Books You Really Hate

[DraPrime]

So, which books do you hate? And when I say hate, I mean that you loathe the book so much that you wouldn't just be bored by reading it. You would want to throw the thing across the room by reading one of its vile sentences. Also say why you hate this book so much.

Me? I greatly dislike Eragon. The words have all been pulled strait out of a thesaurus without any thought of how they should be used. The characters have no personality. There's the ever so famous issue of the plot being ripped of from Star Wars. But what I hate most about it is that it's received so much popularity. The book is a purple prose laden, cliche, unoriginal, and poorly edited, yet for some reason it has radical fans who often violently criticize me whenever I disagree with them about the book. People on Xbox Live are more civil than the crazed fans of Eragon.

So, how about you people?

[Terraoblivion]

Every single one of the horrible and artsy short story collections i was forced to read in Danish class in high school. A short story written by an author trying to avoid having a point is bad, forcing innocent high school students to read four entire collections of the nonsense is plain and simple torture. I don't care about some thirty'ish woman having an affair with a biologist who cannot kill the fox he hits while driving to the local train station. In fact there are few things in the world that interests me less.

[Tengu]

Only books we've read, or books we haven't read? What about books we were supposed to read in high school but didn't because they were extremely bad or boring and/or we were lazy?

[DraPrime]

Only books we've read, or books we haven't read? What about books we were supposed to read in high school but didn't because they were extremely bad or boring and/or we were lazy?

It's up to your judgement.

[Tirian]

I've read my share of lousy books in my life, but the only book that ever drew me beyond "I don't like this book" to "I hate this book" was The Celestine Prophecy.

[Neon Knight]

Anything by Michel Foucault. I read, understood, and interpreted translated volumes of Friedrich Nietzsche without horrendous difficulty, but Foucault is so painfully obtuse that I would rather eat burnt oatmeal infested with flesh eating parasites than figure out what the hell he was yakking on about.

[Terraoblivion]

Could be even worse, Kasrkin. It could be Derrida, he is so hard to comprehend that i have read a book by a philosophy professor where the author complains about Derrida being incomprehensible. Now that is quite a feat to manage for a writer.

[Arcane_Secrets]

Only books we've read, or books we haven't read? What about books we were supposed to read in high school but didn't because they were extremely bad or boring and/or we were lazy?

This would include The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, right? The only reason I even remember that book is because it stands out as the single book from high school that I least desire to ever read again.

In terms of recent works I hated, Empire by Orson Scott Card ranks fairly high for being...rank. I was at least able to finish it though. There have been a couple of books that I've never been able to finish, but I couldn't really mention either the author or the title here otherwise.

[13_CBS]

Most "classics". I just can't stand how nothing interesting seems to happen, and how everything just seems so dense. I can understand why people love them so much thanks to my excellent literature classes at school, but such books are not for me.

Go ahead, call me shallow, call me unsophisticated, call me a Philistine. But I just despise classics. And as stupid as this will sound; I read books to relax and let loose, not to make me think again. I have music for that.

[rubakhin]

Could be Heidegger. Jesus Christ.

[kpenguin]

I have an irrational hatred for Charles Dickens. I tried to tackle "A Tale of Two Cities" when I was in 6th grade and it put me off him for life. Yes, I know I shouldn't have tried reading it back then. That's why the hatred is irrational.



Go ahead, call me shallow, call me unsophisticated, call me a Philistine. But I just despise classics. And as stupid as this will sound; I read books to relax and let loose, not to make me think again. I have music for that.

Interesting. Its the other way for me, for the most part.

[Semidi]

A Tale of Two Cities. All right. The only good part in the entire book is the last hundred or so pages. The rest of it is spent describing hair. I like some boring books, but this was by far the most dull and overrated piece of crap ever.

The Mayor of Casterbridge was also bad, but at least it was short.

Atlas Shrugged is philosophically interesting, but it's an abomination of literature. The same points are hammered in every three or so pages, and then after 1000 or so pages, there's a 60 page monologue which restates every theme in the novel multiple times. I understand philosophizing with a hammer, but she did it with a sledgehammer the size of New York and part of New Jersey.

The Book of Mormon. Every sentence begins with either "Yea," "And so it came to pass," "And behold," and so on. Maybe not every sentence, but at least three quarters. I wont comment more as a it's a religious text.

I can’t say I hated many other books. Didn’t like them sure, but I didn’t “hate” them. I’m probably forgetting some.

[Haruki-kun]

I absolutely HATED "La Celestina". OK, fine, it's a tragedy. Clearly they have to die in the end, since that's the definition of tragedy, but PLEASE! Can it be in a better way than leaning out a balcony and suddenly slipping and falling off? Have him stabbed or something!

One I didn't really hate but wasn't a big fan of is "Chronicle of a Death Foretold". By Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was a good story and the guy is a good writer, but I didn't really care for it.

"The Labrynth of Solitude" by Octavio Paz is also a book I hated. I have better things to do with my time than read what one person thinks about a certain culture, especially if said person really believes that everyone, ESPECIALLY teenagers live sad, cold, cruel and empty lives and how everyone in the world has a natural desire to die.

I can't remember any others for the time being. I guess I'll post later if I do.

[Fri]

Well, paolo coelho is awesome for me, but I seconded celestine propechy.

Most ridiculous book I've ever read. And I've read a LOT of book.

[Felixaar]

Both Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson

I wont even begin to talk, they were just terrible, terrible books.

[Szilard]

Most of the old scifi books are boring, sure they have some science, but its boring.

[Baerdog7]

Utopia by Thomas More. *shudders* My AP European History class disliked it so much that we actually managed to get the teacher to let us stop reading it. He made up for it by having us read Voltaire's Candide next. :smallbiggrin:

[Serpentine]

In my year 12 English class, my teacher deliberately chose lowest-common-denominator books. I know, because she told me. I asked her why we were doing the load of codswallop known as Divine Wind when we could have been doing Othello (I have never, ever studied any Shakespear ever, which is a pain cuz I'd really like to), and she told me "I had to choose something everyone could understand." HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF CHOICE, WOMAN?! Anyway, this stupid book one some award or other. It is packed full of Important Issues - Sexism, Growing Up, Racism 1, Racism 2, Feminism, War, etc - but I got the distinct feeling they were only there so they would be there. 'Twere horrible, dull, pointless... *sigh* I did far worse in that class than I should have, considering it was previously my best :smallsigh:
I really didn't like the Cecilia Dart-Thornton series that started with The Ill-Made Mute. It started off well, and was fairly interesting, but then it just turned to crap. The main character was very interesting, intriguing and likeable, but then
she got her gender, then face and memories back, and she was oh-so-beautiful and oh-so-good and oh-so-FREAKING BORING. There was another promising character, but then he was killed off :smallsigh: The way she used real-world fairytales and myths I was a bit ambiguous about. It could have worked pretty well, but combined with the rest of her hack writing it just seemed lazy. Speaking of hack writing, I think she sat there with a massive thesaurus next to her and just used whatever sounded neat. Now, I generally like very descriptive works. I like knowing exactly what things look like, especially when it's described creatively and evocitavely (sp?). I know other people don't, but oh well. Dart-Thornton spent, I kid you not, at least half a page describing a field of flowers, using words for colours that I'd never heard of before (and I have a reasonably good reading vocabulary). Then there's the speech! She explains away the "thees" and "thous" used between a couple of the characters as being "the language of love" or somesuch rubbish. It didn't make it any less awkard, stiff and annoying. 1/5
[/rant]

[Catch]

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Now, I'm aware that in some circles, the book is considered an excellent insight into the contrast of Chinese and American culture and the relationship between US-born daughters and their immigrant mothers, but, frankly speaking, sixteen year-old boys don't give two spits about that sort of business, so I've always harbored a special sort of disdain for the novel, despite having graduated high school (and the "Enriched" English program) years ago.

And Jane Eyre too. At fourteen, I didn't quite have the mind for 19th century social criticism and the Gothic bits came off as dated and stuffy, though Antigone and The Odyssey both appeared in the same class, as I recall, and I enjoyed those works, oddly enough.

Probably because there was more killing. Such is a boy's life.

Also! That was when I read Brave New World for the first time.

[sun_tzu]

Not trying to stirr a debate or offend anyone...but, the Old Testament.
I come from a Jewish family (ethnically speaking. We're non-believers, at least in my immediate family), and had to read from it as a kid so that I wouldn't have a gap in my culture.
I so, so, so hated that book. And I was happily reading Jules Verne and Dragonlance at the same age.

[Helanna]

Don't even bother putting "no offense." Somebody WILL take offense. It's just that you don't have to care:smallwink:

The book that I hated with a passion was Things Fall Apart.

JESUS. CHRIST.

I hated that book. We were reading it in English to correspond with our unit in Global History. Now obviously, when a class reads a book in English, 90% of the students will hate it regardless, but this was justified.

It was about Nigeria being colonized, but the first two parts had absolutely no plot - not a weak plot, there simply wasn't one. The chapters were seemingly thrown in at random and just described various Nigerian customs. Then in the third part a tiny thing that could almost be called a plot was introduced, but it still sucked. At the end,

The main character died, but no one cared because everyone hated him!

If it hadn't been 'fiction' I probably wouldn't have hated it so much, but the fact that the author tried to give it a plot but couldn't write fiction kinda ruined it, and it read like a textbook.

Sorry this is so long . . . I REALLY hated that book.

[Obrysii]

A Prayer for Dawn - not because it was a particularly bad book (though the ending was rushed and incoherent, and completely set at a different pace from the rest of the book), but because one of the worst creative writing teachers I've had forced us to read it (and buy it, because it was a college course) because one of his buddies wrote it.

Forcing your class to buy a bad book because your friend wrote it is bad - and the fact the book really isn't anything special, showcasing no unique or creative literary style, just makes it all the worse.

[cody.burton]

The Awakening by Kate Chopin. The moral comes out to basically:
It's alright that I have affairs and then decide to suicide and leave my children motherless because... Well, actually my life is pretty damn good, seeing as I don't have to work at all because my husband pays for everything and we have servants to do all the work at home.

[Tengu]

This would include The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, right? The only reason I even remember that book is because it stands out as the single book from high school that I least desire to ever read again.


Luckily I didn't even know this book exists. Hmm, frankly, I have a hard time thinking of a book I really hate that was not written in Poland and therefore would be known to someone outside of this land... and good for you, because titles such as Granica ("The Border") or Nad Niemnem ("Over Niemen" - it's a river in Poland) are so horrible and dull that our literature teacher herself admitted she wouldn't introduce them in the program if she had a choice.

[Spiryt]

Luckily I didn't even know this book exists. Hmm, frankly, I have a hard time thinking of a book I really hate that was not written in Poland and therefore would be known to someone outside of this land... and good for you, because titles such as Granica ("The Border") or Nad Niemnem ("Over Niemen" - it's a river in Poland) are so horrible and dull that our literature teacher herself admitted she wouldn't introduce them in the program if she had a choice.

Buahahaha!
... ekhm
It's good that I never read it. I always surrendered after few pages. But I agree, and I would also add : " Ludzie Bezdomni", "Cudzoziemka" and few else. They were so pointless, depressing and ultimately dull...

From some reason I also hated " Kamienie na szaniec ".

Geez, I don't even know what titles they have in english editions (if they exist) - but as you can see, I mostly hated my obligatory school readings:smalltongue:

[Winterwind]

Hmmm... I can hardly think of any books I genuinely hated, though there were some which bored me enough to prevent me from finishing reading them (which is quite an accomplishment, for I read quickly and am usually interested enough in anything written to at the very least reach its end).
The only book I can think of that I read (and had to read for... um, I suppose it corresponds to college) and that indeed managed to disgust me was Günter Grass' Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse). Unnh. Not to mention that I found everyone in that book unsympathetic and their plight not interesting, my major beef with it was that I found it aesthetically repulsive. The narrative structure is weird and incoherent, and both the images invoked and the words chosen to do so are plainly ugly. Now, I know that's intentional, but that does not make me like the book any tiny bit more.
The fact that the guy got a literature Nobel prize (albeit not for this particular book) is disheartening.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I have an irrational hatred for Charles Dickens. I tried to tackle "A Tale of Two Cities" when I was in 6th grade and it put me off him for life. Yes, I know I shouldn't have tried reading it back then. That's why the hatred is irrational.

No, Dickens hating is entirely rational.


Clearly they have to die in the end, since that's the definition of tragedy, but PLEASE! Can it be in a better way than leaning out a balcony and suddenly slipping and falling off? Have him stabbed or something!

Except in the original Greek definition, where Tradgedy is just anything that doesn't count as comedy and contains a single day's worth of action. The worsed tradgedies are actually the ones when some people are alive over to spend the rest of their lives in torment.


Both Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson

I wont even begin to talk, they were just terrible, terrible books.

Swiss Family Robsinson, the book where a family are stranded on a desert island with an infinate supply of ammunition and wild Rhinos to hunt. Right...


I know, because she told me. I asked her why we were doing the load of codswallop known as Divine Wind when we could have been doing Othello (I have never, ever studied any Shakespear ever, which is a pain cuz I'd really like to), and she told me "I had to choose something everyone could understand."

Not having to study Shakespeare is actually a blessing if you actually like his work.


The Awakening by Kate Chopin. The moral comes out to basically:
It's alright that I have affairs and then decide to suicide and leave my children motherless because... Well, actually my life is pretty damn good, seeing as I don't have to work at all because my husband pays for everything and we have servants to do all the work at home.

I heard read someone's writings on that book once. It was something like "what do you call someone who gets bored with a spouse who works every day to supply money for them and sleeps with someone else without being repremanded, if the person is a man, he's a cheating scumbag, if it's a woman, she's the heroine of a New York Times best seller and an inspiration to a generation of women".

[JabberwockySupafly]

I'll probably get booed off the board for this one, so to play it safe:

*Erects his flame-shield*


Hehehe...erect... *blink...blink* Oh. Sorry. My contribution to the offal pile would have to be anything written by that hack who tries to, and somehow succeeds at, calling himself a fantasy writer, R.A. Salvatore. Especially anything with Drizz't. The man suffers from serious Favourite NPC Syndrome.

In case you're wondering what FNS is, it's when a DM/GM in a roleplaying game has an NPC with the party that, no matter how cool or powerful the party is, the NPC just has to be cooler and/or more powerful. He also cannot die. You can use True Creation to call into being enough dark or anti- matter to cause a singularity,black hole, or supernova, and said NPC will survive somehow, usually with the DM uttering such words as "He just does. I'm the DM, and I say he survives." Or if you just use sheer brutality to knock them into negative umpteen billion hit points, then the DM just says "No, he blocks all your attacks. In a really cool way too." That is the feeling I get from Drizz't.

Also, I hate reading fantasy novels where you can practically hear the dice rolling. Salvatore's books are so close to being ripped directly from what feels like an actual module or gaming session I'm shocked he doesn't include the exact spell names, the Save DCs, and breaks to get more coke & doritos. I read about 20 or so pages of The Crystal Shard and then promptly gave it back to my friend. By hurling it at him with all the might my spindly dice-chucking arms could muster.


hehehe... erect...

[rakkoon]

Titles are kind of difficult. I think I only ever threw away 2 books after 10 pages. The first was about a depressed telepathic cat and the second was the Gor book written from the woman's perpective. I like the Gor books in the typical Swords & Sorcery way but dislike the view of women. Having an entire book written from the viewpoint of these BDSM women is just too much.

Then again to each his own. Good topic by the way

Drizz't....bad but did finish the book.

[WalkingTarget]

Book I was greatly disappointed in, but finished anyway: A Tale of Two Cities for pretty much the same reasons others have given. I think I would have liked Great Expectations more if it hadn't been for 9th grade English class. The teacher had a tendency to ask "what do you think..." questions when really asking you to tell her what her opinion was. Maybe I'll read it again one day.

Only book I've ever given up on: The Mists of Avalon. Just couldn't get into it. After a few hundred pages I just put it down and didn't pick it up again.

Not sure that I've read anything that I genuinely hated.

[Winterwind]

Only book I've ever given up on: The Mists of Avalon. Just couldn't get into it. After a few hundred pages I just put it down and didn't pick it up again.Heh. That was the book I was thinking of in my last post, when I mentioned books that bored me enough to prevent me from finishing them. I actually got through most of it, in the hope that something that would awaken my interest, that I could relate to, or that would somehow justify the hype would happen... negative. Nothing at all.
I don't hate it, but it's clearly not a book for me.

[Oslecamo]

I'm going to be sooo flamed for this, but I'll say it anyway.

Ender's game.

At first it actually seemed interesting. I actually liked the first chapters. But as the story advances I simply loathed it and only managed to finish trough sheer force of will.

Why? Because by the end of the book the author decided that logic wasn't a necessary thing for a story. Let's review the final battle shall we?

Evil alien empire general:Sir, the enemy is aprocahing the planet were we really stupidly gathered all but one of our supreme leaders wich, if killed will mean the end of our empire. We have around a thousand more ships than the enemy equiped with the latest technology. I must remind you sir that the enemy posesses a powerfull and unknown ranged weapon that seems to deal more damage the bigger the target is. Shall we order all the ships to open fire so we kill them in a barrage of deadly projectiles? Or shall we atempt a desesperate atempt attack by throwing our endless hordes of ships against the enemy from all directions at once to overrun them?

Evil alien empire supreme comander: No. All units hold fire. Nobody shoots anything!

EAEG:Sir, the enemy is aproching our planet...

EAESC:Order our ships to open the way for them.

EAEG:And when they are surrounded we open fire right?

EAESC.No. By no means open fire.

EAEG: Sir, with all due freacking respect, if we don't open fire I really can't see how can we defeat the enemy.

EAESC: Ah, but you see, our enemy is very smart and managed to outmaneuver us untill now. He expects us to open fire. If we don't open fire, then his plans will be ruined and we shall be victorious!

EAEG:Sir the enemy is entering the atmosphere. Please let us shoot the ground to space defenses, I beg you.

EAESC:NO! Don't shoot! It's essential that by no means we try to stop the enemy.

EAEG:Ok, that's it(shoots himself).

C'mon, that last battle was the lamest stupidest thing I ever saw in my entire life. Put all the queens in the same planet? Don't shoot at the enemy? Don't even try to block his path? How could Ender ever lose that battle? How could he actually lose the war when the enemy seems to be ruled by a buggy AI that seems to suffer from ninja syndrom(th more they are the easier they are do defeat)?

Not to mention his brother taking over the world by the internet. The people of Eath may be stupid, but I doubt they would be stupid enough to make supreme comander of the Earth a young boy that actually never did anything.


Oh, and the second book...Mary sue much? Everybody loves Ender, be it the mysterious aliens or the machine spirit/internet entity who rules all technology, and he just needs to walk and say his wishes that reality obeys him.

[Tengu]

Buahahaha!
... ekhm
It's good that I never read it. I always surrendered after few pages. But I agree, and I would also add : " Ludzie Bezdomni", "Cudzoziemka" and few else. They were so pointless, depressing and ultimately dull...

From some reason I also hated " Kamienie na szaniec ".

Geez, I don't even know what titles they have in english editions (if they exist) - but as you can see, I mostly hated my obligatory school readings:smalltongue:

Thanks for reminding me about Homeless People - a godawful and extremely pretentious book (the main hero sits down under a tree split by lightning, which symbolises how his spirit is feeling split at the moment - how deeeeeep).

And I haven't actually read any of these horrible books I mentioned. Fragments were enough to discourage me completely.

[Adumbration]

David and Leigh Eddings, The Dreamers.

Seriously, what the f***? It's one of the few books that have made me want to strangle all the main characters and cheer for the bad guy. Except that the bad guy is apparently impotent. And gets beaten up time after time. In almost the bloody same way.

Don't get me wrong, I used to like the Eddings books. I enjoyed Althalus and Belgariad.

But in the Dreamers... Every single character and the interactions between them feels like it's ripped straight through from their previous books. Plus, they're all smug bastards. And no good guy ever gets killed. Or even hurt. It feels like they're charicatyres of good guys, except that they're not. The Eddings apparently were serious.

It's like they suddenly just decided to make a run for the money and write complete crap for four books. The only reason I've read three of them is a masochism and desperate hope that it might get better. No such luck.

