Books Books you regret reading [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

veti

2017-05-02, 04:19 PM

Spin-off to avoid derailing another thread...

What are the books that you really regret reading? Maybe they were recommended by someone you trusted. Maybe you were promised a twist ending that would make it all worthwhile. Or maybe you just read on with the awful fascination of one watching a train wreck. But whatever the reason, you put part of your life into this work and when you were done, all you could think was "I'm never getting those hours back".

I have a couple of contributions to get the thread rolling. Note that spoilers may follow.

Dan Brown, 'The Lost Symbol'. Summary: a mysterious, mystically-superpowered villain believes that 'ancient wisdom' guarded by the Freemasons would enable him to become a god, and sets out to force our hero to uncover the Masons' deepest secret.

Spoiler: it's a bible. Yes, that's right - the unspeakable secret that billionaire Freemasons are prepared to lay down their own, their families', and each others' lives to protect - is the most readily-available book in the Western world. If only our villain had thought to check in his hotel drawer, we could all have been spared 700 of the most tedious pages it's ever been my misfortune to read.

And if you think that's silly, just wait until you find out why the CIA is involved.

D J Watry, 'The Tainted Sword'. It almost feels like cheating to include this. After all, the cover didn't exactly promise a deep and meditative read. But it did suggest an entertaining sword-and-sorcery romp in a vaguely D&D-themed setting, and boy did it fail to deliver that.

What it does deliver is like "swords and sorcery without adults". There's not one character in the entire book who has more maturity, wisdom or responsibility than a thoroughly spoiled 13-year-old. They all deserve what's coming to them, except for the "heroes" who quite inexplicably get a "happy" ending. Me, I'd been rooting for "rocks fall, everyone dies" since about the midpoint.

-----

There's my starters. What's your Most Regrettable Literary Experience?

Lethologica

2017-05-02, 04:56 PM

Adderbane

2017-05-02, 05:06 PM

Firewing by Kenneth Oppel

The thing I hate most in books is when authors retcon the character's happily ever after in the sequel.

Olinser

2017-05-02, 06:07 PM

I regret reading Brisingr. Eragon and Eldest weren't terrible despite being terribly derivative, but the more elves got involved, the stupider it got.

Thankfully I quit Inheritance at the first speed bump. I don't know how it ends and I don't care.

Concur.

The fist book wasn't bad (if a huge cliché storm), but the follow on books got progressively worse and worse. Probably the worst problem I saw was that the main characters were quite frankly TERRIBLE people, and yet were treated as unambiguously right and moral in everything they did, regardless of how crazy it was.

I also deeply regret reading Star Wars New Jedi Order books. They weren't BAD, per se, but the quality was incredibly schizophrenic due to multiple authors trying to write effectively 1 storyline, the main villains were ludicrous, and they just completely gutted multiple long-standing characters so they weren't even recognizable. I kept hoping they were going to get their **** together but finally quit about 10 or so books in.

Giggling Ghast

2017-05-02, 06:41 PM

I kind of wish I hadn't read any of the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara books. Those were what soured me on the Shannara series.

-D-

2017-05-02, 06:43 PM

Anything starting with Anita Blake.

Knaight

2017-05-02, 07:28 PM

I'm not sure I'd break out the term "regret", but I've gotten through some real garbage. Dan Brown deserves some mention here - The Davinci Code was staggeringly inane - but he's got nothing on the rest of these books. More than a few would have been abandoned had they not been required reading for school.
Anthem by Ayn Rand: It's basically Atlas Shrugged but worse.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: Note that there are two books called the Alchemist - one of them is an excellent fantasy novel, the other one a hundred and fifty pages of insipid garbage where a protagonists utterly incapable of being a protagonist by virtue of their inability to make any decisions is guided through a journey by a bunch of mystical forces pushing this flat non-character prop through a procession in tedium that purports to be an adventure.
Conan by Robert Howard: I'm glad that I read these and gained literary perspective through doing so. It was still a miserable experience.

Razade

2017-05-02, 07:38 PM

The Sundering Duology by Jacqueline Carey. The story starts interesting with the concept of "Written from Sauron's perspective" essentially. Not even a "Sauron was right" story, just a character study into the evil/maligned enemy. Then it slowly descends into some...pretty boring crap with a love angle and I decided to skip to the end and it ends with a "And now the real story starts!" and...that just killed it for me. Nothing gets accomplished by the end, no one learns anything, there isn't even a tragedy. Just shlock.

Red Fel

2017-05-02, 07:52 PM

I regret reading Brisingr. Eragon and Eldest weren't terrible despite being terribly derivative, but the more elves got involved, the stupider it got.

Thankfully I quit Inheritance at the first speed bump. I don't know how it ends and I don't care.

Actually, I'll throw Eragon in there. I read it as an adult, on a recommendation. The recommender was someone I met on a program, a teacher in her spare time. She assured me that, even though it was YA genre fluff written by a literal child, it demonstrated a uniqueness and quality.

She was dead wrong. Even setting aside how derivative and pretentious it was, it lacked complexity or dynamism. I asked her point blank if the reason for her recommendation was that she was impressed that a child wrote a best-seller that became a film; she said no. She lied to me.

Another I'll throw in is Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. You know, the one about the Wicked Witch of the West? The one that inspired a Stephen Schwartz musical? Mild spoiler, it's nothing like the musical.

I don't need my stories to be sweetness and light. I read Dune in elementary school, for badness' sake. I can appreciate a tragedy in the classical Greek sense, where a character is brought to ruin by their own tragic flaws. But I don't react well to the sensation of true futility. Not a fan. And this book did to me what the movie Unforgiven did - it left me an emotional wreck for several days.

Unlike Eragon, it's not a bad book. It's quite good. It would have to be, to evoke such a profound cathartic reaction. (ProTip: Red Fel experiences catharsis the way most people experience a violent stomach illness. Nothing left inside and a queasy, weak, sore feeling for days.) But that said, I don't like having that done to me emotionally. I don't enjoy it. And given the chance for a do-over, I would set the book aside and just enjoy a campy, cheesy musical.

Cikomyr

2017-05-02, 07:52 PM

The Gunfighter

Because I really hated the experience. And i feel I should hand over my nerdcard.

Hagashager

2017-05-02, 11:31 PM

Soul of the Fire by Terry Goodkind. It's the fifth book in the Sword of Truth series and the point where I stopped reading it. The fifth book is absolutely awful. Grotesquely violent for its own sake, self-indulgent, barely focuses on the series' protagonists, and is the apex of Goodkind's affection for "Rape as plot contrivance" a form of contrivance I find very offensive and immature when not handled with tact, tact Goodkind lacks.

The Watchmen a graphic novel by Alan Moore that is just so precious it makes me gag. I'm not a big fan of books/comics/graphic novels that tell their stories with such heavy-handed pretentiousness.

Thankfully, those are the only two that stand out currently. The vast majority of books I've read, even if there were parts I did not enjoy, I generally find worth reading for the sake of different writing styles, views and general pleasure (if I'm reading for that purpose)

There were also a plenty of books I did not like as a child, but as I got older I appreciated them more. The most apparent being the works of Mark Twain. As a child I never liked him, as an adult I now consider him one of the greatest authors I've ever read.

BWR

2017-05-02, 11:38 PM

"Elminster in Hell" by Ed Greenwood.
Greenwood isn't the greatest author around but his other books have been at least somewhat readable even if they aren't particularly good. This wasn't. This was a tortuous affair. Our titular Old Perv is caught in Hell by some monster who wants the Silver Fire. why is it he wants the Silver Fire? We are never told but we assume it must be because this one ability tied to this one god on this one miserable little planet must be the awesomest thing ever because....Greenwood, I guess. So he tortures El and rifles through his memories. We are treated to pointless scenes of El dealing with things and ending up having sex with someone so much younger than him that even if he were her ancestor they would not be considered relatives.
"Foolish mortal, none of this nonsense! show me the Silver Fire!" our supposedly intelligent and powerful antagonist proclaims. Rinse repeat. The entire book is just chopped up scenes like this, some of them stolen from other Greenwood stories. the entire thing is capped off by Mystra wanting to save her Previous so she makes Halaster into a Chosen, and he proceeds to beat up Hell and save El.

I have literally had fever dreams that were more enjoyable than this piece of ****. At least then the passage of time was pretty diffuse and unclear. With El in Hell I was painfully aware of every excruciating minute. I keep it on my shelf as a reminder that no, I don't need to finish reading everything I start. If it is bad enough, I am allowed to drop it.

Telonius

2017-05-02, 11:53 PM

There are exactly two books I regret reading: Johnny Tremain, and Catcher in the Rye. I read Johnny Tremain back in grade school, and even then I felt like I was being sold a false bill of goods.

Catcher in the Rye ... partly because of how its proponents push it up to be the greatest book ever written about teen life, and it really fell short of the hype for me; but mostly because through the entire thing I could never bring myself to care what happened to Holden, at all. (I get the feeling that The Chocolate War occupies the same place for me that Catcher does for the people who enjoy it).

Crossroads of Twilight is probably the book I hated most, all-time. Single worst reading experience in my life. But I'm glad I read it, anyway. I am going to finish my own book series (one of these days). I keep that hardcover copy to remind me how it felt when I read it; and how I never want to inflict that on any of my readers.

WhenLilacs

2017-05-03, 12:21 AM

I've regrettably read all the books in the Stephanie Meyer Twilight Series. It was a dark time for myself and for all of humanity (namely middle school girls). At one point, a friend proposed writing a Jacob fanfiction. :smalleek:

Perhaps 50 Shades of Gray is in a similar vein of appeal (but I haven't read that, phew).

[talking about true regret here. I don't think works that have literary merit are exact wastes of time and even if I don't like them, I wouldn't say I regret reading them.]

Metahuman1

2017-05-03, 12:27 AM

Regards the Eragon series. I, was, granted, like 14 when I read the first book, but I do recall enjoying it. I kept working through the second and third books, and while I noticed a SHARP drop in quality (Or possibly my tastes just getting better.), they kept teasing me with moments were it looked like things were going to improve.

And THEN we got to book 4, and I wound up just quitting in frustration about half way through.

Regard's the Anita Blake series. I would argue that while mistakes are made through out the early installments, none of them are unforgiveable. (Even to me, something of a firearms and martial arts enthusiast, who cringes several times when fights or reasoning for certain guns/ammo in use are discussed. Or sometimes the presence of certain guns and ammo in the books at all. ). Were I though it really, really started to go full on off the rails was Narcissus in chains. And even then, it would, once in awhile, throw a bright spot at you to trick you into thinking maybe, just, just maybe, they were going to get there crap in gear again.

And that's what sucked about it so much after while. It was objectively increasingly awful, but it obscured this with little bright spots or the occasional good/interesting idea to make it harder to peg down.

I think the point were I lost it was well past were I should have been reading (Ok, I KNOW it was well past were I should have been reading.) There's a guy whom the main character helped put in charge of the local Were-Lions, whom she knew at the time was a thug mob enforcerer. And surprise surprise, this is working out poorly, so she and a couple of the other lions, are challenging him for dominance. And backing her up is this body guard that's been assigned too her for a number of books and was frequently a character I found myself really liking and wanting to see more of and learn more about and see have her moment.

For context, both thug and bodyguard are roughly comparable in terms of power form being part of the super natural scene.

Said thug is described as 6ft tall or so and densely build, and having the kind of experience a fairly trusted mob enforcer and higher level Lycan would.

Said bodyguard also has that Lycan experience. But, she's described as being one of the most serious weightlifters the main character has ever seen, 6'6ft tall, and oh, yeah, she's an ex black ops spook.

She's noticeably stronger and larger then he is, she's got a significant natural reach advantage, she's at minimum as experienced a fighter as he is, and she's far and away vastly better trained.

This fight should have been over in under 3 minutes, probably under 1, with said bodyguard utterly destroying the guy and only not killing him if she had made a choice to spare him, or someone in a position to do so ordered his life sparred.

Instead, he cheats and starts winging, just so the main can save the day, except the person they were all stepping up to protect get's killed in the process.

But yeah, it started ok, and then it just fell the hell apart.

Edit: I thought I'd clarified the early installments, realized I'd missed that, and added a bit of clarification.

Rynjin

2017-05-03, 01:40 AM

Concur.

The fist book wasn't bad (if a huge cliché storm), but the follow on books got progressively worse and worse. Probably the worst problem I saw was that the main characters were quite frankly TERRIBLE people, and yet were treated as unambiguously right and moral in everything they did, regardless of how crazy it was.

Honestly, I thought the 4th book was the best of the bunch. It ended in a way that seems to acknowledge the flaws of the preceding books, and a lot of Eragon's self-righteous smugness gets wiped away by the end.

As for my end...the last book of any K.A. Applegate series, Animorphs and Everworld specifically to me, though I hear all are similar.

She likes to end great series' on downer, out of nowhere endings. Animorphs in particular still makes me a terrible mix of sad and angry to this day. There was already plenty of legitimate, well-earned pathos in Rachel's death and Tobias' coming to grips with the fact that, as a hawk...his lifespan from here wasn't going to be very long. Seemed set to be a good, if bittersweet ending...then that cliffhanger bull**** where we learn Ax just got killed, basically, and his body was about to be used to kill all the other surviving main characters. Cut to black. Series over. Never elaborated on.

**** offffff with that.

Zalabim

2017-05-03, 02:08 AM

There is one book. I do not remember it's name or author. I won't make more than a cursory effort to find it, for reasons that should become obvious. I checked it out at my local library for some unremembered reason. I can't imagine why a book like this was even in a library.

So to skip to the regrettable part: It's a fantasy story and part of the background setup is thus: There's several noble houses that rule the land with attributes vaguely associated with animals, like a bear's endurance, owl's wisdom, wolf's loyalty, or whatever. Typical D&D magic stuff. The bloodlines have become diluted and their gifts weak over time and now the land is in trouble.

In the story's climax, the hero is tasked with reviving the animal powers in the bloodlines in a rather direct, sordid, and thoroughly detailed manner starting with a wolf and a large dose of magic. The sex is not even slightly handwaved. How anything good could come of this is thoroughly handwaved.

digiman619

2017-05-03, 02:09 AM

The Malloreon series by David Eddings. I liked the Belgariad, but the Malloreon seemed like bad fanfiction. Remember the Ultimate Choice that determined the fate of all reality? Well, now there's a NEW Ultimate Choice that will determine the fate of all reality for real this time! Also, I'm introducing love interests for all the single heroes including bringing one back from the dead! Also, the villain is a woman with stars as her skin tone. ORIGINAL CHARACTER, DO NOT STEAL!

I blame his wife for getting involved in his work. This was the start of him writing his female characters (especially ones in positions of power) less like Polgara (strong, respectable women who engendered trust) and more like Ce'Nedra (flighty creatures of whim that the hapless male leads have no choice but to go along with). This is very apparent during the Elenium & Tamuli trilogies. which I so regret reading. I can't prove it, but I'd wager we were seeing a bit of the author's personal life in that.

As for the Eragon debate, I read the first book and basically thought "Well, that was meh" but didn't hate it. Then I read the second one. Good god, the elves were total bastards. and the dwarves not much better. I actually decided only to read the chapter following our main hero, not the other half of the book about his cousin. I thought I'll read one and then the other so I'll get more coherent stories. I never got around to reading the other half.

Kalmageddon

2017-05-03, 02:10 AM

Let the right one in, I've never seen a more mean spirited, unplesant and disturbing book, where the only characters we can root for are killed off horribly or are forever traumatized by the designated heroes and protagonists. There is only ugliness and cynicism and I have no idea of how anyone could have read this and thought it would have been a great book to adapt for the big screen. Twice.
Haven't seen either of the movies and I'm not going to.

The Roots of Heaven, a Metro 2033 spin-off novel written by Tullio Avoledo. I dislike it much for the same reasons I dislike Let the right one in, only worst. Let's be clear, both Metro 2033 and Metro 2034 are not uplifting tales. But all the characters are interesting and reletable to some extent, even when they make horrible mistakes. Not so in The Roots of Heaven. From beginning to end it feels like watching a transcript from an exploitation movie and the whole thing, not a short book, mind you, is a shaggy dog story that goes nowhere. Oh and thank you Tullio for reinforcing the provincialism that plagues our (Italian) media. You write a spin-off for Metro 2033 and you set it in Italy with no connections to the source material. Bravo.

The Bitterbynde trilogy. I've read this books on advice from a female friend of mine. That turned out to be a mistake. While the first book wasn't bad (though massively spoiled by the title for the Italian edition), the other books read like fanfiction filled to the brim with wish fulfilment, where an unlucky girl finds love in the arms of a supernaturally perfect man with no flaws whatsoever and where all the other male characters are turned into caricatures to empahsize how perfect the love interest character is. And the big "plot twist" the whole trilogy builds up to can be deduced halfway through the first book. And to add insult to injury, the last book wraps everything up in a hurry in the last 3 pages.

The Pillars of the Earth, **** Ken Follett.

Cheesegear

2017-05-03, 02:23 AM

Anything starting with Anita Blake.

Did we just become best friends?

factotum

2017-05-03, 02:28 AM

These days I don't usually bother finishing books that I'm not enjoying. The last one I can remember that I struggled through to the end of despite not liking it much was "The Coming of the King" by Nikolai Tolstoy, which I'm sure was very literary but was simultaneously boring and hard to read.

Tvtyrant

2017-05-03, 03:19 AM

I kind of wish I hadn't read any of the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara books. Those were what soured me on the Shannara series.

Huh. Those were the only.ones in the series I actually liked.m.

Fri

2017-05-03, 05:11 AM

There's just one book I ever regret buying or reading.

Celestine Propechy.

I bought that because from the description I thought it's a pulp-fiction action adventure book. I didn't know. I didn't know! I never heard it before!

Eldan

2017-05-03, 05:23 AM

-D-

2017-05-03, 05:36 AM

Did we just become best friends?
(ITEHTTS Rogal Dorn voice) YES.

Regard's the Anita Blake series. I would argue that while mistakes are made through out the early installments, none of them are unforgiveable. [snip] Were I though it really, really started to go full on off the rails was Narcissus in chains. And even then, it would, once in awhile, throw a bright spot at you to trick you into thinking maybe, just, just maybe, they were going to get there crap in gear again.

And that's what sucked about it so much after while. It was objectively increasingly awful, but it obscured this with little bright spots or the occasional good/interesting idea to make it harder to peg down.

I heard first installments were ok, but after reading about Were-Svan (Were-Svan?! Were-Svan?! What is this ****ing world then? Will she find a Were-Hamster and recreate an episode of South Park?) and the furry-****-fest that are latter books, I retroactively started hating it. Especially, since the main character is a Author Avatar of epic proportions. Basically it's a porn, for people into succubus, vampires and/or furries.

Metahuman1

2017-05-03, 06:45 AM

(ITEHTTS Rogal Dorn voice) YES.

I heard first installments were ok, but after reading about Were-Svan (Were-Svan?! Were-Svan?! What is this ****ing world then? Will she find a Were-Hamster and recreate an episode of South Park?) and the furry-****-fest that are latter books, I retroactively started hating it. Especially, since the main character is a Author Avatar of epic proportions. Basically it's a porn, for people into succubus, vampires and/or furries.

Pretty much.

Though, in the interests of fairness, Were-Svan is an aberration in universe. It only really happens one of two ways. Your either born into it as part of a curse on your family line placed by a notable magic user, or your the original victim said notable magic user is cursing. It's there to be a punishment. Cast out by humanity, but nothing but prey to everything else supernatural running about.

But yes, the Porn with a Plot + Author Avatar escalating dangerously close to Mary Sue levels does nothing but get worse, and does throughly derail and ruin the lot of it.

Now, if you gave me a spin off series about her body guard setting up shop in another city and removed it form all the other goings on in that series except the universes more basic rules as a back drop, that could have potential.

Cikomyr

2017-05-03, 07:04 AM

Catcher in the Rye ... partly because of how its proponents push it up to be the greatest book ever written about teen life, and it really fell short of the hype for me; but mostly because through the entire thing I could never bring myself to care what happened to Holden, at all. (I get the feeling that The Chocolate War occupies the same place for me that Catcher does for the people who enjoy it).

Oh god this. It was a mandatory reading in my High School "English as a Second Language" class. Man, was the experience thoroughly unpleasant, and absolutely nothing that came out of it.

I have read some really unpleasant books. The most unpleasant i can remember was 1984, but the ordeal made it just more precious and worthwhile. Catcher in the Rye is the pointless thoughts of a self absorbed teenage emo.

2D8HP

2017-05-03, 07:51 AM

Since I seldom finish books that don't interest me, I remember less of these than movies (which my wife usually gets).
But I'll cite a few:

The Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove.of which I read two and a half books.

Basically, outer space aliens invade just before the Second World War.

Lot's of trite, repeated phrases, really seemed hurried and "phoned in".

The Silo series by Hugh Howey, which I also read two and a half books.

Left too many unanswered questions, and also seemed too long.

The Great Gatsby. It was assigned reading in high school (so over two decades ago), but I still remember my intense loathing of the characters.
I did get a good grade for the essay I wrote about how much I hated the characters.

The Natural History of Dragons, which I actually liked, but it led me to read one and a half of the sequels, which didn't interest me as much.

The Grapes of Wrath, I don't actually regret reading it, but man did it make me cry, which is true of most non-fiction histories of the 1930"s and '40's.

Utopia for Realists, since it's about politics I can't say much about it, beyond that some of what the author (a European) describes as the "problems of modern civilization", don't fit the USA, and actually sound pretty good to me!

-D-

2017-05-03, 08:34 AM

The most unpleasant i can remember was 1984, but the ordeal made it just more precious and worthwhile. Catcher in the Rye is the pointless thoughts of a self absorbed teenage emo.
I read 1984 after a fever. I dreamt I was inside Room 101. My worse fear was that O'Brien was right - that such society isn't just inevitable, but eternal.

Sprütche

2017-05-03, 08:41 AM

Some time ago I read The Three Musketeers and I have absolute no clue how that material could become so famous. I don't outright hate it but I was very disappointed by the heroes most of the time. I don't remember a movie that was close to the book but I have seen only few of them.
I guess the book is a product of its time (and somewhat based on a true story?). The musketeers are drunken mercenaries who like to brawl all the time. D'Artagnan is a total idiot. Okay, he is very young, but messing with the enemy's deadliest agent just for petty revenge is beyond inexperience. And his irresponsibility is staggering. Sorry Ketty, he extorted you for his scheme but he cannot really protect you from Richelieu's men. But hey, there is this free place in a cloister. And poor Madame Bonacieux. D'Artagnan is supposed to be in love with her. He did not do anything at all to find her for a year, then she gets poisoned by de Winter and dies when the musketeers find her by pure chance.
Milady de Winter is also quite stupid some of the time. She can easily brainwash Britain's most fanatic soldier while being his prisoner in record time, but she falls for D'Artagnans' silly trick.
Athos, Portos and Aramis are poorly characterized. Portos was the strong guy, I think. Athos and Aramis are religious and clever but I cannot tell who is which.
The king of France is an idiot. The queen is clearly working against the king, but the musketeers keep on doing favours for her. Of course, it's an arranged marriage and the musketeers need the money.
Richelieu is the only one doing his job of serving France, even though arranging the murder of another head of government is wrong. In many movies Richelieu is supposed to court the queen. It is mentioned by the author in one sentence but Richelieu did nothing that made me think it's true.
D'Artagnan never fights the guy from Meung within the story. We are told in the epilogue that they became friends who like to hurt each other in duels.
And the trial and execution of de Winter was shocking. I know those were other times but why even bother to put up this show trial. They could have just as well killed her. The musketeers are the attorneys for the prosecution, the witnesses and the judges before paying some village executioner to do the dirty work for them out of sight.

I also deeply regret reading Star Wars New Jedi Order books. They weren't BAD, per se, but the quality was incredibly schizophrenic due to multiple authors trying to write effectively 1 storyline, the main villains were ludicrous, and they just completely gutted multiple long-standing characters so they weren't even recognizable. I kept hoping they were going to get their **** together but finally quit about 10 or so books in.

I hated The New Jedi Order for killing Chewbacca right at the beginning, other important guys later on, making Han Solo a mental wreck and laying waste to the whole galaxy. But that seems popular these days. At least it got better somewhen after book 10. And finally the Yuuzhan Vong war never happened. Instead they kill other heroes in the movie. Aargh. Another problem was that they reused almost every character who ever appeared in a book or comic.
The different authors were always a problem when they borrowed other characters from the EU. Even the main trio had quite different portrayals.

For school, however, wow, did we ever read crap. (Most of this is in German, some probably mercifully doesn't have English translations. I'll just translate titles).

Then there was "The Sorrows of Young Werther", which came up in High School when we read German classics. It's a 100+ page teenage emo blog on myscape. For some reason, it's a classic.

I can probably think of more later.

You are totally right in every single point. Young Werther was bad. What made it worse for me: My teacher went on a total killing spree with that genre. Irrungen, Wirrungen by Fontane (different English titles), Intrigue and Love by Schiller, Emilia Galotti by Lessing, The Reader by Schlink. So much complicated tragedies, unrequited love, lovers not befitting each others' social ranks. I never had any interest in that genre and we did not read all of it. One in excerpts, one as a movie. But now that field is forever lost to me.

JeenLeen

2017-05-03, 08:50 AM

I can't think of any that I've read of my own volition -- I mean, I read some mediocre books, but nothing bad -- but I really despised Their Eyes Were Watching God when I had to read it for school. Part of it was I saw it as a very anti-religious book and offensive to my beliefs (I may have misunderstood the author, though I don't think so), and it was probably influenced a little bit since our teacher said it was a bad book by a lousy author but we were forced to read it based on school policy--but mainly because it was written in the accents of the narrator.

This had a dual annoyance 1) I sometimes had to read the book aloud to figure out what it was saying. 2) I tend to start to think in the manner of what I read, so I wound up thinking in the accent of the narrator. So, for a week or two I literally hated my own thoughts.

I also had a hard time with Swiss Family Robinson, since I read it in the original English, which is not contemporary English. Well, I read a chapter or two before giving up. But that's not so much the book as a lack of translation.

