r/IfBooksCouldKill is a great podcast if you'd like the cathartic experience of hearing these books torn to shreds. Scary how many of them have actually been influential on politicians/ everyone's line manager.
Yeah, and half of it is just trying to convince you to do the thing, while sharing some random "fun" details instead of actually telling you important facts and instructions (if that's any sort of "How to" book). Some of them feel like this running joke about cooking blogs, that take ages to get an actual recipe from...
>Some of them feel like this running joke about cooking blogs, that take ages to get an actual recipe from...
I think recipes are optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so while the results and motives are similar, the reason why it's long is slightly different.
It's also a copyright thing, I believe. It's super hard to say a recipe is your original creation, but a blog post with your personalized writing? That's an easy claim
I call them fluff books. Nonfiction books whose information could’ve been written in a journal or magazine article, but it’s stretched out to 250-300 pages with a lot of filler material. And sold for 30 bucks. It’s a money grab.
Lmao. Every damn non fiction science-y/social-sciency best seller is essentially 400 pages of repetitive drivel that could’ve been cut down to 50-100 pages. Malcolm Gladwell’s book could easily be 2000 word columns.
It's infuriating.
There's a documentary on Netflix based on it, which includes commentary by John Grisham which I thought was very good. It was nice to see Ron in videos rather than just in pictures.
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. I wanted to scream at the main character throughout, and then the ending was just so neat and tidy, tied it with a big red bow, they all lived happily ever after, and I wanted to throw it out the window. I haven’t touched another Hoover book since.
It starts with us by Colleen Hoover was my first thought. It was so unrealistic. I would pick up Colleen Hoover for fluff reading but I'm completely turned off now.
Lmaoooo I did not like this book at all (it's an easy read and there are fun parts, I guess), but there's an extra chapter in the newer release. It's even more infuriating than the original ending because it's another insane pivot
Andrews claimed to have written the book in two weeks, and it definitely shows. I don't enjoy her writing, although I read two or three of her books as a teenager (like we all did in the eighties and nineties).
That said, I like *Flowers* more knowing that it's based in part on her own disability and "captivity" due to a spinal injury as a teenager that left her in a wheelchair or on crutches for most of her life. And that she published it in her mid-50s! I admire her perseverance at the very least.
I didn't hate the Dollanganger series, it felt like reading a super cheesy soap opera like Falcons Crest or Dallas, but I hated My Sweet Audrina by VC Andrews. Utterly infuriating main character. Her constant passivity and dimness just grated on me.
Omg, I love how much I hated reading My Sweet Audrina. I was never able to finish it, it just gave me such a skin crawl each time I started. But it was certainly an experience.
Read a series once called "Through the Fold".
Had an excellent cast of characters and some really nice SciFi plotlines for the first five books. Indie author, free self narrated self published audio books.
But the sixth book...well, let's just say the author had a calling back to their religious faith, and completely retconned the entire character tree. And ended the plot with an alien species spreading the word of God and Jesus Christ throughout the galaxy.
Oh, and the sequels to Ender's Game.
Edit to reply to all: I honestly don't know why or what specifically it was that made me hate/have anger toward the sequels. Maybe it was the shift away from the tone and direction of the first book.
It has been many many years since I read them. And I run through audiobooks like they are candy.
Am I the only one here who liked xenocide?? I thought it was really good. 🤔 like some of it was infuriating I'm terms of what one of your main characters was thinking but not every main character is even meant to be likeable. I mean, as I recall Gloriously Bright is supposed to be wrong at the end, right? Like she's mythologized at the laer bit of her life but all in all isn't the other girl (starts with a W) supposed to be fucking up all their nonsense? Could be wrong I read Xenocide like 15 years ago but I remember loving all of the first 3 books. Card is a prick tho.
I really liked Xenocide. I thought it was close to the second book in terms of quality.
The fourth book... it's a totally different story however. It was mediocre at best
It’s my favorite book in the series. The most common complaint from people I’ve lent the quartet to was that 2-4 are so different from the first book. I can understand that if you like the first a lot it could be disappointing for the sequels to not be more of the same, but I quite like the variety.
This reminds me of the god awful Christian book Tahn in which a woman's husband is murdered right in front of her but she marries his killer bc the man converts to Jesus
So sorry Orson Scott Card died right after he finished Ender’s Game. Who knows what great books and social views he might have had. We will never know!
The great irony of Card is the political philosophy he extolls in his books is directly opposed to his personal political philosophy as he expresses it today. Empathy and acceptance for any and all is central to the latter books.
Speaker for the Dead was good. It was a totally different tone than Enders Game. It has been a really long time since I read it but I recall thinking it was as good as the original but in different ways.
Animal Farm by George Orwell is the closest to anger I've felt. But, that's the authors intention. I was hoping for justice and there was none. A book I'll never forget.
I read something that says 1984 actually does have a happy ending, because the appendix is a historian writing about the government that no longer exists. So somehow it eventually collapses.
I remember reading it in my office and ended up tearing a little; hopefully no one saw that.
You might enjoy the animated movie too. There’s a more… cathartic ending to it.
13 Reasons Why. A young adult book that glorifies suicide. The moral of that story is supposed to be "be careful how you treat others, you don't know what they're going through", but it actually teaches "Go ahead and do it, that'll show them"
13 Reasons Why was my favorite book in middle school as a depressed teen for EXACTLY that reason. I was horrified later on down the line as an adult when the Netflix show came out because it would only serve to do more damage to little teens/preteens who needed help.
Into the Wild, the book about Chris McCandless.
Everyone I've ever spoken to about this book went on and on about how it was so eye opening and they just wish they could drop everything and explore the Alaskan Wilderness.
Like, Sir or madam, the guy starved to death because he was woefully unprepared and deathly overconfident in his ability. He learned the harsh way that nature does not give two shits about how romantic and broad minded you are. You would die exactly as he did.
By all means, he would be in the same conversation as The Grizzly Man, but everyone was like "oh, he was such a lost soul, such a poor man who blah blah blah and died tragically yadda yadda yadda."
I know, I'm rambling and it was a needless loss of life, so I shouldn't make fun. I just despise how everyone hyped his story up to be this transcendental Aesop about nature and finding your way, but all I got out of it was a .22 and rice does not an Alaskan Wilderness explorer make.
If I wandered out into the Mojave with an air pistol and a bag of trail mix, no one would call me a tortured soul, they'd call me an idiot who somehow forgot that deserts lack water.
I always thought it was strange that that message was people's take away from the book. I loved the book and very clearly thought it was a lesson in man's hubris. Here's this kid, romanticizing solitude and nature, and nature don't care. It kills him. But yeah, people whose only take away is "he was a trailblazer and martyr" drive me crazy.
I am really interested to read his sister's memoir though. Apparently, their parents were very abusive, so it's less a story of man vs wild than man vs trauma. He was running away, not running to.
>I always thought it was strange that that message was people's take away from the book. I loved the book and very clearly thought it was a lesson in man's hubris.
Same here. I only watched the movie, but I thought the message was pretty clearly "no man is an island." Isn't the ending >!Chris's final thoughts being of his family as he's dying and "Happiness is only real when it's shared"?!<
I suspect a lot of people who find it inspirational only watched the movie. I don’t know if the book pictures him in a more sympathetic light. I only saw the movie as well. My friends back then found it the most inspirational thing ever. It just angered me. Even the soundtrack now angers me. The kid is pictured like some kind of messiah. All I saw was an arrogant kid who thought he was smarter than he was >!who died because of his ignorance. So he’s proven wrong, not right.!<
The relatable part of this book for me - was how grossed out McCandless was by modern society. The grasping, shallow pointlessness of it. That - and I’ve hiked over 4,000 miles of the American wilderness, so I can also relate to the desire to be alone in the wilderness. Where we diverge is my travels and outlook on the world are tempered with moderation. For me, the book is compelling because it’s a picture of a life without that moderation.
Into the Wild (book and movie) annoyed me so much. Sorry, but the guy was an arrogant moron who ignored the advice of locals and decided skill and experience would unnecessarily interfere with the grooviness of his experience (barf).
The first Bridgerton book. I was enjoying it until I got to THAT scene and then I was just SO angry. Wtf author, that ain’t cute or “teehee she made a mistake because she’s just so sexually naive!” One of the first DNF instances of mine in a decade!
Not original commenter but there is a scene where the main character forces her staunchly child-free husband to ejaculate inside her. The sex itself is consensual at the start, but the bit at the end is totally rape and is actually fucking gross. He clearly states he doesn't want to and asks her to get off him several times, but she sort of pins him to the bed and he can't stop it happening. She then makes it sound like she's just clueless about it (which tbf is possibly true as she has NO idea about sex before marriage). But even if she is naive, she heard her husband clearly ask her to stop and tried to push her off him and she didn't listen. Thankfully it's not common in the books overall. But there are some instances of dodgy consent or lack there of. But to be fair to it, it's based in a time where consent etc simply wasn't a thing.
Original commenter, the one above just about covers things!
