Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week’s theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!
This week’s theme is ‘Unpopular Bookish Opinions (submitted by Kaitlin Galvan @ Somehow I Manage Blog)’ and at first I wasn’t sure what I was going to talk about. I could do the usual ‘people should be allowed to write in their own books’ etc. but I don’t think that’s really an unpopular opinion, is it? We all know people can do what they want with their own books.
I also recently talked about My Unpopular SFF Opinions and I didn’t really want to repeat myself.
So today I thought I’d talk about some well-loved books that I didn’t like. Now if I mention your all-time favourite book, I can guarantee this isn’t a personal attack against you or your taste. These are books that just didn’t work for me!
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: Controversially, I like the movie but I didn’t like the book very much. I know this book is very well loved and I think the issues it covers are important, but personally I found this book super pretentious.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini: This is a classic of the fantasy genre, and I DNF’d it. I didn’t think it was written all that well, and from what I can remember I seemed to spend ages reading it and the plot never seemed to go anywhere. Not for me, sadly!
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black: I see so much love for this book and I didn’t get it at all. I loved the first chapter, and then the rest of the book took a bit of a nosedive for me. I found all of the characters really annoying and I can’t really remember anything that happened. Black’s one of those authors I couldn’t gel with for a while, though, and then I read and loved The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King!
Legend by Marie Lu: I still don’t understand the hype for this book. It was supposed to be about taking down a corrupt government, and yet I spent 90% of my time reading this book being told in great detail what someone was wearing. This is another book I can barely remember anything about.
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo: I adore the Six of Crows duology, but when I finally read the Grisha trilogy this year I was pretty disappointed. I liked the second book more and the third book a lot more, but this first book, much like Legend, spent a lot of time telling me about how Alina was wearing her hair or telling me about her boy trouble instead of telling me about the hole of literal shadow demons in the middle of her war-torn country.
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence: I so wanted to love this book! I’m pretty heartbroken that a book about assassin nuns hasn’t become one of my new favourites, but unfortunately I didn’t get along with Lawrence’s writing style.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal: This is another book I was expecting to love and it just didn’t work for me. I felt like I was getting bashed around the head with the book’s messages rather than being told a story that just happened to include them.
Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier: I loved Daughter of the Forest. I loathed this book. Liadan is one of the most hypocritical characters I’ve ever encountered. Some of my favourite characters are unlikable people – why do you think Zoya was my favourite character in the Grisha trilogy? – but Liadan wasn’t supposed to be unlikable and I hated her.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: This is probably my least favourite book of all time. I think it’s pretentious and I don’t care about any of the characters at all. Seriously, Gatsby, just move house.
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie: I don’t know how popular the original Peter Pan is, but considering how popular retellings of it seem to be, I’m going to guess quite a lot of people love the story itself. I just found it… creepy? And to be honest I think it’s supposed to be, but it’s been remembered as such a whimsical children’s story that it’s pretty jarring when you read the original. A bunch of grown men call Wendy ‘mother’. It’s weird, man.
I’m planning to read Red Sister next month 😂
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Legend wasn’t quite my thing either.
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I’m not a fan of Perks of Being a Wallflower either. I know people who pretty much swear by it as their favorite book and I read it and didn’t think it was good at all. And while I’ll complain about how terrible Eragon is, I’m also Eragon trash. I listened to the audiobooks more recently to finish the series and I think it gets better with each book.
🙂
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I really wish I could get into Eragon, I always felt like I was missing out, but to be honest I don’t think it helped that I’ve always been more of a unicorn girl than a dragon girl 😉
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Understandable! I’m am a dragon girl, so even if something isn’t the greatest, if it has dragons, I’m biased. No worries! There are plenty of BETTER dragon books out there than Eragon.
My love for it probably comes from the fact I read it in middle school, similar to why people are so nostalgic for Harry Potter.
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I made my husband read Shadow & Bone a million years ago and that is exactly how he describes the book, too! Whenever it comes up he’s always like, “Is that the book where the girl constantly wonders if she’s pretty enough and if the boy likes her?” So yeah. I still haven’t finished that series. But Six of Crows is one of my favorites.
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Hahaha I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt that way!
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I liked The Great Gatsby well enough but I love your description for why you hate it, lol.
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Haha thanks – I think having to read it for school probably didn’t help!
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I wasn’t crazy about Six of Crows and never read Crooked Kingdom, so I don’t think I would read Shadow and Bone!
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That’s fair! Bardugo’s books definitely aren’t for everyone. 🙂
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I’ve only read The Shadow and Bone series out of these. I have very mixed feelings on the series, mostly because I loathe Mal lol
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I didn’t mind Mal, mostly because he’s a teenager and teenagers do dumb things and also because I never liked Alina or the Darkling or anyone that much, really! My favourite character from the original trilogy is Zoya, but I have a thing for mean women.
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I quite liked the first two Eragon books, but I’ve not been able to re-read them or carry on with the series. Peter Pan is creepy in every version (although I did love the Jeremy Sumpter film when I was younger!)
