Indian Readers discussion

So guys we all must have come across one or two or more books that we never were able to complete or regretted reading. My list is long and have some real cult status entries there
1. The Fountainhead
2. Shantaram
3. Life of Pi
4. Secrets
5. The Winner stands Alone.

what's yours.

You regretted reading The Fountainhead & Shantaram? Damn man :(

The book i regret reading the most is paulo coelho's brida. I found it so boring and melancholy.

Anirudh :P I found Fountainhead too boring and sinfully slow. Shantaram was so hap hazard and unbelievable to such an extent that was unable to digest what it served.

Abhisar wrote: "Anirudh :P I found Fountainhead too boring and sinfully slow. Shantaram was so hap hazard and unbelievable to such an extent that was unable to digest what it served."

I have your same opinion about Shantaram but this book is so beloved by many members that I'm always scared to say it because I don't want to offend anybody.
The Fountainhead is in my to-read stack, will read it someday.

These books are extremely overrated.
And are the only one that make me felt regretful after reading.

1. The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Ludicrous
2. The Oath of the Vayuputras - Clueless , Comical

The books which I couldn't read/complete:
(not a comprehensive list, haphazard jotting down of the ones I remember)
Catch - 22 (tried 4-6 times)
Shantaram (tried 3 times)
50 shades of grey (shocked within 50 pages)
Immortals of Meluha (I liked it, but I don't know why I keep on misplacing it - 3-4 times, so far- perhaps some sort of subconscious aversion)
Left from Dhakeshwari (I respect the author, but it was too depressing)
Lady Chatterley's lover ( perhaps I was too young when I read it to understand the significance)
Zaphyr, other Paulo Coehlos
One hundred years of solitude (completed owing to my sheer grit)
Love in the time of cholera (wanted to give the author a second chance - but Psmith and Marquez don't gel)
All books by Maya Banks, Lori Foster - shocking content, dismal stories - have read 1-2 samples by each, names long forgotten, but remember the loathing and disgust
Navarasa by Lotus - phew
Shall update as and when....

Psmith it seems we share a lot in common. I too have find most of the ones mentioned by you really difficult to complete barring Melhuas. I found the Shiva Trilogy somewhat interesting.

Ankit wrote: "These books are extremely overrated.
And are the only one that make me felt regretful after reading.

1. The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Ludicrous
2. The Oath of the Vayuputras - Clueless , Comical"

dude. so damn right!!

@Abhisar, great minds....... :P

'The guardians of Karma', not sure what the author was on about. Goes on and on and on discussing and explaining philosophies while the story running at a snail's pace.

'Atlas Shrugged' and 'Oath of the Vayuputras' are definitely on my list.

There was a very recent one. An affair to remember -by Harkeerat Anand. A thin 100 odd page book but I didn't understood a word. :P

Its kinda difficult for me to not like a book, and did not have one until very recently when I came across A Clockwork Orange and Geez ! I hated it !

Maybe, it was too gruesome for my taste or maybe I wasnt in the right frame of mind then to guage the book, but I detested every bit of it.

Has anyone read Kafka's The Trial?..I just hate it more than his other book 'Metamorphosis'..

Deepak wrote: "Has anyone read Kafka's The Trial?..I just hate it more than his other book 'Metamorphosis'.."

Me and I have various opinions about this book. When I read it I was really upset and I hated Kafka. Later, deepening my knowledge of Kafka and his life, I understood that he is a genius, there aren't a lot of authors like him. What he wanted to do with this book is to let the reader feel anxious and anguished; he wanted to let him feel lost, without hopes and he succeedes in this very well! He could be considered a visionary existentialist.

The only book I couldn't ever read was Heidi! I mean you have got to have a dictionary around your neck all the time while reading that book!

Ankit wrote: "These books are extremely overrated.
And are the only one that make me felt regretful after reading.

1. The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Ludicrous
2. The Oath of the Vayuputras - Clueless , Comical"
The Oath of Vayuputras is so dragging and I can never finish that book! I started reading that book for like 6 times now!

Catch-22 (count is 9, of the times I have tried reading this one...zzzzz..)
Love Story - Erich Segal
The White Tiger

@Anusha, Heidi is one of my favorites :P

The Fountainhead. Tried reading it thrice, but just couldn't take it. I really want to know why it's so hyped and why so many swear by it, so I might just try again.

