10 years of awful books my Bookclub has read

We have done over a 100 books since my Bookclub started. Here's a "heads-up" on what to avoid

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard

My Summer with George Marilyn French

Paradise Toni Morrison

Where the Heart Is Billie Letts

What Looks Like Crazy
on an Ordinary Day Pearl Cleage

A Good House Bonnie Burnard

The Temple of My Familiar Alice Walker

Anil's Ghost Michael Ondaatje

A Heartbreaking Work
of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers

Mercy Among the Children David Adams Richards

Lovingkindness Anne Roiphe

Icy Sparks Gwyn Hyman Rubio

Rush Home Road Lori Lansens

Kit's Law Donna Morrissey

Trans-sister Radio Chris Bohjalian

Running in the Family Michael Ondaajte

Unless Carol Shields

Elle Doug Glover

Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon

The Last Crossing Guy Vanderhaeghe

A Complicated Kindness Miriam Toews

The Wife Tree Dorothy Speak

Balzac and the Little
Chinese Seamstress Dal Sijie

Elegant Gathering of White
Snows Kris Radish

A Map of Glass Jane Urquhart

A Wedding in December Anita Shreve

Eucalyptus Murray Bail

These are my personal dislikes. Some members were more charitable but not by much. We have 10 members and each one picks a book for us to read per month. One of our rules is you must finish the book even if you don't like it. We have read some real "dogs" but have also read some great ones.

A Heartbreaking Work
of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers

I've tried many times to like this book, and granted, I have nothing personal against Dave Eggers, but the sarcasm leaves me cold.

I enjoyed Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. I thought it brought out many different emotions and was well worth the read. I have not read any of the others in your list.

I've only read six of the books on your list, but I loved five of them . . . Anil's Ghost, A Complicated Kindness, Map of Glass, Unless, Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress (okay, maybe I didn't love that one, but I thought it was very good). Running in the Family was just okay.

My bookclub just read How Proust Can Change Your Life. Definitely not life changing. More like sleep inducing.

Nickel, isn't How Proust more appropriately read with Proust? I haven't read it...but even if its a spoof, wouldn't it make a little more sense? Or do I have the completely wrong idea about that book?

When our book club agreed to read How Proust Can Change Your Life we were assured that you don't have to read Proust to "get it." I think it was fairly straight forward philosophy, and not difficult to understand. But the bits on Proust certainly didn't make me want to read Proust. The whole thing made me not care.

But we're meeting on it tonight, and after a good discussion and a couple of glasses of wine, I often come home with an enlightened position.

I recently read The Consolations of Philosophy by the same author (de Botton) and had the same reaction: none. I don't dislike these books. There are some interesting points and the photos are kinda funny when taken in context with the text. But I can't say I like them either.

I really liked The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Can't say that I've read the others, though.

The discussion by book group had after reading Unless by Carol Shields was fascinating...many times the strangest topics can come out of books I both liked and disliked. To me a good writer can make me feel....good and bad.

I would agree with Trans-sister Radio but Pilgrim at Tinker Creek I really loved.

I think that de Botton is a great author. The Consolations of Philosophy and On Love were awesome books. I'm currently in the middle of Status Anxiety and I recommend his books to people all of the time.

Well, I haven't given up on de Botton yet. I think it's possible that I may like one of his other books. Which would you recommend? I thought the Proust book was very blah, and liked Consolations a tiny bit better. Which one should I try next?

Annie Dillard- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek- can be pretentious as hell but acquaints you with interesting info and makes interesting connections between usually unconnected topics.

</i>A friend recommended Pilgrim at Tinker Creek when it was first published. Although I share the author's love of the natural world, I just could not force myself to read the thing. And it won a Pulitzer!

Edited to stop the italics from a previous post.

Nickelini - On Love is a great story...my mom loved it so much that she bought it for a friend of hers because of the universality of the story...it shows how love is not an easy thing to handle...we are only human.