I mean, c'mon. They could do better than that. (I'm still kinda hoping that it could be just due to translation, but hey, no one can translate that badly and get away with it.)

[Telonius]

I've encountered lots of books that were dumb, poorly executed, or bad. There are only a small number I actually hate.

- Beloved, by Toni Morrison.
- The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand.
- The entire Wheel of Time series (except for book 1), by Robert Jordan.
- Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes.

Catcher in the Rye was on the list for a long time. It's been granted a provisional reprieve until I get around to reading it again from the alternate perspective suggested by (I think) Rubakhin.

[cody.burton]

Catcher in the Rye was on the list for a long time. It's been granted a provisional reprieve until I get around to reading it again from the alternate perspective suggested by (I think) Rubakhin.

What is this alternate perspective? I disliked the book, but so many people that I respect about this stuff like it, so I want to give it another chance.

[Querzis]

The Alchemist. I had never started to sleep while readin a book or started to sleep in the afternoon but that book managed to make me do both. Its that boring. And yes, its really so boring that I wanted to rip the book apart but I coudnt since I had to read for school...but I did it as soon as the exam was over though.

Basically, its the story of a guy who travel in search of a treasure and that learn at the end of the book that the destination isnt as important as everything he learned while he was traveling...now I kinda agree with that moral I guess but the problem is, thats what the book is all about. 200 pages resumed in one sentence, the rest is just really unimportant and uninteresting stuff. Hell, the only time where there could have actually been some kind of action, when he predicted that they were going to be attacked, he spend about ten pages trying to convince everyone hes telling the thruth...and then they dont talk about the battle, they just say they won. Youpee...

[Jorkens]

Don't even bother putting "no offense." Somebody WILL take offense. It's just that you don't have to care:smallwink:

The book that I hated with a passion was Things Fall Apart.
I was about to launch into an impassioned defence, and then realized I was thinking of Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (who knows why I got the two mixed up?) which is rather different.

[V Junior]

Stardust. Ugggh. The movie was so much better.

The movie had a clear ending, was quite funny, and had some really exciting bits. The book was an anticlimax, and it was actually quite sad at the end. I didn't like the book at all.

It's the only time I've ever liked a movie more than its book...

[kamikasei]

Stardust. Ugggh. The movie was so much better.

The movie had a clear ending, was quite funny, and had some really exciting bits. The book was an anticlimax, and it was actually quite sad at the end. I didn't like the book at all.

It's the only time I've ever liked a movie more than its book...

Books... are allowed to be sad at the end, you know. And to imply continuity between the events of the book and what happens before and after it (actually, how did it lack a clear ending? It's been a while since I read it, but as I recall it did, in fact, end, and it was quite clear where it ended). They are also allowed to not be funny when they're not comedies.

It just seems strange to me to say you hate a book just because the movie of it was more to your taste.

[Inigo Montoya]

A Separate Peace.
The moral of that story:Everyone is evil, except people who get killed by jealous friends.
:smallyuk:

[Morty]

Only book I've ever given up on: The Mists of Avalon. Just couldn't get into it. After a few hundred pages I just put it down and didn't pick it up again.


Really? I personally liked Mists of Avalon very much, even though it was hard to read and pessimistic like hell. Strange how people's tastes can differ.
I'm personally lucky to never have read any book I'd really hate that wasn't an obligatory school read, in which case Tengu and Spiryt listed all books I loathe already and I'm likely to loathe in the future.

[Telonius]

What is this alternate perspective? I disliked the book, but so many people that I respect about this stuff like it, so I want to give it another chance.

According to (I'll call it Rubakhin from here on out, though I really can't remember who it was), it makes a lot more sense if you realize Holden is suffering from clinical depression throughout.

[WalkingTarget]

Really? I personally liked Mists of Avalon very much, even though it was hard to read and pessimistic like hell. Strange how people's tastes can differ.

Yeah, I started it because a friend recommended it (and loaned me his copy) and I've overheard a few conversations between people discussing it since then who seemed to think it was good. I just couldn't get interested in it. Maybe I had just been spoiled by other good versions of the Arthur legends.

Hard-to-read and pessimistic outlooks don't faze me (I really like House of Leaves and Of Mice and Men, so I think I've covered both bases there at the least).


According to (I'll call it Rubakhin from here on out, though I really can't remember who it was), it makes a lot more sense if you realize Holden is suffering from clinical depression throughout.

I only read it recently (last summer, I think) and it dawned on me about 2/3 of the way through that Holden is probably narrating the whole story from a mental institution.

[valadil]

Technically speaking I can't say that I hated the whole Wheel of Time series because I gave up on it in book 4. It was so bad I didn't read anything else for the better part of a year till I was introduced to GRRM.

The only thing worse than WoT for me was Pride and Prejudice. I had to read it 9 years ago and I still get pissed off thinking about it. Just to get through the damn thing I bribed myself with Tolkien. I'd read a page of Austen and then a page of the Silmarillion. In comparison, the Silmarillion was quite readable.

[Mr. Scaly]

The Baldur's Gate novelisation.

Now...I have nothing against books based on video games. Provided that certain qualities are met. For example:

-the basic plotline of the game must be followed, for the most part. Tasteful improvisation is allowed. This is not present. Abdel Adrian, the disgrace of a PC that calls himself a Bhaalspawn, likes to skip everything and simply murder his way to victory instead. Case in point? Yaga Shura, the invincible fire giant. Abdel strolls right out and kills him DESPITE the invicibility. Everything epic about that quest was leeched out.

-the characters must remain as likeable as in the game. This is not so. In the immortal words of one Amazon.com reviewer...

"The protagonist, Abdel Adrian (may his wormlike soul be used as a bait for Hadesian fish forever), is stupider than an old boot, violent, selfish and weak-willed. He's also a hero, it says so in the book. It appears that he'd killed Khalid and Jaheira had fallen in love with him (anyone who's played either BG knows that's not exactly likely). And now this "Jaheira" was captured; what is the first thing our hero does? Goes to save her? No, that's the second thing, the first is to betray her with another woman. And then Adrian (may his name be used as a swearword by people with good taste everywhere) has to be dragged along the plot forcefully, because his attitude is "Why would I wanna save the world and myself? I'll just go home." Apparently, Athans' BG 1 was a growth story where he became a... better person, and it shows in that now he occasionally decides *not* to kill someone after all, or pauses to think a few hypocratic thoughts."

And another one...

"The remaining characters are brushed over with such cursory dialogue and minimal depth to the extent that they might be regarded as garden gnomes as opposed to companions on an epic quest."

Wow, I wish I could vocalise my loathing that well.

-There must be more plot than violence and sex. There was not. Nuff said.

-The author has to be able to bring life to it all. Philip Athans massacred the story of Baldur's Gate so badly that the best Drew Karpyshyn was sew the body back together for a respectable funeral.

[Mewtarthio]

The Lost World, by Michael Crichton. It's a Crichton novel, so you'd expect mindless action that's clearly intended to be adapted into a screenplay. You get a long essay on Crichton's thoughts about the evolution of dinosaurs. Oh, and this hilarious GUI From Hell that's intentionally designed to screw the protagonists (seriously, why would you even have a "fold menu up into a cube and spin around really quickly" button?).

Chricton is, incidentally, the reason behind my policy of avoiding books that have the author's name printed at twice the size of the title:

http://blog.king7.com/images/next.jpg

[Serpentine]

Only book I've ever given up on: The Mists of Avalon. Just couldn't get into it. After a few hundred pages I just put it down and didn't pick it up again.Yeah.. This one I didn't even make a conscious decision to give up on. I just put it down and never picked it up again...


Stardust. Ugggh. The movie was so much better.

The movie had a clear ending, was quite funny, and had some really exciting bits. The book was an anticlimax, and it was actually quite sad at the end. I didn't like the book at all.

It's the only time I've ever liked a movie more than its book...Huh. I have no idea when I actually read the book, but I seem to recall quite enjoying it. Normally I dislike books and movies with unhappy endings, and I don't remember this one having anything like that. I should read it again sometime, though...


Technically speaking I can't say that I hated the whole Wheel of Time series because I gave up on it in book 4.That's about when I gave up on them, too. All the characters are just so despicable :smallyuk:

The only thing worse than WoT for me was Pride and Prejudice. I had to read it 9 years ago and I still get pissed off thinking about it. Just to get through the damn thing I bribed myself with Tolkien. I'd read a page of Austen and then a page of the Silmarillion. In comparison, the Silmarillion was quite readable.Huh. I really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. You know she was making fun of middle class Victorian England, right? That it's not a serious book?

[Azerian Kelimon]

My contribution: The Silmarillion.

Yes. Yes, I know you practically NEED to read it to be able to discuss LoTR seriously. But I just can't bring myself to read it. It's so goddanged DRY! And the same thing happened with the second book of LoTR, though I thankfully managed to read it fully. The first one, the Hobbit, and the last one get a pass for actually having a plot that moves at decent speed and is interesting, but those two...UGH! That's probably the reason Peter Jackson's movies got so much critical acclaim. By speeding the plot up, LoTR suddenly becomes a LOT more enjoyable.

[WalkingTarget]

The Lost World, by Michael Crichton. It's a Crichton novel, so you'd expect mindless action that's clearly intended to be adapted into a screenplay. You get a long essay on Crichton's thoughts about the evolution of dinosaurs. Oh, and this hilarious GUI From Hell that's intentionally designed to screw the protagonists (seriously, why would you even have a "fold menu up into a cube and spin around really quickly" button?).

Chricton is, incidentally, the reason behind my policy of avoiding books that have the author's name printed at twice the size of the title:

http://blog.king7.com/images/next.jpg

Yeah, not as good as JP. Having read the original Lost World by A.C. Doyle I found the intentional parallels interesting.

Side note, most of the Crichton paperbacks I own have his name and the title in equal sized fonts. That's a problem with becoming a multi-bestseller author, your name becomes its own marketing.


Huh. I have no idea when I actually read the book, but I seem to recall quite enjoying it. Normally I dislike books and movies with unhappy endings, and I don't remember this one having anything like that. I should read it again sometime, though...

It's just not as "happy" as the film is. Yvaine returns to the sky alone after Tristan dies (of old age). And the witches aren't punished, they just fail to get their youth.

That's about when I gave up on them, too. All the characters are just so despicable :smallyuk:

I'm having trouble seeing what's so despicable about Perrin? Granted it's been a few years since I've read any of them.


My contribution: The Silmarillion.

Hey, I'm a big Tolkien fan and even I recognize that your complaints here are justified (maybe not enough to hate it, but it sounds more like you can't plod your way through it than genuine animosity, no?). Tolkien's style definitely isn't for everyone.

[Sundog]

I'm NOT going to give Catcher in the Rye any sort of reprieve. I LOATHE that book.

Holden Calder is the most unlikable character I've ever run into in literature. I hesitate even to give him the sobriquet of "protagonist"; he never makes a decision without second-guessing himself, barely manages to move himself from chapter to chapter, but simultaneously is completely and solely responsible for everything that befalls him - yet seems unable to take responsibility for his own actions. I'd call him "reprehensible", but he's too damned pathetic.

The book is competently written, yes, but is in no way a masterpiece - I wouldn't even rate the writing as above average. It has become famous because, for a few fleeting moments, it caught the zeitgeist of it's time - let us consign it back to that time.

[Winterwind]

My contribution: The Silmarillion.

Yes. Yes, I know you practically NEED to read it to be able to discuss LoTR seriously. But I just can't bring myself to read it. It's so goddanged DRY! And the same thing happened with the second book of LoTR, though I thankfully managed to read it fully. The first one, the Hobbit, and the last one get a pass for actually having a plot that moves at decent speed and is interesting, but those two...UGH! That's probably the reason Peter Jackson's movies got so much critical acclaim. By speeding the plot up, LoTR suddenly becomes a LOT more enjoyable.Funny how perceptions can vary. From my perspective, the second book was the one which Jackson screwed up the most, to the point where I like the first and third movie, but hate the second one. And terms I would attribute the Silmarillion with include "epic" and "tragic", but most certainly not dry (though I see how one might arrive at this conclusion).
Not trying to argue here, merely amused by the fact. :smallwink:


Holden Calder is the most unlikable character I've ever run into in literature. I hesitate even to give him the sobriquet of "protagonist"; he never makes a decision without second-guessing himself, barely manages to move himself from chapter to chapter, but simultaneously is completely and solely responsible for everything that befalls him - yet seems unable to take responsibility for his own actions. I'd call him "reprehensible", but he's too damned pathetic.I thought that was kind of the point of the book? :smallbiggrin:

[truemane]

The book that I hated with a passion was Things Fall Apart.


I was about to launch into an impassioned defence, and then realized I was thinking of Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (who knows why I got the two mixed up?) which is rather different.

You got them mixed up becasue they both allude to "The Second Coming" by Yeats. 'Things fall apart, the center cannot hold' AND 'What rough beast comes slouching towards Bethlehem.' I'm quoting from memory. So pardon my paraphrasing.


Anyway. I love threads like this because the infinite variety of human aesthetic taste continues to amaze me. And the frequency with which people dismiss older books as "bad" when really they just depend on sets of linguistic and literary and social conventions that aren't in place anymore.

You wouldn't read a book in Vietnamese (assuming you can't read Vietnamese) and say "I didn't get it. What a crap book." You'd say you couldn't understand it.

Same thing for the art of ANY age, place, time, or niche culture not your own. I mean, the book might still be crap, but you can't really make a valid judgement call until you understand something of the context in which the piece exists.

Older films get the same rap. Worse actually. But alas, the academics lost those battles some time ago....

Anyway.

I've only hated TWO books in all my life.

1. Son of a Smaller Hero by Mordecai Richler
2. Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

In both cases, I think it was the style of prose that set me off. I just couldn't get into the story because the language itself (or rather, my lack of proficiency in enjoying the language) was keeping me out.

But there you go.

I can completely understand why people hate the Silmarillion, though, unless you are interested in the content. I can't imagine anyone getting drawn in by the writing itself.

Same thing with Dickens. A lot of what's REALLY good about him and his work only really comes clear when you know more about the time and place and media in which he was writing.

[Hoggy]

Pretty much anything by Shakespeare (okay, they're plays, but we still were forced to read the scripts) and Dickens. I can't think of any specific reason tbh, so I think I'll just settle that to me, they're crap. Utter crap.

[KazilDarkeye]

I'll vote "Silas Marner the Weaver of Raveloe" by George Elliot (the pseudonym of Marion Evans).

Quoted as being
"The only George Elliot book in which nothing happens"
"Totally boring"
"A complete waste of an IGCSE corsework essay"

by my English class.

As for ^ some of the Dickens books aren't half bad, especially if you watch them as a play e.t.c before reading the book.

[WarriorTribble]

But in the Dreamers... Every single character and the interactions between them feels like it's ripped straight through from their previous books.Yep, this is Eddings writing style in a nut shell, they take their previous character types, and put them in new settings. I'm kind of surprised you didn't notice how the Althalus characters were so much like the Belgariad folks.

With that said, I hated the sequel to the Belgariad. It started out decently enough, but the writer got lazy and started railroading the plot every fricken time a conflict was resolved (ex. Why the hell can't I rescue my son? Cause you must find the rock of DOOM, and if you don't the WORLD IS DOOMED! Why the hell must I enter a random jousting competition? DOOMED WORLD! PAY ATTENTION IDIOT!), and fairly three dimensional character became caricatures (which Adumbration also complains about heh). It didn't help that the main character also had an artifact that made him omipotent. I could also go on a long convoluted rant about how the ending didn't make any logical sense, and was REALLY disappointing.In the end, the conflict between Light and Dark was resolved by the simple decision of one seer. Whoever she picked would win, and the other would die out. Not too surprisingly since A. The agents of Light equaled good guys, and B. The Dark agents were horrible monsters who metaphorically raped puppies, despite the handwave that Light and Dark ITESELF were two sides of the same coin, you KNEW she'd picked the side that allowed her to keep her friends and future husband to be. Ya know... instead of the one that would probably have her gang raped, and sacrificed to a Dark God. When everything else is equal you're just have to pick the side that best suites you, Dark never had a chance.
Same thing for the art of ANY age, place, time, or niche culture not your own. I mean, the book might still be crap, but you can't really make a valid judgment call until you understand something of the context in which the piece exists.Out of curiosity, how niche must something be before one should hold judgment?

[Sir Enigma]

"All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren - not very interesting basic structure, and a couple spots where the author appears to have gone insane (did anyone make any sense out of the Great Twitch stuff?)

Wheel of Time - loved the first two, gave up at the beginning of Book 8 having absolutely forced myself through to that point (this was in a summer that I was bored out of my mind, and it was still painful to read)

David Copperfield (Dickens) - eight hundred pages of filler. I liked Tale of Two Cities, but couldn't see any point at all to David Copperfield.

Children of the Mind (Orson Scott Card). I thought the Ender series went downhill, and this one really ruined it for me - having read it, I don't like the ones before it any more

[Jorkens]

I thought that was kind of the point of the book? :smallbiggrin:
Yeah, if Salinger was trying to set him up as some kind of Nietzschian ubermensch who we should all aspire to be it'd be epic fail, but to represent a generation (or part of a generation) of young people who are cynical and jaded about the world they inhabit but lack the will to do anything about it, he's pretty much spot on.

@truemane - give that man a coconut. "What rough beast, it's hour come at last \\ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

[CurlyKitGirl]

Pretty much anything by Shakespeare (okay, they're plays, but we still were forced to read the scripts) and Dickens. I can't think of any specific reason tbh, so I think I'll just settle that to me, they're crap. Utter crap.

You sir, are a fool.

@Adumbration: As much as I hate abbreviations: QFT.


Myself:
After HP3 I had to force my way through them for even one original paragraph. And I, who collect whole series, gave up on this one. It's bad.
The Amber Spyglass. I couldn't remember what the book was about when I was midway through the fleeping thing! I have a very very good memory when it comes to plots. Excepionally good. But with this one, I don't think I actually read to the end. But I know I did. Just didn't take in a single wor because it felt preposterous. Couldn't have been more than thirteen/fourteen at the time.
Lord of the Flies. We had to read it for GCSE English. Hated it. And I read it the day we got it. Hated it. Then we had roughly six months of reading, rereading and digesting it.
Of Mice And Men. We spent a month reading this for GCSE English before they realised we weren't Bottom Set. A month wasted. Hated it so much. Where's the sense in it?
Lord of the Rings. Never saw the films either. Didn't want to. I read the series for the first time in Year 5 (age 10) and loved it. Went back in Year Six (age 11) and I couldn't even make it through Book 1.
WoT 10. I read the first nine. See my dedication? But 10 just. It just existed. Heck, I even read 11 but that book just broke the metaphorical donkey's back. Where was the point?????
Eragon. 'nuff said.
Possibly The Mayor of Casterbridge. During our introuctory Eng Language lesson for AS Level English Language we were given numerous extracts from different sources. Including the opening to that book. It was only maybe two paragraphs. And deadly. The entire class blanked out when it was read aloud by the class. I actually wrote on my handout "NEVER READ THIS."
Anything by Daphne du Maurier Even if she is a local writer. I can't get into her work.It's just impenetrable.
Any book where the writer kills off the main character for no other reason than shock value. ANY BOOK.

[truemane]

Out of curiosity, how niche must something be before one should hold judgment?

Entirely valid point. That's the rub isn't it? At what point do you declare something just plain bad, regardless of what it's socio-symbolic context is? And is context even a valid criterion when discussing artistic quality? Shouldn't GREAT ART transcend both time and place? Or is the whole idea of ART, let alone GREAT bound up in space and time?

I don't know. Either idea, taken to extremes, is absurd. I'd say that the answer lies somwhere in the middle, but that's absurd too.

I DO know that learning how to appreciate art (film, dance, sculpture, etc) outside of my own experience has greatly increased my appreciation for it. But I also know that no amount of learning will ever bring me around to liking D.H Lawrence. Or Britney Spears.

So there you go. For whatever it's worth.

