# Books you thought you'd love, but didn't **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 7, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529 "2011-04-07T15:25:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/21 "2011-04-07T17:19:12Z")
I’ll refrain from commenting on 75% of the posts in the thread so far, and just add a few of my own: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavir Tapestry - I’ve loved everything else of his I’ve read. This sucked. Larry Niven - I used to be a big sci-fi fan. Couldn’t ever get into his stuff. The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond - I liked GG&S, though not as much as many other people here, but this one sucked. His arguments were lame and his points were unimpressive. Luckily, I have a lot more entries in the complementary thread - books you liked that you didn’t expect to. _Glaring at that “Moby Dick” comment above._ ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/22 "2011-04-07T17:19:55Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > LOTR. > > Classic series, everyone seems to love it, but I just cannot. read. it. For an adventure story, it’s just so damned BORING! I was going to post this very thing. ---
**Author:** ![vifslan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f4b2a3/32.png) [@vifslan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vifslan)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/23 "2011-04-07T17:43:48Z")
I’ve got two that immediately spring to mind. Tim Powers threw in a picturesque Gypsy camp four pages into The Anubis Gates, and all my interest evaporated. And the more shameful one, Italo Calvino in If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Normally I’m crazy about Calvino, but second-person, first-tense narration rubs me in all the wrong ways. I wasn’t too crazy about Arturo Perez Duarte’s The Dumas Club or Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, but I at least got as far as the conclusion before I threw them aside with a profound, “Who cares?” ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/24 "2011-04-07T17:54:41Z")
_Theodore Rex_, I loved the _The Rise of Roosevelt_ and was looking forward to the sequel. But it just was dull and I couldn’t get into it. ---
**Author:** ![Daylate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@Daylate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daylate)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/25 "2011-04-07T18:15:03Z")
Must confess that I am one of those Philistines that cannot ever get through a Patrick O’Brian book. Lord, I’ve tried, but to no avail. I had two goes at “Master and Commander” because it was a great movie, but the book was just too boring. A few chapters in, O’Brian goes into pages and pages and pages about the religious beliefs of the first mate on the ship. Who the F\_\_\_\_ cares? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/26 "2011-04-07T18:27:43Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > As King’s ‘Dark Tower’ series progressed, I became less and less impressed by it. I didn’t even bother picking up the last book. I just read ‘The Gunslinger’ over instead. You guessed the ending! ---
**Author:** ![Prox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/da6949/32.png) [@Prox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prox)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/27 "2011-04-07T18:48:01Z")
For me, it’s Kim Stanley Robinson’s _Red Mars_ series. I actually read all three books because I thought I saw a thread of potential to the idea of showing a more or less realistic depiction of terraforming Mars over multiple generations. But the multiple generation thing is submarined almost immediately when immortality is discovered. Most of the characters are idealistic idiots. The one interesting character gets brain damaged and becomes just as dumb as the rest of them. The struggle between Mars & Earth boils down to Mars is really far away so Earth can’t do much, and the resulting Martian government is pretty much designed to be unable to accomplish anything. Also, there’s a Martian environmental movement that is supposed to parallel the present day Green movement, but completely ignores the fact the environment on Mars is completely inhospitable to life, and that it really would be better for everyone if humans didn’t have to live in failure prone domes. ---
**Author:** ![Nathan\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/47e85d/32.png) [@Nathan\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nathan_S)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/28 "2011-04-07T18:54:31Z")
I loved Neal Stephenson’s _Snow Crash_ and _Cryptonomicon_, reasonably liked _Zodiac_ and _The Diamond Age_. So I had high hopes for _Quicksilver_. I could not get through it. Couldn’t even get past the first couple chapters. That serves as a reminder to me that I do _not_ like historical fiction, no matter how gifted the author may be. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/29 "2011-04-07T18:54:55Z")
> [@Prox](#): > > For me, it’s Kim Stanley Robinson’s _Red Mars_ series. I actually read all three books because I thought I saw a thread of potential to the idea of showing a more or less realistic depiction of terraforming Mars over multiple generations. But the multiple generation thing is submarined almost immediately when immortality is discovered. Spoiler alert? :dubious: Fortunately for me, I put Red Mars down after about 1/2 way through and have no intention of finish it. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/30 "2011-04-07T19:00:27Z")
