Books I Loathed discussion

Michael wrote: "Do you think that a person might loath a book less for the content of the fiction than for some outside influence, like being forced to read it in school?"
Definitely. My best friends loves to read... as long as she's not forced to. She has hated every book we had to read in school, but loved several that she got to choose.
It may also have something to do with who recommended it to you. I have a friend who has a totally different reading style of what she likes than I do, so whenever she recommends something, I think I hate it because I expect to hate it.

Long post is long. Feel free to skip to the TLDR summary at the bottom.

I personally hate books, not generally because of the genre, but because of something in the book like the writing style or the characters. If I can't like or empathize or at least care about one of the characters then I'll hate the book no matter what genre it's in. But if I like the characters (and the plot and writing style aren't totally stupid) then I'll probably like the book regardless of genre. I honestly don't even know what genre of book I like because it doesn't really matter that much to me. I do know that I generally tend to dislike mystery novels, but that's because I'm not a big fan of the typical private eye character.

Writing style is also a really big thing for me. If I don't think that the author is a good writer and I dislike their style then it just isn't going to work out, no matter how interesting the idea is. And interesting ideas or themes are important, sometimes even more so than plot. Never Let Me Go is one of my favorite books, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what the plot is. Instead, I'd just end up describing the characters and the premise.

I think all of this rambling, my entire method of liking or disliking books, can be wrapped up in a simple sentence. If it makes me feel some strong emotion (other than the desire to stop reading it) then I like it, and if it fails on that front then it wasn't worth my time.

As for being forced to read a book, that's never stopped me from liking something. I loved the books we read for school, with only a few of them making my hate list. Those few were books that already violated the rules I already outlined in the previous paragraphs.

TLDR: So, to make a long post short, I think that genre doesn't matter so much as other things like characters, plot, theme, and writing style. And while many people have an aversion to being required to read something, that doesn't seem to be the case for everybody.

Emily wrote: "...because of something in the book like the writing style or the characters...."

I totally agree with you on this one! I have abandoned books (which I don't do often) because of writing styles that I just couldn't stand.
I think the characters matter too because it's like when you read a book and latch onto a secondary character to love, and then you read the sequel and that character is hardly in it. You (or me, anyway) are already inclined to hate the sequel just because of that.

I would go so far to say that characters don't have to be likable, but that they do have to be someone worth reading about. If I don't care at all about any of the characters in the book, why would I bother finding out what happens to them? They should be realistic enough that I can care about their lives or struggles or quirks. That is why books like Twilight will never be fulfilling to me, because the characters are not round enough to make me care. Paradise Lost, on the other hand, has at least one rather interesting character in Satan. And, as I said, theme and writing style are both important, both of which Paradise Lost has plenty of. In fact, my inclusion of theme as an important element of what makes a book likable or not would include the things that "agitate our gray cells." Again, I would reference Never Let Me Go as the perfect example of how important this element is.

I don't like books that have unbeleivable plots. Having said that, I like SF and fantasy but it has to be credible and consistent.

IMO, consistency - what I refer to as internal consistency, at any rate - is not the same as realism. It's more about the tension between setup and payoff. It's the "gun over the door" rule: if your story describes a gun over the door on page one, somebody darn well better get shot before the story ends.

Warning: my post is going to be VERY tl;dr

I dislike books too because of the writing style and characters. I find that I can read books in pretty much every genre as long as the writing style and characters dont bug me.

I usually have a pretty high tolerance for writing style - I think perhaps the only books I ever had problems with were LOTR and the Sky Rained Heroes. LOTR I just found terribly boring and drawn out, and Sky Rained Heroes used ridiculously flowery and complicated language. I'd wager that I didnt understand what the author said 90% of the time.

As far as characters go, I need to be able to relate to the main character in some way - other characters, not so much. I despise Twilight so much because I feel like Stephenie Meyer created the most boring and horrid characters in Bella and Edward. I dont relate to Bella as a teenage girl AT ALL, she feels like a damn cardboard cutout.

I also despise the main character Elena Gilbert in the Vampire Diaries series (that series is also majorly flawed in other ways, but I wont get into that). She's popular and bitchy, everybody apparently worships the ground she walks on, and she's gorgeous. She's pretty much everything I despised about girls at my high school, so I dont know why the author would pick such a horrible protagonist.

