Which books don't do it for you?

[Jo Zebedee]

Either you started them and can't finish it, or they don't appeal at all. A why would be good. I'd also love recommendations that might change my mind.

Mine. Genres first:

Epic fantasy

Anymore of Game of Thrones - the padding in the last two volumes did for me. I'll read the spoilers and find out the end.
And while on epic: Wheel of Time. It sounds too long, too slow and I suspect I'd hate it.

Now, one of these I've read, one not, and epic, by and large, doesn't do it for me. I say by and large because I like some series, but, as I've got older I feel I've read the ilk too much and struggle to find anything new.

Hard sci fi

I don't mind the concepts per se but find that the genre sometimes makes me feel like an eejit for not understanding them and, crucially, the genre often lacks fun. I'd love to know of a fun hard sci-fi with brilliant characters.

Sparkly vampires

But I like a bit of trashy reading - any good-uns?

Books:

American Gods. I can't say how disappointed I was having loved his other stuff.

Peter F. hamilton - I want to love it, I thought he was fab and friendly and interesting at Worldcon but I glaze over

The Dark Tower - I love King, I love the Childe Roland poem but at sixteen couldn't get past book one - should I go back? Does it become more engaging?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I don't have any genre I won't read however:

Vampires and zombie will usually make me put a book back. Especially if they are romantic The whole boinking dead things bothers me.

I get really annoyed with murder mysteries that don't produce a corpse fairly early.

Specific books: Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Rings, Perfume, Vanity Fair


Trashy reading recommended: Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Book one of the Dark Tower has quite a different feel to the rest. I think it really picks up in book two and feels more 'King'. I love the series, but then, I would

Recently finished WoT and very much enjoyed it by the end. Now I've seen where it goes, I think I'd enjoy it even more going through it again.

I've fallen out with GRRM, too. Too much 'nobody's allowed a break in this series'. I've generally gone off gritty altogether at the moment. The news tells me stories of grief on a daily basis; I'd like my books to give me a bit of hope and goodness.

I haven't read extensively in hard science fiction but I did really enjoy The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Catcher in the Rye - me too. Started it many times but... Nope...

I pretty well know I won't try WOT but I'll have another go at the gunslinger, maybe, Hoops. The feedback I see on it always makes me sorry I didn't keep going.

 

[Mouse]

Epic fantasy

Anymore of Game of Thrones - the padding in the last two volumes did for me. I'll read the spoilers and find out the end.
And while on epic: Wheel of Time. It sounds too long, too slow and I suspect I'd hate it.

Yes. Agreed. I used to love epic fantasy, but now? Urgh. It drags on too damn long, it's over detailed and nothing happens for pages and pages and pages. Luckily, I read all the ASoIaF books years ago when I was into that sort of thing... apart from, obviously, ADWD. Which now sits, unread, on my shelf taking up way more room than is decent.

I have a couple of JV Jones books, brand new, unread, shoved out in the garage in a box cos I can't even bear to look at them.

However, I still adore Robin Hobb and will continue reading her.

American Gods. I can't say how disappointed I was having loved his other stuff.

You're no longer allowed access to my mind mesh.

Other stuff, well... I've not tried hard sci-fi so I don't know for definite I won't like it, but I suspect I won't.

Specific books... I started Merchant of Dreams by Anne Lyle and have yet to finish it. I do intend to pick it up again, because I love Ned. But I'd had enough of Coby so had to put it down for a bit.

Also, ack, Teresa's Queen's Necklace book. It's very descriptive, which I struggle with, and I couldn't really work out what the story was. Again though, I intend to pick it up again and finish it. I did actually get quite far.

I also started Terry Brook's Running with the Demon, which actually, was alright. But I was on a can't be arsed to read a trilogy kick, so put it down in favour of something else. Again, I intend to get back to it.

Roger Wossname's Amber books. I bought the massive all-books-in-one-volume thing and couldn't even finish the first book because I detested the MC. I will never pick this back up. Another one that's been tossed into the garage.

Um... Erastes's Transgressions. Not SFF. It's a m/m romance. I could not stand the way one of the characters spoke (it was all thee, thy, thine) and abandoned it after four pages.

