# Disappointing Recommendation



## CTStanley (Oct 27, 2012)

It sucks when you have a friend recommend a book they love and think you will like, and when you get round to it it's not nearly as good as expected.

Had 'The Magicians Guild' by Trudi Canavan recommended, but honestly thought the writing wasn't great and the story dragged a bit. 

Now to tell that friend I don't really want to finish the trilogy...

got any books you thought were going to be good but just turned out to be a let down?


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## PaulineMRoss (Oct 28, 2012)

CTStanley said:


> It sucks when you have a friend recommend a book they love and think you will like, and when you get round to it it's not nearly as good as expected.



The inverse sucks too - when someone asks you for a recommendation, you excitedly tell them about your absolute favourite reads - and they go 'meh'. Reading tastes are incredibly personal. I've given up recommending anything, unless people are extremely explicit about what they're looking for.


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## Jes (Oct 29, 2012)

I had an English teacher who wrote and published a Fantasy novel while I was still in high school. Every one of my friends and even some of the teachers excitedly recommended it to me and I was more than happy to pick it up and see what my esteemed instructor had come up with. I remembered bouncing story ideas off of him the prior year, after all!

I read it. I got through about three chapters and had to shake my head and put it down. I picked it back up the next day, determined to give it a second chance, and then forced myself to read it until I had finished it.

And it was just terrible. There were so many different characters (and it was an arguably short novel to begin with) who all had their own long-winded sob stories. The narrative moved from character to character with each chapter (at times it changed tense, too) - some of them were really short and there were no two chapters in a row who had the perspective of the same character. That meant that I had five chapters of random unlikeable character perspectives to get through before I could return to the one character I actually did like.

It was a serious disappointment because it felt very personal. I felt like all these friends and teachers were ignoring the problems with the story structure simply because the man was their instructor/colleague - and that told me that if I had glaring problems with my own writing I couldn't trust them to tell me as much.

Perhaps I looked too much into that part, but it was still incredibly disappointing that I didn't even _somewhat like_ the book my English teacher wrote.


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## CupofJoe (Oct 30, 2012)

"Man in the high castle" - its Philip K Dick and someone said I would love it... well I got to the end and wondered if there was a second volume... it was written well enough [you either like PKD or you don't] but it felt unfinished... there was just so much story left to tell. Then I started thinking and all the PKD stories I've read feel like that - he got bored and wondered off to do something else... Mescaline perhaps...


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## thedarknessrising (Nov 4, 2012)

I was recommended the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. I tried to read it twice. Never finished the first book. Maybe I should try it again?


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## Steerpike (Nov 4, 2012)

thedarknessrising said:


> I was recommended the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. I tried to read it twice. Never finished the first book. Maybe I should try it again?



Absolutely terrible. Don't bother - there are too many other great books waiting to be read.


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## Telcontar (Nov 5, 2012)

As a big fan of Goodkind, even I would say that if you try and fail to get into a book twice, quit bothering. 

This one wasn't a recommendation, but I read The Summoner by Gail Martin a few years back and thought it was atrocious. Somehow she is regarded as a good author, but I can't fathom why. Just goes to further reinforce that there's no use in trying to understand why other people like things that you despise - accept that they do, and worry about finding things _you_ like.


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## Steerpike (Nov 5, 2012)

Telcontar said:


> This one wasn't a recommendation, but I read The Summoner by Gail Martin a few years back and thought it was atrocious. Somehow she is regarded as a good author, but I can't fathom why. Just goes to further reinforce that there's no use in trying to understand why other people like things that you despise - accept that they do, and worry about finding things _you_ like.



I started that one and thought it was pretty bad as well.


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