The Grapes of Wrath, I don't actually regret reading it, but man did it make me cry, which is true of most non-fiction histories of the 1930"s and '40's.

I had to read that for school, too, and really disliked it. I think mainly some scenes and characters just ticked me off, but not in a way that made me empathetic to the characters or care about the story. I'll add that book to my list. I can get crying from some of the scenes, though; there were some brutal, sympathetic scenes.

There were some other books I read for school that I didn't like, but nothing that seems an utter waste of time. Usually I found it rewarding in one way or another, either for having read a classic or some enjoyment or insight from the author. Not so with Their Eyes were Watching God or Grapes of Wraith. (I did really like some of the other works by the author of Grapes of Wraith.)

Cikomyr

2017-05-03, 09:00 AM

I read 1984 after a fever. I dreamt I was inside Room 101. My worse fear was that O'Brien was right - that such society isn't just inevitable, but eternal.

I was in a bathtub for 5 hours finishing 1984. I couldnt stop.

Man that was intense. I love thst book, but it made me feel so ill.

Thialfi

2017-05-03, 09:10 AM

Do books that I was forced to read in school count for regrets?

Because the Scarlet Letter and Moby **** are garbage. In my American Lit classes I kept thinking "really? this is this best that 19th century America had to offer?"

As far as reading for fun goes, Pet Sematary by Stephen King was god awful. I was five pages in and I correctly guessed everything that would happen in the book. To make matters worse, his fun characterizations that make up for dreadful endings like The Stand and It were completely absent from this one.

Cikomyr

2017-05-03, 09:12 AM

Jan Mattys

2017-05-03, 09:32 AM

I never managed to get past the middle section of Moby D i c k (stupid censorbot).
Honestly, to the point that I seriously doubt any claim I hear about having read the book for real (and not only knowing the plot).
I found it extremely slow with long boring rants about the whale business and sailors life.

Has anyone really - like, for real - read it and found it good? I sincerely wanted to like it, but it grew to become too hard a challenge.
Note that Melville's masterpiece is probably the only book I my entire life I never managed to read to the end, which fills me with shame tbh.

Rockphed

2017-05-03, 09:42 AM

There's been some schlock, but very little I actually hated among books I read for fun.

For school, however, wow, did we ever read crap. (Most of this is in German, some probably mercifully doesn't have English translations. I'll just translate titles).

It started in middle school when we read "Escalator downwards" (Rolltreppe abwärts). I've managed to suppress most of my memories of it, but basically, it combined two things: our teacher thinking that it would be hip and cool of him to read a book about "the youths of today" or something, filled with painfully bad slang and what read like a bad drug PSA. You know "Yo, yo, kids, if you skip school, you will shoplift, and then become a homeless heroin addict and die". It didn't help that we were out in the country a bit, in Switzerland, and I don't think even one of us had ever seen drugs. Or a mall. Or heard any of this "totally hip slang".

Sounds like a German Catcher in the Rye, which is a similarly horrible book. I put it down after about 10 pages and refused to read the rest of it. Pretty much I decided that the main character was an idiot who brought his sorrows on himself.

Then there was "The Sorrows of Young Werther", which came up in High School when we read German classics. It's a 100+ page teenage emo blog on myscape. For some reason, it's a classic. It's insipid, stupid, pointless and whiny. Our hero is some kind of independently wealthy minor noble teenager. He falls in love with a woman he met once. She is nice to him, but doesn't love him. So he decides that now his life is forever over, that he shall only know sadness and sorrow, deeper than anyone has ever experienced. He whines on for ages, then kills himself. The end. Of course, there are such gems as his diatribe about how the lepers begging in the street still have it better than him, because he is so much more educated and intelligent and emotional than they are, and therefore able to experiene deeper sadness. While lounging around in gardens all day. Never have I more wanted to murder a fictional character to stop his whining.

I think I have heard of that one. It sounds familiar at least.

I never managed to get past the middle section of Moby ****.
Honestly, to the point that I seriously doubt any claim I hear about having read the book for real (and not only knowing the plot).
I found it extremely slow with long boring rants about the whale business and sailors life.

Has anyone really - like, for real - read it and found it good? I sincerely wanted to like it, but it grew to become too hard a challenge.
Note that Melville's masterpiece is probably the only book I my entire life I never managed to read to the end, which fills me with shame tbh.

Haven't read Moby **** to the end, but I suspect that it is similar to Les Miserable where the author enjoys some trivial minutia and decides to share it will all his readers who obviously also enjoy trivial minutia.

That said, the only books that I regret reading (that I can remember reading) are books by Anne McCaffrey that aren't about dragons fighting grey stuff that falls from the sky. And even some of those I regret.

Vinyadan

2017-05-03, 09:45 AM

I love the censor filter on this forum, Moby **** is right there with the names of African countries that are too offensive to be named.

Anyway, I tend to leave books I don't like. Reality Hunger was a factually inaccurate, pompous mix up. The Labirint of Fear or whatever the original title of Dever * Grant's Lone Wolf book about the Maze, was a huge falldown in quality and quantity, and I regret having paid for it more than having read it.

I'll probably add more later.

random11

2017-05-03, 09:49 AM

factotum

2017-05-03, 09:57 AM

Has anyone really - like, for real - read it and found it good? I sincerely wanted to like it, but it grew to become too hard a challenge.

I read it and enjoyed it, but that's perhaps because I *liked* the long passages of describing the details of how an actual whaling ship worked--I found it fascinating to learn about that sort of thing. If you approach the book as more like a history text with an incidental storyline you might appreciate it more, maybe?

Jan Mattys

2017-05-03, 10:14 AM

I read it and enjoyed it, but that's perhaps because I *liked* the long passages of describing the details of how an actual whaling ship worked--I found it fascinating to learn about that sort of thing. If you approach the book as more like a history text with an incidental storyline you might appreciate it more, maybe?

Maybe. Then again, having known the novel for a long time as a philosophical tale about friendship, duty, defiance and death, I kinda wanted and expected to be able to savour those without having to claw my way through an historic piece first.
I agree that my expectations probably got in the way. I was also quite young (was 20 at the time, I am 38 now) and patience was not my strong point back then.
I wasn't new to "challenging" books, mind you, but the experience was so shockingly boring that I finally gave up and never had the drive to pick it up again for a second try.

warty goblin

2017-05-03, 11:13 AM

Consider yourself lucky, I continued all the way to the end, and it only got worse.
(At least I think it was the end. I believe there was another book after the series was done, but I never got to it and never will)

Do I regret it thought? Not sure, since I still use it as a source of best examples how NOT to write a story.

I can't remember the exact point I bailed on Sword of Truth. I know it was after Faith of the Fallen, I definitely got through whichever the one where Richard murders the nonviolent protestors is, and I'm pretty sure I endured the first of the ones where Kahlan gets erased from existence? By that point I had achieved an age sufficient to realize just how foul the books were, and besides that, when one of the major characters is removed from reality and you think 'good!' it's probably time to give up on the books.

Anymore I don't finish books I find myself hating. Life's too short, and the unread book pile's too huge to waste time on sub-readable nonsense. The most recent thing I picked up that I really genuinely found distasteful was Queen of The Tearling. All the men were violent jerks at best, and a really statistically improbable number of them appeared to be pedophiles or some other manner of sex criminal. Some of them were good violent jerks though, because they went around cracking heads on behalf of our putative heroine, who gets made queen in the opening section. She then proceeds to be a total moron whose actions are clearly going to get enormous numbers of the people she's responsible for horribly killed, yet whom I am supposed to root for.

See, she gets made queen of the Tearling, which is a miserable little statelet in the worst strategic position imaginable, and essentially a puppet of the much more powerful Mortmense*, which is ruled by some sort of evil lich queen. The Tearling has to send off some (actually quite small) number of slaves every year or whatever to the evil Red Queen because Hunger Games. This state of affairs that has persisted since the last war between the two, which went badly for the Tearling. Insofar as having the enemy army rampage around nailing babies to their shields is going badly. Pissing off Mortmense again will doubtless provoke an equally brutal response. Hey, Game of Thrones has all sorts of brutality, so we'd better get some of that in here too! Then there's some stuff with prostitutes that manages to be boring, creepy and preachy all at once, then our putative heroine decides that she simply cannot bear to have slaves sent to appease the ruler who could crush her entire kingdom like a bug under a tank anymore.

*Brought to you by the Voldemort School of Evil Names: It's Deep 'Cause it's Discount French!

This was the point where I bailed out. The problem is that the book wanted to have its grimdark realpolik cake, and have its special awesome child of destiny cake, and eat them both. Thing is, those are different cakes, and putting them together is like mixing carrot cake and flourless chocolate cake. Everybody wishes you had just given them one or the other. I'd be totally down with a magical princess discovers her destiny and kicks evil queen ass story, but this was too gritty and focused on really boring politics and every non-protagonist female character getting raped to manage that. I'd be down with a slightly naive ruler ascends the throne of a weak state and is forced to chart an uneasy course between compromising her ideals and keeping her people from being massacred, but it too clearly wanted the heroine to be a shining beacon of morality who makes everything better.

Oh, and it also had the worst worldbuilding I've encountered in a while. Not that it had a lot of plot holes, but that it was distracting. Apparently this is Earth in the year whatever, after some sort of collapse had destroyed all technology more advanced than a sword. Also there's apparently now magic - or at least glowy destiny stones - but lots of old books from Before are still around. So we also get treated to a wonderful section about how good a writer Tolkien is, but he really should have included more female characters. Tip: if you can't write as well as Tolkien, don't remind me that I could be reading Return of the King instead of this.

Knaight

2017-05-03, 12:01 PM

By the way. I said in the last page that i didnt like "The Gunfighter". My bad, i meant "The Gunslinger". Yes, I actively despised reading the Dark Tower.

Doesnt mean i found thr story uninteresting. I just felt bad reading the words on the page. Cant wait to see the movie.

I was subjected to the Dark Tower audiobook as a kid, because it was a roadtrip choice by someone else. Being in audiobook format is going to bias me against it, but even given that I hated it.

Adderbane

2017-05-03, 12:20 PM

Some others:

The first Shannarana (pretty sure I spelled that wrong) book, AKA "let's shuffle the plot of LotR around and hope nobody notices". People have said the other books are better, but I just can't make myself read them.

Inheritance again, which introduced me to the "rooting for the empire" trope. Was really hoping for Galbatorix to come out and glass the elf forest at least.

Honorable Mention: Sigma Force. Later books are better, but the author needs to decide whether truly supernatural phenomena are allowed. Ancient super science and conspiracy theories can only suspend disbelief so far. Example: ancient Mormon nanobots are one of the less weird ones. At least not EVERY scene involves hostile gunmen anymore...

GloatingSwine

2017-05-03, 12:39 PM

Catcher in the Rye ... partly because of how its proponents push it up to be the greatest book ever written about teen life, and it really fell short of the hype for me; but mostly because through the entire thing I could never bring myself to care what happened to Holden, at all. (I get the feeling that The Chocolate War occupies the same place for me that Catcher does for the people who enjoy it).

The fact that Holden Caulfield is an unlovable ******** who is nowhere near as clever, unique, or interesting as he proclaims himself to be is literally the whole point of Catcher in the Rye.

It's not a book about "teen life", it's a book about what comical nonsense teenagers look like to people who aren't teenagers any more.

warty goblin

2017-05-03, 12:44 PM

The fact that Holden Caulfield is an unlovable ******** who is nowhere near as clever, unique, or interesting as he proclaims himself to be is literally the whole point of Catcher in the Rye.

It's not a book about "teen life", it's a book about what comical nonsense teenagers look like to people who aren't teenagers any more.

I recall being forced to read Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, by an adult who thought myself and other teen bookgroup members should be like, totally identify with Holden, man. Everybody hated the book, to the consternation and disappointment of the adult group leader. Maybe it's a generational thing?

(Although to be mercilessly fair to my teenaged self, I recall advancing The Dark Elf Trilogy as a better book. So even though Catcher in the Rye sucks, I was still an incompletely formed idiot)

Seppl

2017-05-03, 01:11 PM

Dune: House Atreides is one of only four books that I did not finish reading. And in this case it is not because it was boring or incomprehensible, but because it was plain infuriating. A friend (who had read Dune: House Harkonnen) warned me not to read the Dune prequels but I did not listen :smallmad:

The book defiles the good name of the original series, with Dune being one of my all-time favorite books. Where there used to be quite cerebral science fiction there is now simplistic space opera. The book thinks it is way more clever than it actually is. This is especially important as the authors did not understand core concepts of the Dune universe. What infuriates me the most is that the whole Dune universe has been cheapened because of the way this book - as a prequel - sets up important plot points that come up in the original. And there is a whole series of these sequels and prequels! Reading plot summaries it seems to me that those books continue the bad example set by Dune: House Atreides. And it is all official canon! :smallfurious:

Yora

2017-05-03, 01:13 PM

Spellfire by Ed Greenwood was only a really bad book. But I also read the two books that came after it and those are hands down the worst books I've ever read. Why did I do that to me?

In school I had to read some books I really didn't like, but at least they had some qualities I had to acknowledge.

Dienekes

2017-05-03, 01:36 PM

The fact that Holden Caulfield is an unlovable ******** who is nowhere near as clever, unique, or interesting as he proclaims himself to be is literally the whole point of Catcher in the Rye.

It's not a book about "teen life", it's a book about what comical nonsense teenagers look like to people who aren't teenagers any more.

Huh. To me it just made me think "See this teenagers? This is you! You're not smart/special. You're not deep. You're just kind of a self absorbed annoyance."

And honestly, that describes just about every teenager I have ever had the misfortune of talking to. I don't think actual teenagers agree or realize this assessment of themselves though.

In any case books I regret:
I want to say Terry Goodkind's stuff. But honestly I get so much fun mocking the chicken that wasn't a chicken, the mud men, the anti-communist statue, and everything that I can't say I actually regret it.

As an aside when I was a young arrogant teenager who, much like Holden, had opinions of himself shoved up my own ass. I did actually read all of Moby Purple-Headed Snake, Les Mis, and the like. I did not enjoy them, but damn it. I did it.

Rater202

2017-05-03, 02:05 PM

Ths past fall, I was made to read Oryx and Crake as part of my intro to literature class.

In addition to the sometimes disturbing subject matter(a flashback to our main character's teenage years has him and his best friend watching child pornography and public executions at the same time), and the fact that it and the rest of the trilogy it's part of are basically an author tract by an author who seems to think that humanity has to go extinct for the sake of the world... It's just ofensive garbage.

The only interesting part is the biology of the "Children of Crake," the genetically engineered replacement humans, and their burgeoning society... and that gets relatively little focus and is phased out in the sequels.

It's also offensive as all hell: The author seems to be under the impression that all people with Asperger's are overly obsessive and eccentric geniuses who are literally incapable of socializing(instead of it just being hard to do), maintaining their own hygine, or finding dates that arne't literal prostitutes that they arranged to meet via a third party.

She goes on to insist that the textbook psychopath who cut the throat of the woman he "loved" right in front of his best friend, who also "loved" her shortly after killing billions of human beings had Asperger's Syndrome... despite psychopathy and austims spectrum disorders having symptoms that are the complete opposite of each other.

I mean, the book is decently put together, but the subject matter is crap.

I did get an A on my paper that explained why Crake was a psychopath and not an Aspie, so I guess I don't completely regret it, but still...

Look, if anyone is actually interested in this book or the rest of the MaddAddam trilogy... just wait for the HBO Miniseries. I give it 50/50 odds that it's gonna be better than the books.

Gnoman

2017-05-03, 02:24 PM

Probably my worst reading experience was Flowers for Algernon, for several reasons.

First of all, it came off as massive Award Bait. Much like the infamous Newbury Death Medal books, it felt more as "I want people to think this is deep so I win an award and a lot of people buy it" rather than "This is a story I want to tell."

Second, it was very, very hard to comprehend large portions of it, because it was written the way (the author imagined) a very mentally challenged adult would write, lacking proper use of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Those things exist for a reason, and while I'm usually tolerant of that sort of thing (I often rather like it when dialects or accents are represented phonetically on the page, because it helps immersion) but writing the entire book that way is too much.

Finally, the story itself was pretty stupid. I felt no real empathy or connection to the main character (which is a huge problem in a book where developing that is the entire point), and the ending was simply a blatant attempt to pull at the reader's emotions that a blind man could have seen coming.

Rynjin

2017-05-03, 02:39 PM

Huh. To me it just made me think "See this teenagers? This is you! You're not smart/special. You're not deep. You're just kind of a self absorbed annoyance."

And honestly, that describes just about every teenager I have ever had the misfortune of talking to. I don't think actual teenagers agree or realize this assessment of themselves though.

Assuming this is even true (which is debatable, after a certain age people start wrongly thinking of children and teens as "things" instead of people), writing something bad on purpose makes you even worse than someone who writes something bad on accident. At least the latter has inexperience and ignorance to fall back on, but if you as an experienced writer set out to purposefully set up a strawman caricature of "them damn kids" and succeed...who gives a ****? You still wrote an unlikable character with an insipid, pointless story written around him.

"Oh that was the point!"

So what? If I punch you in the face and you get mad, but I follow up with 'Well, that was the idea" does that make it any less of a bad thing to do, or any less pointless in the long run?

It doesn't help that JD Salinger is a despicable human being in his own right, so where he gets off passing moral judgment, particularly in the realm of PETTINESS of all things (look up his relationship with his daughter) is beyond me. If he managed to accurately capture the thought process of a teenager it's only because he himself, throughout all 91 years of his life, never managed to move beyond it.

Peelee

2017-05-03, 02:51 PM

Assuming this is even true (which is debatable, after a certain age people start wrongly thinking of children and teens as "things" instead of people), writing something bad on purpose makes you even worse than someone who writes something bad on accident. At least the latter has inexperience and ignorance to fall back on, but if you as an experienced writer set out to purposefully set up a strawman caricature of "them damn kids" and succeed...who gives a ****? You still wrote an unlikable character with an insipid, pointless story written around him.

"Oh that was the point!"

So what? If I punch you in the face and you get mad, but I follow up with 'Well, that was the idea" does that make it any less of a bad thing to do, or any less pointless in the long run?

It doesn't help that JD Salinger is a despicable human being in his own right, so where he gets off passing moral judgment, particularly in the realm of PETTINESS of all things (look up his relationship with his daughter) is beyond me. If he managed to accurately capture the thought process of a teenager it's only because he himself, throughout all 91 years of his life, never managed to move beyond it.

I'm going to steal that analogy.

Cikomyr

2017-05-03, 03:51 PM

Telonius

2017-05-03, 04:03 PM

The fact that Holden Caulfield is an unlovable ******** who is nowhere near as clever, unique, or interesting as he proclaims himself to be is literally the whole point of Catcher in the Rye.

It's not a book about "teen life", it's a book about what comical nonsense teenagers look like to people who aren't teenagers any more.

That's kind of where the book failed for me, I think. He didn't come off as an unloveable jerkwad. I just, literally, didn't care either way. If he'd annoyed me, at least it would have held my interest; if I'd connected to him and identified with him, I'd have wanted good things to happen to him. Either way I'd have wanted to see what happened to him. As it was, I was left with a main character I didn't care about, having what seemed like pretty pointless and uninteresting things happening to him, for the whole book. Even if that was his point, there's other ways to make it - ways that wouldn't have made me feel like I just wasted a few hours of my life.

Seppl

2017-05-03, 04:13 PM

While i pity you, i also think you only have yourself to blame dude. Kevin J Anderson, what did you expect?
It was my first contact with him. Only later did I learn what he did to Star Wars.

Peelee

2017-05-03, 04:46 PM

It was my first contact with him. Only later did I learn what he did to Star Wars.

The one nice thing I'll say about KJA's Star Wars books were that at least they weren't Children of the Jedi, Planet of Twilight, or The Crystal Star.

veti

2017-05-03, 04:50 PM

Reading plot summaries it seems to me that those books continue the bad example set by Dune: House Atreides. And it is all official canon! :smallfurious:

If it's not by Frank Herbert, it's not canon. End of.

Good writers are those who make up their own characters and settings. Those who are paid by soulless corporations to write in other people's worlds are hacks. And the great majority of hacks are talentless, which is why they're not out there making up new stuff (which is way more profitable, if you've got the talent).

tonberrian

2017-05-03, 05:00 PM

Watership Down, because I was expecting Redwall. Which it isn't. That book was intense.

All Quiet on the Western Front was just my school trying to make children hate reading forever.

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Really the roving murder-rape squads in the first book should have let me know what I was in for, but I was young and the books were recommended to me by a trusted adult.

Rynjin

2017-05-03, 05:02 PM

If it's not by Frank Herbert, it's not canon. End of.

Good writers are those who make up their own characters and settings. Those who are paid by soulless corporations to write in other people's worlds are hacks. And the great majority of hacks are talentless, which is why they're not out there making up new stuff (which is way more profitable, if you've got the talent).

That's pretty rude to everyone who writes D&D adventures and such.

And basically pisses on comic books as a medium.

No brains

2017-05-03, 05:30 PM

Mr. E

2017-05-03, 05:36 PM

I would definitely concur with those regretting the Sorrow's of Young Werther. Also, I always found Jack London's books far too gloomy for my taste. Edgar Rice Burrows books are sometimes unintentionally amusing but always terribly, terribly sexist and racist.

Olinser

2017-05-03, 05:46 PM

The one nice thing I'll say about KJA's Star Wars books were that at least they weren't Children of the Jedi, Planet of Twilight, or The Crystal Star.

I stopped reading before she entered but from what I understand he's also not nearly as bad as Karen Traviss, either.

Olinser

2017-05-03, 05:49 PM

That's pretty rude to everyone who writes D&D adventures and such.

And basically pisses on comic books as a medium.

I do agree somewhat with the underlying point, though it needs to be broken out.

People that are commissioned to write specific stories or storylines in other worlds and with other characters ARE usually hacks, and they take the job precisely because it means they don't have to come up with their own ideas.

The good writers are the ones that come up with ideas and then ask permission to use the world/characters for their stories, or who pitch their original ideas to get a job writing the character/universe.

Sapphire Guard

2017-05-03, 05:50 PM

I have read a lot of of things. Goodkind. Twilight. Brown. In all of it, the only book I have truly hated it Marked by PC and Kristin Cast.

A high school girl gets into an elite school for vampires and vampire celebrities. Racist. Sexist. Homophobic. Sectarian. No matter your gender, creed, color, orientation, there's something to hate in this book. And apart from the anti Christian stuff, it's all accidental, the writer is well intentioned but just can't do things right.

veti

2017-05-03, 06:32 PM

That's pretty rude to everyone who writes D&D adventures and such.

And basically pisses on comic books as a medium.

First: there is such a thing as a talented hack. They're uncommon, but they do exist. Even the less talented ones can have flashes of inspiration, but those are even more uncommon.

Second: you seem to be assuming there is no such a thing as a comic book with an original setting. See the works of Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman for counter-examples. But yes, the great majority of comic books are trash.

Rynjin

2017-05-03, 06:36 PM

The great majority of anything is trash.

Defining "trash" as "anything that takes place in a shared, pre-existing universe" stretches the difference as to make it meaningless.

Peelee

2017-05-03, 06:46 PM

I stopped reading before she entered but from what I understand he's also not nearly as bad as Karen Traviss, either.

In the old canon, Karen Traviss was the only female Star Wars author I could read (interestingly, in New canon, one of the women wrote damn near the best book yet). Not great, but not terrible. Obsession with mandalorians though.

Correction: A. C. Crispin was also badass. She should have done more.

oudeis

2017-05-03, 07:03 PM

Good writers are those who make up their own characters and settings. Those who are paid by soulless corporations to write in other people's worlds are hacks. And the great majority of hacks are talentless, which is why they're not out there making up new stuff (which is way more profitable, if you've got the talent).

I have to disagree with this. When writers like Joe Haldeman, Barbara Hambly, and J. Gregory Keyes produce a Star Trek, Star Wars, or Elder Scrolls book, it isn't because they don't have the ability to create their own worlds. There are a lot of good authors who write what I call 'franchise fiction' books because of market pressures, i.e., their own material is too strange for the mainstream, their last book didn't sell as well as the publisher wanted, they just couldn't say no to the money they'd get from writing branded material, or all of the above. In short, because too many prospective readers are buying processed sci-fi/fantasy-type product starring Drizz't/Jedi/Vulcans instead of new, original material.

Rodin

2017-05-03, 07:04 PM

Apart from summer reading (which to be fair I mostly enjoyed with a few exceptions), the main standouts for me:

A collection of short stories by Piers Anthony, the name of which I now forget. This was the first sign to me that there is something seriously, seriously wrong with that man. The Xanth books in general became very poor as he abandoned storytelling in favor of squeezing in as many metric tons of puns as he could instead of actually putting a plot in them. The rest of his works also suffer greatly now that I'm not a teenager and can spot the massive sexism going on.

Any of the Dragonlance books other than the original six books (Autumn/Winter/Spring and The Twins trilogy). I read them exhaustively from the library, and I can recall the plot of virtually none of them.

This is also true of the Star Trek EU novels I was reading at the same time. I enjoyed the Star Trek Logs (novelizations of the animated series by Alan Dean Foster), Dark Mirror, Q-Squared, and Fallen Heroes. And...that's it. The rest were unmitigated crap in retrospect, also noted by how I can't remember the plots of any of the over-a-dozen that I read.

And finally, another book I can't remember the name of (again, library). The first novel I enjoyed, telling a tale of a crippled boy on a quest where he slowly gets a full party of friends and many swashes are buckled. Then comes the sequel, where one of said characters equips cursed armor which makes him ultra paranoid and proceeds to steadily murder all the likeable characters built up in the first book. By the time the book ended just about every decent character was dead. Makes me wonder why the author bothered.

Dienekes

2017-05-03, 07:14 PM

First: there is such a thing as a talented hack. They're uncommon, but they do exist. Even the less talented ones can have flashes of inspiration, but those are even more uncommon.

Second: you seem to be assuming there is no such a thing as a comic book with an original setting. See the works of Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman for counter-examples. But yes, the great majority of comic books are trash.