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I don’t think I’ve ever seen that film the whole way through! It’s one of those films I’ve always just seen bits of whenever it’s on ITV2 – I need to sit down and watch it properly one day because I always liked the look of it.
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Red Sister is a book I keep going back and forth on. On the one hand the premise- yeah. But then I just don’t know, and I did read a shorter book by him just recently, and while I liked it okay, it didn’t wow me, so not sure how I’ll react to Sister? So I just keep procrastinating. 🙂
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I recommend the audiobook! My biggest problem was that I didn’t love Lawrence’s writing style, but Helen Duff’s narration is really good.
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I thought Legend was just okay. I never finished the series, but a lot of people love it so to each their own.
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Definitely! It’s a well-loved series, sadly it just wasn’t for me.
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I wasn’t a massive fan of Gatsby!
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I’m glad I’m not alone!
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Okay now it’s unfriending time! You put my favorite book up there!
Not really, we can still be friends. Sometimes I read 1-star reviews of my favorite books just to remind myself that not everybody likes the same books as I do, and as a writer, it’s okay if someone doesn’t like my stories too.
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Hahaha uh oh! 😉
I really enjoy reading negative reviews of books – I’m much more likely to tell if a book is for me from a negative review than a positive one.
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I wasn’t a big fan of Peter Pan either.
My TTT.
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It’s good to know I’m not the only one!
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Is it bad that I’ve never read the Eragon book but watched and adored the movie long before I ever knew it was a book in the first place? Oops…hehe
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Haha definitely not! I must admit I didn’t love the movie either, but I’ve finished the movie whereas I never finished the book, so I suppose I must have preferred it!
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I haven’t read the books on your list, Jess but I have a feeling that I might have a series of DNFs that are on it because like you, the odds are in greater favour I won’t like the seriously popular books vs the books I discover on my own and/or are from authors no one knows about as well as the ones listed here. I think its great you’ve listed all of them! Be proud! Stand your ground and know all of us have a *list!* of stories we don’t like didn’t appreciate it and couldn’t stand reading! lol Its just the way it goes… what I love, you could hate and vs versa. Blessedly that is why there are so many choices out there – love how you talked about what took you out of the stories, too! #awesomesauce
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Exactly, I love it when someone tells me they loved a book that I didn’t like because it just goes to show how there really is a book out there for everyone, and a lot of the time a book stays with us because of when we read it. There are books I loved when I was younger that I probably wouldn’t love as much if I read them now, but they were just what I needed when I read them. 🙂
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I agree on Perks, I actually did a Book V Movie comparison for that and said that I liked the film better, I found the story much easier to follow in the film than in the book!
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/11/top-ten-tuesday-215/
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Yeah, considering Chbosky wrote the screenplay for the adaptation I can’t help wondering if it should have been written as a screenplay in the first place!
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I mean potentially? He did a great job on it, it’s an awesome film!
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I loved Six of Crows too, and with all the mixed reviews of the Grisha trilogy, I’m wary about reading it. Do you think I should still read it?
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Personally I thought the series got better as it went on – I know a lot of people really didn’t like the third book, but I thought it was the best book in the trilogy – and really it all depends on whether you want to read it or not! If you’re interested in reading King of Scars it’s probably worth reading – I binge read the trilogy (and they’re really quick and easy reads) so I could read King of Scars with all the relevant backstory, and I enjoyed KoS a lot more than SaB. 🙂
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Hmm, okay. I’ll think about it. I did actually want to read KoS and I didn’t realize that SaB gave some backstory for it, so thank you for pointing that out 🙂
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Great post! I was very into F. Scott Fitzgerald for a while, but I never liked Gatsby. And Eragon didn’t really work for me either — I read it for my son, and finished it, but then started the 2nd book and just couldn’t take it for one more minute. 🙂 I did love The Calculating Stars, and really need to read the sequel one of these days!
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I wanted to love The Calculating Stars, I’m still really bummed that it wasn’t for me!
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When I read the original Peter Pan a few years ago, I was shocked at how bizarre it was. I was expecting the Disney version with older sounding language, and I got something dark and weird. The dad especially weirded me out.
I also didn’t LOVE love Perks. It was okay– and the author is from the same city I am, so I give it a little more props than I normally would.
Great List!!
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Thanks! Yeah, Peter Pan is really dark and I think I would have been fine with that if I’d expected it, but there’s so much whimsy around Peter Pan I had no idea the original story was like that AT ALL.
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I agree with you on Peter Pan. It’s a very dark story, and parts of it make me uncomfortable.
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Right?! It’s so creepy!
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Nice list! I love Six of Crows, but haven’t read The Grisha trilogy. I’ve heard mixed reviews on it, but I still might give it a try at some point. Here is our Top Ten Tuesday.
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Thanks! It’s not a terrible series by any means, but after loving Six of Crows the Grisha trilogy was never going to live up to that duology for me. I think it all depends on the kind of fantasy you like, to be honest! 🙂
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You’re the second person to dislike Gatsby!
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It’s nice to know I’m not alone, it’s a much-loved classic!
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