For me, probably Jihad vs. McWorld, What's the Matter with Kansas? (wanted to learn more of the arguments even though I disagreed with them) and Wicked (kind of kept waiting for it to get good).
The first book of The Wheel Of Time series. I finished it, but it was boring. I started to read the second and gave up after reading about half of it.
Star Trek Red Sector...I despised just about every word of that book but I still finished it. I recommend that it be used as a torture device because it's so fracking awful it would crack the most determined individual rather quickly.
'The Subtle Knife.' I loved 'The Golden Comapass' so much I immediately jumped into this one, it took me a few months to finish it because I put it down for a while. I never did pick up the third book in the series do to my disappointment with the second.
I have a burning hatred for Fahrenheit 451. It is one of the worst written books I have ever read and somehow finished it. Other classics I hate the writing style of are 1984 and Children of Men. 1984 I made it to page 11... 6 times and fell asleep every time. Children of Men is a beautiful movie and the book is just bizarre. Made it to page 50-somehting.
You would have been very disappointed with the 3rd book. Like you, I loved the Golden Compass and its concept, but I was disappointed in the direction the 2nd book took, and even more disappointed in the 3rd book. The second book never really clicked with me on the same level the first one did, and I somehow expected more crossover between the different worlds. The third book seemed to really fall apart, with some major characters flatout disappearing never to be mentioned again. The one redeeming feature about it was reading about the alien creatures, which was at least interesting compared to the rest of the book. And overall, I feel all three each had a different tone that didn't quite mesh with each other. Overall, I felt like Pullman had started a trilogy that he didn't know how to end. It's as if he never mapped out the thing from start to finish with any kind of idea where to go from the start. To this day, I feel it's one of the weakest trilogies I've read. His creativity was just too clever for his execution.
Doris Lessing, god knows I read like three books of hers when I was in my 20's and I hated every one of them. I kept reading to try and get what the appeal was. Sons and Lovers, what a piece of godawfulness that was. I was on a Lawrence kick but I hated every word of that. Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, omg what was the point of it. The Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. BORING TEDIOUS and so dated even when I got to it. heh, these are all from my years of reading things you are supposed to read. I was on a literary tour. Nowadays I toss it if it doesn't grab me by the second chapter. I no longer have the eating your vegetables mentality about fiction.
There are numerous books, most of which I've forgotten (though one of the ST non-canon series of books struck me as tedious as hell and I bailed early). But the one I regret is The Descent by Jeff Long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_(novel) Srtarted off great, creeepy events, scary shit, fantastic idea, that turned to crap in the last third, really, really awful shit. Not as in horrific, just as in badly thought out and executed. Very disapointing after the great start.
I read Angels and Demons and, while the story and some of the debates about science vs. religion were good, the writing itself was abysmal. and lot's not forget the means in which Langdon survived. Ugh. On a related note, the Da Vinci Code was far worse.
i thought The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice was pretty awful. the previous book in the series was great. but this...this was like a Hallmark Christmas film with light soap opera elements and werewolves.
Some of the collected works of Shirley Jackson that was attached to "The Lottery". That tale and a few others were good but some of them seemed incomplete. As if they just gathered a bunch of her stories and published them.
1984 lost me about halfway through. I finished it but any emotional investment was long gone. Oddly enough, I like Orwell's other, much lesser known, works far more. Everything I read by Steven King involves a lot of "Oh, it looks like it might start to get good here soon." I can appreciate his storytelling, but the payoff is rarely worth the previous 500 pages. The Wheel of Time books started out completely engrossing to me. Once I hit book 6 or so they slowed to a crawl and by book 8 I was having regular bargaining sessions to convince myself to keep going. The Road was bad. It is art, I respect it, it deserves much of the acclaim it has received, but it is a bad book.
Dreamcatcher and HDM: The Amber Spyglass were also very, very disappointing; agreed that Pullman lost interest in the initial ideas and the new ones were much weaker.
I actually regret reading Terry Goodkind's Wizards First Rule. I feel like I tainted myself reading it.
Silas Marner, I never imagined a book so short could feel so long. Elliot is a fine writer, but the character digressions. So often I wondered 'Why is she telling me all this?' Buddenbrooks, I slugged through half of it in German for class, gave up and cheated with the English, that didn't help as Mann is that boring. Had to slug through others, none did I like, but this was the one I liked least though The Magic Mountain comes pretty close. One Hundred Years of Solitude, felt like a century getting to the end. What, in God's name, is the fascination?
Hm... if we don't count school-required reading, I don't figure there's many books I muscled all the way through without liking. HP5 was a grind, and after the endless camping section of HP7, I just wanted it to be over, and groaned my way through the epilogue. I love all three HDM books, but it was definitely a shock to go from the lyrical fantasy of Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) to Lyra marveling about how awesome movies are, and then Will's wound that won't stop bleeding despite the witches' spell was pretty freaking grim/scary. It was almost as if the reader was being chastised for having enjoyed the magical and wondrous aspects of NL a bit too much. That said, what was there was pretty brilliant, and one can hardly be too much Lyra (even if the very short "Lyra's Oxford" story was pointless and lame as all heck).
See, I loved that book. I think it works well if you look at it as an epic instead of a novel. The Return of the Native was the dullest slog I've ever had to endure, though.