Most Disappointing Reads of 2023

Chandos MD

Chandos MD

Member
I finished the major Sebald novels this year, I liked Austerlitz but failed Vertigo and The Rings of Saturn. Halfway through both of them I started skimming out of boredom, then gave up once I noticed what I was doing. I’m not sure what I missed but I’m not interested in trying again. I had a similar experience with Emigrants a few years ago but I hoped it would be different this time
 
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Ben Jackson

Well-known member
I have two books left for me to read, but thus far my most disappointing reads:

Adrift on the Nile--- Naguib Mahfouz. Didn't understand what Mahfouz was trying to do here, I got lost in the philosophical digression and in fact the entire plot. Thief and the Dogs was way better.

The Wave--- John Ashbery
Apart from the long title poem, and maybe one or two more poems, I didn't understand what Ashbery was trying to do here. Worst was some of the poems employing pop culture references. Sontag blends low culture and high culture, but it's appealing because she writes the essays. Ashbery's style doesn't work for me. If Ashbery was shortlisted with Heaney, I think the Nobel Committee made a right choice with Heaney.

Tales of the Don---Mikhail Sholokhov
Beautiful writing but very ideological. A propaganda piece. For me, it's the only misstep among the recipients of 1960s Nobel Literature. (Agnon Yosef's way better. I just finished Only Yesterday, and it's beautiful. More on this review later.) Still don't know how Sholokhov won the Nobel.

Couples--- John Updike

Not close to the first two Rabbitt series. Too many characters which had no bearing, improper descriptions of intimate scenes, and the dialogue slightly unbelievable and discouraging.

Didn't read much disappointing books (I'm half way into Singer's Enemies, a Love Story. Not disappointed thus far, but not as brilliant as The Slave), and I still have Proust's Time Regained, which I'm certain wouldn't be bad, but I think the ones I have written are the most disappointing.
 
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Ben Jackson

Well-known member
Daniel del Real said:
OK, here you go, drop all your hate and spite to all these books that truly disappointed you during this year. Show no mercy!
Don't focus on the worse books but the ones on which you had high expectations and didn't deliver, or were a total letdown.

For me, I'm thinking in a couple of books by recent Nobel Prize winners.
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Can you name the works of the Nobel Laureates?
 
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dc007777

Active member
For me:

Something New Under the Sun- Alexandra Kleeman. Lots of hype around her in the US, but I found the book dull. Doesn't land as satire or sci-fi.
 
Phil D

Phil D

Well-known member
Three letdowns, to varying degrees:

Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness As Such / Querido Miguel (Caro Michele)
-- switched between Spanish and English translations looking for someone to blame, but it's nobody's fault but Ginzburg's in this case. I wanted it to be funny, or insightful, or have interesting characters, or plot, or something, but I couldn't find anything at all to justify the existence of this book.

Scholastique Mukasonga, Notre-Dame du Nil
-- loved the idea of a girls' boarding school at the top of a mountain as a microcosm of a fractured society, but the execution left everything to be desired.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes
-- really wanted to like this book, but could never believe in the legendary text and mysterious author at the centre of the plot. I found the attitude of the text to literature as such to be naive, simplistic, and a little bit embarrassing -- like the idea of literature that someone might have if they'd never encountered actual literature. It wants to be Los detectives salvajes, but it doesn't get Bolaño's humour; the irony and scepticism that tinges Bolaño's characters' desperately romantic approach to literature are totally absent.
 
sibkron

sibkron

Active member
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
--Well written but I don’t understand why I need it.

Alejandro Saravia, Red, Yellow, Green
--I threw the book. Template dissident prose. The author confused hate and criticism.

Rodrigo Hasbún, Affections
--More could have been extracted from the history of the Ertl's family.
 
Stevie B

Stevie B

Current Member
tiganeasca said:
Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob: interminable.

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights: disjointed.

Sony Labou Tansi, The Antipeople: tedious.
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I ordered The Antipeople earlier this year. I don't think I even made it through fifty pages before adding it to my books-for-trade box that I brought to a bookseller in the Twin Cities. I used to never quit on a book once it was started, but I have too many books in my TBR pile to devote more time to one that's not speaking to me.
 
