May 2026
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    What is a book you completely disliked or do not understand why it’s highley rated or popular? For me it’s:

    A Confederacy of the Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
    The Crying in Lot 47 by Thomas Pynchon

    I read through the first two books and only made it to about 30% of The Crying in Lot 47. I read the reviews on Goodreads and I don’t understand why they have high ratings.

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    22 Comments

    1. lovablydumb on

      The Catcher in the Rye. It’s awful. One of the worst books I’ve ever finished, and one of the reasons I’ll dnf a book now if I don’t enjoy it.

    2. Prince of Thorns.

      I have *literally* never **ever** come across a bigger gary stu than the main character of that series, to an absurdly ridiculous degree. Oh, he is also an unrepentant rapist.

    3. Self Help!!!

      “Going through depression, here are 4 books with 500 pages each”

    4. The Last Heir to the Blackwood Library by Hester Fox. It seemed popular with a bunch of book circles I follow and historical fiction with supernatural elements seemed right up my alley. Nope! Absolutely brutal. It’s so rare that I have a book I actively want to warn people away from.

    5. Maleficent-Jello-545 on

      1) Kafka on the Shore. People on this sub will sing Murakami’s praises forever but that book was my first of his and I hated it. Half of it is interesting but about 3/4 through the protagonist (who is a child btw) starts having constant graphic sex scenes with his mom. I couldn’t finish it.

      2) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A lot of people love it but I did not get it at all. It’s just a bunch of nothing, and like the author tried too hard to make the characters edgy and offensive all while no plot happens. And an adult having sex with a child happens in this one too. Felt like a waste of time.

      3) Another unpopular opinion but A Hundred Years of Solitude. The entire book was a slog except for the very beginning and the very end. And surprise incest and pedophilia happens in this one too.

      4) Already mentioned but Catcher in the Rye. Nothing crazy just boring.

    6. SparklingGrape21 on

      The Great Gatsby and Pachinko are two books I hated and can’t understand how anyone enjoyed.

    7. Decent-Amphibian8433 on

      Cloud Atlas – Couldn’t figure out why so highly rated. DNF.

      Tried to read couple of books by John Le Carre. It was so slow. DNF.

    8. thegoldenlion4 on

      Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’. Read up to 40% of it. Just a load of ‘game of luck’ stupidity to give some deeper meaning to the characters. Didn’t even make any point for me.

    9. Black Leopard, Red Wolf – didn’t enjoy it at all & very graphic.

      The Archive Undying – very hard to follow the plot

      Deadmen Walking – hot mess

    10. surprise--bitch on

      Bunny by Mona Awad. it’s on every bestseller table at the bookstore. jesus christ. it’s such a slog that i took personal offense.

    11. bladershaven on

      Great Gatsby, great expectation, boring as hell in stead read classics that are actually good like anything by Jules Vern

    12. Jan_17_2016 on

      If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler. I see it recommended all the time, gave it a shot and DNFd after 30 pages.

      I’m not a fan of post-modernism or Metafiction.

    13. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. It was so boring. Literally 80% was who’d wearing what in great detail. I couldn’t stand it. I hate finished it and it’s the reason why I will dnf now.

    14. The road by Cormac Mccarthy

      Heard good things about the author but I couldn’t even finish the book because of the way it was written

    15. Letsget_literal on

      The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I simply don’t get the hype

    16. gvtterskunk on

      “Things have gotten worse since we last spoke” by Eric LaRocca. It’s marketed as a horror/disturbing book about two girls meeting on a chatroom and obsessing over each other into an unhealthy sadomasochist relationship.
      The prose is terrible and while reporting chatlogs in a book and make them actually engaging isn’t an easy task, the author failed miserably. It’s boring, and it feels like something you’d see written by a teen on a creepypasta website. And the “horror” part is literally just lesbian trauma porn, and honestly the lack of good horror lesbian books that don’t involve sexual perversions is depressing. You can guess that the writer is not a lesbian. It was a waste of time, luckily not of money.🏴‍☠️

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