**The Red Badge of Courage** , read it in high school in the middle of an American Civil War obsession, I was around the same age as the protagonist, I was into first hand accounts and realism in literature (we had just gotten done with a Romanticism poetry unit…\). Besides just being referred to as ‘the youth’ which always bothered me, I never felt like I was there. I pushed though it for the test but it didn’t stick and I can hardly recall anything about it now. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/31 "2011-04-07T20:07:59Z")
Not one I expected to LOVE, per se, but one of my guilty pleasures is Piers Anthony’s Xanth series (_Dragon On A Pedestal_ was my gateway drug to fantasy fiction). But this latest one I got out of the library had me putting it back down within 30 minutes. He has a character who’s a woodwife (a fairy creature that appears human from the front but is hollow from behind), and she speaks in wood puns. “Yew” for “you”, “wood” for “would”, etc. It’s incredibly distracting and difficult to read…and she’s one of the major characters! Her dialogue is going to be on almost every page! I’m still hoping that Anthony just deems the conceit understood within the first 25 pages and stops that. I’m going to try again when I’ve read the rest of this library haul. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/32 "2011-04-07T20:08:06Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Matthew Pearl’s [The Dante Club](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dante_Club)… I really don’t know why I just couldn’t muster up any appreciation for he book. Preach it, brother. I had the book practically thrust into my hands by someone who thought I’d love it, and I expected I would, too, but… meh. Felt forced and precious in its writing style, and just never clicked for me. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/33 "2011-04-07T21:10:22Z")
Loved **A Fire Upon The Deep** and **A Deepness In The Sky** , but did not at all enjoy **Rainbow’s End**. Maybe the planned sequel will help. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/34 "2011-04-07T21:24:41Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > Spoiler alert? :dubious: > > Fortunately for me, I put Red Mars down after about 1/2 way through and have no intention of finish it. Er - the book was published in 1992, won the Nebula, and got a Hugo nomination. Complaining about spoilers here is a bit like griping if I tell you that Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/35 "2011-04-07T22:06:22Z")
[QUOTE=Sicks Ate] Can’t get into anything by Ken Follett, with the exception of Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. [/QUOTE] Not even **Eye of the Needle**? ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/36 "2011-04-07T22:52:42Z")
I like the TV series _Bones_, so I was looking forward to reading one of the novels by Kathy Reichs that the series is loosely based on. I kept expecting it to get better, but it never did. It wasn’t horrible, but it was barely worth finishing. I loved the movie _Doctor Zhivago_ but the novel was pretty bad. I finished it, but it was a slog. I tried several times to read Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. It seemed like the sort of series I’d enjoy but I just couldn’t get into it. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/37 "2011-04-07T22:54:03Z")
_Hannibal_, the sequel to _The Silence of the Lambs_. I did not read _Hannibal Rising_, the prequel, because I am neither masochistic nor an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/38 "2011-04-07T23:01:19Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > As King’s ‘Dark Tower’ series progressed, I became less and less impressed by it. I didn’t even bother picking up the last book. I just read ‘The Gunslinger’ over instead. It took me five tries over a three-year period to finally plod through _The Gunslinger_. I still can’t figure out how it’s looked at with such passion – unbelievably boring book. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/39 "2011-04-07T23:11:11Z")
David Ebershoff’s _The Nineteenth Wife_- I like anything having to do with modern day polygamy and I’m fascinated by the life of Mormon prophet Brigham Young and this is about both- one plotline about his wife Ann Eliza Webb who sued him in federal courts for divorce (she was a real person) and another plotline about a modern day son of a polygamous cult who returns home to solve another. Easily the most boring book I’ve read in years combining all of the excessive wordiness of Thomas Wolfe with the complete inanity of Danielle Steele. ---
**Author:** ![Rhodes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhodes/32/273_2.png) [@Rhodes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhodes)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/40 "2011-04-07T23:26:26Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > David Ebershoff’s _The Nineteenth Wife_- I like anything having to do with modern day polygamy and I’m fascinated by the life of Mormon prophet Brigham Young and this is about both- one plotline about his wife Ann Eliza Webb who sued him in federal courts for divorce (she was a real person) and another plotline about a modern day son of a polygamous cult who returns home to solve another. Easily the most boring book I’ve read in years combining all of the excessive wordiness of Thomas Wolfe with the complete inanity of Danielle Steele. Huh. I haven’t read it, but my wife enjoyed it. I thought I’d love the book it was based on: _Wife No. 19_, by Ann Eliza Webb Young. But it was terrible. Many of her anti-LDS claims are completely false. No sources are cited. It is all from her memory, and from her biased perspective. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529.md?page=3)