What was a book you expected to love but when you started to read it/finished it you were sorely disappointed?
Also, and vice versa what was a book you didn't expect to like or went into blind and completely loved it?
I'll start.
I went into the Exorcist with high hopes but found it a bit boring… Don't hate on me as I know this book is considered a classic.
Vice versa, I went into the Library at Mount Char not expected much and now the book is my favourite of all time.
by JakubJamesBoote
9 Comments
Joyland. I like Stephen King so I knew it’d be at least ok, but I didn’t expect it to become one of my all-time favourites like it did.
My biggest disappointment was probably Infinite Jest. Everyone kept telling me it was this genius work that would change my life, but I spent like 3 months trudging through it and just felt exhausted by the end. All that buildup for what felt like homework disguised as literature.
On the flip side, I picked up The Martian on a whim because I needed something light after finishing a particularly dense technical manual for work. Expected some cheesy sci-fi but ended up staying up until 3am multiple nights in a row because I couldnt put it down. The problem-solving aspects really clicked with my programmer brain, and Watney’s humor kept me engaged way more than I thought it would. Ended up being one of my favorite reads that year.
I just got bored during most of the chapters of Satantango. A bunch of Hungarian country yokels being stupid, and I couldn’t find any literary value in their whinging at each other. Sandwiched in between were some wonderful, highly memorable scenes – a doctor trapped in his gaze, a girl’s suicide – but they struggle against the mass. I really I wish I knew what made its author a candidate for the Greatest Living.
Then there’s Lolita. Some people have gotten outright angry at me when I told them I didn’t have any moral problem with the book, I just found the second half dull and Humbert’s prose style unengaging.
I expected to love the post office by Charles Bukowski but didn’t find it that good.
I ended up loving Piranisi by susana Clark and I wasn’t sure I would going into it. It is now one of my top 5
Mistborn. So many people love Brandon Sanderson and this series, but I really struggled to get into the story and didn’t love the world building. I plan on trying it again though.
*The Secret History* by Donna Tartt. On the surface it had a lot of elements I like, and everyone who recommended it to me was positive I’d love it. But the characters were so heinously morally repugnant that I couldn’t stand reading about any of them. I have never enjoyed a book less than that one. I disliked it so much that I actually feel almost embarrassed about how much I disliked it, and it’s so popular in this sub that I feel like some sort of heretic! But, here we are!
The Library at Mount Char was one I expected to like, but alas didn’t.
Same with Her Body and Other Parties, Lapvona, Notes on an Execution, and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.
I also expected to like Convenience Store Woman more than I did. I loved Earthlings by the same author (Sayaka Murata), but Convenience Store Woman was just a 3/5. Still liked, didn’t love.
Babel. Academia, weird magic, anti-colonialiam. Sign me the fuck up. My wife loved it and hyped it up. It was NOT GOOD™️
It was like baby’s first book about colonialism and the Silver did nothing I swear.
I read Itch! By Gemma Amor, thinking I would love it, and it turns out that I really didn’t love it but the end. Turned out to be more of a crime thriller than I was expecting.
On the other hand, I don’t really read books that I don’t think I would like. But I did read the Count of Monte Cristo thinking that it would be a drag, but I really liked it the whole way through. Even the bits that people tended not to like (according to the internet).