I've just finished reading Captain Corelli's Mandolin
and (slightly overlong depressing ending* aside) I found it to be a damn sight better than I was expecting. Humorous and touching with believable, likeable (and dislikable) characters, I really never thought it possible that I could chuckle out loud at a novel about the second world war. I reckon anyone who considers themselves "a reader" (and God knows the stigma attached to that these days) should give it a go. The fact that the very first paragraph refers to "an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema" should tell you all you need to know.
As for shit books that are supposed to be good, I tried reading Porno (the sequel to Trainspotting) and found it to be completely fucking incomprehensible. I made it through about 50 pages and gave up. Also, I found Cloud Atlas to be really annoying. It was a great idea (six different narratives nestled inside one another like literary Russian dolls, all of them somehow linked to their surrounding story) and I raced towards the ending, and then... then... it ended. There was no twist (SPOILER!) there was no clever resolution, there was no underlying reason as to why or how everything is linked. Bastards.
Oh, and I really enjoyed _House Of Leaves, pretentious as it was, but that corpse is picked over elsewhere on these pages. You should still read it though.
*And no, it wasn't the "they all die and the ones that don't live unhappily ever after" kind of depressing.
(Paolo Nutini's Bikini Better than Frederick Fleet's optometrist, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 0:54, 3 replies)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin
rates up there with:

Wild Swans by Jung Chang
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

All of which actually live up to their hype and are overall bloody good reads. Wild Swans is breathtakingly good and if you have not read it yet, get it, read it and pass it on.
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 1:32, closed)

I seem to remember wanting to give up after about 100 tedious pages
and then it suddenly clicking and loving the last 250 or so.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 8:47, closed)

Oh. this
and i cried like a little bitch at the end.
( janet aylia y'all motherfuckers need jesus, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 8:48, closed)

I think it's probably the last time I cried while reading a book.
(Windy Militant, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 9:20, closed)

Agreed.
I guess I could've worded myself better. It was an overlong depressing ending, but I got the feeling that it was meant to be, and I was meant to hate it.
It could certainly make you resolve not to waste your life.
(Paolo Nutini's Bikini Better than Frederick Fleet's optometrist, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 11:50, closed)

No,no, no
You've misunderstood, or I've not been clear, I loved the last 250 or so pages, it was the first quarter-ish of the book that I struggled through.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 12:22, closed)

Haha! Shit, it seems I'm *really* struggling this morning.
I too found it to be a bit of a drag in the beginning, but the Mrs told me to plug on, and that it was worth it, so I did. Then it hooked me and I loved it, but after the main plot had wound up and the endgame was playing out (trying not to leave spoilers here!) it left me in a very real funk of depression; I'd lived these characters lives to such an extent that when things didn't work out the way they wanted I felt bad for them.
I liked the ending, and I loved the book, but I really didn't like the ending, despite the fact that I liked it. Or something.
I didn't hate it in a "this is a bad book" kind of way, but in a "bloody bastard nasty author" kind of way.
(Paolo Nutini's Bikini Better than Frederick Fleet's optometrist, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 12:31, closed)

Irvine Welsh is a self-absorbed twat
who desperately needs an editor who can tell him that not everything written in an adult writers class deserves publishing. If Trainspotting had been half as long it would have been twice as good. The special-effects-man-fakes-child's-murder bit, for example, was pitifully bad, and would have been pitifully bad for a thirteen year old.
(ubergeekian, Sun 8 Jan 2012, 14:36, closed)