Zenmervolt
Elite member
- Oct 22, 2000
- 24,514
- 36
- 91
So this would not be a good time for me to tell you all that I absolutely love the works of Jane Austen too?
ZV
I mostly stick to "classics" and the like, and so I don't read too many modern books.
As far as those that I've had trouble finishing, or dislike:
- The Awakening (have yet to make it through)
- House of Seven Gables (I liked the book, but it was damn tough to get through)
I've pretty much been able to find at least a few redeeming qualities in just about everything that I've read, and so it's pretty difficult for me to pick books that I don't like. But requiring someone to read a book can go a LONG way in killing their appreciation of it. Not that required reading should be done away with; but if you disliked a book that you had to read in high school or college, try re-reading it again when it's not mandatory. You'll usually have a newfound appreciation for it.
As far as those that I've had trouble finishing, or dislike:
- The Awakening (have yet to make it through)
- House of Seven Gables (I liked the book, but it was damn tough to get through)
I've pretty much been able to find at least a few redeeming qualities in just about everything that I've read, and so it's pretty difficult for me to pick books that I don't like. But requiring someone to read a book can go a LONG way in killing their appreciation of it. Not that required reading should be done away with; but if you disliked a book that you had to read in high school or college, try re-reading it again when it's not mandatory. You'll usually have a newfound appreciation for it.
The Silver Wolf by Alice Borchardt. Alice is the sister of Anne Rice, which is the only reason this piece of trash EVER saw print. A lot about this book utterly sucks sour frog ass. The characters are one dimensional, lacking anything approaching depth. The plot line is threadbare and predictable. The motivations in a lot of instances are unexplainable (she inherited that from her sister I see). Worst of all, the technical -- the sentence structure and composition -- are utterly abominable! That woman could not use a comma to save her life! The thing that disgusted me the most about this book was the attitude of all the female characters. (Coincidentally there are exactly three male characters portrayed in a positive light vs one woman portrayed in a negative light.) The story is set in Rome, during the late Holy Roman Empire. Marriage back then was a different thing, and arranged marriages for political reasons were extremely common, especially amongst those with power. Yet every single woman that the protagonist encounters (including the nuns!!!) reacts to hearing that the woman is to be married to someone she (or for that matter anyone else in the city) has never met with "Oh, you gotta kill him girlfriend." The nuns even!!!!!! WTF!! A more misandrist (male version of misogynist) novel I have yet to come across. Really, the only saving grace to this book was the rather nifty setting. Everything else just adds up to a collective slap in the face for every truly talented author who is unable to get a manuscript published.
I don't suppose anyone else here has read this series and can enlighten me on whether she gets any better in the subsequent books?
Another book that disgusts me is He, She and It by Marge Piercy. After reading perhaps a quarter of the book (I had to read it for a class I was taking) I came to the undeniable conclusion that Marge has had zero exposure to science since she left high school -- and even that was generous. Further more, she hasn't a bloody clue about computers or the people who use them, which is greatly frustrating as those are central elements in her story. Really, the whole thing just reeks of science fiction written by someone who has never read it. Or at least anything of decent quantity or quality. It would be someone here trying to write a story from the perspective of a 19th century seducer, it would come off extremely poorly. But enough about the obvious cluelessness of the author. The characters she writes are also bloody clueless!! There are several instances where the reader has figured things out far ahead of the narrator and is wondering when they'll finally penetrate. But never fear, the narrator gets her blindness from her mother. There is one occurrence in which the mother is almost killed in cyberspace. This is allowed to happen because defenses were never fixed up, despite attacks killing six (or so) progressively higher ranking members of the town. Yet when this happens the mother says (actual quote) "I never saw this coming." This is the only time I have ever wanted to belt the author of a story across the head with a hardcover copy of their book. Never have I been so disgusted reading something a character has done or said. The science in this world is also very stupid. For instance, due to the degeneration of the atmosphere, people must live in domed cities... of no more than six stories tall. That's right; domes large enough to cover small cities are not high enough to hold buildings more than six stories. Even domes built within the ruins of more contemporary cities follow this guideline. Why? I haven't a damned clue and the author fails to provide one. Bleah, enough of that. Positive notes for that book are the facts that it's well written (from a purely technical standpoint) and the parallel story of a Jewish Golem myth is more interesting and well done than the central plot. Also, at the ending, she is one of the few characters who realizes that the android character can be rebuilt from the leftover blueprints and design notes (yes!) but that it would be impossible to reinvent him, not because the AI brain he uses grows by experience (a subjective nature) but because he would not want to have another live as he did (fvck!). Overall, very badly done
Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind. The sixth Sword of Truth book, where the series hit fvcking rock bottom! Oh my god. Ignoring the fact that this is a poor retread of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead placed in a fantasy setting (or so I'm told) we can in turn just look at what's wrong with it in a general context. First, he resorts to a plot device used in 4 of the 5 preceding novels, that of splitting up his characters and giving each their own arc. Next, he drops all pretenses of the novel being a fantasy story with a moral message, and makes it a political polemic espousing the virtues of Objectivism and a whole, overly simplistic comparison of capitalism vs communism (or socialism). He constructs a lot of strawman arguments and uses one-dimensional charactures to implement them. Really, he spends an almost 800 page narrative beating the point home with a fvcking sledge hammer! It's disgusting that the man used a work of fiction from which to preach (never mistake it for anything else) his political and social opinions. He also shows other disturbing trends in how he's creating an effective oligarchy centered around the characters with the gift for magic. There are several instances where we see that the questioning of these characters results in death. Oh, and speaking of death, what pissed me off the most about this book was that he whacked a central and needed character. Now that's not a bad thing in and of itself, but he did it in SUCH an utterly STUPID way!! An off-camera, totally pointless and preventable death. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Plot wise, this book is a little... thin. Who am I kidding, in relation to the main plot, it's practically not even there! The central plot has advanced perhaps 600 pages between all of books 5-8. Heck, by the end of this one NOTHING HAPPENS! There's been a little movement, but nothing major has changed! For anyone who has ever wrote or done some studies of English, one thing that is known about good authors is that they plot ahead, that they know exactly where their stuff is going and usually have a lot of notes on the subject. I've heard Goodkind does not work like that and seems almost proud of the fact that he hasn't a clue where his series is going. Considering the quagmire he drops his characters into here for no real reason, that's not at all hard to believe.
A series with a nice split for me was the Rama series by Arthur C Clarke. The first one -- the solo effort -- is simply wonderful and a work of sci-fi art. As a friend of mine put it "It's like a bunch of apes discovering a moving diesel-electric locomotive." Very cool. Alas, he then got Gentrey Lee on board for the next three sequels. I stopped after the middle of the third book, because I just really stopped caring. The lead female was just beginning to annoy me and the whole mess became one huge, convoluted soap opera. Garden of Rama is the only book in the last 7-8 years that I have ever failed to finish. Even Greg Bear's novel Legacy -- which exists only because he tacked it on to the far better Eon series, and it had no bearing on that series at all -- I managed to finish after a couple months and a few other novels in between. Really, the social dynamics and soap opera nature introduced to the Rama series made it just utterly awful IMO.
Those are really the books that disgusted me the most, as you can see by the imprint they've left. Catcher in the Rye, the only one mentioned here I have read and would agree with, just struck me as bloody boring and ultimately pointless, plus the main character was an utter twit. I cannot see why people love that book so much and revere it to the point they do. It's some moron's weekend in New York for chrissake!!
-- Jack
Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.
-- Ivana Trump, upon finishing her first novel
I don't suppose anyone else here has read this series and can enlighten me on whether she gets any better in the subsequent books?
Another book that disgusts me is He, She and It by Marge Piercy. After reading perhaps a quarter of the book (I had to read it for a class I was taking) I came to the undeniable conclusion that Marge has had zero exposure to science since she left high school -- and even that was generous. Further more, she hasn't a bloody clue about computers or the people who use them, which is greatly frustrating as those are central elements in her story. Really, the whole thing just reeks of science fiction written by someone who has never read it. Or at least anything of decent quantity or quality. It would be someone here trying to write a story from the perspective of a 19th century seducer, it would come off extremely poorly. But enough about the obvious cluelessness of the author. The characters she writes are also bloody clueless!! There are several instances where the reader has figured things out far ahead of the narrator and is wondering when they'll finally penetrate. But never fear, the narrator gets her blindness from her mother. There is one occurrence in which the mother is almost killed in cyberspace. This is allowed to happen because defenses were never fixed up, despite attacks killing six (or so) progressively higher ranking members of the town. Yet when this happens the mother says (actual quote) "I never saw this coming." This is the only time I have ever wanted to belt the author of a story across the head with a hardcover copy of their book. Never have I been so disgusted reading something a character has done or said. The science in this world is also very stupid. For instance, due to the degeneration of the atmosphere, people must live in domed cities... of no more than six stories tall. That's right; domes large enough to cover small cities are not high enough to hold buildings more than six stories. Even domes built within the ruins of more contemporary cities follow this guideline. Why? I haven't a damned clue and the author fails to provide one. Bleah, enough of that. Positive notes for that book are the facts that it's well written (from a purely technical standpoint) and the parallel story of a Jewish Golem myth is more interesting and well done than the central plot. Also, at the ending, she is one of the few characters who realizes that the android character can be rebuilt from the leftover blueprints and design notes (yes!) but that it would be impossible to reinvent him, not because the AI brain he uses grows by experience (a subjective nature) but because he would not want to have another live as he did (fvck!). Overall, very badly done
Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind. The sixth Sword of Truth book, where the series hit fvcking rock bottom! Oh my god. Ignoring the fact that this is a poor retread of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead placed in a fantasy setting (or so I'm told) we can in turn just look at what's wrong with it in a general context. First, he resorts to a plot device used in 4 of the 5 preceding novels, that of splitting up his characters and giving each their own arc. Next, he drops all pretenses of the novel being a fantasy story with a moral message, and makes it a political polemic espousing the virtues of Objectivism and a whole, overly simplistic comparison of capitalism vs communism (or socialism). He constructs a lot of strawman arguments and uses one-dimensional charactures to implement them. Really, he spends an almost 800 page narrative beating the point home with a fvcking sledge hammer! It's disgusting that the man used a work of fiction from which to preach (never mistake it for anything else) his political and social opinions. He also shows other disturbing trends in how he's creating an effective oligarchy centered around the characters with the gift for magic. There are several instances where we see that the questioning of these characters results in death. Oh, and speaking of death, what pissed me off the most about this book was that he whacked a central and needed character. Now that's not a bad thing in and of itself, but he did it in SUCH an utterly STUPID way!! An off-camera, totally pointless and preventable death. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Plot wise, this book is a little... thin. Who am I kidding, in relation to the main plot, it's practically not even there! The central plot has advanced perhaps 600 pages between all of books 5-8. Heck, by the end of this one NOTHING HAPPENS! There's been a little movement, but nothing major has changed! For anyone who has ever wrote or done some studies of English, one thing that is known about good authors is that they plot ahead, that they know exactly where their stuff is going and usually have a lot of notes on the subject. I've heard Goodkind does not work like that and seems almost proud of the fact that he hasn't a clue where his series is going. Considering the quagmire he drops his characters into here for no real reason, that's not at all hard to believe.
A series with a nice split for me was the Rama series by Arthur C Clarke. The first one -- the solo effort -- is simply wonderful and a work of sci-fi art. As a friend of mine put it "It's like a bunch of apes discovering a moving diesel-electric locomotive." Very cool. Alas, he then got Gentrey Lee on board for the next three sequels. I stopped after the middle of the third book, because I just really stopped caring. The lead female was just beginning to annoy me and the whole mess became one huge, convoluted soap opera. Garden of Rama is the only book in the last 7-8 years that I have ever failed to finish. Even Greg Bear's novel Legacy -- which exists only because he tacked it on to the far better Eon series, and it had no bearing on that series at all -- I managed to finish after a couple months and a few other novels in between. Really, the social dynamics and soap opera nature introduced to the Rama series made it just utterly awful IMO.
Those are really the books that disgusted me the most, as you can see by the imprint they've left. Catcher in the Rye, the only one mentioned here I have read and would agree with, just struck me as bloody boring and ultimately pointless, plus the main character was an utter twit. I cannot see why people love that book so much and revere it to the point they do. It's some moron's weekend in New York for chrissake!!
-- Jack
Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.
-- Ivana Trump, upon finishing her first novel
Well, I've never read WH, but we seem to be polar opposites as far as literary taste is concerned. I haven't read anything by Card, but he comes highly recommended to me by others who also enjoy Heinlein. I've gobbled up everything he's written, and have always been left wanting more.
AreaCode707
Lifer
- Sep 21, 2001
- 18,447
- 133
- 106
Card has some fabulous books, and he just falls flat on his face in others.
My personal dislike of Heinlein has a lot to do with the way I feel about the philosophy of his books. It always seems to me that they're decent until halfway through the book and then they splinter off into crap. I haven't read Starship Troopers, and I've heard it's good - but I've read "Job, Comedy of Errors", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (decent but I never got to finish it), and "Stranger in a Strange Land."
Preach on, brotha!
Yeah, it was Ludlum. My highschool creative writing teacher mentioned Ludlum as a current pulp writer; prolific, has a following, not very talented. Mary Higgins Clark is kindda like that, too. She writes female romance novels that is one pauses to think of the actions of the characters, they will realize they are reading about epileptic mental deficents.