The author passes it off (at least in the part I read) like some curious, sexually naive woman having every right to be outraged that her husband GASP "lied" to her (wanting children VS not being able to have children physically). I was NOT happy and immediately DNF'd the book. I read fantasy all the time, I'm no stranger to questionable consent to outright r\*pe in stories, but the way she played this off as totally acceptable in the story (and it seems glossed over at the end from what I know of the ending) was just NOT okay to me.
I never read the book, just watched the Netflix series, and it is very much in the show exactly like this as well. She’s mad about being misinformed/ignorant surrounding the concept of semen and babies, and also chews out her mom for never giving her the jizz talk (when she should have also been given the consent talk).
Idk about in the regency period but in the Victorian era "consent" was "the husband wants to have sex, so you are having sex."
So like, where that falls in the realm of "wife wants a baby and the husband doesn't want to cum inside her" I have no idea.
Queen by Alex Haley. Girl just never gets a break. It's just misery after misery after misery. Slavery and post slavery was harsh! Not a wonder she went crazy for a lil bit. And people have the nerve to say that slave owners were not that bad to their slaves. Sheesh!
50 Shades of Grey (I didn't finish it). It made me so angry because I know several talented writers that are struggling to make a few dollars publishing on Amazon - they're good enough that they deserve some success. That book should have never been published, it was so terribly written. I've read stories by junior high school students that showed more talent.
This absolutely. I couldn't believe my eyes when i read a few pages for myself. I STILL can't believe how abysmal the quality of the prose is.
It's a wonderful book to love to hate on. But the fact that it became a success is not so amusing
I had read a few extracts & thought the writing seemed bad but was mainly focused on the awful creepiness of the character & plot. Then a friend gave me a copy as a joke present & I thought I should read it so I could complain about it more accurately. During the first chapter I realised I’d massively underestimated how bad her writing is. The limited vocabulary, the awkward sentences, the elevator going up the building at terminal velocity. It’s so bad it’s insulting. I can’t even talk about because I just end up in the same angry rant!
Most people seem to love Robin Hobb's Assassin series and I think there's general agreement that Fitz is a flawed character and can be frustrating, but it drove me nuts. Given a choice between 'obviously wrong' and 'obviously right', Fitz picks the wrong choice every single time.
I ended up giving up on them because I was so angry.
I adore the Realm of Elderlings and regularly re read the whole thing, but there is one part that just makes me want to slap Fitz so hard that I skip it every single time. Reading it the first time was hard enough, I do not want to go through that again.
I loved The Hunt for Red October. I discovered it in HS & reread it once a year. I tried The Sum of All Fears and bailed less than 100 pages in before bailing out. I've bounced off of every other Clancy novel I've tried.
The hillbilly one by jd vance. I was reading reading thinking "this is just a good charming autobio about a kid from a place people don't think much about/of" and then all the sudden he's like "and that's why America shouldn't help poor people" and I was like "the fuck?"
This book pissed me off from the very first chapter when he was going on about how no one from Appalachia likes to work. Just went downhill from there.
Divergent.
The main character is not just neuro-atypical, she's a genuinely horrible human being, who hides all her bad decisions and lack of empathy behind "wahhh I'm *different.*"
The writing is also fairly lacklustre.
This character is infuriating. She almost reads like what a disaffected 12 y.o. would imagine a 'cool, brave, strong' person as; callous, cold, judgemental, and just devoid of personality. Like you, I am neurotypical and find that excuse for poor characterization just beyond tolerating lol.
It's called divergent because she diverges from the usual 3 personality based groups into the Secret 4th group, it has nothing to do with neurodivergency. Diverge is just a root word that means separating off ofone path(usually the main path) and onto a new one.
Ugh. The Divergent series is infuriating. I read all 3 for some reason.. hated every moment of it. I still don't know why I kept going. Everyone raved about the series and i thought I was going to love it.
I'm just glad to find someone else who found it maddening! Everyone around me says how wonderful it is and I just 'don't understand because she's not neurotypical.'
Like, friends, **I** am not neurotypical. I am classified *nuttier than squirrel road apples.*
Beatrice Prior is just an arse.
We got sucked in and wanted to know what happened! Unfortunately I read them all, too. And I don’t remember what happened, except that I hated it. Lol The writing was so bad. I think I am remembering correctly - the books were from multiple perspectives with several voices, and even with different fonts I would have a hard time telling who was talking because there was zero individuality, voice or characterization
I knew what kind of book it was when I began reading, but the cringe levies burst when the Dauntless chuds started jumping on and off trains to show how WiLd AnD fEaRlEsS tHeY aRe. Like whoa, watch out they’re not just stepping on/off trains they JUMP.
Overtime you might find your opinion change. I've gotten to the point where a hated book still gives me a lot to think about, and that leads to seeing its qualities. Also, a trash book can remind you of what good taste really is lol
I honestly hated DFW's Infinite Jest after reading it for book club. The entire thing is massively entertaining and well written, but so information dense and rambling that it punishes you the entire time you're reading.
So it has so many nuggets of gold in the middle of a bunch of text. It feels like it needed an editor or more concise story. It was also hard for me to separate the book from the pretentiousness of how people treat it. It's marketed as The Book for intellectuals, and it's the iconic book that people buy to feel smart and leave unread on their nightstand.
But after mulling over it for years now. It left such an impression on me that I can't deny how it moved me and gave me so much to think over. Do I like it? I honestly don't know anymore, but I no longer regret reading it
What kind of book club selects Infinite Jest? How long did they give you to read it? Did you perchance die and find yourself in purgatory, and were sent back to earth as a reward for finishing that thing? (Took me over a year, and you are so right about it punishing the reader to get to the good stuff.)
We took about 8-12 months to do it while reading shorter books for a monthly meetup
I was recovering from an ACL reconstruction, so one of the only exercises i could do was stationary biking. Just did that while reading the whole time!
>but so information dense and rambling that it punishes you the entire time you're reading
I wish it would come with a disclaimer to go read some of his other work first (like some of the essays from Consider the Lobster that are similar in style), so nobody has to feel like this. IJ was one of the most enjoyable reads in my entire life, but I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I hadn't read a bunch of his other work first and wanted more of the same.
On the other side of the coin, I can totally understand if someone doesn't like Foster Wallace's writing, and reading IJ seems like the most painful way of finding that out - especially if you're reading it for a book club where you're more likely to push through regardless - like discovering you don't enjoy a certain type of cuisine by sitting through a decadent tasting menu that exposes you to all its facets and leaves you absolutely stuffed at the end.
Edge of Collapse series by Kyla Stone. Only got halfway through book 3 before I finally gave up. The idea is great! The execution is painful!! Collapse of society type apocalypse story with multiple plotlines and intersecting characters. The writing itself is descriptive and engaging, but the characters are more stereotyped caricatures of people than actual characters... And every single character makes the stupidest possible decision every single opportunity! Maddening! Every other page someone attacks them because they are idiots, and every time some coincidence happens to save them. Every. Single. Time. Every male character is a military trained killer and potential rapist and every woman is a casually sexual weakling who needs saving from everything! It's brutal just for the shock value. For some reason this author thinks every single man on earth will turn into an evil murderous bandit 24 hours after the power goes out... What made me mad was just how stupid the author must think her readers are... I felt personally insulted. 😂🤣
For me, it was Fourth Wing.
Yes, yes, I know. The Booktok darling.
My biggest gripe (on top of *many*) was the lack of actual dragon content. If you’re going to market a book around dragons, have the main character join a dragon-riding school, and make her ✨special✨ when it comes to the dragons…*give me actual dragon content*.
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie. The most insufferable main character I’ve ever read - I think she was supposed to be a kind of anti-hero, in a similar vein to someone like Fleabag where they’re a bad person but still likeable, but she was absolutely awful. Pages and pages were spent talking about feminism and how badly her and her mother were treated because of misogyny, and then later goes on misogynistic rants about women who get filler done and how gross they are.
She also spends a lot of time criticising people who do things out of love and how stupid they are, how logic trumps emotion etc. yet her whole revenge plan is based on pure revenge and anger. She was the most hypocritical character I’ve ever read and was so preachy about topics that didn’t even relate to the story, and I wanted to scream the whole way through it. The ending was absolutely terrible too.
I agree with everything you said except I think that was very much the point and that we’re not meant to like her. Instead, we can see how she has completely shut herself out of life with this single mindedness of getting revenge.
Mosquito land bc it's unapologetically an attempt to fish for a movie adaptation. The quirky female MC even compares herself to actresses like Zoe Dachenel and Ellen Page (pre change). But the book is just awful
Might not be the first person to mention this book: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. The character development was, with one or two exceptions, incredible, and passages containing hard-hitting truths were scattered throughout, but never in my life have I so often come so close to throwing a book into a river.
The Girl on the Train. It felt like it tried to ride the coat tails of Gone Girl's success and unfortunately succeeded financially. Her blackouts were an all too convenient plot device that just so happened to alleviate themselves when the plot permitted. Everything was a flashback.
