# 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:** 3
**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, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/41 "2011-04-07T23:32:24Z")
> [@Rhodes](#): > > 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. And extraordinarily bland (though mostly due to the time it was written). You don’t even know if her marriage to Brigham Young was consummated or not. Ebershoff rewrites it but it rings completely false, and he changes everybody’s back story but for the far less interesting which is another problem I had with the book. ---
**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, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/42 "2011-04-07T23:53:47Z")
> [@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! As no other Tolkien geek seems to have bothered, I must state, on behalf of the fraternity, that _Lord of the Rings_ is not a series or a trilogy. It is a single book published in three volumes, no one of which tells a complete story. You’re free to dislike it, though. My affection for it does not prevent me from understanding why others dislike or even hate it. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/43 "2011-04-07T23:57:07Z")
I know - however if you include The Hobbit and the other supporting books (Silmarillion, etc), they are collectively a series. So PPPPPPPPBBBBBBBTTTTT. I liked the movies, and I remember when I was Small there was a radio play of The Hobbit which came on every night that I loved - but I’ve never been able to get through the actual books. ---
**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 8, 2011, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/44 "2011-04-08T00:08:35Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > I know - however if you include The Hobbit and the other supporting books (Silmarillion, etc), they are collectively a series. So PPPPPPPPBBBBBBBTTTTT. :: catches raspberry, tosses into salad :: I’d grant that you have a point if you’d referred to the _Middle-earth_ series, but you didn’t. > [@](#): > > I liked the movies, and I remember when I was Small there was a radio play of The Hobbit which came on every night that I loved - but I’ve never been able to get through the actual books. I’m the weirdo who loves _Silmarillion_, likes _Lord of the Rings_, and tolerates _The Hobbit_. (Well, a little more than tolerate, I’ll grant.) Back to the thread topic, I thought I’d enjoy Kushiel’s Dart far more than I did. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/45 "2011-04-08T00:25:55Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > As no other Tolkien geek seems to have bothered, I must state, on behalf of the fraternity, that _Lord of the Rings_ is not a series or a trilogy. It is a single book published in three volumes, no one of which tells a complete story. Or a single story in six books. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Orr\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ee59a6/32.png) [@Orr\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orr_G)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/46 "2011-04-08T00:26:28Z")
_Game of Thrones_, recommended to me and lent to me by a friend. It’d been a while since I’d read any medieval fantasy, and I was feeling ready for a good adventure. I noticed people here talking up the book, and noted that it won some awards. Man, I struggled to get past the first hundred pages. Twice. I mean, I put the book down for several months, and then tried again later. Just couldn’t do it. The classism just bugged the hell out of me. I know that such attitudes were pervasive in medieval times, but there was no hint that Martin wasn’t completely buying into these attitudes as the author, and I just couldn’t get past that to enjoy the book. Every page seemed to contain some subtext or assumption that required buying into a classist mindset, and it hurt my brain. Why couldn’t there have been just a little commentary by a wise old commoner or a low-born tradesman about all these self-important snooty bastards? Maybe there was, later, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to mention _Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell_ as another example of a book I thought I’d love, but I was misled by the person who lent it to me, and so that’s not fair. The person in question assured me that it was right up my alley, but they know that I have no tolerance for anything resembling Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, and an avid distaste for British “Comedy of Manners” period stuff. Give me Sherlock Holmes or Alice’s Adventures any day, but recommending that one to me was just a cruel setup. ---
**Author:** ![Angel\_of\_Doubt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Angel\_of\_Doubt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_of_Doubt)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/47 "2011-04-08T00:34:02Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > 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. Heh, yeah, he brings pun annoyance to a whole new level. When I started reading the Xanth series way back when I loved them. I was in college; and having been brought up with an open mind towards sexuality, I liked the flirtatious and playful sexual innuendo in many of the books- what else can you expect with naked nymphs and centaurs, right? But his later books seemed to take an “ickier” turn. I haven’t read any of the rest of the series for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/48 "2011-04-08T00:44:29Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > _The Wordy Shipmates_ by Sarah Vowell. Everybody loves it. I didn’t. I didn’t either. Her latest book, **Unfamiliar Fishes** is better, but not up to par with **Assassination Vacation**. I could never get into LOTR, despite multiple attempts. ---
**Author:** ![Jane\_Elliot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jane_elliot/32/6166_2.png) [@Jane\_Elliot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jane_Elliot)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/49 "2011-04-08T02:14:40Z")
The Scarlet Pimpernel. Absolutely hated the book. ---
**Author:** ![Carmady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f04885/32.png) [@Carmady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carmady)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/50 "2011-04-08T02:22:23Z")
Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions From the reviews calling him one of the greatest authors of the century, and comparing him to some of my personal favorite authors, I expected to love it. I liked it well enough, but not nearly as much as I thought I would. I later found out the translation is considered substandard by many, which might partly explain my lack of enthusiasm. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Surb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@The\_Surb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Surb)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/51 "2011-04-08T02:43:26Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Many a Stephen King book published in the last twenty years would fit this thread also. I wouldn’t mind Stevie refunding me for all of the crapola I’ve bought from him since The Stand. No more though. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/52 "2011-04-08T05:31:17Z")
