Books you regret buying

[Anonymous]

Is there any book you have bought that made you wish you could travel back in time to prevent yourself from purchasing it?
Because it just didn't live up to your expectations? Or because it seriously upset you somehow?

Mine would be, and that might surprise some, not be Unseen Academicals, but Folklore of Discworld, which I bought after reading the 'note from the publisher' in UA. As a more casual Dicworld fan I went and bought the book in hope it would explain some things UA didn't deliver an explanation for. But, oh surprise, the needed information were NOT in the version of Folklore that was out at the time, no, those came in a new edition much later on. (which I didn't buy after using amazon's 'search inside' feature...only to discover that a trip to wikipedia and looking up 'orcs' 'goblins' and 'medieval football' provided the same, if not more and better information)

The second book I actually regret buying even more is Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw.
The text on the back promised a book that combined one of my all time favourite themes, th victorian age, with one of my crazes at the time: dragons. It promised a world full of dragons living in a victorian setting.

Spoiler

could have went well if Miss Walton wouldn't have written a cheap penny romance novel with a semi-historical setting and just replaced the word 'human' with dragon and sparsely sprinkled it with some dragon-specific things here and there. What I got was a book in which dragons of 20m and more in size ride trains in which they sit on banks, ride coaches drawn by 4-8 regular horses etc. There is only that much suspension of disbelief I can muster.

Combine that with a very boring and clichéd standard plot and you have a book you can only regret buying.

 

[chris.ph]

all of them, theyve cost me a bloody fortune over the years

dark carpathian by christine feehan was a waste of money jeez wot a load of pap, and if i say its rubbish you can just imagine how bad it is

 

[Sjoerd3000]

A book by Conn Iggulden, the first book of his Caesar series. I hadn't expected it to be totally historical accurate but it was so historical inaccurate I was nearly shouting at the book.

 

[author3]

I really regret buying Mister Monday by Garth Nix.It was a terrible book and it cost me 9 euro

 

[Anonymous]

Oh, talking about accuracy when it comes to writing a book based on something much older.
You just reminded me of my all time hate-book, sjoerd:
A german book on the norse god Loki (Name's 'In Lokis Feuerschmiede'). Published by a small, specialised publisher, which should have run the first alarm bell.
second bell should have rung when there was no example of the text anywhere. Well, that's no all true. there was one, but that one wasn't from the actual author...
third bell should have rung when I discovered that the book is PrintOnDemand.
the book was and is HOR-RI-BLE. Absolutely horrible.
Bad prose, inconsistencies en masse, the characters are in no way like they are in various translations of the myths etc. it's plain bad. Stay away from it.

 

[SimStars13]

The only book I can think of is Hannibal, the sequel to Silence of The Lambs.
I picked it up whilst on holiday in France, thinking it would be similar to Silence of The Lambs, read about three quarters of it, went home + left it in france, then found it in a charity shop. Then read the last quarter. I now refuse to have the book in the house - it's too freaking disgusting for words. It's also affected me in school, as any mention of open brain surgery (about the brain in Biology) makes me shudder.

 

[raptornx01]

Lol, i take it you never watched the movie then either

 

[Paranye]

Oh, I have one. A book I regret ever opening at all, a book I would give a kidney to be able to unread - and oddly enough, it's not because it was bad.

It was the biography of Alf Wight, the man who wrote stories under the pen name James Herriot. If you love those stories, don't read this, OK? Trust me.

Spoiler

The book revealed that the stories were only loosely based on real people and events, which I was fine with. But it was finding out that some of the beloved characters of the books were based on jerks that really bothered me. The James Herriot books are so full of affection for the people in his life that it came as a real shock to find out that, for example, his wife Joan (Helen in the books) was actually sort of a harpy, or that Donald Sinclair (Siegfried Farnon) was a money grubber and a bit of a bastard. The general result of reading it was that something lovely had been spoiled or tainted a little bit for me. I wish to God I'd never read it!

 

[CrysaniaMajere]

a book by Janet Evanovich, one of the Stephanie Plum series, so boring and full of ... boring stuff. A quick search tells me the original title was Two for the dough, and the description says it's funny, enterteining... it didn't make me laugh. I've been much more cautions on what to buy after that, and I paid something like 10 or 12euro! Luckily enough, I could sell it for 5euro.

 

[raisindot]

a book by Janet Evanovich, one of the Stephanie Plum series, so boring and full of ... boring stuff. A quick search tells me the original title was Two for the dough, and the description says it's funny, enterteining... it didn't make me laugh. I've been much more cautions on what to buy after that, and I paid something like 10 or 12euro! Luckily enough, I could sell it for 5euro.

Sacrilege! The Stephanie Plum books are masterpieces of modern literature. Just because you Europeans are such raving Philistines who are stuck in your waning, decadent empires and post-modern belly-lint gazing nonsense that you can't appreciate jokes about ho's, exploding cars and friend chicken doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't find it hilarious.

 

[Bouncy Castle]

I love the Stephanie books.

1 started off OK, good story, and characters, but not too many LOLs.

By book 4, the tears were streaming down my face!

Never diss The Steph.


Ranger can frisk me any time of day!

 

[meerkat]

They use metal sensors now, Bouncy, Men are not allowed to frixk ladies no more!:naughty: Boo!

 

[Bouncy Castle]

 

[chris.ph]

aaahhh bouncy is gutted

 

[meerkat]

It came as a very nasty surprise to me too!

 

[Bouncy Castle]

I sulk. :snooty:

 

[high eight]

Anything by Piers-bloody-Anthony. The man can't write his way out of a paper bag and is deeply morally suspect.