The Lies of Locke Lamora. Seriously. Just get the hell on with it. I read twenty pages, then gave up and swapped the book for something else.

And, as I said above JV Jones. I read the first two books in her Sword of Whatever-it-was series, loved them, but like with ASoIaF, I'd lost interest by the time the third book came out. I tried to read it, but got bored.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm in your mind-mesh, you're doomed.

Lies of... Good to know as I've vaguely wondered about trying it.
I stopped at the second Midnight's Masque - mainly because of Coby - but if the third turns up in the library, I'll pick it up.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Zombies don't do it for me. Vampires I can take or leave, and generally don't go out of my way for.

Second Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Rings, and add Lord of the Flies while you're at it. Cormac MacCarthy in general, along with Hunter S. Thompson. If there's anything worse than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the book, it would be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the movie -- and I'm a Depp fan.

A few years ago, I started reading my local library starting with A, and quickly discovered that I was going to have to skip the Edward Abbey section.

I like Stephen King in general, but he has written some that I just can't deal with -- I did not finish Desperation, and finished but didn't care for Cell -- it was more amusing than grotesque, though.

I gave up quickly on Jeffrey Deaver's new book, The October List, because it's written from the wrong end and I just couldn't get into it. It starts at the end and each chapter is slightly before the previous one. Experimental claptrap from a normally great author.

I haven't actually picked up any of Game of Thrones, nor seen any of it on TV.

 

[Overread]

*hides in the corner and hugs his epic fantasy books*

Though I will say I've not caught up with A Game of Thrones; but that's mostly so I can "choose" not to catch up rather than being "forced " to stop at the current last book.



As for me I'd say a fair few, but not all, "young adult". I tend to find that genre paces things a touch too quick and characters tend to always make the right choices, or right guesses a touch too often. They end up feeling more like "roles" than characters; each one fitting their part in the story as they should. It just feels a touch hollow.



Epic-scifi which is too heavy on the science can deter me as well. I end up feeling frustrated that I can't visualise what's happening because I've no idea what half the terms mean in the setting. (ps Peter F. Hamilton is a great example of how you can get really geeky with the science and yet still back it up with great visual description to not leave your none-professor level physics readers behind).

 

[elvet]

I avoid most urban fantasy. I think it's harder for me to escape to a world where so much of the surroundings are familiar. I prefer a mediaeval time setting. I don't like Steampunk stories either. Maybe it's technology juxtaposed to magic that doesn't interest me. Now that I think about it, that must be it. Never was was a fan of contemporary magicians or their shows. It makes magic seem tawdry and cheap.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

I'll read almost anything. I have never read a romance novel though, and don't plan to. Don't get me wrong, I like some romance in my books though.

Books I've given up on:

The Great Book of Amber - Roger Zelazny
The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
American Gods - Neil Gaiman. I know this book is loved by so many, but I just could not get into it. I haven't given up on Mr. Gaiman, though. There are still some other books of his I want to read.
Gates of Fire - Steven Pressfield.
Forrest Gump - Winston Groom. Loved the movie, couldn't stand the book. One of the few times I thought the movie was better than the book.
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice. I picked this up because it was on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. I read 136 pages before giving up, and that was rough reading.
The Casual Vacancy - JK Rowling. I just didn't care about anyone in this story. I think I got about 1/4 of the way through, and then gave up.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I really struggled with Jonathon Strange but loved Interview with the vampire!

 

[kythe]

I have trouble with cyberpunk. I love "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson so much I've read it 3 times. But I can't make it past the first few chapters of "Diamond Age", another of his popular books.

"Neuromamcer" by William Gibson is also a famous cyberpunk novel, but I can't get though it either. I think my love of Snow Crash is an anomaly, since I don't seem to like books that are similar.

 

[TitaniumTi]

I don't have any genre I won't read however:

Vampires and zombie will usually make me put a book back. Especially if they are romantic The whole boinking dead things bothers me.

Exactly!