Stevie B

Stevie B

Current Member
sibkron said:
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
--Well written but I don’t understand why I need it.
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I enjoyed the title story of Jesus' Son, but can't recall any of the other stories in this collection, though this is likely more of an indictment of my ever-fading memory than it is of the quality of Johnson's writing.
 
Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
Phil D said:
Three letdowns, to varying degrees:

Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness As Such / Querido Miguel (Caro Michele)
-- switched between Spanish and English translations looking for someone to blame, but it's nobody's fault but Ginzburg's in this case. I wanted it to be funny, or insightful, or have interesting characters, or plot, or something, but I couldn't find anything at all to justify the existence of this book.

Scholastique Mukasonga, Notre-Dame du Nil
-- loved the idea of a girls' boarding school at the top of a mountain as a microcosm of a fractured society, but the execution left everything to be desired.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes
-- really wanted to like this book, but could never believe in the legendary text and mysterious author at the centre of the plot. I found the attitude of the text to literature as such to be naive, simplistic, and a little bit embarrassing -- like the idea of literature that someone might have if they'd never encountered actual literature. It wants to be Los detectives salvajes, but it doesn't get Bolaño's humour; the irony and scepticism that tinges Bolaño's characters' desperately romantic approach to literature are totally absent.
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Scholastique Mukasonga, Notre-Dame du Nil.- I agree with you that this first novel has flaws, specially in bringing together two different worlds, but on the whole I liked it.
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
Don DeLillo, The Silence: Bad, robotic story that's also far too short to be published on its own. I've never been DeLillo's biggest fan, but I can't believe he's fallen this far.

Roy Jacobsen, The Unseen: This one's probably more on me. I read an article about how great this book was, and I think I got too hyped. Solstad and Fosse are two of my favorites, Lunden and Hjorth are both wonderful, Knausgaard's kind of there too I guess, so to hear there was another Norwegian writer on their level got me very interested. Not bad, but also not great. Tedious at times, especially the faux-dialect the English translation uses.

Kenzaburo Oe, Somersault: Somewhere in this 600 page tome about spirituality, salvation, and a Japanese cult is a good-to-great 250 page novel.

Cesar Aira, Little Buddhist Monk: I went through an Aira phase at one point this year, but this novella brought that to a halt. Aira's books aren't always super cohesive, jumping around from point to point, but they typically build to something, or are inventive enough that I can appreciate the sheer creativity. This story, about a Korean monk guiding a French couple through a fantastical Korea, gets too silly and ridiculous (the monk is eventually revealed to be a robot??). Reads like Aira didn't know where to go so he just quickly made up an ending, a feeling I also had when reading The Literary Conference.

Also, I went back to a post I had previously made in one of these "Most Disappointing of 20XX" threads and came across this:
redhead said:
Independent People by Halldor Laxness. I've continually heard him be referred to as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, but he didn't do it for me. The prose was nothing special, the narrative just kept dragging on, and I had to push myself through the last 200 or so pages because I was so bored with it.
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I'm happy to say I reread Independent People 2 or so years ago and completely shifted my view. It's still a little overly long, but it's definitely a masterpiece.
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
Chandos MD said:
I finished the major Sebald novels this year, I liked Austerlitz but failed Vertigo and The Rings of Saturn. Halfway through both of them I started skimming out of boredom, then gave up once I noticed what I was doing. I’m not sure what I missed but I’m not interested in trying again. I had a similar experience with Emigrants a few years ago but I hoped it would be different this time
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Of course Austerlitz is, by far, the superior book among his production, but I still enjoyed the other three you mention (Emigrants a little less). In all of these books, Sebald is to me an antiquarian, collecting pieces, places & moments. Probably the main difference is that in Austerlitz the common thread which builds the main structure is by far more captivating.
If you want to still try something by him but different I'd recommend On the natural history of destruction, a slim book which focuses in the destruction left after WW2, especially in the German cities that were bombed and left in ruins.
 
