My Literary Shitlist

I'm currently in the process of compiling my top 20 favourite books for this blog. I have to say I'm finding it quite hard to nail it. Simultaneously I've been listing the books which I really, really didn't like. This list has been a little easier. So, I present, my Top 8 Most Hated, Despised, Time-thieving Books List.

8) Emma by Jane Austen. Holds the dubious honour of being the book it took me longest to complete. Two whole years it took me to plod through this novel with its irritating, smug heroine.

7) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To be fair to Marquez I've never been the biggest fan of Magic Realism so we started off on the wrong foot-and from there we walked in opposite directions. Marquez's work reminds me of a sticky fruitcake-far too rich and cloying for my taste. I found the novel incoherent. I spent a lot of time trying to absorb and memorise the family tree at the beginning of the book. My memory is trying to insist there is a scene in which one of the characters floats off into the atmosphere with some bedsheets. Surely I've imagined that. Haven't I? Three years later I read Love in the Time of Cholera. Clearly I'm a glutton for punishment.

6) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Maybe I should have read up on American history before I started this novel. Or maybe it's just a dull novel which no amount of American history/politics knowledge could have saved for me.

5) Twelve by Nick McDonnell. Someone died maybe? Lots of drugs in the book maybe? I don't really remember. The new Catcher in the Rye some declared at the time. We'll never know because it's already out of print. Thank God.

4) The Backpacker by John Harris. Hilariously this book is kept in the travel literature section, rather than the fiction section. I'm not sure how any editor could have been fooled into believing the 'facts embellished beyond truth' in this novel. Want to read the badly-written fantasy adventures of an oversexed, overdrunk, overdrugged lad with a mental age of about 16? I didn't.

3) Faithless by Karin Slaughter. As a young, inexperienced bookseller I was given the crime section to run. Gamely, I decided to try to acquaint myself with this alien genre by reading one of the new releases. It put me off crime for years. This must be one of the most badly written books I've had the misfortune to encounter. "She opened the cupboard door and reached for her cornflakes. She poured her cornflakes into the bowl and turned around to her friend and said "x". She poured milk on her cornflakes and went to sit down" and so forth. Parts of the book are written in 'real time' as above. Perhaps she even wrote when her characters blinked. I would not have been surprised. Perhaps we'll feel more empathy for the characters if we live through the mundane, day-to-day parts of their lives? Perhaps it's just badly edited and Slaughter is a poor writer?

2) The Colour Purple by Alice Walker. I wanted to like this, I really did. No doubt the subject matter is important but I'm just not good at such heavy-handed feminism. Nor when it is so poorly written. The whole novel seemed so contrived. I liked it not.

1) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. This novel includes 2 things I simply cannot abide in novels-2d characters and American sentimentalism. Each of the 'women' plays a role in a cliched 'American Dream' family-the good one, the clever one, the naughty one etc.. They all learn their lesson and evolve to form perfectly happy families. I was almost shocked when they did away with one of the characters, but then Holloywood kills the odd hero off too to 'engage your emotions' and 'tug at the heartstrings'. Nauseating...cringing..I feel sick ...