This week’s question posed by Wendi:
What is your least-favorite book(s)? Is your least-favorite book listed in your LT library? If it is listed, do you have anything special in the tags or comments section? How have others rated your least-favorite book?
My answer:
What is my least favourite book? I have no idea! These days if I don’t like book I drop it and if I do finish it and was unimpressed I don’t hang on to it. There are so many great books that I don’t have time or houseroom to persist with books I don’t take to.
There are however a couple of exceptions to this rule. I have two books with just one star apiece in my LibraryThing catalogue. Both are second novels that disappointed me after I loved the author’s first book.
Here they are:
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
2898 members have it in their library and it has an average rating of 3.4.
A book that seemed to disappint a lot of people. A lot of reading but not much plot and zero resolution
The Inconstant Husband by Susan Barrett
Just 4 members have it in their library and it has an average rating of just 2.25.
Susan Barrett’s first novel, Fixing Shadows, was a lovely piece of Victoriana. This one was set in the early 20th century but it has modern day sensibilities and that just didn’t work for me.
I hold onto these two in the hope that I might pick them up one day and discover that I misjudged them and they really were as great as the books that came before …
Fleur in her World 
Same here – if a book’s that bad, I don’t bother to finish it.
I also only have two one stars in my library, because if I really hate a book, I don’t finish.
There is nothing quite like the disappointment of reading a second book by an author you like and the book is disappointing. That rarely happens, but when it does, it’s worse than any other poor read.
darn…I own The little Friend…I think I will hold that one until after I read every other book I own.
I hate it when that happens with sequels!
Here’s my post.
I wish I could do that – if I don’t like a book, just don’t finish it. It makes so much sense on so many levels. Yet, I keep plowing through. Or sometimes I’ll just stop and put it back in the TBR. A few times if I tried the same book again a few months later, I like it.
Haven’t read either of those, but I’ve looked at The Little Friend a bit, and decided it’s probably not for me. I definitely agree about dropping a book if it doesn’t hold my interest. My TBR pile is so huge, there’s always another book waiting to be sampled.
Oh goodness, ‘The Little Friend’ is frightful. I tried to make myself read a page a day, as I don’t like giving up on a book, but found myself deliberately mislaying my spectacles so I’d have a good excuse not to bother. My mother enjoyed it enormously, which probably indicates it’s not for me either. In Tartt’s defence, ‘The Secret History’ was a tough act to follow.
I need to get better about stopping books if I don’t like them (or skimming and checking the end to see if it gets any better). š
Thanks for stopping by and participating in Thingers last week! I’ve got the post up for this week, have you seen the new customizable widgets on LT? ~ Wendi