Books Not to Read

PhantomWolf said:
Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works. Yes I know that they are beloved by millions, and are the grand-daddy if all fantasy, but they just haven't stood the test of time. Tolkien was a great world builder and linguist, but his storytelling is really bad when compared to today's writing. I'm of the opinion that these are books to read fully once, and then if you read them again, skip large sections to condense it all. They are worth reading to learn about the roots of fantasy, but those that read them all the time just need a life.
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Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham (Wikipedia) is an exception. He actually pokes fun at the escapist sentimentality of fantasy novels like LotR: noble, valiant, self-sacrificing heroes etc.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works. Yes I know that they are beloved by millions, and are the grand-daddy if all fantasy, but they just haven't stood the test of time. Tolkien was a great world builder and linguist, but his storytelling is really bad when compared to today's writing. I'm of the opinion that these are books to read fully once, and then if you read them again, skip large sections to condense it all. They are worth reading to learn about the roots of fantasy, but those that read them all the time just need a life.
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Everyone has their own tastes, but I've read Lord of the Rings several times because it's just such a pleasure to read. Not only for the world but I've always found something powerful about Tolkein's use of language, and the arcs that are followed by his characters. To each their own, but I'm glad I didn't take your advice to put this on a "Books not to Read" list.
 
Darat said:
Anything that describes itself as a "paranormal romance" or "urban fantasy romance"! Indeed justreading that in a description will give away 90% of the "plot"!
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I think it's the publishers who add genre tags like that, to improve marketability. Lady Jade's Explosion might be romance, historical, mystery, or scifi but it's not going to sell until it gets lumped into one of those categories.

(Falsely, since it's actually a gritty noir cookbook and computer repair manual, with a pornographic subplot on identifying Byzantine coins. The last fifty pages are an author diatribe abusing the reader for reading it. It's quite possibly the greatest book ever written.)
 
PhantomWolf said:
Being hugely into fantasy there are a couple of series and writers I'd add, though I am sure others will scream in disagreement.

The Shadow Trilogy by Chris Claremont and George Lucas really showed me that Lucas is wonderful at world building, but his storytelling is terrible. For those that don't know, this series is the sequel to Willow.

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. The story is meh, though I have to admit I did buy all 4 books to find out how it ended, and then regretted it. The writing itself is poor, and in places describes a world that just physically is not possible.

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I got the first of The Inheritance Cycle out from the library and thought it was almost a scene by scene reworking of Star Wars, episode four, but with dragons instead of jedi.
 
jimbob said:
I got the first of The Inheritance Cycle out from the library and thought it was almost a scene by scene reworking of Star Wars, episode four, but with dragons instead of jedi.
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Yep. The rather bad movie made this even more clear. But, it was not an awful read, and to be fair Star Wars was based pretty heavily on a classical "heroes journey" structure, so whatever.

The only really interesting the was that the author was a teen when he wrote it, IIRC. Taking that into account, it wasn't a bad first outing for such a young author.
 
jimbob said:
I got the first of The Inheritance Cycle out from the library and thought it was almost a scene by scene reworking of Star Wars, episode four, but with dragons instead of jedi.
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Not entirely, though it certainly has a lot of elements of the Heroes Journey in it, as does Star Wars, so there are a lot of similarities in the patterns and tropes used.

Dr. Keith said:
Yep. The rather bad movie made this even more clear. But, it was not an awful read, and to be fair Star Wars was based pretty heavily on a classical "heroes journey" structure, so whatever.
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It wasn't awful enough that I threw it away, but I wouldn't recommend it. The movie was made even worse in that it took out so much of the book that would have made it stand up better than a generic fantasy movie, and also those parts became incredibly important in the later books meaning that any sequels would have been gutted before they started.

The only really interesting the was that the author was a teen when he wrote it, IIRC. Taking that into account, it wasn't a bad first outing for such a young author.
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There are a lot of teen authors these days with the ability to self publish, so...