[Innis Cabal]

I'm going to have to throw my hat in with the D&D book crowd. Salvatore especially for many many reasons, other then Drizzt. Seriously undermining a whole race of fantasy play with his "language" and theme's is a discredit to the gaming community, i know thats comming from left field, but i cant RP with a Dark elf in any game without hearing about Lloth or Drow speak, etc. And thats just sad

Also, the Giver.....just...what ever

[streakster]

I read of Mists of Avalon as Mists of Everness, and was ready to ask how anyone could not like that book when I finally figured it out. So, the book I hate? The Xanth series. I never liked those novels, for all that I liked his other stuff.

[Culwch]

I'll vote "Silas Marner the Weaver of Raveloe" by George Elliot (the pseudonym of Marion Evans).

Quoted as being
"The only George Elliot book in which nothing happens"
"Totally boring"
"A complete waste of an IGCSE corsework essay"

by my English class.

As for ^ some of the Dickens books aren't half bad, especially if you watch them as a play e.t.c before reading the book.

I just have to second a George Elliot book, although in my case it's the Mill on the Floss. I had to read it for my English Literature class at the University. I loathed 19th c. English prose fiction ever after.

Let me summarise it briefly. In my edition, the book is 617 pages long. As far as I remember, it's a Bildungsroman about two children, Tommy and Maggie Tulliver, whose father debates control (or ownership) of a mill on the river Floss with his neighbour, in a court of law. Father looses, gets angry, falls down from his horse, hits his head on the rock, falls seriously ill. His family becomes destitute, on his deathbed he makes Tommy swear never to reconcile with the neighbour. Tommy's mother manages to have him apprenticed to a merchant. The other apprentice is a handicapped son of the neighbour. They don't get along until teenage Maggie comes to visit and falls in love with the gentle neighbour's son. The families reconcile, Maggie rejects a suitor to be with the neighbour's son, whom Tommy accepts. We're on the page 615 now. Just as things appear to be all fine and the family will live happily ever after, on page 616 Floss overflows and floods the surroundings, and by the first paragraph of page 617, Tommy and Maggie drown.

This is the only time I was furious with a book for wasting my time.

[Lizardfolk Lich]

Hate the entire Artemis Fowl series.

[H. Zee]

The first Wheel of Time book was genuinely quite good. Not a masterpiece, but good clean fun, and I enjoyed it.

As I read the second and third books, I started to get this sinking feeling... But I decided to keep reading and give it a second chance.

Then I hit the fourth book, and from there it all went to hell. I gave up on the series after reading the sixth one (I wanted to give up halfway, but I have never given up on a book, no matter how bad, so I forced my way through using sheer force of will).

It's a shame, because I think the first one showed a bit of potential.

ALSO! Anything by Jacqueline Wilson I passionately loathe. I seem to remember being forced to read a few of her books at primary school, and they made me ridiculously angry.

[Nevrmore]

The Scarlet Letter.

Beyond the fact that Nathaniel Hawthorne has the nasty habit to be over-descriptive (an entire chapter describing what the outside of the mayor's manor looked like) which really irks me, the story has 4 principle characters, and the closest one that is likable, the protagonist Hester, is still an adulterer who openly admitted that she did not love her husband. Beyond that, Reverend Dimmesdale is shallow and cowardly, Chillingworth is veangeful, manipulative, and creepy, and Pearl is just an average 7-year-old girl who is the Mary Sue of all Mary Sues.

[SPOILERS BELOW, I GUESS...]


Seriously, she somehow deduced that Dimmesdale was her real father because she sees him cupping his hand over his heart a lot. She's an annoying demon child but Hawthorne treats her as if she was the most perfect, most intelligent little girl that ever lived. She's the only one that not only gets a halfway decent ending to the story, but a ridiculously great one. To wit:

Reverend Dimmesdale admits to the township that he was the one who had an affair with Hester, and dies right on the stage due to his failing health.

Chillingworth, having devoted his life to making Dimmesdale miserable, finds nothing else to live for and withers away to death within a year.

Hester moves back to England where she lives the rest of her days as an old, lonely widow.

Pearl grows up, gets a wonderful husband, bears children, and oh yeah, Chillingworth was apparently filthy rich and left all of his money to her, leaving Pearl as the richest heiress in all of America to live the rest of her days in peace and prosperity.

[The Rose Dragon]

Out of the books that I finished? Web of Deceit.

Basically, during the entire book, people are killed by the villains, except for the heroes, who get to kill the villains. Or something like that.

Oh, and one of the good guys turns out to be the villain.

And I actually find Dan Brown's books enjoyable. Web of Deceit is just... nothing.

[Megalomaniac2]

Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon is a monumental doorstopper which spends an ungodly number of pages building up a world war... then has the war over and done with quicker and easier than a fight between Jack Bauer and Kate Moss. The time is passed with right-wing browbeating and borderline-racist anti-Chinese sentiment. I was more than slightly disappointed.

[Revlid]

Noughts and Crosses, by Malorie Blackman.

Everyone else raved about it, but as a lover of alternate reality stories, I couldn't help but wonder how the world got to be the way it did, something that is never expanded upon. Did the Romans, the civilized-world-dominating society of whites, never exist? Were they beaten by an African nation? Where did the African nations get the resources to build the sort of warships needed to spread across the world early on?
Other things that are never expanded upon are the cultures of the Noughts or the Crosses, their musics and religions and histories, and the more though you put into it, the more you realise how little thought Blackman has. Eventually you work out that this is actually just a rather standard "Early 20th Century Racism" story, only with a palette swap to add controversy.

I couldn't be bothered to finish the first book, and ended up just tacking the same ending onto it that I do for every dull book I never finish - Doctor Doom conquers the world and fixes everything.

[SurlySeraph]

The Worldwar series, by Harry Turtledove. For the uninitiated, it's an alternate history book. The premise is an alien invasion in the midst of World War II. Sounds like it would make for some interesting battle scenes, right? Wrong.

Basically, the battle scenes are reasonable, except that Turtledove isn't creative at all. The aliens have freakin' starships, but all of their combat technology is equal to modern human stuff - assault rifles, helicopters, guided missiles, advanced tanks, fighter planes. That's all. No lasers, nothing imaginative. They do have nuclear weapons, which they use entirely at random. And the humans start making nuclear weapons, but the author can't keep track of how many weapons he said the humans had built at what time and just has a nuclear explosion happen basically whenever he feels like it; nukes never go off anywhere near any of the characters anyway.

Unfortunately, there aren't many battle scenes. I estimate that there is about 1 battle scene for every 4 sex scenes. Yep, there's a hideous war going on, and the battered human forces are struggling for the very existence of the species against a threat that they can hardly imagine - and so all the characters start having sex left and right. Turtledove even puts in the cliched fantasy of men and women being captured by aliens for breeding experiments, that's how horny and unimaginative he is. Also, he puts an insane amount of emphasis on how the aliens are all male, because they don't have women with them, and human women are important as shown by a few female characters who... like... carry supplies and stuff... between having sex with all the male characters in their respective regions.

Most of the characters are 2-dimensional but not too bad. But you know what the author does? Over the course of the series, he kills off all of the likeable characters he created. Every. Last. One. The first to go is an intelligent, well-meaning nuclear physicist. His wife cheats on the physicist with a sailor whom she hates, but it's justified because she was separated from her husband for THREE WHOLE MONTHS while he was off trying to find components to build nuclear weapons to SAVE HUMANITY, and gets pregnant. Then she decides to stay with the jackass, somewhat abusive sailor because she's pregnant. Then the physicist gets sent off on his thankless mission again, gets gonorrhea twice, and finally goes insane for no apparent reason and gets shot by another jackass, this time a cavalry commander. I can't list all the likeable characters who die, but suffice it to say that the author is a bastard.

I couldn't get more than halfway through the last book in the original series because it would mean slogging through a hundred pages of mean-spirited bastards and empty-headed sluts having sex with each other, with occasional cuts to the alien leadership falling apart. I just flipped through to check if the last two likeable characters survived: nope. A likeable alien who tried to broker a peace agreement is worked to death in a Siberian prison camp after his efforts get all his comrades enslaved, and a laid-back, non-evil SS officer suddenly decides that he hates Jews after all and gets shot down by his best friend (who isn't affected by being forced to kill his best friend in the slightest, and immediately goes off to have sex) after trying to nerve-gas the Warsaw ghetto.

Moving on to other books I hate: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye (which we read in school as our Mandatory Book By an Author who is Not a Dead White Male for the year) is just awful.

The book was apparently intended to make everyone who reads it feel uncomfortable. Oh, marvel at the poor living conditions, look how brainwashed children are into being racist against themselves, see how evil white people and especially white males are and how much they've corrupted black people, but remember that black people cause their own problems, as shown by this breathtakingly dysfunctional family. Everything is everyone's fault!

Morrison relies heavily on shock, as in multiple cases of rape and incest, several pedophilic characters, and many more descriptions of sex/erotic dreams/ whatever than necessary. The characters are mostly sort of believable, but most of them appear to be insane. I realize that a large part of why I hated the book is that I couldn't identify with the main character even a little bit (the main character is a poor black girl, I'm a middle-class white boy), but failing to understand it can't explain away why I hated it so much.

It was just bad - semi-plausible characters, rambling plot interspersed with lots of flashbacks, emphasis on how innocent the main characters are and the corruption of modern sexuality and racial self-hatred and lack of honest blah blah blah. It was simultaneously heavy-handed at delivering its message and bad at articulating exactly what that message was. I hate that book.

Also, Catcher in the Rye. I'm from a pretty well-off family. I go to an Ivy League school where I'm surrounded by arrogant hedonistic rich kids. I'm frequently depressed. I know exactly the kind of stuff Catcher in the Rye is about. So why do I hate it? Because I understand why Holden feels the way he does, and he has no right to feel that way. He's being a wimp. He knows his ideas are wrong, but he refuses to let go of them. He's a hypocrite and knows he's a hypocrite; this doesn't make him deeply sensitive and tragic, and makes him a punk who won't commit to what he knows is right. I have no tolerance for the "You can't understand me! No one can understand me! I'm just too special!" attitude that Holden has; I understand people like that, and there is nothing special about him. Having emotional problems does not make him intrinsically interesting or sympathetic.

Probably the reason that a lot of people like Catcher in the Rye is that Holden's personality seems to vary over the course of the book, depending on what situation he's in. Because the way he reacts to what's going on changes, almost everyone will see some passage where they have felt exactly the way Holden feels there. I remember one passage where I fully identified with Holden, but that didn't erase everything in the book that had made me hate him.

Also, Salinger infuriates me. He had a very good writing style, and he used it to write bland stories about how special kids are and how we should all listen to the sensitive people and whatnot. It's such a waste of talent.

And a new one that I haven't complained about on these forums before! Une Tempete, by Aime Cesaire, which we read in AP French. It's like The Bluest Eye, in that it tries to make you un-racist by bludgeoning you until you say "Okay, fine! Have it your way! All whites are evil! Stop telling me!" It's a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest, except completely different. Warning: I am going to spoil as much of the dull little plot that I possibly can.

Prospero is no longer a mostly benevolent old wizard who almost goes a bit too far in his desire for rightful vengeance. Instead, he's the incarnation of slave-owning and capitalism and colonialism and riot police and suchlike. He is very mean to poor Caliban, who has gone from being a barely restrained dumb fiend to basically Malcolm X mixed with Chief Sitting Bull, except too empathic and nature-worshipping to actually kill anyone. He's the hero. Ariel is closely based on Martin Luther King, but he's not the protagonist because he doesn't curse angrily at anyone in the name of freedom. But don't worry, he comes around in the end. As for the rest of the characters... they might as well not exist, for how much time Cesaire spends on them. Oh, except for Gonzalo, who is still a pretentious idiot. Now he's a pretentious idiot who is inconsiderate of the desires of indigenous peoples for their islands to be seen as more than just vacation colonies and is patronizing, since he perpetuates the "noble savage" stereotype. He somehow manages to represent organized religion, too.

It's basically a hundred twenty or so pages of Prospero saying something, and than Caliban proving him wrong, and then Prospero saying something Establishment-y and threatening, and then Caliban threatening him back. Every so often Ariel shows up and acts submissive to prove that nonviolent resistance is for pawns of the Establishment. Every so often, the other characters show up so that the Social Hierarchy may be Subverted by means of Honest Language and Deconstruction of Colonialist Concepts. At the end, everybody gets to leave except Caliban, who just wanted his goddamn island back. And then Prospero suddenly decides that the fact that Caliban is better than him enrages him so much that he won't leave. Then time passes and they apparently have fought a war in the interim. Caliban, with the Forces of Loving Nature on his side, is apparently beating Prospero, who has the Forces of Industrialization and Western Blah Blah Hegemonic Blah Power Blah on his side. But we don't know exactly what happens. Then it's over.

Much like The Bluest Eye, Une Tempete is a book that argues against racism in such a hackneyed way that it nearly makes me consider joining Stormfront or one of those other evil groups just so I can hear something positive about my race for once. Except Une Tempete is really concerned with colonialism more than race, so now I just want to disinter Columbus, Pizarro, Cortez, and the rest and shake all of their condescending, slave-taking, baby-murdering hands.

[AslanCross]

A Separate Peace.


I hated it when I took it up in high school, but when I reread it recently (because I had to write a test on it for my English class), I was able to appreciate it.

Oliver Twist, however, will never be redeemed in my eyes. Dickens, gargh. It was so overwrought, so overdramatic, and the narration was just so difficult to follow that I never finished it. And I was writing a test on it, too.

[Zarrexaij]

Eragon. OP summed it up nicely, but I'll add on it's deceptive in the fact he got a book deal for his male cow fecal matter so easily yet for aspiring writers they're just lucky for someone to even look at it.

A Separate Peace. The protagonist was a jerk. Not even a lovable jerk (there's several examples of unrealiable, really assholish yet still lovable protagonists, but I won't bother). I wanted to kick him in the 'nads. He came off as an annoying, whiny little jealous ****.

Scarlet Letter. OMG. Pretentious. Long-winded. Most characters were one dimensional. Nevrmore sums up my problems with it so well.

[Mr. Scaly]

July's People.

Honestly, I don't know why i hated that book so much. It just made me yawn every few words.

[TheElfLord]

The Baldur's Gate novelisation.


I could not agree more. I loved the games and was excited when I saw the books, but they were a disgrace to the name of the games.

The only other book I really loathe is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. The story is depressing, and the plot moves at a snails pace. Not to mention the tragic twist at the end is brought about by the stupidest idea I've ever seen in print. (If I knew how to do spoilers I would state that massive attack on intelligence, but I don't)

[an kobold]

Unfortunately, there aren't many battle scenes. I estimate that there is about 1 battle scene for every 4 sex scenes. Yep, there's a hideous war going on, and the battered human forces are struggling for the very existence of the species against a threat that they can hardly imagine - and so all the characters start having sex left and right. Turtledove even puts in the cliched fantasy of men and women being captured by aliens for breeding experiments, that's how horny and unimaginative he is. Also, he puts an insane amount of emphasis on how the aliens are all male, because they don't have women with them, and human women are important as shown by a few female characters who... like... carry supplies and stuff... between having sex with all the male characters in their respective regions.


AHAHAHA!

Seriously, I was waiting for someone to bring up Turtledove. I got into his Second Contact series before even trying Worldwar. The lizard's colonization fleet has arrived, and guess what? They bought females! And guess what happens? It turns out that the spice ginger, not only an addicting drug to the both alien genders, is an aphrodisiac that puts female lizards into heat! Which makes for. . .disturbing consequences when some human terrorists launch a ginger missile at the lizard's earth capital.

It was a real disappointment, because I found that his stuff around the south winning the Civil War was at least entertaining.

[GrassyGnoll]

Time of the Kraken. It begins with vikings and ends with vikings in space with jetpacks and lasers. That transition is as rough as it seems and happens in the last 4 chapters. The main character is a mangina, his companions range from worthless to pointless, and the story plods along with the subtlety of a retarded rhinoceros.

[Catskin]

Atlas Shrugged is philosophically interesting, but it's an abomination of literature. The same points are hammered in every three or so pages, and then after 1000 or so pages, there's a 60 page monologue which restates every theme in the novel multiple times. I understand philosophizing with a hammer, but she did it with a sledgehammer the size of New York and part of New Jersey.

I can find something rewarding from just about any piece of fiction. Except Atlas Shrugged. I'm feeling very good about the world that, including me, Ayn Rand has hit this list 3 times. No only is the work an abomination of literature, it's point is hammered home--over and over and over--with a tone of moral arrogance the like of which makes even the most self-righteous rehashed biblical allegory seem tolerant by comparison.

[DraPrime]

Geez, I leave this thread alone for a day and it grows to 3 pages. Anyway, I'd also have to add Johnny got his Gun. This is one of the most poorly executed anti-war books I have ever seen. The point that the author seems to have is that you should never fight, no matter what. Not even in self defense. Not to mention that the amount of run-on sentences is atrocious. If you want a good book describing the horrors of war, read All Quiet on the Western Front, not the piece of crap known as Johnny got his Gun. Although the Metallica song based off of it was awesome.

edit: When I have the time, I think I'll start consolidating a list of the books that people hate. I better get started soon before this thread is of monstrous size.

[Rare Pink Leech]

I find it interesting that most people here who say they hate The Wheel of Time say their hatred began with Book 4. Most everyone else I know of who hates the series loved the first six books, and say Book 7 is where it started going downhill. But I digress ...

I hate anything by Margaret Atwood. I was supposed to read The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace in highschool (emphasis on the word supposed) but I just couldn't do it. I can't say why I hate it either. I just can't force myself to read them.

Oh, and I hate The Belgariad with a fiery passion. Boring, predictable plot told in boring, predictable writing, with one-dimensional characters whose sole personality trait is based on racial stereotypes (look at me, I'm a dwarf! I'm burly and I drink ale!). Complete and utter trash.

[rubakhin]

What is to Be Done by Chernyshevsky.

NOBODY in the history of the universe likes, liked, or will like that book. Except Lenin. In fact both Nabokov and Dostoevsky found it so utterly stupid that they decided to write a couple of novels in complaint. I repeat: the novel is so deplorable that it inspires masterpieces. That is an unprecedented level of awful.

His stories are generally all right, but I have deep loathing for the prose style of Henry James. Though I maintain that Dickens is decent if you skip every third word. I cannot, however, stand Jane Austen. Especially Northanger Abbey. If that book doesn't have you thoroughly annoyed by the third page you're a better man than I. Good for you, Jane, you're clever, now can you please stop congratulating yourself and get on with the story?

As for more modern stuff, I have very little tolerance for Gary Shteyngart. He was nominated for a Bad Sex in Fiction award this year if you want an example of his prose style (and racial sensitivity).

However, the very worst book I have ever read was this ridiculous piece of vanity published crap that somehow managed to find its way into Yale's Sterling Memorial Library. Called, I think, Death to Reach a Star. It's a historical novel that takes place in revolutionary Russia, and is supposedly a true account of the author's past life as dictated to her during transcendental meditation or whatever. (I swear to God I am not making this up.) In the first few pages I had to suffer Russian peasants talking in phonetically spelled Northern European accents, one of whom said something along the lines of "Unhand me, ye moron! Tha kind o' kiss ye be wantin' starts wit' a betrothal!" and started pelting the main character with milk buckets pulled from hammerspace. Hammerspace. (I swear to God I am not making this up, either.)

At this point I was cautiously thinking "It could still theoretically be good!" But, um, no. The book was every bad slash fic cliche come to life, no matter how improbable. I gave up on it once our protagonist was kidnapped and sold to an aristocrat as a sex slave. (In Petersburg. In the 1920s.)

Then I flipped to the epilogue. And, uh, apparently at some point in time a time-traveler or an angel or something entered the novel, and it takes place in the 2020s, and some character was described as wearing a T-shirt with "the ancient Metallica symbol" on it. What the hell? Jesus, I couldn't even finish the epilogue, it was that bad.

[Serpentine]

I cannot, however, stand Jane Austen. Especially Northanger Abbey. If that book doesn't have you thoroughly annoyed by the third page you're a better man than I. Good for you, Jane, you're clever, now can you please stop congratulating yourself and get on with the story?I liked the first part of Northanger Abbey for making fun of the Gothic horror-mystery stories of the time, but the rest of it got a bit boring. I still prefer Pride and Prejudice of the ones I've read so far.

