For me, the most recent book regret is Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Predictable from the get-go, bland, boilerplate sci-fi ideas, too many of these way-too-convenient plot devices just to push the story forward. I frankly don’t get the hype, and I am a pretty big science fiction guy.
Another one is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read this in college and this whole book should have been a one-page essay. It was too repetitive, and the whole premise of “trust in your snap judgments and gut reactions” is way too simplistic and honestly stupid. Like all Gladwell books, it was anecdotal, superficial, and a waste of time.
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This post. Tired of the hate posts. Blocking another clown ass OP.
I don’t really regret reading any books I’ve read.
I regret nothing. When you dislike, you learn.
Even my most disliked books provoked thoughts and feelings when I read them. I still think about them from time to time which means they stirred something even if I didn’t enjoy the read.
Something I tell myself occasionally is that every book I read can’t be 5 stars, and if it were that would be quite boring. Variety is the spice of life. I very rarely DNF, and I never regret having read a book.
This is very much my take on it too. I’ve never been big on DNFing books and as much as I’ve hated some books, I’ve never actually regretted reading any of them. Every book provokes thoughts and feelings, as you say, and imo those are worth having even if about something I didn’t like. I’ve always found something to reflect on, in some shape or form, in every book.
While I love this romantic notion, I have to respectfully disagree. There are a lot of just plain awful books out there that really don’t have any redeeming value. At most I’ve learned to avoide that author and/or lamented modern education that anyone thought that book was readable
Same.
Bad books taught me to read the esamples on amazon before buying. That was the only actionable lesson, for me.
I love this perspective.
My book club friends frequently ask me why I don’t donate the physical copies of books I dislike or even hate. The way I see it, a bookshelf full of only books I love isn’t as interesting as a bookshelf full of books I have a range of opinions on.
Wasn’t the worst thing ever (or even bad) but time probably better spent on something else.
The Paris apartment, fine print, the wicked king~ majority of the books mentioned from book tock
Fools Die by Mario Puzo is one of the few books I genuinely regretted. Other times I hate the book but it’s fun to rant about them. But this book got on my last nerves.
Most of the recommendations from book tok. I’m not usually a classic lit snob about “popular” books because commercial fiction has its merits but it seems like most of the ones that go viral now are just unreadably bad. So poorly written that it’s cringey and reads like Wattpad fan fiction.
Why did you read them? I DNF those books within 20 pages.
I regret wasting money on them. I also regret any amount of time I spent on them, even if I DNF. I could’ve been reading better stuff!
Honestly so many booktok books are so terrible. They’ll be raving about books romanticizing abuse or it’s just smut that is written poorly with no plot and so many times it’s clear there’s been barely editing done. I’ve gotten so picky taking recs now and can honestly say I’ve read better stuff on wattpadd than some of the booktok recs
TikTok doesn’t have the smartest people and when I first heard about booktok I avoided it. Don’t have the want to look at it and probably never will.
One would think some authors almost don’t want their books to get popular on there because some people, like me, tend to shy away from them for this reason. that said, it’s too bad because some books that have gotten popular I read and enjoyed long before they got BookTok Famous and it may give people the wrong impression. I really liked Secret History by Donna Tartt and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
I’ll never read another booktok recommendation again.
imo its better to become classic lit snob than to become mindless hype-based consumer
booktok is all about the hype and the quick buck. It has nothing to do with quality.
Snobs and gatekeepers get too bad of a rap these days. Embrace your crotchety, well-read, high standards self.
They are all aimed at really young women so I never ever pick up a booktok book. No Maas or Hoover for me.
I know already that I won’t like them.
Hoover’s work is mediocre, but to be fair I don’t think it should fall under the traditional “romance genre” like it’s usually marketed. A lot of her stories explore toxic relationships like they’re trying to be psychological thrillers but end up simply romanticizing abuse. Maas is hit or miss for me. The cheese is off the charts but sometimes I’m in the mood for cheese. I am the target demographic.
Yeah from what I’ve heard about Hoover I won’t most likely ever read something from her.
Maas writes elfporn/smut and with insufferable characters. I know I would just get pissed off if I read anything by her. Like I feel she’s so out of touch. It’s not endearing to ”quirky and clumpsy and love food”. Feels like she’s stuck in 2013 with that shit.
You are not wrong.
I despise the Three Body Problem. I have read darker and bleaker stories, but there was something about it that hit differently than anything else.
100% agree. Got worse and worse.
The series is one of my favorite sci-fi series ever. That said, my favorite book is The Road, so bleak is usually not a problem for me.
The Dark Forest sits comfortably in my top 5. I know it’s not for everyone, but those who like it, like it a lot.
As a stand alone, I could read The Dark Forest over and over!
Memoirs of misinformation by Jim Carrey it’s so bad
Memoirs of misinformation by Jim Carrey
I totally forgot about this. I love Jim too. Why is it so bad? Isn’t the audiobook by Jeff Daniels, which I love so much?!
It was such a bore
'The Dark Tower’s series by Stephen King. Not for the ‘it didn’t really end!’ arguments that are often made, but because when he inserted himself into the narrative as the god like figure, any and all immersion I had went out the window. I loved the series up til then, but I’ve donated the whole series to the second hand bookshop, and I never plan to revisit them.
Same experience for me. I think he had his big car crash between 4 and 5 and then he rushed through the rest, presumably in a pretty sketchy place mentally. I was enjoying them quite a lot until then. Tons of other popular cutlture references. Like a Harry Potter novel just turning up somewhere. So cringe.
I don’t know if I regret reading Jerusalem by Alan Moore, but I guess I kind of wish it didn’t take me so long…
I no longer re-read books from my childhood and adolescence. Reality almost never lives up to the memories of reading it when I was a kid. It’s better to leave those things in the past where they remain meaningful.
I never regret reading anything - why would I?
None.
The investment in starting a book is negligible to me. I mainly borrow from the library or buy used. And I don’t hesitate to stop reading books that aren’t working for me.
I finished Blink because despite its repetitiveness, Gladwell is an engaging writer. A similarly repetitive writer is Nassim Taleb. I abandoned “The Black Swan” because it could have easily been an HBR article, and Taleb is insufferably arrogant.
I finished Dark Matter too. It was a quick read and entertaining enough. I can’t recall off the top of my head an abandoned novel, but I know it happens several times per year. I suspect it’s because they’re all so forgettable
Hub by Matt Shaw and Playground by Aron Beauregard. I wanted horror that would actually affect me, but the only thing that affected me was how bad the writing was. I regret them but at least they taught me extreme horror is extremely bad.
Pet Sematary by Stephen King and Push by Sapphire have both haunted me since reading them. One of King’s short stories has as well: Survivor Type.
Omg the survivor story still occasionally comes back to tingle my spine out of nowhere. That and the one about the bloke who dies but somehow is conscious for the autopsy (I think he died playing golf? I forgot the name of it).
Yes! It’s called “autopsy room 9” or something very similar