The 5 Most Disappointing Books I Read in 2018

Most - actually, all - of the books I read I expect to like. I'm not working, not taking classes - why would I read anything that I didn't expect to like? Sometimes, though, I can see right away that a book isn't for me - and I'll stop reading. Please explain to me why anyone would force themselves to read to a the finish a book that's not working for them? But there are the oddities, books that I think I'll like and I keep wanting and expecting to like, pretty much all the way through - and these are to the most disappointing books for me. Here are my thoughts on the five most disappointing books I read in 2018, arranged alphabetically:

Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday (2018). I usually like to single out debut works of fiction only for praise, but Halliday's has been so lavished w/ praise by so many critics and writers that I think she can withstand my disappointment in her book. The writing is good throughout, but, seriously, would this novel have received such praise, let alone such attention, had it not been for its appropriation of the private life of a major literary figure?

The Dud Avacado, by Elaine Dundy (1958). Who could resist a weirdly titled novel (from NYRB no less) that earned blurbs from Hemingway and Groucho Marx? In the end - or at least halfway through, when I quit - Dundy offers a lot of quips and gags, but overall this is a thinly disguised memoir of a year in Paris by an adventuress, enabled by a generous grant from her wealthy uncle, who seems careless about danger, responsibility, or commitment of any sort - a luxurious insouciance that few of her friends can indulge.

My Struggle: Book 6, by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2018, English tr.) Though I have been a huge van of Knausgaard's series of autobiographical novels and this final volume has a few excellent scenes, Book 6 would have been more powerful had KOK set aside the long middle section in which he analyzes Hitler's writings, delivering a fatal blow to this already meandering, unfocused volume.

Other Men's Daughters, by Richard Stern (1973). In this NYRB reissue it all works out for the guy who walks out on his marriage and his family and shacks up w/ a student half his age. Very nice; and it's too bad there's nothing in this novel, not even a hint, from the woman's point of view because I don't think it worked out so well for wife, Sarah. But also guess what: Sarah has the last word, in a sense. Take a look at popular and literary fiction over the past 40 years, since the publication of Stern's novel, and see whose story is told most often.

To Have and Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway (1937). Despite some powerful scenes that translated well into the movie adaptation (The Breaking Point), we can  see right away why no one reads this novel today. EH's racism is appalling right from the start: He can't even begin to describe much less to justify the barbarity and ignorance of his language, and, yes, it may be that his language is "appropriate" to the narrator, Henry, but still H could at least write about this guy in a civilized if not enlightened manner.