[Arkhaminmate]

Anything that was written by Tolkien, in my entire life i have yet been able to trudge through a single one of his short stories or novels, hell i couldn't even stay in the theater for the entire movie

[Telonius]

Pretty much anything by Shakespeare (okay, they're plays, but we still were forced to read the scripts) and Dickens. I can't think of any specific reason tbh, so I think I'll just settle that to me, they're crap. Utter crap.

I don't count Shakespeare as a book. It's meant to be performed, not read; and I wish that the American Education Establishment Conspiracy would realize that and start making kids see the plays instead of read them.

[Ryshan Ynrith]

I'd like to point out, at this point, that my mother is an English teacher who does, in fact, ensure that her students get to see the plays instead of just reading them. Makes all the difference.

But I suppose she's hardly representative of teachers as a whole.

[Rutee]

Has anyone mentioned anything by James Joyce joy is fun but pains not and pain ow that would kinda hurt I hate pain.

[WNxHasoroth]

I'm going to be sooo flamed for this, but I'll say it anyway.

Ender's game.

At first it actually seemed interesting. I actually liked the first chapters. But as the story advances I simply loathed it and only managed to finish trough sheer force of will.

Why? Because by the end of the book the author decided that logic wasn't a necessary thing for a story. Let's review the final battle shall we?

Evil alien empire general:Sir, the enemy is aprocahing the planet were we really stupidly gathered all but one of our supreme leaders wich, if killed will mean the end of our empire. We have around a thousand more ships than the enemy equiped with the latest technology. I must remind you sir that the enemy posesses a powerfull and unknown ranged weapon that seems to deal more damage the bigger the target is. Shall we order all the ships to open fire so we kill them in a barrage of deadly projectiles? Or shall we atempt a desesperate atempt attack by throwing our endless hordes of ships against the enemy from all directions at once to overrun them?

Evil alien empire supreme comander: No. All units hold fire. Nobody shoots anything!

EAEG:Sir, the enemy is aproching our planet...

EAESC:Order our ships to open the way for them.

EAEG:And when they are surrounded we open fire right?

EAESC.No. By no means open fire.

EAEG: Sir, with all due freacking respect, if we don't open fire I really can't see how can we defeat the enemy.

EAESC: Ah, but you see, our enemy is very smart and managed to outmaneuver us untill now. He expects us to open fire. If we don't open fire, then his plans will be ruined and we shall be victorious!

EAEG:Sir the enemy is entering the atmosphere. Please let us shoot the ground to space defenses, I beg you.

EAESC:NO! Don't shoot! It's essential that by no means we try to stop the enemy.

EAEG:Ok, that's it(shoots himself).

C'mon, that last battle was the lamest stupidest thing I ever saw in my entire life. Put all the queens in the same planet? Don't shoot at the enemy? Don't even try to block his path? How could Ender ever lose that battle? How could he actually lose the war when the enemy seems to be ruled by a buggy AI that seems to suffer from ninja syndrom(th more they are the easier they are do defeat)?

Not to mention his brother taking over the world by the internet. The people of Eath may be stupid, but I doubt they would be stupid enough to make supreme comander of the Earth a young boy that actually never did anything.


Oh, and the second book...Mary sue much? Everybody loves Ender, be it the mysterious aliens or the machine spirit/internet entity who rules all technology, and he just needs to walk and say his wishes that reality obeys him.

Wasn't the whole point that the Buggers found out that humans weren't hive mind drones but in fact that everyone was a thinking, feeling individual, and that the Buggers had basically been committing mass murder and that they accepted annihilation as redemption or something? I'm probably mixed up as I haven't read the story for a while, but knowing your knowledge of the fluff (or lack of it), I'm going to have to raise the point anyway.

Anyway, books I hate, a good majority of the Black Library books, for example, the hideous Ultramarines series, the Blood Angels series, Grey Knights etc. More mainstream novels, I hate Drizzt (every fricking time Salvatore mentions his fricking eyes glowing fricking purple I cry) for how everything after the first three books sucked, and how I still have to buy every book comes out. I also hate Dragonlance, and anything by those authors. I've torn up the books. I don't like 'em.

[Jack Squat]

The Scarlet Letter - This was one of the worst books to trudge though, I'd have stopped after the second chapter if it hadn't been for school. Seeing as how I know noone who remotely enjoys this book, I'm convinced that we're made to read it as an example of how bad a book can be.

Grapes of Wrath - We probably read this too late in the school year for me to think more than "I want this year to be over." I'm sure I'd think better of it if I read it again, but that's not on my to-do list anytime soon.

Wuthering Heights - Disregarding Ms. Bronte's lack of understanding of the concept of time, this book was still horrid. The main focus of the book, Heathcliff, was a monster up until the very end. He became the way he was because of his adoptive family abusing him, so I can understand him being out for revenge. However, this was the slowest, most unsatisfying revenge that could have been thought up. There's only one scene that really has any violence, the rest of it shows Heathcliff being about as slow as Hamlet in taking revenge, only without the internal character conflict or good writing.

[dish]

Has anyone mentioned anything by James Joyce joy is fun but pains not and pain ow that would kinda hurt I hate pain.

Yes, and I was a mountain flower yes with a red yes like the Andalusian girls do and take me down yes.

P.S.
Finnegan's Wake
Is one long spelling mistake
With not a lot
Of plot.

[pendell]

I forget it's name ... but there was a FR novel which starred a chaotic good drow elf female wizard.

It's not so much that I didn't want to read it again as I felt it was annoying.

1) The heroine was a wayyy overpowered Mary Sue.

Two are spoilers


2. Somehow, early in the book , the heroine is detected as a goody two-shoes by Drow society ... and yet does NOT wind up decorating the nearest altar in less than five minutes. Blatant interference which really knocked the believability now.

3. At the end of the book, drow magic which never worked on the surface of Faerun before suddenly does. Maybe there was a reason and the author was forced to do it, but it came off to me like a major re-write of the rules of the game so that the favored PC could still continue to do cool magic instead of instantly reverting to Commoner.



4. And of course the obvious problem that the heroine is Drizzt with a sex change and spells instead of swords. So not only do we have a Drizzt clone, we have an overpowered magic-using Drizzt clone. If Drizzt and Elminster were able to spawn a child, this would be her.

For that matter, there's a whole 'nother series of books by Salvatore with titles like 'Annihilation' and 'Dissolution' that chronicle a civil war in Menzobarranzan. My complaints were 1) The unrelenting stream of evil without any heroism got to be a bit much and 2) it was something like *seven novels*! Mediocrity is not improved by page count.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Rutee]

P.S.
Finnegan's Wake
Is one long spelling mistake
With not a lot
Of plot.

Quoth TV Tropes.
"At one point in the 1990s a revised and updated edition of Finnegans Wake was released, with an announcement that numerous typographical errors had been identified and corrected. One commentator quipped, 'Typos in Finnegans Wake? How can they tell?'"

[Tengu]

I'd like to throw "Star Wars books that aren't The Thrawn Trilogy or Shadows of the Empire" to the mix. Badly written, lots of ass pulls and (although I've not read this particular book) they've killed Chewie in one of them, which is inexcusable as without permission you are not allowed to kill or portray in a different light characters that you borrowed from another author!

[MeklorIlavator]

I'd like to throw "Star Wars books that aren't The Thrawn Trilogy or Shadows of the Empire" to the mix. Badly written, lots of ass pulls and (although I've not read this particular book) they've killed Chewie in one of them, which is inexcusable as without permission you are not allowed to kill or portray in a different light characters that you borrowed from another author!

I would add the X-wing series to that list, perhaps adding I, Jedi to that list as well.

[an kobold]

Actually, now that you mention it, anything written by Kevin J. Anderson. Anything from Star Wars to Dune, I try to read something by him and it drives me into frenzies of NERD RAAAGE! over the butchering and Mary Sue-isms that go on in his writing.

[Ominous]

C'mon, that last battle was the lamest stupidest thing I ever saw in my entire life. Put all the queens in the same planet? Don't shoot at the enemy? Don't even try to block his path? How could Ender ever lose that battle? How could he actually lose the war when the enemy seems to be ruled by a buggy AI that seems to suffer from ninja syndrom(th more they are the easier they are do defeat)?

I think you have misunderstood this part. I've never read the book, but I've read reviews, summations, and had a friend tell me the whole story, which is what has put me off reading it.

Anyways, from what I understand, the bugs refuse to kill anything sentient. They thought humans were not sentient and were on the verge of wiping them out before discovering their error. Thus when humanity comes to destroy their civilization in revenge, they let them, because the bugs refuse to kill anything that is sentient.

There aren't many books that I dislike, but The Scarlet Letter was one of them.

However, nothing is as bad as reading an article in an academic journal, by an author who thinks that the more large, rarely used words you have and that having sentences that are four or more lines long makes what you write more scholarly. There is nothing more boring, obtuse, and hard to read than that. When you read it, you feel as though you're trying to walk through knee deep mud while wearing a 100-pound backpack.

[DraPrime]

However, nothing is as bad as reading an article in an academic journal, by an author who thinks that the more large, rarely used words you have, and that having sentences that are four or more lines long makes what you write scholarly. There is nothing more boring, obtuse, and hard to read than that. When you read it, you feel as though you're trying to walk through knee deep mud while wearing a 100-pound backpack.

This reminds me of how Christopher Paolini writes. He takes words that are ridiculously complex, misuses them, and then thinks that doing so is good. There was an interview with him and two other authors. When he bragged about how he has a thesaurus that has words that can't be found anywhere else, and that he regularly uses this thing when writing, I was stunned. I was wondering if this guy seriously just bragged about making his books impossible to be fully understood? The funny thing is that there was this sort of awkward silence from the two other (competent) authors after Paolini said this.

[Tengu]

I would add the X-wing series to that list, perhaps adding I, Jedi to that list as well.

I never read them, but heard they're good. So okay. Still outnumbered by crappy Star Wars books, though.

[Terraoblivion]

Could be even worse, Ominous. It could be written like 18th century German philosophy. Herder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_von_Herder) was the most incomprehensible writer i have ever had the misfortune to have to read in class. His use of punctuation and grammar is special to put it mildly and more honestly it is completely and utterly random. He just wrote bits of sentences and then connected them with random hyphens and periods. Kant is not quite as bad, but still not easy to read either, suffering from a severe lack of understanding that periods are useful.

[Dancing_Zephyr]

Harry Potter, the first book I couldn't read all the way through. I understand that these books are popular, but I really couldn't read them.
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, the second book I couldn't read all the way through. Mysterious floating castle, names that are hard to pronounce for no reason, which are mixed with names like Whiskeyjack. I'll pass, thank you very much.
Catcher in the Rye. I don't know where to start.

[MeklorIlavator]

I never read them, but heard they're good. So okay. Still outnumbered by crappy Star Wars books, though.

Oh, I completely agree with you, but I really felt that those needed to be added to the list of decent books.

[Brickwall]

I hate Bridge to Teribithia (sp?). I read it when I was in 7th or 8th grade. Now, it's hard for me to remember my exact impressions of the book, but I recall it being a happy funland kinda book, which I don't mind. Then the girl freakin' drowns! I was pissed. Keep a consistent goddamn tone and theme!

Catcher in the Rye was...unbelievably horrible. There was no flow to it, the character just plain sucked, and the theme just plain sucked. It sucked.

I have good things and bad things to say about anything Dickens wrote. To his credit, he knows how to make a plot work. Okay, I have one good thing to say about his work. His characters, however, are incredibly poor. You get about as much of a feel for them as you would the guy sitting next to you on the subway. And character traits spring up out of nowhere. "Oh, by the way, he had a drinking problem, or something", except the statement is somehow extended to two paragraphs, without being any less blunt or stupid. Which brings me to my next point: the man needs to learn to shut the hell up! I mean, read the beginning of "A Tale of Two Cities". Yes, the famous "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That's not all of it, though. It runs on with a ton of similar oxymoronic (emphasis on the moronic) statements for a while, then suddenly shifts to some idiot in a carraige. And you have to wait a few chapters for him to even get to the main cast before he finishes covering a bunch of barely-semi-relevant people. Oh, and most of his sentences were longer than paragraphs. There were far more commas in those books than periods (not including the ones separating dialogue from narrative text). He phrased things in the most obtuse manner, and for all his words, failed to convey much extra meaning. And now for the last thing I hate about him: he's irrelevant. Most of his novels are societal commentary on a society we no longer have. They're about as significant now as jokes about Martha Stewart will be in 150 years, maybe less.

Fork Dickens.

[Ubiq]

I don't think I've ever hated any other book as much as I did "The Year of Living Dangerously". The professor that assigned it loved it dearly, but stopped using it in later years because of the overwhelmingly negative feedback he received from the people who read it.

[thevorpalbunny]

Books I really hate?

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Really good suspense and stuff, but then the characters, who by their jobs have to be incredibly brilliant, make rookie mistakes directly in their area of expertise. For example, a co-worker of the main character shuts off the program that would have solved the conflict because he thinks if it doesn't finish he might get more of a chance to hit on her. OK, plausible. They work at the NSA and it is probable that this problem may involve the government blowing up. No longer plausible. The ending is also horrible.

Eragon for the same reasons as everyone else.

The Education of Little Tree: a book about a Native American boy written by a member of the KKK. Needless to say, he doesn't know squat. Also, he's a horrible writer.

I disliked Catcher in the Rye but it was pretty good for a book I had to read in school. Salinger's other junk (Nine stories etc.) all sucks, apparently because it is all autobiographical and the only time he made sense was when he was a teenager.

The Eddings' Dreamers series has likable characters, but every single one so far ran:
Beginning: there is bad things!!! Make preparations!!!
Middle: OH T3h Noes a deus ex machina made our preparations useless!!!
End:Oh tEh Yaayz a deus ex machina made us win!!!
However, I think the last one is set up to have serious potential so perhaps the series is suffering from Star-Wars-Episode-One-and-Two-itis.

Also, people would like Shakespeare so much more if they performed one of the comedies in class as the first play they covered. In 8th grade, my class read through Merchant of Venice, and just by having people stand up and deliver the lines it was really good. Unfortunately, my 9th grade class in Romeo and Juliet almost ruined it for me.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Unfortunately, my 9th grade class in Romeo and Juliet almost ruined it for me.

My father always says that Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's worse plays, due to the confused plot and sudden disappearance of comedy in the second half. If you're going to kill the light relief character in order to make a turn for the dark, make sure he isn't the only decent character in the play, otherwise you end up with a play like Romeo and Juliet.

[Otto-Sieve]

How can you blame Salvatore for killing off chewie and what-not. Lucas personally oversees everything in EU, so nobody is stealing from anybody else or doing anything wrong. Chewbacca's death was actually his idea.

Anyways though it is not a book I do not like Shakespeare.

[Dervag]

I'm going to cast another vote against the Scarlet Letter.

If you want run on sentences, Nathaniel Hawthorne is the man for you. The fact that the book is written in this intense, fevered psychodrama tone and that all the people involved are deeply screwed up (and not in intriguing ways) makes it worse.

[TheElfLord]

I'm going to be sooo flamed for this, but I'll say it anyway.

Ender's game.



There is nothing wrong with disliking the book, but I feel compelled to point out that your analysis of the last battle is rather off.

First, the buggers don't ignore the human fleet till everyone is destroyed. In every previous battle Ender had fought in such a way as to preserve as many lives as possible. The buggers deployed a stratagy based around this presumption. They moved to surround the force, making sure there was no escape. They didn't expect Ender to switch to a suicide mission. That is part off the drama of the final battle. Its a statement about human's will fight for their life unless they realize there is something bigger than themselves.

Anyway, once the buggers realize Ender is doing something different they also switch tactics and attack the fleet. Far from floating there stupidly, their attack almost succeeds as only one fighter from one of the human ships manages to get within range of the planet with Dr. Device.

There are parts of Ender's Game I don't like, and I'm sure lots of people don't like the book. I just wanted to set the record straight on the battle.

[Sixscimitars]

107 posts and no one's mentioned Eye of Argon yet? Sad, playgrounders, sad.
Also, I'd like to cast my vote on Eragon being the most overhyped, boring, incomprehensible, and crappy series ever, but anything with Drizzt in it is a close second. Still, I respect the man for Sellswords and Quintet.

[Terraoblivion]

The Eye of Argon was only a short story though. Also it falls very squarely into so bad it's good. At least the MST3k commented version does, but really some of that writing is just hilarious to laugh at.

[comicshorse]

'Edge of Danger'by Jack Higgins for the most godawful coincedences and plot stupidities.
Any Druss book ( excluding Legend) for the horrible 'Druss kills everything in sight 'cause he's that hard'.
'Atomised' by Michel Houellebecq for just being a loathsome story about totallu unlikeable characters and for turning into a sci-fi novel in the last chapter for absolutely no reason

[Rutee]

'Edge of Danger'by Jack Higgins for the most godawful coincedences and plot stupidities.
Any Druss book ( excluding Legend) for the horrible 'Druss kills everything in sight 'cause he's that hard'.
'Atomised' by Michel Houellebecq for just being a loathsome story about totallu unlikeable characters and for turning into a sci-fi novel in the last chapter for absolutely no reason

Was Legend the first one? 'cause that's the one I read.

[comicshorse]

Yep, 'Legend' was the first one. He's not to bad in that one because unlike the others he's not the sole focus of the books. Thpugh again in this one despite being 60 and dying he slaughters enemy warriors by the dozen

[Occasional Sage]

Hmmm. Lots of things in here I've enjoyed reading, but I'm here to tirade, not argue.

Also, lots of things in here which I've loathed, by authors I wouldn't walk across the street to kick if they were on fire just because it might put out the flames. But I'm not wanting to just join in other people's tirades.

First, an obscure one: A Void (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780002711197-7) by Georges Perec. I really, really want to like this book. Perec went to a very great deal of trouble to write a novel in French without the letter e being used, even once. Then they translated the book into English, still without an e. I'm fascinated. I desperately want to fall in love with this book, but it lumbers and staggers like a drunken Frankenstein's monster through a total lack of anything interesting that makes me want to pound my head through a wall. The only reason that I still own the book is that it's a good conversation piece when people are perusing the wall of books.

Second, a classic:
The Great Gatsby. Really, I dislike everything by Fitzgerald, but Gatsby is particularly noxious. I find none of the characters sympathetic or even interesting, the plot doesn't move so much as spin in circles until I want to vomit, and... man. There just aren't words. As much as I adore books, I'd honestly be happy setting a copy of GG on fire.

Finally, modern fiction:
The entire body of work by Terry Goodkind. While his books are wildly popular, I can't for the life of me think why. He desperately wants to be three-dimensional, but manages only to wave bombastically in that direction from a flat, lifeless, derivative 2D caricature of what a book should be. Most of my contempt for and hatred of these books stems from the cultish following they have; if they were bad but tucked away in the dusty back room like, say, 668: Neighbor of the Beast, that'd be fine. But really, why read these horrible excuses for books when you can pick up GRRM, or Tim Powers, or Lawrence Block?

Whew. I feel better now.

[Jerthanis]

Second, a classic:
The Great Gatsby. Really, I dislike everything by Fitzgerald, but Gatsby is particularly noxious. I find none of the characters sympathetic or even interesting, the plot doesn't move so much as spin in circles until I want to vomit, and... man. There just aren't words. As much as I adore books, I'd honestly be happy setting a copy of GG on fire.

Finally, modern fiction:
The entire body of work by Terry Goodkind. While his books are wildly popular, I can't for the life of me think why. He desperately wants to be three-dimensional, but manages only to wave bombastically in that direction from a flat, lifeless, derivative 2D caricature of what a book should be. Most of my contempt for and hatred of these books stems from the cultish following they have; if they were bad but tucked away in the dusty back room like, say, 668: Neighbor of the Beast, that'd be fine. But really, why read these horrible excuses for books when you can pick up GRRM, or Tim Powers, or Lawrence Block?

Whew. I feel better now.

Ack, I'm too late. I came to this thread specifically to mention these two things, and now you've done so ahead of me. Now I can just point to this quotation and say, "Yeah, pretty much like that."