The vast majority of books are trash.

Also Gaiman's magnum opus was written in the main DC continuity, at the time, and directly steals characters not just from comics but basically all stories told around the world.

And Moore's most famous work was going to be entirely based in someone else's work and characters, which he wrote on commission. But then DC decided they wanted the characters to actually survive so basically everyone got a rename and new costume while otherwise still being the original character with a few Moore flourishes.

Peelee

2017-05-03, 07:22 PM

Barbara Hambly

So long as she doesn't try another Star Wars, I'm happy.

DomaDoma

2017-05-03, 07:44 PM

Olinser

2017-05-03, 08:07 PM

Fri

2017-05-03, 08:21 PM

XVI by Julia Karr. It is the apotheosis of a bad YA dystopia. Ludicrous premise? Yep: Once you turn sixteen, you get a tattoo which means you are legally mandated to have sex with anyone who asks. Sheeple starter best friend with no redeeming qualities? Broody love interest who makes Catwoman's alliances look stable for no apparent reason? High school stereotypes masquerading as characterization? All of these. And no doubt more: keep in mind I haven't read the thing since 2012, and that's only the stuff that still stands out like a bad sore. (I read it to the end because not finishing a YA novel is kind of like not finishing a bucket of popcorn.)

Wow.

This takes the cake as the most ridiculous dystopian YA novel premise I've ever read, and I've read Maze Runner. Believe me, that's no easy feat, because Maze Runner is about an organization who decimated human population because earth turned barren from solar flare, except the virus accidentally turned most people into zombies. So to stop the zombie virus they gathered immune kids, give them amnesia inducing drugs, and put them into a... monstered moving plant maze that kills them (which I assume took at least all the remaining plant in the world to build.

Gnoman

2017-05-03, 08:51 PM

This is also true of the Star Trek EU novels I was reading at the same time. I enjoyed the Star Trek Logs (novelizations of the animated series by Alan Dean Foster), Dark Mirror, Q-Squared, and Fallen Heroes. And...that's it. The rest were unmitigated crap in retrospect, also noted by how I can't remember the plots of any of the over-a-dozen that I read.

You must have tried several of the bland ones in a row. The Star Trek novels are very uneven in quality, but even the worst are usually at least a step above the TOS episode Spock's Brain or Voyager's Threshold, and the best far surpass anything in the show(not least because they had far more room to develop the storyline without having to deal with the demands of a blockbuster movie). I've long been considering a Let's Read of all of them (similar to the Let's Watch somebody did of TOS not that long ago), but that would be an immense investment in time.

The Glyphstone

2017-05-03, 08:55 PM

I'm quite fond of How Much For Just The Planet myself, as far as Star Trek EU novels go.

S@tanicoaldo

2017-05-03, 09:00 PM

I'm happy to see my Threads spawns taking over the forum >:)

For me it was the The King in Yellow. Boring, incomplete and not scary or weird as it was hyped to be.

Gnoman

2017-05-03, 09:03 PM

I'm quite fond of How Much For Just The Planet myself, as far as Star Trek EU novels go.

That is one of the better ones. Shame it was too silly to be adapted into an actual episode.

Rodin

2017-05-03, 09:14 PM

You must have tried several of the bland ones in a row. The Star Trek novels are very uneven in quality, but even the worst are usually at least a step above the TOS episode Spock's Brain or Voyager's Threshold, and the best far surpass anything in the show(not least because they had far more room to develop the storyline without having to deal with the demands of a blockbuster movie). I've long been considering a Let's Read of all of them (similar to the Let's Watch somebody did of TOS not that long ago), but that would be an immense investment in time.

I would note that I read them 20+ years ago, so quite a few of the better ones I've heard about (like the post-TNG novels) hadn't been written yet. The ones by Peter David and Diane Duane tended to be pretty good, the others typically not so much.

I went through the list on Wikipedia and the only one I actually remember based on the title (apart from those I already mentioned) was The Eyes of the Beholders, which was utterly fantastic and really nailed the feel of being an episode.

The most recent title I recognize from the list is Q-Squared at 1994, so that's...23 years ago. Damn I feel old now.

Gnoman

2017-05-03, 10:39 PM

I would note that I read them 20+ years ago, so quite a few of the better ones I've heard about (like the post-TNG novels) hadn't been written yet. The ones by Peter David and Diane Duane tended to be pretty good, the others typically not so much.

I went through the list on Wikipedia and the only one I actually remember based on the title (apart from those I already mentioned) was The Eyes of the Beholders, which was utterly fantastic and really nailed the feel of being an episode.

The most recent title I recognize from the list is Q-Squared at 1994, so that's...23 years ago. Damn I feel old now.

That's a pretty fair description. David, Duane, and Crispin aren't the only really good authors, but Duane in particular is responsible for several of the absolute best books. Come to think of it, I can't remember any that were downright bad as opposed to bland and forgettable.

tensai_oni

2017-05-03, 11:26 PM

For people who dislike Sorrows of Young Werther all I have to say is - wow. I feel disappointed.

I know it's hip for the current generation of readers to crap on classics as "boring" but they're often classics for a reason, and Young Werther is no exception. I found that book very enjoyable, though in no small part it's due to mocking the titular character's naivete and emo-ness (which was actually the point, despite someone in the thread stating earlier that "it was the point!" doesn't excuse an unlikeable protagonist. I disagree - the fault lies on the reader's side, not the author's).

Speaking of more modern works though, there's Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett.

I don't regret reading bad books in vacuum, at worst it's time wasted. But I regret reading bad books by good authors, because they remind me of how much better the author could've done than what we got. And that just makes me sad.

Speaking of which Snuff belongs here too, but at least it was (slightly) less boring.

Rynjin

2017-05-03, 11:37 PM

That's a pretty fair description. David, Duane, and Crispin aren't the only really good authors, but Duane in particular is responsible for several of the absolute best books. Come to think of it, I can't remember any that were downright bad as opposed to bland and forgettable.

Diane Duane is just an all around great writer. Her Young Wizards series is excellent. It takes a lot of talent to write a YA story that stands up even after its audience "ages out".

digiman619

2017-05-03, 11:57 PM

SaintRidley

2017-05-04, 01:56 AM

factotum

2017-05-04, 02:31 AM

Watership Down, because I was expecting Redwall. Which it isn't. That book was intense.

Tip: if you found Watership Down too intense to be enjoyable, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to read "Plague Dogs" by the same author.

Rodin

2017-05-04, 02:31 AM

I was going to add another book series, one I really enjoyed when I read it. Why do I regret reading them? Because the series got orphaned halfway through the plot. I've had that dangling plot hook bugging me for over 20 years now.

However, upon searching for the name of the series (The Tales of Gom in the Legends of Ulm), I found out that the author returned to the series to write a couple more over a decade later! And then wrote several more 10 years after that!

Has anyone read the later novels? Are they worthwhile?

Because as I headed off to try and buy them, I was suddenly reminded of another set of books I regret reading - the Paksenarrion re-launch novels that Elizabeth Moon did. The quality of writing was so far removed from the original trilogy that it was hard to believe I was reading the same story. I thought that 20 years would have improved the writing, but I'm just not sure what happened.

So I'm a touch leery - should I be leaving the Gom series as fond memories? Or are the follow-up novels worthy successors?

2D8HP

2017-05-04, 07:11 AM

...that description of Catcher in the Rye as "Dang You Kids, Get Off My Lawn: The Novel" was good.:smallbiggrin:

:biggrin:

I didn't like the Catcher in the Rye when I read it in the 1980's, but maybe now it will seem good!

lt_murgen

2017-05-04, 07:21 AM

Dream Games, by Karl Hansen.

Read it way too young.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 09:12 AM

:biggrin:

I didn't like the Catcher in the Rye when I read it in the 1980's, but maybe now it will seem good!

It's a trap.

Eldan

2017-05-04, 09:38 AM

I know it's hip for the current generation of readers to crap on classics as "boring" but they're often classics for a reason, and Young Werther is no exception. I found that book very enjoyable, though in no small part it's due to mocking the titular character's naivete and emo-ness (which was actually the point, despite someone in the thread stating earlier that "it was the point!" doesn't excuse an unlikeable protagonist. I disagree - the fault lies on the reader's side, not the author's).

Was it, though? Was it? Goethe was at around that age when he wrote it, got out of an unlucky love himself and a good friend of his did commit suicide at the time. It's much more autobiographical than pointing out any flaws. Goethe did say it was his attempt to write away his own depression.
It's also famous for young people imitating it and committing suicide in Werther-costumes. Goethe hated the entire thing later in his life and even rewrote small parts of it (including a small poem at the end that ended with "Be a man and don't do as I did").

Destro_Yersul

2017-05-04, 09:48 AM

Cikomyr

2017-05-04, 09:51 AM

I kinda regret reading the Necronomicon, if only because all these tentacles are a bit intrusive. :smalltongue:

More seriously, though... I don't remember what it was called, but a long time ago I read the Star Wars book that introduces the Yuuzhan Vong, and just didn't enjoy it. I do not like the Vong.

Best thing to come out of the YV's invasion of the Galaxy is Star Wars Legacy that came decades after.

Grytorm

2017-05-04, 09:57 AM

The first book of Witch and Wizard by James Patterson. I got through it, looked at a bonus cut scene, and realized the whole thing was just kind of bad.

digiman619

2017-05-04, 10:48 AM

Even the books I don't like, I don't really regret reading. Even the first chapter of Twilight isn't a regret.

Probably the only book I truly regret is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It's garbage all throughout, and the only saving grace is that it appears to be going in a delightfully gay direction. But it doesn't. Should be five times gayer than it is, so there'd be something worth reading it for.

HPatCC is one of he few books I couldn't finish. Maybe it was the script format, maybe it was Harry holding the Idiot Ball (i.e., not realizing that him being thought as Slytherin's Heir was the same thing as Scorpius being thought as Voldemort's child. Harry, you were a Parselmouth, a rare ability that Salazar was famous for. Other than "His mom met Voldemort at one point", there's no such connection with Scorpius... and that's one of like a half-dozen dumb things Harry does in the early bits of the book), but it just pissed me off enough not to continue it.

I didn't list this as being a book I regret reading because I didn't finish enough if it for me to count it.

Gnoman

2017-05-04, 10:49 AM

I know it's hip for the current generation of readers to crap on classics as "boring" but they're often classics for a reason, and Young Werther is no exception.

There's a lot of hate for the "classics" because so many people get them shoved down their throat in school, laden with a ton of extra meanings that must be true because of "Death of the Author", and most of the more famous "classics" are labeled as such because of "literary merit" rather than trivial details like telling a solid story or being well written.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 11:08 AM

I kinda regret reading the Necronomicon, if only because all these tentacles are a bit intrusive. :smalltongue:

More seriously, though... I don't remember what it was called, but a long time ago I read the Star Wars book that introduces the Yuuzhan Vong, and just didn't enjoy it. I do not like the Vong.

Ugh. Vector Prime. Introduced the 19 book slog that was the Vong, most of them terribly written. First time I ever read Salvatore, and probably last time as well.

MikelaC1

2017-05-04, 11:36 AM

The Thomas Covenant Series (first series) by Stephen Donaldson. I had to try on 4 separate times to read the first book and finally finished, and then the series. I did not go back for helping #2.

Forced to read Heart of Darkness in school. Massively over-rated, massively over-analyzed.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 11:47 AM

The Thomas Covenant Series (first series) by Stephen Donaldson. I had to try on 4 separate times to read the first book and finally finished, and then the series. I did not go back for helping #2.

Was that the one where he had leprosy and a white gold wedding ring? Even before I read LotR, it seemed like a poor ripoff of LotR.

georgie_leech

2017-05-04, 11:49 AM

Jan Mattys

2017-05-04, 11:58 AM

There's a lot of hate for the "classics" because so many people get them shoved down their throat in school, laden with a ton of extra meanings that must be true because of "Death of the Author", and most of the more famous "classics" are labeled as such because of "literary merit" rather than trivial details like telling a solid story or being well written.

True.
That said, though, "literary merit" is a thing. Coming up with something truly original, or creating a breakthrough in any field of art is an amazing feat in itself, even if the first piece of whatever is rarely the best piece of whatever as well.

Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel, but it isn't the best modern novel ever written, of course.
And yet, even if it wasnt awesome (and it is), being the first modern novel would probably justify a reading, wouldn't it?

Knaight

2017-05-04, 12:11 PM

Tip: if you found Watership Down too intense to be enjoyable, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to read "Plague Dogs" by the same author.
This is undeniably true - on top of that, Plague Dogs is just written to a lower standard. I found it thoroughly unimpressive, and that's despite being fine with bleak and depressing.

There's a lot of hate for the "classics" because so many people get them shoved down their throat in school, laden with a ton of extra meanings that must be true because of "Death of the Author", and most of the more famous "classics" are labeled as such because of "literary merit" rather than trivial details like telling a solid story or being well written.
To an extent. I'd argue that there's a lot of hate for particular classics because they're extremely widely read, so even a small proportion of people disliking them is enough to generate a strong dislike. Add in a bunch of papers on them and that dislike tends to grow. Other classics do a pretty good job dodging this - Mark Twain is pretty well loved.

Dienekes

2017-05-04, 12:48 PM

True.
That said, though, "literary merit" is a thing. Coming up with something truly original, or creating a breakthrough in any field of art is an amazing feat in itself, even if the first piece of whatever is rarely the best piece of whatever as well.

Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel, but it isn't the best modern novel ever written, of course.
And yet, even if it wasnt awesome (and it is), being the first modern novel would probably justify a reading, wouldn't it?

To some people it would. But they have to actually care. Totally honestly, a lot of this type of reading doesn't actually accomplish all that much for a majority of people.

Now I loved Don Quixote, but if someone only has time to read a handful of books a year and they don't know enough about literary history to appreciate all the steps that book takes they probably won't be getting as much out of it. And there is a lot of other things they can probably be doing that is more constructive for their life. Just learning about economic fluctuations, that has a way more direct and probably important impact on everyone's life, that Don Quixote really ever will.

And I think we all saw this in school at one point or another. My high school read the Iliad. I loved the Iliad. I was the only person in my class who loved the Iliad. To most everyone else, reading a long list-like poem about a bunch of people killing each other with an almost alien morality system, just isn't relevant regardless of whether or not it is one of the foundations of the entire Western Canon.

Lethologica

2017-05-04, 01:26 PM

I read a disgusting number of Drizz't novels, now mostly mercifully mind-wiped by natural means (albeit a few of them were okay). The Cadderly novels were less regrettable but also even less memorable.

I also regret reading both Lev Grossman's Magicians and his brother Austin's Soon I Will Be Invincible. They're not awful, but I found them transparently, indulgently cynical, and empty of reconstructed meaning (not to mention likeable characters).

InvisibleBison

2017-05-04, 01:35 PM

I'll submit the several sequels to Rendezvous with Rama. The original book, by Arthur C. Clarke, is an interesting story about some astronauts exploring a giant alien spacecraft that's passing through the solar system. Part of what makes it interesting is that no real answers are found about what the object actually is. The sequels (which were written by someone else) proceed to ruin that, not only by resolving everything the first book left unresolved, but by giving really stupid answers for most of the mysteries.

Ugh. Vector Prime. Introduced the 19 book slog that was the Vong, most of them terribly written. First time I ever read Salvatore, and probably last time as well.

Reading posts like this make me wonder if I have a different standard for bad books than most people. I didn't think the New Jedi Order series was particularly bad. It wasn't remarkably good, mind you, but it was a worthwhile, entertaining read. I'd appreciate it if anyone would be willing to explain why they didn't like it.

Jan Mattys

2017-05-04, 01:39 PM

To some people it would. But they have to actually care. Totally honestly, a lot of this type of reading doesn't actually accomplish all that much for a majority of people.

Now I loved Don Quixote, but if someone only has time to read a handful of books a year and they don't know enough about literary history to appreciate all the steps that book takes they probably won't be getting as much out of it. And there is a lot of other things they can probably be doing that is more constructive for their life. Just learning about economic fluctuations, that has a way more direct and probably important impact on everyone's life, that Don Quixote really ever will.

And I think we all saw this in school at one point or another. My high school read the Iliad. I loved the Iliad. I was the only person in my class who loved the Iliad. To most everyone else, reading a long list-like poem about a bunch of people killing each other with an almost alien morality system, just isn't relevant regardless of whether or not it is one of the foundations of the entire Western Canon.

Their loss, I suppose. And incidentally, not being able to create interest in one of the greatest epics of all time is probably your teacher's fault.
I mean, I agree with almost all you said, especially the part about some things being not worth it if you don't have the right tools and the curiosity to delve into them. And still, school is exactly where those tools should be given to you. Forcedly more often than not, because no teenager in his right mind would EVER read some of the best books in the history of mankind willingly. If nothing else, because it would take years for those seeds to come to fruition. Culture and wisdom don't grow in a day.
That's sad, but that's what it is 99% of the time, in my opinion.

Example: in Italy the reading and analysis of "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri is a staple of high school. Everybody does it, and almost everybody hates it (save maybe some excerpts from the Inferno, the first part, because they are sufficiently gorey to appeal to a teenager audience :D). I hated it, too. But I am glad they forced me to know it. I wouldn't have read it by myself till much much later (if at all).

georgie_leech

2017-05-04, 02:05 PM

There is only so much a teacher can do to create engagement though. Like, I love 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I love how it helped form the foundations for near-future science fiction with relatively reasonable projections of current technology. But I developed that love after developing an interest in the genre, and a curiosity about its roots. Trying to force it on me wouldn't have given me that same sense of wonder. At the end of the day, a sizable chunk of the text is devoted to catalogues of fish species the narrator sees, without even a colour described. Acquired tastes are developed over time, not by force-feeding them to people until Stockholm Syndrome sets in.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 02:25 PM

Reading posts like this make me wonder if I have a different standard for bad books than most people. I didn't think the New Jedi Order series was particularly bad. It wasn't remarkably good, mind you, but it was a worthwhile, entertaining read. I'd appreciate it if anyone would be willing to explain why they didn't like it.

Mostly writing styles that I hate (coming into this same problem with the Aftermath books, it looks like), and storylines that I just don't really care about. And I'll readily admit that after a certain point, I'd felt just burned out on the whole damn series and the last parts probably didn't even get a fair shake. Wasn't a fan of the intro novel, Stackpole waa able to keep my interest, and after that it was just a long downhill. That downhill may not have been very steep but it was very long, and that made it memorable.

Gnoman

2017-05-04, 02:57 PM

True.
That said, though, "literary merit" is a thing. Coming up with something truly original, or creating a breakthrough in any field of art is an amazing feat in itself, even if the first piece of whatever is rarely the best piece of whatever as well.

Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel, but it isn't the best modern novel ever written, of course.
And yet, even if it wasnt awesome (and it is), being the first modern novel would probably justify a reading, wouldn't it?

The thing is that there is a difference between literary merit and "literary merit". School curriculum don't usually focus on the really influential books, but on ones that are praised for being "deep", or ones that analysts have been able to shoehorn a "brilliant" interpretation into. I've personally met educators say with a straight face that Gulliver's Travels and Huckleberry Finn are just escapist fantasy (with the added feature of there being a few rather naughty scenes in Travels and the deliberate use of racist language in Finn), while pushing A Christmas Carol as a "brilliant critique of capitalism". Never mind that Travels is one of the first notable works of satire, and Finn is probably the greatest critiques of racism (although the most brilliant aspect of the novel is hard to catch - we see Jim through Huckleberry's eyes, filtered through Huck Finn's ingrained racism. This means that Jim acting less and less like a caricature is not Jim changing, but Finn learning to see past his blinders). Meanwhile A Christmas Carol has not only been adapted to death, but was explicitly just meant to be a Christmas ghost story with no greater theme than the fall and redemption (a rather common and important theme in Victorian Christmas literature) of one man.

Dienekes

2017-05-04, 03:04 PM

The thing is that there is a difference between literary merit and "literary merit". School curriculum don't usually focus on the really influential books, but on ones that are praised for being "deep", or ones that analysts have been able to shoehorn a "brilliant" interpretation into. I've personally met educators say with a straight face that Gulliver's Travels and Huckleberry Finn are just escapist fantasy (with the added feature of there being a few rather naughty scenes in Travels and the deliberate use of racist language in Finn), while pushing A Christmas Carol as a "brilliant critique of capitalism". Never mind that Travels is one of the first notable works of satire, and Finn is probably the greatest critiques of racism (although the most brilliant aspect of the novel is hard to catch - we see Jim through Huckleberry's eyes, filtered through Huck Finn's ingrained racism. This means that Jim acting less and less like a caricature is not Jim changing, but Finn learning to see past his blinders). Meanwhile A Christmas Carol has not only been adapted to death, but was explicitly just meant to be a Christmas ghost story with no greater theme than the fall and redemption (a rather common and important theme in Victorian Christmas literature) of one man.

Eh, while I'm not against your point about Finn and Gullvier's (seriously, those books are great and very deep what are these educators talking about?)

But there is a lot your glossing over in Carol. There's a huge speech by one of the ghosts that details why their current economic system was faulty and was very clearly in focus for Dickens. I'm not going to say that it is focused on anti-capitalism as much as strongly critiquing the social influences of economy during his time. Really, a lot of Dickens has elements of this somewhere in the story.

Though I will say, in part of the whole "done to death thing" I agree, but also weirdly that previously mentioned speech usually gets cut, probably because the examples given really aren't relevant anymore.

BWR

2017-05-04, 03:29 PM

Best thing to come out of the YV's invasion of the Galaxy is Star Wars Legacy that came decades after.

The NJO was bad but Legacy was way worse. NJO at least gave us Traitor, which about the best SW book ever written.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 03:39 PM

The NJO was bad but Legacy was way worse. NJO at least gave us Traitor, which about the best SW book ever written.

I'd call that last part highly debateable, at the very least.

Cikomyr

2017-05-04, 03:44 PM

The NJO was bad but Legacy was way worse. NJO at least gave us Traitor, which about the best SW book ever written.

Not Legacy of the Force, but Legacy. The story of Cade Skywalker and the Imperial Knights; the single best thing to happen to Star Wars since Darth Vader.

thorgrim29

2017-05-04, 04:15 PM

Did not like Catcher in the rye when I read it in high school (I would have been 16 I think). The protagonist was utterly unsympathetic. The line about children looking for a cause to die for and adults looking for a cause to live for did stick with me though.

I was forced to read a lot of books in the french literature canon when I was much too young to appreciate them (and this is coming from a guy who read Jules Vernes novels when he was 10), I blame that for the fact that I basically only read sci-fi, fantasy, mysteries and historical fiction now. I think the french school system is designed to turn people off of literature for some reason. Standouts would be Eugénie Grandet by Balzac, anything by Maupassant, and Antigone by Anhouil and Phèdre by Racine (the last 2 are theater). I did enjoy most of the stuff I read from Victor Hugo, Dumas and Molière though. Also at around the same time (14 or so) I read the unabridged Great Expectations in english. It was a painful experience.

Books I subjected myself to now... The last few Pratchett books while not bad per-se made me sad because ofd how much lesser they were than when he was at his prime, so anything after making money I regret reading (not I shall wear midnight though, that is an excellent little book). Also The Long Mars. The Chronicles of the Dread Empire by Glen Cook is incomprehensible dreck even though I usually like his stuff. The penal regiment books from 40k were bad and worthless, the last few Sword of Truth books I forced myself to read likewise (still like the first one, and after that for a while there was a book in 2 or 3 that I enjoyed enough to keep at it, eventually I gave up). French author Bernard Werber is a mixed bag, I like the Fourmis trilogy a as well as the first 4 or 5 books of the Thanataunaute series and one of his "detective" novels but the man has a tendency to disappear up his own rectum when he thinks he's writing something important and descends into the worst of pop-philosophy and new-age crap.

factotum

2017-05-04, 04:17 PM

Was that the one where he had leprosy and a white gold wedding ring? Even before I read LotR, it seemed like a poor ripoff of LotR.

I'm struggling to see the relationship between the two stories, to be honest, apart from they're both fantasies that include magic rings? Also, the Second Chronicles are a far better tale than the First.

Mind you, since we're speaking about Stephen Donaldson, that brings to mind another of my regrets--"The Mirror of her Dreams". The nominal heroine and POV character of this book does literally nothing throughout the entire thing apart from narrowly avoid having sex on a couple of occasions. The sequel (A Man Rides Through) is an awful lot better.

Vinyadan

2017-05-04, 04:45 PM

the first piece of whatever is rarely the best piece of whatever as well.

Notable exceptions: epic and certain poetry metrics. The Iliad is the oldest classical epic poem we have, and it's the best, hands down. The Chanson de Roland is the oldest chanson de geste we have, and it's the best. The Divine Comedy was the first text to use the tercet in terza rima, and it was the best (besides the fact that it probably is the best independent, complete, unitary work of world literature, although, not having read everything ever written, I guess I'll never be sure :smallfrown:).

Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel, but it isn't the best modern novel ever written, of course.
And yet, even if it wasnt awesome (and it is), being the first modern novel would probably justify a reading, wouldn't it?

I didn't read the book, but, out of curiosity (and decidedly off-topic), which ones do you think could be the best modern novels?

Jan Mattys

2017-05-04, 05:36 PM

I didn't read the book, but, out of curiosity (and decidedly off-topic), which ones do you think could be the best modern novels?

That's a very difficult question I think, but I'll throw you my favourite five (not having read everything, of course, consider this both a personal list and an obviously incomplete one :smallsmile:)

In no particular order:
- Tolstoj's "Anna Karenina"
- Kafka's "The trial"
- Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"
- Dostoevski's "The Brothers Karamazov"
- Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo"

All of these changed me in some way. Of the five, "The Count of Monte Cristo" is definitely the worst of the lot in terms of prose, having been written with the precise intent of being long-winded for the sake of it (Dumas was getting paid by the word), but I still love it so much.

The other four, I consider almost perfect masterpieces in their own right.

Lethologica

2017-05-04, 06:00 PM

It didn't take very long after sonnets were introduced to the English language for Shakespeare to ruin them for everyone else. (That's kind of cheating, though, considering the form's Italian history.)

