Reader’s Remorse

Submitted by WunderPlundr t3_z5qebk in books

What was a book that you read all the way through and then found yourself wishing you could have all that time back?

For me it was “The Butlerian Jihad” by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Andersen. It was such a shoddily written, dumb as a rock book, full of flat characters that just annoyed me. I originally picked it up cause I was in that phase where I was like “I’m only ever going to read a series in chronological order” and boy did it kick the desire to do that again out of me. It also put me off picking up “Dune” itself for a while.

A more recent example would be the Bobby Dollar Trilogy by Tad Williams. Big fan of his so him doing and urban fantasy noir story was really interesting to me. Book 2 was pretty good, but 1 and 3 were so slow and lifeless that by the end I was glad for it to be over. On the positive side, it finally gave me the resolve to just put a book down and walk away if it’s not working for me.

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ViForYourAttention t1_ixxxb9r wrote

After I finished Where the Crawdads Sing, I felt like I wasted my time trying to like a book that apparently a lot of people really enjoyed. The story immediately fell off at the end with a quick resolve time skip. I felt like I was still left with a lot of questions and nothing seemed believable for a book that was supposed to be considered realism.

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NoRegrets-518 t1_iy06xta wrote

Right. I stopped reading this book about 1/4 of the way in. Life is too short.

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Mo-ree t1_ixxikk6 wrote

I'm going to get hate for this, but I did not enjoy The Handmaid's Tale at all. I didn't care for the style of writing or the narrator. It's been over 10 years since I read it, so I can't say much else, but I do not understand the hype.

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NoRegrets-518 t1_iy076i6 wrote

I agree. It's an interesting concept, but doesn't go far enough to write beyond the obvious plot points.

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SofiThomas t1_ixyoqdp wrote

I didn't get that one either. I'm assuming the TV show is a lot different.

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Negative-Arachnid-32 t1_iy0d5mg wrote

Didn't like it as well, for the exact same reason. I like the idea of the book, but that's it.

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Megaslammer t1_ixxm0c3 wrote

Forest Gump

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censorbot2022 t1_ixxxtsz wrote

The movie is unending and torturous, I can only imagine how tedious the book is.

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SofiThomas t1_ixxiocf wrote

I wouldn't advise reading Dune. Got through two amd a half books before finally wondering what the hell I was doing to myself.

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Fit_Employment_1840 t1_ixyzqh3 wrote

The Devil Wears Prada. The screenwriter did the author a huge favor. Horrid book. Hated every character.

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Cultured_Ignorance t1_ixxk7xs wrote

Ravelstein. I get it's partially autobiographical, but Bellow seems to have no clear understanding of what the book was supposed to do. In some sense my final thought was 'what a couple of quirky academics', way too superficial a takeaway for a Bellow book.

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Sargatanus t1_ixxkbys wrote

The Illuminatus Trilogy.

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oater99 t1_ixyfbfr wrote

Too many to list but 2 I recently read Don Delilo's White Noise (it's a movie out soon) and Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. I hated them both. I didn't like the writing style of either and thought they were poorly written and over hyped.

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Prof_Pemberton t1_ixzerws wrote

Lydia Millet’s “A Children’s Bible”. I’d give the first 80% of the book a solid B-, which was why I got to the end. It was just barely good enough to keep going. But the end was just wretched on so many levels. It was sloppily plotted for one thing; she literally falls back on a deus ex machina to get out of the corner she wrote herself into. But what’s worse the allegory and moralizing just punch you in the face. It’s the kind of ham fisted garbage you’d expect from a freshman taking his first creative writing class. It honestly makes a Chick tract look subtle and nuanced.

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CallynDS t1_ixxrf6y wrote

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher was terrible. I knew it would be, because the first half of the book was terrible, but I enjoyed so many other Dresden Files books. Part of it was having gotten older, but it's still bad and my last Dresden Files book.

Swords and Deviltry By Fritz Leiber is also pretty bad. It's a different kind of bad, and I understand why it is less good to a modern reader such as myself, but Leiber wrote better stories twenty years before he published this one.

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censorbot2022 t1_ixxy88a wrote

I read stranger in a strange land by robert heimlin. Stopped near the end when the plot went off the rails. I wasn't enjoying the preverse family swap elitist nonsense, but kept reading because it was the only book in the house. Had to stop when it became clear he was just making it up as he went along, just an excuse to write about fucking your kids I guess.

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ricewbean t1_ixz8lno wrote

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Too many words about fishing that gave me a headache. This the first book that made me remember English is my 2nd language lol. I felt like I was just learning how to read and translate.

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mrbaseball1999 t1_iy2812c wrote

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Feels like Clarke is trying really hard to imitate Dickens, but falls wildly short. And the footnotes, ugh.

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