A well-known book which I put on my reading list as it was mentioned in a positive way is the book edited by Jo Walton, An Informal History of the Hugos.
The premise of the book is fascinating: there is a strange artifact on the moon, which apparently is more than three-dimensional. It is hard to see and understand and going inside will kill you - at least if you don’t follow the exact protocol which can only be discovered by trial and error. And making an error always means death. Fortunately, a device for instantaneous travel can be used for making copies of people. For some strange and convenient reason, the memories of the dead copies are retained by the new body. Unfortunately, the act of dying makes everyone go crazy and even catatonic. The researchers find a daredevil who apparently has a death wish, and he commonly does stunts which might very well kill him at any time. It turns out that he is able to survive death. (Finding this man, before any real plot starts, takes about half of the book). The premise sounds very interesting, but the actual science fiction story takes about six pages of the book. Everything else is spent while very irritating characters discuss with each other, flirt and compete for attention. And all that in a very, very dated way. For example, according to a female character, one man is very strange as he treats women as humans. And apparently that isn’t all good. The book was a chore to read, so dull that I have rarely seen anything like that and it was really, really dated. One of the worst books I have read in a year or so.
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