I did find it interesting that he tried to use an Atheist take on fantasy, but in the end he sort of tied himself up in knots by forcing that on a world where he'd already shown religious orders having mystic powers, and trying to have the supernatural magics come from natural sources without any explanations of how they do it. Oh sorcerers have spirits in them that give them their powers, what's a spirit? It's a misty kind of creature that lives in the wilds of the lands. Where does dragon rider's get their magic, oh it comes from their dragons. Where do the dragons get it.... He also tries to subvert expectations a lot, and I'm really not a fan of subversion unless the solution that you give the reader (viewer) is better than what they were expecting to have happen. If it's worse than what they were expecting, then it leaves a sour note and I feel a lot of the time he doesn't nail a good subversion that beats the readers expectations. In the end it often comes off and "Oh aren't I so cleaver" and yet in other places where subversion would have been perfect, his writing becomes generic and trope filled to the point of being so predictable it's boring. In the end I managed to fight through the last two books, taking breaks from them, but managing to finally get to the end to find out what happened.
 
Roboramma said:
Do you have any titles that you could contribute to this thread?
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One book that disappointed me was Volume III (on Quantum Mechanics) of "The Feynman Lectures of Physics". This is not a book that I would recommend if you want to acquire in-depth knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, and be ready to do research and calculations. At the end of it, Feynman said:
The quantum mechanics ... has begun
to be exploited in many practical and real ways. ... I am sorry to say, gentlemen, that to participate in this adventure it is absolutely imperative that you learn quantum mechanics as soon as possible. It was our hope that in this course we would find a way to make comprehensible to you at the earliest possible moment the mysteries of this part of physics.
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A better Feynman book (more introductory), in my opinion, is "The Character of Physical Law" (1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University).
 
Star Trek: The Return, a novel written by William Shatner, most likely in the same sense that H.P. Lovecraft's "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" was said to have been written by Harry Houdini when it was originally published.
He clearly had input in the story though, since it involves Kirk being resurrected after the events of "Star Trek: Generations" and proceeding to out-tactic Picard, out-fight Worf, out-think Data, and generally prove himself superior in every way to those Next Generation upstarts. The connection established between V'Ger and the Borg was mildly interesting though.
 
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My daughter wanted to read Hunger Games when she was in middle school, so I wanted an idea of what the stories were about before giving approval. While I liked the concept of the books, I thought the writing was poor - even taking into account the audience.

Also tried reading Inkheart, but didn't get far into it.
 
I tried twice to read Terry Brooks' Shannara books, and found them to be badly written and horribly cliched. I just don't get what anyone over twelve years old sees in them.
 
Michel H said:
One book that disappointed me was Volume III (on Quantum Mechanics) of "The Feynman Lectures of Physics". This is not a book that I would recommend if you want to acquire in-depth knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, and be ready to do research and calculations. At the end of it, Feynman said:


A better Feynman book (more introductory), in my opinion, is "The Character of Physical Law" (1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University).
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For his science books my favourite is QED, but there's some great bits to the Feynman Lectures. I went through them looking for interesting parts though rather than actually working my way through the whole series.
 
Armitage72 said:
Star Trek: The Return, a novel written by William Shatner, most likely in the same sense that H.P. Lovecraft's "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" was said to have been written by Harry Houdini when it was originally published.
He clearly had input in the story though, since it involves Kirk being resurrected after the events of "Star Trek: Generations" and proceeding to out-tactic Picard, out-fight Worf, out-think Data, and generally prove himself superior in every way to those Next Generation upstarts. The connection established between V'Ger and the Borg was mildly interesting though.
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That sounds awesome. I liked The Next Generation, but have always been a Kirk fan, so it would be fun to see him showing up those pretenders.
 
luchog said:
I tried twice to read Terry Brooks' Shannara books, and found them to be badly written and horribly cliched. I just don't get what anyone over twelve years old sees in them.
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I've only ever read The Sword of Shannara, but it gets pretty widely panned for being a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings.
 
I think I read Sword of Shannara in high school, but I have no recollection of the particulars, nor was I motivated to read any more of Brooks's work. By way of comparison, I read It during the same period, and was so enthralled that I embarked on a program of reading everything Stephen King had written at the time, and every new book he published for over a decade after. A program I have never regretted. I'm pretty sure I stopped reading King's new books at just about the right point in his career.
 
Master and Commander. Too much time spent on explaining nautical terms and how a ship works. I preferred the Horatio Hornblower series.
 
theprestige said:
I think I read Sword of Shannara in high school, but I have no recollection of the particulars, nor was I motivated to read any more of Brooks's work. By way of comparison, I read It during the same period, and was so enthralled that I embarked on a program of reading everything Stephen King had written at the time, and every new book he published for over a decade after. A program I have never regretted. I'm pretty sure I stopped reading King's new books at just about the right point in his career.
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Speaking of King, The Dark Tower series starts off great, but ends up being awful.
 
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