Catriona wrote in the Heyer/Grand Sophy thread:
Sarah, can we do a thread on romances that we want to love, we should have loved, everybody else loves them…but that we can’t stand because something just left a bad taste in our mouths?
I like this idea for two reasons. No, three. First, we’ve done it before. But let’s do a new one. It’s been years.
Second: not enjoying a book that it seems like everyone loved or enjoyed can be an isolating experience, but as I’ve learned on the internet, you’re never alone in your likes and dislikes, no matter how outlandish they might seem. 0_o
And third: everyone’s buttons are different (woo, kinky!). What ticks me off may not bother you in the slightest, and vice versa. For example, and I’ve used this example before: there are many who are intensely bothered by historical inaccuracies in romances. I am not one of these people. The Duke can in fact drive a Porsche to Almack’s, and I’m fine with it. Whatever.
My hot button is stilted, unrealistic and awkward dialogue. If characters, like, for example, the Duke of Porsche, say things that real human beings wouldn’t say, and use cliches to the point that they don’t sound like actual people, I get really annoyed. Yanks me right out of the story and into Land of Crankypants. But the Porsche? Meh. Whatever.
I am not alone in that preference, but I do think that among romance readers, especially historical romance fans, I’m in the minority. And this is not to insult any author who busts her ass doing the research. Go on with your bad self – and your Porsche.
Catriona’s example is a bit more specific:
My example is As You Desire by Connie Brockway. Everybody is in love with this book and it always appears on people’s top romances list. I should love it – I enjoyed Brockway’s other books, I’m crazy about Egypt and archaeology and I love romances that are supposed to be funny and witty. It had everything going for it.
But I’m telling you, this book is like my own personal berserk button. To this day, I still can’t think about it or hear somebody sing its praises without my blood pressure spiking. My issue is with the way the author set up an “older” woman (I think she was in her early 30’s) to be the younger heroine’s foil. Basically, the older woman was rejected by the hero and pretty much every male in the book because she wasn’t as “perfect” as the seemingly smarter, blonder, younger heroine. I would expect this kind of ageism/blondeism in a book from the 1970’s, but this book was from 1997! This passage in particular, in which Marta, the other woman, sees the heroine at a restaurant, encompasses everything that bothers me about this book:
“I say,” Lord Ravenscroft suddenly breathed, “Now, there is a treasure worth coveting. Have you ever seen such a piece of tiny, golden perfection?”
…Marta followed the direction of everyone’s gaze to where Miss Carlisle’s progress through the room was marked by a wave of men scurrying to their feet as she passed.
To blatantly steal a phrase from you, Sarah: OH COME ON NOW AND I MEAN IT! Is this supposed to be a parody? Because it fails if it is. I ended up feeling whole lot more sympathy for Marta, while I wanted to bury Desdemona Carlisle headfirst in the sand. Normally the perfect, blonde, child prodigy, men-literally-fall-at-her-feet woman is the RIVAL, not the heroine.
Maybe I’m letting this bother me way too much…. But somewhere deep down, it grates on me that the heroine has to be this drop-dead gorgeous, “oh save me” frail young creature. I often wonder why people loved this book so much when I, who was much closer to Desdemona’s age when I read it, was so bothered by the discrimination against the older, more experienced, more capable other woman.
I got to wondering, is this just a case of me finding it difficult to relate to the heroine, and seeing myself as a rival to her to the hero? Nah, I thought Harry was an idiot too. His famous “you are my Egypt” speech just made me cringe. I would’ve heaved if anyone said anything so ridiculous to me, but apparently a lot of readers disagree judging by the links out there:
I fully expect the pitchforks and torches to come after me on this one, but bring it! Catriona “Encyclopedia Hittanica” is ready!
Ok, I’m about to come off even more objectionably: I have never read this book, but now I’m so very curious.
So, what’s your book that everyone adored, but you couldn’t enjoy it? You certainly don’t have to limit your example or response to this one. No shame and no shaming, please! Bring on your least liked books that made you feel the most isolated in your lack of enjoyment.
I had intended to just come back and read the comments but Karina’s comment had me mentally shouting YES!! (and not in a good way). I thought The Perfect Play was dreadful but I’ve never seen anyone else who agreed with me before now. It’s the only book I’ve ever actually sent back for a refund (thank goodness for spines that don’t look creased once the book has been read). I love books about sports players so by all rights it should have been a definite keeper but the dialogue was just terrible and it was all so wooden that it drove me nuts.