Other than books for school, I don't really read books I don't like. (And sometimes not even then!), so I don't really have a lot of examples I can think of. A lot of my friends can't put down a book once they've started, but I can basically drop a book at the first cross word I have to say about it... which can actually be problematic to the ends of actually finishing books I've heard are good.

I didn't really like the first two Song of Ice and Fire books, but the third was actually pretty good. In fact, the third was really phenomenal. It's just a shame it wasn't the first book in the series, and I had to slog through the first two books to get there. I'm still getting around to the fourth... I've just got other books to read by authors I like better first. It's not like the fifth book is in danger of coming out this decade anyway.

[sun_tzu]

Another book I loathed was "Moby ****". So long, so....boring. I quit somewhere in the middle.

And while I didn't hate "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"...I did skip several chapters that had, quite literally, no plot, just descriptions.

[kamikasei]

I didn't really like the first two Song of Ice and Fire books, but the third was actually pretty good. In fact, the third was really phenomenal. It's just a shame it wasn't the first book in the series, and I had to slog through the first two books to get there. I'm still getting around to the fourth... I've just got other books to read by authors I like better first. It's not like the fifth book is in danger of coming out this decade anyway.

I'm actually inclined to say, wait for the fifth (it's supposed to be out this year, I believe...); the fourth I found a bit of a slog, and it and the fifth are actually split over the same chronological period, so it might be better if you can go straight from wading through the fourth on to the fifth and read about some of the likeable characters who were just missing for an entire book.

[Winterwind]

Actually, now that you mention it, anything written by Kevin J. Anderson. Anything from Star Wars to Dune, I try to read something by him and it drives me into frenzies of NERD RAAAGE! over the butchering and Mary Sue-isms that go on in his writing.I so very much concur. The man is not a writer, he is a living book-mass-production-factory. And it shows.

[random11]

I add my vote to "Alchemist", although it might be for a different reason.
As a kid, I enjoyed reading folk tales from around the world, and I had several books plus a large set of mythology books.
Imagine my surprise when I read a book recommended by many others, only to find a story that is compound mainly from folk tales I knew by heart YEARS before the author wrote it.


Other books are book 4+ from "Sword of Truth".
5+ if I'm on a generous mood.
I have never read such a long book that contained mostly preachings from a too perfect character, that seems to be a master in whatever he wants.


As for classics, I'll also add "Narnia" books 4+.
Book 4 is when a good children fantasy book turns to "Christianity for children", and a manual of how to hate, disrespect practically anything that isn't Christianity.

[random11]

Sorry, double post.

[Annarrkkii]

I'm with Lemony Snicket on the subject of Johnny Tremain, which I found to be a repugnant piece of literature. I may have been in 6th grade at the time, but I stand by the impression it gave me then.

As far as modern fiction goes, I'm easily satisfied but hard to impress. I'm perfectly willing to read books like Eragon, even the Kevin J. Anderson Dune prequels (mainly because I adore Erasmus so much, and I felt he was handled reasonably well by the prequels).

[Woofsie]

Can't think of any books I really loathe, but the chapters involving Tom Bombadil in Lord of the Rings are the worst thing I have ever read. It is so nauseatingly bad that every time I start reading LotR I get as far as there and give up. I just can't bring myself to read that section, which is a pity because everything up to that point in the book was pretty good.

[pendell]

Woofsie,

Out of curiosity, what's so bad about the T-B chapters? In any case, just skip ahead to 'At the sign of the Prancing Pony' and the rest of the book is pretty good.

I thought T-B was a big doorstop in the narrative flow, but I can't say I loathed it. Tom is the guardian spirit of the Old Forest. I grant he acts as a Tom Ex Machina twice, but thankfully he cannot leave the borders of his country.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Woofsie]

It's been a few years since I read it, so I don't remember it all that well. I greatly disliked Tom Bombadil's character, and I thought the whole thing seemed out of place and unnecessary. Overall I just found it a chore to read

My opinion of it is probably worsened because it's part of such a good book, and it really ruined the book for me.

[pendell]

It's been a few years since I read it, so I don't remember it all that well. I greatly disliked Tom Bombadil's character, and I thought the whole thing seemed out of place and unnecessary. Overall I just found it a chore to read

My opinion of it is probably worsened because it's part of such a good book, and it really ruined the book for me.

*Nods*

"Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow
Bright blue his jacket is and his boots are yellow" ... BLAHHH.

And yet I actually think Tolkien was saying something important there. If you look between the lines you'll see the Tom is actually quite a powerful spirit .. the Ring has no power over him, and he is predicted to be the last of all to fall to Sauron if things go bad. He's one of the most powerful beings in middle earth.

And he spends it romping around a forest and gathering water lilies.

I think Tolkien was trying to say something about the nature of good and evil there .. his good guys typically aren't your world rulers. Gandalf wanders around and makes firecrackers. Tom stays at home and gathers water lilies. Galadriel runs her realm but doesn't bother anyone else.

By contrast, it's the Dark Lords -- Saruman and Sauron -- who have Big Plans for the betterment of humanity. Rather than cultivating their own gardens (as Sam chose to do), they choose a garden swollen to a realm, determined to force everyone else into *their* mold. To drag the world kicking and screaming into betterment, whether it likes it or not.

I think it's an interesting point. But I agree T. didn't need two chapters to say it. There's a reason every adaptation of LOTR cuts Tom Bombadil.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mephisto]

The Sirens of Titan. It would be alright if Vonnegut didn't feel the need to explicitly spell out every goddamn thing to the reader.

[Skillness622]

Allow me to back up the Thomas Hardy-hate. I had to do both The Mayor of Casterbridge and Far From the Madding Crowd for GCSE Drama back in the day and hated every minute of it. How I managed to pass those exams I have no idea since I only read the first 100 pages before getting bored!

Also, if this subject extends to plays, I put forward The Glass Menagerie by Arthur Miller. It meanders around for far too long never going anywhere with a plot that never seems to decide whether its a social commentary on the 20s, a descent into madness, or a shakespearian tragedy.

[Squidmaster]

Eragon, for reasons listed above. I have a high tolerance for bad books, but these made me cry. I managed to pull myself through the first because all my friends loved it, but I had to hide it afterwards. The worst part about it is If I ever critisize it at school, then a bunch of annoying little 7th graders cry out "eragon totaly pwns, and is the best series ever, on the merit that it just is."
:smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown:


Can't think of any books I really loathe, but the chapters involving Tom Bombadil in Lord of the Rings are the worst thing I have ever read. It is so nauseatingly bad that every time I start reading LotR I get as far as there and give up. I just can't bring myself to read that section, which is a pity because everything up to that point in the book was pretty good.

That was the hardest part of LOTR for me to read, but I was able to pull through, and was incredibly thankful I did. interestingly, my dad, who introduced me to the Lord of the rings, likes Tom Bombadil a lot. I really can't see why, though it might just be the wackyness of it all.

[Muz]

I could not agree more. I loved the games and was excited when I saw the books, but they were a disgrace to the name of the games.

The only other book I really loathe is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. The story is depressing, and the plot moves at a snails pace. Not to mention the tragic twist at the end is brought about by the stupidest idea I've ever seen in print. (If I knew how to do spoilers I would state that massive attack on intelligence, but I don't)

YES! I read that bloody depressing thing years ago in 11th grade, and it still sticks in my mind as my most hated. It's the literary equivalent of being stuck in a dark room with nothing to do a week, and having someone someone come in every hour to kick you in the crotch.

I agree with what people have been saying about the World War series by Turtledove, too, though I just plain put that down midway through, so I only developed a dislike for it rather than full-on hatred. :smallsmile:


Actually, now that you mention it, anything written by Kevin J. Anderson. Anything from Star Wars to Dune, I try to read something by him and it drives me into frenzies of NERD RAAAGE! over the butchering and Mary Sue-isms that go on in his writing.

Seconded (or thirded, I guess). Okay, so I only really read part of his Jedi Search series--or maybe even just part of the first book before I put it down, I can't remember--but that was enough. I'm afraid to see what he did to Frank Herbert's Dune series. :smalleek:

[Terraoblivion]

Another aspect of why Tom Bombadil was important for Tolkien was because he represented nature. And as Tolkien makes painfully clear he considers nature, as well as rural living, to be good whereas industry and modernity is evil. So Tom Bombadil is yet another way to hammer this point home. In addition to representing the correct way to handle power, specifically taking care of your own and not messing around in the business of others.

About A Song of Ice and Fire i personally found that book four was a great deal better the second time i read it. Brienne's parts were horribly slow-moving and hard to see the point of though and there was a severe lack of the best characters of the series.

[R.O.A.]

ALSO! Anything by Jacqueline Wilson I passionately loathe. I seem to remember being forced to read a few of her books at primary school, and they made me ridiculously angry.
I feel entirly the same way about her books. :smallmad:

I also hate 'Coram Boy', a book I was made to read in english lessons. Basic Story; Life is tough, everyone lies, and children die, unless they're secretly the children of someone rich, in which case everything will turn out ok. And one of the characters just wanders about having mad hallucinations of dead babies. Suckage.

I'm going to have to say, I actually liked Catcher in the Rye, but since I think I was the oly one in my english class that did, I'm not going to argue, but just agree to disagree :smallwink:

[Ted_Stryker]

Not sure this rises to the level of hatred, but I find large swathes of the 7th, 8th, and 10th books of the WoT series to be distressingly tedious. Particularly whenever Elayne or Cadsuane shows up in those books, with very limited exceptions.

[Catskin]

Also, if this subject extends to plays, I put forward The Glass Menagerie by Arthur Miller. It meanders around for far too long never going anywhere with a plot that never seems to decide whether its a social commentary on the 20s, a descent into madness, or a shakespearian tragedy.

The Glass Menagerie was written by Tennessee Williams.

[Sucrose]

Can't think of any books I really loathe, but the chapters involving Tom Bombadil in Lord of the Rings are the worst thing I have ever read. It is so nauseatingly bad that every time I start reading LotR I get as far as there and give up. I just can't bring myself to read that section, which is a pity because everything up to that point in the book was pretty good.

I feel much the same about the first few chapters of Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. After reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I came into the book expecting surrealistic humor and sci-fi/fantastic situations pretty much from the first page. Instead, I got a slice-of-life situation that has a few things that feel off, but is on the whole depressingly normal.

I appreciate that it set the stage for the latter chapters, and is thus extremely important, but it still required me forcing myself through the first sixty pages or so, something that I'd never had to do in Hitchhiker's Guide.

It wasn't by any means enough to ruin the book for me, but I just wish that Adams could've had a few more curveballs in the first chapters, or dispensed the information in a different way.

[Zeful]

Lord of the Flies. A book about cannibalism and killing at the hands of ten-year-olds or anything else that actually qualifies as a book?

I'll take the real book any day.

[Edan]

Anything by Terry Brooks after the original Shannara Series and the Heritage of Shannara, and even the Heritage was a stretch. It just went downhill so fast, and it was not that great to begin with. I went from die hard fan to hater after he wrote the Voyage series. I mean, he really stretched things from this point on and went from above average fantasy to boring generic garbage.

Just read Antrax, a sentient computer in a fantasy world that goes on a killing spree only to be defeated by a magic weilding emo. While said druid emo seeks greater power through rumors of "magic books" which are actually digital records of old science guarded by said machine. That was the basic plot, it made me sick.

I also liked Catcher in the Rye, but I am staying out of this one as well.

[SurlySeraph]

Lord of the Flies. A book about cannibalism and killing at the hands of ten-year-olds or anything else that actually qualifies as a book?

I'll take the real book any day.

There wasn't any cannibalism. They intended to make a human sacrifice at one point, but other than that and the murder attempts there was nothing implausible. How is Lord of the Flies not a real book?

[Hell Puppi]

I loved Lord of the Flies.


I hate the Scarlet Freakin' Letter.

It's been years since I've read it and yet I still can't say it's name without adding the 'freaking' to the middle. I hate that book. So. Very. Much.

[Muz]

Just read Antrax, a sentient computer in a fantasy world that goes on a killing spree only to be defeated by a magic weilding emo. While said druid emo seeks greater power through rumors of "magic books" which are actually digital records of old science guarded by said machine. That was the basic plot, it made me sick.


Why'd it make you sick? (You seem to be implying that the very premise itself made you sick and should make everyone else sick, too, but I'm not sure I understand the reason behind your thinking that.) Not arguing, just curious. :smallsmile:

[Edan]

Why'd it make you sick? (You seem to be implying that the very premise itself made you sick and should make everyone else sick, too, but I'm not sure I understand the reason behind your thinking that.) Not arguing, just curious. :smallsmile:

I actually was just stating my opinion on it way to strong. I just hated the plot, style and most everything about that book, and I brought a very biased argument to the table. As such, I allowed my personal opinion to end a summary. With that capstone, combined with bias, I unknowingly created a statement that created an expectation of the reader, and was forcing my bias onto another. Whoops.

PS: Has anyone read Candide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide)? I "had" to read that for a history class and it drove me nuts because its satire convoluted the plot to me and I just got lost in trying to pick it apart.

[TigerHunter]

The Awakening for the reasons already discussed. Virtually our entire Women's Lit unit was hypocritical, but closing on that one really made me seethe.

Catcher in the Rye for the reasons already discussed. Boredom, cover to cover, and virtually no point.

Shakespeare is hit-and-miss. Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado about Nothing were fun, but Hamlet just stank. The books aren't terrible, just way, way, way overrated.
Also, they're PLAYS. Why on earth are we READING a PLAY, for God's sake?

[i]Lord of the Flies could have been soooo much more interesting and still gotten its point across. I'm told there was one, even if I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.

Siddhartha. First place winner for worst book ever. Everyone dies as soon as they're no longer useful to the story, and at the end Siddhartha gives an annoyingly pointless message about universal truth and his enlightenment. Yawn.


In general I just despise the "classics." Literary aesthetics be damned, they're boring as hell and don't promote any thought whatsoever. There are so many GOOD books out there that deal with important issues without making me want to bash myself over the head with a sledgehammer. The cesspit known as our Junior Year reading list makes me want to never pick up a book again.

[Vaynor]

Most of the old scifi books are boring, sure they have some science, but its boring.

Jules Verne = awesomesauce, however.

I tend not to hate books, just avoid them out of dislike.

[SurlySeraph]

The cesspit known as our Junior Year reading list makes me want to never pick up a book again.

That seems to be a common trend. My theory was that my (high school) Junior Year reading list was designed as an experiment in whether clinical depression could be induced via literature. It included:

The Bluest Eye (which I ranted about already) It ends with the main character going insane after being impregnated by her father
Hamlet Poisons fall, everybody dies.
The Great Gatsby True love fails. Twice. And all of the hypocrites who don't care about the lives of others stay the way they are.
Oedipus Rex He married his mother and murdered his father. She kills herself, he pokes his own eyes out and goes to wander the world as an outcast everywhere.

[Terraoblivion]

Mine was even worse, SurlySeraph. Not only did it include Hamlet and King Oedipus (no real need to translate the name of a Greek play to Latin), there was also Medea, the Iliad and a variety of short stories about mid-aged men and their mid-life crises. We seriously didn't get to read a single uplifting story and even so the versions we read were infinitely better than the movie versions we were subjected to. Passolini's Oedipus movie still gives me nightmares. The flute, the horrible, abominable flute.

[Vaire]

My Junior Year reading list included "All Quiet on the Western Front"


I have not yet recovered enough to look at the cover of that book without feeling vaguely nauseous. And I just had my 10 year reunion.


Other than that I can't say I've really hated any books. Although I've never been able to enjoy anything written by Hemmingway.

[Drascin]

Mine was even worse, SurlySeraph. Not only did it include Hamlet and King Oedipus (no real need to translate the name of a Greek play to Latin), there was also Medea, the Iliad and a variety of short stories about mid-aged men and their mid-life crises. We seriously didn't get to read a single uplifting story and even so the versions we read were infinitely better than the movie versions we were subjected to. Passolini's Oedipus movie still gives me nightmares. The flute, the horrible, abominable flute.

Mine was more or less like that, except for a single exception, which incidentally was the only book I bothered to finish despite being the longest. Namely, Don Quixote. After spending the whole year reading stuff like Beatus Ille (which I would like to nominate as the single worst book i've ever read, due to nonsensical plot, heavyhanded mindscrew - if you want to mindscrew, do it with a bit of style, not just by messing the timelines and verb tenses so much the reader doesn't know which year they're in! - and for the most part revolting and/or stupid characters except for the Authorial Insert protagonist. Sheesh, how the **** did THAT get so many prizes?!? That's a rethoric question, sadly... (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsIncomprehensible)), a bit of Cervantes's acid satire was unbelievably welcome, even despite the sad ending.

[Terraoblivion]

One thing that is fun about Don Quixote is that most people who haven't read it misunderstand what it is about. Instead of being about how horribly silly and outdated chivalry is, people think it is about never giving up in the face of the impossible and holding on to your beliefs. Then again people often misunderstand entertainment.

[Drascin]

One thing that is fun about Don Quixote is that most people who haven't read it misunderstand what it is about. Instead of being about how horribly silly and outdated chivalry is, people think it is about never giving up in the face of the impossible and holding on to your beliefs. Then again people often misunderstand entertainment.

You think that's farfetched? At least that's half-related to the book! You should have heard my teacher go on and on about the "allegories" and "social analysis" that were "obviously omnipresent" in the book.

I think the sheer strength of the stares of disbelief from us people who actually read the book actually singed the blackboard slightly :smallannoyed:.

Of course, this being already Junior year, I was already more than able to turn off the stupid-speak from teachers, so I simply stopped listening and went back to planning my sessions during the classes :smallamused:

[Terraoblivion]

That is an obvious litterature major mistake to find allegories that nobody else can. Just remember how you were taught that everything ultimately is about sex if somebody wrote it down. Preferably sex with their mother and fear of castration. For the common masses though misreadings tend to be much closer related to the actual topic, just without any nuances. The ideal is of course between these two.

[Emperor Ing]

For the record, To Kill a Mockingbird is an overrated, and generally stupid piece of crap. Quite literally. The artist was in the toilet one day, and all of a sudden, the entire book was written right there. The bad part is that it wasnt written in pencil or ink. :smallyuk:
Anyways, the plot is suck and loss. As a matter of fact, there is no real mainstream plot. It is simply a bunch of random plotlines. Each chapter was a different random plotline, with no relation to the previous plotline. It is all random events that occurr on a preset timeline in the Jim Crow period of American history. Plotlines, plotlines within plotlines. Also, there's an unusual, atmosphere of nonrealism and general stupidity within the book. Atticus is the best marksman? Really? How hard is it to shoot a nigh stationary silohette of a dog with a rifle? And the ending? What makes the ultra mysterious Boo Radley decide to come outside after all these frickin YEARS?!? Is he plot armor incarnate or something?
The author, I forget their name, really should've thought hard about how all these random storylines advance a main storyline. They should've also thought harder about developing a main storyline AT ALL.

To summarize it, To Kill a Mockingbird = Toilet paper.

[Oregano]

Personally I hate to Kill a Mockingbird, with a passion; it seems so bland to me and with horrible characters, every character annoyed me except maybe Dolphus Raymond. Apparently I'm not the only person in my English Class who didn't like it because my teacher was the only one that was surprised when I asked why people like it anyway. It really strikes me that it's regarded as one of the best books ever.

I hope I don't get flamed because of this.

EDIT: Very strangely NINJA'D, I fear Randomizer may be some kind of international telepath.

FURTHER EDIT: It was wrote by Harper Lee, and is apparently based on real events as is one of Truman Capote's books(he was in fact the basis for the character of Dill); I also agree with the stupidity and implausibilty of the characters, especially how Atticus is (still) the best shot in the town, despte not shooting a gun in thirty years.

[Kosmopolite]

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I just graduated from university with an English Literature degree, so it's not like I'm intolerant of old, long-winded or flowery texts. Tess, however, I found to be mind-numbingly boring. The long-winded descriptions of landscape, two-dimensional characters and awful metaphors make it a the worst book I have ever read. I know there are people who love it, but even the mention of its name makes me :smallfurious: .

EDIT: Also, I loved Lord of the Flies.