I just had to put in a word for Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek. To me the problem is with the English language. We can hear excitement in a voice but cannot express it in words without using specific expressions often related to the big G word which Abbey found too frequent in Dillard even though he granted that she filled out thoreau's boots better than anyone else around. If you, like me also wrote in Japanese, you would realize how much this handicaps English. In Japanese, and many other languages, emotion of all different sorts can be worked into verb endings, sort of like the meow of a well-developed cat (many cats who grow up in isolation lack proper variety, i had to teach one to meow better). If you feel such expressions pretentious, perhaps it is because you take them literally rather than emotionally and fail to see that Tinker Creek is a book-length prose poem. Or, to turn that around, if you thought of it as a poem would you still find it pretentious? And why? And, you might ask yourself, why a throw the beer can out the window pee a lot manly writer like abbey respected dillard that much. It was not just for a little interesting info or connections between some usually unconnected subjects.

I think whether someone likes Tinker Creek or not tells a hell of a lot about that person and think i will make a forum sometime, after considering what factors/questions to ask participants. The results could be very interesting. Ah, I believe that people who like Tinker Creek are 90% certain to like what I write and those who do not probably will find me too much . . .

Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!

>16 keigu: keigu

In my case, thinking of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek as a poem wouldn't help a bit. I don't actually read much poetry, other than an occasional bout with Robert W Service. My training is in engineering, so I do indeed take things literally, and I have little patience with any form of expression that is overly lyrical or gushy. But I have enjoyed the LT haikus, so perhaps I am not totally hopeless. Who knows, I might even enjoy the Sea Cucumber haikus.

many cats who grow up in isolation lack proper variety, i had to teach one to meow better
LOL! I would love to sit in on that little tutorial session! All of my cats have been quite chatty; perhaps I trained them (or they trained me) without my knowing it?

I'll be damned! My Dad, an engineer (mechanical/aeronautical/boats/thermodynamics etc) loved Abbey but felt the same way about Tinker Creek as you do. Yes, the cuke book has the cooperation of a no nonsense evolutionary biologist, and my sin is ocassional flippancy rather than gushiness: you might find it acceptable. It took months of tutorials -- whenever i visited my mom's -- most cats are chatty (could they etymology be ...?) but if they are separated from their family too quickly they do not know how to say they lack the intonations which are completely different for expressing come here, please, you better come here cause i have something great, i am very upset with you and, you persist and i'll have to bite you etc.

I used to feel guilty for not finishing books that I just did not like, no longer! Life is short and there are way too many good books out there! Try Michael Chabon's "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" or his book "Wonder Boys" turned into a pretty okay movie with Michael Douglas in I believe the only decent role he has played!

I read "Where the Heart Is" and it wasn't bad, but....it got a little weird in places. Like whenever Forney is around Novalee, he's obsessing over *everything* about her. And she's seventeen when they meet! How old is he supposed to be? I just never really saw the chemistry between them. All I saw was a lonely, obsessed librarian with a crazy sister in the attic, eerily like "Jane Eyre."
In fact, that whole book was a lot like "Jane Eyre"! The smart girl with the kid (in this case her own daughter) is abandoned by her loser boyfriend, and she later bonds with the strange gentleman librarian with a secret (his alcoholic, somewhat deranged sister) and even though they are temporarily torn apart (she feels that her low class status--working at Wal-Mart--would hold him back from his ambitions to teach and be part of the intelligensia) they are ultimately reunited. It's very Bronte when you look at it like that.

But the movie---Oh, god. Baaaad. The only role Natalie Portman was worse in were the Star Wars prequels.

I also read Where the Heart Is, and I have to agree with you on the weirdness, oxymoron. But I wouldn't say it was an awful book.

