Books you feel like you have to like but didn't

@Jordan: Look to Windward and Player of Games. I read a bit of Consider Phlebas but didn't get that far.

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Just a question, has this topic officially become "Complaining About Books You Don't like"?

The Kagami topic has now reached 201 posts! (Nov 5)

^Yeah, pretty much.

@Snowbull- Player of Games is a good book/good starting book. Starting with Look To Windward isn't a good idea. You kind of have to be really immersed in the series to like it- I like the series and I couldn't get into that one.

Hodor

Oh boy. I know I'm going to commit blasphemy by saying I didn't like these books. If you like them, great! You do you! But I just couldn't like the books I'm about to mention here.

Of Mice and Men: A college professor had us read this for a class, and the only emotion I felt when reading this was disgust. After I finished it, I thought 'THIS is considered a revered classic?!' Nothing happened, the story is little more than a bunch of guys doing stuff, and George is an annoying, whiny, pathetic, stupid prick who does nothing but bitch and moan about Lennie every chance he gets, who spends the entire book being crapped on for his whole existence. I wanted to punch George every time he opened his mouth, because he is openly and unashamedly ableist towards Lennie. I mean, who would want to root for a character who claims he'll shoot himself if Lennie turned out to be his relative?! That's like saying you'd kill yourself if your child turned out autistic, and treating a disabled person the way George treats Lennie is NOT OKAY. Sorry guys, but I didn't like this one.

The Hate U Give: Hated this one, too. Again, if anyone here likes it, that's fine, and I don't want to shame or insult anyone for doing so. However, I found the characters extremely bland and unlikeable save for two, the writing is extremely juvenile, the conflict is way too heavy for its own good, so many bad events happen to Starr and her family and friends all at once that it borders on Gone with the Wind levels of overblown melodrama, and the morals are all broken aesops due to the terrible way they're written, and mostly because the book seems to be trying to paint black people as pwecious widdle oppressed saints who can do no wrong and the whites as being all evil, and anyone who's not still has to apologize for being white. And anyone who's black is allowed to be racist towards whites. Yeah, no. That's not how you write an anti-racism message. I can't fathom how this got so popular, and this should not be the standard we should hold literature to.

Anything by Yuu Watase. I've grown up with anime and manga, but I never got into her work. Even trying to now, none of her manga appeal to me in any way. I attempted to read a few of her works, but I dropped Fushigi Yuugi after three volumes because Miaka was a moron, Imadoki! was needlessly melodramatic and one chapter in volume two made me drop the series entirely because it wanted us to easily forgive a complete Jerkass for innocent stuff like attempting to hold a school hostage with a fake gun (Though the characters didn't know it was fake at the time) and sexually assaulting the main female in doing so, Alice 19th had way too many panty shots and females getting sexually assaulted for my liking, and all that stuff. I don't know what it is with Watase's obsession with Attempted Rape, but she really needs to stop using it as a convenient plot device and shock value so much. It's getting really old. Honestly, I only liked two manga by her: Fukugaeru, a two-chapter short story where a magic frog makes a woman swap bodies with her more successful coworker, and Sakura Gari, which is a yaoi (and a surprisingly well written one at that, even with its melodrama and heavy usage of rape and sexual assault for shock value), and even that's a personal guilty pleasure.

Edited by TwilightPegasus on Jul 23rd 2019 at 3:18:25 PM

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. We had to read it for my freshmen seminar to "educate us about how people who are 'different' see the world." But honestly, we would've been better off reading the phone book or a travel brochure, because Incident sets the understanding of "different" people back several decades.

I was, quite frankly, extremely offended by it. And I don't get offended easily. The author openly admitted to doing NO research when writing his autistic main character (he believed that "imagination trumps research")- and it shows. The book normalizes the abuse Christopher endures, and portrays him in a way that will give neurotypicals an EXTREMELY dim view of their fellow autistic people. At least the titular Rain Man was a nice person despite his temper and his story was meant to show that neurodivergent people are human, but Christopher demonstrates a near-complete lack of empathy for any other human being- which, contrary to popular belief, is not a common autistic trait- hyperempathy is far more common.

The worst part? Many people who know that I have autism recommended this book to me solely because I'm autistic. One could only imagine how ridiculously problematic this would look if one did the same based on, say, race...

Edited by Spottedleaf on Jul 23rd 2019 at 5:13:11 AM

Agreed. I attempted to read Curious Incident once, but I dropped it after ten pages because it was so cringey. I couldn't stand it, and I have no desire to read it, so you're right to stay the hell away from it. I'm autistic too, and I didn't even get to the parts you mention. Besides, I can recommend books that feature autistic protagonists that happen to be SO MUCH better, though they're not without their flaws.

Edited by TwilightPegasus on Jul 23rd 2019 at 7:05:32 AM

There's a famous novelist in my country, who is lauded to be a very great writer and is one of our classics. He was prolific and wrote nice long books.

Unfortunately, his style is somewhat... slow and dragging for me when I read it. Granted, last time I tried I was like 15/16 but as I put the book down after 2-3 pages, I haven't dared try again since. Maybe I should since I managed to read Les Miserables in the meantime... I did like one of his stories as a movie tho so it isn't about characters or plots.

---

Another thing is, maybe I should like the fact that it was translated, but I cannot bring myself to like the English translation of Utas és holdvilág (Journey by moonlight), translated by Len Rix.

Never read a book just because it has an important message or agenda. Never read a book just because it's popular. Use your valuable reading time to read books that you enjoy and that speak to you, not to impress people. On the other hand, don't be afraid to try reading something that others have sincerely said is great. It might be.

Oh hey, this is a thing.

Okay, so here goes. I hate Dune. I think it's awful. I found Paul Atreides to be a glaring Gary Stu, none of the characters were sympathetic, the narration was droning, and the setting was highly misogynistic and way too dark for me to care about any of what was happening. How it became so popular is completely beyond me.

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 24th 2019 at 2:45:35 AM

Oissu!

Agreed. While I don't find myself liking a lot of classics, there are some I genuinely love, such as Bambi, Anne of Green Gables, and Where the Red Fern Grows.