Before trying Starship, try reading Armor by John Steakley. It's what Starship should have been
It has a few holes in the plot (Just why don't they nuke the bugs from orbit? I don't know.) but is a much better read. Felix's arc is quite gripping.Nice to see a few others hate the later Rama books, too
Mo0o
Lifer
- Jul 31, 2001
- 24,227
- 3
- 76
Originally posted by: Vonkhan
Doesn't have a bad book necessarily ..
like a book that made u mad, depressed, stressed, whatever.
I gave up reading a long time ago, around the time that I got my brand new 386 pc with a copy a Wolf3d
The WORST books EVAR:
Wuthering Heights
The Mill on the River Floss
You didn't like wuthering heights? i thought it was alright..
Wuthering Heights is a story of bitchy manipulative women who are respectfully beaten by their spouses. Women like it because they think Heathcliff is sexy for some reason even though he is abusive and what not. The story is complete garbage (it was written by a woman in the 1800's, need I say more) although I will give Bronte the fact that most of the scenery is very well defined. I still remember intricacies of the surroundings to this day having read it 4 years ago. The writing isn't poor, just the story.
Bottom line : Only women (read: manipulative and dream-chasing) and effeminate men will like this book.
I disliked the Great Gatsby. I just don't jive with Fitzgerald's styles I guess since I hear people rant and rave about this book and I just didn't 'get it' apparently.
Loved:
The Scarlet Letter
Crime and Punishment
Grapes of Wrath
That is all.
-silver
Bottom line : Only women (read: manipulative and dream-chasing) and effeminate men will like this book.
I disliked the Great Gatsby. I just don't jive with Fitzgerald's styles I guess since I hear people rant and rave about this book and I just didn't 'get it' apparently.
Loved:
The Scarlet Letter
Crime and Punishment
Grapes of Wrath
That is all.
-silver
Wuffsunie
I've read the whole Silver Wolf series and the first is the weakest. I read the first two back before I started rating books but I gave the third a 7.5 out of ten. I am pretty generous though with my ratings especially towards werewolf books. I really can't remember much about any of them other then the second one deals with how the male werewolf came to be and the third picks back up were the Silver Wolf ended. I do remember them all being weird.
I've read the whole Silver Wolf series and the first is the weakest. I read the first two back before I started rating books but I gave the third a 7.5 out of ten. I am pretty generous though with my ratings especially towards werewolf books. I really can't remember much about any of them other then the second one deals with how the male werewolf came to be and the third picks back up were the Silver Wolf ended. I do remember them all being weird.
First person to say WOT gets shot. Seriously.
Wuffsunie: I happen to like the Sword of Truth series :| Granted, the last volume I read was the fifth one, but I doubt it went that far downhill...
Wuffsunie: I happen to like the Sword of Truth series :| Granted, the last volume I read was the fifth one, but I doubt it went that far downhill...
The Wheel of Time series - the latest book (not the prequel).
I'm not too scared of getting shot by a kid that wants to move to Japan to become an anime voice actor while he doesn't even know Japanese.
I'm not too scared of getting shot by a kid that wants to move to Japan to become an anime voice actor while he doesn't even know Japanese.
don't really have any "worst" books
if i didn't like it i didn't read it
even in academic situations
if i didn't like it i didn't read it
even in academic situations
Speaking of books, I wonder if anyone knows what book this is. I read a book a long time ago when I was really young. It was about a girl who moved in with her grandmother at her house. And she started seeing this other girl ghost or something. And she followed the ghost into the closet and came out into a field by her house except it was like 100 years into the past.
I read this book when I was real young and for some reason I can always remember parts of the book. Weird.
I read this book when I was real young and for some reason I can always remember parts of the book. Weird.
Battlefield Earth - Hubbards writing style is EXTREMELY poor. Very very short sentences drive me crazy!
Whoever said Rama 2 was correct, too. I had such hope for that book, but it was severely raped! Clarke never should have gotten help with it.
Whoever said Rama 2 was correct, too. I had such hope for that book, but it was severely raped! Clarke never should have gotten help with it.
No matter what book I read, I can never get past the 1st sentence without getting SUPER bored. I hate books. They piss me off, what the hell can ever be "fun" about reading a stupid story? I would much rather watch TV, play a sport, play on the comp, or hang out with friends. Books just cant compare.
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
I sure hated that book. It basically entailed listening to a crazy woman whine in the real world and her own fantasy world. She switched worlds randomly so the book had no flow.
I sure hated that book. It basically entailed listening to a crazy woman whine in the real world and her own fantasy world. She switched worlds randomly so the book had no flow.
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