Quote:
Originally Posted by yvanleterrible
. . . took ages to deliver a meager story that could have been told in a page
|
Another reason for everyone having a different POV. I mostly go by whether I care for the characters. Story? Sometimes I do read mystery or thriller books that have a complicated story line. They make me feel inadequate for not having been able to remember enough to guess the ending that I'm supposed to be guessing.
One of my favorites is
Framley Parsonage, Anthony Trollope's longest and best-selling novel. 800+ pages mostly about one not-all-that-extraordinary couple whose friends think they shouldn't marry. And all that time you know they will. Even better, and I sometimes read them through tears: Anything by a Brontė. And yet someone put a Brontė novel on their worst list.
As for my worst, the problem is that it's not fair to say the books are bad when you can't finish them. Exhibit A: Ayn Rand. It's not primarily the politics -- I just don't believe the characters are real, and so don't want to find out more about them.
I did finish one Harry Potter book. But I can't put it on a worst list here because I can't remember which it was. I know that a lot of people identify with those characters and something must be missing in me not be able to do so myself. Then again, almost every book on the worst lists of this thread were bestsellers at some time, beloved by someone. Its a big world with lots of different people.
The one book I finished in recent years and can truly say I hated was
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. Maybe I cared about the characters and just don't like Chabon.