Z--

Z--

Member
redhead said:
Don DeLillo, The Silence: Bad, robotic story that's also far too short to be published on its own. I've never been DeLillo's biggest fan, but I can't believe he's fallen this far.
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I'm afraid I felt this way as well. Disgraceful publishing of a glorified short-story into a novel.

Worse yet, the central conceit - the character monologues reflecting their interiority and separation - had been better handled earlier (over 80 years ago, no less!) in Woolf's magnificent The Waves. Didn't help I'd read that novel earlier that year.
tiganeasca said:
Olga Tokarczuk, Flights: disjointed.
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I don't think I disliked this one quite as much as you did, though your criticism is spot-on. Absolutely astounding that the Tokarczuk, who has it in her to write a riveting subway thriller, then turns around and produces the mind-numbing anatomy lessons. Felt like I was reading two different authors at time. Still think it's worthwhile, but certainly a disappointment in my eyes as well.

---

My only disappointment this year was Ernoux's A Simple Passion. Yes, yes, I won't write her off until I give The Years a fair shake, but given the acclaim, I thought to start with a shorter work initially. Bland, terribly bland - woman's daily musings in the midst of her affair with an Eastern European man. It's terribly observational with little to keep one engaged; I had little interest in the surface level self-criticism, and the constant justification of the necessity to write it as it was written along with her countless references to Anna Karenina only pushed me to desire reading something else more engaging. Fortunately, I persevered in finishing... and was rewarded with jarring reference to the Iraq War that felt terribly out of place. Alright then.
 
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kpjayan

Reader
Viktoriya Tokareva - The Talisman and Other Stories : Ignored the warning of @alik-vit and read it. Poor writing.

Fernanda Melchor - Paradais : After the impressive 'Hurricane Season', this really wasn't worth the time.

Manuel Puig - Pubis Angelical : I liked most of his previous books. This wasn't anywhere near.

Willem Fredrik Herman - Beyond Sleep : Adventure in Norwegian Wilderness by a dutch researcher.

And a few more. But this is largely from the expectations. I've read few poorly written books, but I wasn't expecting them to be any good, int he first place.
 
tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
kpjayan said:
Viktoriya Tokareva - The Talisman and Other Stories : Ignored the warning of @alik-vit and read it. Poor writing.

Fernanda Melchor - Paradais : After the impressive 'Hurricane Season', this really wasn't worth the time.

Manuel Puig - Pubis Angelical : I liked most of his previous books. This wasn't anywhere near.

Willem Fredrik Herman - Beyond Sleep : Adventure in Norwegian Wilderness by a dutch researcher.

And a few more. But this is largely from the expectations. I've read few poorly written books, but I wasn't expecting them to be any good, int he first place.
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Sorry to hear that about the Herman and the Melchor; but good to know. Thanks.
 
Stevie B

Stevie B

Current Member
kpjayan said:
Willem Fredrik Herman - Beyond Sleep : Adventure in Norwegian Wilderness by a dutch researcher.
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Did you dislike Beyond Sleep from the beginning? I started it about ten years ago, but I had to return the inter-library loan book unfinished because the lending library wouldn't extend the return deadline (I tend to doubt anyone has checked out the book since :rolleyes:). Anyway, I was enjoying the book and finding it quite funny, but I never tracked down another copy (though I just noticed it's available on archive.org). Do you think your expectations for the book were too high since it's generally considered a Dutch literature classic?
 
Chandos MD

Chandos MD

Member
Daniel del Real said:
Of course Austerlitz is, by far, the superior book among his production, but I still enjoyed the other three you mention (Emigrants a little less). In all of these books, Sebald is to me an antiquarian, collecting pieces, places & moments. Probably the main difference is that in Austerlitz the common thread which builds the main structure is by far more captivating.
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Yeah the absence of a unified narrative to drive the novels forward is for sure the difference, but I don’t always lose steam reading plotless fiction like I do with Sebald so there must be something particular to him that I can’t see. I will try him again because of how much my friends love him but not for a while
 
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