I have to admit that most of these I haven't even heard of, much less read. Some of these authors I've read other works of, and liked these works, but that doesn't mean their other works are good. in fact, I think maybe some of them only had one book in them.
I'm thinking of Anita Shreve. The Pilot's Wife was definitely good, but Sea Glass was not, and All He Ever Wanted was not good enough for me to finish. Is it just sophomore slump, or do these authors have multi-book contracts they're in a hurry to fulfill, or what? I'm tninking of Judith Rossner--I really liked Looking for Mr. Goodbar and was looking forward to August What a clunker! I forced myself to finish it, though.

Incidentally, I agree with you on The Temple of My Familiar--bad on several levels. But I like Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek. Ondaatje is a big-deal writer. I tried to read The English Patient but gave up on it. I felt like Elaine in the episode of Seinfeld that deals with the film The English Patient(which I also gave up on about 20 minutes in).

I really wanted to try Trans-sister Radio. What was it that you didn't like?

#1 & #8 - my book group also read Unless by Carol Shields and it was a mixed review. I got on quite well with it but some of the others felt it was a let down. Then someone pointed out that she had been very ill at the time of writing and this had perhaps changed her style somewhat and certainly her focus could not have been solely on the book.

Not everyone felt this excused the book but it led to a very interesting discussion on how events in the writers life, both good and bad, can change them as an author quite dramatically. Stephen King's accident and subsequent books was brought up as another author who is "the same but different" following a life-changing event.

Kavalier and Clay is the only one I've read; I thought it was a too-long book with many moments - and some longer passages - which were breathlessly revealing and poignant. Some of them were unforgettable.

Some clunkers from our book group were:
Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight and
The Memory Keeper's Daughter- this one was way to Lifetime movie for my taste. I couldn't even finish it!

No one in my RL book club liked Enslaved by Ducks and only a few liked Love in the Time of Cholera.

All seven people present at the first 2008 meeting of my book club disliked The Gathering

Other than winner the prize, I haven't heard anything good about The Gathering. But tell us, why did you all dislike it? Did you think it was well written, but there was something about it you didn't like? Or was it poorly written? Or boring? Or ??

Yes, it was boring. None of us felt any sympathy for the narrator and we found her 'obsession' with a certain part of a man's anatomy unnecessary.

>26 HelloAnnie:-I just read Memory Keeper's Daughter and I couldn't agree with you more. I think I lost a few IQ points and got a few grey hairs because of this book. By the middle of it, I was rolling my eyes at the book so much, I COULDN'T read it.

I liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Anil's Ghost, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Icy Sparks. I definitely did not like Unless. It's Sunday morning and I am too sleepy to explain my likes and dislikes however.

Kavalier and Clay?

Them's fighting words!

#23 - I have to say I was the only one in the book club who didn't like Trans-Sister Radio so you might very well like it. The book seemed pretentious and pandering to a white, middle class, (somewhat sheltered) audience. I should say I'm white and love NPR. But I have also known several people (two, well) who have transitioned. Maybe it's that last fact that makes this ring false more than any other.
The author did a good job of researching the topic, but the word that I associate with this work is empty. It's also a bit didactic and the characters underdeveloped.

I'm going to have to get in the Kavalier and Clay Fan Club. One of my favourites for sure.
The only other I've read is Where the Heart Is. I actually really liked it the first time I read it but when I reread it I couldn't figure out what I likes so much the first time.

I liked The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, and Unless. The only other Carol Shields I've read was Stone Diaries and I liked Unless much better. What I'm really interested in is the whole book club thing. I was only in one for a short while before it kind of fizzled out. I've just never got the appeal of letting someone else pick out what I'm going to read. I have SO many books I really want to read, many in piles where my family would rather they weren't, that I've never been too drawn to a group where I would have to read what they say. I've also rarely found the books friends recommended as great as they did. It has usually been a chore to read those so I could return their copy or tell them how much I loved their gift.

I hated Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress. We had to read it for a book club at my old workplace. My latest bookclub is kicking off the year with The Ritual Bath, an awful potboiler by the queen of awful potboilers, Faye Kellerman.