When your opinion goes against the masses....

When I reviewed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon in my previous post I was certain of one thing; that the comments would be filled with people declaring their love for the book in response to my rather less than glowing review.

Sometimes it's like that with this blog lark; Chris and I have always been willing to post negative reviews here, if we feel they are deserved, but sometimes we read a book which has had rave reviews everywhere else but for one reason or another it comes up short for us. We are sometimes left wondering if perhaps we missed something.

This is meant to be quite a light hearted post BTW, a mere musing. People who disagree with our posts are always very polite when they say so and there are no issues with that whatsoever. I say that in-case your wondering if something sparked this post!

So just for fun we have listed here some other books which we have really not liked but everyone else seems to have loved;

From Jess

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

I could just about put up with the needlessly gory details of what happens to a human being when they burn alive and I could put up with the ENDLESS descriptions of food which went on in this book but what I could not put up with was the ending which explained bugger all.

The World According to Garp by John Irving

I hated Garp and this was my main problem with this book. I hated him so much that when his wife had an affair I thought 'good on you girl, that'll show him'.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I didn't hate this one, in fact I liked it but for the life of me I can't understand why people love it, for me it was just alright.

From Chris

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

My God but didn't everyone make a fuss over this book. Even Jessica succumbed to the hype. When I declared to her that I didn't like the book she looked at me as if I had told her I was pregnant then said indignantly “Well, you're the only person in the world who doesn't like it”(A statement which I have since discovered is untrue)

I found 'The Road' to be largely boring, bleak, depressing, almost utterly without hope and suffering from a severe case of poor character development. Overall I found the story to be a meandering mess which was always going to end badly.

Don't lend this to someone with depression, you'll drive them over the edge.

I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti

I reviewed this book recently and found the comments I received were mainly from fans or people that had heard positive things about it. I couldn't (and still can't) see what the fuss was about with that book. The characters, without exception, were unlikeable. The plot was nonsensical and the overall ending deeply unsatisfying.

Slaughterhouse 5

Ah, one of my most hated books. I could easily write a ten page review on how naff this book is but I will just highlight a few of my biggest bugbears. The main character was infuriating and completely mad, the story was ridiculous, the phrase 'So it goes' is repeated over and over and over until you want to burn the book (it appears 116 times in 150 pages) the story is disjointed and difficult to follow. Then the author beings to bash the allies for bombing Dresden during the Second World War before falsifying the numbers of casualties the Germans suffered during the raid and calling the bombing “the greatest massacre in European history” Vonnegut was a fool. Even the man himself branded Slaughterhouse 5 a “Failure” he was right about that at least.

For every one hundred people that loved The Time Travelors Wife, there is always someone else (my mum being one of them) who couldn't finish it. A book on Amazon could have three hundred five star ratings and yet still have thirty one star ratings. We hope that anyone reading our reviews will always check out other opinions (unless the reader knows our tastes quite well) because when it all boils down to it, this blog is just our opinion, plain and simple.