2015 Reading Challenge [Closed] discussion

I'm quite a way off from reading a book in this category, but I'm curious as to how people are finding books with bad reviews. Surely books with bad reviews will also receive good reviews too. And where are you looking for these reviews? Are you going on Amazon reviews, or professional book reviewer reviews?

Some of these categories are so easy to find books for, and others are a bit of hard work!

I always look at Goodreads reviews and particularly the reviews of those I follow. To find this book, I just went to my TBR shelf and ordered the books from lowest to highest rating. The lowest rated book was Q by Evan Mandery (sorry on my phone so can't link it) with 3.23 stars. It has bad reviews aplenty so that's what I'll be reading!

I'm currently reading a book with horrid reviews and I'm 15% through and dreading the rest... it's thisclose plagiarism at times of Twilight it's scary...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

Try that list

I already read for that category... I read #5 on the Goodreads worst books... Behind the Bell: Behind the Scenes of Saved by the Bell with the Guy Who Was There for Everything by Dustin Diamond. It was awful. :)

You can also check out this blog (http://pieceofshitbookclub.blogspot.ca). The reviews are funny but I can't say I've ever been compelled to read one of the books.

You can also choose to interpret it however you want. I'm thinking of doing a polarizing book instead, something like The Catcher in the Rye, which many people feel strongly one way or the other about, and in fact had trouble getting published and received many poor reviews from prominent critics once it finally was published.

I don't know if I can do it! uggh The books on the list suggested by TJ look awful.

TJ - Thanks for the link. It's very helpful. I noticed there was also a link for "Average Rating of 3.69 and below". I think I'll read Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling from that list as I can't bring myself to read something that is entirely awful (unless it only has, like, 10 pages). :)

I just realized I own #38 on the "Under 3.00" Worst Rated List: The Grave Gourmet with a rating of 2.66. Lucky me. I'm glad it was a free book!

I peaked at the reviews, and it looks like it's not just bad. It's infuriating. That should be a fun week... :)

I also had a hard time finding this one. I decided that the essence of the challenge (one of them) is to read books that you wouldn't otherwise read. But enjoy it. So I figured that it could be books with mixed reviews. If it's one that you wouldn't read due to some iffy reviews but are still interested in it then it's a book you wouldn't otherwise read. if that reasoning makes sense. So I found this collection of Goodreads lists: https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/worst

I think I'm going to read House of Leaves on the disappointing list. I just don't think the purpose of the challenge is to have a horrible time reading a book.

I'll be reading Coming Out Straight: Understanding and Healing Homosexuality, because if I have to read a bad book I at least want to read one I can have a huge fight with in my review :D. It's gonna be fun.

I had troubles finding one that looked even remotely like something I would like to read, so finally I just started searching random books on here and looking at the reviews. I'll be reading Hemlock Grove I liked the show but I've heard that the book is horrible in comparison. Some of the reviews even said things like 'I'm not sure how this was even published' etc. But I'm intrigued so I'm going for it. It has a 3. something stars. I know I won't be able to read something that has really low ratings.

I thought about this for awhile and came up with The Chronicles of Narnia because Phillip Pullman hated it so much he wrote his own fantasy books to be the opposite of those books. They are beloved by many though, and I remember loving the miniseries as a child! The movie was pretty good too.

Laura wrote: "I also had a hard time finding this one. I decided that the essence of the challenge (one of them) is to read books that you wouldn't otherwise read. But enjoy it. So I figured that it could be boo..."
Good to know about House of Leaves...it was recommended to me years ago so I might do it in that week but I've heard its 750 pages long and super crazily written all hard to read with words all over the page, and not very scary to boot.

Stephanie: That's why I think it fits in the challenge :) Some people say it's terrifying and sticks with you and then some say that it's not scary at all. Since I like horror, I think it's worth it to find out. I'm hoping the different writing style will make the length go a little faster.

This thread is so funny. Laughed out loud a few times reading these comments! I love this group.

I'm reading one of these for "bad reviews" week:

Palo Alto: James Franco
The Flame Alphabet: Ben Marcus
Tell-All: Chuck Palahniuk

Can't decide if I care what James Franco has to say about anything, but I think I like him well enough as an actor to be able to make this claim:

"I read a book James Franco wrote one time. It was awful."

I like some of Chuckie P's other books, so I'm thinking Tell-All might not be all that bad. Maybe. Hopefully.

The Flame Alphabet actually sounds appealing to me. I'll decide which to read when the time comes.

TJ: The Flame Alphabet actually sounds like it could be interesting. I may join you on this one if you decide to do it. :)

Seems James Franco has a fair few books with poor reviews. I was considering his Actors Anonymous: A Novel for my poor review book before settling on The Arrivals by Melissa Marr.

I am reading Marly's Ghost. This book has very mixed reviews (some of them are really bad).

Sarah wrote: "I always look at Goodreads reviews and particularly the reviews of those I follow. To find this book, I just went to my TBR shelf and ordered the books from lowest to highest rating. The lowest rat..."

Oh, I like that idea. My lowed ranked one on my TBR shelf is 3.17. I guess that will do. So I'm going to read Her Wicked Wolf...think I'm glad it was a free book.

Thanks for all the links everyone. I'll certainly have a look at those. I've already got a pile of books to get through yet, so I won't be thinking about this one for a while, but I like to be prepared. I'm really not looking forward to this one!

It came to me today about which book I'll read for the "book with bad reviews". There's a theologian named Marcus Borg who just died. I've read bits and pieces of his writings when I was in graduate school but have never read an entire book. One of his most well-known is "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time". Well if you read the Amazon reviews he is either loved or hated. The ones who hate him are not at all shy about leaving their bad reviews. lol. So that will be my book for that category. I've already bought it for my Kindle.