DomaDoma

2017-05-04, 08:21 PM

The Secret. I found the implications of 'want something bad enough and the universe will reshape itself to accommodate you' sickening enough that I couldn't finish. Like, physical symptoms. Proms of nausea. Yeah, there's something to be said about being focused on your goals making them more likely to be accomplished, but the book seems to go way past that. I still have a faint half-hope that it was secretly (heh) a parody.

Nope. The all-accommodating Universe is a frighteningly popular thing to take seriously. Granted, I do ride the bus, but given that it's one of Oprah's favorite strains of product to peddle, I doubt it's just limited to people who should, generally, be poor enough to realize the Universe is not actually bending to their aspirations, but don't because they're also a little crazy.

Ditto on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I have no idea how I can have blotted that one from my memory in such short order - I'm probably representing a small minority of the board just by liking Harry Potter at all, and in fact the series pretty much consumed my adolescence. And Cursed Child was a desecration, f'real. (Might help that, as desecrations go, it was awfully bland. One of the worst things it did, IMO, was write a villain reveal scene to be exactly what the audience expected with no misdirection tricks whatsoever, and that would fly in plenty of stories. Just not Harry Potter.)

tomandtish

2017-05-04, 08:55 PM

The first book of Witch and Wizard by James Patterson. I got through it, looked at a bonus cut scene, and realized the whole thing was just kind of bad.

In fairness (and also a large part of why I stopped liking Patterson), the vast majority of his work these days is co-authored. He submits an outline, someone else writes the chapters, and he

"The way it usually works, Patterson will write a detailed outline--sometimes as long as 50 pages, triple-spaced--and one of his co-authors will draft the chapters for him to read, revise and, when necessary, rewrite. When he’s first starting to work with a new collaborator, a book will typically require numerous drafts. Over time, the process invariably becomes more efficient. Patterson pays his co-authors out of his own pocket. On the adult side, his collaborators work directly and exclusively with Patterson. On the Y.A. side, they sometimes work with Patterson’s young-adult editor, who decides when pages are ready to be passed along to Patterson."

These days he's probably about half-way between editor and writer on the majority of his work.

I'm in the category of "If I don't like something I stop", but my Grandmother gave me a full set of the Twilight books several years ago as a Christmas gift, so I had to read them. That was painful.

RyumaruMG

2017-05-04, 08:56 PM

Add another to the "Catcher in the Rye" hate pile. Had to read it for class and oh my god did I just want to stop. I don't usually have that problem with books. Even books people consider bad. But Catcher in the Rye was just insufferable. I'd tell Salinger where to stick his opinions but I don't think there's any room in there due to his head taking up all that space.

WhovianBeast

2017-05-04, 08:57 PM

The Terminal Man, Sphere, and Prey by Michael Crichton. I like most of Crichton's work (Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Andromeda Strain, Micro, etc...), but these three just weren't working for me. These are some of the few books where I read it, and felt vaguely nauseous afterwards. Combination of a good premise, poor ending, and visceral writing.

Durkoala

2017-05-04, 09:08 PM

Was that the one where he had leprosy and a white gold wedding ring? Even before I read LotR, it seemed like a poor ripoff of LotR.

Yep, and it's also a book I really didn't like, although I'll add a quibble that it didn't seem like any more of a poor Lord of the Rings than most bad fantasy too me. I only read the second book, but I really couldn't stand the protagonist, who seemed under-invested even for a man who believed that he was hallucinating the whole thing while his body and life fell apart in reality. None of the other characters really caught my interest, even the person who was all about picking out the protagonist's flaws. And of course, there's the fact that the love interest was his daughter by rape, he still pursues a relationship with her after learning this and it's implied that this is why she's attracted to him in the first place.

I do still have it on my shelf to remind myself how not to write a fantasy book though, so maybe it wasn't a total waste of my time. Somehow.

------

Before the absolutely awful trilogy I post up next, I have to give a dishonourable mention to Marathon Man by... William Goldman?

I actually had to google that to make sure it was the right person, and he's responsible for so much stuff that's either good, famous, or on my list of things to look at! I have no idea how somebody with so many great things to his name made... this. To be fair, 80% of it is a decent thriller, even if it some of the characters are somewhat grating. But the ending just upsets everything and makes it out that the hero (I suppose he's more of a Greek Anti-Hero, but I'm digressing) has overcome some kind of personal quest and defeated a great evil, after killing five people, losing everybody close to him, destroying his career path, changing to a philosophy of attempting to crush out any lawbreakers to preserve society (while fighting against a nazi, for the irony points) and talking to a policeman about to arrest him. There's certainly a plot in there, but I absolutely loathe everything about that ending and how it treats becoming a borderline serial killer as a triumph of spirit.

------
I don't really know how to describe this one. I found a summary on it and thought a post--apocalyptic adventure novel written in the 1910's sounded exactly up my street, if a bit uncomfortable with some of its values of sex and race, but expecting that to not be present is like taking a trip to the Amazon and not expecting any rain.

Darkness and Dawn (George Allan England) is a combination of the worst attitudes of its time: racism, sexism, gloating of Man's triumph over nature, the certainty that Western Civilisation (and in this particular case, America*) is the apex of human achivement and a protagonist who is a complete and utter Mary Sue. I might have forgotten a few there.

To summarise, our 'heroes' wake up at the top of a somewhat dilapadated* skyscraper to find that the world apparently ended a long time ago while they slept. In the interests of making sure I remembered this right, I took another look at it and... it opens with the heroine (or if you want to be less tactful, the eye candy) waking, and only waits one sentence before informing us of 'that full bosom', which.... also, she's naked. Then she has a little panic while basically acting like Alice in Wonderland if she had all her forthrightness removed, which to be fair isn't an unreasonable response to waking up in rusted wasteland. Then we meet The Hero, who, being a man, has a second to panic and then is immediately reasonable and heroicly unconcerned about waking up in his office to centuries worth of degradation and the probable (the possiblity is discussed in this scene) extinction of the human race.

*The skyscraper is falling to bits, but given that it's later revealed that they awoke after over 1200 years of civilsation being wiped out, it's held up remarkably well.

This next bit is quite possibly the worst bit of all. It's seriously offensive unless you find it laughable. Viewer discretition blah blah. I really should have walked away when I found this.
The main antagonists of the first book are a massive band of roaming creatures called the Horde. There isn't an easy way to say this, so I'm jumping straight in: According to Mr England, they're what happens when black people are removed from the civilising influence of whites and are allowed to breed themselves into essentially being Morlocks. I don't even know where to start. There's many diatribes on their subhuman intellect, although they're perfectly capable of tool use, carving and setting traps when the plot calls for it. The reason they survived is something along the lines of their savage blood allowing them to withstand the volcanic poisons that wiped out the other race (no other ethnicities are mentioned: people were apparently only either white or black at the turn of the century). The reason civilisation fell over despite having a sizable amount of people around to run things is because they were just plain incapable of keeping it going for more than a few generations. They're cannibals. The obvious and correct response to being surrounded by an army of devolved humans is to make them worship you as a god with your firearms and racial superiority, although thankfully this plan falls as flat as it can without the death of the main characters.

Of course, when we finally find some surviving white people, they're perfectly human in form and have a functioning civilisation, although they still need to be taught the American Way to bring them up to speed on being full-fledged humans. The heroine asks if they should consider trying the god act again, but is shot down 'because it won't work on white people'. The fact that it didn't work on the Horde either is convieniently ignored.

Racism aside, there's a strange parabolic curve effect with sexism. At first, the female 'lead' simpers, panics easily and generally acts like a child in contrast to the Hero, who is so manly and unshakable and does everything while his lovely companion holds the tools. Then thankfully she gets, if not a spine, a thicker skin and some marksmenship skills. She's still solidly the sidekick and never takes the lead in anything, but she at least gets to do things instead of cowering behind the Manliest Man of Mannering Manor. Then she has a child and essentially becomes a basic damsel in distress (although iirc, she still isn't quite as bad as she first started out). Even the most generous critic would balk at calling her a feminist icon at any point, though.

Next, our Hero, like I said earlier, is an utter Mary Sue. At every point he takes living in the new world in stride and never despairs. The narration endlessly dwells on his 'unbreakable manly spirit' and his peerless intellect. This usually manifests as him retroactively knowing whatever skill is needed for the plot. Surrounded by cannibal sub-humans? It's a good thing he invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite that he has lying around to make improvised grenades out of! In a fight with the leader of a clan? How handy that he's a champion boxer! Discovered the wreck of an old aeroplane? It's a good thing he's flying instructor who has trained champion pilots and knows the workings of a plane! And on, and on it goes. There's never a time where his skills are mentioned beforehand, and they rarely are brought up again, with the exception of his flying machine.

He often espouses in the superiority of the American way of doing things, but then contradicts himself, such as when he says that it's time he got some democracy started here... but his followers are too primitive still to accept it, so he'll have to rule by force and fear until he decides they're ready.

Frustratingly, it was in many ways what I wanted, with many quirky or quaint happenings that could only be products of that time and genre. When the story was devoted to exploring a new quirk of the strange world, it was often enjoyable, in a bootleg Jules Verne way. If the Male lead wasn't so unutterably smug and assured of his way, or the female lead got to be a bit more proactive, I might have been able to call it 'bad but enjoyable'. As it is, though, with the purple prose, terrible science and awful thoughts on the treatment of human beings, it's a book I wish I had never found or decided to read all the way through, and even regret staying up so late to type this out.

Also, because it has to be mentioned, there's a scene where a gorilla randomly appears and tries to rape the heroine. That pretty much sums up the entire book: I wanted to see wacky oldfashioned ideas, and it delivered a boatload of the very worst ideas in that category.

An Enemy Spy

2017-05-04, 09:30 PM

georgie_leech

2017-05-04, 09:35 PM

Nope. The all-accommodating Universe is a frighteningly popular thing to take seriously. Granted, I do ride the bus, but given that it's one of Oprah's favorite strains of product to peddle, I doubt it's just limited to people who should, generally, be poor enough to realize the Universe is not actually bending to their aspirations, but don't because they're also a little crazy.

The poverty is one thing, but I can't help but look at that and view it as a possible justification for the worst sort of victim blaming. You didn't get better from cancer because you just didn't want to be better hard enough. It's totally fine to remain in abusive relationships, because wishing they will be better will magically bring about change. Victims of real-life-events-that-I-am-definitely-not-naming just focused too hard on their dire circumstances, so the universe didn't reshape itself so they had opportunities to escape. :smallfurious:
:smallmad:
:smallsigh:

Apologies, just thinking about it is getting me worked up. The fact that someone that usually spreads a message of hope and generosity promoted this delusion just makes it worse.

tomandtish

2017-05-04, 10:06 PM

Before the absolutely awful trilogy I post up next, I have to give a dishonourable mention to Marathon Man by... William Goldman? ..... Snip

Your post reminded me of one I'd managed to forget I'd read (thanks for that! :smallyuk: )..... The Gor novels by John Norman.

I stuck with them way too long because I thought they were going to be the hero battling AGAINST the woman enslaving culture. Silly me.

Fri

2017-05-04, 11:25 PM

Why is it that bad authors can never resist sharing their weird sexual fantasies with the rest of us? It's like the book only exists so he can slobber over the sex object he created and then contrive a plot so he the hero can get into her pants(assuming he gave her any). I mean, I don't care if you want to get off through writing, we've all got our guilty pleasures, but please, keep that stuff in your desk drawer.

There's nothing wrong with writing fetish porn. It's a big industry. Though you do might should mention that you're writing porn.

And also, there's John Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series. It's specifically a fetish book, basically something he wrote which he never intend to publish and just to get the idea out of his mind in between his usual writings (it's a sci-fi military thriller rife with bondage, sexual slavery etc). But he showed the unpublished story to his fans at one point, and apparently it got good response that he published it.

An Enemy Spy

2017-05-04, 11:30 PM

There's nothing wrong with writing fetish porn. It's a big industry. Though you do might should mention that you're writing porn.

And also, there's John Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series. It's specifically a fetish book, basically something he wrote which he never intend to publish and just to get the idea out of his mind in between his usual writings (it's a sci-fi military thriller rife with bondage, sexual slavery etc). But he showed the unpublished story to his fans at one point, and apparently it got good response that he published it.

There's writing porn for people who want porn, and then there's slipping in porn for people who just want fantasy adventure. And it's often very self indulgent porn.

Rodin

2017-05-04, 11:49 PM

There's writing porn for people who want porn, and then there's slipping in porn for people who just want fantasy adventure. And it's often very self indulgent porn.

Robert Jordan springs to mind. Yes, Robert, you're very kinky. We get it. Can we get back to the epic fantasy adventure instead of having our heroes literally spank one of the villains into submission?

The Glyphstone

2017-05-04, 11:52 PM

There's nothing wrong with writing fetish porn. It's a big industry. Though you do might should mention that you're writing porn.

And also, there's John Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series. It's specifically a fetish book, basically something he wrote which he never intend to publish and just to get the idea out of his mind in between his usual writings (it's a sci-fi military thriller rife with bondage, sexual slavery etc). But he showed the unpublished story to his fans at one point, and apparently it got good response that he published it.

Or as he calls it now looking back, 'Fifty Shades of Guns'.

Knaight

2017-05-04, 11:59 PM

Robert Jordan springs to mind. Yes, Robert, you're very kinky. We get it. Can we get back to the epic fantasy adventure instead of having our heroes literally spank one of the villains into submission?

He's got nothing on Robert Howard, who manages to fit a naked woman tied up on a table being threatened somehow into something like 80% of the short stories he writes.

Olinser

2017-05-05, 12:02 AM

Yep, and it's also a book I really didn't like, although I'll add a quibble that it didn't seem like any more of a poor Lord of the Rings than most bad fantasy too me. I only read the second book, but I really couldn't stand the protagonist, who seemed under-invested even for a man who believed that he was hallucinating the whole thing while his body and life fell apart in reality. None of the other characters really caught my interest, even the person who was all about picking out the protagonist's flaws. And of course, there's the fact that the love interest was his daughter by rape, he still pursues a relationship with her after learning this and it's implied that this is why she's attracted to him in the first place.

I do still have it on my shelf to remind myself how not to write a fantasy book though, so maybe it wasn't a total waste of my time. Somehow.

------

Before the absolutely awful trilogy I post up next, I have to give a dishonourable mention to Marathon Man by... William Goldman?

I actually had to google that to make sure it was the right person, and he's responsible for so much stuff that's either good, famous, or on my list of things to look at! I have no idea how somebody with so many great things to his name made... this. To be fair, 80% of it is a decent thriller, even if it some of the characters are somewhat grating. But the ending just upsets everything and makes it out that the hero (I suppose he's more of a Greek Anti-Hero, but I'm digressing) has overcome some kind of personal quest and defeated a great evil, after killing five people, losing everybody close to him, destroying his career path, changing to a philosophy of attempting to crush out any lawbreakers to preserve society (while fighting against a nazi, for the irony points) and talking to a policeman about to arrest him. There's certainly a plot in there, but I absolutely loathe everything about that ending and how it treats becoming a borderline serial killer as a triumph of spirit.

------
I don't really know how to describe this one. I found a summary on it and thought a post--apocalyptic adventure novel written in the 1910's sounded exactly up my street, if a bit uncomfortable with some of its values of sex and race, but expecting that to not be present is like taking a trip to the Amazon and not expecting any rain.

Darkness and Dawn (George Allan England) is a combination of the worst attitudes of its time: racism, sexism, gloating of Man's triumph over nature, the certainty that Western Civilisation (and in this particular case, America*) is the apex of human achivement and a protagonist who is a complete and utter Mary Sue. I might have forgotten a few there.

To summarise, our 'heroes' wake up at the top of a somewhat dilapadated* skyscraper to find that the world apparently ended a long time ago while they slept. In the interests of making sure I remembered this right, I took another look at it and... it opens with the heroine (or if you want to be less tactful, the eye candy) waking, and only waits one sentence before informing us of 'that full bosom', which.... also, she's naked. Then she has a little panic while basically acting like Alice in Wonderland if she had all her forthrightness removed, which to be fair isn't an unreasonable response to waking up in rusted wasteland. Then we meet The Hero, who, being a man, has a second to panic and then is immediately reasonable and heroicly unconcerned about waking up in his office to centuries worth of degradation and the probable (the possiblity is discussed in this scene) extinction of the human race.

*The skyscraper is falling to bits, but given that it's later revealed that they awoke after over 1200 years of civilsation being wiped out, it's held up remarkably well.

This next bit is quite possibly the worst bit of all. It's seriously offensive unless you find it laughable. Viewer discretition blah blah. I really should have walked away when I found this.
The main antagonists of the first book are a massive band of roaming creatures called the Horde. There isn't an easy way to say this, so I'm jumping straight in: According to Mr England, they're what happens when black people are removed from the civilising influence of whites and are allowed to breed themselves into essentially being Morlocks. I don't even know where to start. There's many diatribes on their subhuman intellect, although they're perfectly capable of tool use, carving and setting traps when the plot calls for it. The reason they survived is something along the lines of their savage blood allowing them to withstand the volcanic poisons that wiped out the other race (no other ethnicities are mentioned: people were apparently only either white or black at the turn of the century). The reason civilisation fell over despite having a sizable amount of people around to run things is because they were just plain incapable of keeping it going for more than a few generations. They're cannibals. The obvious and correct response to being surrounded by an army of devolved humans is to make them worship you as a god with your firearms and racial superiority, although thankfully this plan falls as flat as it can without the death of the main characters.

Of course, when we finally find some surviving white people, they're perfectly human in form and have a functioning civilisation, although they still need to be taught the American Way to bring them up to speed on being full-fledged humans. The heroine asks if they should consider trying the god act again, but is shot down 'because it won't work on white people'. The fact that it didn't work on the Horde either is convieniently ignored.

Racism aside, there's a strange parabolic curve effect with sexism. At first, the female 'lead' simpers, panics easily and generally acts like a child in contrast to the Hero, who is so manly and unshakable and does everything while his lovely companion holds the tools. Then thankfully she gets, if not a spine, a thicker skin and some marksmenship skills. She's still solidly the sidekick and never takes the lead in anything, but she at least gets to do things instead of cowering behind the Manliest Man of Mannering Manor. Then she has a child and essentially becomes a basic damsel in distress (although iirc, she still isn't quite as bad as she first started out). Even the most generous critic would balk at calling her a feminist icon at any point, though.

Next, our Hero, like I said earlier, is an utter Mary Sue. At every point he takes living in the new world in stride and never despairs. The narration endlessly dwells on his 'unbreakable manly spirit' and his peerless intellect. This usually manifests as him retroactively knowing whatever skill is needed for the plot. Surrounded by cannibal sub-humans? It's a good thing he invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite that he has lying around to make improvised grenades out of! In a fight with the leader of a clan? How handy that he's a champion boxer! Discovered the wreck of an old aeroplane? It's a good thing he's flying instructor who has trained champion pilots and knows the workings of a plane! And on, and on it goes. There's never a time where his skills are mentioned beforehand, and they rarely are brought up again, with the exception of his flying machine.

He often espouses in the superiority of the American way of doing things, but then contradicts himself, such as when he says that it's time he got some democracy started here... but his followers are too primitive still to accept it, so he'll have to rule by force and fear until he decides they're ready.

Frustratingly, it was in many ways what I wanted, with many quirky or quaint happenings that could only be products of that time and genre. When the story was devoted to exploring a new quirk of the strange world, it was often enjoyable, in a bootleg Jules Verne way. If the Male lead wasn't so unutterably smug and assured of his way, or the female lead got to be a bit more proactive, I might have been able to call it 'bad but enjoyable'. As it is, though, with the purple prose, terrible science and awful thoughts on the treatment of human beings, it's a book I wish I had never found or decided to read all the way through, and even regret staying up so late to type this out.

Also, because it has to be mentioned, there's a scene where a gorilla randomly appears and tries to rape the heroine. That pretty much sums up the entire book: I wanted to see wacky oldfashioned ideas, and it delivered a boatload of the very worst ideas in that category.

I mean, blaming it on race exclusively isn't necessarily accurate, but there have been SEVERAL times throughout history where civilizations had their technology boosted by outside intervention and then massively regressed in just a couple generations when disaster/rebellion happened.

It really could happen to the modern world shockingly easily if a wide spread disaster were to happen. Forget high technology, seriously, just for fun, ask a few of your friends if they can actually explain how basic things like toilets and running water actually WORK. I guarantee only a tiny number could actually tell you how to construct even a primitive water/sanitation system without looking it up on the internet.

Peelee

2017-05-05, 12:08 AM

I'm struggling to see the relationship between the two stories, to be honest, apart from they're both fantasies that include magic rings? Also, the Second Chronicles are a far better tale than the First.

Yep, and it's also a book I really didn't like, although I'll add a quibble that it didn't seem like any more of a poor Lord of the Rings than most bad fantasy too me.

Eh, sounds like I was wrong. Didn't get very far into it, just enough to get the idea of a magic ring everyone wants and a shadowy evil rising. I was also in my late teens, so this was quite a while ago, and I may have made snap comparisons that were more rash than reasonable.

Still hated the book.

Emperor Ing

2017-05-05, 12:37 AM

I know a lot of people have said this already but...Catcher in the Rye. Required reading at my school and good God almighty. What total, pretentious nonsense! When ever I hear people complaining that kids don't read anymore, I think of this book and I am instantly reminded of why. To this day I am still baffled at the level of narcissism and pretentiousness one character can have. Characterization 101 is to give characters flaws to make them more relatable to the reader and to provide a contrast to their otherwise positive traits. The idea being that you want your readers to like your characters. The concept of the anti-hero subverts this somewhat, giving otherwise flawed and bad characters positive traits, but otherwise making them sympathetic, and in some ways still likeable. Holden Caulfield isn't a hero, he's not even an anti-hero. His character is so absorbed in his innumerable flaws that they're largely his defining trait. What moments of virtue he does exhibit don't even register as a candle in the darkness. One that not even 1/4th of the way through the book, I wished for him to literally drown in.

I believe the term for characters like this are Anti-Sue.

Coming of Age stories aren't my cup of tea. Or maybe they are and I haven't given them a chance because Catcher left such a raw taste in my mouth. Either way, Catcher is a good case-study in what not to do.

Rodin

2017-05-05, 01:43 AM

He's got nothing on Robert Howard, who manages to fit a naked woman tied up on a table being threatened somehow into something like 80% of the short stories he writes.

Hmmmmm, didn't Jordan also write a bunch of Conan stuff? Birds of a feather and all that...

Kalmageddon

2017-05-05, 01:55 AM

Ah what the hell. I'll chip in on the school books hate.
In Italy one of the main classics the they have you read at school is "I Promessi Sposi" (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni. You can be assured that teachers will talk about it as the best thing to ever grace a bookshelf, they will barely contain their laughter when remembering some small comical anecdote in chapter 8 and they *will* make you hate it.
The whole thing reads as if Manzoni was constantly going "wink-wink, nudge-nudge, aren't I clever?", you absolutely can't immerse yourself in the story at all, because Manzoni will drag you out of it two lines later to remind you how amazing he is.
It's like playing in a campaign where the GM interrupts the narration every two minutes to indulge in self referential humour.
It's the most infuriating book I've ever read.

factotum

2017-05-05, 02:36 AM

I don't really know how to describe this one. I found a summary on it and thought a post--apocalyptic adventure novel written in the 1910's sounded exactly up my street, if a bit uncomfortable with some of its values of sex and race, but expecting that to not be present is like taking a trip to the Amazon and not expecting any rain.

Darkness and Dawn (George Allan England) is a combination of the worst attitudes of its time: racism, sexism, gloating of Man's triumph over nature, the certainty that Western Civilisation (and in this particular case, America*) is the apex of human achivement and a protagonist who is a complete and utter Mary Sue. I might have forgotten a few there.

OK, I'm a bit puzzled about this one. You admit that a book written in that time period would be expected to be racist and sexist, then complain in the next sentence about how racist and sexist it is? Yes, by modern sensibilities it sounds horrible, but at the time I'm sure it wasn't anything special. I wish I could remember the name of the *horrendously* racist story by L. Frank Baum I read once--the attitudes were just so different back then it's hard to see past that.

Knaight

2017-05-05, 02:39 AM

Rynjin

2017-05-05, 03:38 AM

Jan Mattys

2017-05-05, 04:56 AM

Misereor

2017-05-05, 05:31 AM

What are the books that you really regret reading?

There are plenty, but the one I remember best is Heidegger's Being and Time.
The original is written in a tone that only really works in German. The translation I read tried to capture that same tone, but in my language it came off as pretentious and over-academic to the point of being hellannoying.

Eldan

2017-05-05, 06:20 AM

There are plenty, but the one I remember best is Heidegger's Being and Time.
The original is written in a tone that only really works in German. The translation I read tried to capture that same tone, but in my language it came off as pretentious and over-academic to the point of being hellannoying.

Oh, don't worry. Heidegger is famous for being pretentious, over-academic and hellishly annoying in German too.

Durkoala

2017-05-05, 07:19 AM

OK, I'm a bit puzzled about this one. You admit that a book written in that time period would be expected to be racist and sexist, then complain in the next sentence about how racist and sexist it is? Yes, by modern sensibilities it sounds horrible, but at the time I'm sure it wasn't anything special. I wish I could remember the name of the *horrendously* racist story by L. Frank Baum I read once--the attitudes were just so different back then it's hard to see past that.

There's a certain level expected from any given era (including today), but some books blow way past that baseline. This sounds like one of those books.

Knaight has it on the head here. HP Lovecraft was published roughly ten years after Darkness and Dawn, and Lovecraft is far more respectful with the same subject matter: in his stories, being white won't protect you from worshipping a false god, or degenerating into a cannibal subhuman and while he was guilty of some really nasty descriptions of them, he always portrayed black people as people, capable of holding jobs, making their own way in the world (perhaps not in the sense that they could rise to a respected and powerful position, but I can't remember him express the idea that they couldn't in his fiction) and even having an ancient empire of non-whites that was wiped out for exactly the same reasons many of his white characters were similarly destroyed. I'm not sure if Lovecraft's attitudes were typical of his time or considered dated even then (I've heard both, but I haven't looked for any proof either way), but they are far more palatable than Mr England's.

