Top Ten Tuesday: Hard to Read Reads

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list  that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Top 10 Books that were Hard for Me to Read (all covers courtesy of goodreads.com unless otherwise linked)

10. Driven to Kill -- This was a subject matter problem. I really like true crime and I've read several of Gary King's novels, but this one was about a pedophile and it had some really graphic (read: nasty) descriptions that gave me a horrible feeling while reading. Not my favorite true crime to read.

9. Wicked -- This was a personal preference thing. The characters were good. The writing was good. But there were just some things about the plot that turned me off to the story, and I never finished it.

8. Seraphina -- I had such high expectations for this one, but like many YA novels, it just seemed a little trite to me. That's just me. I like edgier stuff and so am not always impressed with YA. I did finish this one, but I was supremely bored.

7. The Neverending Story -- Loved the children's movie from the eighties. Practically grew up on the thing! But the book was translated from German, and it was very hard to stay in the story because the translation was so bad. Still liked the story, but...

6. World War Z -- I've mentioned this one before. A whole bunch of completely unconnected stories made it impossible to root for anyone or look forward to anything. Despite the zombie element (which I usually love) I just couldn't get into it. Snooze fest.

5. Monstrous Beauty -- I was bored with the plot on this one, the writing wasn't terrible but was a bit choppy, and then they did this weird mermaid-rape thing that was both bizarre and turned me off to the book even more. Of all the mermaid books I read last summer, I liked this one least.

4. Anna Karenina -- Like #3, this is a translation which makes it choppy and passive, but Anna's character is also one that's very hard to identify with, which makes it hard to root for her.

3. The Man in the Iron Mask -- This is a classic but it's also a translation, which makes it choppy and all in passive voice. Very hard to stick with.

2. L.A. Noir -- I got this one because it's about Mickey Cohen and the organized crime of L.A. as a young city. I thought it sounded interesting. Yeah, dry. Very dry. I really do want to finish it, but I fall asleep nearly every time I pick it up. :/

1. The Millenium Trilogy -- Just. So. Boring. I really liked book 1 because it had an excellent whodunit mystery. The second and third book degraded into semi-espionage novels, but they weren't done very well. And I've ranted about this before, but the author set us up for something and then changed his mind 50 pages before the end. Ugh. I only finished because I kept hoping it would get better and because I have something of a finishing complex.

What books were hard for you to read?

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