I also really dislike when SF or Fantasy worlds are inconsistent - and I'll bring up Twilight again as an example. In the first 3 books you're pretty much led to believe that vampires cant mate with humans, because theyre dead and dont produce bodily fluids (not even sweat).

But then in Breaking Dawn, Bella's eggo gets preggo and all Carlisle says is 'it's possible'. Then we get told that interspecies breeding is usually impossible when the vampire is female, because a menstrual cycle has to be present and a vampire has no cycle, as their body is frozen in time.

Then I read something Stephenie Meyer said about how the vampires produce their own equivalent of bodily fluids (I guess that was a new development). That just brought up even more questions than it answered - well does vampire sperm replenish itself then? Shouldnt the sperm be dead? Etcetera.

Uhh yeah, tl;dr.

Re: message 11 by Michael

If there's a gun over the door on page five, I would hope that it would appear again somewhere later in the book, whether it falls off the door and accidentally shoots someone, or perhaps a character throws it out as not necessary, or then again, maybe it implicates a character as having evil in her heart, whether or not the evil is acted upon. What I don't want to see is the gun still over the door at the end of the story, having had no part to play at all.

The gun and butler analogy doesn't stand up: it's never the butler, and the weapon is often not the gun, unless the story is ironic. ;>)

Can a gun over the door not be symbolic? Must it be fired in some way in order to be signifigant to the plot? A gun over the door that stays over the door throughout the story can be quite meaningful, in the hands of a good writer.

Yes, of course it can be symbolic; but it's got to tie in somehow (see #13), I think.

A gun over the door that stays over the door throughout the story can be quite meaningful, in the hands of a good writer.

*grin* In fairness, I was oversimplifying for effect. It's easier and snappier to say "somebody better get shot" than "the gun should be used in some meaningful way."

And if there's a butler in a murder mystery, and he's not the murderer, I'm not gonna complain, UNLESS there isn't some other reason for him to be in the story. If he's truly extraneous, that's bad writing.

ETA: I would be just as displeased if there was a pointless stranger who walks in and gets shot with the gun that had been over the door! ;)

I do not like dumb, selfish, stereotypical, or bitchy characters. In addition, format, spelling, and grammar are big things for me. I am also one of those people that cannot stand the books that I read for school because I had to read them for school. However, if I read the same books anytime after we are done with them in school I have a chance of suddenly liking them.

When I dislike a book, it is because
-the story is illogical and details are inconsistent. (In the Logan Hunter mysteries by Susan Whitfield, an intern with the state bureau of investigation leads a homicide investigation, instead of the local police and county sheriff. An intern? Seriously?)
-the author has not done sufficient research (Again, Susan Whitfield, Wilmington, NC is not in Brunswick County, so the Wilmington police would no have jurisdiction there.)
-the dialogue is unrealistic or something the character would not say (Susan Whitfield: "the bride was chowing down at her wedding reception."
-grammar and usage errors (It is not "tow the line." It is "TOE the line!")
-if it is an audiobook and I hate the reader's voice.

That said, when the character is purposely hateful and stupid but well-written (The Social Climber's Handbook: A Novel) I like the book. When the premise is far-fetched, but put forth logically, then I like the book ("proof" that mermaids exist)

Once I discover something offensive in the first few chapters, I end up scouring for more reasons to hate the book instead of enjoying the story!

While I hate plenty of books on their own merit, and I don't think an outside influence would ever convince me to hate a book I loved, I do think that outside influence can tip the scales in favor of loathing if it's a book I didn't really have a strong opinion about.

There were plenty of books that I read in school that, while they never would have been my favorites, were completely ruined by having to pick apart every. last. little. detail. and "find the hidden meaning."

No, I don't think that the heroine lived in a red-brick house because red symbolizes disaster and therefore it shows that her life was doomed! I think she lived in a red-brick house because brick was a common building material where and when she lived and bricks are usually red. I also think that if the house did indeed symbolize disaster it would have been mentioned more than once over the course of a 400-page novel. Eesh.