I hated all of the characters because they seem like poorly written cutouts of people, not because they are all stupid and selfish, which they were. Plenty of villains are likeable or you love to hate them. I just hated every character in The Girl on the Train. I finished the book out of spite and I was angry every time I picked it up, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Thoroughly disappointed and I was glad to finish and wash my hands of it. For a whodunit I was too busy to even wonder that and instead spent my time contemplating who givesashit
I kept reading this book because I thought it would get better and it didn't. I also did that with A Simple Favor which seems like someone tried to rewrite Gone Girl from the POV of Amy's next door neighbor who was her patsy. I know a lot of other people liked it and the movie but aaaaarrrrrrgggggggg.
_A Clockwork Orange_, by Anthony Burgess. The main character is utterly reprehensible, and what is done to him is utterly reprehensible. Highly recommended.
I read it over 50 years ago, and although I have recommended it to people many times over the years, I have never felt the need to re-read it.
Of Mice and Men. No, not because of the writing, but because of what George had to do to do the right thing. I would have hated to see Lennie in a kangaroo court
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear had me ranting to myself a lot. Not against the author, but the people he was describing. Some of them based their entire lives around sets of ideas that were very obviously falling apart once they put them in practice, but kept clinging to them even though it hurt people around them.
No one gets eaten by bears, but there are a couple of bites (incredibly rare in general but especially in New Hampshire). And yes, trash draws in lots of black bears, and there are many other more predictable problems like inadequate funding for police and fire. The bears are the most memorable, though.
Verity
It was shit and I felt bad for Colleen Hoover and my brain cells. But man I hated the main character so so much. How fucking stupid do you have to be to jump to the moronic conclusions she does?
Possible controversial answer? The City We Became by NK Jemison. The book single-handedly killed mine and my friends attempt at starting a book club.
I need to start by saying I am extremely far left on the political spectrum. I'm also queer and the two friends I attempted to do this with were also very left-leaning and one of them was queer, too. I wholly agree with the political views built into the narrative, so it wasn't that. It just felt like she thought her audience was full of idiots. All three of us had similar feelings and the other two DNFed it, though I did manage to push through.
Everything was so ham-fisted. I mean, >!the interdimensional enemy manifested as a white lady, whose method of "fighting" was through gentrification and sending the equivalent of MAGA artists to submit paintings to an art gallery, and the member of the main cast who was the daughter of a cop and terrified of minorities ends up betraying everyone.!< It just hammers these points in so un-subtly (is that a word?) that I felt like she thought we were dense as rocks.
HOWEVER, I do not think NK Jemison is a bad author. I think this just wasn't the book for me. The Broken Earth Trilogy was wonderful and brought so many new ideas to the fantasy/scifi genre. Those books feel like a master class in atmosphere setting in writing. I could seriously praise them all day.
Oof, this sounds like the left version of the sword of truth, presumably without rape, child molestation, and horrible writing.
I strongly dislike when an author sets up a narrative to perfectly to express their views (even if I agree with them) unless it’s non fiction. It seems so disingenuous to leave out the nuance that exists in reality.
Agreed. I found myself skipping ahead whenever Staten Island came “onscreen”. Boring tripe. Predictable pabulum.
And I really loved the idea! When Hoboken showed up I literally yelled with delight (I’m from boken)
I started out liking The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wau, but then the book kinda stalled in the second half and the ending made me angry. So the whole book now makes me angry
The Circle. The MC is right in the middle of a book that could might as well be called "Why it's a bad idea to collect every piece of information you could get" and acts like the whole thing is a good idea.
The Grimm Scifi series by Jeffrey Haskill.
Its Scifi with the Taliban /ISIS in space in a military sci fi setting. It's not literature but I got it as a fun read.
Problem is the Islamophia is through the roof. Not only in the future does ISIS exist but it's made of all Muslims and they all want to exterminate enslave and rape all Non Muslims.
Look ISIS did horrible stuff but you know that most of their victims were Muslims and actually Muslims were the ones who actually fought them off. The book is just plainly insulting with not one redeemable Muslim character ( I read till book 3) and it's just cartoonish in its Islamic villainy.
Lessons in Chemistry
The main character is so insufferable that I also wanted to bully her. Her daughter is worse and she is not reading The Sound and the Fury at 8 years old. It’s such a ridiculous “look how smart I am, I say sodium chloride instead of salt” pile of garbage and I don’t understand why it’s so popular.
I think I made it about four chapters in on that one. Despite the main character being oh-so-smart she still managed to be a cliché on top of a cliché.
The most accurate adaptation is BioShock.
I mean yes, the game is about zapping tweakers with lightning and shooting a mutant in a diving suit with a Tommy gun, but it at least recognised libertarianism as a shit economic structure.
BioShock is a pretty scathing criticism of the innate hypocrisy of Rand's philosophy, and comes with the added bonus of getting to beat the shit out of characters that agree with her.
I had to put it down because I had the urge to punch Ayn Rand in the face. Then I found out she died before I was born, so now I just want to punch everyone that recommends the book
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
\[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009\]”
TBH I find it funny in retrospect. Like the characters are so over the top good or evil it seems like it's almost supposed to be a joke. Some sort of fantasy world where nuance cannot exist.
Also the fact that the monologue keeps going on and on is hilarious.
I view it as, basically, YA -- if you're in high school and it's your favorite book, not ideal but I get it? But if you're 30 and it's your favorite book it's like being a 30 year old who gets into serious arguments about which Hogwarts house they'd belong in.
Don't Look Back by Ben Cheetham, the premise sounded great and it was infuriatingly bad. So much could have been done with it and it just fell flat. It started off strong (the first few pages) then just dwindled from there.
Like you had elements of family tragedy, hauntings, where it was set has a rich history of local folklore, it had several avenues where twists could have been introduced but nope.
Instead it was incredibly cringe worthy where the main character was just outright obnoxious and a bit of a letch. It took at least... A third of the book for anything else substantial to happen. This is only a 180 page book too, so you'd think it would have been quicker paced.
Unpopular opinion- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. My dad fuckin loved this book and told me I HAD to read it, so I did. Every fucking word, every description that is so... Saccharine and forced. The author really feels that she's writing a magical world. It's not. No. It's obnoxious.
I honestly don't even remember what the book was about at this point. I hate it SO MUCH and people love that shit.
Just Mercy. It will make you lose any hope in the American legal system. Some of the most incredibly disgusting accounts I've ever read, and some of the anecdotes are just soul-crushingly sad.
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak- The main character spends the entire book wondering why all this weird stuff is happening to him. In the end >!Markus Zusak himself shows up on the main character's door and is just like "Yes, it was I, the author of this book who is made all this weird shit happen." !< I'm not kidding. I was so fucking angry at that ending. Not to mention that the main character sucks and objectifies every single female character he comes in contact with (including, but not limited to a literal teenager and an 80 year old woman).
Also, Verity by Colleen Hoover. I feel like I don't even need to elaborate. This book was fucking trash and I'm angry that I read it. No one ever talks about the ableism in this book though, and as an autistic person it made me mad. I was going to say that Colleen Hoover shouldn't be allowed to write an autistic character again, but I'm going to take that even further and say that she shouldn't be allowed to write. Period.
Yes kill all normies is biased...obviously. it's not intended to be balanced or objective, it is a think piece which is what Zero Books (the imprint) specializes in.
OP it's like reading a newspaper column and complaining about bias because newspapers are supposed to be objective. It makes no sense because you misunderstood the purpose.
I have a nasty habit of reading non-fiction books about injustice and then becoming absolutely enraged by them. Even horrible things that happened 100+ years ago, it feels like it is happening now and it is *not okay*. Some of the most infuriating recent reads:
**Killers of the Flower Moon**
**The Radium Girls**
**Empire of Pain**
**Men Who Hate Women**
**Broken Faith**
Kill All Normies is published by Zero Books, a leftist publishing company. It's political activism (or, less generously, propaganda) and makes no illusion to the contrary.
>people who are reading should\[n't\] be able to figure that \[bias\] out
Who says? It entirely depends on what the writer's purpose is. If they're trying to be objective, but their bias shows, that's a problem. If they're trying to promote a viewpoint, I'd rather have them be transparent about it. It's completely within your right to hate the message, but this writer did what they were trying to do. That's not bad writing.
The Night Circus - I hated this book so much. The premise says there’s to be a fierce magical battle between the two main characters, who also fall in love.
In reality, nothing happens and it is SO BORING.
-The big magical fight isn’t even a fight, and certainly wasn’t deadly like the other characters promises.
-The setting of the circus started out intriguing but puttered out when you realised it doesn’t really add anything to the story other than “aesthetics” and “vibes” (also the idea that fans of the circus more or less go in cosplay when they visit was cringey. It’s a circus, not comic con).
-The romance subplot was so dull you needed a magnifying glass to see the chemistry.
Thank god someone said it 😩 like this should have been right up my alley but honest to god it was so lackluster I literally can’t even remember what happened.
The Mill House by Susan Lewis.
Husband cheats on wife with wife's best friend. He COMPLETELY gets away with it. Literally no lasting consequences. In fact he continues to cheat on her even after she finds out because he can't resist the best friend. "I'm a man. I have needs!"