I enjoyed Tolkein and CS Lewis, and I love fantasy in theory, but in practise I have trouble sorting the wheat from the chaff. Too many fantasies seem to use a negative deus ex machina. "You think the hero(ine) is home free, now that (s)he's defeated the warlocks, demons and goblins but, hah, here are some orcs to torment him/her!"

I also love the idea of hard sci fi more than the reality. I'm still searching for hard sci fi with characters I care about. I am particularly irritated by books that are marketed as hard sf and littered with scientific impossibilities or irrational "scientific" arguments.

I must be getting crochetty. I used to enjoy space opera but now both the casual body counts and the large-scale scientific impossibilities bother me.

 

[tinkerdan]

Don Quixote - I think it just gets lost in translation.

Tad Williams' Otherland - I've no explanation (every time I look at the cover I get queasy)

Nikos Kazantzakis's The Odyssey (a modern sequel.) it's even illustrated.

I almost couldn't get into Dhalgren by Samuel Delany but once I hit the half way mark I managed to tolerate it.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Fantasy

I read Lord of the Rings then after I finished I asked myself, "Why did I do that?"

It is as though there are things you are "supposed to read" and expected to know about but that does not necessarily mean you will like them.

Since I found that I liked Bujold's work to a degree that surprises me I purposely read two of her fantasy works. So I read Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. They just didn't do anything for me but it can't be argued that it was anything about her writing. Fantasy just doesn't make for interesting reading to me. I can't imagine it as being real. Fantasy mixed with science fiction that I call techno-fantasy mostly does not interest me either.

I still like the old Conan stories but I figure it is nostalgia again because I read them so young.

psik

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Sparkly vampires - I am not a teenage girl. And for a similar reason - i.e. I am not any sort of teenager, Harry potter.

Anything with too much sadism in it. The Men in the Jungle, and the Gap series.

Anything too depressing - Canery Row, Grapes of Wrath.

Anything too damned high literature - Anna Karenina.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Vince W]

I dislike any of the current supernatural themes like vampires, zombies, or werewolves.

I can't get into urban fantasy or steampunk at all.

None of the current YA dystopian books.

And I couldn't get into Harry Potter at all.

 

[Pyan]

ASoFaI - I've got them all, read them, once, and now they're just taking up space. Most books I read at least twice, (and some much, much more - most of my PTerry books have the bindings hanging off them, and I've read LotR at least 30-35 times straight through) but I've never had the slightest desire to read any of GRRM's books again. I think it's a need I have to identify with at least one character - and when the fifth one you've tried to "bond" with is killed off, that's enough.

The Thomas Covenant books - no. Just no.
Any Stephen King apart from The Dark Tower
Not fond of Steven Erikson - just too convoluted.

 

[Extollager]

I'm generally put off by any sf, mystery, or fantasy novel that seems to have been written by an author who conceived of storytelling in terms of cinema and sprawling page counts, who purveys a bunch of unnecessary characters, and who, presumably, composed at a word processor. This means I have a built-in bias against current writers -- I admit. But I'm generally turned off by the sight of an sf novel that's more than, say 400 pages and that indulges in endless pages of dialogue and that does the common trick of switching back and forth between scenes in a cinematic way.

So, for example, I recently dropped Camilla Lackberg's mystery novel The Ice Princess within a few pages, put off by the opening, in which we are given details about an upper-middle-aged man who is thinking about retiring to Greece and who cheats on his wife -- and whose only role, I suspect, was to find a corpse. Sorry, Camsie, life's too short.

My impression is that a great many galactic empire novels and so on are written this way. Obviously many readers like it or think they like it or are willing to put up with it. Not this one.

Editors apparently are largely acquisitions speculators with an eye on possible movie rights, etc. -- but not concerned to get writers to write better.

It is fatally easy to write on and on at a word processor. When people used to write on typewriters or by hand, I think it was less easy to slather out words and authors got the job done without blathering pointlessly on, dissipating much of the energy that might have inhered in their ideas.

In short, I start with a bias against current stuff -- although I read Andy Weir's The Martian and nobody here seems to have caught up with me...!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I have to be honest Thomas Covenant has never turned me on. They're sort of nothing much happens books, right? Like the mc is in a fugue state? Or am I completely wrong on that?