@ Krishna Sruti,
I too had the same problem. not that I didn't like it, but somehow I kept abandoning it in between

Yay! I am glad I'm not the only one.

my list would include Oryx and Crake, ASURA: Tale Of The Vanquished, The Great Indian Love Story, 61 Hours, Between the Assassinations, Aleph, The Rozabal Line, Odd Hours, Rosemary's Baby... though i've managed to finish them all with sheer perseverance :P:P

one book that i started and was not able to complete would be The Name of the Rose... i'm still trying through plod through... :/ :/ :/

you regret about fountainhead? how sire?

Misha, I loved Oryx and Crake. Name of the rose ditto. but the movie was good.

dely wrote: "Deepak wrote: "Has anyone read Kafka's The Trial?..I just hate it more than his other book 'Metamorphosis'.."

Me and I have various opinions about this book. When I read it I was really upset an..."

It took me a while to like 'The Metamorphosis', but i still consider 'The Trial' as something beyond me and the one book i really loathe..

Krishna Sruthi wrote: "The Fountainhead. Tried reading it thrice, but just couldn't take it. I really want to know why it's so hyped and why so many swear by it, so I might just try again."

In the beginning 'Fountainhead' was so inspiring and i could easily relate to the characters..But towards the end it turned out to be just another Anti-communist,over hyped & apologist literature..

Apart from the scores of self-help books, trashy best-sellers and cheap thrillers which I actively avoid, the one truly worthless book I read was Weight Loss.
It was a bargain buy from a second-hand book-store and I had no idea what it was about (though the cover art by Sarnath Banerjee was interesting). I had earlier read and liked Upamanyu Chatterjee and hence wasn't prepared for the utter atrociousness of Weight Loss. I bravely laboured through the book hoping to find something that would justify even the 70 rupees I paid for it until, as I turned the last page, I realised that there were none. Maybe the only thing that I liked about Weight Loss was Sarnath's art on the cover.

But his English, August was good :(

After reading this thread, I was struggling to come up with a book I really hated. I think it's partly because I tend to be careful about selecting a book, and I abandon any that don't interest me after a couple of chapters. I still don't truly hate those, though--sometimes it may be simply the wrong book at the wrong time.

I'll have to keep trying :)

I detest pretty much everything written by Chetan Bhagat and Ravi Subramanian. The latter is described as the 'John Grisham' of banking, but that comparison is just painful and almost obscene.

Another author I hold in really low esteem is Amish Tripathi. I found the Shiva trilogy hopeless. I mean the first book, actually. I couldn't bear the idea of reading the others.

The Last Love Letter by Minty Tejpal. I dare anyone to complete it :P

Fifty shades
Siddharth by Herman Hesse
Hunger by Knut Hamson

oh shit not again by mandar. love and other demon , chronicles of a death foretold.i bought later two books and autumn of a patriarch in a Marquez frenzy reading after love in times of cholera . bored me to death. I still can't get it how or what makes people like it. maybe its like neo modern art ( google for images) seems ordinary or nonsensical halied by critics. sometime I think maybe works which have a lavish language but no apparent meaning is hailed by critics to hide their own inability to understand it. east of eden by john Steinbeck gave up after a sometime list goes on

Rags, Oh Shit not again was worse beyond words. it was mere stupidity

But, I think Marquez was fantastic. In fact, I've got his books lined up for re-reads. :)

(And hoping that I'm not one of those who are 'hiding inability to understand' it by reading it) :P

I never could fathom Marquez. So I am "intelligent" :P

Catch 22.. Couldn't make a head or tail out of it..
Sita's curse
Love in the time of cholera

@Sumit more power to you if you like his books :). I am still spellbound by love in times of cholera . Planning for a reread. However I couldn't make sense of chronicle of a death foretold or love and other demon.

@ Rags : I am an ardent fan of Marquez, but still i agree with you to an extent. I have read almost 6 of his books leaving Love in the time of cholera and 100 years of solitude for last.
I guess it is not story but narration that makes his writings intriguing.
I found Immortals of Meluha and Old man and the sea utterly boring read though idea was great.

i m happy dat i never tried reading any of the books stated above

I gave up on Chanakya's chant. Somehow didn't like the language at all and just couldn't stay with the story.