> [@Fionn](#): > > I didn’t either. Her latest book, **Unfamiliar Fishes** is better, but not up to par with **Assassination Vacation**. > > I could never get into LOTR, despite multiple attempts. I’m reading UF too. _Assassination Vacation_ was definitely her high water mark but really needs a website to show pics of the places she mentions. _Ford’s Theater_ is easily to find pics of but some of the more obscure ones are hard to find images online. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/53 "2011-04-08T05:59:01Z")
When I was in middle and high school everyone loved the Dune series. It sounded great so I started it. I couldn’t get through more that 35 pages. So I waited a year or so, hearing everyone talking about it even more, and I tried again. Still hated it after a chapter or 2. I have probably picked up and started Dune 5 or so times. I really want to like it. But I just can’t. ---
**Author:** ![Nightfall1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/54 "2011-04-09T01:31:46Z")
You have me beat. I’ve never gotten to chapter two of Dune. I’ve tried four or five times. My brain just shuts down. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/55 "2011-04-09T01:41:59Z")
Long ago when Roger Ebert gave a thumbs down to the Dune movie, saying it was convoluted and no one could possibly understand all the characters and situations, someone I know got irked and said, “well, why didn’t he just read the book?” ??? Dude. NO ONE can read the book, much less a busy movie reviewer, it’s a full time job (reading that thing) on its own. A writer named Angela Carter wrote heavily symbolic and arcane fairy tales. In The Company of Wolves was a movie made from one of her works. I’d read you’d either love her or hate her. I thought, oh, I am so there, right up my alley. Sadly, I hated hated hated her. Shame. ---
**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 9, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/56 "2011-04-09T01:46:09Z")
> [@Nightfall1](#): > > You have me beat. I’ve never gotten to chapter two of Dune. I’ve tried four or five times. My brain just shuts down. It’s not for everyone. I’ve read the whole (REAL) series, from Dune to Chapterhouse, plus the Dune Encyclopedia. I love the real Dune. I tried to read the first of the new Dune books, by Herbert’s son and Kevin Anderson. Instant. Hate. I not only hate the books, I hate them now for ruining Herbert’s vision. I’d like to build bonfires out of those literary abortions (the books, not the authors). ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/57 "2011-04-09T02:07:01Z")
> [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](#): > > I’ve been hearing about the Culture books for years, but I’m reading _Consider Phlebas_ now and I don’t like it at all. What don’t you like about it? If it’s that it’s too slowly paced, then you really won’t like _Use of Weapons_ or _The Player of Games_, which are quite a bit better than _Consider Phlebas_, IMHO. Then again, I liked Phlebas too, so there you go. I found The narrative structure of Weapons is a bit hard to get used to, but it rewarded my efforts. I loved it. De gustibus though, and all that. As far as Niven/Pournelle’s _Footfall_, yeah they are total Mary Sues (and you really won’t want to read _Fallen Angels_), but it’s an actual alien invasion story that to me made sense. As in, “Why would beings who can traverse interstellar space give a shit about taking over the Earth?” How movies like _Independence Day_ and _Battle: Los Angeles_ get made, while properties like _Footfall_ and _The Mote in God’s Eye_ just sit there, is beyond me. Then again, I’m still pissed that _Rendezvous with Rama_ keeps sitting in development hell. Oh and Dark Tower V-VII, never mind tripe like the last half of Cell, made me wish in a dark moment that the idiot van driver did a better job… ---
**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 9, 2011, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/58 "2011-04-09T03:28:43Z")
> [@Palo\_Verde](#): > > When I was in middle and high school everyone loved the Dune series. It sounded great so I started it. I couldn’t get through more that 35 pages. So I waited a year or so, hearing everyone talking about it even more, and I tried again. Still hated it after a chapter or 2. > > I have probably picked up and started Dune 5 or so times. I really want to like it. But I just can’t. Same here. I finally read it last year, after reading the first 20 pages on two or three occasions and giving up each time. I suppose that makes it the book that’s taken me the longest to finish, technically, at about 25 years. heh. It did actually get better, though; those first chapters are just a jarring and rude introduction to the Dune universe. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/59 "2011-04-09T04:23:20Z")
> [@Nightfall1](#): > > You have me beat. I’ve never gotten to chapter two of Dune. I’ve tried four or five times. My brain just shuts down. I actually succeeded in reading the entirety of \*Dune, \*back in the 70s. All I remember is that I never had to work so hard to finish a book. As comparison, I had no trouble reading \*Atlas Shrugged \*multiple times (including the speech), but \*Dune \*was like trying to skip through molasses. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2011, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529/60 "2011-04-09T05:18:08Z")
> [@bibliophage](#): > > 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 tried to read the first book, and didn’t get very far. I could have overlooked the fact that there’s no Booth in the books, but I was bored silly too, so.. > [@Palo\_Verde](#): > > When I was in middle and high school everyone loved the Dune series. It sounded great so I started it. I couldn’t get through more that 35 pages. I got 1.5 books into the series before my stamina gave out. I thought that there being a sequel to [one of my favorite novels](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talisman_(King_%26_Straub_novel)) ever would be great so I even bought the hardcover, which is rare for me. And then I read **Black House** and hated King and Straub for wasting my time so utterly. Years later, I still can’t figure out why they bothered. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-you-thought-youd-love-but-didnt/577529.md?page=4)