Rudyard Kipling published most of his work a decade or more before Darkness and Dawn's publishing, and despite being often imperialist, it's very clear that he loved the culture of India and considered it and its people worthy of praise, even if this was sometimes expressed with a condescenion bordering on parody. I think I'll leave it there, as I'm becoming aware that I haven't read as much Kipling as I should have to properly judge how much of his writing was written ironically. I'm absolutely certain that he was far more respectful and even-handed in his treatment of race than Lovecraft and England were though.

Darkness and Dawn is quite frankly the most absurdly racist book I can recall reading, even including stand-in fantasy racism such as orcs or the entire series of Redwall, or books published a decade on either side. I also feel I should say that being racist is far from its only flaw: The hero comes off as incredibly self-serving, bullying and tricking his way to power and deciding to become a tyrant who rules by fear after deciding that the cavepeople who have followed him up to the surface aren't ready for democracy. The narration endlessly circles around the "virtues" of the protagonists and how fortunate mankind is to have themselves be delivered from their shame by such clever people a clever man, because he's the one that does all the work, unless he needs something sewn up, then it's a good thing he has a woman along.:smallyuk:

ED: Also, the science is soft enough to be cut with a spoon. The big catastrophe is an explosion in the earth big enough to kick a miles-wide chunk of land up into orbit and alter the angle of the earth's spin, but somehow most of America's buildings are still standing.

SuperPanda

2017-05-05, 07:26 AM

Another I'll throw in is Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. You know, the one about the Wicked Witch of the West? The one that inspired a Stephen Schwartz musical? Mild spoiler, it's nothing like the musical.

I don't need my stories to be sweetness and light. I read Dune in elementary school, for badness' sake. I can appreciate a tragedy in the classical Greek sense, where a character is brought to ruin by their own tragic flaws. But I don't react well to the sensation of true futility. Not a fan. And this book did to me what the movie Unforgiven did - it left me an emotional wreck for several days.

Unlike Eragon, it's not a bad book. It's quite good. It would have to be, to evoke such a profound cathartic reaction. (ProTip: Red Fel experiences catharsis the way most people experience a violent stomach illness. Nothing left inside and a queasy, weak, sore feeling for days.) But that said, I don't like having that done to me emotionally. I don't enjoy it. And given the chance for a do-over, I would set the book aside and just enjoy a campy, cheesy musical.

I'm not sure I'd agree Wicked was all that good as a book - the musical is plenty fun, but the novel was an unpleasant slog the entire way through. Almost every single character was unpleasant to an extreme. For a book that seemed set to try to be a commentary about prejudice and/or our perceptions of good and evil it instead delivered the futility you mentioned with a side note of "everyone is aweful and therefore thinking about good and evil is pointless."

I seriously disliked the book - though part of that was starting with high expectations because I had friends who loved the musical and I mistakenly thought they were more connected.

Catcher in the Rye ... partly because of how its proponents push it up to be the greatest book ever written about teen life, and it really fell short of the hype for me; but mostly because through the entire thing I could never bring myself to care what happened to Holden, at all. (I get the feeling that The Chocolate War occupies the same place for me that Catcher does for the people who enjoy it).

I know a lot of people have said this already but...Catcher in the Rye. Required reading at my school and good God almighty. What total, pretentious nonsense! When ever I hear people complaining that kids don't read anymore, I think of this book and I am instantly reminded of why. To this day I am still baffled at the level of narcissism and pretentiousness one character can have. Characterization 101 is to give characters flaws to make them more relatable to the reader and to provide a contrast to their otherwise positive traits. The idea being that you want your readers to like your characters. The concept of the anti-hero subverts this somewhat, giving otherwise flawed and bad characters positive traits, but otherwise making them sympathetic, and in some ways still likeable. Holden Caulfield isn't a hero, he's not even an anti-hero. His character is so absorbed in his innumerable flaws that they're largely his defining trait. What moments of virtue he does exhibit don't even register as a candle in the darkness. One that not even 1/4th of the way through the book, I wished for him to literally drown in.

I believe the term for characters like this are Anti-Sue.

Coming of Age stories aren't my cup of tea. Or maybe they are and I haven't given them a chance because Catcher left such a raw taste in my mouth. Either way, Catcher is a good case-study in what not to do.

I don't actually hate Catcher but I sure didn't enjoy it. The thing I got out of Catcher was that these reactions were the intended ones. I know about one person who understood the book and loved it because of how well it nailed that extremely annoying man-child who refuses to grow up and deludes himself that he is somehow talented and important - but also at all the people who that basically describes who love the book because "it gets them."

As for coming of age stories - there are much much better ones. For one things Holden never comes of age. He ends the book lamenting that children have to grow up and wishing he could stop them from it - but all the evils of the adult world he's trying to protect them from are exemplified in himself and not the adults around him. Certainly not a pleasant book but I don't think it was trying to be.

If anything I think Catcher helped me be happy to be getting over the teen stage of my life (read in the middle of the teen stage of my life) - because even then I found myself thinking "I am so done with this."

The Thomas Covenant Series (first series) by Stephen Donaldson.

I cannot agree emphatically enough. I never got past Covenant's first real act in the magical world. I was somewhat onboard with the leprosy angle to the story and the escapism/fever-dream angle with him never really knowing if anything he was experiencing was real - but even then that start was something which would have been difficult to redeem if the book had even tried.

The only other one I can think of is Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. His Calling of Lot 49 had pretty much the same theme at something like 1/8th the length - it was nonsensical, it ended abruptly, nothing was ever explained, and by the end of the book you have less idea what the character's motivations are than at the start. I can appreciate a ~150 page book which is essentially trying to say "nothing really has any meaning and nothing really makes sense so don't worry too much about that" - when the book is 1000+ pages with the same message it feels like the writer is conducting an experiment to see how many pages it takes for people to catch on and stop reading.

Oddly Pynchon's short stories weren't bad while his longer stuff felt like it was trying to punish people for reading.

2D8HP

2017-05-05, 07:41 AM

Good rule of thumb on old literature (or media of any kind, really)...the typical amount of racism/sexism/other-isms inherent in the attitudes of the era will probably make you occasionally cringe or wince or feel uncomfortable.

Things that go above and beyond casual, thoughtless "-ism" are like to make your skin crawl.

There's a difference between attitudes that were ingrained in the culture of the time that we NOW find racist and things that, even AT the time were found racist.

The dividing line for me is:

Was it written before or after times I remember.

If the "hero", forces himself on the "heroine", which somehow becomes consensual afterwards in say a 1930's R.E. Howard story (which mercifully "fades to black"), which I think was even still a "trope" used (mercifully rarely) on Star Trek in the 1960's, I'm less bothered, than reading it in 1978's Gloriana, which I will add to the list of books I regret reading.

I know the 1970's is "pre-history" to most of the Forum, but for me, that's when I think "you should know better" begins, which is actually weird, because wrong is wrong no matter when, maybe it works similiar to how "white walkers" on Game of Thrones don't bother me, but The Walking Dead I find too disturbing?

Anyway, if something looks to be from the 1950's or earlier, I forgive things, that if I see the same thing in post 1960's media I don't.

Riddle me that.

gomipile

2017-05-05, 08:28 AM

The Face of the Waters by Robert Silverberg. The character arcs and the plot went basically nowhere. It almost seemed as though something was about to be accomplished at the end, but then it seemed as though the book was missing about forty pages from the end.

The setting is similar to Kevin Costner's Waterworld. The two biggest differences between Waterworld and The Face of the Waters are that The Face of the Waters takes place on an alien world used as a future lifetime prison, and I actually enjoy and sometimes return to Waterworld.

Telonius

2017-05-05, 08:37 AM

Nope. The all-accommodating Universe is a frighteningly popular thing to take seriously. Granted, I do ride the bus, but given that it's one of Oprah's favorite strains of product to peddle, I doubt it's just limited to people who should, generally, be poor enough to realize the Universe is not actually bending to their aspirations, but don't because they're also a little crazy.

Ditto on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I have no idea how I can have blotted that one from my memory in such short order - I'm probably representing a small minority of the board just by liking Harry Potter at all, and in fact the series pretty much consumed my adolescence. And Cursed Child was a desecration, f'real. (Might help that, as desecrations go, it was awfully bland. One of the worst things it did, IMO, was write a villain reveal scene to be exactly what the audience expected with no misdirection tricks whatsoever, and that would fly in plenty of stories. Just not Harry Potter.)

I read Cursed Child, but didn't have the visceral hate reaction that most people here seem to. I was taking it as a play, trying to figure out the blocking and stage directions as I went. Just like any other play, you can't really judge it just on the script. (I did see a couple of places where it seemed it would be really problematic - like, "Did they skip all that because they didn't have the budget, or would it have made it too long?") I haven't seen it staged, but I wonder if not having "NAMED CHARACTER!" flashing above the villain's head wouldn't have an effect on what people were expecting for the reveal.

Mikemical

2017-05-05, 10:24 AM

Dan Brown's books. Any of them. Because at first you think "Wow, this guy surely did his research!", then you open google and find out Symbology isn't even a real thing(The field of study of symbols and language is actually called Semiology, as in 'semantics'), and everything just goes downhill from there. There's a reason people say creators are 'Dan Browning' when they write about something after reading the wikipedia article's summary above the table of content. Like Kojima when he added the Fulton Recovery System in Peace Walker.
It makes you cringe when he says in Angels and Demons that CERN invented the Internet, when in Digital Fortress, he got it right saying DARPA invented the Internet while CERN invented the World Wide Web. And Digital Fortress is the first book in the series.

Also, Ripper by Isabel Allende. It felt like reading through a Scooby Doo fanfic, only instead of focusing on Shaggy's marijuana induced munchies for five minutes, we get over 70 pages detailing a secondary character's love for certain flowers, how she studied traditional oriental massage and has learned to read her clients' chakras, but she can't tell when one customer is posing as another despite knowing and sleeping with the two of them for years. And that's just the mother of one of the protagonists. I went in expecting Agatha Christie, and I got "AND THEN A SKELETON KIND OF FELL OFF THE JANITOR'S CLOSET! BUT IT WASN'T AN ACTUAL SKELETON, JUST AN ANATOMICAL MODEL!"

Maryring

2017-05-05, 10:53 AM

Not sure if I can profess that I regret reading it, especially since I'm still reading it albeit mostly to see how much worse the book can get, but there is the Left Hand of God trilogy by Paul Hoffman. I'm currently on book 2. And I don't think I've ever read anything quite as ridiculously sexist before. Most of the characters are awful horrible people. The main character is an unlikeable prick whom the narrative bends over backwards to make out to be the super-awesome greatest thing ever. The story is a typical medievalish super-grim world that is on the verge of discovering gunpowder. Because some guy wants to create a particle accellerator. Doctors are useless at doctoring, and teenagers with absolutely no medical training are so much better at healing than trained physicians. There are several references to events that happened in the real world, but they're all modified. Often in groan-worthy ways.

Oh, and I did mention that it's sexist right? Because it's so ridiculously sexist. Girls exist only to be saved, get pregnant, and die horribly. The moment a girl shows anything resembling courage or drive or ability, it is a clear sign she's about to die. Martin Luther is turned into a girl and dies horribly. Abraham's son Isaac is turned into a girl and he sacrifices her. And don't get me started on the paragraphs describing our hero's justified desire in wanting to hurt a girl for being frightened of him, or just plain wanting to kill her. Oh, and they get together for quite a while too.

It's just... blergh. The book is ostensibly recent, but it'd be denounced as sexist drivel in the 1800s.

I still read it though, because if drivel like this can be published, then I too have a hope to get something published.

Hagashager

2017-05-05, 10:58 AM

I absolutely hated Catcher in the Rye back in high school. I still hate the book now, however, I do owe it a certain degree of respect.

My school used Catcher in the Rye as a starting point for the concept of "Symbolic Reading". I hated the concept as a teenager, it was so incredibly pretentious and I just couldn't figure it out. The practice finally clicked with me one day when we read the part where Holden accidentally breaks his favorite record. He still picks up the shattered pieces and walks around with them though. My teacher stopped us at that point, and inquire to the class on why Holden would still hold onto the record pieces.

This scene struck closer to home for me than I would've liked since I was having to let go of someone I was very infatuated with at the time. I, begrudgingly, saw a part of myself in Holden then, which I hated, and then I realized, "oh, that's what this symbols crap is about, isn't it?" The book taught me to "read between the lines" as it were.

However, on its own, the book is awful. Holden is an incredibly pretentious character, even from the perspective of a teenager. At 17 I still found him incessantly whiny, spoiled, thankless, dumb and ignorant. The entire plot meanders, going nowhere, and most of the symbolism in the book, I frankly think isn't even there. I find it absolutely hilarious that with Catcher in the Rye there is no right answer. Everyone's got their own interpretation, and Salinger probably gave less than a damn about all of them.

The most logical one for me is that it's a commentary on teenaged angst, Holden is meant to be a deeply unlikeable character. It's a sign of maturity that one can look at Holden's behavior as an extension of his lack of growth and immaturity. However, my favorite interpretation is that it's an allegory for Post-WWII America. With Holden representing the average American having to grapple with the fact that they're not longer part of an Isolationist nation of free-enterprise, but now a global super-power that's expected to keep the peace in a post WWII Europe and Asia.

SaintRidley

2017-05-05, 11:04 AM

Gnoman, if you can't see how A Christmas Carol levels a critique at capitalism, you may want to get your eyes checked. That's like, not even subtext.

And I think we all saw this in school at one point or another. My high school read the Iliad. I loved the Iliad. I was the only person in my class who loved the Iliad. To most everyone else, reading a long list-like poem about a bunch of people killing each other with an almost alien morality system, just isn't relevant regardless of whether or not it is one of the foundations of the entire Western Canon.

Honestly, relevancy is way overrated.

Dienekes

2017-05-05, 11:11 AM

Honestly, relevancy is way overrated.

It might be. But try telling that to a group of high school students, who either don't care or are only in the class for a good grade.

There has to be some hook to get them motivated. Whether it's entertainment (Catch-22 succeeded here, for my class) or speaking to them on a personal relevant level.

Or maybe I'm talking out my ass. I'm not a teacher. Never intend to become one either.

SaintRidley

2017-05-05, 11:41 AM

It might be. But try telling that to a group of high school students, who either don't care or are only in the class for a good grade.

There has to be some hook to get them motivated. Whether it's entertainment (Catch-22 succeeded here, for my class) or speaking to them on a personal relevant level.

Or maybe I'm talking out my ass. I'm not a teacher. Never intend to become one either.

My usual way to hook students is by setting a theme that should interest them, and exposing them to a wide variety of different approaches. I did a semester on (neo)medievalism, where we read some medieval texts as well as more modern approaches to medieval stories (ranging from modern poems based on medieval texts, to novels like American Gods, to modern high fantasy short stories), with dragons being one of the examples that came up repeatedly. Had I not been preparing for my comprehensive exams and therefore not on autopilot, the class would probably have been spectacular rather than merely good enough.

Fortunately, I teach college students, so I have freedom to set my own curriculum (unfortunately, the university I teach at is large enough that for my classes, which are part of a gen ed requirement for non-majors, that most first and second year students don't even select their own courses, but simply register for the sections their administrative advisers tell them to - so most of my students haven't even bothered looking at the course description, though those who do seem really interested).. I could never do High School or below.

I suppose there's a kind of relevancy to that, but that's not the kind of relevancy I find grating. More the "how will this be useful, why do I have to read X novel?" (even if by novel they mean short story, poem, play, or other non-novel text) kind. Well, the book isn't a practical skill. That's not the point here. I picked it because I like it and because I think it gives you a solid basis for practicing the critical thinking and analysis skills you're in this class to develop. And yes that's hard, because most of you think that summary is analysis and when I try to get you to make connections you find that twelve years of schooling before now has failed you (or you have failed yourself, either is likely) and you haven't the foggiest idea what analysis is or how to do it. And people wonder how the country we live in got to the point it is - maybe if our kids could take a moment to step past the "I don't like it" stage and actually try to exercise critical thought, whether they like the thing or not, we'd be better off.

Telonius

2017-05-05, 11:46 AM

And I think we all saw this in school at one point or another. My high school read the Iliad. I loved the Iliad. I was the only person in my class who loved the Iliad. To most everyone else, reading a long list-like poem about a bunch of people killing each other with an almost alien morality system, just isn't relevant regardless of whether or not it is one of the foundations of the entire Western Canon.

For what it's worth, my medieval studies professor in college put it to us this way when we were analyzing some of the same sort of things in Beowulf and early German literature. Have you ever listened to a football game on the radio? They didn't have football, radio, or stats analysis when Beowulf was written. But the same sort of people who care about that stuff now, existed back then. Those long lists of battles are a sports recap.

Hearing it put that way, it made a whole lot more sense.

Rater202

2017-05-05, 12:23 PM

For what it's worth, my medieval studies professor in college put it to us this way when we were analyzing some of the same sort of things in Beowulf and early German literature. Have you ever listened to a football game on the radio? They didn't have football, radio, or stats analysis when Beowulf was written. But the same sort of people who care about that stuff now, existed back then. Those long lists of battles are a sports recap.

Hearing it put that way, it made a whole lot more sense.

*blink*

You sir, have just blwon my mind.

Rockphed

2017-05-05, 12:27 PM

Speaking of more modern works though, there's Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett.

I don't regret reading bad books in vacuum, at worst it's time wasted. But I regret reading bad books by good authors, because they remind me of how much better the author could've done than what we got. And that just makes me sad.

Speaking of which Snuff belongs here too, but at least it was (slightly) less boring.

I don't regret reading Raising Steam. I just wish the characters who weren't the engineer had spent much less time on screen. The engineer was a great character and a loving characterization of engineers.

I do not remember the plot of Snuff, so I don't really care about it. Frankly, the Sam Vimes books should have ended with Thud.

There is only so much a teacher can do to create engagement though. Like, I love 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I love how it helped form the foundations for near-future science fiction with relatively reasonable projections of current technology. But I developed that love after developing an interest in the genre, and a curiosity about its roots. Trying to force it on me wouldn't have given me that same sense of wonder. At the end of the day, a sizable chunk of the text is devoted to catalogues of fish species the narrator sees, without even a colour described. Acquired tastes are developed over time, not by force-feeding them to people until Stockholm Syndrome sets in.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea might be the first near future sci-fi that I read. I read the abridged version when I was 10. I tried reading the unabridged version to my daughter and got drowned in all his lists of weird things they found in the various parts of the ocean.

georgie_leech

2017-05-05, 12:38 PM

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea might be the first near future sci-fi that I read. I read the abridged version when I was 10. I tried reading the unabridged version to my daughter and got drowned in all his lists of weird things they found in the various parts of the ocean.

Pun intended? :smallbiggrin:

Gnoman

2017-05-05, 03:08 PM

Gnoman, if you can't see how A Christmas Carol levels a critique at capitalism, you may want to get your eyes checked. That's like, not even subtext.

I should have been more clear. A Christmas Carol does have a critique of aspects of capitalism as it was idealized in the late Victorian era (characters not far off from Ebenezer Scrooge were held up as examples in that era), and Scrooge found redemption by using his wealth for good instead of pointlessly hoarding it. The educators I was referring to insisted it was attacking all forms of capitalism as a concept, holding it up as a clarion call to ban anybody from having any money ever.

Rockphed

2017-05-05, 03:22 PM

Pun intended? :smallbiggrin:

*Looks Left*

*Looks Right*

I look more put together if I say "yes", but it was actually not intended as a pun.

NecroDancer

2017-05-05, 04:09 PM

I read Eragon when I was in 6-7th grade so it was ok for me (I was just getting into fantasy so I found the cliches to be "riveting" and "deep").

The first few shannara books were boring because of all their cliches but I skipped to the "voyage of the Jerle Shannara" series and I liked it.

I regret reading "the color of magic" becuase now I'm stuck reading 30+ books (good bye spare time/sleep).

I read "camp of saints" out of morbid curiosity (how bad could it be?) when I finished/skimmed it I needed to lie down for an hour a bleach my memory/scoop my eyes out. The only good thing was I didn't pay any money to get it (in hindsight I may have accidentally pirated it but can you steal something that doesn't have any worth?).

solidork

2017-05-05, 05:43 PM

Its been a long time since I read The Catcher in the Rye, but I will maintain that the scene where he goes into a phone booth, stands there for 20 minutes and then leaves without calling anyone is one of the most relatable things I have ever read.

veti

2017-05-05, 06:32 PM

Kalmageddon

2017-05-05, 08:49 PM

Yes, the last few Discworld books were pretty sad reading. But I can't quite bring myself to regret reading them, else I wouldn't have known how bad they were.
As someone who is planning a massive catch up of Discworld's books, this troubles me. Could you guys clarify why you feel like the last few books aren't good?

Rater202

2017-05-05, 09:17 PM

As someone who is planning a massive catch up of Discworld's books, this troubles me. Could you guys clarify why you feel like the last few books aren't good?

Sir Terry Pratchett had Alzheimer's. By the last few books, it was starting to affect him a bit--simpler plots, sillier plots, a few inconsistencies, a few newer characters had a few traits that didn't scan well.

From my understanding, the stuff from Unseen Academicals onward isn't bad, per se, as much as it's of a lower quality than Sir Pratchett's work had been when he still had his full faculties about him. They're perfectly servicable on the own, but...

It's like the Star Wars Prequels. If you're judging them on their own, they're decent films. If you're judging them in relation to the franchise as a whole, however, then they're mediocre at best.

In the case of the Discworld Novels, it's also tinged with a hint of tragedy that such a treasured mind was finally going, which somewhat taints the tales.

Velaryon

2017-05-05, 11:09 PM

The thing I hate about walking into threads late is that there are pages upon pages of posts I would like to reply to, and it's hard to do all that in one post.

So, books that I regret reading. There are a few, but first, I'd like to share some thoughts on other books that have been mentioned in this thread.

I'm currently working my way through Eldest, the sequel to Eragon. I checked out the books (in audio form) out of morbid curiosity. I was forewarned going in that the first book was basically Star Wars with dragons, so I entertained myself by guessing all the plot twists and then looking them up (I was mostly correct, but spoiled myself on a couple things that happened in later books. Oh well). Now that I'm in book 2... I hate Eragon's chapters, because the whole Mary Sue Elves trope is cranked up to eleven in this series. No, eleven doesn't cover it. The trope is cranked up to about twenty-five. Elves are perfect, they can do everything that everyone else can do but better. No matter how much they may try, no human can ever hope to match even the lowliest elf at anything, be it combat, magic, blacksmithing, poetry, or anything else, because elves are &$%#*!* PERFECT. But they can't be bothered to go and defeat the Big Bad by themselves, because the Yoda expy is too old and weak and the rest of them are just lazy, so Eragon has to suffer through everyone constantly telling him how wrong he is about everything until he gets strong enough to go save the world or whatever.
His cousin's chapters are a breath of fresh air because they're simply about common people struggling to survive and escape the conflict they've been drawn into, but I'm under no illusions that this part of the book is any good. It's just better than the other half. I will probably not bother with the rest of the series.

The Catcher in the Rye has been brought up numerous times in this thread, and that gratifies me because it's among the three worst books I've ever read (more on the other two later). I don't care whether Salinger intended the reader to dislike Holden Caulfield, the book is garbage. Caulfield whines about nothing for most of the book - if Seinfeld had been meant to be serious, I imagine it would look a lot like The Catcher in the Rye. At least most of you had to read it for school. I did it to myself. Fresh out of college, I had this idea in my head that I was going to "educate" myself on the classics. I started with To Kill a Mockingbird and loved it, so I moved on to this... and stopped. The Catcher in the Rye is, as far as I am concerned, a book with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. Its only "literary merit" is that it serves as an example of what not to do.

Someone mentioned The Gunslinger. I read it, found it boring, didn't continue the series. I don't regret reading it, just didn't like it.

Regarding the New Jedi Order series, Vector Prime remains the worst Star Wars novel I have ever read - and I've read four Karen Traviss novels! At least if you could strip away Traviss's mega-crush on Mandalorians and her pathological hatred of all things Jedi (which you really can't because that's about 95% of her books), what little is left isn't too bad. Vector Prime is just terrible - it completely ignores the previous characterization of practically every character it uses, kills of Chewbacca for nothing other than shock value, and gives absolutely no explanation of who the Yuuzhan Vong are or why they are invading and killing everyone. No, we had to wait more than halfway through the darn series for that information. Some of the NJO books were pretty decent, but the quality was all over the place throughout the series, and probably averaged out to somewhere around mediocre. I don't regret reading the series, but I also have no interest in doing so again.

There's a lot of hate for the "classics" because so many people get them shoved down their throat in school, laden with a ton of extra meanings that must be true because of "Death of the Author", and most of the more famous "classics" are labeled as such because of "literary merit" rather than trivial details like telling a solid story or being well written.

I agree completely. I think the books chosen for students to read do more damage to their potential love of reading than any possible benefit they could gain from being exposed to such "classics" or learning to analyze such works with an eye toward literary criticism.

Re: Death of the Author, I had a high school English teacher who was absolutely convinced that Frankenstein's monster did not exist, and that it was an invention of Victor Frankenstein's subconscious, and he was the one behind all the killings. So basically, he was ignoring the whole obvious "man shouldn't play God" thing and wanted to be reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde instead.

I've a few books to add to this thread that I haven't seen mentioned yet, but since this post is already pretty long, I'll save it for later.

SaintRidley

2017-05-06, 12:12 AM

That's not even Death of the Author. That's just ignoring the text.

Death of the author is a very simple principle: a good reading of a text must be based in the text, what the words on the page say and mean. And the reason it works really well is twofold. First, most authors are already dead. All we've got is the text. Medievalists have always been operating under a form of Death of the Author - it's the rest of the discipline that's had to catch up to us.

