To which I ask: What translation were you reading? It’s a given that translators make an enormous impact on the quality of the translated work, but I honestly can’t think of a book where I felt the gap between translation qualities was as large. The Ginsburg stood out for me by a huge margin.
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From the cover image, it was the Penguin Classics version, so Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
I didn’t notice any problems with the translation though, it just didn’t grab me. Interesting things would happen, then something completely different would happen, but I didn’t feel like they were connected, it felt more like several different short stories in the same book.
I’m quite willing to concede that I’m wrong though. So many people have told me how good it is I must be missing something.
Which is a perfectly fine way to be, honestly. I wasn’t trying to dismiss your opinion of the work, and apologize if that’s how I came across. I may have needed a fresh reminder that not everyone is going to like My Favourite Thing ™. 
It’s quite a useful reminder, though. It lets me admit in public that I despise James Joyce, for instance, without too much fear of being shunned by society.
prepares to duck and run for cover
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Nope, pretty sure it’s my flaw that I don’t enjoy it (and I’d been handed the book by a friend who’d described it as their favourite ever book, imagine how they felt when I went back to them and said “nah”).
But there’s more books in the world than I will ever have time to read, so I might as well stick to ones I enjoy.
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