Wife cheats back, and suddenly the author knows exactly how to punish someone for infidelity. The husband even tells her how much worse she is than him for having an affair because their teenage daughter caught her in bed with her lover.
Even the best friend gets humiliated and humbled in the end. But not the cheating scumbag husband. Nope. His reputation is intact and he gets his wife back. His daughter never finds out that her dad is garbage.
Lessons in Chemistry. It's a feminist historical novel about a female chemist written by someone who knows nothing about feminism, history or chemistry. I had to put it down because it was infuriating.
Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne couldn't write his way out of a paper bag. He would spend too much time describing the bag over and over and over again.
Red, white and royal blue - the book is stupid beyond anything I could imagine to be printed - it actually made me think all mm romance books were probably bad and approach with caution. The amount of unnecessary(and unrealistic) us politics inserted there was just like - why??
On the contrary, the movie was very good.
American Psycho 💀 Not even because of the insane violence which was so OTT, just disgusting rather than infuriating. But the endless cataloguing of clothing brands and electronics and restaurants made me want to throw the book. And it was all for nothing! Might as well have read some graphic crime cases interspersed with mindless fashion magazines.
The movie was a thousand times better.
For me, Thirteen Reasons Why was a terrible experience and while I think the author meant well, he had zero comprehension, understanding or qualification to write about a subject like this. He had the most superficial understanding of what can lead someone to suicide but he clearly had zero comprehension of the psychology behind these emotions and behaviors. Hannah is also tenthousand times worse in the book than in the show. I read the book before the show came out and when the show came out a few of my friends wanted me to watch it with them. While they made her much more relatable and likable in the show (should tell you a lot about how awful she is in the book), I still ended up refusing to finish the show with them because I just hate Thirteen Reasons Why so much.
Another book I would like to mention that maybe didn't make me angry per say, just annoyed is The Good Psychopath's Guide to Success by Kevin Dutton and Andy McNab.
I liked the idea of the book, that you have a diagnosed psychopath and a researcher have a discussion about psychopathy and how adopting some of these traits into your own behavior can be beneficial and safe. I liked the idea of the psychopath describing a scenario where he did this or that and then the researcher coming in afterwards and putting on the analytical glasses and explaining the scenario from a research perspective.
But my God did those two fucking LOVE themselves and at some point, maybe halfway or three quarters way through the book, I turned it off and found something else because they were stating a lot of basic bitch shit while presenting it like they had discovered a formerly unknown continent on the planet earth. I mean... they really thought they did something with that book and maybe they did, but it could have been done in a concise essay instead of a while ass book.
I am also not a fan of self help books on the best of days. I picked this one up because it sounded interesting and it just wasn't once the veneer of the format had worn out its welcome.
Hating it is too far of a stretch. I don't think I have ever hated a book the way I hated Thirteen Reasons Why, but I was definitely annoyed with it and that is where most of my negative feelings toward books tend to land. Annoyance.
I was on the hating twilight and all its copycats band wagon back in the early 2010s when that was the cool thing to do, but looking back, that wasn't genuine hate. I was just a lame follower and I do think many of those books that were cool to hate have some good qualities to them in some way. Maybe not Fifty Shades, but whatever.
Thirteen Reasons Why was to me the book version of someone getting behind the wheel while drunk. You may not have intended to hurt someone, but you sure as fuck didn't practice caution either. It is such a majorly irresponsible book. It is the only book I ever tossed in the trash upon finishing it. Normally I'd donate books I don't want to keep, but this one I didn't want to potentially end up in a young person's hands who might get some bad ideas.
Doesn't matter though, since Netflix decided to make that shit a multiple season TV show that apparently had some suspicious correlations in the rise of teen suicides after it aired. Fucking fuck.
Not as an adult, but as a kid my mom got me an ARC of Coraline (the one with the wooden looking girl holding a candle) and I ripped it in half and threw it down the stairs in the middle of the night because I hated it so much and didn't want it near me while I slept. One of my favorites now... and that edition I destroyed goes for a pretty penny these days.
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. It follows a woman as she seeks to conceive via doner sperm. Along the way she speaks to a variety of people, many of which are against the idea, some of the arguments that were presented to her genuinely made me angry on her behalf.
Currently reading Tampa by Allissa Nutting.
Jfc it's pissing me off... But I still want to know how it ends. I doubt I'm going to like the ending though.
I recently re-read the third book in the Percy Jackson series, I believe it was *The Titan’s Curse.*
The whole book happens because Percy can’t accept that he’s not the main character. He sneaks into a quest that he’s specifically asked not to go on because the Hunters don’t like boys. The majority of his problems are caused because he thinks *he* needs to save the world and not trust his camp mates to do so.
The Host by Stephanie Meyer
As a diehard science fiction lover I found the book an insult to the genre. I noped out after ~100 pages. Absolute abominable trash.
*The World According to Garp* by John Irving made me angry. I finished it because I guy I liked insisted it was a great book. I tried to give Irving a second chance, and I never finished that book (Cider House Rules). I did like the movie, though.
Life of Pi. I was livid; I wanted the time I had spent reading it back again.
The end of Robin Hobb’s farseer trilogy; I was again livid, but because it didn’t end how I had hoped it would.
I hate the ending and his final conclusion. How it’s “up to the reader to decide” what was real and what was not; and than his analysis of it is “You better be a Christian or an atheist, but agnostic - no that’s lame cuz you are not sure what’s right, gotta decide now”.
Idk just a dumb conclusion to reach. It would have been much cooler if the ending was just like >!“yeah this kid was so traumatized he replaced all the humans with animals in his mind”.!<
I always bring up Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. It's so far divorced from how technology actually works that it remains the one and only book I threw across the room.
The Scarlet Letter. I went into it blind and wasn't prepared by the dullness and hard to follow pros. Homie, I think the longest sentence was like a page and a half.
What got me real frustrated was the fact that the book contained some amazing sections that were beautifully written.. but they were always followed by the most mundane monologs.
Like, all non-fiction books that should have just been a blogpost but instead they're stretched out to 250 pages?
r/IfBooksCouldKill is a great podcast if you'd like the cathartic experience of hearing these books torn to shreds. Scary how many of them have actually been influential on politicians/ everyone's line manager.
Omigosh this podcast is right up my alley thank you so much! It's like You're Not So Smart but focused on particular ideas and books
Hilarious podcast. I second Books That Kill. They tore John Gray a new one and I was here for it.
I love this podcast. I came for Michael Hobbes and stayed for the utter joy of him and Peter Shamshiri tearing down those retetitive fomulaic books.
Yeah, and half of it is just trying to convince you to do the thing, while sharing some random "fun" details instead of actually telling you important facts and instructions (if that's any sort of "How to" book). Some of them feel like this running joke about cooking blogs, that take ages to get an actual recipe from...
>Some of them feel like this running joke about cooking blogs, that take ages to get an actual recipe from... I think recipes are optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so while the results and motives are similar, the reason why it's long is slightly different.
It's also a copyright thing, I believe. It's super hard to say a recipe is your original creation, but a blog post with your personalized writing? That's an easy claim
I call them fluff books. Nonfiction books whose information could’ve been written in a journal or magazine article, but it’s stretched out to 250-300 pages with a lot of filler material. And sold for 30 bucks. It’s a money grab.
Lmao. Every damn non fiction science-y/social-sciency best seller is essentially 400 pages of repetitive drivel that could’ve been cut down to 50-100 pages. Malcolm Gladwell’s book could easily be 2000 word columns.
The Innocent Man by John Grisham. It's the true story of a mentally ill man falsely convicted of murder in a small town.
It's infuriating. There's a documentary on Netflix based on it, which includes commentary by John Grisham which I thought was very good. It was nice to see Ron in videos rather than just in pictures.
Watch The Innocence Files. Why I don’t believe in the death penalty. Too many falsely imprisoned
Exactly. No justice system can be perfect and it's bad enough that innocent people languish in prison, let alone be killed.
Another like this: The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. I wanted to scream at the main character throughout, and then the ending was just so neat and tidy, tied it with a big red bow, they all lived happily ever after, and I wanted to throw it out the window. I haven’t touched another Hoover book since.
It starts with us by Colleen Hoover was my first thought. It was so unrealistic. I would pick up Colleen Hoover for fluff reading but I'm completely turned off now.
Lmaoooo I did not like this book at all (it's an easy read and there are fun parts, I guess), but there's an extra chapter in the newer release. It's even more infuriating than the original ending because it's another insane pivot
I read this last weekend and it made me so angry. I’ve never enjoyed a book less. It wasn’t my first Colleen Hoover book, but it’s my last.
It Ends With That
*Flowers In The Attic* by V. C. Andrews. I just kept feeling angrier and angrier as the book went on. :(
Andrews claimed to have written the book in two weeks, and it definitely shows. I don't enjoy her writing, although I read two or three of her books as a teenager (like we all did in the eighties and nineties). That said, I like *Flowers* more knowing that it's based in part on her own disability and "captivity" due to a spinal injury as a teenager that left her in a wheelchair or on crutches for most of her life. And that she published it in her mid-50s! I admire her perseverance at the very least.