I do like The Fountainhead immensely. Though I can see why it could be difficult to like. :)

chanakya. ... me too :/

Windings by Nilanjana Roy

Rajeev wrote: "Wildings by Nilanjana Roy"

I have read it some month ago and for me it was a 2 stars book. I've read it for my cat-challenge (books with or about cats) but in Italian.

Beautiful Disaster - Jamie Macguire : I was told that it was one of the best romantic books ever, but it's so amateurishly written, and left it halfway.

The Hindus - Wendy Doniger : Totally not worth the hype, and average stuff.

Because of current events, might as well make this officially a book review - for the 1/2 worse book ever come across.
The main points are already here at the other folder: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The book is The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus . (Note the shift in titles from Chilling to Terrifying)
In summary, The Hot Zone is touted as non-fiction, which it is, but it begs the questions as to when fact becomes speculation becomes pure fiction.
The book opens with an account of not ebola, but another deadly hemorrhagic fever, Marburg Virus or Green Monkey disease, specifically about a French expat victim of it in western Kenya. The man arrived in the capital Nairobi and died at the hospital, infecting several hospital staff, a number of whom died also. The author then goes on to discuss the various deadly outbreaks of ebola in Zaire/DRC Congo, with very lurid and terrifying descriptions of the demise of the victims and the ultra-high mortality rate. The reader is now primed with this unnerving information, so the author then describes an ebola outbreak amongst lab monkeys in a suburban Virginia medical lab. After a massive medical/government mobilization to shut down and isolate the ebola outbreak amongst the monkeys, which, stuck in a containment lab, die off very fast and ends all by itself with the last monkey without making a single human in contact with them sick. It's a seat-of-the-pants, breathless narrative which then poses the alarming question of what happens when a localized super-bug manages to go global via airlines, and gives the reader no time or inclination to sit back and reflect, especially the part about no humans at the Virgina lab getting even a wee bit ill, nothing. Despite the fact that amongst a pile of dead monkeys, the humans were all fine. At the last page of The Hot Zone, the reader is more primed to be interested in learning more about survivalist prepper supplies and bunkers than virology.
It's easier years later to see now plainly where and how this book manipulates, with its effect on the public understanding of ebola. That has been almost an unqualified disaster, feeding book sales,panic and fear, provoking excited calls for destroying ebola-struck regions to contain the disease. Ebola as expressly described in The Hot Zone has since been the inspiration for zombie fiction fantasies and the epitome of mankind's worst disease horrors. That's a lot of negative grooming of the global public for just one book and a pretty much average movie made from it.
It may seem a funny time to recall the old Scooby Doo cartoon mysteries of the 1960s, but in their own very simple way, they taught a valuable lesson to children. They were all the same: a little 'gang' of teenagers who solved mysteries gets tangled up in scary haunted houses, castles, offices, whatever. They spend the first half of the storyline screaming and running in panic from ghosts and spirits and all sorts of unexplained things, until usually the 'smart one' Velma skids to a halt to say, "Wait a minute! There are no such things as ghosts so what's really going on here?" One they all calm down and start discussing together what they know, do they begin to unravel the fraud,how it was done and who was doing it. Always, it was about someone trying to steal money.
Since the Hot Zone was published,(1995) a lot has happened, mostly in terms of what is now know about ebola, perhaps the most-studied virus on the planet. People with zero medical help usually die from the stress and dehydration of it, but with early medical care and IV for re-hydration, people are surviving in numbers thought not possible and improving monthly. The author was able to contemplate all sorts of horrible future global pandemic scenarios, but not that modern medicine in the same past two decades has been working steadily to unlock ebola's genetic secrets to get a vaccine for it. Malthus could only project from what he saw of hand-cultivation agriculture; he never had a glimpse of mechanization and better-bred, higher-producing crops. The Hot Zone makes the same mistake in disease and disease research.

The Quran (by Anonymous) is the worst book I have ever read in my entire life.

chetan bhagat(I have read two),Paulo choelho excepting alchemist which had good imagery and led me to venture others like Veronika decides to die,zahir,witch of portobello.
These books were bought by my brother and since I had no others,I read them hoping to discover something good(but perhaps I am a bit too immature to comprehend their meaning if they are so beloved),but I really disliked them and regretted reading as I read them at an age when books used to affect me immensely.