[Vuzzmop]

Apaert from the utterly disgusting "Eragon", I havn't so far read a book I particularly hated. I didn't like "To Kill a Mockingbird", I know its a classic, but it just didn't appeal to me, perhaps because the issues it explored were not those I am familiar with. The play "A View from the Bridge" wasn't a great love of mine either, this time I just found it to be too much like a soap opera and not quite gripping enough for my intellectual but unattentive mind.

Of topic: I was forced to read "Lord of the Flies" in year (grade if you're an american) 7. I don't think many people knew what the hell was going on, but for some reason, I look back at it fondly.

For some reason, I seem to be the only one in my A-level English class that looks forward to doing "Julius Ceasar", but then, I've always loved Shakespeare.

[Jayngfet]

Hate the entire Artemis Fowl series.


care to elaborate...


I hate anything by lemony snicket, its all the same book over and over

orphans get parents, orphans find olaf, no one believes them, peope die, they barely escape, on to the idiot orphan placer...lather rinse, repeat.

also harry potter, to mantain an invisible reputation that you can lie about requires grnerations of in breeding, and yet no genetic consequences

also wizards are still woefully medevil, never bothering to try to adapt, a single house cant be that magic, and they can make magic cars, why not magic E-mail that can even deliver packages or video game worlds you can live in, but nooo, anyone who even tries is considered a loony.

also the wizards sense of superiority, its not like they outnumber us or even can kill each other quicker than we do, or even more quietly, and they never think that people can handle magic with all the generic fantasy books out there.

I also hate every high school short story or novel, its like a museum of broken and warped aesops. joining a group is bad, you'll get stabbed or something; Always be proud of your heritige, even when it's unrelated to bring up and brings misfortune to those around you; don't make friends, they always die from an accident or disease or get murdered.

I wish each of those examples were from a single story but therre are so many examples that tv tropes has a list (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathByNewberyMedal?from=Main.DeathByNewberryMedal ) for the last one

[Ozymandias]

I absolutely, unequivocally hated The Pearl, which is strange because Steinbeck has written so many books I love (East of Eden, Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men) which all have great morals and then this one which is depressing and almost Stalinist.

I also hate Left Behind, largely for its overwhelming popularity despite its infantile prose and jejune plot line - even the premise is overblown and rendered almost prosaically. I assume that Eragon is about the same.

The Fountainhead was heavy-handed, but a decent enough book. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in sixth grade, but I remember thinking it was good.

I didn't like what I read of Ada - the opening is too boring, which is something I'd never expect, nor want, from Nabokov.

I wish people would stop dissing Hamlet; you can hate it but don't say it's bad. I think it's quite deep (especially in its portrayal of dichotomies) and overall well-crafted, although the ending seemed a little hasty (everyone dies, Fortinbras is the "winner").

[Terraoblivion]

The reason for the ending is supposedly that it was written as a satire over the revenge tragedies of the age. And those always ended with everybody dying. Also i guess that Fortinbras winning could be seen as representing how the infighting in the Danish royal family destroyed them and losing the country is really clear of that.

Also Hamlet shows a surprising amount of knowledge about Danish politics of the age, even as it ignores most of it. The place where it truly shows is in the naming of Rozenkrantz and Gildenstern, they are named after the two most prominent Danish noble families at the time.

[phoenixineohp]

Books that inspire feelings of nausea in me. This includes,

Not wanted on the Voyage - didn't finish it

Cure for Death by Lightning - wish I hadn't finished it

The White Bone - almost finished it, but decided not to so as to avoid a coma. For the record my English teacher didn't manage to finish it either.

[Artemician]

I don't actually hate any of the books that I'm being forced to read in school right now. I think I'm a social outcast.

No, seriously. Merchant of Venice, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, King Lear, Oedipus Rex, Faustus, all have tried their best shot on me. And frankly, I don't feel strongly enough about any of them to say that I hate them. I even like some of them, in fact. Oh my god! I'm not normal!

*

The only books that I really dislike are books that are overhyped for their quality (or lack of it) like Eragon,The Inheritance of Loss, and Bridge to Teribithia. That, or books with Broken Aesops, or utterly unlikeable main characters, like A Series of Unfortunate Events or (non-print example) Samurai Champloo.

But I never really hate them, though. Because I know I can always choose not to read them (which I do). But when I'm forced to read them (although I haven't disliked a single school-forced novel to date, so I'm pretty good in this regard) or when they received recognition or praise that I consider undue.

[Arioch]

The only fiction book I remember not finishing was a Jaqueline Wilson book. I Can't even remember why I was reading such a thing, since they're not exactly written for boys.

I tend not to hate books, but there are some I dislike, usually because I've been made to analyze them to death in English classes (this, as far as I am concerned, is not the point of books, and kills the enjoyment of reading utterly, especially when the points, uh, pointed out by your teacher become increasingly far-fetched).

Books of this sort include Heart of Darkness (we had to write an essay on whether Joseph Conrad was racist, and no-one thought to ask if, over a hundred years after the book was written, it really mattered) and bloody Of Mice And Men, which I'm going to have to write about in my summer exam.

The books we had to read in year 7 (first year of secondary school) were...odd. Carrie's War, Wolf and Kit's Wilderness - spot the connection?
In each one, something burns down.
We wondered about that English teacher.

EDIT: I also think that Shakespeare is monstrously over-rated. His plays are good, but I've seen better, and they're really boring to read, especially in the aforementioned context of literary analysis.

[sapphail]

In my year 12 English class, my teacher deliberately chose lowest-common-denominator books. I know, because she told me. I asked her why we were doing the load of codswallop known as Divine Wind when we could have been doing Othello (I have never, ever studied any Shakespear ever, which is a pain cuz I'd really like to), and she told me "I had to choose something everyone could understand." HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF CHOICE, WOMAN?! Anyway, this stupid book one some award or other. It is packed full of Important Issues - Sexism, Growing Up, Racism 1, Racism 2, Feminism, War, etc - but I got the distinct feeling they were only there so they would be there. 'Twere horrible, dull, pointless...


Gah, I second that, I had to read that in Year 12 as well. Even the teachers hated it and when those of us who could read above primary school level asked why the hell we had to read this cliched beat-you-over-the-head-with-the-issues drivel we were pretty much told the same thing you were. It was the 'easy' text for 'those whose English isn't their best subject', as my English teacher tried to put it tactfully. Dreadful, dreadful book.

I read about five pages of Eragon and couldn't force myself to go on. I read a chapter of Heidegger and my brain nearly imploded.

Has anyone read anything by Tara Moss? For those who've never heard of her (which I sincerely hope is most of you) she's an ex-model who now writes horribly cliched crime novels. Example - the protagonist is a model training to be a forensic pathologist when her best friend is murdered, so she runs off to investigate and becomes a target of the sadistic (aren't they always?) serial killer who whacked her friend. :smalltongue:

[Serpentine]

Oooo, someone else who knows about it! That mean you're in Victoria, then? Ugh... The only reason I didn't do Literature that year was because Biology was in the same block, and at that stage I intended science to be my career. The beauty of it, though? The class of this oh-so-experienced English-genius teacher* got a worse average mark than the shiny new inexperienced student teacher next door :smallbiggrin:


*Context: I put my hand up and asked whether I could stay after class to talk about some comments she put on a (admittedly awful) piece I wrote. Her response? "I've been teaching English for a long time now so I think I know a bit better than you!" Cow :smallyuk:

[bosssmiley]

My Junior Year reading list included "All Quiet on the Western Front"

I have not yet recovered enough to look at the cover of that book without feeling vaguely nauseous. And I just had my 10 year reunion.

Entirely understandable, "All Quiet" is probably the quintessential anvilicious anti-war tract. "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves knocks it into a cocked hat (and has cameo appearances by several real world reluctant heroes - Siegfried Sassoon, T. E. Lawrence, etc.).

Books Eggy hates. How, with the prior understanding that a book is not responsible for what it is (any more than is a baby covered in obscene tattoos), I have to say that the following make me want to slap their authors all over town:
"To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf.
Nothing happens, in a very meaningful manner, to a pack of essentially unlikable and self-absorbed characters. I could've been reading something good in the time wasted...

"Orlando" by Virginia Woolf.
The potentially awesome story of an undying, sex-changing swashbuckler bouncing through the cooler bits of history ruined by the author's schoolgirl crush on that abominable virago Vita Sackville-West. Epic fail is even worse when it comes so close to being epic win.

omnia opera by Karl Marx.
How can a seemingly intelligent man be so damn wrong about everything he looks at? Adam Smith had the right of it 100 years before Karl even put pen to paper.

Any "Dune" book not written by Frank Herbert.
Can you say 'literary graverobbing' kiddies?

Any of the contemporary genre of 'misery memoirs'. Half of them are made up anyway, and the whole pack of them are self-indulgent waffle. Get your issues out with a shrink; don't expect me to pay for the privilege of gawping at your neuroses.

[sapphail]

Ah, don't you just love getting the one English teacher no one can stand? I had my year 12 English teacher for year 11 Lit (and if she had taught it in year 12, I wouldn't have done it). She basically had it out for me because I didn't agree with most of her opinions on the books we did (and I was able to back up my assertions with the text, which she hated) and when I got downgraded for writing something she didn't like the justification was basically 'because I'm the teacher and I say so'. Moll.

Then, out of all the teachers I could have had for year 12 English? Her. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say I would have got a better mark for that subject had I got anyone but her. :smallmad:

Edit: Yep, I'm in Melbourne. :smalltongue:

[thevorpalbunny]

I think a lot of books most people consider to be good become hated because of horrible teaching. For example, I liked To Kill a Mockingbird, but I had a really good teacher for it. (Interestingly, it had been on her list of Books I Really Hate until she discovered that it was the only fixed book on the curriculum and she read it again.)

Some books are just terrible, (Gormenghast comes to mind), some are interesting if you understand what is happening, and some are good but usually over-analyzed to the point where they are deathly dull, boring, and unreadable (Shakespeare is the best example of this ever).

[Bookman]

EDIT: I also think that Shakespeare is monstrously over-rated. His plays are good, but I've seen better, and they're really boring to read, especially in the aforementioned context of literary analysis.

I was having a conversation along similar lines with a real life genuine English major (They do exist! :tongue:). I think this is yet more proof all literary analysis is crap and isn't how real people in the normal world read books (and shouldn't do so). It doesn't increase judgment it merely tries to make you figure out a "hidden meaning" that the author probably didn't intend.

Also for Shakespeare I think the language use he has in place makes it difficult to read. It, like almost every other play, requires it to be seen/heard and since it's a harder language to read then it's doubly true.

I lost my train of thought with where I was going with that so....... yeah. I think I said everything I wanted/needed to say. :tongue:

I mostly haven't been reading because of college (DAMN YOU SCHOoooooool!). This is interesting because of course I work in a BOOKSTORE. Luckily mostly I haven't really READ anything bad. I hadn't realize how lucky I was until I picked up an Advanced Reading Copy of Lee Child's latest mass market paperback. The writing made want to throw it away. It almost like third grader descriptions of things in a story. I only read a page or two before basically throwing it away from me.

And I like Eragon. Yeah...... I said it. THROW STUFF AT ME :tongue: It will, however, give you an idea HOW bad the Child book is... (If you consider Paolini a really bad writer. Which I don't but.......that's me. Bite me :tongue:)

EDIT: AHA! I remembered what else I wanted to say about literary analysis. It's probably entirely designed to help us guys look for the double meaning that most women (at least the ones in MY family :tongue:) find in EVERYTHING :wink:


(Just kidding ladies............)


( I mean I could NEVER get half the subcontext that ya'll do :wink:)

[Vaire]

Any "Dune" book not written by Frank Herbert.
Can you say 'literary graverobbing' kiddies?
[/LIST]

I would, except I actually enjoyed the final installment. It was nice to have my theories about the old man and woman realized. I also found myself enjoying the "House" books. The Butlerian Jihad books lost me when they...well, let's just say after the first one. Herbert's son just doesn't have the gift of making tragedy as readable as his father did.

[Quincunx]

Sticking my nose into the thread, well covered with a full NBC protective suit, to like The Scarlet Letter although I will not dispute anyone for not liking it or pointing out the heavy-handed chapter-long use of metaphor.

Pause until the incoming cowpie rate dips below 1/minute. . .

Loved Lord of the Flies, don't mind that some people don't like*, but I cannot fathom how some people don't understand the storyline or the moral. The book makes it onto reading lists because of its transparency, because the metaphors are very clearly marked and not very abstract; it was a schoolteacher's first book and that shows.

I will also agree with the hit-and-miss quality of Steinbeck, and quietly rue that nobody's list of hits and misses matches up with anyone else's. Choosing one of his books for a reading list is like throwing cowpies while blindfolded.

NBC suit removed, moving on to books I despise. . .

Any women's literature book which just replicates boring females in print form. Why is this the same criterion which gets a woman's book onto a must-read list? I want books which are written by women and interesting, not written by women despite not being interesting in the least. I want books with characters who think with their individual minds, not with their societies.**

Curse whoever first mentioned, and reminded me of, Henry James. I gave it the ten-year test earlier this week in the bookstore. Yep. It's still worthless.

*Despite being devoid of females, it hit a trigger in my mind which was only active at Fourteen And Female--I can't better explain--the last time that trigger was tripped, I was watching Powerpuff Girls.

**And in The Scarlet Letter, I got that.

[Brickwall]

EDIT: AHA! I remembered what else I wanted to say about literary analysis. It's probably entirely designed to help us guys look for the double meaning that most women (at least the ones in MY family :tongue:) find in EVERYTHING :wink:


(Just kidding ladies............)


( I mean I could NEVER get half the subcontext that ya'll do :wink:)

If there were a good reference book to understanding how women think, it would be titled "So does that mean you think I'm fat?" :smalltongue:

As for The Awakening, I thought of a way to fix it. At the end, when the stupid lady goes off to drown herself, she realizes how damn good she has it, miraculously learns to swim, and begins paddling back to shore. Then, all of a sudden, a shadow looms from the ocean. Cthulhu eats her. The end.

Whaddya think? Too saccharine?

[Arcane_Secrets]

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I just graduated from university with an English Literature degree, so it's not like I'm intolerant of old, long-winded or flowery texts. Tess, however, I found to be mind-numbingly boring. The long-winded descriptions of landscape, two-dimensional characters and awful metaphors make it a the worst book I have ever read. I know there are people who love it, but even the mention of its name makes me :smallfurious: .

EDIT: Also, I loved Lord of the Flies.

Since you mentioned landscaping and Hardy, it just brought back to me one of the memories of reading him that I must have previously blocked out. In HS when we had to read him, our English teacher told us that he was studying to be an architect or something similar, and this heavily influenced his descriptive style.

[Gamiress]

Of Mice and Men is easier to understand if you already know that the title of the book references a poem called "Ode to a Churchmouse", specifically 'The best laid plans of mice and men/Gang aft agley' (going often astray). From the first line, they're being set up for failure. Needless to say, I love the book.

On to books I hated, Left Behind sticks out as utterly, soul rendingly horrible. the characters are heartless paper cutouts (particularly the doctor who says he's got 'nothing to do' as people are strewn all over the airport screaming and dying) and we're expected to sympathise with them. I still don't know what possessed them to make a movie for it.

I forced my way through The Wheel of Time until book 8, which is where I gave up. It makes me really sad, because the first one was actually good. Now he's dead and it still isn't finished.

And of course, Eragon, not only for bad grammar and plagiarism but because the characters are unlikable hypocrites, especially Arya. The vegan elf princess in a leather catsuit.

[Kosmopolite]

Since you mentioned landscaping and Hardy, it just brought back to me one of the memories of reading him that I must have previously blocked out. In HS when we had to read him, our English teacher told us that he was studying to be an architect or something similar, and this heavily influenced his descriptive style.

So his plan was to make very long buildings with very little point?

[Arcane_Secrets]

So his plan was to make very long buildings with very little point?

Perhaps that's why he took up writing instead although in his case, it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference.

[comicshorse]

You know I'm starting to get tempted to read Eragon just to see if its really that bad.
I second Heart of Darkness, a monumentally dull book. So dull it makes things like being attacked in the amazon by hordes of natives seem the most boring thing in the world. I'm still not certain how the author managed that

[Rare Pink Leech]

I second Heart of Darkness, a monumentally dull book. So dull it makes things like being attacked in the amazon by hordes of natives seem the most boring thing in the world. I'm still not certain how the author managed that

Heart Of Darkness takes place in the Congo, not the Amazon :smalltongue: Anyway, I'll kind of third Heart Of Darkness - I don't hate it, but I couldn't even get through the first third of it.

Similary, I'll kind of add Mrs. Dalloway to the list. I don't think I can say I hate it, but I couldn't read past the eleventh page or so.

[Legendary]

Heart Of Darkness takes place in the Congo, not the Amazon :smalltongue:

It was obviously so boring he couldn't even remember the setting.

*wishes I could remember if I posted here or not*

Oh, well, in short, nearly every book on racism I read in school, excepting Invisible Man. Which is a shame, 'cuz it was one of the last ones we read, and people were so fed up of reading effectively the same book over and over again that they actually refused to read it.

Of Mice and Men was depressing, and Grapes of Wrath was only good for the chapters in between the narration.

Also, for good measure, the stuff by Call of the Wild guy. It's all the same.

[TigerHunter]

As for The Awakening, I thought of a way to fix it. At the end, when the stupid lady goes off to drown herself, she realizes how damn good she has it, miraculously learns to swim, and begins paddling back to shore. Then, all of a sudden, a shadow looms from the ocean. Cthulhu eats her. The end.

Whaddya think? Too saccharine?
I have SO got to work this into my essay on the book...

[Tempest Fennac]

I can't remember he authour's name but I once read a book called The Last Crusader which was similar to te Da Vinci Code. I enjoyed it until it got near the end where everything became ridiculously over the top in addition to having a really disappointing ending.

[F.H. Zebedee]

Ah yes, the Left Behind series. Because it seems that the Christian community can't actually pick anything worth getting into when it comes to fiction. *sigh* I concur very strongly with it being a worthless series, and a very weak basis for a franchise. I can think of a half dozen better pro-Christian fiction series off the top of my head. Of course, I can think of two dozen that failed spectacularly at being readable.

Ethan Frome fully accomplished its purpose. Conveying the bone-chilling, mind numbing, pale grey boredom that oozes from the winters in New England. It's a book that has an overall tone that's more depressing than 1984, and more boring and heavy handed than the Scarlet Letter. PICKLE DISH! PICKLE DISH! PICKLE DISH! (Oy.) The suisled was a nice touch, though.

Scarlet Letter was dry, but not HORRIBLE.

[loopy]

Ah yes, the Left Behind series.

I remember reading some guys website, his goal was to go through the Left Behind series page by page and list what was wrong with the books. He's been at it for years and he's still only about 400 pages into the first one.

EDIT: His website (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html), if you are interested.

[banjo1985]

I couldn't stand The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I tried the first book but had to stop after going catatonic with boredom!

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also pretty dire. I understand that a lot of the difficulty comes from it being written nigh on 90 years ago, but I am a fan of George Orwell and H.P. Lovecraft, so I think it's mainly the book. It very nearly sent me to sleep but I at least managed to finish the thing.

[Occasional Sage]

I remember reading some guys website, his goal was to go through the Left Behind series page by page and list what was wrong with the books. He's been at it for years and he's still only about 400 pages into the first one.

EDIT: His website (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html), if you are interested.

I can't fathom having THAT much of a negative reaction to a series of books. Granting for the moment that the books really are dangerously misleading (which seems to be the guy's root problem), would the right people read his analysis and be swayed?

Somebody needs a new hobby. Although I'm thoroughly amused, I feel for the guy. Getting some fresh air might help him....

[Closet_Skeleton]

I liked Heart of Darkness. But I will admit that it is the longest short book I have ever read. It's only 100 pages long, making it a novella, yet its boringness makes it seem like one of those doorstopper books. I just happen to like boring, depressing books.

[Nevrmore]

Of Mice and Men was depressing,
Dude, you are not going to go very far in your literary maturation if you hate books for being depressing. Of Mice and Men was fantastic.

The Grapes of Wrath can go suck and die, though. "Hey, I think I'll write an entire chapter about a turtle crossing the street!" Yeah, screw off, Steinbeck.

