Books you hate

[JoeEllison]

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

I could not sympathize with the protaganist (rapist) and it just didn't catch my attention.

BLASPHEMY!!!!

 

[fuelair]

After the First Death by Robert Cormier - I do not order Cormier books for media after that one. As a YA author, he is dead to me.
If you don't know that one, the only surviving "hero" is a 16 year old Muslim terrorist - on his way to find a driver to murder for his car - after murdering a young girl, after holding a bus of young campers hostage (with other slime(and you know what word/s I mean in reality)).
Since terrorists (note, I do not limit that to Muslim) exist only to give practice on advanced (or primitive, I do not really care) educational techniques for information gathering (or, what-the-heck, just for educational reasons), I do not support films, literature, etc. where their existence out of educational circumstances is of any functional duration.


I do prefer that it be certain that they indeed are terrorists - or assistants to terrorists - before the above applies.

 

[JoeEllison]

After the First Death by Robert Cormier - I do not order Cormier books for media after that one. As a YA author, he is dead to me.
If you don't know that one, the only surviving "hero" is a 16 year old Muslim terrorist - on his way to find a driver to murder for his car - after murdering a young girl, after holding a bus of young campers hostage (with other slime(and you know what word/s I mean in reality)).
Since terrorists (note, I do not limit that to Muslim) exist only to give practice on advanced (or primitive, I do not really care) educational techniques for information gathering (or, what-the-heck, just for educational reasons), I do not support films, literature, etc. where their existence out of educational circumstances is of any functional duration.


I do prefer that it be certain that they indeed are terrorists - or assistants to terrorists - before the above applies.

I'm not really sure any of that made sense...

 

[fuelair]

I'm not really sure any of that made sense...

First line ids the book and author, notes I do not (any longer) order any of his books in media centers I am in (short statement). 2nd, that i do not keep up with his output, read his reviews, etc.

2nd para describes the essence of my problem with the book: (short) terrorist lives and continues.


3rd para notes my belief that torture is the only response I approve for terrorists (immediate death only if necessary to preserve real life). I refer to torture as education since it helps the terrorist to understand he did something/attempted to do something very, very wrong and needs to really pay for that. It is true that torture of a terrorist probably won't get any reliable information. Although I would like reliable information, I am not that concerned as long as the terrorist leaves us well educated.

 

[Kiosk]

Anything by Martin Amis. For some reason, all his books seem so obviously to have been written by a man with a deeply unpleasant personality, who is nowhere near as clever nor one half so insightful as he seems to think. A vicious whiff of worthless arrogance about his actual style, too. Amusingly, I only began to really hate him when someone compared my own (journalistic) writing to his. Whatever it is you do, there's nothing worse than being compared to someone whose work you don't respect.

Anyway, I felt oddly, almost wooishly drawn to this thread: I can sense Catcher In The Rye-bashing from a mile away. I knew someone would bring it up, in the same way that when someone on a music forum starts a thread called "Worst Band Ever", it's only a matter of time until someone says "The Beatles".

I just re-read it for about the twentieth time. Needs a slap? He's having a nervous breakdown, for God's sake. The book's themes - powerlessness, confusion, sense of loss, alienation, the fact that those who experience the world the most intensely (adolescents and the mentally ill) are often those who can contribute the least to society - may put one in mind of emo kids, but it's not as if this is just some whingefest. The book's a tragedy, not a manifesto. Holden's naivety and selfishness are pretty well signalled throughout, but it's clear that his real problem is an acute oversensitivity he can't control - i.e. mental health issues - more than his own brattishness. What's more, the prose is so magnificent that when, on this reading, I spotted one single line that jarred very slightly*, it was like being jolted out of a dream by the doorbell.

* Holden is at the apartment of Mr Antolini, and from the details he relates (innocently), it's strongly implied that Mr A is a hopeless alcoholic. Mr A has another drink, and Holden says "He may get to be an alcoholic if he doesn't watch his step." It's like a momentary loss of confidence on Salinger's part, the one awkward misstep in the whole book, but it highlights the effortless subtlety of every other line.

 

[Kiosk]

Damn, just noticed the post above me. I may as well not have bothered with mine - no one's going to read it. They'll still be puking.

 

[Morrigan]

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, so I can't say that my opinion won't change, but so far the characters are shallow and predictable, the writing is stale and uninspired, and the author's imposition of her moral beliefs in the narrative is so blatant that a typical high school student's work would seem inspired and sublime in comparison.