I’m feeling quite thankful now that I haven’t bothered with most of the titles that are turning up frequently in the comments here.
JamiSings: I know you weren’t coming at me 🙂 I agree with what you said. You present a great challenge to many a romance writer. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a modern day woman as a lead who just did not feel like having sex until she was good and ready? You would have to be really adept at showing romance from a courting aspect as well as leading up to the possible big moment of intercourse if it was to happen. I am game to read something like that. I would say attempt to write it, but I am in the middle of working on something else right now and I think it needs to be handled well and not half assed.
@Snarkhunter,
You’ve made me think about my own perspective on virgin heroines in contemporaries, and I appreciate you brought this up. I’ve had A LOT of issues with authors who repeatedly portray the heroines as virginal (though not virgins) and it’s bothered me from a feminist perspective that women who sleep around = bad. I haven’t actually read many virgin heroines. Naked Edge by Pamela Clare was excellent. It was the first book of hers I read, but then all the others in the series are about near untouched women who have major hangups about sex and it bothered the crap out of me. I have a hard time believing five women investigative reporters all have the same fears and issues regarding sex.
I think I would appreciate virgin/virginal heroines more if they were dealt with well (i.e., a question of respect for oneself rather poor, innocent, afraid woman needing to be rescued by alpha male). All in all, it kind of comes down to the same thing: women’s choices about their bodies shouldn’t be denigrated and viewed solely through patriarchal lenses.
First thing that popped into my head was “Kathleen Woodiwiss”. I slogged through the two Flame books and Everlasting (I think) before throwing Ashes in the Wind against the wall. I don’t read romance so that I have to think really hard and be depressed and angry, thanks.
Which means I’ve got a couple of Woodiwiss books to go back to the UBS, because I won’t force myself to read them, despite how “classic” she is.
Others that come to mind: I read the first dozen LKH Anita Blake books and won’t read another; Stephanie Plum needs to pick a man in another town and move there; MJD made me throw a hardback against the wall with a Betsy book (2 releases ago?); and will Sue Grafton please get to the end of the darn alphabet so her protagonist can join the 21st century? Although, I gotta admit to adoring Henry in that series.
Good lord, what a garbled sentence.
Okay, that makes some semblance of sense now. See what you do to me, Twilight?? You utterly destroy my ability to string sentences together.
Agree with all the Outlander dislike. Serious editing required, beyond just not caring for the story.
I get the Kenyon issues as well; I can’t say I love her writing, but at this point I’m so invested in where she’s going with the mythology and interwoven characters I can’t completely give them up. Therefore, get them from the library to skim and return and save myself the $$.
Jude Deveraux was one of the first romance authors I read and I liked most of her books (even A Knight in Shining Armour which has already been called out here) but can’t stand Remembrance. If you hate time travel books, avoid this like the plague because it does it more than once with past lives and star-crossed lovers and no real resolution and—ack! HATE!
It’s interesting to me that Catherine Coulter has not been mentioned once, so maybe that means I’m alone here, but I cannot stand her books. I haven’t even read the old rape-y ones, just a few of the contemporary FBI series, but something about the author’s voice (for lack of a better term to describe how she writes/phrases things) drives me BAZOO!
See, I totally get that whole “omg what the heck, ANOTHER virgin?” thing. I loathe the “widow virgin” storyline, for instance, and I get why people are skeptical of the virgin heroine, b/c it so often a fetish for people. But I just get so frustrated at the notion that if you haven’t had sex by X age (but not before Y age), then there’s Something Wrong With You.
I think it would be an awesome story, but really, really hard to do well. Too much cultural baggage.
Apologies to Sarah (and many others), but Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten was a DNF for me. And I’m a total completist, so for me to DNF a book, I must’ve really hated it. I just did NOT like either of the main characters. The heroine (whose name I’ve blocked out) was sooo angry and I just kept thinking ‘get over it already, life sucks sometimes, deal with it.’ And I didn’t see the attraction to Clay at all. It made me sad because I was really looking for a new paranormal series to love, and with everyone singing its praises, I thought that one might do it for me. I chose poorly.