[loopy]

I can't fathom having THAT much of a negative reaction to a series of books. Granting for the moment that the books really are dangerously misleading (which seems to be the guy's root problem), would the right people read his analysis and be swayed?

Well, as a person who read the books and (previously) considered them to be harmless fiction, I'd say yes. I read them during high school, and even though they weren't written with much skill, I still managed to pick up many twisted ideological views from them.

As I read through the series I could never quite shake the feeling that something was wrong with the books though...

[Rigel Cyrosea]

I couldn't stand The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I tried the first book but had to stop after going catatonic with boredom!
I felt similarly about the Thomas Covenant series, but I kept reading it because I didn't have anything else. Now I'm on the fifth one, and still not enjoying them, but I can't quite bring myself to give up on the series entirely.

Books I really hated:
The Dark Tower. I loved all the other books in the series, and all the parts of this one except for the ending. I hated the ending. Ruined the entire series for me. One of the things I liked about The Dark Tower series was that it had a very strong sense of importance, but the ending destroyed that completely.

The Picture of Dorian Gray. Boring, boring, boring. And I was really annoyed by the author's obsession with the importance/power of art. I know it's a 19th century thing, but that sort of stuff always annoys me.

The Taming of the Shrew. I normally like Shakespeare, but I found the attitudes in this book too offensive to enjoy it. Yes, it was hundreds of years ago, but the way blind obedience and a broken will are shown to be good things just makes me angry.

[sun_tzu]

For the record, I think some of the dislike here comes from having been forced to read and study certain books, rather than from the books themselves.
I read The mayor of Casterbridge and To Kill a Mockingbird or my own initiative; I thought the former was a decent read, and the latter pretty good. The huge reading lists we got in high school almost completely turned me off literature for a while, though.

[WNxHasoroth]

Wow, I second the Dark Tower comment. The ending crushed my soul. I really should have heeded Stephen Kings warning not to read the last chapter. I mean, wow, seriously. Poor Roland :smallfrown:

[Serpentine]

Stephen King warns you not to read the last chapter? Then why did he write it? :smallconfused:

[banjo1985]

Stephen King warns you not to read the last chapter? Then why did he write it? :smallconfused:

From what I remember, it was because the publishers wanted a 'proper' ending, not the open ended one that he first wrote. So he tacked on an extra bit which made anyone who read it wish they hadn't!

Roland, Roland, Roland, some people are just born with bad luck.

[Gamiress]

The Picture of Dorian Gray. Boring, boring, boring. And I was really annoyed by the author's obsession with the importance/power of art. I know it's a 19th century thing, but that sort of stuff always annoys me.

I loved The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I love Oscar Wilde. I will admit though that the book's problem is this: He was a playwright, and writes like one. Thus, he 'infodumps', with pages upon pages of description followed by pages upon pages of dialogue with no break. You can almost see Basil Exit stage right written in there.

[Telonius]

From what I remember, it was because the publishers wanted a 'proper' ending, not the open ended one that he first wrote. So he tacked on an extra bit which made anyone who read it wish they hadn't!

Roland, Roland, Roland, some people are just born with bad luck.

Spoiler ...
I'm not sure that's the case. He did revise The Gunslinger from its original version to make that ending make more sense. So he had the loop ending in mind for a while. Personally, I think that he was trying to make a point to the Constant Reader. What is the Dark Tower? It's addiction. You keep chasing after it, throwing away all advice to the contrary, losing your humanity in the process. You keep going, no matter what that hoary cripple with malicious eye askance might tell you. Why did the reader continue? Because they had to have that story, had to squeeze the last drops out of it. That's my take on it, anyway.

[Tengu]

You know I'm starting to get tempted to read Eragon just to see if its really that bad.
I second Heart of Darkness, a monumentally dull book. So dull it makes things like being attacked in the amazon by hordes of natives seem the most boring thing in the world. I'm still not certain how the author managed that

Thank you for reminding me about that book, which ascends over ordinary boredom and becomes so unspeakably dull that it can put anyone to sleep. It's weird that Apocalypse Now, such a wonderfully Mind Screwy movie, was based on it.


Stephen King warns you not to read the last chapter? Then why did he write it? :smallconfused:

Because he's an arse, probably. Although, while I felt cheated by the ending myself,
it seems that Roland might accomplish his goal this time, as he has the horn with him. Which makes the ending more bittersweet and less meaningless.

[Serpentine]

Hmm... Maybe I should get someone to buy me a copy and tear out the last chapter. Does it work, with that chapter just removed, or does it make it go strangely?

[banjo1985]

It leaves it more vague...more uncertain...let's you use your imagination. Opinion is divided as to whether that's a good thing or not. I was personally happy with either ending, I was glad to finish the series really. I thought it peaked at Wolves of the Calla then trailed off a little.

[Arcane_Secrets]

I couldn't stand The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I tried the first book but had to stop after going catatonic with boredom!

I'm past the halfway mark on the first book now. I keep hearing that it gets better once Covenant actually does something that genuinely helps someone else instead of just whining.



A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also pretty dire. I understand that a lot of the difficulty comes from it being written nigh on 90 years ago, but I am a fan of George Orwell and H.P. Lovecraft, so I think it's mainly the book. It very nearly sent me to sleep but I at least managed to finish the thing.

I really liked Brave New World, personally. I think I read it in its entirety over the course of a couple of days or so (interrupted sessions, because I had to go to class).

[WNxHasoroth]

Well I dunno, it was bitter sweet.

Its like Kings saying "Don't go on. You'll hate yourself for it. I made it as soul crushing as possible" and the idiot reader goes "I paid X for this book, I'll read it anyway!"

Then you read on, and on, and on, until the last part, and you go "Holy crap. Why did I do that? Why? It seemed like a happy ambiguous, make up your own, ending. Now its some bitter sweet nightmare."

At least he has the horn. At least he has the horn.

[Ecalsneerg]

Books I really hate:

The Silmarillion. Yuo can tell it was compiled after his death from his notes. It's a dab, dreary, boring work. I cannot get into the book at all.

Harry Potter. It's not bad, it's not good. It's the definition of mediocre, so why the hell has JK been more successful than Pullman and 9i think) Pratchett!? It boogles the mind! Not to mention the plot bloat as the series went on. You can fit the first three books into the fourth easily; and the first four probably go into the seventh. Editors: grow a pair, really.

Now, for one that often causes disputes. The Necroscope saga. I did like:
- The first four were great IMO. Well plotted, with good characters mostly.
- The fifth one befoe it went from a tragic story to freaky-deeky vampire sex.
- The Touch, although I don't feel it fits in with the rest at all.

The rest are characterisationless tripe.

[DomaDoma]

You know, I didn't actually hate Inheritance - found it a guilty pleasure, for the most part, with the exceptions of Roran's chapters of awesome on the one hand and the elven brainwashing sessions of wince on the other.

The one book that actually inspired hatred in me was Lord Foul's Bane. I mean, I've heard of unsympathetic protagonists, but this is ridiculous.

[Terraoblivion]

If you want to see really unsympathetic protagonists i have just two names to say: Richard and Kahlan. The horror stories about them and the books they are from are all over the internet. I am sure others can relate them better than i can.

[Deepblue706]

Well I dunno, it was bitter sweet.

Its like Kings saying "Don't go on. You'll hate yourself for it. I made it as soul crushing as possible" and the idiot reader goes "I paid X for this book, I'll read it anyway!"

Then you read on, and on, and on, until the last part, and you go "Holy crap. Why did I do that? Why? It seemed like a happy ambiguous, make up your own, ending. Now its some bitter sweet nightmare."

At least he has the horn. At least he has the horn.

In my opinion, that was a better ending.

[Winterwind]

I'm past the halfway mark on the first book now. I keep hearing that it gets better once Covenant actually does something that genuinely helps someone else instead of just whining.I consider the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to be in my top 3 favourite fantasy sagas (right after George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire and Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. However, it requires an act of strong will to get through the first two books - not because they aren't awesome (they are very much so, in my opinion), but because throughout the first books the protagonist is the literally most unlikeable individual I have ever encountered in the protagonist role in my life. (I pretty much spent the first two books trying to devise a death sufficiently excruciating for him to repay me for my frustration with him - until I ran out of ideas)


I really liked Brave New World, personally. I think I read it in its entirety over the course of a couple of days or so (interrupted sessions, because I had to go to class).I remember I didn't like it when I read it the first time. I re-read it rather recently, and found it quite okay (though I still prefer 1984, as far as dystopic books go).

[Zeful]

There wasn't any cannibalism. They intended to make a human sacrifice at one point, but other than that and the murder attempts there was nothing implausible. How is Lord of the Flies not a real book?

Because any idiot can write about mindless killing without a plot. It takes an author to actually write a plot.

[kamikasei]

Because any idiot can write about mindless killing without a plot. It takes an author to actually write a plot.

I'm pretty sure that claim ("Lord of the Flies is mindless killing with no plot") is literally indefensible. Of course there's a plot. You just didn't like it or, more likely given your comments, didn't understand it.

The message of the book is very bleak and the course of events in it highly unpleasant. That doesn't make it a bad book, or not a book at all, or mean that it is plotless.

[Zakama]

I hated Dune, by Frank Herbert. It was freakin boring man. I didn't even finish it, I got to like 5(?) chapters from the end and stopped.

[SurlySeraph]

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also pretty dire. I understand that a lot of the difficulty comes from it being written nigh on 90 years ago, but I am a fan of George Orwell and H.P. Lovecraft, so I think it's mainly the book. It very nearly sent me to sleep but I at least managed to finish the thing.

76 years, dearie. :smalltongue:

EDIT:


Because any idiot can write about mindless killing without a plot. It takes an author to actually write a plot.

The plot:A plane, apparently carrying schoolboys as refugees from a war in England, crashes in the tropics. Two of them, Ralph and Piggy, find a conch shell, which they use as a trumpet to gather the scattered boys together. They form a government, in which the ambitious character Jack is introduced. The boys use Piggy's glasses to create a signal fire so that they can be rescued. While exploring, they confirm that they are on an island. The boys cooperate in making shelters and finding food for a while, but the hunters led by Jack are increasingly separate. Some of the boys begin to believe there is some sort of dangerous beast on the island. At one point, believing they have found the beast, they accidentally beat a boy to death. The hunters lead a breakoff faction that believes in the beast, while Ralph and Piggy lead those who don't believe. Jack's group gradually converts almost all of Ralph's supporters, and becomes increasingly violent and tribal. Eventually the hunters steal Piggy's glasses to create their own fire. When the remnants of Ralph's group goes to get the glasses back, Piggy is semi-accidentally killed and the conch (symbolizing order and government) breaks. Ralph's last two supporters convert to Jack's hunters. Ralph flees, and Jack leads his hunters around the island to find and kill Ralph, as a sacrifice to the beast. Jack burns down much of the island in the process; the fires alert a nearby British warship, which arrives at the island just before Ralph would have been killed. The crew saves the boys, though are shocked by their degeneration.

[rubakhin]

I loved The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I love Oscar Wilde. I will admit though that the book's problem is this: He was a playwright, and writes like one. Thus, he 'infodumps', with pages upon pages of description followed by pages upon pages of dialogue with no break. You can almost see Basil Exit stage right written in there.

Hah! Yes. The first couple of chapters amuse the hell out of me because you can tell he wants to just set the whole thing down in script format, and is having trouble coming up with things for the characters to do with themselves while they monologue. You sorta wanna smack them and tell them to stop fidgeting.

(Having said that, I've read that book upwards of twenty times, so mad love for Mr. Wilde, don't get me wrong.)

[Arioch]

The huge reading lists we got in high school almost completely turned me off literature for a while, though.

I was lucky in that the reading lists in my school were always recommended rather than required, so I felt free to ignore them completely, other than those books that were actually required for schoolwork or the exams.

[Emperor Tippy]

I can only think of 1 book I really, truly, hate: Beloved

There are a lot of books I dislike and a large number that I couldn't get interested enough in to finish (many of which have been mentioned already) but only the one I truly hated.

[Legendary]

Dude, you are not going to go very far in your literary maturation if you hate books for being depressing. Of Mice and Men was fantastic.

The Grapes of Wrath can go suck and die, though. "Hey, I think I'll write an entire chapter about a turtle crossing the street!" Yeah, screw off, Steinbeck.

First off, despite the fact that there is good, uplifting literature, my school utterly ignored it. By Of Mice and Men, I stopped looking for reasons to like books. I think I'm gonna go back to it soon, but school ruined the classics for me.

And, with Grapes of Wrath, the turtle chapter was more interesting than the family. I liked the random nonsense chapters MUCH more than I could bring myself to care about the characters, and this is when I was still trying.

[ghost_warlock]

It leaves it more vague...more uncertain...let's you use your imagination. Opinion is divided as to whether that's a good thing or not. I was personally happy with either ending, I was glad to finish the series really. I thought it peaked at Wolves of the Calla then trailed off a little.

Personally, Wolves of the Calla ruined the series for me. I was so freaking sick of the multiple personalities thing by then that I couldn't finish the book, nor continue the series. From what I've read of reviews it appears I'm not missing much. :smallsigh:

I read Brave New World, mostly because a girl I was corresponding with/e-dating at the time told me it was her favorite book (lol). I realize the book was written before we had a strong understanding of genetics but the terrible science of the book really bothered me. Also, were all the women bred by the society to be shallow, fickle automatons? They just seemed too stupid to be at all believable for me (I felt much the same about Stranger in a Strange Land). Still, rampant sexism is pretty common in literature, I guess... :smallfrown: But, even though I feel BNW is crap, at least the girl introduced me to something I did find worthwhile: The Life Aquatic. :smallbiggrin:

[Vargtass]

Also, were all the women bred by the society to be shallow, fickle automatons?

The short answer is: yes!

[Jerthanis]

Also, were all the women bred by the society to be shallow, fickle automatons? They just seemed too stupid to be at all believable for me

To be fair, I think it's implied that all men were bred to be shallow, fickle automatons as well. It's just we get to see the few male counterexamples who still exist on the male side, but don't see it in the female side.

I didn't like Brave New World either, but I got the sense that the whole world was stupid, not just half of it.

[Nevrmore]

Because any idiot can write about mindless killing without a plot. It takes an author to actually write a plot.
Violence without reason is detestable. Lord of the Flies is not detestable.

I think that it does a good job in depicting what kids would devolve into if they were left on their own for that long, especially since they were young and their moral compasses hadnt'f fully developed in the first place. There are far more violent books out there with far less purpose for you to rant about than this.

[zeratul]

WARNING: this post is rediculously mean!

Go Ask Alice. It's horribly written, and the characters (particularly the main one) are really annoying and predictable. Bear in mind I also found it hilarious. The sheer stupidity and predictability of the characters, along with the bad writing, produced long laughs from me and one of my friends. Now this is where some of you are saying "But zer! It's the sad diary of a real life girl's struggle with drugs and eventual overdose! How could you find that funny?" Well generic appalled onlooker i just made up, there are a few reasons. There are the reasons I mentioned above. But there are many reasons it's bad and funny aside from those. It reads like a badly written diary of a whiny 14 year old. Mind you it supposedly is the diary of a whiny annoying 14 year old, however there is much evidence to support the theory that it is not in fact a real diary. This could contribute to some of the terrible random and cliche writing.

Overall it was hilariously bad, with an annoying but also hilariously bad main character. I wouldn't recommend reading it more than once, and the first time just read it for the laughs.:smallwink:

[Zarrexaij]

Violence without reason is detestable. Lord of the Flies is not detestable.

I think that it does a good job in depicting what kids would devolve into if they were left on their own for that long, especially since they were young and their moral compasses hadnt'f fully developed in the first place. There are far more violent books out there with far less purpose for you to rant about than this.Indeed. But I wouldn't just say kids, I'd say humanity as a whole. The whole point of that book was behind all this civility there lies a beast that would resort to animal means if society crumbles. Of course, that's a really cynical way to look at things, but I think (damn, his name is eluding him) the author is pretty much right.

Of course, a lot of the philosophy in Lord of the Flies was borrowed from Heart of Darkness. I'm torn on my opinion about that book. The message is very good, but the vehicle... is pretty boring.



I'd like to point out some of the best, most true to reality literature often have the most depressing endings.

Hell, a lot of really good books have "bad" endings. Personally, nothing annoys me more than the arbitrary, unrealistic good ending. :smalltongue:

[turkishproverb]

As for classics, I'll also add "Narnia" books 4+.
Book 4 is when a good children fantasy book turns to "Christianity for children", and a manual of how to hate, disrespect practically anything that isn't Christianity.

Yea, but in all fairness, the first 3 books were Christianity for children/ fantasy fans, they were just also decent about it.

And some of his christianity stuff still rocks, Like the Screwtape letters.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I liked Brave New World and Heart of Darkness.

I liked how in Brave New World, there's a good intellectual answer to everything bad about the utopia. Even the Prison Colonies are perfect. However the book provokes so many emotional dislikes that you can't not hate the utopia. I like how John Savage is a completely displaced character who is noble and heroic yet if he tries to act like a hero he just ends up looking angry and uncivilised. His sense of justice is in theory a good thing but it just leads to his suicide.

I liked Heart of Darkness because the narrator appears to be racist but the author is making a differant point. The narrator finds the black slave labour disgusting but part of this is because the slaves have been forced to be inhuman. I liked how everyone talks about how wonderful Kurtz is but when you get to meet him he's absolutely pathetic.

[bosssmiley]

I couldn't stand The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I tried the first book but had to stop after going catatonic with boredom!

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also pretty dire. I understand that a lot of the difficulty comes from it being written nigh on 90 years ago, but I am a fan of George Orwell and H.P. Lovecraft, so I think it's mainly the book. It very nearly sent me to sleep but I at least managed to finish the thing.

On that you and the mighty George Orwell (who was taught by Huxley at Eton IIRC) agree. "1984" was partially written as a "screw you, this is a proper dystopia" to Huxley. "Brave New World"; great concepts, shame about the post-Edwardian author on board (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WriterOnBoard) writing.

[Wardog]

July's People.

Honestly, I don't know why i hated that book so much. It just made me yawn every few words.

Oh, god, yes. Of all the pretentious, anvillicious books I had to study for English Lit GCSE, that was the worst.

For those that were spared it, it is set during the violent overthrow of the Apartheid regime in South Africa (the story, by Nadine Gordimer, was written before the actual end of Apartheid, but it had ended by the time we did the book).

The story is about a family of liberal(ish) white South Africans, who escape from the chaos in Johannesburg (or wherever it was they lived), and go to stay with their black servant (July) in his impoverished village.

Where they have to cope with poverty, squalor, white guilt, more poverty, more, realizing that they weren't as liberal as they thought they were, more squalor, stress, family breakdown, more white guilt, etc. Oh, and did I mention that they had to cope with the squalor?


It didn't help that our teacher was both very PC, and also seemingly rather ignorant about how certain things worked in the real world. E.g. at one point in the story, the the mother of the family was getting concerned that they were about to run out of anti-malaria tablets.

Teacher (slightly paraphrased): "This shows how out of touch the protagonists are, because they are worrying about the lack of the minor comforts of civilization".

(Which might have made sense, if they were worrying about aspirin. But malaria is a disease that kills vastly more people every year than AIDS, and is much harder to avoid).


Or, when discussing the general lack of food available to the villagers, one of the other pupils pointed out that they were living on the edge of a game reserve, and wondered why they didn't catch some of the animals for food.

Teacher: But how could they catch them?
Pupil: Well, I suppose they could make spears and hunt with those?

Which the teacher seemed to think was a very objectionably suggestion, as it implied (in her view) that Africans were still living as primitive tribes. (Quote: "You must have very strange views of Africans!")


Then there was the exercise where we were presented with a (fictional) "letter from a concerned parent", objecting to the amount of graphic descriptions of squalor and violence in the book (and the fact that at the end, the mother - probably the main protagonist - apparently abandons her family).

Out task: to write an essay showing why this knuckle-dragging Daily-Mail reader concerned parent was wrong. (Not: "Discuss the issues she raised". Not: "Present your own conclusions on the subject". But quite clearly: "This woman is wrong. Demonstrate why".)


Of course, even without the way it was taught, it would still have been a pretty poor book.

