Books Which Aren’t All That

Last summer when I reviewed Sideways On a Scooter , I mentioned that one of the cover blurbs said it was akin to Eat, Pray, Love, which thankfully wasn’t the case. Fellow Book Fox Anne, summed up it up perfectly in the comments “I’m glad you noted how different it is to the quite dreadful Eat, Pray, Love (a book I was in equal parts incredibly bored and incredibly irritated by) “. It got me to thinking what other books didn’t live up to the hype. After asking around, I was surprised to find just how many books didn’t live up to expectations.
Linda K found spousal recommendations unreliable “My husband had been raving about books by Stephen Hawking, the noted theoretical physicist and cosmologist, and suggested that I might want to read one of his best sellers:  A Brief History of Time:  From the Big Bang to Black Holes. This book has sold more than 10 million copies, and as my husband said was “a simple explanation of Black Holes, quantum physics, etc.”  Well, it definitely wasn’t simple enough for me!  I still don’t understand black holes, and don’t even ask me what a “light cone” is!  The book didn’t have that many pages, but I just couldn’t make it all the way through.  The secrets of the universe will just have to remain a secret to me.”
Janika, a doctor who has vacationed all around Europe, often takes books along with her. But two of them ended up being excess baggage. “Last Orders by Graham Swift (Man Booker prize winner).
It made me feel like I was on a long car journey on a rainy day, feeling a bit car sick, with wet socks on and badly needing a loo with no sign of a public toilet in site. That probably reflects that the book was well written, but I was not after such an uncomfortable trip!
The Accidental by Ali Smith. I read this book mainly while at the beach so perhaps I was not in the right frame of mind for obscurity. A lot of it felt like it was literary fiction just for the sake of being literary fiction. If you know what I mean!”
Another traveler, Kae told me, “Before I fly (so scary), and after I’ve cleared Security (so stressful), I usually like to get myself a sandwich, a smoothie, and a book for the plane trip ahead. The book I chose for one recent flight was James Patterson’s The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King – A Nonfiction Thriller. I read the front and back covers, as well as the inside blurbs. Yes, this book was going to offer everything: history, suspense, and the solution to a good, old-fashioned mystery. 
I’d never read James Patterson before, but I knew he is a best-selling author, and I figured he has to be so successful for a good reason. He’s also from my hometown (Newburgh, New York), so he has that in his favor. I was so excited, I almost forgot we were about to take off, a time during which I’m ordinarily immersed in prayer.
But from page one and throughout, I was completely disappointed with Patterson’s Tut. I can almost hear you ask, “Why?” because surely you want to know. Best-selling author, history, suspense, mystery: what went wrong?
Well, the only mystery about the book is how it wormed itself onto the airport bookshelf without announcing that it was written for young– and functionally illiterate– adults. “Who does Patterson think his audience is?” I asked my husband. “Monkeys? Trained seals?”
I don’t mind simple prose, but prose for simple minds doesn’t entertain me. Constant repetition annoys me. Ultimately, plagarism doesn’t wash with me, either. Patterson has “borrowed” an assassination theory about Tut’s death from sources who’ve covered this territory before and claimed it as his own.
I don’t know why I read the whole thing. Probably a remnant of parental instructions in childhood to eat everything on my plate, even if the vegetable was lima beans. Patterson must have something going for him in his other books, so maybe he wrote this one in his sleep. Come to think of it, sleep would have been a better idea than reading this book on my flight. I would have accomplished something with more purpose.”
Elaine, whom I met in a book discussion group,said “For the past few years, I have been keeping a list, with an occasional note or two, of the books I have read.  There has seldom been a book that hasn’t pleased me in one way or another, except for one entitled, Political Animals: Memoirs of a Sentimental Cynic by Walter Trohan.  Cannot remember what lead me to this book, but it is the only one on my list with the comment, “Awful book, efr.”
Nell, who pretends she is a curmudgeon, said “I did read a book recently that disappointed me; in fact, I considered it had been a total waste of time when I finished it.  It is A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell.
I had read someone’s opinion that it was the best of Rendell’s books.  It was probably on Amazon, where I was reading customers’ comments on her books.  It was the first novel I had read of hers, and I wouldn’t read another.
I was not able to remember all the names of characters as I continued reading.  Halfway through the book I went back to the beginning and made an index of all the characters and then continued to read it until the end.  When I finished the book, I just didn’t care about any of them.  It’s a murder mystery where you find out near the beginning who the murderer probably is and you’re supposed to be interested in finding out why she did it.
