What are the books everybody loved but you just didn't get?

[bif]

One of mine was "The Shipping News". My wife and daughter absolutely loved it. I got about 50 pages into it and kept waiting for it to grab me. I thought it was goofy, just for the sake of being goofy. Like watching an intentionally campy movie.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Cold Mountain.

Actually, I loved it all the way to the final chapter and then all but threw it across the room in disgust. Worst ending ever.

I know there are others, and if I think of them, I'll post again.

What I have learned over the years that almost any and every book that becomes a huge best seller is not worth reading. I think the problem is that most people read maybe one or two books a year, and so they invariably go for whatever book is currently being hyped. Because they read so little, their standards are quite low.

All of the Dan Brown books would be such an example. I have never read any of them, but I recall when The DaVinci Code came out, I could tell right away that I'd read that sort of secret history a gazillion times before. It's a theme that's rather common in science fiction. But if you've never ever read anything like that, it probably seems fresh and interesting. And all the reviews I read of the book made me realize there was no point in bothering.

I read a lot, at least a hundred books every year. I also keep a book list, and a while back I started including a short synopsis or my reaction to a given book. It's very helpful, especially if I want to recommend a book to someone. I can go back and see what I thought of it.

[Scrivener7]

3. I think I would have liked the Da Vinci Code a lot better if it were not for all the hype around it.

It was a good yarn! But it wasn't really the answer to all the questions about Jesus and Christianity that people seemed to want to make it into.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. I really want to emphasize that I've read similar books.

There really are a lot of "secret history" books out there.

[yellowdogintexas]

27. I love those "secret history" books

I have been reading through 3 different series.

All 3 involve lost artifacts, and often the characters are after the same artifact but the approach and surrounding plot are quite different.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

29. So long as you understand they are fiction.

Too many people seem to think The DaVinci Code is a documentary.

[yellowdogintexas]

30. Absolutely. I am amazed at these people who are so outdone by

complete works of fiction, especially if the plot contradicts certain religious tenets

[Scrivener7]

2. There's a whole genre that I call "housewife literature" that I don't get. (I am a woman.)

They are "suspense" books about married women in their thirties or forties who are wealthy enough to get themselves embroiled in unlikely shenanigans that they can engage in without the necessity of spending much time on working or childcare.

Big Little Lies is the quintessential book of this genre. The "who" of the whodunit was a supreme letdown and the characters all reveled in vapid.

Many of them are billed as "the next Gone Girl" when none of them even remotely resembles Gone Girl. The Woman in the Window is an example of this.

Most of them have covers that are a woman's or women's faces that are half hidden behind something.

But they do REALLY well, and now it seems like every book out there is about a woman in her thirties or forties who is in trouble and who does a lot of name dropping of the stores she shops in and the products she buys and why she likes or doesn't like the other women around her in their thirties or forties.

[Ocelot II]

13. These are sometimes called "domestic thrillers," but they are seldom thrilling.

There are a few main subjects, at least one of which is invariably present: a missing child; a hidden past life of abuse or crime; a handsome husband/boyfriend who is covertly an abusive monster; someone who isn't who they claim to be; a mysterious friend or neighbor; and a bit of soft porn. These books sell like hot cakes, and I am guilty of reading them when they're free or a buck on Kindle because they don't make my brain work very hard and it's kind of fun to see how quickly I can suss out the ending.

[3catwoman3]

4. Didn't "get," or didn't like?

The World According To Garp

The Oldest Living Confederate Widow

She’s Come Undone

[rsdsharp]

18. I agree about Garp. Most anything bu Irving, really, IMHO.

[gab13by13]

5. I thought Huxley's "A Brave New World,"

was pretty unrealistic. In today's world I understand what Huxley was saying now. Which reminds me, time to pick up my soma at the borough building.

[babylonsister]

6. Anything by Danielle Steel.

I 'get' them but think they're insulting to intelligence even though they're extremely popular.

A friend lent me "A Man Called Ove" and raved about it but for some reason I just could not get into it. Maybe I'll give it a 3rd go, though I'm at an age where I don't waste time, for the most part, on books that I don't like.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. I personally loved

A Man Called Ove, but if you can't get into then, the heck with it. There are lots and lots of books out there that you would like.

I've also never been able to read a Danielle Steel book. Superficial is the word that comes to mind.

I will offer some recommendations to you.

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.
A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Whishaw.
The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

A variety of genres and kinds of books. Look them up on your favorite book site to see if any of them are appealing to you. I loved them all.

[babylonsister]

33. Thank you kindly!!

All those authors are new to me; I will indeed try to find some of these. Am thinking of getting a kindle; at this juncture in my life it seems to make sense.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

34. I got a kindle right before my Hawaii cruise in March, 2020. I wound up not using it on the cruise,

but since then have found it to be a wonderful thing.

I hope that at least some of those authors will work for you. If not, feel free to PM me. I read a lot. A lot. At least ten books per month, and I've been keeping a book list for a very long time now, so I can readily go back and find books you might be interested in.

I do hope that at least one of the ones I've suggested work for you.

[yellowdogintexas]

37. my mother HATED Danielle Steele.

