Today, I’ve stolen another tag from the internet, Unpopular Bookish Opinions.
A popular book or series that you didn’t like.
50 Shades of Grey. In June 2015, 125 million books had been sold worldwide, which is ridiculously many books. I thought: 125 million people can’t be wrong, and read them, all three of them (because book 1 and 2 ends in a cliffhanger and I can’t with cliffhangers!) Turns out 125 million people can be wrong, and I really, really dislike this book series. The writing is terrible. The characters are horrible. And they do a piss-poor job of depicting BDSM. No thank you.
A popular book or series that everyone else seems to hate but you love
The Da Vinci Code. It’s on this list of books considered the worst, but I liked it when I read it. Stayed up all night reading it, googling all the artwork that are mentioned in the story, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
A love triangle where the main character ended up with the person you didn’t want them to end up with, or an OTP that you don’t like.
Bella-Edward-Jacob, in the Twilight series. To be perfectly honest, I was #TeamEdward when I read Twilight back in 2005, but time – and age – has made me realize that Edward and Bella is kind of creepy. She’s a teenager and he’s a 109-year-old vampire, albeit looking like a teenager. I’m all for May/December romances, but this is a little too much, considering he’s also a creepy stalker. It would have made much more sense for Bella to end up with Jacob.
A popular book genre that you hardly reach for
Fantasy and sci-fi. I have a hard time reading extensive world-building, so these genres are not for me.
A popular character that you don’t like.
Albus Dumbledore. He expected a child to rid the wizarding world of its greatest threat, and instead of helping him, he withheld information. Not cool, dude.
A popular author that you can’t seem to get into
J.R.R Tolkien. I’ve read The Hobbit, and 200 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring and nope. Nope nope nope. (I like the movies though.)
A popular book trope that you’re tired of seeing.
The Big Misunderstanding. If I never have to read a book with characters not communicating again, it’ll be too soon.
A popular series that you have no interest in reading
The Temptation series by Ella Frank. Not because I don’t like her writing, I liked the two M/F romances of hers I’ve read. The reason I don’t want to read it, even though it’s wildly popular among M/M romance readers, is that all six books follow the same couple, and I’m not a fan of series like that. I’m too impatient to wait six books for a couple to get their HEA, and if they get their HEA in book one, the author adds drama (most of the time) and fucks up the HEA, which pisses me off. So I’m a stand-alone kind of gal. Or at least series with new couples in every book 🙂
Everyone says “the book is better than the movie”, but which movie or TV adaptation did you enjoy more than the book?
Dangerous Liaisons from 1988, starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Uma Thurman among others. It’s a fabulous movie, the acting is so great it’s ridiculous, and I’ve watched it many times. The movie is based on a French epistolary novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos from 1782, and I thought: the book is always better than the movie and I love epistolary novels and I love classics so I went to my local library to borrow it. They kept it in storage because no one had wanted to read it in ages, so it took an hour for them to find it, and when they gave it to me, it came with authentic library dust.
The book was such a disappointment. It was boring and uninspiring, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand how they could make such a brilliant movie from it.
Nell Iris 