I heard Goodkind actually blatantly rips off Ayn Rand and is an ardent follower of her philosophy. I haven't read his work, but your description is so totally spot on for Goodkind that I can only imagine. *shudders* I STILL think it can't be quite as bad as Sword of Truth...

That's Piers Anthony you're talking about, right?

I wish. I only read one book by that guy and it was total, total garbage, yes... but I thankfully mostly forgot about it, so I can't summon my hatred to unleash at him right now.

 

[vIQleS]

Anne Perry - i forget the title, but it looked like a nice interesting fantasy novel. I don't remember what it was actually about, (or the title) but i do remember that it was the most insipid, plotless, uninteresting book i've ever read. I had no idea what was happening at any point throughout the book.

I liked the earth's children (clan of the cave bears et al), but then i wasn't reading it as factually historical. the stories are really good - there is however a lot of description which i tend to skip over.

There's another book which i can't remember the title or author (i'll check when i get home tonight), which was a sci-fi and again - completely incomprehensible.

 

[JoeEllison]

Damn, just noticed the post above me. I may as well not have bothered with mine - no one's going to read it. They'll still be puking.

I have a strong gag reflex, but I'm still rather nauseated by that ...

 

[MetalSeagull]

I can't think of too many books I've hated. I've given up reading quite a few out of boredom. I tried twice to read Siddhartha and Stranger In a Strange Land. I gave up half way through both times.

I didn't even make it that far in Wicked.


The only book I've recently read where I felt cheated out of the time I invested in it was Gilligan's Wake. I really enjoyed the first chapter, but liked the story and the characters less and less as I went on.

 

[lionking]

Anything by Martin Amis. For some reason, all his books seem so obviously to have been written by a man with a deeply unpleasant personality, who is nowhere near as clever nor one half so insightful as he seems to think. A vicious whiff of worthless arrogance about his actual style, too. Amusingly, I only began to really hate him when someone compared my own (journalistic) writing to his. Whatever it is you do, there's nothing worse than being compared to someone whose work you don't respect.

Anyway, I felt oddly, almost wooishly drawn to this thread: I can sense Catcher In The Rye-bashing from a mile away. I knew someone would bring it up, in the same way that when someone on a music forum starts a thread called "Worst Band Ever", it's only a matter of time until someone says "The Beatles".

I just re-read it for about the twentieth time. Needs a slap? He's having a nervous breakdown, for God's sake. The book's themes - powerlessness, confusion, sense of loss, alienation, the fact that those who experience the world the most intensely (adolescents and the mentally ill) are often those who can contribute the least to society - may put one in mind of emo kids, but it's not as if this is just some whingefest. The book's a tragedy, not a manifesto. Holden's naivety and selfishness are pretty well signalled throughout, but it's clear that his real problem is an acute oversensitivity he can't control - i.e. mental health issues - more than his own brattishness. What's more, the prose is so magnificent that when, on this reading, I spotted one single line that jarred very slightly*, it was like being jolted out of a dream by the doorbell.

* Holden is at the apartment of Mr Antolini, and from the details he relates (innocently), it's strongly implied that Mr A is a hopeless alcoholic. Mr A has another drink, and Holden says "He may get to be an alcoholic if he doesn't watch his step." It's like a momentary loss of confidence on Salinger's part, the one awkward misstep in the whole book, but it highlights the effortless subtlety of every other line.

You have just picked my all time favourite author! And I couldn't read "Catcher", so we are polar opposites. It is good to get other views, however, so that I can be perhaps a bit more critical when I re-read Martin's books, as I ineviatbly will.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

It's already been said but I gotta bang on The DaVinci Code one more time.

It's so jumbled, the writing is so pedestrian, leaden and uneven, the different elements are so ill-fitting, the resolution is so badly handled and so anti-climatic and the "secret" and the long, long pages explaining it are so ridiculous, ridiculously convoluted and jumbled, it makes those endless manifestos 9/11 conspiracy nuts write look literary.

Oddly, the movie works much, much better with the same material. Call me crazy but I actually enjoyed the movie when I saw it and thought it got a very unfair bum rap.

What a shame Pauline Kael never lived to see the DaVinci phenomenon- she would have had a field day with it.