She was a librarian and when readers would ask for those books it drove her nuts because that was all they would read. She did her best to open them up to different books.

[luvs2sing]

7. Gone With the Wind

Never even made it through the first chapter. Also, “The Stone Diaries” which was popular around the same time as “The Shipping News”.

I loved “The Shipping News”, but her next book, called “Postcards” (I think), was so horrific I couldn’t even make it through the first page. Reading the first page was traumatic.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

35. I first read Gone With the Wind when I was

about 12 years old, in 1960. I loved it. I saw the movie around that time.

I've reread that book several times over the years and always loved it.

Except not the most recent reread, perhaps five years ago. I suddenly saw the racism that was embedded in the book and was genuinely appalled. Okay, so back in 1937 or whenever, that racism was invisible, or benign, and I'm willing to cut a lot of slack for people back then, but now? No slack.
I'm not about to say "Don't read Gone With the Wind". Not at all. But just in case implicit racism isn't a problem,there's a lot of interesting stuff about the social norms and expectation of that time.

Perhaps more to the point, time is limited. Don't spend a minute on reading something you personally think is crap. It doesn't matter if the entire rest of the world thinks that piece is amazing and wonderful. If you don't like it, or it just doesn't work for you, that's all that's needed. Go on. Pick up another book. Read something else.

Love you.

[luvs2sing]

36. Amen to that!

I’ll usually give a book a chapter and a half or so to grab me. If I’m not into it by then, I know I probably won’t be.

[Bayard]

8. The Bible

[underpants]

10. Conversely "Catcher in the Rye"

I’d heard and heard about it but I was in a phase where I didn’t read much. Finally I read it and I got it instantly. I was mostly taken by the timeliness of it - a teen age boy in the 50’s was the same as a teenage boy in any period.

“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote too. Probably the best writer I’ve ever read.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. The Plot Against America

by Philip Roth is another. It's a poorly written alternate history, and all the people who'd never read an alternate history book before were blown away, and have no idea how bad this one is.

Alternate history is another huge sub-genre in science fiction.

[Haggard Celine]

12. I read free novels from Amazon a good bit.

A lot of them are pretty well-written, but I don't usually remember titles. Unless the book is a classic or otherwise well-known, I have trouble remembering the title and the author's name.

I'd say that the trope that probably annoys me the most is linking the bad characters to Nazis and Hitler. It's just so typical and it's a sign of a lazy writer with very little imagination. Ridiculous plots can be entertaining sometimes, but if those plots fall back on overused themes, it ruins the whole book for me.

[bif]

14. I should clarify...

What I mean by "get" is get why it/they were so popular.

[CrispyQ]

15. Harry Potter.

Got through book one, barely.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

32. For what it's worth, when the series first came out

(and I discovered it very early on) I bought the first one for my son. I started to read it, and put it down after the first chapter, because it just wasn't working for me. He raved about the book -- he was ten years old at the time, the perfect age for it -- so I picked it up again and was transported.

But even the very best of books may not work for everyone. And honestly, if you are over the age of 15 or so, you are not really the intended audience for the Harry Potter books. I wound up really liking them, and read the entire series, although I found the final ending to be dumb and unbelievable.

Again, life is too short to spend time reading books you don't like. It really is.

[XanaDUer2]

16. Rich Dad, Poor Dad

oy. Supposed to be a first-rate investment book. It was filled with anecdotal stories about the author's "poor" professor father's life, vs a "rich" neighbor, or someone, I forget. I think the author gets rich writing and presenting nonsense in seminars or MLM schemes. I want solid advice like index funds, Morningstar, etc.

It was surreal.

[ShazamIam]

17. I love Gore Vidal's history series and some others, but ... Myra Breckinridge, I could not read, and

based on social event conversations at the time I think a lot of people who were talking about it as if they had read it had not, at least I never heard any chatter to suggest they were doing more I was doing, letting it become a dust collector, that soon fell to the back of the night table to lie undisturbed until time for a deep clean, to later be added to the donate pile.

[Ziggysmom]

19. Fifty Shades of Grey sucks

Poorly written. True BDSM is all about consent, what happens in this book when Ana is drunk amounts to rape.

[Scrivener7]

25. Totally agree. Man, that thing was awful.

[TexLaProgressive]

20. "Dune" by Frank Herbert.

It is one of 3 books that I couldn't finish even after multiple tries and friends promoting it. It just didn't work for me.

[bif]

21. Gravity's Rainbow & Joyce's Ulysses

Tried reading both of the numerous times. Finally gave up and donated them.

[Midnight Writer]

22. Anything by James Patterson.

I have friends who keep recommending him to me, because I love thrillers and mysteries.

They are fast paced and many have interesting concepts, but the execution leaves me cold.

Nothing spoils a mystery more than gaping plot holes.

[Scrivener7]

23. This!

[The King of Prussia]

24. In all honesty

Pretty much anything written before, or set before, 1920.

[bif]

26. I agree. The exceptions being Mark Twain and some Dickens.

[yellowdogintexas]

28. The French Lieutenant's Woman

what a disappointment that was.
I liked The Collector but did not get the other one at all.