Books I Loathed discussion

Is it just me, or is this book one huge inside joke that I'm just not getting?

I feel like I should be laughing at Confucius. He's enormously absurd, but the book was like a drawn out cocktail party where you're stuck listening to some pompous idiot go on about how they are better than, well, everything, and while everybody else revels in their stupidity ( or pretends to to try to appear high brow) you feel almost...bad for them. But because they're so loud and disgusting you don't even want to stick around to tell them they look ridiculous. (i couldn't, I put it down midway through)

Am I meant to want to know what happens to this bafoon? What am I missing?

I had pretty much the same reaction. Every review I'd seen before reading it said it was hilarious, but I didn't find any of it funny...mostly just uncomfortable. And I can't really think of another book where I've gotten the sense that the author has as much contempt for his main character as in this one.

Nooooo! Try it again!

I rarely give up on a book, but I just couldn't get into this one and I seriously tried. I'm an avid reader who always has a book on hand, I was abroad at the time and fresh out of books in English and someone loaned me this one. I still gave up on it, ended up reading something I'd brought with me for like the third or fourth time. that's how much I disliked this book.

I found it unspeakably exhausting, and with no one to root for I couldn't keep up the mental energy for it.

I LOVED this book. laughed out loud on nearly every page.

Love this book. It's actually pretty much a joke on every character except for the lovely people who work in the bar.

I read this book in college when I lived in New Orleans and was waitressing in the French Quarter. I hated the book; these were characters like people I knew and I found them sad not funny. Everyone I’ve met loved the book and I loathed it. Glad there’s someone else out there who didn’t like it!

Bailed on this one when I realized how much I'd grown to loathe Ignatius.

Lauren wrote: "Is it just me, or is this book one huge inside joke that I'm just not getting?

I feel like I should be laughing at Confucius. He's enormously absurd, but the book was like a drawn out cocktail par..."

Who reveled him? I don't recall anyone (except himself) did....

Kate wrote: "I found it unspeakably exhausting, and with no one to root for I couldn't keep up the mental energy for it."

Watch a sport if you need to root. Lost of great literary misanthropes to enjoy.

Lauren wrote: "Is it just me, or is this book one huge inside joke that I'm just not getting?

I feel like I should be laughing at Confucius. He's enormously absurd, but the book was like a drawn out cocktail par..."

Not sure I saw New Orleans as a cocktail party--maybe more like a bourbon and cocktail weenie party...it's probably just that you don't get it. Maybe travel to NOLA. Maybe that'll help.

I tried to read this....I really did.....but it never 'grabbed' me and was just plain confusing and boring. I used to feel 'inadequate' since it received such glowing reviews....the fact that it ended up in this group gives me hope for mankind!

Lauren, I think I understand the feeling you're describing. Maybe it has to do with how some folks love watching other's stupidity and then there are those of us who feel sorry for them and find their behavior uncomfortable or embarrassing. I am not one who regularly indulges in Schadenfreude so maybe that is why the book didn't appeal to me.