The second reason is that people are fallible. Memory is fallible, and our ability to know what and why we are thinking something with 100% certainty of all possible influences and reasons behind that thought is not a thing. Therefore, Word of God is not the be all and end all of meaning for a text. Authors can provide insight on why they made certain choices or what their intended meaning was and such. Those should be looked at in light of the words on the page, however, and not afforded special status simply because the author said so. And at the same time, well-reasons textually grounded interpretations that disagree should not simply be swept aside because the author had an intended meaning - authors can imperfectly impart their meaning, and may in fact reveal biases they weren't even aware of (see Burlew, Rich, and many of his commentaries relating to Order of the Stick for an example).

That's Death of the Author, in as condensed a form as I can explain it.

2D8HP

2017-05-06, 06:24 AM

As someone who is planning a massive catch up of Discworld's books, this troubles me. Could you guys clarify why you feel like the last few books aren't good?

The Discworld series has long had ups and downs, of later books I never finished Snuff, and found The Shepherd's Crown to seem unfinished, and it was melancholy reading.

Of early works, Rincewind, and Twoflower grated on.me as characters so Colour of Magic, while the start of the series, seems a poor introduction to me.

I'd recommend reading Mort, Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Lord's & Ladies, Hogfather, Guards Guards!, and Wee Free Men instead.

BWR

2017-05-06, 06:37 AM

I seem to be in a minority for liking TCoM and TLF better than almost any other Discworld books apart from the Golden Age books (Pyramids, Small Gods, etc.). First of all I like Rincewind but mostly it's because the Disc was a lot more funny when it was ripping on fantasy clichés and was open and blank enough that Pterry could put whatever he wanted in there. Later books had to contend with canon, which makes for a different type of story.

He slowly became a better writer, leading to the Golden Age, but after that things started to get, not bad (that comes later) but a bit too soapboxy and not as funny. The world was roughly shaped so it was harder to introduce new stuff that didn't contradict old stuff, and recurring characters became more serious (Rincewind being pretty much the only exception). Compare Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites with her later portrayals.
DW became more about serious stories with a comedy coating rather than funny stories with serious elements.

Kato

2017-05-06, 08:36 AM

@Pratchett my thoughts have basically been said already.. I love the man but Snuff, Steam and Shepherd are all books I could have lived without. Especially Shepherd.. I get it, they wanted to release what they had but this was not ready to be read. It's sad this is the last book by Sir Pratchett...

Otherwise.. I've had to read a few things in school I didn't care for. Like Woyzeck... Recently I'm in a book club where you kind of have to read what others suggest, which goes both ways. Now I had to read masterpieces like "The Game" which made me physically sick more than once - don't ask why I kept reading - or things that just felt like wastes of time. But if I started listing all books I felt were a waste of my time I think that would exceed the thread.

Rockphed

2017-05-06, 09:57 AM

Re: Death of the Author, I had a high school English teacher who was absolutely convinced that Frankenstein's monster did not exist, and that it was an invention of Victor Frankenstein's subconscious, and he was the one behind all the killings. So basically, he was ignoring the whole obvious "man shouldn't play God" thing and wanted to be reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde instead.

He was also ignoring the outermost level of framing. As memory serves, we had a ship captain in the arctic who was told a story by Dr Frankenstein, and for a bit Frankenstein was relating a narrative that had been passed on to him by the monster. However, the Captain saw the monster and talked with him after the doctor passed, so the monster is more than just Victor's latent madness.

veti

2017-05-06, 10:36 PM

As someone who is planning a massive catch up of Discworld's books, this troubles me. Could you guys clarify why you feel like the last few books aren't good?

Snuff: unfocused, rambling, this is where Sam Vimes finally suffers complete character derailment. This most egalitarian of coppers... has become an aristocrat. I didn't need to see that happen.

Raising Steam: also unfocused and rambling. Seen as fan fiction for steam locomotives, it's - well, frankly meh even in that capacity. As a Discworld story, it suffers from having no antagonist. There's just - no particular reason for any of this stuff to happen, except that Sir Terry wanted to write about trains.

Shepherd's Crown: is really just a collection of notes waiting to be turned into a book.

The Golden Age of Discworld was, for me, between Wyrd Sisters (book 6) and Men at Arms (book 15). From 1988 to 92, Pratchett wrote two books a year and they were, all of them, solid gold. After that, as I see it, fatigue sets in; there are still some excellent books to go, but they're alloyed with an increasing proportion of - not so good material. (Exactly which books are "not so good" is a matter of hot debate, which I'd rather not get into here.)

Manga Shoggoth

2017-05-07, 06:58 AM

As someone who is planning a massive catch up of Discworld's books, this troubles me. Could you guys clarify why you feel like the last few books aren't good?

As a long term Pratchett fan... It's very hard to draw the line - in the last few years I picked up each book thinking "Is this going to be the one where it all crumbles to (insert noun here).

There is a sharp drop in quality towards the end, but the books are still reasonable by general fantasy standards, just not so good compared to Pratchett at his peak.

The only book I would suggest that you avoid is The Sheperds Crown. The big problem with that book was thst - as stated in the afterward - it was released unfinished.

Of course, whether this was the right decision is up for debate - some extra work might have improved the book, but could just as likley made things worse. I don't regret buying and reading it, but I admit that this was more for closure.

Snuff: unfocused, rambling, this is where Sam Vimes finally suffers complete character derailment. This most egalitarian of coppers... has become an aristocrat. I didn't need to see that happen.

Raising Steam: also unfocused and rambling. Seen as fan fiction for steam locomotives, it's - well, frankly meh even in that capacity. As a Discworld story, it suffers from having no antagonist. There's just - no particular reason for any of this stuff to happen, except that Sir Terry wanted to write about trains.

There are faults in both books, and there are clear signs that Pratchett's grip on the story is weakening - In fact Snuff is the book I see as the tipping point. However:

I see Snuff differently - this is the book where Vimes accepts that he is now part of the aristocracy (which he has been since marrying Sybil: in other words, for most of his time in the series), and starts to use his position(s) effectively instead of grudgingly. It is also about showing the other side to the aristocracy, rather than automatically assuming that aristocrat = evil.

Raising Steam has an antagonist. It's just that the "antagonist" is a faceless, underground, radicalising, militant organisation, which is in many ways harder to write and considerably more of a threat. It was reflecting some real concerns about UK society at the time (which I won't discuss further due to the board rules).

On to the actual topic:

Amazingly, I managed to get through school without regretting any of the set books. I was a little disappointed with Moonfleet, as I was expecting a Sci-Fi story, and it turned out to be a seafaring romance.

Even after that I have read some really awful stuff. A Woman in Space holds the title of the very worst thing I have ever read, but it was so badly written that it was hilarious to read, and a book called Quinton I never got beyond the third chapter. But I don't regret reading them.

In fact, the only book I regret reading was the last of the Cleric quintet, by that old stalwart R.A. Salvatore. Why? because he took a perfectly good and sympathetic character (the headmaster) and turned him straight into a villian, just so he could have a villian. No foreshadowing and no buildup: Suddenly the character is corrupted and eeeevil!!!! (If I recall correctly, he becomes some form of vampire).

It didn't turn me off Salvatore - I still have several of his stories - but it ruined the quintet completely for me, and the books were packed off to a charity ship forthwith.

Keltest

2017-05-07, 07:28 AM

In fact, the only book I regret reading was the last of the Cleric quintet, by that old stalwart R.A. Salvatore. Why? because he took a perfectly good and sympathetic character (the headmaster) and turned him straight into a villian, just so he could have a villian. No foreshadowing and no buildup: Suddenly the character is corrupted and eeeevil!!!! (If I recall correctly, he becomes some form of vampire).

It didn't turn me off Salvatore - I still have several of his stories - but it ruined the quintet completely for me, and the books were packed off to a charity ship forthwith.

In as much as I have become very tired of Salvatore, if you replace "became a vampire" with "killed" it feels better. He isn't the one who fell and became a villain (that was rufo, and there was 4 other books for foreshadowing for that), he fell and became a victim of his own insecurities. And you can definitely see some of the decadence and resistance to change from the headmaster as far as the first or second book.

Manga Shoggoth

2017-05-07, 08:34 AM

In as much as I have become very tired of Salvatore, if you replace "became a vampire" with "killed" it feels better. He isn't the one who fell and became a villain (that was rufo, and there was 4 other books for foreshadowing for that), he fell and became a victim of his own insecurities. And you can definitely see some of the decadence and resistance to change from the headmaster as far as the first or second book.

That is a fair interpretation, but not one I would have made at the time.

Of course, these days I can't speak for the rest of the story detail. Iit's been a long time, and I don't even remember most of the characters beyond Cadderly, the Headmaster and the two dwarves. That's three characters that I can't even recall the names to. and I don't remember Rufo at all.

Keltest

2017-05-07, 09:48 AM

That is a fair interpretation, but not one I would have made at the time.

Of course, these days I can't speak for the rest of the story detail. Iit's been a long time, and I don't even remember most of the characters beyond Cadderly, the Headmaster and the two dwarves. That's three characters that I can't even recall the names to. and I don't remember Rufo at all.

I suspect you've mixed him with the Headmaster. he was the one who became the vampire first, and his fall was definitely foreshadowed, not to mention a long and drawn out process.

random11

2017-05-07, 12:14 PM

I try not to regret books I read.
I sometimes gamble on new or unfamiliar authors on second hand book stores. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn't but if I regret the ones I buy I might miss good gems.
Hell, I don't even regret the entire "Sword of Truth" series which showed new examples of bad writing book after book, and only became worse.

There are however, some books I remember for leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
There is one prime example of awkwardness. I don't remember the name of the series or the writer, but I do remember the main idea:
It centered around an officer and a mage he rescues in a battle. This mage was disliked by most of people who were above him in the army, but he had some good ideas and had support from the people he helped.
Slowly, the mage rose in ranks (much to the distaste of the traditional politicians), and it continued until the mage became the new ruler of the country.
From there, it was a fast slide toward dictatorship, along with the secret police, executions of former rivals and pointless wars of conquest.

The sad part is that these parts were well written. The slow rise was believable, and the atmosphere was described in a good way.
The problem? Every second chapter had a long detailed sex scene.
Oh, I don't mean as a figure of speech, I mean it in the most literal way, EVERY SECOND CHAPTER.
It's like it was written by two authors, taking turns writing each chapter.

Considering the dark tone of the main story, this led to some scenes that just engraved themselves in my memory.
For example, the officer (who is the main hero and the story is told from his perspective) came back from war. War that was mostly pointless, and his mood did not improve as he passed through villages where most of the men were sent to die in the same war.
If you haven't guessed where it leads yet, the next chapter was him in the village that contained mostly women, no men around, and all wanted children........

Not bad enough? Here is something worse:
In another chapter, the officer was sent for battle far away from his pregnant wife.
He was delivered bad news via a latter from his wife, telling him that there was a miscarriage, and that she is angry at him for leaving her alone and going away to fight.
Then the letter continues with all the things she wants to do to him when he comes back... In great details.
That was one of the greatest emotional whiplashes I ever saw in any book, and I never want to see it again.

Algeh

2017-05-07, 12:24 PM

I think I most regret reading DoOon Mode, by Piers Anthony. I'd read every Piers Anthony book I could get my hands on at some point in middle or high school in the 90s, and the Mode series was unfinished at that time. I then lost interest in reading Piers Anthony books in general (since at that time he was pretty much just releasing Xanth and co-authored stuff), and wandered off to find some new authors to read. As a teenage girl, I liked the Mode books fairly well and was disappointed that they ended on a cliffhanger because (I think the explanation at the time was) the publisher wasn't interested in printing any more of them. They were probably my second or third favorite series of his, behind Incarnations of Immortality and possibly some other series that I'm really not going to bother to try to remember right now.

Anyway, he later finally got DoOon Mode published, and I read it as an adult when I came across it. I not only didn't enjoy the book, but it made me realize who incredibly creepy most of his other books were in terms of repeated themes in his teenage female characters, thus retroactively ruining my enjoyment of quite a few things I'd liked a decade or so earlier but hadn't bothered to re-read since becoming an adult.

This has in turn made me tentative in re-reading other things I liked as a teenager, in case they are a similar case.

Velaryon

2017-05-07, 01:55 PM

Okay, now that I'm caught up on the thread, I'd like to add some more that I regret wasting my time on. Some of them I had to read for school, but others were my choice and I have no one to blame but myself for the experience.

For school:

Lord of the Flies was not an enjoyable experience by any means. Sure, we got to watch the episode of the Simpsons that spoofed it, but it wasn't worth it. Not the worst book I've ever read, but I didn't like it at all.

Heart of Darkness was even worse, though. It was largely uneventful, racist even by the standards of its time, and I still fail to see what supposed "literary merit" it has. Its only saving grace was that the movie Apocalypse Now is based on it, and was somewhat more enjoyable.

My least favorite book I had to read in high school, and one of the three books I hate most that I've ever read (alongside The Catcher in the Rye and one other) is The Great Gatsby. I know a lot of people love this book, but I found it extraordinarily dull and undeserving of its reputation. I found the first 90% of the book to be uneventful, none of the characters likable or sympathetic, and it seems like the book's reputation largely comes from its extensive use of symbolism, which doesn't strike me as anywhere near as deep, profound, or interesting as it apparently does everyone else.

The last of my three least favorite books is more modern. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is so pretentiously awful that they probably forced prisoners to read it at Guantanamo Bay. The two protagonists are so unlikable that within the first 30 pages I was wishing horrible death on both of them.

The first is a middle-aged concierge at a hotel who has "refined" tastes (meaning that she listens to old composers, reads authors like Kant and Tolstoy, appreciates Dutch painters from several centuries ago, etc.) but conceals them because that clashes with the lowbrow tastes she thinks are expected of someone like her - so much so that she does things like put a TV on in her front room with whatever garbage is on TV before going back to her room to read/listen to/otherwise appreciate the things she likes.

The second protagonist is, if possible, even worse. She's a 12 year-old girl who is convinced that she's seen and experienced everything worthwhile in life already, and is planning her suicide on her 13th birthday because there's just nothing left to live for. She's so thoroughly detestable that by the end of the chapter in which she was introduced, I was already rooting for her not to wait until her birthday. And I really don't normally say things like that.

I don't even know how it ends because this book was so excruciatingly unbearable that I just couldn't make myself continue more than about a quarter way through the book. I read it for a book discussion in one of my graduate classes, and about 90% of the class reacted to it just like I did. The 10% that did like it compared it to The Catcher in the Rye, so I guess it appeals to the same people who enjoy that sort of thing. Most of them also said it was the ending they really liked. I'm hoping that the end involves the entire hotel in which the characters live being catapulted into space or something.

Got to cut the post short since I'm at work, but next post I'll mention the ones that weren't for school, that I chose on my own and wish I had the time back.

veti

2017-05-07, 04:11 PM

I see Snuff differently - this is the book where Vimes accepts that he is now part of the aristocracy (which he has been since marrying Sybil: in other words, for most of his time in the series), and starts to use his position(s) effectively instead of grudgingly. It is also about showing the other side to the aristocracy, rather than automatically assuming that aristocrat = evil.

Hmm. Let me clarify what I mean by "aristocrat".

It's not about having a title, or even money. Aristocracy is a state of mind. It's how people like Lords Rust and Selachii think: that they are simply superior beings, and the rules that govern the riff-raff don't apply to them. I think one of the things that attracted Vimes to Lady Sybil in the first place was that she didn't think like that.

But there are plenty of sympathetic characters in Discworld who do. Moist von Lipwig, obviously (although he is literally forced to follow some rules). Granny Weatherwax would be a better example - she's a born "good" aristocrat. Sam Vimes, however, was never one of these. No matter how elevated he became, or how many rules he broke, he never expected to be let off just because of who he was.

I found a particularly acute review of Snuff shortly after I first read it - ah, here it is (http://wrongquestions.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/snuff-by-terry-pratchett.html):

In a particularly galling instance, the local constable, Feeney, arrives at the hall to arrest Vimes on a trumped-up charge. Vimes responds with what is essentially "do you know who I am, boy?" to which Feeney responds by quoting a speech by Vimes to new policemen telling them exactly where that kind of statement should be stuffed. And yet somehow, Vimes not only feels no shame at having been called out in this manner, but manages to wrest the moral high ground away from Feeney, and is later validated in this by both the young constable and the narrative.

sktarq

2017-05-07, 07:42 PM

Well in response to some of the books already mentioned.
I really like Moby D i c k. I enjoyed it more as kid than as an adult.
Grapes of Wrath? I really enjoyed reading it. It wasn't a fun book but it connected so well I wanted to pick it up again as soon as I put it down
1984 - one of my favorite books actually. My regular delving into human nature and its relationship with things like language and authority was massivly developed by a well timed introduction via this book
Watership Down - probably the first "Downer" book I ever read. Again I loved it. Having my father read it to me when I was just a kid (prolly 6-7 years old) was probably the best way to do it. Still read it every few years
All Quiet on the Western Front - I thought this book was fine. But I have to admit I was shocked my the reaction of my classmates.
Catcher in the Rye - I actually liked this book. I would never call it a classic. It reminded me of my classmates. Not that I would recommend it to anyone not bitter and snarky. It was also something I'm glad I read so that I had a "Don't be that guy" part of me.

As for books I regret reading myself.

Angels and Daemons by Dan Brown. I only actually finished this book because it was so bad and the science was so mangled (even on the easy to google stuff) I was wondering how bad it could get. I was just a horrible book.

Blindness by Jose Saramango - This POS won a Nobel Prize. There is no bloody punctuation. This may be "clever" to some. To me it is a bloody nuisance. And frankly the story was Day of the Triffids crossed with The Plague. Just annoying.

Thus spoke Zarathustra. - Honestly this has the similar problem as the above. Most pages had dozens of punctuation marks. But perhaps one or two would be a period. I had to break out sentence Diagrams just to figure out what he was saying- because miss a comma placement and the whole meaning inverts due to inclusion or exclusion of a negative. Now I've done this for other books but this was nearly constant in order to say very little.

Sword of Truth - First one and a half books. I am not a fantasy book fan. (see above) This was one of the few books that I did read because it was recommended by a friend. I tried. I was in pain trying to focus. I think it helped make sure I never got into the genre

Winter_Wolf

2017-05-07, 08:31 PM

SaintRidley

2017-05-07, 08:55 PM

Heart of Darkness was even worse, though. It was largely uneventful, racist even by the standards of its time, and I still fail to see what supposed "literary merit" it has. Its only saving grace was that the movie Apocalypse Now is based on it, and was somewhat more enjoyable.

Loathe Heart of Darkness. The one thing I can say for it, however, is that it's actually a fairly good base for practicing nearly every possible approach to literary criticism under the sun. It's pretty much tailor made for schools of criticism that didn't even exist yet, like critical race studies and new historicism. So there's that, at least. Though I'd personally prefer to practice those schools on more enjoyable texts. If you ever want to read an epic takedown of the book, check out Chinua Achebe (http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html)'s essay on it.

An Enemy Spy

2017-05-07, 09:26 PM

Sword of Truth - First one and a half books. I am not a fantasy book fan. (see above) This was one of the few books that I did read because it was recommended by a friend. I tried. I was in pain trying to focus. I think it helped make sure I never got into the genre

Haven't you heard? Sword of Truth isn't fantasy.

"First of all, I don't write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It's either about magic or a world-building. I don't do either." - Terry Goodkind

That's right, his story about wizards and monsters set in a magical realm isn't fantasy. The great Terry Goodkind would never sully his incredible egotalent by dabbling in a genre as crass as fantasy.

Lethologica

2017-05-07, 09:57 PM

I can certainly believe that Terry Goodkind doesn't do world-building.

Knaight

2017-05-07, 10:06 PM

Loathe Heart of Darkness. The one thing I can say for it, however, is that it's actually a fairly good base for practicing nearly every possible approach to literary criticism under the sun. It's pretty much tailor made for schools of criticism that didn't even exist yet, like critical race studies and new historicism. So there's that, at least. Though I'd personally prefer to practice those schools on more enjoyable texts. If you ever want to read an epic takedown of the book, check out Chinua Achebe (http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html)'s essay on it.

Then check out some of Chinua Achebe's other writing, because he is an excellent author. Things Fall Apart was one of the best books I read for school, and that's with it up against Shakespeare, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mark Twain.

factotum

2017-05-08, 02:16 AM

"First of all, I don't write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It's either about magic or a world-building. I don't do either." - Terry Goodkind

Wow. That reminds me of how mainstream authors, when having written something set in the future, will twist themselves into pretzels to avoid their work being labelled as "SF" even though, by definition, that's what it is!

The Duskblade

2017-05-08, 04:30 AM

He takes pride in a lack of world building? Yeah I'll stick with my World building fantasy thanks.

Anyway regrets.

Maestro. I've complained about this before so I'll keep it brief. It was an assigned book in highschool that I'm convinced was only on the reading list because it was a "coming of age" story that happened to be set in Australia. Suffice to say reading a first person story from the perspective of a character I found reprehensible did not put me in a good mood. And he never got better.

1984. Now this one I have to clarify. 1984 is a good book in many ways. I think it's message is valuable and well written. I just hatted Winston and Julia. And the chapter long detour about Goldstein's book felt like wasted time. Funnily enough I liked Animal Farm just fine. Probably because I actually sympathized with the animals.

Betrayal by Fiona Mcintosh. I had to go hunting for this one since I barely remember it to be honest. But it managed to really aggravate me. And the worst part is I picked it up because it had a recommendation from one of my favorite authors Robin Hobb on the front. I just remember the characters being unlikable, the magic system I literally could not recall one thing about it other then the main character doing some kind of mind switch with his mentor character to avoid execution (which the execution itself was a stupid thing to have happened) and again this was a long time ago it may have been more to do with me then the author. But there was a rape scene that felt... gratuitous for lack of a better word. For the life of me I couldn't give you specifics but it made me hate the book. I don't think it was just my age/subject matter. This would have been around the age I read Game of Thrones and Robin Hobbs books after all. I think it was just the handling. There was another fantasy book I had a similar issue with but I remember even less about that one.

Rodin

2017-05-08, 07:21 AM

And I absolutely loathe Grapes of Wrath. It's probably unfair to say that if I could go back I time I'd punch Steinbeck square in the throat and watch him choke to death, but the only thing that book did for me was waste time I could have used to read literally anything more meaningful to me. And I like reading a variety of things, I could have been getting down with anything

Grapes of Wrath was an unpleasant read at the time but one I'm ultimately glad I read. There's some powerful lessons in there about the dangers of unchecked captalism and the exploitation of the poor and out of work. I can't remember anything of their actual journey though.

Lord of the Flies was similar. I hated it as I was reading it but even immediately after I finished I was glad I did.

On the other hand there's stuff like the Scarlet Letter which was just full of Puritan moralizing. Mildly interesting from a historical standpoint but totally uninteresting as a story and without any lessons to teach. With such a limited amount of time in high school to cover classic literature I'm deeply saddened that we spent so much time on it when we could have been covering more important works.

DomaDoma

2017-05-08, 09:48 AM

Grapes of Wrath was total agitprop, but well-written enough that I can't fault it as a book. (Except for the part where it's a book about Dust Bowl refugees and the author clearly does not understand why fields should be kept fallow every few years. That is worth some serious wincing, especially as that's where the explicitly revolutionary exhortations come into play. As someone who only agrees with this book's politics when it's talking about the artificial-scarcity policies of the New Deal, it lends the whole thing an eerie metafictional recursiveness.) But no - it's got such mastery of microcosm and the conveyance of humanity that I will absolutely defend Grapes of Wrath as required reading.

sktarq

2017-05-08, 12:09 PM

Haven't you heard? Sword of Truth isn't fantasy.

Assuming your entire post shouldn't have been sarcastic blue...

He's right it's not fanstasy it a human attempt a Vogon Poety.

Winter_Wolf

2017-05-08, 01:47 PM

oudeis

2017-05-08, 01:50 PM

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris. This has to be one of the most well-written examples of Creator Backlash (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorBacklash) in literature (WARNING: TVTropes). Harris is one of my favorite authors and I think his novels are practically clinics on how to write, but this was one great big extended middle finger to his fans. From quotes I've read from him after The Silence of the Lambs won the Oscar, I got the sense he was genuinely disgusted how much people idolized Hannibal Lecter. Fans would ask him if he could recommend a psychiatrist as brilliant as Lecter, and I'm sure he was aware of the reams of Clarice-Hannibal erotic couplings in fan fiction, because he was pretty clearly determined to burn everything to the ground. Every single decent character from TsotL is either killed, rendered feckless or corrupted, and every new character is an unredeemed monster who makes you ill just to read about them. The ending was forced and utterly out of character for the protagonist, not to mention stomach-turning. It didn't help that I read it in the middle of a Chicago winter while in the grips of severe depression, but I've revisited it on warm sunny days since then and it doesn't get any less grim.

Sandkings, by George R.R. Martin (the short story and the eponymous collection). The sheer revolting ugliness of this can't be overstated. Have you ever read a story and wished it was real so you could meet the heroes? The characters in these stories made me wish they were real so I could gutshoot them and feed them to starving carnivorous vermin. Just a torrent of utterly unredeemed malignance. My reaction to ASoIaF was almost as intense.

The Xanth series by Piers Anthony. Actually, everything I've read from him. I only read a few of the Xanth books , the Battle Circle trilogy, a book of his short stories, and perhaps a couple of the Incarnations of Immortality and that's all that I needed and far more than I wanted. Not only simplistic juvenile drivel, but as close to pedophilia propaganda as I ever want to get, with a dash of rape-justification/denial and a self-grandiosity that would be hilarious if it weren't in service to such loathsome ideology.

The Glyphstone

2017-05-08, 01:51 PM

Let's pretend I don't know what agitprop is, because I don't in fact know and I'd prefer not to have to guess. Could you or someone in the know please explain what actual words that's a mashup of. I probably won't ever need to know outside of this, but you never know.

"Agitation" + "Propaganda" - political propaganda, often historically associated with Communism, that takes the form of cultural mediums like literature, plays, and films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agitprop

Zavoniki

2017-05-08, 02:06 PM

Velaryon

2017-05-08, 02:15 PM

Exactly two books spring to mind, one that I bought and chose to read and another was the mandatory crap they push I high school because reasons, I guess.

I had a decent tolerance to Terry Gookind right up until Pillars of Creation. I was Done then. I finished it and I had no idea what in the hell. Just what in the hell.