[Jorkens]

On that you and the mighty George Orwell (who was taught by Huxley at Eton IIRC) agree. "1984" was partially written as a "screw you, this is a proper dystopia" to Huxley.
I think they complement each other rather well, actually - hard jackbooted totalitarianism vs soft consumerist totalitarianism. I read a rather interesting article in the grauniad that started with a quick rundown on different phases of recent history and which book seemed the more plausible dystopia at the time.

[DraPrime]

I consider Fahrenheit 451 to be a rather ridiculous dystopia. First of all, Ray Bradbury commits the crime of purple prose many times through the book. The whole thing is unnecessarily intricate. Then there's the very basis of the dystopia. People don't read. So many worse things could happen to society than a lack of reading. We could all be drugged up (like in Brave New World) or have a thought police (like in 1984), but a lack of reading? I found the book to be absurd.

[Sequinox]

Chasing Vermeer.

Throughout the book, it has a vague, conspiracy-theory feel to it. It is somewhat intense. All of these strange things are happening, and it makes you want to know why.

In the end, none of the strange happenings had anything to do with a plot. They were really just random, strange things.

The guy 'whodunnit' is a character you wouldn't have heard about unless you translated these sections of the book, and that was just stupid to me. I want to be able to read the book and not be forced to do translation to get the whole story.

Everyone in my class still remembers, and hates, that book.

EDIT: And Animal Farm, I liked it a lot, but the ending just ticked me off. I'm not sure if I should post that.

[comicshorse]

I mentioned this debate to a friend who then claimed that 'Room With a View'is the most boring book in existence not 'Heart of Darkness' as I claimed. He's agreed to read 'Heart of Darkness', so hopefully we will soon have an opinion on what is in fact the worst book.

[Nevrmore]

I consider Fahrenheit 451 to be a rather ridiculous dystopia. First of all, Ray Bradbury commits the crime of purple prose many times through the book. The whole thing is unnecessarily intricate. Then there's the very basis of the dystopia. People don't read. So many worse things could happen to society than a lack of reading. We could all be drugged up (like in Brave New World) or have a thought police (like in 1984), but a lack of reading? I found the book to be absurd.
I agree. If I recall correctly, I believe at one point, early in the book, Guy walks into his house, and the simple act of him moving into his living room gets like a page of flowery description that somehow ends up with the moon getting compared to a clockface or something. It's sad because the beginning is very slow, then everything picks up at the climax and it starts getting interesting, and then...It just sort of falls out without any sort of ending.

Captain Beatty was such a good character, too.

[DomaDoma]

I consider Fahrenheit 451 to be a rather ridiculous dystopia. First of all, Ray Bradbury commits the crime of purple prose many times through the book. The whole thing is unnecessarily intricate. Then there's the very basis of the dystopia. People don't read. So many worse things could happen to society than a lack of reading. We could all be drugged up (like in Brave New World) or have a thought police (like in 1984), but a lack of reading? I found the book to be absurd.

Books are the rallying point, but it's more about the slam-bang attitude that lacks any contemplation whatsoever and doesn't give a thought to anyone's well-being. I thought it was well-done.

[Coplantor]

I should'nt be mad at the book because it catched me for a while but... The DaVinci Code. There was this guy I know who uses references of the davinci code all the time to attack catholicism as if the book were the final great truth about everything and he wont even listen to any kind of argument. I know, it's not the book's fault but arrrrgh...

[Ceric]

Animal Farm by George Orwell. I hated Old Major's philosophies, and the entire book was based on those philosophies. I just don't think chickens care much about their infertile-and-thus-useless eggs or even that (sorry) animals are smart enough to do this kind of thing. Animals have an Intellegence of 3 or less, after all. :smallwink:

The Portrait of Dorian Gray. It was boring and depressing. I also hate when people act like they know everything.

The Golden Compass trilogy. Could not understand the plot at all. I mean, I knew whats-her-name and whats-his-name were good guys and that's about it. And then the end made even less sense.

A Series of Unfortunate Events. I don't remember why.

I liked the Obsidian Trilogy until I read a one-star review on Amazon how the mages of Armethalieh were always evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysChaoticEvil). I have to skip those parts when I reread, or I'll vomit. But Cilarnen's my favorite character, because he understands both sides and hates neither of them.

Some books are just written because the author wishes it were true--mostly when people (mostly females) own or can talk to animals. It's like published fanfic.

I'm used to disliking books like Fahrenheit 451, The Pearl and To Kill a Mockingbird that we have to read in school. They've been mentioned already.

Oh, and Eragon.

Wow, that's a lot of books.

[Quincunx]

Ooo, dystopias! I only remember one which hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread, and that's most likely because no one has read it!

Erewhon, Samuel Butler. Victorian-era explorer floats into a remote, perverse, civilized society. Tedious, detailed, Victorian textbook of the opposition-which-isn't-really, aren't-I-clever-for-noticing-it follows. Since those perversions of the idea are accepted truths fifty years old or older, now, nobody shudders at this vision of the future that could never be.

We, Yevgeny Zamyatin. Inter-war period dream of a technotopia where man is distilled to a cog in a machine. Main character is a mathematician and engineer discovering that there is more to life than numbers. Sometimes I wonder if an autistic thinker would see the problem in this world. The few people who've read it that I know think the problem is that a book devoid of human emotion is bloody boring.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. It's already been adequately skewered in this thread--but aside from the abolishment of family, how is it different than the world we're living in now?

1984, George Orwell. All of the relevant questions about overweening authority, no relevant answers. The current set of answers are the Matrix trilogy. Take a look at one to counterbalance the other.

The Giver, Lois Lowry. Nearly a utopia, and at a lower reading level than the others, very accessible. Nobody sacrifices much--call it 'art' and the power to be artistic, or the power to want, or to choose. The only novel on the list where the family unit is preserved. I have run the idea of this novel past people who describe their homeland as a "socialist utopia" and they, to a person, fail to see the problem in this utopia.

[SurlySeraph]

Hm. I'm reading Brave New World in English right now, and I rather like it so far. I think it's holding my interest because the society has a pretty even balance of traits that I think would be good (careful maintenance of quotas, figuring out necessary population figures, indoctrination to keep people happy and productive throughout life, the concept that everyone belongs to everyone else) and traits that disgust me to the very core of my being (the immaturity, the short-sightedness, and absolutely above all their attitude towards sex). It's making me reconsider my beliefs, I'm amazed that Huxley wrote something that is in many ways so prescient in 1932, and it's the first book I've read that has whiny protagonist whom I neither hate nor identify with. I look forward to the rest of it.


I agree. If I recall correctly, I believe at one point, early in the book, Guy walks into his house, and the simple act of him moving into his living room gets like a page of flowery description that somehow ends up with the moon getting compared to a clockface or something.

Hey! I like that style of writing! :smallyuk:


Animal Farm by George Orwell. I hated Old Major's philosophies, and the entire book was based on those philosophies. I just don't think chickens care much about their infertile-and-thus-useless eggs or even that (sorry) animals are smart enough to do this kind of thing. Animals have an Intellegence of 3 or less, after all. :smallwink:

Er... you do realize that the entire point of the book is that it's a metaphor, right? It's not about talking animals. At all. It's about how Communism falls short of being ideal, and how ideals are corrupted. Read some history, than reread Animal Farm, keeping the following in mind:

Humans = dictators

Pigs = intellectuals

Old Major = Marx and/ or Lenin

Napoleon = Stalin

Snowball = Leon Trotsky

Squealer = propaganda incarnate

Dogs = the secret police

Horses = the working class (except for Mollie, who's the aristocracy)

[Azerian Kelimon]

Actually, the pigs are the revolutionaries. Benjamin the Donkey is the representation of the poets and intellectuals.

Major is Marx. Napoleon is both Lenin and Stalin, depending on the period. Pilkington is, I believe, England, and Frederick is Hitler.

[Closet_Skeleton]

People don't read. So many worse things could happen to society than a lack of reading.

It's about a general death of culture. Faber, the old professor character, actually makes the point that the world was pretty crap even when people read books. The author also uses it to rant about other things like caesarian insection. The book is intelligent in that it isn't the government that causes the dystopia but the people themselves. It's one of the few the utopias where only the USA is changed. The USA getting destroyed in a war that its people don't even care about is pretty poignant as well and shows that a true utopia couldn't support itself.

The great thing about Fahrenhiet 451 is not that it shows a truly horrible world, but how close we are to the world it presents.

Also Clarise McKellen is a good example of how to use a complete cypher of a character well.

[rubakhin]

The few people who've read it that I know think the problem is that a book devoid of human emotion is bloody boring.

Wait, what?

:smallconfused: Maybe it was just a crappy translation or something ... even before all the love triangle business comes in I thought the book was rather beautiful. The emotion wasn't quite there at the beginning, but I found D-503's aesthetic adoration of the mathematically precise world he lived in quite moving.

[TigerHunter]

The book is intelligent in that it isn't the government that causes the dystopia but the people themselves.
But the government was actively trying to perpetuate the dystopia, given how they outlawed books and a few other things I've forgotten about (read it way back in 7th grade).

I personally liked the book. Ray Bradbury just has a very ...unique style.

[bugsysservant]

Hmm, let's see:

Eragon: duh.

The Critique of Pure Reason: I'm never going to finish that thing. Because the only thing more entertaining than reading an author that's utterly full of himself is reading it over a thousand pages in an utterly impenetrable manner. Hell, Nietzsche is better than that, and I disagree with just about every premise he comes up with.

Moby ****. I Stopped after the chapter describing the lantern. That's right, a chapter describing a lantern. 'Nuff said.

Hamlet. I'm including this. While it has some of the greatest writing contained in it that you'll ever encounter, it suffers heavily from "Don't read plays, idiot" syndrome, and is far too big to be performed in full. And it doesn't really make sense due to the way Shakespeare's writing was compiled. So, is Hamlet 30, or 19? Oh, and Oscar Wilde was far and away a better playwright than Shakespeare. I can read An Ideal Husband like a book with no problem. God, I love him.

By extension, The Invention of the Human. I read about fifty or so pages of that for English class. WHY GOD, WHY??? Seriously, Harold Bloom makes me see red. "And all of humanity is contained in Hamlet... because he was conflicted. Oh, and even though every other scholar on the face of the Earth disagrees with me, I'm going to rest massive portions of my thesis on historical "facts" I just made up.

Things Fall Apart. My English teacher made me read it back to back with Heart of Darkness, and thought she was being clever.

A Movable Feast. "And then I met this other author. We sat and drank for a while. The wine was good, with a bit of an aftertaste. Oh, and we are now going skiing for some reason. Did I mention I know other famous authors?"

Anyway, that's all I've got off the top of my head.

[Closet_Skeleton]

But the government was actively trying to perpetuate the dystopia, given how they outlawed books and a few other things I've forgotten about (read it way back in 7th grade).

The government had a hand in it but it's the people's fault for not caring. In fact, the book never precisely states that the USA is no longer a democracy. The government was only able to ban book because nobody was reading them.

[Quincunx]

The Venn diagram of the overlap between People Who Appreciate the Mathematical Order of We and People Who Read Classic Novels for Pleasure and/or Self-Edification shows how very tiny it is.

If you can't stand modern dreck, take a peek at The Digested Read (http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/0,,124958,00.html), new releases summarized and skewered in 400 words or less. It's a pity that the review of the EU Constitution (Revised) slipped off the page; it was the only non-novel on the list and one of the very best condensations.

[Winterwind]

Hm. I'm reading Brave New World in English right now, and I rather like it so far. I think it's holding my interest because the society has a pretty even balance of traits that I think would be good (careful maintenance of quotas, figuring out necessary population figures, indoctrination to keep people happy and productive throughout life, the concept that everyone belongs to everyone else) and traits that disgust me to the very core of my being (the immaturity, the short-sightedness, and absolutely above all their attitude towards sex). It's making me reconsider my beliefs, I'm amazed that Huxley wrote something that is in many ways so prescient in 1932, and it's the first book I've read that has whiny protagonist whom I neither hate nor identify with. I look forward to the rest of it.That's funny. And here I was thinking their attitude towards sex was the only thing where the Brave New World society was more sensible than our own.

[DraPrime]

That's funny. And here I was thinking their attitude towards sex was the only thing where the Brave New World society was more sensible than our own.

How? Not having sex with tons of people was the equivalent of cheating on your wife in our society. And they had children participate in "erotic play." While Huxley isn't very specific about what this erotic play is, the reader gets a good idea, and the disturbing thing is that kids younger than 10 are encouraged to do it. That's simply sick.

[Closet_Skeleton]

How?

There's always the bonobo/chimpanzee comparison. Bonobos have sex all the time, while chimpanzees have almost human habits. Bonobos are completely peaceful and chimpanzees are one of the most bloodthirsty species of animal.


That's simply sick.

A purely cultural viewpoint.

[DraPrime]

A purely cultural viewpoint.

Yes, because I can't imagine any other cultures that would consider little children engaging in sexual acts as wrong.

[Jimblee]

Anything published by Ian McEwan. Man! I can't stand that junk. Blah blah blah Oh, look! A metaphor that ONLY APPLIES TO YOUR BOOK. Whats that, Ian? Going into a page-long description over a fountain, as a symbol of the love thats going to change IN THE VERY NEXT PAGE? Thanks, that was great, Ian, I loved it. So tell me, what does this book deal with? Could it be... Love and loss? OMG OMG OMG! Your so clever, Ian! I had Atonement as some required reading - you can guess how that panned out. I literally couldn't read it. I would try, and my head would just burst with insults over every page. Try reading it, seriously. He doesn't write about whats going on, he just writes about things that don't relate to whats going on, as an obscure metaphor for what their feelings on the issue are.

He got a movie out for Atonement, right? You know who's in it? Keira Knightly. You know what Keira Knightly does in every movie she's in? Take a look. She doesn't do anything unless she's awesome, everyone wants to have sex with her, and she wins. She does that.. mouth thing, and you just see in her face, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Keira Knightly!". Just look at how she dresses!

You know, he wrote a book about 9/11? You weren't in the city, Ian. You had no loss there. Shut up, get out of here.

...Why do I hate this stuff so much?


Me? I greatly dislike Eragon. The words have all been pulled strait out of a thesaurus without any thought of how they should be used. The characters have no personality. There's the ever so famous issue of the plot being ripped of from Star Wars. But what I hate most about it is that it's received so much popularity. The book is a purple prose laden, cliche, unoriginal, and poorly edited, yet for some reason it has radical fans who often violently criticize me whenever I disagree with them about the book. People on Xbox Live are more civil than the crazed fans of Eragon.

Funny thing about Eragon. I have this friend whose trying to get his books out there, but he's having trouble, since he gets too many good ideas to put into one book. All of them are clever, dark, full of ideas; you know, all that stuff Eregon doesn't have. I can't tell how how gifted this guy is at prose.

Both of their names are Chris. They look the same. And Paolini gets his PoS Eragon published 'cause his parents own a company. I can't tell you how much he hates that series.

[Irenaeus]

I'm sure these have been mentioned a few times before, but I hate them as well, so they will be listed again. I really hate the Dune prequels and everything of Ayn Rand and Robert Jordan. Contrary to many people, nobody has ever forced me to read The Lord of the Flies, Moby ****, The Catcher in the Rye, and quite a few other English classics, so I like them quite well. Dickens is OK, but usually just a bit too much.

If I read two books by Pratchett in a row, I usually get very annoyed with him as I find him very much to be a one-trick pony with a taste for repitition. It's to his credit that I actually have to start on the second book in a row before this occur.

I'm currently reading the Boris Akunin books. Those are great, if silly, fun, and my enjoyment of them are quite OT.

Edit: I like Brave New World quite well. By the way, when I see Moby ****, Philip K. **** or **** Cheney mentioned on these boards, I sometimes get a bit annoyed by the profanity filter. Oh well.

[captain_decadence]

Yes, because I can't imagine any other cultures that would consider little children engaging in sexual acts as wrong.

If you've ever worked closely with kids, you'll realize that they are sexual, not asexual like Western culture likes to paint them. I'm not joking at all when I say that kids do play doctor, they do masturbate and they do engage in some forms of sex play before puberty. Huxley's society is one where sexual freedom is extremely important so he opens sexuality up to even the youngest. They do it anyway and if their society wants to indoctrinate them to their ideas of sex, they need to start early.

[Gamiress]

I lived in Northern Canada for a long time, and before the industrial revolution made its way up there people did indeed live in igloos (they can be built very quickly as families follow the seal migration). Do you think they built a seperate one for the kids? Nope, any children slept where their parents slept - and where their parents had sex. This is only one example, too. The idea that sex is inappropriate for children to know about is a recent one in the grand scheme of things, heck, the reason girls used to be virgins at marriage is because they were getting married at twelve.

[Winterwind]

How? Not having sex with tons of people was the equivalent of cheating on your wife in our society. And they had children participate in "erotic play." While Huxley isn't very specific about what this erotic play is, the reader gets a good idea, and the disturbing thing is that kids younger than 10 are encouraged to do it. That's simply sick.Unnhh. Damnit. I must have repressed that part. I was thinking of the more relaxed stance they had towards sexuality, thinking of it as a perfectly natural method for physical enjoyment, and forgot they also encouraged pedophilia. :smalleek:
Nevermind. Forget what I said before.

[kamikasei]

You know what Keira Knightly does in every movie she's in? Take a look. She doesn't do anything unless she's awesome, everyone wants to have sex with her, and she wins.

"The Hole".


Just look at how she dresses!

...:smallconfused: is this satire, now?

[Closet_Skeleton]

and forgot they also encouraged pedophilia.

They don't encourage paedophilia at all. They encourage children to be sexualy explorative. These are completely differant things. The book never mentions adults being "intimate" with children.

[DraPrime]

One more thing for the "Sex in brave new world discussion." Everyone having sex all willy-nilly tends to get STDs spread. FAST. While people do manage to stay youthful for most of their life in Brave New World they do eventually die quickly and abruptly (this may not be entirely right. I read the book a while ago). Methinks this may be from all the diseases they acquire (sexual and not sexual) finally catching up to them.

If anyone wishes to continue this discussion with me then PM me. I don't want this thread locked.

[Sleet]

The Last of the Mohicans is probably one of the worst books ever written. How it's considered a classic is beyond me. I'm tempted to send someone back in time to club James Fenimore Cooper to death with a stick before he wrote it.

Except that Michael Mann made an absolutely wonderful film loosely based on it. So I'm torn.

[SurlySeraph]

@^: I think you'll appreciate this (http://ww3.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html).

[Plactus]

I wonder if my hatred for Heart of Darkness stems from the circumstances under which I read it. The first time, my teacher thought we could push through it over a weekend. A week later, when we were supposed to be reading Lord of the Flies, everyone in the class was still slogging through HoD. Fortunately, we still had time before the final which was to cover both books.

Then at semester I switched English teachers. Our first project for the new semester was to read Hamlet in class, while at home... yep, Heart of Darkness. So, I didn't get to read it on my own terms, which led to me hating the thing. I'm not going to give it another try, though.

Then there's Hemingway. Or, at least, The Old Man and the Sea and the first half of The Sun Also Rises. But that's more than enough for me.

[Jayngfet]

a book recently read for english class, men of stone, its painful because it starts out good, then dives so hard that it talks about how bad it sucks


the plot is as follows

girl troubled dancer quits dancing because he's mocked

his great aunt comes to live with him, his sisters feminazi and wonder twins and their crazy mom

mr.forgettable has about five chapters of being the butt monkey

he gets off his ass and tries to do something about it because the system dosn't work in this situation

his best friend runs away

the wangst in the dancing guy and his buddy build up into violence and his buddy is in jail

somehow when he stops trying to fight and gets his ass kicked

in the end his family still has no common interest, his mom still thinks he's a wimp, his best friend is in prison, his other friend he knows will leave him, the one person left he could talk to is leaving...


but its okay! his wimpery lets him get the girl third time around and he's found a reilgion who's beliefs contradict most of his actions (really, from the little described about the mennonites a wasteful violent dancer is perfect!)

also he isn't eating healthy anymore!

really my favorite parts were when the protagonist enjoyed watching is families schedule and order collapse around them.