck for the voyage.

 

[Heather Myst]

It would have to be the ending of Renegade's Magic which was book three of Robin Hobb's Soldier Son series. I had just read her first three trilogies and because of that I didn't bail out on this series when I should of. I thought book one Shaman's Crossing was bad but little did I know that it was going to be as good as this series had to offer. This series was so bad that it made wonder if Robin Hobb really wrote these books.

 

[hopewrites]

@hitmouse, I should have done as you did, but I kept telling myself "it will get better." I finished the series.

Jo's Boys I did through against the wall. (Third book after Little Women, and Little Men.) Little Women she obviously put love into crafting. I could easily believe she wrote it for herself and was lucky enough to get published. Little Men was slightly fan service, but still showed a love of the characters involved. Jo's Boys I would not be surprised to find was written while held captive by rabid fans, in her own blood as it dripped from the many wounds said fans inflicted demanding more. The final chapters are not but bile and bitterness, and after insuring that the fans now hate her characters, she throws the whole town down an abyss to a fiery hell it never actually deserved.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Little Women she obviously put love into crafting

Well, partially auto-biographical. Just like Jo, she really had earlier written sensationalist books and found success when she did her first book very loosely based on her own background.

I agree, the last book isn't so good.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters.

At one point in 1857, unable to find work and filled with such despair, Alcott contemplated suicide. During that year, she read Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Brontë and found many parallels to her own life.[citation needed] In 1858, her younger sister Elizabeth died, and her older sister Anna married a man by the name of John Pratt. This felt, to Alcott, to be a breaking up of their sisterhood ... In the mid-1860s, Alcott wrote passionate, fiery novels and sensational stories under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard. Among these are "A Long Fatal Love Chase" and "Pauline's Passion and Punishment".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_M._Alcott