This was my experience as well. A friend recommended Wizard's First Rule to me when I was 14, having freshly caught up on the Shannara books that were out at that time. I may or may not have read Lord of the Rings yet by then, but otherwise that was the extent of my exposure to fantasy literature.

I loved it, because I thought these books were so grown up. Goodkind was the first author I had read who didn't shy away from the topic of sex, and I thought the magic was so unique compared to what I'd seen before, and I liked the idea of shades of gray in the morality of the book. Basically, I thought they were good because I hadn't been exposed to much better at that age.

I devoured the first four books as quickly as I could, and liked them all. The fifth I wasn't super keen on, but at the time I just wrote it off as Goodkind having one off book before (hopefully) getting back to normal. Faith of the Fallen did seem like an improvement, though there were some things I still didn't like about it. Up until then I'd missed most of the Randian philosophy and didn't pick up on the thinly-disguised communist allegory that was the Imperial Order, so they seemed like just generic invading baddies that wanted to conquer everybody. The sixth book really ramps the communism stuff up to eleven though, and it felt to me at the time like a massive retcon. Still though, Richard's eventual triumph in fomenting rebellion at the heart of the empire's capital seemed pretty cool to me at the time.

Then The Pillars of Creation happened, and it was awful from start to finish. Naked Empire was even worse, to the point where I had to really force myself to finish it. I promised myself that if I didn't like the ninth book, I was done with the series. By this time I had read a fair amount more fantasy, so I had a bit more to compare Goodkind to, but I still liked the early books. The rest of the series turned out to be better than Naked Empire, but never again was I a big fan. I got to the end of the main series and I've never picked up a Goodkind novel again. I still have the early ones, and I wonder if I could enjoy them if I picked them up now, but I really don't want to find out badly enough to actually do it.

2D8HP

2017-05-08, 02:43 PM

Grapes of Wrath....

As I posted before The Grapes of Wrath got me verklempt.

I wouldn't read it without expecting to cry.

It gave me an insight into my grandfather's life, as he came to California from Kansas "riding the fender of a Model A Ford".

Strident?

Well yes, but I still found it worthwhile reading.

Kalmageddon

2017-05-08, 05:11 PM

Heart of Darkness was even worse, though. It was largely uneventful, racist even by the standards of its time, and I still fail to see what supposed "literary merit" it has. Its only saving grace was that the movie Apocalypse Now is based on it, and was somewhat more enjoyable.
.
Could you provide specific examples? I remember reading it in English and really liking it, maybe we just have different sensibilities but I'm curious as to why our opinions seem to diverge so much.

Wow. That reminds me of how mainstream authors, when having written something set in the future, will twist themselves into pretzels to avoid their work being labelled as "SF" even though, by definition, that's what it is!
Our very own Giant has a very similar approach to his writing, though...

Maryring

2017-05-08, 05:47 PM

Doesn't surprise me. There are still way too many people who turn up their nose at the mention of fantasy or sci-fi. As if the very genres are tainted somehow.

DomaDoma

2017-05-08, 05:58 PM

Gregory Maguire being, by far, the most ludicrous example thereof. The man writes nothing but Wizard of Oz fanfic and fractured fairy tales, and he insists on keeping his brow so high it's vanishing into the opera house ceiling.

Liquor Box

2017-05-08, 06:02 PM

Steig Larson's the Girl Who Played with Fire and the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Both not recommended.

digiman619

2017-05-08, 07:35 PM

Grapes of Wrath was an unpleasant read at the time but one I'm ultimately glad I read. There's some powerful lessons in there about the dangers of unchecked captalism and the exploitation of the poor and out of work. I can't remember anything of their actual journey though.

Lord of the Flies was similar. I hated it as I was reading it but even immediately after I finished I was glad I did
Yeah, that's pretty much the way I feel about Maus and Maus II. Incredibly moving books I never want to see again.

Knaight

2017-05-08, 08:38 PM

As I posted before The Grapes of Wrath got me verklempt.

I wouldn't read it without expecting to cry.

It's a great book, just not one you should go anywhere near if you're looking for something happy.

Durkoala

2017-05-08, 09:53 PM

Our very own Giant has a very similar approach to his writing, though...
To me at least, Burlew is alright because at least he doesn't deny that he's writing fantasy, rather than something that looks like fantasy, but is totally mature and not one of those silly wizard and goblin stories. I don't agree with his position that escapism isn't worth writing, but he's a grown-up author and he can write what he wants to.

Steig Larson's the Girl Who Played with Fire and the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Both not recommended.

Oh, yeah I forgot about them. I don't like either of the main characters and found the translation to be pretty poor.

That's pretty much all I have to say about them.:smalltongue:

Flying Turtle

2017-05-08, 10:08 PM

When I look at this thread, I am reminded of two quotes:
"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel... is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae..." -Kurt Vonnegut

But also:
"There is no tragedy like a bad book." -Italian Proverb

Let me tell you, with all of the crap I've read, I'm like some burnt-out tragic hero bringing a storm all over a Baskin-Robbins. I recognize that I can really fly off the handle talking about how some particular books suck, but I'm gonna restrict myself to letting out that there exist some books that REALLY SUCK.

One thing that makes talking about bad books really difficult is staying on the topic of the book. If a bad book were just some author's soiled mental toilet paper, that would be fine. The trouble is that there are so many people willing to stuff it in my face and tell me that it smells good. It's way too easy to go off target and either jump in the way for a book you like or jump on someone for talking smack about it.

So not only do the books SUCK, but talking about how they SUCK SUCKS. Nothing can suck joy and fulfillment out of a person's life like literary debate. It's like a mosquito and a tick going ouroboros on each other. It makes me wonder why I didn't just toil or stare at a wall for all that wasted time reading, talking, and possibly thinking.

I think I need to stop myself. Though last thing: that description of Catcher in the Rye as "Dang You Kids, Get Off My Lawn: The Novel" was good.:smallbiggrin:
Couldn't disagree with that Vonnegut quote more. Personally I find tearing into a bad book incredibly cathartic. Better yet I find it makes me a better writer as it leads me to identifying exactly why I dislike the books I do. I believe the adage is you learn more from a loss than a win and I am more than willing to take advantage of someone else's loss. Including Vonnegut himself.

Bluebeard was bad. Completely devoid of, well, anything. There's just nothing there. It's just a sad old man living off his moderate artistic success and recalling in vivid detail his past sexual escapades. At times it almost feels like a manic pixie dream girl story but one that couldn't fully commit so it just sort of mills about wasting the reader's time.

I read a disgusting number of Drizz't novels, now mostly mercifully mind-wiped by natural means (albeit a few of them were okay). The Cadderly novels were less regrettable but also even less memorable.

I also regret reading both Lev Grossman's Magicians and his brother Austin's Soon I Will Be Invincible. They're not awful, but I found them transparently, indulgently cynical, and empty of reconstructed meaning (not to mention likeable characters).
Indulgently cynical is the perfect description for The Magicians. That book is all over the place. It constantly jumps from barely connected plots, each existing solely to explicitly skewer a different mainstream fantasy story. And by explicitly skewer I mean the characters actually name drop the stories the book is parodying, usually with more than a healthy dose of derision.

I also regret reading The Wise Man's Fear. For those who don't know The Wise Man's Fear is the sequel to Name of the Wind, a book best described as the literary equivalent of the sound you make when you get home from work and immediately realize you forgot something and have to turn around and go right back to the office. So much potential, so thoroughly wasted. For what it's worth Name of the Wind has excellent prose and some genuinely creative ideas. All of which are wasted on an unlikable protagonist, a two dimensional supporting cast, and world building that fails to understand one of the basic tenets of world building.

The Wise Man's fear has all the above problems, magnified and paired with a frankly absurd amount of plot irrelevant sex. Absolutely ruined any hope I had that the series might actually make decent use of its redeeming qualities. Wish I had skipped it and kept the dream alive.

DomaDoma

2017-05-08, 10:16 PM

Ohh boy, where do I start.

David Weber: I actually like the first half(minus Flag in Exile) or so of the mainline series, but the later books, especially as Honor becomes more and more Mary Sue, get worse and worse and worse.

All this. I like to pretend that the series ended with book eight. (Book nine's plot moments are epic and fantastic, but they don't make half so good a conclusive note and they're all but suffocated in padding besides. So.) And yes, book five is basically book four, once more without character investment (yet, somehow, much more character emoting,) and I'm not a fan either.

Hagashager

2017-05-14, 07:59 PM

To me at least, Burlew is alright because at least he doesn't deny that he's writing fantasy, rather than something that looks like fantasy, but is totally mature and not one of those silly wizard and goblin stories. I don't agree with his position that escapism isn't worth writing, but he's a grown-up author and he can write what he wants to.

Oh, yeah I forgot about them. I don't like either of the main characters and found the translation to be pretty poor.

That's pretty much all I have to say about them.:smalltongue:

Wait, what?

I've never bothered reading up on Burlew's personal opinions on things. I like OotS, but never felt like getting ingrained the meta of the web-comic. When did Burlew say Escapism wasn't worth writing?

If that's true that's...hysterically hypocritical. Isn't the of the main draws, if not THE main draw of his web-comic escapism? What's more, DnD, the literal inspiration for OotS, and the sole reason it exists in the form that is does, was quite literally written as a form of escapism.

Anything related to Dungeons and Dragons, Pen and Paper RPGs, and other interactive media have their roots in escapist story-telling.

Gnoman

2017-05-14, 09:18 PM

Check SaintRidley's signature for a link - he has a post at the top of the page.

georgie_leech

2017-05-14, 09:41 PM

Wait, what?

I've never bothered reading up on Burlew's personal opinions on things. I like OotS, but never felt like getting ingrained the meta of the web-comic. When did Burlew say Escapism wasn't worth writing?

If that's true that's...hysterically hypocritical. Isn't the of the main draws, if not THE main draw of his web-comic escapism? What's more, DnD, the literal inspiration for OotS, and the sole reason it exists in the form that is does, was quite literally written as a form of escapism.

Anything related to Dungeons and Dragons, Pen and Paper RPGs, and other interactive media have their roots in escapist story-telling.

I cast Greater Imitate Banana. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?479555-The-Index-of-the-Giant-s-Comments-VOn-a-Saner-Forum-We-Wouldn-t-Need-this-Index)

...no fiction is meaningful if its lessons cannot be applied to the world that we, real actual humans, live in. If you are going to dismiss any themes or subtext present in any fantasy story as simply not applying to our world because that world has dragons and ours doesn't, then you have largely missed the point of literature as a whole, and are likely rather poorer for it. Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism. So if I can make even one person think about how we treat people of other races (or religions, or creeds, or what have you) by using the analogy of Redcloak, then it will have been time well spent on my part.

If a story gives you something emotionally, then it probably is tied to a real-life issue—the issue of how we process our emotions while making our way through the complex world in which we live. Not all messages need to be externally focused.

If a story fails to even give you that much, then it's porn. Or fanfiction. Or both, probably. Either way, I have no time for it.

An Enemy Spy

2017-05-14, 09:56 PM

I feel like Rich Burlew's quotes are being taken out of context. He isn't putting his work above other works in the genre and dismissing everything else as brainless escapism(which is exactly what Terry Goodkind is doing). He's disputing the notion that just because a work is not set in the real world it has no themes that can apply to real life.

Red Fel

2017-05-14, 10:12 PM

To be fair, this is something that is fairly commonly taught - the difference between "literature" and "genre fluff" isn't the setting, but the lessons. A writing can take place in an escapist high-fantasy setting and still be considered "literature," if not necessarily high art or a classic, because it still relates back to a message or meaning or lesson or casts a lens on some aspect of the human experience or society or political theory or something.

Dune was a look at, among other things, the impact of trade on politics, the growth of cults of personality, and the clash of ideologies and dynasties. It was also a space story about force fields, lasers, and giant space worms that poop psychic dust.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a view of the horrors of war, an attempt to recreate the majesty of historic genealogies and records in a fantasy setting, and a story about overcoming hardship and the values of an underdog. It was also a story about short, hairy people, elves, dragons, wizards and magic rings.

American Gods, which I'll remind you is now a TV series, was a view of the immigrant experience, the pressures of assimilation, the thirst for the past and a cultural identity. It was also a story about a guy and his buddy-deity taking a fun road trip.

Eragon was a story about a boy and his dragon. That's... Pretty much it.

Three of these things have lessons, or reflections about the human experience, or what have you. One of them does not. Three of these things, whether liked or disliked, are generally considered "literature," while one is accurately described as "genre fluff."

It's not that escapism isn't worth writing. Lots of literature is also escapist. That was the literal purpose of dramatic reenactments of classic Greek myths - catharsis, emotional purgation through escaping into the story.

It's that stories that are only escapist, that do not also have some additional layer to them, tend not to possess lasting value. An artist who creates pure escapism, absent more, collects a paycheck; an artist who creates escapism with substance has added a small patch to the quilt of literary culture and history.

Metahuman1

2017-05-14, 11:15 PM

Ohh boy, where do I start.

And then there's the book of his who's name I forgot where the plot was something like, Aliens invade Earth, are slowly conquering the planet, then Dracula kills all their leaders, infilitrates all their spaceships, and sends them back to the alien worlds so that vampires can kill all the aliens. WTF.

1984: I hate this novel. Until I read Caliphate this was by far the worse novel I had ever read. It tried to say something(I think) about human nature, but it just felt unrealistic and ignorant. If your going to write your Dystopian novel, at least make sure your Dystopia could happen and makes sense. That's all I ask.

1: That might not have been a good book, but in comic book or animation as a medium, that could be metal as freaking heck! Actually, it sounds like it would also be a lot of fun in a game format. Maybe run it as a table top game? Like, The monsters are real and doing a Masquerade when the aliens show up, so, rather then completely loose there food source, they come out into the open to defend there prey, and in so doing, find a new prey in the form of the aliens?

2: Um, 1984's dystopia more or less DID happen. In more then one country over the course of the 20th century, or very, very close too it at least. We called these places country's with communist governments. And, well, there is an argument to be made that there are still country's with communist governments that would qualify as being uncomfortably close to 1984's state.

GolemsVoice

2017-05-15, 03:05 AM

Fri

2017-05-15, 04:19 AM

Except as we see here, many novels who ae big on "value" (itself a meaningless term) are disliked exactly BECAUSE they put "meaning" over "escapism".

Also, I'm not sure just how many people read Dune or LotR for the insightful commentaries on life, the universe, and everything.

So while I value the Giant's comics and think he's a really good writer and artist, that opinion still comes off as "I'm better.... because". The use of phrases like "only meaningful" or "petty escapism" makes it pretty clear what he thinks of "such books" and where he thinks his works fall.

I think you're reading it wrongly. That quote is a response to people who dismiss fantasy or sci-fi stories because "they're set in make believe world, with dragon and magic, they're pointless."

The response is "a fantasy story is worthwhile because eventhough it's set in a world with magic and dragons, you can relate about real life. A fantasy story which you can't relate is worthless, people like to read fantasy or sci fi because they can relate to something in it (memory of their childhood adventure, how the magic university is similar to their experience in art college, commentary on racism, etc)." And one of the thing that Giant is proud on his story is if people can relate his story about real life racism or whatever.

It's similar response to people who say "fantasy/sci-fi is worthless and hack writing, because you can make up things, unlike stories set in mundane real world." Fantasy story still need plot, premise, internal consistency, etc.

factotum

2017-05-15, 06:02 AM

Also, I'm not sure just how many people read Dune or LotR for the insightful commentaries on life, the universe, and everything.

Of course they don't set out to read a novel with that end in mind, but if they happen to learn something along the way then that's a good thing, surely? I wouldn't go so far as to say that a story with no lessons to teach is entirely worthless, mind you.

As for people not reading "worthy" books because they don't like them--that's probably not down to the worthiness of the books, but the poor quality of the story part of things. This isn't a zero-sum game, after all, and it's not necessary to reduce the quality of the story side to accommodate the worthy bit.

GolemsVoice

2017-05-15, 06:06 AM

I think you're reading it wrongly. That quote is a response to people who dismiss fantasy or sci-fi stories because "they're set in make believe world, with dragon and magic, they're pointless."

The response is "a fantasy story is worthwhile because eventhough it's set in a world with magic and dragons, you can relate about real life. A fantasy story which you can't relate is worthless, people like to read fantasy or sci fi because they can relate to something in it (memory of their childhood adventure, how the magic university is similar to their experience in art college, commentary on racism, etc)." And one of the thing that Giant is proud on his story is if people can relate his story about real life racism or whatever.

It's similar response to people who say "fantasy/sci-fi is worthless and hack writing, because you can make up things, unlike stories set in mundane real world." Fantasy story still need plot, premise, internal consistency, etc.

I can see that, and I would agree with him, but somehow Rich can't make that point without pointing out that, no, see, it's actually OTHER stories that are pointless.

But closer to the topic of the thread, I don't really regret reading books, if a book really doesn't interest me, I just abandon it. However, I once read Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom" because I thought the title sounded cool as hell, and boy, was that ever a dry book. I don't remember much of it, but I remember at one point telling myself that if the author ever used the phrase "a curious state of undefeat" (or something similiar) again I'd stop reading right there. There were probably a lot of allusions and clever literary things I didn't get, due to not being American and just not caring enough, but that book annoyed the hell out of me.

DomaDoma

2017-05-15, 06:25 AM

\

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a view of the horrors of war, an attempt to recreate the majesty of historic genealogies and records in a fantasy setting, and a story about overcoming hardship and the values of an underdog. It was also a story about short, hairy people, elves, dragons, wizards and magic rings.

Objection: the foremost theme of Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly sense of place. That alone feeds the save-the-trees stuff, the supreme virtue of hobbit-sense, the aforementioned genealogies and records, and the all-pervasive conviction among everyone* that there was much more splendor in the old days.

As for the horrors of war... I mean, that's just something Tolkien, WWI vet, couldn't not touch on. It was hardly emphatic enough to make it a theme; battles in Lord of the Rings are most definitely worth it in the end. Horrors-of-war pieces at least raise a giant question mark.

*Except, come to think of it, the hobbits. Even after Sharkey, the order of business is simply to restore the status quo. Hmm, worth chewing on.

Keltest

2017-05-15, 07:04 AM

Objection: the foremost theme of Lord of the Rings is undoubtedly sense of place. That alone feeds the save-the-trees stuff, the supreme virtue of hobbit-sense, the aforementioned genealogies and records, and the all-pervasive conviction among everyone* that there was much more splendor in the old days.

As for the horrors of war... I mean, that's just something Tolkien, WWI vet, couldn't not touch on. It was hardly emphatic enough to make it a theme; battles in Lord of the Rings are most definitely worth it in the end. Horrors-of-war pieces at least raise a giant question mark.

*Except, come to think of it, the hobbits. Even after Sharkey, the order of business is simply to restore the status quo. Hmm, worth chewing on.

The hobbits were very much a product of the English's Tolkien's time. He liked Britain's relatively open and wild areas, and was concerned that industrialization would destroy all of them very quickly. The Shire was a bit of his own escapism, creating a world where the horrors of development cant overcome the beautiful farmlands or the people.

Cikomyr

2017-05-15, 07:12 AM

All this. I like to pretend that the series ended with book eight. (Book nine's plot moments are epic and fantastic, but they don't make half so good a conclusive note and they're all but suffocated in padding besides. So.) And yes, book five is basically book four, once more without character investment (yet, somehow, much more character emoting,) and I'm not a fan either.

Wait. Flag in Exile? The one where she spends the entire book in Grayson?

This is one of my favourite of the series.

2D8HP

2017-05-15, 07:19 AM

...I also regret reading The Wise Man's Fear. For those who don't know The Wise Man's Fear is the sequel to Name of the Wind...

:confused:

I read Name of the Wind, and I can't imagine how to make a sequel at all.

Kalmageddon

2017-05-15, 07:31 AM

I can see that, and I would agree with him, but somehow Rich can't make that point without pointing out that, no, see, it's actually OTHER stories that are pointless.
This sums it up pretty well, actually.
The way I personally see it, Rich got tangled up in an age where every piece of fiction needs to promote an ideological agenda. You don't create a character anymore, you create a stand-in for groups, minorities, ideologies. Is your villain non-heterosexual? You are obviously going against LGBT people. Is your cast diverse? You must be one of those politically correct freaks. And unfortunately this forum itself became an eco chamber for certain very dogmatic ideologies.
In my mind, Rich simply gave in to inirect pressure and took sides, rationalizing this as the move of a responsable writer that wants his work to mean something, but unfortunately by extension condeming anyone that write fiction for entratainment purpose only.
I guess there are those that look at his "mea culpa" on having written a gag based on gender change, or for having female characters use the slang for female dog as an insult, as a sign of a maturing artist distancing himself from old shames. And I guess that if Rich wrote those knowingly motivated by sexism or what else they would have a point. But from the outside? Both those things are harmless in the context of the comic and there was no apparent malicious intent behind them.
So yeah, Rich isn't writing "just" fiction anymore. There will be morals, there will be messages and there will be propaganda. Because we apparently shouldn't enjoy his wecomic otherwise and were silly to do so anyway up until recently.

Cizak

2017-05-15, 08:35 AM

The way I personally see it, Rich got tangled up in an age where every piece of fiction needs to promote an ideological agenda.

So any age ever?

In my mind, Rich simply gave in to inirect pressure and took sides

If there's one thing I'm sure Rich (and any public figure) enjoys, it's getting to hear the true motivation of their actions, rather than the silly lies they tell themselves, from random people they don't know.

And I guess that if Rich wrote those knowingly motivated by sexism or what else they would have a point. But from the outside? Both those things are harmless in the context of the comic and there was no apparent malicious intent behind them.

Malicious intent isn't required for things to be harmful. Our society has a lot of internalised harmful ideas that we perpetuate more or less unknowingly in our daily lives. While Rich's examples may be (arguably) harmless in the context of the comic, they are harmful in real life. And that's largely Rich's point; his comic exists in real life and relates to it, as does fiction as a whole.

So yeah, Rich isn't writing "just" fiction anymore. There will be morals, there will be messages and there will be propaganda.

Again, point being that no fiction is "just" fiction, at least not in the sense that "just" fiction has no connection to real life, because all fiction does.

Because we apparently shouldn't enjoy his wecomic otherwise and were silly to do so anyway up until recently.

Again again, point being that if you're enjoying a piece of fiction, you are getting something out of it that connects to real life. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Keltest

2017-05-15, 08:41 AM

So any age ever?

If there's one thing I'm sure Rich (and any public figure) enjoys, it's getting to hear the true motivation of their actions, rather than the silly lies they tell themselves, from random people they don't know.

Malicious intent isn't required for things to be harmful. Our society has a lot of internalised harmful ideas that we perpetuate more or less unknowingly in our daily lives. While Rich's examples may be (arguably) harmless in the context of the comic, they are harmful in real life. And that's largely Rich's point; his comic exists in real life and relates to it, as does fiction as a whole.

Again, point being that no fiction is "just" fiction, at least not in the sense that "just" fiction has no connection to real life, because all fiction does.

Again again, point being that if you're enjoying a piece of fiction, you are getting something out of it that connects to real life. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum.

If that was what Rich intended to communicate, suffice to say that I feel he did it so incredibly poorly its a wonder that he didn't go back and restate the thought.

Kalmageddon

2017-05-15, 09:40 AM

stuff
If you want to have a conversation with me, never, ever split-quote me. It turns me off completely.
Also avoid being dismissive and sarcastic.

DomaDoma

2017-05-15, 09:57 AM

Cizak

2017-05-15, 10:08 AM

If you want to have a conversation with me, never, ever split-quote me. It turns me off completely.

What would the difference be if I quoted you once and then adressed your seperate points seperately, as I did?

Also avoid being dismissive and sarcastic.

Like you are dismissive of Rich's actions with your "In my mind, this is what actually happened" statement? Got it.

Kalmageddon

2017-05-15, 10:15 AM

Rich is taking it from a standpoint of annoying current social politics, to be sure, but his larger point about the true resonance of fiction is valid. (Short digression: the greatest resonance of all is something utterly inapplicable - an aching, alien beauty which you can only inarticulately long for - but that's a matter for the Greatest Poets Of All Time, not for Joe Fantasy Writer.) His comic is really really good, more to the point. If the comic were one of the preachy anvil-thudders we've been discussing on this thread, that would be one thing. But it ain't.
Not yet, at least. Hopefully never.
I don't know if I agree entirely on the "resonace" part. There are plenty of works of fiction that can be appreciated even if they are irrelevant to everyday life. For example, I'm very passionate about speculative zoology, which is something that almost by definition is not applicable to real life. It's about imagining ways life could evolve or could have evolved in various conditions. It's an exercise in creativity, sure, and it takes a lot of scientific knowledge to do properly, but it's entirely self-serving. And I'm ok with it. I'm probably not going to see how life meaningfully evolves on this or other planets during my lifetime, so speculative zoology is the next best thing.
And yet the sense of wonder and beauty that studying life, imagining life, gives me is incomparable to anything else. Is my passion worth less than a stick figure webcomic just because one has applicability while the other one doesn't?
Taken one step further, isn't roleplaying the purest form of escapism? You pretend you are someone or something you are not and go on an adventure in a make believe world. Sure, there's technically nothing preventing the GM from tackling important and applicable social issues in their game, but how often does it happen? But if we are here, chances are that it's because we share a passion for table top roleplaying games.

Aedilred

2017-05-15, 10:36 AM

So any age ever?
There probably has always been a political element to fiction. But I think Kalmageddon's point was that the period in which Rich (presumably) grew up and matured as an artist was one where such issues were particularly to the forefront. It's the same period that, in other academic fields, saw an explosion of new theories and schools with focus on groups under-represented in traditional approaches. The idea being that the ideological component of art became not just descriptive, but prescriptive.

As ideas which were at the time revolutionary have become more mainstream, some of this stuff has come to look rather clumsy ("anvilicious" in TVTropes speak). But there are still people around who have been heavily influenced by that approach and that shows through at times in their work, whether because they're still trying to forcefully make a point that most people have already accepted, or because they've latched on to a more contemporary issue with great fervour.