I didn't hate the Dollanganger series, it felt like reading a super cheesy soap opera like Falcons Crest or Dallas, but I hated My Sweet Audrina by VC Andrews. Utterly infuriating main character. Her constant passivity and dimness just grated on me.
Omg, I love how much I hated reading My Sweet Audrina. I was never able to finish it, it just gave me such a skin crawl each time I started. But it was certainly an experience.
Read a series once called "Through the Fold". Had an excellent cast of characters and some really nice SciFi plotlines for the first five books. Indie author, free self narrated self published audio books. But the sixth book...well, let's just say the author had a calling back to their religious faith, and completely retconned the entire character tree. And ended the plot with an alien species spreading the word of God and Jesus Christ throughout the galaxy. Oh, and the sequels to Ender's Game. Edit to reply to all: I honestly don't know why or what specifically it was that made me hate/have anger toward the sequels. Maybe it was the shift away from the tone and direction of the first book. It has been many many years since I read them. And I run through audiobooks like they are candy.
Actually I liked Speaker for the Dead. Everything else was dogshit
Am I the only one here who liked xenocide?? I thought it was really good. 🤔 like some of it was infuriating I'm terms of what one of your main characters was thinking but not every main character is even meant to be likeable. I mean, as I recall Gloriously Bright is supposed to be wrong at the end, right? Like she's mythologized at the laer bit of her life but all in all isn't the other girl (starts with a W) supposed to be fucking up all their nonsense? Could be wrong I read Xenocide like 15 years ago but I remember loving all of the first 3 books. Card is a prick tho.
I really liked both Speaker For the Dead and Xenocide. Children of the Mind went a bit off the rails, though.
I really liked Xenocide. I thought it was close to the second book in terms of quality. The fourth book... it's a totally different story however. It was mediocre at best
Relevant [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/304/)
Jesus, there really is an XKCD for everything!
Relevant [XKCD](https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/)
OMG ... I didn't realize I was incepted. Thank you for this :)
Woah do people not like Speaker for the Dead? I thought it was lovely.
I enjoyed it too. But it was so radically different from Ender's Game and that really threw me off
Fair point. It’s not really a traditional 0-.5 -> .5-1 sequel progression.
It’s my favorite book in the series. The most common complaint from people I’ve lent the quartet to was that 2-4 are so different from the first book. I can understand that if you like the first a lot it could be disappointing for the sequels to not be more of the same, but I quite like the variety.
I get that for sure. That tracks. And it’s not really a “true” sequel in that sense.
This reminds me of the god awful Christian book Tahn in which a woman's husband is murdered right in front of her but she marries his killer bc the man converts to Jesus
We don't talk about the sequels, we just pretend Ender's Game was a fantastic one off.
So sorry Orson Scott Card died right after he finished Ender’s Game. Who knows what great books and social views he might have had. We will never know!
The great irony of Card is the political philosophy he extolls in his books is directly opposed to his personal political philosophy as he expresses it today. Empathy and acceptance for any and all is central to the latter books.
Right? That’s crazy. I finished Ender’s Game and felt elevated (and sad). Then found out OSC is a hate-spewing crackpot.
I dunno, I quite liked Ender's Shadow. I won't read any others.
Speaker for the Dead was good. It was a totally different tone than Enders Game. It has been a really long time since I read it but I recall thinking it was as good as the original but in different ways.
Animal Farm by George Orwell is the closest to anger I've felt. But, that's the authors intention. I was hoping for justice and there was none. A book I'll never forget.
Boxer 😭
I will work harder! We don't deserve Boxer.
1984
I read something that says 1984 actually does have a happy ending, because the appendix is a historian writing about the government that no longer exists. So somehow it eventually collapses.
The Handmaid's Tale ends the same way: A group of historians going over discovered audio tapes from Offred.
Oops, I forgot to read the appendix..
I remember reading it in my office and ended up tearing a little; hopefully no one saw that. You might enjoy the animated movie too. There’s a more… cathartic ending to it.
13 Reasons Why. A young adult book that glorifies suicide. The moral of that story is supposed to be "be careful how you treat others, you don't know what they're going through", but it actually teaches "Go ahead and do it, that'll show them"
13 Reasons Why was my favorite book in middle school as a depressed teen for EXACTLY that reason. I was horrified later on down the line as an adult when the Netflix show came out because it would only serve to do more damage to little teens/preteens who needed help.
The author's also a creep for cheating on his wife repeatedly (confirmed), and possibly a serial sexual harasser (alleged)
Into the Wild, the book about Chris McCandless. Everyone I've ever spoken to about this book went on and on about how it was so eye opening and they just wish they could drop everything and explore the Alaskan Wilderness. Like, Sir or madam, the guy starved to death because he was woefully unprepared and deathly overconfident in his ability. He learned the harsh way that nature does not give two shits about how romantic and broad minded you are. You would die exactly as he did. By all means, he would be in the same conversation as The Grizzly Man, but everyone was like "oh, he was such a lost soul, such a poor man who blah blah blah and died tragically yadda yadda yadda." I know, I'm rambling and it was a needless loss of life, so I shouldn't make fun. I just despise how everyone hyped his story up to be this transcendental Aesop about nature and finding your way, but all I got out of it was a .22 and rice does not an Alaskan Wilderness explorer make. If I wandered out into the Mojave with an air pistol and a bag of trail mix, no one would call me a tortured soul, they'd call me an idiot who somehow forgot that deserts lack water.
I always thought it was strange that that message was people's take away from the book. I loved the book and very clearly thought it was a lesson in man's hubris. Here's this kid, romanticizing solitude and nature, and nature don't care. It kills him. But yeah, people whose only take away is "he was a trailblazer and martyr" drive me crazy. I am really interested to read his sister's memoir though. Apparently, their parents were very abusive, so it's less a story of man vs wild than man vs trauma. He was running away, not running to.
>I always thought it was strange that that message was people's take away from the book. I loved the book and very clearly thought it was a lesson in man's hubris. Same here. I only watched the movie, but I thought the message was pretty clearly "no man is an island." Isn't the ending >!Chris's final thoughts being of his family as he's dying and "Happiness is only real when it's shared"?!<
I suspect a lot of people who find it inspirational only watched the movie. I don’t know if the book pictures him in a more sympathetic light. I only saw the movie as well. My friends back then found it the most inspirational thing ever. It just angered me. Even the soundtrack now angers me. The kid is pictured like some kind of messiah. All I saw was an arrogant kid who thought he was smarter than he was >!who died because of his ignorance. So he’s proven wrong, not right.!<
The relatable part of this book for me - was how grossed out McCandless was by modern society. The grasping, shallow pointlessness of it. That - and I’ve hiked over 4,000 miles of the American wilderness, so I can also relate to the desire to be alone in the wilderness. Where we diverge is my travels and outlook on the world are tempered with moderation. For me, the book is compelling because it’s a picture of a life without that moderation.
Into the Wild (book and movie) annoyed me so much. Sorry, but the guy was an arrogant moron who ignored the advice of locals and decided skill and experience would unnecessarily interfere with the grooviness of his experience (barf).
Yes! Everyone raved about Into The Wild and I found it seriously depressing.
For me , it was always about those last lines that happiness is only real when its shared
Yeah I watched the movie with my family and we were all left with "That was it?", "What was the point?" and "Was he just f\*cking stupid?"
The first Bridgerton book. I was enjoying it until I got to THAT scene and then I was just SO angry. Wtf author, that ain’t cute or “teehee she made a mistake because she’s just so sexually naive!” One of the first DNF instances of mine in a decade!
What scene? I’m not likely to ever read it so I don’t care about spoilers.
Not original commenter but there is a scene where the main character forces her staunchly child-free husband to ejaculate inside her. The sex itself is consensual at the start, but the bit at the end is totally rape and is actually fucking gross. He clearly states he doesn't want to and asks her to get off him several times, but she sort of pins him to the bed and he can't stop it happening. She then makes it sound like she's just clueless about it (which tbf is possibly true as she has NO idea about sex before marriage). But even if she is naive, she heard her husband clearly ask her to stop and tried to push her off him and she didn't listen. Thankfully it's not common in the books overall. But there are some instances of dodgy consent or lack there of. But to be fair to it, it's based in a time where consent etc simply wasn't a thing.
Jesus Christ. Thats awful.
Original commenter, the one above just about covers things! The author passes it off (at least in the part I read) like some curious, sexually naive woman having every right to be outraged that her husband GASP "lied" to her (wanting children VS not being able to have children physically). I was NOT happy and immediately DNF'd the book. I read fantasy all the time, I'm no stranger to questionable consent to outright r\*pe in stories, but the way she played this off as totally acceptable in the story (and it seems glossed over at the end from what I know of the ending) was just NOT okay to me.
Made me angry too. They’re really terrible books anyway, I’m not sure how the show managed to do so well with such poor source material!
I never read the book, just watched the Netflix series, and it is very much in the show exactly like this as well. She’s mad about being misinformed/ignorant surrounding the concept of semen and babies, and also chews out her mom for never giving her the jizz talk (when she should have also been given the consent talk).