There was a book called the Overture that was about a virtuoso violinist (A left-handed violinist proclaimed as the best thing since Paganini). I eagerly dove in… and stayed with it to the end, going “Oh my… holy no!” I liked the writer’s unique voice, so I kept going, and going, and cringing and covering my ears.
Themes that, even hinted at, kick me out of a book and slam the door in my face include: incest, professor and student sex, and I-don’t-know-who-the-baby’s-dad-is, or I-will-lie-to-my-kid-and-not-tell-them-who-the-dad-is. And this book had all of them. Not to mention inaccuracies in violin technique that made me shriek in despair! Okay, I’m a music snob, but please, if you are going to proclaim your heroine is the best at something since that big star before her, please, for the love of Pete, do your research!!!!!!!
I’m a fool for accurate details. To my detrement. I really really tried to like that book, but it just left me bereft at the end. And not in a good way.
Other books I bug on:
I’m in the group that tried Nora and just couldn’t do it. I’ve read a lot of her books, and found sparkling moments of genius in a few, but only glimpses through the trees. And yet, I’m a hopeless J.D. Robb addict. And as someone put it earlier, it’s like my Macs and Cheese, cliche by now, redundant, but I return and return for those character quirks and the moments of smartass dialogue that make ya wanna go “Booya!”
Don’t like Steele. Don’t like Twilight. DO NOT LIKE Sparks or Fehan’s Game series.
But my latest what-the-hell-are-they-raving-about book was A Visit From the Goon Squad. Read it. Couldn’t DNF it fast enough. Ok, ok, admit: I dragged myself through it just so I could go to dinner with my BF and stare him down across the appetizers and go That Book Sucks! And back up my arguments as to why. I’m not into short stories as a rule. Just was not my thing. At all.
But I loved Kelly Armstrong… until the most recent books. Don’t dislike them, just… can’t quite keep up?
and I’m disagreeing with the PC Cast crowd. There’s moments of sheer idiocy in those books, but it’s YA, and there’s some moments of hysterical laughter in there too. It’s so off-the-wall that you have to laugh. Maybe I’m just too young and immature but I love Plum and PC Cast and authors who make fun of life. They make me laugh, and sometimes that’s all I want out of a book. I’m so over literature that takes itself too seriously. Save it for the prudes and the critics and the college kids who have to analyze it. I did my time, thank you.
@ Alley – yeah, that’s my problem with Nora Roberts too. Well put. Even the ones I like (and I liked the Chesapeake Bay series) seem removed from reality – the characters seem more like stock characters from made for tv movies than actual people I know.
@Lew and JL – I’m with you on weird versions of academia in fiction. Both the sociology prof and the grad student in Erin McCarthy’s nascar series just confused me.
As I told someone at an author chat last week, someone who pulled me aside and confided that certain other members of her book club made her feel like her reading taste was hideously downmarket and lowbrow (she liked romance, wouldn’t ya know!)…we like what we like. No apologies, justifications, or explanations are required. In my mind, it’s all good – even when it isn’t. 😉
We read.
Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin. It was just…depressing. I think I was supposed to feel sympathy for “the other woman” but that just isn’t in my nature. And I wanted to reach into the book and slap the husband stupid. Instead I settled for chucking the book instead.
And as much as I like the Black Dagger Brotherhood I pretty much only read Books 2-4 (even though I hated the ghost twist in V’s story). I’m just not invested in any of the new characters she’s introducing.
@ TC – I’m with you on Catherine Coulter – I read one of her books – maybe the Sherbrooke Twins but I don’t really care enough to look it up – and it was so upsetting, so completely not my taste, that I put her permanently on my mental do not read list and then blocked most of memory of the book. I think the only other author who made it to my DNR list after only one book was Judith McNaught for Whitney My Love.
I have no problem with virgin heroines. (I like the distinction between “virgin” and “virginal”). I would love to see more virgin heroes. I also am good with h/h who like sex and have plenty of experience. I can also see a place for sexually dysfunctional h/h, anything “one traumatic experience and I’ll never do THAT again” to “trying to run away from other emotional pain in an endless series of meaningless hookups.”
What I would appreciate more is seeing characters who take sex *seriously*. Not as a “magic wand” to cure all past psychological damage. Not as an irresistible hunger triggered by a whiff of scent, matching tattoo, or other ephemeral signs of Twu Wust, that must be indulged in six times a day, even when in the middle of a shoot-out with the villains or on the road to Mordor. Not as a Sacred Holy Blending that can only occur on the last page to transport your Twinned Souls to Heavenly Bliss.