I'm not sure I wholly buy it, although I can see where Kalmageddon is coming from. Given the evolution of the comic, I think what we're looking at is the zealotry of the convert rather than the legacy of an earlier era. But there might be something in the way that issues have been approached that mimics an earlier way of doing things. I'm not sure. Where I think the influence of one's youth can have a great impact thematically I tend to think that where things fall down stylistically that's just a mistake on the part of the writer.

If there's one thing I'm sure Rich (and any public figure) enjoys, it's getting to hear the true motivation of their actions, rather than the silly lies they tell themselves, from random people they don't know.

Malicious intent isn't required for things to be harmful. Our society has a lot of internalised harmful ideas that we perpetuate more or less unknowingly in our daily lives. While Rich's examples may be (arguably) harmless in the context of the comic, they are harmful in real life. And that's largely Rich's point; his comic exists in real life and relates to it, as does fiction as a whole.
I think the first two sentences of your second paragraph serve as adequate refutation of the first.

But seriously, if we're going to reject the idea that the author's cultural context and subconscious can affect the work, and that we shouldn't consider anything about the work beyond what is prima facie apparent and what the author has themselves stated, we might as well abolish the whole subject of literary criticism.

Personally I'm increasingly of the opinion that authors just shouldn't (be allowed to) talk about their work. I don't think the increased contact between fanbase and artist that the internet has facilitated has really had any positive impact on anything.

DomaDoma

2017-05-15, 11:17 AM

What would the difference be if I quoted you once and then adressed your seperate points seperately, as I did?

Looks much, much more like an attempted demolishing and much, much less like a civil discussion with a fellow human being in split quotes. Sorry, we didn't establish online social conventions; that's just how it is.

I don't know if I agree entirely on the "resonace" part. There are plenty of works of fiction that can be appreciated even if they are irrelevant to everyday life. For example, I'm very passionate about speculative zoology, which is something that almost by definition is not applicable to real life. It's about imagining ways life could evolve or could have evolved in various conditions. It's an exercise in creativity, sure, and it takes a lot of scientific knowledge to do properly, but it's entirely self-serving. And I'm ok with it. I'm probably not going to see how life meaningfully evolves on this or other planets during my lifetime, so speculative zoology is the next best thing.
And yet the sense of wonder and beauty that studying life, imagining life, gives me is incomparable to anything else. Is my passion worth less than a stick figure webcomic just because one has applicability while the other one doesn't?
Taken one step further, isn't roleplaying the purest form of escapism? You pretend you are someone or something you are not and go on an adventure in a make believe world. Sure, there's technically nothing preventing the GM from tackling important and applicable social issues in their game, but how often does it happen? But if we are here, chances are that it's because we share a passion for table top roleplaying games.

You and I are actually in perfect agreement - because there are many more, and worthier, dimensions to life than the strictly political. Curiosity? Companionship? Fighting the good fight? Making the kind of high-stake judgment calls we're probably never going to have to make in real life but it's nice to know what would happen if it came up? Much more applicable to the daily human condition than what you think of this month's big protest headline.

2D8HP

2017-05-15, 01:45 PM

Looks much, much more like an attempted demolishing and much, much less like a civil discussion with a fellow human being in split quotes. Sorry, we didn't establish online social conventions; that's just how it is....

As a reader of this Forum, I very much like "split quotes", especially when the original post is close by.

As a Poster to this Forum, if I have a long post, a "split quote" of something I've written helps me better know what they're responding to (often a side joke that I put little thought into at the time).

DomaDoma

2017-05-15, 02:10 PM

Anyway.

Totally agree with the general assessment of Catcher in the Rye. Which is interesting, because I read a whole lot of social commentary from the elbow-patch crowd, and hardly a one sees any problem with saying "Holden" and "Huck" in the same reverent breath. I don't get that. They seem to be largely sensible and imaginative people.

Also, The Veil of Snows. I absolutely adored A City In Winter, the middle book in the trilogy. Swan Lake, the first of them, was... okay. But The Veil of Snows... well, first, the veil it really needed was for its social commentary. And second, the great tragedy of it happens on account of a stupid mistake whose perpetrator - the Queen, who is supposed to be the wisest of them all - freely acknowledges to be a stupid mistake well before it predictably turns out as badly as it does.

Even Chris Van Allsburg, the illustrator who's saved narratives much more thin than this - and who raised A City in Winter from the respectable level of, say, The Thirteen Clocks up into a tear-welling masterwork - couldn't handle it, flipped out, and chose to illustrate the agonizing siege scene by showing the part where the invaders launch the bodies of plague-ridden beasts and it's just a coincidence, I'm sure, that they happen to be cows.

(Dang fine backstory with the minstrel and the usurper, though.)

FreddyNoNose

2017-05-15, 02:26 PM

Anything by Robert Jordan.

Cizak

2017-05-15, 02:56 PM

Taken one step further, isn't roleplaying the purest form of escapism? You pretend you are someone or something you are not and go on an adventure in a make believe world. Sure, there's technically nothing preventing the GM from tackling important and applicable social issues in their game, but how often does it happen? But if we are here, chances are that it's because we share a passion for table top roleplaying games.

Alignment is a way to measure real life morality, created by the real life authors of the game.

The tasks given to the party have to be solved with the real life co-operation of the real life players.

If the rules tell you that you are allowed to kill the ugly creatures because they are unquestionably always evil, that's very much a result of a certain set of values held by the creators and says something about our society and/or culture.

Roleplaying isn't escapism. Roleplaying isn't done in a vacuum.

I think the first two sentences of your second paragraph serve as adequate refutation of the first.

I would disagree.

My second paragraph talks about how some of our opinions and beliefs may have secondary internalised and unconscious parts. My first paragraph is about Rich saying "I have gained new knowledge and am now making a decision with this knowledge in mind", and Kalmageddon responding "No, you aren't, I know what's actually happening."

Rich's new knowledge and decisions are not exempt from the possible secondary parts, just like anyone's, but I am not advocating that humans make no conscious decisions ever or that we are 100% controlled by the internalised ideas in our subconscious. Rich's knowledge and decisions still stem from conscious efforts on his part, and I believe he has better knowledge of those efforts than a random poster on the forums. What Kalmageddon is doing is just taking away Rich's agency. That is what I object to, as I find it rude and condescending.

But seriously, if we're going to reject the idea that the author's cultural context and subconscious can affect the work, and that we shouldn't consider anything about the work beyond what is prima facie apparent and what the author has themselves stated, we might as well abolish the whole subject of literary criticism.

I'm not advocating either of these.

Looks much, much more like an attempted demolishing and much, much less like a civil discussion with a fellow human being in split quotes. Sorry, we didn't establish online social conventions; that's just how it is.

Split posting is just cleaner and more practical, and I disagree it makes the discussion less civil. It let's you clearly show what specific parts of an argument you are specifically adressing. The problem would be if I hadn't read the whole post before split quoting it, but I could just as well not read a post before quoting all of it.

DomaDoma

2017-05-15, 03:12 PM

Alignment is a way to measure real life morality, created by the real life authors of the game.

The tasks given to the party have to be solved with the real life co-operation of the real life players.

If the rules tell you that you are allowed to kill the ugly creatures because they are unquestionably always evil, that's very much a result of a certain set of values held by the creators and says something about our society and/or culture.

I would argue that the term for that is "hack'n'slash campaign." As in, you are consciously choosing gameplay over any kind of characterization at all. The paradigm isn't "no, seriously, it's a Manichaean world and the ugly must die", it's "let's see what your strategy is made of."

EDIT: But - segueing back to topic - attempts to fuse that conceit into deep worldbuilding always end in tears. Tolkien never could put the orcs into a coherent place, and once it's cycled in and out of D&D, and you've already novelized hack'n'slash and then feel the need to get complex about stock villain species with the same cast of characters... you get the scene in Sojourn where the wise old mentor teaches Drizzt the value of hating all goblinoids on sight. So much cringe.

Velaryon

2017-05-15, 07:50 PM

Could you provide specific examples? I remember reading it in English and really liking it, maybe we just have different sensibilities but I'm curious as to why our opinions seem to diverge so much.

It has been 16 or 17 years and many, many hundreds of books since I read the book, so I really can't point to specific examples from the text. What I believe I remember (and I'm willing to concede that I may be wrong, but these are not exactly uncommon criticisms) is a lot of the description being casually racist in that the Africans aren't even really characters - they're just background scenery for a story about white people. Aside from frequent descriptions of the "savages," they are usually portrayed either in the way that a book might talk about animals like horses or oxen, or the narrator might rise to looking down on them with some pity. Do I think it was necessarily intended to be read that way? Not really, though I've never cared enough to really research Joseph Conrad to find out what his intentions may have been.

I believe someone mentioned the author Chinua Achebe's criticism (http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html)of the story. I skimmed through it after digging it up, and I think he goes into a lot more detail and argues more persuasively than I could.

Dienekes

2017-05-15, 09:56 PM

Could you provide specific examples? I remember reading it in English and really liking it, maybe we just have different sensibilities but I'm curious as to why our opinions seem to diverge so much.

Our very own Giant has a very similar approach to his writing, though...

Oh, Heart of Darkness is pretty racist. Read any of the depiction of Africans and it's all discussions about how weird it is to see them try to do European things, or heavy depictions of them as nearly inhuman, only for the narrator to correct himself that they are acting too human, but strange.

However, it definitely was not bad for its day. I don't think people really comprehend how racist 1800s to early 1900s were. I mean read the everyday propaganda about the Congo expedition, Hell, slavery was just ended in the U.S. about 30 years before the book was written.

Heart of Darkness is damning about how terrible the Europeans are, the whole point of the book is pointing out that despite all of European's advances, the European protagonist still feels the stir when Africans make their "unearthly" or "monstrous" chants and calls. It shows some nobility in the African's way of life and actions and then shows how utterly monstrous the Europeans are in comparison for what they're doing. It even has African characters, that have not been Westernized, that are portrayed in an entirely positive light. I can't think of an earlier example of that.

It is still, definitely racist. But everyone should at least have a perspective about what was going on at the time.

Algeh

2017-05-16, 01:14 AM

Ohh boy, where do I start.

David Weber: I actually like the first half(minus Flag in Exile) or so of the mainline series, but the later books, especially as Honor becomes more and more Mary Sue, get worse and worse and worse. I also read the entire Safehold series, which i don't regret because parts of it were quite good, but I had to perfect my Weber-Reading talent where you master knowing when to skip 50 page essays on various things that you don't care about so you can go back to the mediocre but hypnotically entertaining plot. And then there's the book of his who's name I forgot where the plot was something like, Aliens invade Earth, are slowly conquering the planet, then Dracula kills all their leaders, infilitrates all their spaceships, and sends them back to the alien worlds so that vampires can kill all the aliens. WTF.

1: That might not have been a good book, but in comic book or animation as a medium, that could be metal as freaking heck! Actually, it sounds like it would also be a lot of fun in a game format. Maybe run it as a table top game? Like, The monsters are real and doing a Masquerade when the aliens show up, so, rather then completely loose there food source, they come out into the open to defend there prey, and in so doing, find a new prey in the form of the aliens?

I feel like the biggest problem with that particular book was not so much that it ended up with vampires fighting off an alien invasion as with the pacing of when it and how it lets you know that it's going to be a book about vampires fighting off an alien invasion. He held the "these characters are vampires" reveal until way, way too far into the book to be introducing the only fantasy element in an otherwise "aliens invade Earth this week" military SF book, and it felt like a really jarring way to resolve everything because it didn't fit the context and constraints that you'd had introduced in the book up to that point.

I'd be like if someone cast a truth spell 2/3rds of the way through a typical crime novel. It's not that no good books have a truth spell in them, nor even that no good mysteries can have truth spells in them. It's that you should probably tell me that we're in a fantasy book where it's possible someone might be able to cast spells sometime within the first three chapters, or all of the time I spend thinking about how to solve the case as I read along will feel needlessly wasted because I wasn't looking at the right set of potential tools to figure out a solution from.

To be fair, David Weber has hinted that they're not really vampires, they're actually some other kind of of alien or alien-tech-infused humans that just think they're vampires, and that this will all make more sense when/if he gets around to writing the sequels he's thought of for that book (this hinting was at a convention I heard him speak at least year, not in the book itself). This might make the series narrative arc make more sense, but still doesn't solve the issues with the book as a book.

GloatingSwine

2017-05-16, 12:05 PM

Metahuman1

2017-05-16, 10:42 PM

I feel like the biggest problem with that particular book was not so much that it ended up with vampires fighting off an alien invasion as with the pacing of when it and how it lets you know that it's going to be a book about vampires fighting off an alien invasion. He held the "these characters are vampires" reveal until way, way too far into the book to be introducing the only fantasy element in an otherwise "aliens invade Earth this week" military SF book, and it felt like a really jarring way to resolve everything because it didn't fit the context and constraints that you'd had introduced in the book up to that point.

I'd be like if someone cast a truth spell 2/3rds of the way through a typical crime novel. It's not that no good books have a truth spell in them, nor even that no good mysteries can have truth spells in them. It's that you should probably tell me that we're in a fantasy book where it's possible someone might be able to cast spells sometime within the first three chapters, or all of the time I spend thinking about how to solve the case as I read along will feel needlessly wasted because I wasn't looking at the right set of potential tools to figure out a solution from.

To be fair, David Weber has hinted that they're not really vampires, they're actually some other kind of of alien or alien-tech-infused humans that just think they're vampires, and that this will all make more sense when/if he gets around to writing the sequels he's thought of for that book (this hinting was at a convention I heard him speak at least year, not in the book itself). This might make the series narrative arc make more sense, but still doesn't solve the issues with the book as a book.

Ah. (I haven't read the book, I was just going off that summation of "Plot about vampires fighting aliens was bad." and thinking "there's gotta be a way to make this work, even if it would be a bit self indulgent and goofy in a dark sort of way.".)

sktarq

2017-05-16, 11:28 PM

An easy rule of thumb is that you can tell if something is literature if the question "What is it about" has answers which aren't a synopsis of the plot.

If only

That said I do think that the field of literary criticism prolly could do with being abolished-I really think it turns people off reading far more than it adds people's depth of understanding. Person X likes catcher in the rye and person Y doesn't - fine go ahead and talk about why and what you each got from it over a couple beers, great idea. The institutionalization of that I don't think helps the world. I think it promotes groupthink and snobby bovine fecal matter.

Honestly I think most of the field is giant Thematic Apperception Test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_apperception_test) where the nature of the reviewer matter more than than the nature of the book.

tantric

2017-05-17, 01:58 AM

on the original topic.....50 shades of grey (is there an emoticon for shame?)

you see, there was this hysterical thread (https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?626323-NSFW-WIR-Fifty-Shades-of-Grey)on rpg.net where someone read it and was forced to drink to insensibility to retain SAN. this was 2012, it may be the source of the drinking game.

After some cajoling by a friend who apparently hates it when I'm sober, I have agreed to do a Where I Read of Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L . James.

A quick note. This is erotica. Actually, that's inaccurate. This is written porn. Wait. Still inaccurate. This is Twilight fanfiction that the author had originally posted on the internet and then subsequently filed the serial numbers off and published. It's a bestseller. It's also the first book in a trilogy.

I am also drinking rum. I'm starting with the good rum, because I like that rum. I will probably turn to the cheap rum as I realize that my Friday evening has been spent not only reading this atrocity but then posting about it on the internet. My life has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

understand that at that time, there were mobs of sexually repressed housewives mugging people with the book. joke, possibly not funny, but they did go around leaving them in waiting rooms and such. since the thread was so funny, i had to try it....but i'm diabetic and can't drink. i thought herbs would be just as good.....nooooooo. it was like watching a train wreck, but it just kept happening. i read it all in one sitting. it is entirely possibly that this experience was so traumatic and powerful that it reached back in time and made me gay.

Red Fel

2017-05-17, 09:00 AM

That said I do think that the field of literary criticism prolly could do with being abolished-I really think it turns people off reading far more than it adds people's depth of understanding. Person X likes catcher in the rye and person Y doesn't - fine go ahead and talk about why and what you each got from it over a couple beers, great idea. The institutionalization of that I don't think helps the world. I think it promotes groupthink and snobby bovine fecal matter.

Honestly I think most of the field is giant Thematic Apperception Test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_apperception_test) where the nature of the reviewer matter more than than the nature of the book.

Literary criticism, if I may be metacritical, has its merits.

For example, a book review that tells me generally what the story is about, without spoiling the plot, can help me determine whether the book is of interest to me. That, however, is not "criticism," but more "synopsis." A book review, on the other hand, which tells me something along the lines of, "Although the story is one of shooting aliens in space, the real underlying concept is about growing up, child soldiers, and the consequences of abdicating one's own moral responsibilities," or, "Despite selling millions of copies, the book is little more than an attempt at titillation, in a story which - despite claiming realism - requires a profound suspension of disbelief," is using arguably objective statements to tell me what the book is actually about, which is very helpful to me.

Let me explain. In 2005, a movie came out, called The Weather Man; it starred Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine, among others. The trailer contained a number of sarcastic quips and humorous moments, and it looked like a bit of fun dark comedy. The trailer was a lie; they took the only arguably light or humorous scenes from the movie to put into that trailer, and the rest was a slow, dark, spiral into melancholy.

A lot of books are like that. You read some bits off the dust jacket or look at the cover art, and you get an impression that could be way off. Give you an example. This is the cover art for Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword.

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1286927812l/407813.jpg

You get a feel right away. It's fantasy. Magic sword, duels on horseback, mysterious protagonist.

You do not expect that the first fifteen minutes will consist of an orphan girl's thoughts on her glass of orange juice. This is what I mean about impressions being way off.

This is the cover art for the edition of Frank Herbert's Dune that I read as a youth.

http://encyklopedie.dune.cz/Bibliografia/pictures/dune_ace1.jpg

You see this, and you get a feel for the strange and exotic desert world on which it is set. Other covers used images of the bizarre alien sand worms. Great. Know what they don't show? The politics, religion, cult of personality, and market dynamics on which the books focus.

That's where literary criticism has merit. If nothing else, it tells us what a story is (or might be) actually about. Which, again if nothing else, can help decide if it's actually worth picking up that book with a cool-looking wizard on the front that actually turns out to be a chronicling of the persecution of educated individuals in the Dark Ages.

sktarq

2017-05-17, 10:01 AM

2D8HP

2017-05-17, 10:14 AM

On topic:
Casino Royale, twice I've tried to read this book (once in the 1980's, and again this decade.

So very boring.

Bond is the ultimate Gary/Mary/Marty Sue/Stu.

No it's not "good for it's time".

Can a bad book be the basis of an OK film?

Yes.

Off topic:

...mobs of sexually repressed housewives mugging people...

....this experience was so traumatic and powerful that it reached back in time and made me....

Can we please start an out-of-context pull quote thread already?

Red Fel

2017-05-17, 10:16 AM

And if that was "literary criticism" I'd say you were right. But that is generally only the first paragraph of even a basic book review.

The rest is same "think piece" type stuff that has little to do with thought and more to do with the critic putting their own issues onto the work...with usually very low repeatability for other readers.

But the thing is, from there it goes from noting what the story is objectively about to what it is subjectively about. And let's be fair, they may be pretentious, but they're not always wrong. A critic may note that a story contains misogynistic undertones, or relies a bit heavily on the works of Tolkien, or is practically a retelling of the War of the Roses, and maybe they're wrong, but maybe they're right - and that, too, may drive my decision. Maybe it's something I would have picked up on and it would have bothered me. Maybe it's something I wouldn't have consciously noticed, but it would have bothered me. Maybe I'm a huge fan of literature regarding the War of the Roses, and this particular series sets it in a brand new way.

And maybe that stuff isn't explicit. Or even intentional. Maybe the author was never thinking about the fact that, in a conflict with multiple feudal lords clashing over political power, comparisons would emerge with the Japanese Sengoku era. Maybe the author didn't once consider that the struggle between elves and dark elves had traces of class warfare. Maybe the author of a book about angsty teens didn't realize just how much psychology was written into the work. Maybe the critic is completely imposing the message on the art. And maybe, just maybe, that adds something to it.

Or not. Funny thing about criticism, that - your mileage will probably vary.

SaintRidley

2017-05-17, 10:46 AM

If I may butt in, as someone who does it for a living, literary criticism isn't really about reviewing a book. It's not about determining whether a book is good or not. The purpose is to examine possible avenues of meaning. Since literature is an art, it touches different people in different ways based on their different experiences, and there's no singular right answer. It's not science, so expecting it to work like science (there being an objectively correct answer, repeatability in achieving exactly the same answer), is like expecting cats to work like flowers.

Fel's doing a pretty solid job of describing the approach we take. Thanks for that.

sktarq

2017-05-17, 10:48 AM

2D8HP

2017-05-17, 10:59 AM

...Fel's doing a pretty solid job of describing the approach we take. Thanks for that.

Red Fel very rarely doesn't do a "solid" post.

He has frightening erudition, good taste, and wit.

Diabolic?

warty goblin

2017-05-17, 11:20 AM

Problem is that the literary critics and their view of what THEY think the story is subjectively about etc have in our society become a bigger deal than the work itself. The idea of the book becomes more important than what is in the book.

Books being about anything other than what is on the page is based on what the reader brings to it-and that is highly reader dependent.

I agree that your mileage may vary, I think that is so true as to make it near useless as I don't think the literature in question is actually as important to the field than social zeitgeist and critic ideology. Thus I think the field has become a net negative as it pushes down the impulse of reader to get anything out of the book for themselves. People who read the reviews or absorb the social place of a book before reading it generally will either get nothing from it or what they are told/expected to if by confirmation bias if nothing else.

So on a large scale I think it is more limiting than illuminating.

I can't say I find this argument particularly credible. Outside of lit classes, does anybody sit down to read, their views completely pre-determined by the critical consensus? Are they even aware of what critics think? I generally have no idea what, if anything, critics think about whatever I'm reading unless I'm deliberately picking up a classic. And even then it's more along the lines of "I bet there's some critical thought out there about this" rather than "I'm going to like this, because the Marxist Feminist critics all say it masterfully demonstrates patriarchal capitalist systems of control." Point being, I generally sit down and read a book not knowing what the critical consensus is, because I don't bother to research it first, and for the vast majority of books it's hardly a widely known cultural artifact I'll already know. I may occasionally look up critiques of a book after I read it, but this is totally voluntary on my part, and I often don't.

Maybe this is just me though? Do lots of people sit down, spend a few hours reading lit crit of a book they're considering buying, then buy it, read it and find themselves mentally pressganged into agreeing with the critical consensus? This just doesn't pass the smell test to me. If anything I'd say it has far more in common with the (at this point in time essentially baseless) nerd as victim of the super-powerful high culture narrative than my own reading experience, which seems to be driven mostly out of some weird fear of the disapproval of entirely powerless and irrelevant people than it does any substantive oppressive force.

sktarq

2017-05-17, 12:32 PM

Consciously? No. As for setting the range of "acceptable" reactions? Very very much. Usually the critical reception will influence how that book is presented to people and the social expectations of the book are thus highly effected.

The number of times I've gotten into a conversation about a book and find out that the other person is basically parroting whatever they think they are supposed to say instead of actually having thought it through for themselves is enough to turn me off the whole field be themselves. And if they don't agree with the range of views they often either think of themselves as failed and be turned off the whole experience or get nothing out of it at all. The idea of what is supposed to be out there blocks them finding anything themselves. And as for "nerd as victim of high culture" thing I would say it is quite often the opposite. The reading of "high culture" books is being blocked by the social expectations put up by the literary criticism world.

I don't think literary critics have much to do with how Piers Anthony readers relate to their books but they do to how those readers relate to Catcher in the Rye. And Catcher is worse off for it and so are the people who take less for the experience.

Lethologica

2017-05-17, 12:59 PM

I can think of a few recent works of media where the idea of the media rapidly overshadowed the media itself. Ghostbusters, for example.

However, if literary criticism is prone to groupthink and snobbery, it must be said that this is no less true--perhaps even more true--of the ordinary consumer. Literary criticism does not promise to abolish bias, to always offer a perfect balance of critical taste and popular appreciation, or whatever. It is simply a development of the tools one uses to read a work and place it in context.

Gnoman

2017-05-17, 01:14 PM

It isn't just classics that get this treatment. The number of times I've seen books sell massively (I used to work for a book reseller) purely because of the "deep meanings" and "what it says about THE "X" EXPERIENCE", then go on to be pulped in massive numbers because they failed the basic quality of being "good books" is beyond immense. Beyond this, there are a great many works that "enjoy" a massive hatedom not because of their actual quality but because of the meaning that critics have assigned them. One example that will probably be fairly familiar to most readers of this forum (and is also extremely dead now) were the hidden Satanic propaganda that was widely believed to be inserted into D&D and fantasy fiction as a whole in the 1980s. No such thing existed, of course, but The Critics said it was in there, and the backlash was immense.

A related phenomenon is the attitude that a work must be built around a Great Idea for it to be anything but schlock. Never mind that most works that put a premium on their Great Idea are often not that great in the first place (There is a reason that there is only around a 5% overlap between the list of Newbury Award winners (a distinction of literary merit that has earned the derisive nickname of Newbury Death Medal as many of the winners are focused on "teaching kids to deal with the concept death through the loss of a pet or loved one") and the Children's Choice awards (where kids pick the books they actually liked reading) or even the less formal "Books of your childhood" nostalgia lists that pop up every so often on various forums.)

It is very difficult to center a story around a message, and those that do it well usually do it in a way that you can enjoy the story even if you don't notice the message in the first place - Twain, Swift, and Orwell were masters of this. Much better is using the situations that organically flow from a story to develop a message through character development - the way the Giant used the Belt Of Gender Changing (the item was introduced as a throwaway gag hundreds of strips before, and showed up again to resolve the plot while also giving Roy the perspective flip needed to understand his boorish and bigoted behavior and realize how wrong it was - also demonstrating to the audience that Roy was being a jerk and that his behavior was Not Okay) is a perfect example. This has risks as well, as it is very easy to pull messages out with the subtlety of a dropping anvil, which is universally bad.