I have heard recently another book criticized for this very thing.Maybe it was a new book by Rendell, but I don’t remember.  Maybe writers of thrillers, for my taste, shouldn’t sacrifice the thriller part trying to make you fall in love with the characters.”
Book Fox Hilary chimes in “I have a vivid and very happy memory of first reading The Lord of the Rings. I was an undergraduate, 19 I think, it was termtime when I picked it up and started reading, and I completely disappeared into its world. I carried it round to read in all my spare moments, took it into meals and read it through the night. I had to keep reading it, so strong was the grip on my imagination. I don’t recall how I coped with real life, but I must have had to pull an all-nighter to do my essay that week. My faulty memory told me I must have read The Hobbit around then too – I certainly know what it’s about. However, I recently picked it up in honour of Peter Jackson’s new film in the making and realised I hadn’t. I didn’t know it at all. I got through a couple of chapters before giving up in despair. It’s so strangely puerile. I know it’s a book for children, but all the best children’s classics are anything but that (think Winnie The Pooh). Its humour is truly unfunny, and it’s so hearty and tweedy and male (not a girl in sight – something that Sir Peter sees fit to sort out). Scouting for Boys, only with Dwarves and Hobbits – I just couldn’t take it any more. I now know I dare not re-read LOTR, for fear of spoiling that magic memory. Or maybe it IS better by far than The Hobbit. (PS none of this will stop me watching the Hobbit films – the pictures will be GORGEOUS.)”
And Anne confides“I’d been told so often that I would love Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, and in the event I absolutely hated it. I thought it was shallow, written with overweening dullness, with a very irritating main character and didn’t show the 80s in any way I remembered them.
I also thought the scene where the main character has his first experience of gay sex is very unrealistic. For a “first time”, what he was up to in the manner in which it was done would most certainly have been painful!!
Without doubt, it holds the record as the most unworthy Booker Prize winner yet.”
Lastly, Deb had an account of a book which started out as a disappointment and transformed into something else. “A couple of years ago a friend told me I had to read this new book called Twilight all about vampires and how cool it was.  She raved about it and even bought me a paperback copy around Halloween.Every week or two, she’d ask me if I’d read it yet, but I was just too busy and I told her I was “saving it till I had time to savor it” and it wouldn’t be long.
Come Christmas, I had a week off and decided to delve into it to satisfy my curiosity and her expectations.The first day, I got ten pages read… me, known for devouring 500-page books in hours. I could NOT get into this thing! The next day, I settled into a nice bubble bath, book in hand, determined to try again.
Same result.  10 pages.  Over the next week, I kept on giving it my best.  But it was just TOO stupid for me… too tweenie… too immature, too poorly written.  I got 60 pages in and just gave it up for a lost effort.  I went back to Jane Austen and re-read Pride and Predjudice, totally satiated.
After the new year, I had to tell my friend that I just didn’t ‘get it’ & I could not figure out why she was so enthralled with this book! It was trite, childish and boring beyond measure. Of course, I said it all tactfully without hurting her feelings.She lit into me, kindly, and told me I HAD to give it a hundred pages.  That’s all, just the first hundred pages and then she’d accept defeat. I fought her for MONTHS! I picked it up repeatedly and felt let down and lost every time. By summer, the first 75 pages looked like they’d been through a war zone… the rest of the book was pristine.
I put it on the shelf and forgot about it for two+ years.  But while cleaning the bookshelf, I came across it again and decided to give in to her occasional nagging and go the distance… the hundred page goal.You guessed it… it was still a struggle. But by the time I got to page 110, I was doing better.  It took three weeks to get to that point, but I read the rest of it in two days.
I still didn’t get the phenomena it had become and it didn’t GRAB me, ever. But I did pick up the second one to read later that year and was instantly into it.  Stood in line at the bookstore for the third one and pre-ordered the final book.
Why it was like that I’ll never know. Maybe anticipation had set an expectation that was unrealistic, but I’ve come to know that not everything will immediately suck me in and whisk me away… unless it starts with “It was a dark and stormy night”.With profound apologies to Snoopy, I’ll have to have more than a ripping first line… maybe as much as a interesting first hundred pages.”
So dear readers, what book have you found that didn’t live up to the hype? Please tell us in the comments and save others from books which aren’t all that.