Just as a part—an enjoyable part, an important part, but not THE most important part—of a relationship that will hopefully survive cellulite, 3 am feedings, and those weird noises he makes while sleeping.
@Rebecca—Thanks for the link!
@Jennifer Armintrout—Yes, that’s exactly the way I felt reading the book.
Yep, Emily Giffin—I read the Something Borrowed books in the wrong order. Do not do that.
For me, I find an anthology can sometimes really make me realize why I don’t like an author. I used to love Julia Quinn, but when I read the recent anthology with Eloisa James (whose writing I love), it really put Julia and the 3rd author at a disadvantage—the speech in their stories was anachronistic. (Not quite people saying Hey, dude, but almost.) I was surprised, and actually went back to the first Lady Whistledown to rediscover why I like Quinn!
Also—I am unable to get into the world building in the Singh/Dianna Love books. It just reads like Revelations to me.
But I do love Calypso Magic, as trangressive as that is nowadays. Blame 14 year old me for reading it!
This thread is making me think that we need a post about authors that we both love and hate. It’s always a shock to me when I read one of an author’s series and love it, and read another and hate it. I’ve seen Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling books mentioned a couple of times – I think they’re dreadful, but I really, really like the Archangel books. I love Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas books, but her other series (something about Guardians?) comes off as very generic and uninteresting to me.
Lizzie,
So with you. The slut-shaming in Touch of Frost was a HUGE turn-off! The whole book was a ridiculous rip-off of other, better written books, but it made me cringe every time she talks about how slutty another character was. The only slightly redeeming factor was that she was an equal-opportunity slut-shamer, and the boys got as much negative attention as the girls did.
I’m a lover of Judith McNaught (She Can Do No Wrong with me) and a desperate fan of Jim Butcher. (The Dresden Files gets WAY better from the ninth book on, but I can see why you wouldn’t stick around that long to find out. The first three or four are dreary in the extreme.)
@hapax,
well said!
One problem with the Twilight books, and the later Hunger Games books, is that the heroine in each suffers from TSTN syndrome (Too Stupid To Notice). Over and over again, a sentence will start out something like “I suddenly realized I had forgotten to breathe,” “I realized I was sitting down,” “I just noticed I had run out of the house, smashed the glass in the front door of another house, and run down into the basement to hide.”
I cannot respect a heroine who has to remember to breathe.
Oh, dear, I’m back again. This is just a hot topic for me and love to hear others who agree with my dislikes.
@TC I liked Catherine Coulter’s earlier romances, but the FBI series has left me cold. I’ve made it four books in, hoping that they will get better, but they never do. And I’ve noticed that her later romances are equally losing me.
I do like Nora Roberts and love J. D. Robb, so I was a little surprised at the numbers who don’t like her until I remembered when I first tried some of her books back in the 1990s that I absolutely hated them. Maybe some books require a certain age and/or mindset.
I don’t consider Danielle Steele to be a romance writer. I simply cannot abide her heroines and consider calling any of the males in her books “heroes” an insult to the word.
I dislike all chick lit. Mostly pretentious, want to be on the NY Times bestseller list authors. Almost anything picked by the great O. Emily Giffin is, again, not a romance author.
Never read CATCHER IN THE RYE, which is surprising considering I was a fanatic reader of classics in my pre-teen and teen days.
I loved Iris Johansen’s romances, but truly dislike her mysteries. Very repetetive. And don’t get me started about heroines (and authors) who can’t make up their mind as to which male character is the hero. Yeah, I’m talking about you, Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich).
growing23? Oh, yeah, this list of “Everyone likes something that I can’t stand” is definitely growing!
I couldn’t get into any of the Nora Roberts books I’ve read and I’ve tried a few. The one I couldn’t stand the most was the first book in the Bride Quartet series and that’s the one people raved about the most. The main character was just SO unlikeable. It disgusted me that the dude liked her so much. Plus the book’s general premise was just weak. I was extremely bored and annoyed so I gave up. That’s the most extreme response I’ve had to any of her books. Otherwise I just DNF them cuz I am too bored.
I also couldn’t stand Twilight. I hated Bella so much and I found the plot cheesy as hell. YA can be ok sometimes but usually when you can forget it’s YA (for me at least). In this book I couldn’t forget it and that just irritated me. Glad I jumped ship.