And speaking of watchable movies made from unreadable books- The Devil Wears Prada is so pedestrian, so badly written and so childish, it's almost like reading The Babysitters Club for adults. It's one of the few books I gave up reading on the fourth page.

 

[Z]

Dude, you suck. Really.

I suck for having tastes that run contrary to your own?

Well, now I understand why you like what you do... **coughimmaturitycough**




But I'm sorry to say, for the most part, Heinlein is a hack, GRRM is boring as all hell, and only about half of Poe is really compelling literature. And Rice did have a couple of good books. Granted, they'd have benefited vastly if she hadn't started firing her editors...

I greatly enjoy Isaac Asimov, but I'd never call him a good writer; maybe occasionally good, definitely prolific, but never 'good'. But his ideas were so fascinating, that one could swallow a load of mediocre writing, just to digest the ideas behind them.

Heinlein, however, had like two compelling ideas buried in two dozen loads of pure, bitter crap, and GRRM doesn't really even have one compelling idea that hasn't been handled more elegantly by a dozen other authors.

Sorry, that's my opinion.




But I gotta agree with you about Ender's Game. Just tried to read it again - almost ripped my own eyes out.

 

[Ove]

Any book you have been forced to read has a great risk of ending up on your hate list. I Can't STAND Steinbeck At high scool we had a teacher in "Ancient times knowledge" -directly translated don't know what it's called in english, it was cumpolsory and basically it was about analyzing the writings of Homér. I had read those books as a kid, off course translated in modern language, and i liked the good stories about the heroes, battles etc. but this particular teacher nearly destroyed those books for me becaused he analyzed them to death, if you know what i mean. We spent the first two months analyzing the first TWO LINES of the Illiad.......

Fortunately he didn't succeed.

 

[PixyMisa]

Any Sword of Truth book, but especially Naked Empire.

Seconded. Though I have to wonder what made you (or anyone) read beyond the first book. Perhaps the same train-wreck fascination that made me finish the first book?

It can't possibly be this bad all the way through...

 

[TX50]

...We spent the first two months analyzing the first TWO LINES of the Illiad...

Only 15,691 more lines to go, then!

And in two months you never learned that it is in fact called "Iliad"?

 

[Foolmewunz]

"Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. Normally I would have given up such ponderous tripe very early, but so many critics were calling it a masterpiece that I got through perhaps half before literally throwing it at the wall.

Grrrr!

One of my favorite books of all times.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


I can honestly say I've only "hated" one book, and it wasn't a significant work. I like mysteries, and if you get lucky and find an author or a series that's good and that you like(Martha Grimes and her Richard Jury series, for instance - or all the whodunnits by Ngaio Marsh), they're generally light reading and ideal for long flights.

Well, I recalled decent writeups about some author who'd written a series of books with the conceit that cats were somehow involved in the solutions. I picked up a paperback in the new release section because it had "Cat" in the title and I thought I'd like to give the series a try. It was mostly a whydunnit, and about two hundred pages in, the solution turns out to be that they murderer was trying to corner the market on male calico cats (which don't exist in nature), because someone had figured out how to breed them and they had magical powers!

(I found out about six months later that I wasn't reading the famed series by Lilian Jackson Braun, but just some book with "cat" in the title.)

 

[Matt the Poet]

‘Quicksilver’ by Neal Stephenson. I’d got so excited that I bought it in hardback. After god knows how many pages of character-light, research-heavy rambling, and as yet no sign of any particular narrative direction, I left it quietly to the mercies of the local charity shop.

Bad books by bad authors I tend to regard merely with pity. Hating Dan Brown would be a waste of emotional energy. Bad books by good authors feel like a betrayal.

 

[Boo]

Crime and Punishment and Les Miserables.


I had to slog my way through these in high school. I tried to like them. Heck I eventually learned to like James Joyce. But these two books, I pulled each page out and burned them.





Boo

 

[rsaavedra]

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus - No they are not. Stop generalising

x2, the only book I remember throwing away. Started reading it enthusiastically, his comments made some sense up to a point, but it only took a few more pages... I couldn't handle the gross generalizations and ridiculously simplistic "solutions" to relationship issues. I literally threw away the book into the garbage.

One book I didn't like: Kundera's "Ingorance". I don't hate it, just didn't like pretty much anything in it.

Not that I hate this one either, but I didn't enjoy "A Series of unfortunate events" at all. Got the first three books and read only the first one. No motivation to continue.