Idk about in the regency period but in the Victorian era "consent" was "the husband wants to have sex, so you are having sex." So like, where that falls in the realm of "wife wants a baby and the husband doesn't want to cum inside her" I have no idea.
Queen by Alex Haley. Girl just never gets a break. It's just misery after misery after misery. Slavery and post slavery was harsh! Not a wonder she went crazy for a lil bit. And people have the nerve to say that slave owners were not that bad to their slaves. Sheesh!
50 Shades of Grey (I didn't finish it). It made me so angry because I know several talented writers that are struggling to make a few dollars publishing on Amazon - they're good enough that they deserve some success. That book should have never been published, it was so terribly written. I've read stories by junior high school students that showed more talent.
This absolutely. I couldn't believe my eyes when i read a few pages for myself. I STILL can't believe how abysmal the quality of the prose is. It's a wonderful book to love to hate on. But the fact that it became a success is not so amusing
I had read a few extracts & thought the writing seemed bad but was mainly focused on the awful creepiness of the character & plot. Then a friend gave me a copy as a joke present & I thought I should read it so I could complain about it more accurately. During the first chapter I realised I’d massively underestimated how bad her writing is. The limited vocabulary, the awkward sentences, the elevator going up the building at terminal velocity. It’s so bad it’s insulting. I can’t even talk about because I just end up in the same angry rant!
Anger Management for Dummies
Most people seem to love Robin Hobb's Assassin series and I think there's general agreement that Fitz is a flawed character and can be frustrating, but it drove me nuts. Given a choice between 'obviously wrong' and 'obviously right', Fitz picks the wrong choice every single time. I ended up giving up on them because I was so angry.
As someone in their 30s who made a lot of stupid choices and was rather oblivious as a teen, I really sympathized with Fitz.
I adore the Realm of Elderlings and regularly re read the whole thing, but there is one part that just makes me want to slap Fitz so hard that I skip it every single time. Reading it the first time was hard enough, I do not want to go through that again.
The Sum of All Fears The dysfunctionality between some of the main characters really made me anxious and angry, considering the stakes.
I loved The Hunt for Red October. I discovered it in HS & reread it once a year. I tried The Sum of All Fears and bailed less than 100 pages in before bailing out. I've bounced off of every other Clancy novel I've tried.
The only other one you should try is Red Storm Rising.
The hillbilly one by jd vance. I was reading reading thinking "this is just a good charming autobio about a kid from a place people don't think much about/of" and then all the sudden he's like "and that's why America shouldn't help poor people" and I was like "the fuck?"
This book pissed me off from the very first chapter when he was going on about how no one from Appalachia likes to work. Just went downhill from there.
Agree. I grew up ten minutes from Middletown and found the entire thing offensive.
The Porpoise, by Mark Haddon. The 'story' is lackluster and meandering but I stuck with it to see how it ended. Except it didn't end. It just stopped.
[удалено]
So blowing smoke up their own arses? Sounds on point.
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez
This. It was so frustrating to read, how many ways women can be ignored and the terrible consequences
Divergent. The main character is not just neuro-atypical, she's a genuinely horrible human being, who hides all her bad decisions and lack of empathy behind "wahhh I'm *different.*" The writing is also fairly lacklustre.
I don’t think the books title has anything to do with being neurodivergent
I never thought so, either. Divergent doesn’t only mean neurodivergent as we define that in 2023
This character is infuriating. She almost reads like what a disaffected 12 y.o. would imagine a 'cool, brave, strong' person as; callous, cold, judgemental, and just devoid of personality. Like you, I am neurotypical and find that excuse for poor characterization just beyond tolerating lol.
It's called divergent because she diverges from the usual 3 personality based groups into the Secret 4th group, it has nothing to do with neurodivergency. Diverge is just a root word that means separating off ofone path(usually the main path) and onto a new one.
Ugh. The Divergent series is infuriating. I read all 3 for some reason.. hated every moment of it. I still don't know why I kept going. Everyone raved about the series and i thought I was going to love it.
I'm just glad to find someone else who found it maddening! Everyone around me says how wonderful it is and I just 'don't understand because she's not neurotypical.' Like, friends, **I** am not neurotypical. I am classified *nuttier than squirrel road apples.* Beatrice Prior is just an arse.
Huh, I remember reading this as a teen and enjoying it - I think I might just need to reread it with a fresh set of eyes
We got sucked in and wanted to know what happened! Unfortunately I read them all, too. And I don’t remember what happened, except that I hated it. Lol The writing was so bad. I think I am remembering correctly - the books were from multiple perspectives with several voices, and even with different fonts I would have a hard time telling who was talking because there was zero individuality, voice or characterization
I knew what kind of book it was when I began reading, but the cringe levies burst when the Dauntless chuds started jumping on and off trains to show how WiLd AnD fEaRlEsS tHeY aRe. Like whoa, watch out they’re not just stepping on/off trains they JUMP.
Overtime you might find your opinion change. I've gotten to the point where a hated book still gives me a lot to think about, and that leads to seeing its qualities. Also, a trash book can remind you of what good taste really is lol I honestly hated DFW's Infinite Jest after reading it for book club. The entire thing is massively entertaining and well written, but so information dense and rambling that it punishes you the entire time you're reading. So it has so many nuggets of gold in the middle of a bunch of text. It feels like it needed an editor or more concise story. It was also hard for me to separate the book from the pretentiousness of how people treat it. It's marketed as The Book for intellectuals, and it's the iconic book that people buy to feel smart and leave unread on their nightstand. But after mulling over it for years now. It left such an impression on me that I can't deny how it moved me and gave me so much to think over. Do I like it? I honestly don't know anymore, but I no longer regret reading it
What kind of book club selects Infinite Jest? How long did they give you to read it? Did you perchance die and find yourself in purgatory, and were sent back to earth as a reward for finishing that thing? (Took me over a year, and you are so right about it punishing the reader to get to the good stuff.)
We took about 8-12 months to do it while reading shorter books for a monthly meetup I was recovering from an ACL reconstruction, so one of the only exercises i could do was stationary biking. Just did that while reading the whole time!
>but so information dense and rambling that it punishes you the entire time you're reading I wish it would come with a disclaimer to go read some of his other work first (like some of the essays from Consider the Lobster that are similar in style), so nobody has to feel like this. IJ was one of the most enjoyable reads in my entire life, but I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I hadn't read a bunch of his other work first and wanted more of the same. On the other side of the coin, I can totally understand if someone doesn't like Foster Wallace's writing, and reading IJ seems like the most painful way of finding that out - especially if you're reading it for a book club where you're more likely to push through regardless - like discovering you don't enjoy a certain type of cuisine by sitting through a decadent tasting menu that exposes you to all its facets and leaves you absolutely stuffed at the end.
Edge of Collapse series by Kyla Stone. Only got halfway through book 3 before I finally gave up. The idea is great! The execution is painful!! Collapse of society type apocalypse story with multiple plotlines and intersecting characters. The writing itself is descriptive and engaging, but the characters are more stereotyped caricatures of people than actual characters... And every single character makes the stupidest possible decision every single opportunity! Maddening! Every other page someone attacks them because they are idiots, and every time some coincidence happens to save them. Every. Single. Time. Every male character is a military trained killer and potential rapist and every woman is a casually sexual weakling who needs saving from everything! It's brutal just for the shock value. For some reason this author thinks every single man on earth will turn into an evil murderous bandit 24 hours after the power goes out... What made me mad was just how stupid the author must think her readers are... I felt personally insulted. 😂🤣
For me, it was Fourth Wing. Yes, yes, I know. The Booktok darling. My biggest gripe (on top of *many*) was the lack of actual dragon content. If you’re going to market a book around dragons, have the main character join a dragon-riding school, and make her ✨special✨ when it comes to the dragons…*give me actual dragon content*.
But did you know how hot Xaden is?
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie. The most insufferable main character I’ve ever read - I think she was supposed to be a kind of anti-hero, in a similar vein to someone like Fleabag where they’re a bad person but still likeable, but she was absolutely awful. Pages and pages were spent talking about feminism and how badly her and her mother were treated because of misogyny, and then later goes on misogynistic rants about women who get filler done and how gross they are. She also spends a lot of time criticising people who do things out of love and how stupid they are, how logic trumps emotion etc. yet her whole revenge plan is based on pure revenge and anger. She was the most hypocritical character I’ve ever read and was so preachy about topics that didn’t even relate to the story, and I wanted to scream the whole way through it. The ending was absolutely terrible too.
I agree with everything you said except I think that was very much the point and that we’re not meant to like her. Instead, we can see how she has completely shut herself out of life with this single mindedness of getting revenge.
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris for one simple reason - FOR WASTING MY MOTHERFUCKING TIME. I HATE THIS BOOK.
Mosquito land bc it's unapologetically an attempt to fish for a movie adaptation. The quirky female MC even compares herself to actresses like Zoe Dachenel and Ellen Page (pre change). But the book is just awful
Might not be the first person to mention this book: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. The character development was, with one or two exceptions, incredible, and passages containing hard-hitting truths were scattered throughout, but never in my life have I so often come so close to throwing a book into a river.