Another author I’ve tried and didn’t enjoy that a lot of people love is Sarah Dessen. I know that is also YA but I know a lot of adults who love her. I find her books dreary and they kinda remind me of TV movies about the issue of the week. Blagh.
I thought the first Sookie Stackhouse was ok but I have absolutely no desire to continue on with the series.
Much like the tormented hero, I just cannot stay away!
Because: so with you, Janelle and Lizzie. I will put a book down if sympathetic characters use the word “slut” (or its more-high-school-but-no-more-charming synonym, “skank”) or otherwise judge other women for appearing or acting overly sexual. (See also: the heroines in Wheel of Time and their disapproving sniffs re: other women’s necklines.)
On virgin heroines: I like the few I’ve read where it’s a non-issue. Like Sarah Morgan’s A Night of Scandal. After the fact the hero is like, “Oh, you were a virgin?” and the heroine is like “Yep.” and they move on. THANK YOU. I mean, I know it’s a big deal for some people but I get so sick of the big dramatic deflowering scenes.
Also, The Scarlett Letter and Their Eyes Were Watching God were my most hated mandatory reading in high school. I would rather read the Odyssey two more times…I would rather recite Shakespeare unrehearsed in front of 10,000 people…I would rather write a 30 page paper on what the stupid whale from Moby Dick symbolizes then EVER read The Scarlett Letter again.
THANK YOU! Especially when the allegedly most brilliant female agent in the Surete is too stupid to consider the idea that the bank truck might have a GPS on it. I LOATHE a heroine who is set up as brilliant/talented/savvy/strong suddenly acting as if her brains had been sucked out of her ears.
Lisa Kleypas’ Smooth Talking Stranger. Everyone LOVES this book, and with the exception of a few glaring personality flaws in the characters, it was pretty decent.
But the second the hero was all, “Ohai! I see you’re a vegan. That’s stupid. You know what you need? A BIG STEAK. Go on, eat it! Eat the steak! It’s delicious! NOM NOM NOM STEAK!” and the heroine did eat it, I was done. Eff that noise. I’m not a vegan, and I love me some steak, but that was NOT OKAY.
I’m glad to hear you say that cause I’ve been working on a Romance with a very inexperienced hero. Of course I’d have to stop working 60+ hr work weeks to actually finish it.
I’m glad to hear you say that cause I’ve been working on a Romance with a very inexperienced hero. Of course I’d have to stop working 60+ hr work weeks to actually finish it.
ETA my capcha is “Learned 69” tee hee hee!!!!!
@cbackson:
One of those really, really hit-or-miss authors for me is Connie Willis. I love To Say Nothing of the Dog and Bellwether to the point of absolute stupidity, but then I read Passage. And ::gag:: Lincoln’s Dreams. HATED them both with a fiery passion. At least the former I can look at semi-objectively and say, ‘Yes, okay, it’s daring and brilliant,” but I’d give a lot to have never read it. I still can’t figure out what the hell the point of Lincoln’s Dreams was. Hatehatehate. And yet this is the woman who introduced me to Dorothy Sayers!
Aaaaaand beletseri wins for best captcha ever.
I promised myself I wouldn’t come back for a fourth post, but here goes:
I’m always mystified by the number of people who claim Small Gods as their favorite Terry Pratchett book. Now, I love and adore Pratchett’s work with a love strong and everlasting, but Small Gods is probably my least favorite Discworld novel. Preachy; unsympathetic, brain-dead protagonist; lack of engaging story or interesting supporting characters, no humor. I suppose as a polemic against the evils of organized religion it’s moderately successful, but it just isn’t funny. Give me Vimes and Vetinari and Von Lipwig any day. (Okay, I may have smiled a little at “Angus”, but that was it.)
Wow, I’m kind of glad to see so many remarks about Lord of Scoundrels on here! I got to the end and all I could think was “That was it?” It was really boring to me and I just kept reading, hoping the next part would magically reveal what everyone else kept talking about. That part never came for me.
Also, I used to really enjoy Christine Feehan’s “Dark” series but after three or so books it just felt like the same thing over and over again. All the “white heat” and “blue lightning” carrying over from book to book.