My plan is to pull up the free ebooks on Amazon and find the one with the lowest reviews. Although I did get a copy of a book on my bookcase which someone gave me with the comment 'don't read this, it's crap' and I've stuck at the end of my bookshelf, so that's always a possibility.

I can't actually remember what it's called at the moment because I've blocked it from my memory, apparently!

Cait wrote: "My plan is to pull up the free ebooks on Amazon and find the one with the lowest reviews. Although I did get a copy of a book on my bookcase which someone gave me with the comment 'don't read this,..."

Hi Cait - Is there a link to pull up the free ebooks on Amazon. I have a link that pulls up the top 100, but of course, they probably wouldn't qualify for 'bad review' books.

I'm reading The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. I figured I would read something that had a lot of five star as well as a lot of one star reviews. I have a feeling I'm going to hate it, but it's short and I'm curious to read it.

TJ - I might go with Tell All as well or Pygmy (also by Palahniuk). I really like his work.

I'm still a bit undecided about reading something that I would never read or reading something that I know I might enjoy despise the bad reviews. It's a bit hard to get out of my reading comfort zone!

Stephanie wrote: "Laura wrote: "I also had a hard time finding this one. I decided that the essence of the challenge (one of them) is to read books that you wouldn't otherwise read. But enjoy it. So I figured that i..."

I really REALLY enjoyed House of Leaves to the point that it still is a book on my book shelf. It is an odd read, has pages going this direction and that, and just makes you think BUT it's because of those reasons that I kept it. I love the fact that it's not like other books. I wouldn't say its horrifying, its just mystery. I would recommend it to anyone.

With that being said, I'm still stuck on this topic.

Paula wrote: "You can also check out this blog (http://pieceofshitbookclub.blogspot.ca). The reviews are funny but I can't say I've ever been compelled to read one of the books."

That is amazing

Erika wrote: "Paula wrote: "You can also check out this blog (http://pieceofshitbookclub.blogspot.ca). The reviews are funny but I can't say I've ever been compelled to read one of the books."

That is amazing"

This link is just what I was looking for. Thanks for mentioning it! I'm still thinking about which book to add to my list for this category.

I just joined the group and have been skipping around on the list, but came to Goodreads for suggestions about books with bad reviews. I know that reviews are so subjective, that's why I tend to go by Goodreads reviews (actual readers) as opposed to newspaper or magazine reviews ("critics"), but still I have run across people on Goodreads that hate books I love and vice versa. This might be a good list to try for this category: (12 Classic books that got bad reviews) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01...

Jordan wrote: "I'm reading The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. I figured I would read something that had a lot of five star as well as a lot of one star reviews. I have a feeling I'm going to hate it, b..."

I've tried reading a couple of his books and hated them too much to finish them. However, I was completely won over by the movie they made of the Notebook...so maybe it's not the story I hate, but the writing. :) (Enjoy...hope it's mercifully short!)

Diane wrote: "TJ - Thanks for the link. It's very helpful. I noticed there was also a link for "Average Rating of 3.69 and below". I think I'll read Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling from that list as I can't br..."

I actually thought this book was very well written. Here is a link to my review of the book (if it works) with no spoilers: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

(When I click the link, my review is the first, but I'm not sure that is what you will see...sorry; pretty new at posting to these kinds of groups.)

Like a lot of others, I'm planning on going with a book that is polarizing, rather than a book that is reviewed as being flat-out bad. I'm choosing Eat, Pray, Love, because it seems to me to be a book that everybody either loves or hates. There are a lot of one-star reviews, but a lot of really good reviews as well. Has me curious. Maybe I'll love it, maybe I'll hate it.

If you're looking for books in this category still, I found this list a little more palatable than outright bad books.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01...

Here's another way to go: classic books that got terrible reviews when they came out. Here's a buzzfeed list as well as the huffington post link that I think is already on this thread. The buzzfeed list is made up of delightful images with the reviews photoshopped onto the covers=)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisritter16...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01...



This is also a good list of terrible reviews from 2013:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...

I can change my mind but I'm thinking about reading The Magicians. The book has some pretty bad ratings (and some good ones, of course) and several of my friends couldn't finish it. There will be a tv show next year for the series and I enjoyed the trailer, so it's an interesting possibility.

Okay, so I read a book earlier this year and after I finished it I thought it might be a good one for this week. The book is Le Pain des Fossoyeurs by Frédéric Dard.

The problem: It only has 4 ratings in GR, making it a 2.25 (probably due to my 1 star rating); there's only one edition in GR, the Portuguese one, the original is in french (if you type the original title it only shows the portuguese translation); as far as I know, there isn't an english translation; the edition I read was from 1956 and it seems to be the only one; I couldn't search much about it because there's very little, almost none, information in portuguese or english and my french is really, really basic.

So should it count? Or should I read something else?

French reviews seem good for this book (I checked Amazon and some blogs/articles), but I suppose they are from readers who usually like this author as it's an old book! Because of this, for me, it's not really a book with bad reviews, it's more a book you disliked.

Thanks so much Zaz! The language barrier made it difficult to find more information so I stuck with what I got from GR. I'll try to fit it in another week or cut it from the challenge.

Could I choose something with 3.4 average at good read ?

In my opinion, part of the challenge is to read books that you wouldn't normally read.

So if a 3.4 would typically prevent you from reading a book then it would count towards the challenge. I interpreted "bad reviews" as a book with a mixture of really low and really low.

I usually read books with 3.75 average rating and more so 3.4 is bad review according to me
thanks Laura for helping