Book dislikes

Oh dear. I read the first page of comments and found everyone hating the books I love so gave up. I adore Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood until she started writing SF.

But I too loathed The Slap. And I think The Historian is a rotten book. Have just read Nutshell by Ian McEwan and found it pointless. I vowed to stop reading him after Saturday and should have stuck to my guns.

5 / 8 for me too. I said no to two genuine messages. Ah well, I was always an old grouch

I gave up on The Book Thief and also The Shadow of the Wind after trying several times to finish it. I may give that one one more go, though.

Has anyone read 'Middlemarch' and wished they hadn't? I had my first attempt at this decades ago reading it on the bus to and from work. When I got to Chapter 6 I went on holiday and the dilemma - should I take it with me? As it was the size of a half-brick I left it at home.
Back in the old routine and I couldn't get back into it - I'd forgotten the characters. Should I begin again or just plough on? I took it back to the library.
Years later I gave it a 2nd chance. Bloody hell fire! What a waste of time. I know it's a good book or it wouldn't have lasted 200 years or so but my word it was trying to push treacle upstairs.

Anything that has Booker Prize on the cover it seems! My DH has bought me 3 that have all ended up in the charity shop! Also anything Mills and Boon-ish. Afraid I never like Le Carre either

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall - sort of love/hate relationship for me. As I was grimly ploughing through it I wondered how it had become apparently so popular. If I didn't have a good knowledge of Tudor politics I wouldn't have understood it at all. And the writing style! No Speech marks!
Haven't even started Bring Up the Bodies although it's been on my kindle for years.
Never understood the fascination for Dickens, Wuthering Heights I just couldn't fathom, though I love most of the other Bronte novels.
Martin Amis -just awful pretentious twaddle with thoroughly unpleasant characters.

On the other hand, I love Harry Potter and the other J K Rowling books, love Iris Murdoch, all Jane Austen, early Margaret Atwood, adore Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Faulke's Birdsong plus all Ian Mcewan.

Someone lent me a Lee Child novel and I'll never read another; not my type of genre at all so I avoid other authors of the same ilk.

I dislike American authors as they tend to use the word gotten a great deal. Drives me mad.

Hated Life of Pi, couldn't get on with Hilary Mantel and Salman Rushdie. Loathe Shakespeare.

I'm a voracious and fast reader. Anything (well, almost anything) will do. But 50 shades??? come on! absolute c--p imho. Early Margaret Attwood - wonderful! Later Margaret Attwood not so much. I"m finding it interesting to read this thread! Thanks OP!

And the writing style! No Speech marks!

No speech marks

I'm definitely not trying it, then. I never liked Thomas Cromwell, anyway, since seeing A Man for all Seasons when I was about 16...

War and Peace. Oh, how I tried.
And Shakespeare.

Hate - Dickens, Austen, Bronte [any of them], Amis pere & fils, Poisonwood Bible, Harry Potter, Enid Blyton [too smug],
Lovely BOnes, Jodie Picoult [read one, they're all the same...]
Love - To Kill a Mokingbird, Margaret Atwood, Time Traveller's Wife, Never let me go [but not any other], Hunger Games, all sorts.

Oh and I love Terry Pratchett and Tom Holt...

I cannot read Thomas Hardy's novels or his short stories, tried repeatedly, although I like his poetry.
Loathed Wuthering Heights for A level, re-read it forty years later and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I still find Heathcliff and Cathy very, very tiresome.
Wolf Hall and the sequel I loved, and am getting worried that either she or I will die before the third book is written/ published. Her previous novels I find rather fey and difficult to follow, or simply too big.
Margaret Attwood I like, but her early novels are extremely odd.
Kate Mosse: subject matter fascinating, but have never managed to finish one of her novels; dreadful writing.

I too dislike Dan Brown and Stephen King, find Wuthering Heights unreadable, and most of Sir Walter Scott likewise unreadable.

I still read Kipling, which is considered heretical these days by those who only see him as imperialistic. Dislike most of the women so beloved of feministically inclined university lecturers these days: Attwood, Sylvia Platt and a whole ton of others.

Agree about Henry James, but basically I am biased against American authors - never understood why either Hemingway or Graham Greene were so highly thought of.

I adore Indian English and have happily read A Suitable Boy at least once a year since the book was first published.

Have any of your actually managed to read James Joyce? If so Kipling's line "You're a better man than I, Gunga Din" applies.

Kipling wrote beautiful English. I don’t believe in making judgements about an author because he was of his time.

“Smug” is a very good word for Enid Blyton.

I know without having read one that I would hate Hilary Mantel.

I love, love, love Shakespeare.

I love Kipling's poems.

Infinite Jest. I read it because I started it but it was a real chore. I love reading and will read anything but I found this one the challenge of my life.

We had to read 'Mill on the Floss' (George Eliot) for O Level. What a torture yet I loved 'Silas Marner'. I had always wanted to read 'Travels with a donkey' by R L Stevenson - I found it in a charity shop, it was turgid. At college we had to write an essay on Thoreau's 'Walden'. Using reference books I concocted an essay - was awarded a B++. I still haven't read the book!

Must stick up for Hilary Mantel's brilliant Cromwell books, can't wait for 3rd book. But couldn't get through Bridget Jones (forgotten author's name) can't cope with humour forced in every line, sorry but Bill Bryson is in that category for me. My sister's the exact opposite so we don't bother to swop or recommend books to each other.

100 years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Loved Birdsong by Faulkes as someone has already mentioned

I started reading The Last of the Mohicans and decided it was unreadable. So did my husband.

Henry James - why write one word when you can write 10

Casgsy that has reminded me that I was given Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and told it was 'a beautiful book'.
However, I abandoned it after the first chapter, beautiful or not.