Along those lines…Any time authors use the same description in their different books really gets me. I do like Nora Roberts but I think the phrase “long of finger, wide of palm” appears in her books WAY more than necessary. I have a very distinct memory of reading one of her books then picking up another one the next day and there it was again. Then again, a few months later! I even pulled them all out to compare. Blech…
Fighting words! Okay, I’ll give you Niccolo. But Lymond is best seen as a Tudor era James Bond, and as such, is going to get into trouble. He *exists* to get into trouble and save the butt of monarchs and such.
Because I know the Bitches love themselves some controversy, and because I read very little het now, I’ll give you my two WTFs from the m/m world. I’m used to not liking the majority of books that most m/m readers squee over, for the simply fact that they’re looking for different things than I am. But two books absolutely bewilder me in their popularity:
Lessons in Desire by Charlie Cochrane (which I reviewed and called “is the most inane m/m romance I have ever had the misfortune to read. It’s like erotica written by Enid Blyton”)
My Fair Captain by J L Langley which I was sent for review and couldn’t even finish because of the egregious writing flaws and tedious style.
My Fair Captain is regularly cited as the bestest m/m book EVAH, and the Lessons series is also incredibly popular. I wouldn’t reread either if I was given a moderate sum of money (hey, I’ll do worst things than *read* for obscene amounts of money.) I simply don’t understand the incredible love for such mediocre, boring writing.
Heh! P&P isn’t my favourite Austen by a long way – Sense and Sensibility is a much lovelier book – but I’m a fan. This summary, however, rocks with fists of steel 🙂
🙁 I giggled all the way through it!
Whereas I can’t stand Moist von Lipwig at *all*. I guess we’ll have unite over a shared love of Vimes and Vetinari 🙂
Tie between Bitten by Kelly Armstrong and Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews. Both ended up with skeevy gender dynamics that made me feel ugh.
For classics, it’s Wuthering Heights. It’s not a bad book but I don’t understand how it’s swooned over.
So, for whatever reason, I LOVED “Dragon Bound” just because I found it entertaining and a fun fast read, but “Storm’s Heart” is driving me batshit crazy and will most likely be a DNF (the hero is a walking muscle drenched in hormones and the heroine is a walking noticer of said muscle drenched in hormones and I can’t read another description of said muscles/tendons/whatevers and how it turns her on.)
I have a high tolerance for certain books that others might find stoopid; for instance I love “Twilight”, but don’t think it can possibly stand up to literary criticism (it was fun for me and entertaining as all get out.)
Other books I can’t get a handle on include the entire works of Tessa Dare, the latter pornivated Anita Blake books, Wuthering Heights (hatehatehatehate) and the sequels to “Soulless” even though I really enjoyed the first book.
Julie Garwood’s For the Roses. The hero was a monumental asshole. And the epic narrative from the back alleys of 1860s New York, the Antebellum South, the pioneer days of the West, crossing the Ocean to noble England and then back again….gag me with a spoon!
Twilight. Part of the problem with it is that I read it thinking it was part of another series, the Anita Blake series, and I kept waiting for Bella to turn into a vampire hunter and getting more and more WTF’y.
Actually, pretty much anything with vampires fails utterly to grab me. Anita Blake, the series they made into True Blood for TV, the list goes on. I am OVER vampires.
Didn’t care for the one Eve/Roarke book I read, either.
My all time “OMG WUT” book isn’t a romance, though; it’s “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell”, which I got for Christmas one year. Finished it – again, kept hoping it would get better – and then wondered why I’d wasted my time.
@AllyJS,
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on Magic Bites, which I liked, but loved the follow up books much, much more. I understand the gender skeeviness with Bitten, but I didn’t get the same vibe as you from Magic Bites.
I just can’t take the trend of YA being read by, or slanted toward grown women. Sorry. Me no get. I tried to read all the popular ones. It’s stuff I would not have read when I was a YA. Just not for me.
I loathe Catcher in the Rye. I only made it halfway through and God, I want to punch Holden Caulfield in the teeth. With brass knuckles on. Everyone I’ve met who straight-facedly says it’s their favorite book and it had such a great influence on their life has turned out to be someone I’m better off not having a friendship with.
Twilight as a reading experience was even worse; I made it to page 3 of the first book and threw it out the window. I mean literally threw it out the window of my 3rd-floor efficiency apartment. Boy did that feel good! Unfortunately, I had to go recover it because it was a library book.