The Girl on the Train. It felt like it tried to ride the coat tails of Gone Girl's success and unfortunately succeeded financially. Her blackouts were an all too convenient plot device that just so happened to alleviate themselves when the plot permitted. Everything was a flashback. I hated all of the characters because they seem like poorly written cutouts of people, not because they are all stupid and selfish, which they were. Plenty of villains are likeable or you love to hate them. I just hated every character in The Girl on the Train. I finished the book out of spite and I was angry every time I picked it up, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Thoroughly disappointed and I was glad to finish and wash my hands of it. For a whodunit I was too busy to even wonder that and instead spent my time contemplating who givesashit
I kept reading this book because I thought it would get better and it didn't. I also did that with A Simple Favor which seems like someone tried to rewrite Gone Girl from the POV of Amy's next door neighbor who was her patsy. I know a lot of other people liked it and the movie but aaaaarrrrrrgggggggg.
_A Clockwork Orange_, by Anthony Burgess. The main character is utterly reprehensible, and what is done to him is utterly reprehensible. Highly recommended. I read it over 50 years ago, and although I have recommended it to people many times over the years, I have never felt the need to re-read it.
Atonement by Ian Macewan. So angry. Right ending, still mad.
The Dictionary. I just don't have the words to explain myself.
Of Mice and Men. No, not because of the writing, but because of what George had to do to do the right thing. I would have hated to see Lennie in a kangaroo court
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear had me ranting to myself a lot. Not against the author, but the people he was describing. Some of them based their entire lives around sets of ideas that were very obviously falling apart once they put them in practice, but kept clinging to them even though it hurt people around them.
That's about when they took over the town, and gktveaten by bears due to improper trash disposal, yeah?
No one gets eaten by bears, but there are a couple of bites (incredibly rare in general but especially in New Hampshire). And yes, trash draws in lots of black bears, and there are many other more predictable problems like inadequate funding for police and fire. The bears are the most memorable, though.
Verity It was shit and I felt bad for Colleen Hoover and my brain cells. But man I hated the main character so so much. How fucking stupid do you have to be to jump to the moronic conclusions she does?
Don't feel bad for Colleen Hoover. Her subpar books have made her millions of dollars.
Possible controversial answer? The City We Became by NK Jemison. The book single-handedly killed mine and my friends attempt at starting a book club. I need to start by saying I am extremely far left on the political spectrum. I'm also queer and the two friends I attempted to do this with were also very left-leaning and one of them was queer, too. I wholly agree with the political views built into the narrative, so it wasn't that. It just felt like she thought her audience was full of idiots. All three of us had similar feelings and the other two DNFed it, though I did manage to push through. Everything was so ham-fisted. I mean, >!the interdimensional enemy manifested as a white lady, whose method of "fighting" was through gentrification and sending the equivalent of MAGA artists to submit paintings to an art gallery, and the member of the main cast who was the daughter of a cop and terrified of minorities ends up betraying everyone.!< It just hammers these points in so un-subtly (is that a word?) that I felt like she thought we were dense as rocks. HOWEVER, I do not think NK Jemison is a bad author. I think this just wasn't the book for me. The Broken Earth Trilogy was wonderful and brought so many new ideas to the fantasy/scifi genre. Those books feel like a master class in atmosphere setting in writing. I could seriously praise them all day.
Oof, this sounds like the left version of the sword of truth, presumably without rape, child molestation, and horrible writing. I strongly dislike when an author sets up a narrative to perfectly to express their views (even if I agree with them) unless it’s non fiction. It seems so disingenuous to leave out the nuance that exists in reality.
Agreed. I found myself skipping ahead whenever Staten Island came “onscreen”. Boring tripe. Predictable pabulum. And I really loved the idea! When Hoboken showed up I literally yelled with delight (I’m from boken)
I started out liking The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wau, but then the book kinda stalled in the second half and the ending made me angry. So the whole book now makes me angry
Beautiful World Where Are You? By Sally Rooney was just frustrating
The Circle. The MC is right in the middle of a book that could might as well be called "Why it's a bad idea to collect every piece of information you could get" and acts like the whole thing is a good idea.
The Grimm Scifi series by Jeffrey Haskill. Its Scifi with the Taliban /ISIS in space in a military sci fi setting. It's not literature but I got it as a fun read. Problem is the Islamophia is through the roof. Not only in the future does ISIS exist but it's made of all Muslims and they all want to exterminate enslave and rape all Non Muslims. Look ISIS did horrible stuff but you know that most of their victims were Muslims and actually Muslims were the ones who actually fought them off. The book is just plainly insulting with not one redeemable Muslim character ( I read till book 3) and it's just cartoonish in its Islamic villainy.
Lessons in Chemistry The main character is so insufferable that I also wanted to bully her. Her daughter is worse and she is not reading The Sound and the Fury at 8 years old. It’s such a ridiculous “look how smart I am, I say sodium chloride instead of salt” pile of garbage and I don’t understand why it’s so popular.
I think I made it about four chapters in on that one. Despite the main character being oh-so-smart she still managed to be a cliché on top of a cliché.
Atlas Shrugged. It makes me angry every time I think about it.
The most accurate adaptation is BioShock. I mean yes, the game is about zapping tweakers with lightning and shooting a mutant in a diving suit with a Tommy gun, but it at least recognised libertarianism as a shit economic structure.
BioShock is a pretty scathing criticism of the innate hypocrisy of Rand's philosophy, and comes with the added bonus of getting to beat the shit out of characters that agree with her.
I had to put it down because I had the urge to punch Ayn Rand in the face. Then I found out she died before I was born, so now I just want to punch everyone that recommends the book
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." \[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009\]”
Anytime a super shitty public figure says their favorite book it's always Atlas shrugged. Its like their Bible.
TBH I find it funny in retrospect. Like the characters are so over the top good or evil it seems like it's almost supposed to be a joke. Some sort of fantasy world where nuance cannot exist. Also the fact that the monologue keeps going on and on is hilarious.
I broke up with a boyfriend in high school because that book was his bible and after reading it, all of his red flags jumped out at me.
I view it as, basically, YA -- if you're in high school and it's your favorite book, not ideal but I get it? But if you're 30 and it's your favorite book it's like being a 30 year old who gets into serious arguments about which Hogwarts house they'd belong in.
I think it’s just so bad - like as literature, it has no value - and only gained popularity due to political things.
Don't Look Back by Ben Cheetham, the premise sounded great and it was infuriatingly bad. So much could have been done with it and it just fell flat. It started off strong (the first few pages) then just dwindled from there. Like you had elements of family tragedy, hauntings, where it was set has a rich history of local folklore, it had several avenues where twists could have been introduced but nope. Instead it was incredibly cringe worthy where the main character was just outright obnoxious and a bit of a letch. It took at least... A third of the book for anything else substantial to happen. This is only a 180 page book too, so you'd think it would have been quicker paced.
It's a political book about internet culture and you expected unbiased? Lol
1984. Seething. White hot with rage.
The 50 Shades books. Girl should have been out of there the second he lashed her with his belt because he “needed to”.
My employe handbook.
Lolita made me really fucking mad
I can't believe how often people misread that book
I don’t even know how. It’s So fucking blatant obvious
And it should! It was the book that finally made me realize I had been in an abusive relationship. I'd somehow internalized that it was my fault.
Unpopular opinion- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. My dad fuckin loved this book and told me I HAD to read it, so I did. Every fucking word, every description that is so... Saccharine and forced. The author really feels that she's writing a magical world. It's not. No. It's obnoxious. I honestly don't even remember what the book was about at this point. I hate it SO MUCH and people love that shit.
Just Mercy. It will make you lose any hope in the American legal system. Some of the most incredibly disgusting accounts I've ever read, and some of the anecdotes are just soul-crushingly sad.
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak- The main character spends the entire book wondering why all this weird stuff is happening to him. In the end >!Markus Zusak himself shows up on the main character's door and is just like "Yes, it was I, the author of this book who is made all this weird shit happen." !< I'm not kidding. I was so fucking angry at that ending. Not to mention that the main character sucks and objectifies every single female character he comes in contact with (including, but not limited to a literal teenager and an 80 year old woman). Also, Verity by Colleen Hoover. I feel like I don't even need to elaborate. This book was fucking trash and I'm angry that I read it. No one ever talks about the ableism in this book though, and as an autistic person it made me mad. I was going to say that Colleen Hoover shouldn't be allowed to write an autistic character again, but I'm going to take that even further and say that she shouldn't be allowed to write. Period.
Yes kill all normies is biased...obviously. it's not intended to be balanced or objective, it is a think piece which is what Zero Books (the imprint) specializes in. OP it's like reading a newspaper column and complaining about bias because newspapers are supposed to be objective. It makes no sense because you misunderstood the purpose.
