Booking Through Thursday

How about, “What’s the worst ‘best’ book you’ve ever read — the one everyone says is so great, but you can’t figure out why?”

Recently I read In the Woods by Tana French and was disappointed. I heard so much about how fantastic it was that I finished the entire book and felt that it didn't deserve the hype. The story is two mysteries rolled into one with interesting characters that just seem to deconstruct in front of you. The story is slow moving, the crime is something that you would see on an episode of Criminal Minds, and over the course of the story I went from enjoying the characters to finding them annoying.

A few years ago I tried to read A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I read a hundred pages and then walked away. To this day, I have no idea what this book is about -- but I am told it is great. Here's a summary from the Barnes and Noble website:

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel García Márquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an accounting of the history of the human race.

So what about you? What is the worst 'best' book you have ever read?