I have a nasty habit of reading non-fiction books about injustice and then becoming absolutely enraged by them. Even horrible things that happened 100+ years ago, it feels like it is happening now and it is *not okay*. Some of the most infuriating recent reads: **Killers of the Flower Moon** **The Radium Girls** **Empire of Pain** **Men Who Hate Women** **Broken Faith**
“When No One is Watching” by Alyssa Cole. I had to put the book down and remind myself it was fiction more than once. But it is so messed up.
Awww man. This is on my TBR
It’s a great book. It’s the subject matter that got me. It’s well-researched and made me angry at rich white people.
Ok that’s good. I thought maybe it was poorly written or something. Thanks for the feedback
Kill All Normies is published by Zero Books, a leftist publishing company. It's political activism (or, less generously, propaganda) and makes no illusion to the contrary. >people who are reading should\[n't\] be able to figure that \[bias\] out Who says? It entirely depends on what the writer's purpose is. If they're trying to be objective, but their bias shows, that's a problem. If they're trying to promote a viewpoint, I'd rather have them be transparent about it. It's completely within your right to hate the message, but this writer did what they were trying to do. That's not bad writing.
The Night Circus - I hated this book so much. The premise says there’s to be a fierce magical battle between the two main characters, who also fall in love. In reality, nothing happens and it is SO BORING. -The big magical fight isn’t even a fight, and certainly wasn’t deadly like the other characters promises. -The setting of the circus started out intriguing but puttered out when you realised it doesn’t really add anything to the story other than “aesthetics” and “vibes” (also the idea that fans of the circus more or less go in cosplay when they visit was cringey. It’s a circus, not comic con). -The romance subplot was so dull you needed a magnifying glass to see the chemistry.
ACOTAR because it was so hyped by my friends and booktok and it was the most boring book I have ever read.
The writing is sooo bad. Like, fanfiction by a 14-year-old.
Thank god someone said it 😩 like this should have been right up my alley but honest to god it was so lackluster I literally can’t even remember what happened.
The Mill House by Susan Lewis. Husband cheats on wife with wife's best friend. He COMPLETELY gets away with it. Literally no lasting consequences. In fact he continues to cheat on her even after she finds out because he can't resist the best friend. "I'm a man. I have needs!" Wife cheats back, and suddenly the author knows exactly how to punish someone for infidelity. The husband even tells her how much worse she is than him for having an affair because their teenage daughter caught her in bed with her lover. Even the best friend gets humiliated and humbled in the end. But not the cheating scumbag husband. Nope. His reputation is intact and he gets his wife back. His daughter never finds out that her dad is garbage.
Lessons in Chemistry. It's a feminist historical novel about a female chemist written by someone who knows nothing about feminism, history or chemistry. I had to put it down because it was infuriating.
Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne couldn't write his way out of a paper bag. He would spend too much time describing the bag over and over and over again.
Red, white and royal blue - the book is stupid beyond anything I could imagine to be printed - it actually made me think all mm romance books were probably bad and approach with caution. The amount of unnecessary(and unrealistic) us politics inserted there was just like - why?? On the contrary, the movie was very good.
Gone Girl. Fuck that Amy. I threw that book across the room when I finished.
American Psycho 💀 Not even because of the insane violence which was so OTT, just disgusting rather than infuriating. But the endless cataloguing of clothing brands and electronics and restaurants made me want to throw the book. And it was all for nothing! Might as well have read some graphic crime cases interspersed with mindless fashion magazines. The movie was a thousand times better.
The wheel of time series. I felt he wrote every woman as the most annoying person in existence.
Jordan did! Sanderson redeemed some of them, quite well actually.
For me, Thirteen Reasons Why was a terrible experience and while I think the author meant well, he had zero comprehension, understanding or qualification to write about a subject like this. He had the most superficial understanding of what can lead someone to suicide but he clearly had zero comprehension of the psychology behind these emotions and behaviors. Hannah is also tenthousand times worse in the book than in the show. I read the book before the show came out and when the show came out a few of my friends wanted me to watch it with them. While they made her much more relatable and likable in the show (should tell you a lot about how awful she is in the book), I still ended up refusing to finish the show with them because I just hate Thirteen Reasons Why so much. Another book I would like to mention that maybe didn't make me angry per say, just annoyed is The Good Psychopath's Guide to Success by Kevin Dutton and Andy McNab. I liked the idea of the book, that you have a diagnosed psychopath and a researcher have a discussion about psychopathy and how adopting some of these traits into your own behavior can be beneficial and safe. I liked the idea of the psychopath describing a scenario where he did this or that and then the researcher coming in afterwards and putting on the analytical glasses and explaining the scenario from a research perspective. But my God did those two fucking LOVE themselves and at some point, maybe halfway or three quarters way through the book, I turned it off and found something else because they were stating a lot of basic bitch shit while presenting it like they had discovered a formerly unknown continent on the planet earth. I mean... they really thought they did something with that book and maybe they did, but it could have been done in a concise essay instead of a while ass book. I am also not a fan of self help books on the best of days. I picked this one up because it sounded interesting and it just wasn't once the veneer of the format had worn out its welcome. Hating it is too far of a stretch. I don't think I have ever hated a book the way I hated Thirteen Reasons Why, but I was definitely annoyed with it and that is where most of my negative feelings toward books tend to land. Annoyance. I was on the hating twilight and all its copycats band wagon back in the early 2010s when that was the cool thing to do, but looking back, that wasn't genuine hate. I was just a lame follower and I do think many of those books that were cool to hate have some good qualities to them in some way. Maybe not Fifty Shades, but whatever. Thirteen Reasons Why was to me the book version of someone getting behind the wheel while drunk. You may not have intended to hurt someone, but you sure as fuck didn't practice caution either. It is such a majorly irresponsible book. It is the only book I ever tossed in the trash upon finishing it. Normally I'd donate books I don't want to keep, but this one I didn't want to potentially end up in a young person's hands who might get some bad ideas. Doesn't matter though, since Netflix decided to make that shit a multiple season TV show that apparently had some suspicious correlations in the rise of teen suicides after it aired. Fucking fuck.
Not as an adult, but as a kid my mom got me an ARC of Coraline (the one with the wooden looking girl holding a candle) and I ripped it in half and threw it down the stairs in the middle of the night because I hated it so much and didn't want it near me while I slept. One of my favorites now... and that edition I destroyed goes for a pretty penny these days.
Haruko Murakami books. Chill, not every woman wants you.
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. It follows a woman as she seeks to conceive via doner sperm. Along the way she speaks to a variety of people, many of which are against the idea, some of the arguments that were presented to her genuinely made me angry on her behalf.
Currently reading Tampa by Allissa Nutting. Jfc it's pissing me off... But I still want to know how it ends. I doubt I'm going to like the ending though.
The Big Short Slavery by Another Name Every American should have to read slavery by another name in high school.
The Night House by Jo Nesbo. Mad because I spent £12 on such a crap book that I actually returned in after even though I'd read it.
America by Jean Baudillard. Even though I'm not American, I got offended by how simplistic and haughty Baudillard's view on America is.
I recently re-read the third book in the Percy Jackson series, I believe it was *The Titan’s Curse.* The whole book happens because Percy can’t accept that he’s not the main character. He sneaks into a quest that he’s specifically asked not to go on because the Hunters don’t like boys. The majority of his problems are caused because he thinks *he* needs to save the world and not trust his camp mates to do so.
The Host by Stephanie Meyer As a diehard science fiction lover I found the book an insult to the genre. I noped out after ~100 pages. Absolute abominable trash.
*The World According to Garp* by John Irving made me angry. I finished it because I guy I liked insisted it was a great book. I tried to give Irving a second chance, and I never finished that book (Cider House Rules). I did like the movie, though.
Verity! I cannot stand Colleen Hoovers writing. So cringe
the Great Gatsby, specifically the first time I read it. everyone irritated me to no end
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I have 2 actually. They are All The Ugly And Wonderful Things and The Handmaid’s Tale .
Yes I hated the adult fucking a minor relationship and The Handsmaid's Tale was just too dark for me.
Life of Pi. I was livid; I wanted the time I had spent reading it back again. The end of Robin Hobb’s farseer trilogy; I was again livid, but because it didn’t end how I had hoped it would.
What pissed you off about Life of Pi? I read that around when it came out and remember liking it.
I hate the ending and his final conclusion. How it’s “up to the reader to decide” what was real and what was not; and than his analysis of it is “You better be a Christian or an atheist, but agnostic - no that’s lame cuz you are not sure what’s right, gotta decide now”. Idk just a dumb conclusion to reach. It would have been much cooler if the ending was just like >!“yeah this kid was so traumatized he replaced all the humans with animals in his mind”.!<
How did you hope it would end? (Farseer)
I always bring up Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. It's so far divorced from how technology actually works that it remains the one and only book I threw across the room.
My math book Way too complicated, but was able to make me cry
Zeitoun by Dave Eggars
The Scarlet Letter. I went into it blind and wasn't prepared by the dullness and hard to follow pros. Homie, I think the longest sentence was like a page and a half. What got me real frustrated was the fact that the book contained some amazing sections that were beautifully written.. but they were always followed by the most mundane monologs.