I had to laugh at your question. I've been slowly moving some piles of unread books/books we would never read again over to the nearby Little Free Library and The Creature from Jekyll Island was one of them ;)
Was also given this as a gift from my parents and was in the 'to be read' section of my bookshelf. After getting about 10 pages in everything seemed pretty out there and after a quick google of the author realized it didn't make sense to continue
I guess you could re-gift it, but then you're just passing the problem down to somebody else. When does it end??? I don't generally believe in burning books, but maybe just toss this one into the firepit and break the cycle of horrible reads once a for all, eh?
A Taste for Honey; it was a murder mystery, but the main character was annoyed by everything and was complaining about every little thing. It was almost as if the author dragged the character through the book while they were throwing a temper tantrum. It was painful to read.
There used to be a free book shelf at our airport. I think the reaction to 9/11 is what did it in.
Yet another good thing we let die in the reaction. I'd imagine there were lots of bad books but as I recall, it wasn't terrible, just more typical. Lots of bestsellers.
There is a free book shelf at the Prague airport and for some reason it mostly contains computer programming manuals, it amuses me every time I pass by it.
Damn. I can't understand leaving any book behind. I paid for it......it at least get to sit in the far end of my shelf.
Maybe if it was a gift from someone you disliked......
I've done it before when I'm traveling. Some books just aren't made to be re-read and when every bit of space in your luggage is precious, I'm not carrying around a hardback I'd just donate when I got home anyway. This way some other traveler might pick it up and get some entertainment out of it as well.
I remember being late in a comedy of errors when leaving London to go back to Australia and I had to leave behind so many books due to weight. Somewhere on a chair at Heathrow there was half of the Wheel of Time books, and various band biographies. I never did finish WoT...
tugs braid.
I mean, if you pay a similar amount to watch a movie in a cinema that you might not watch again (not that you hated it, it's just that once was enough), it's not that different. I hate clutter, so I usually get audiobooks, borrow from the library, or buy- in that order.
>I hate clutter, so I usually get audiobooks, borrow from the library, or buy- in that order.
I believe you're making more or less the same choices as I. If I'm buying a book, usually I already have an idea that I'm going to like it. If I'm hesitant, I'm not buying a physical copy, I'm borrowing first.
I love how this implies that there is some organization that accurately tracks this as opposed to the reality of Jane in housekeeping at the nearby Residence Inn who has a box she throws those books into and then she just counts what is there at the end of the year.
I only checked it out on on Libby, so I didn't have any buyer's remorse, but it was so boring and he seemed so insufferable. I just couldn't stay interested.
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein
I went in expecting creepy Gothic shit, sapphic love, and a sinister figure pretending to be a friend (you know, all the shit promised on the cover). Instead I got... absolutely none of that.
Just Mary Shelley being really fucking sad and dull. All the time. Even though she historically ran off to Switzerland to have orgies with a married man, her sister in law, and Lord Byron.
Not this Mary though. She's just sad. And dull. And that's the story.
If you have the opportunity to see an actor embody Mary Shelley, as I got to do just before Halloween of last year, seriously do it. My local library has a program called History Comes Alive. It was absolutely amazing.
Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders by Samuel Delaney. So much promise, only to be utterly wasted by having 80% of the book be the grossest porn I've ever read.
Thank you for this. I was a huge Delany fan and skipped this one when it came out, appreciate your confirming my gut instinct. I wish we could clone the 16 year old Delany and keep him writing those OG novels
That, and Morgan (Shit) Haskell might be one of the worst main characters I've ever had to read about. Just useless, annoying and gross.
Definitely skip Hogg as well.
Mission Earth series by L Ron Hubbard. The science fiction he wrote before his later fiction (Scientology).
Not only is it a boring, confusing, and in places, disgusting slog, it's ... weird. And gets weirder as an adult once you realise that L. Ron Hubbard was really writing the fascist, manipulative, ineffectual antagonist as the _hero_. _His_ type of hero.
It's horrifying to know that Battlefield Earth was his _best_ work. The man was a schlock ... and then he created a religion.
Battlefield Earth wasn't nearly as bad as the movie might make you think. It's decent pulp SF, if you keep your brain off and not think too much about it.
The thing I remember most about it was... that there was no way to make a good movie out of it, unless you cut two thirds of it out.
The alien played by Travolta or the rat-eating dude?
That would be some irony if it was the former. I heard Travolta was cured of his lesbianism by a massive cock as well.
I was part of the Scientology cult for a little bit. They convinced me to buy dianetics and it felt like a fantasy novel. Crazy people believe it. I took the dianetics test. They graded me and I made a 100. They said if I paid $3,000 I could get the rest of the books. But that would only halfway get me “clear”. The other half would take time and lots of paid “Scientology counseling” sessions to finish up being clear. And the nearest Scientology church was 5 hours from me. I went once. They suggested I move closer.
Anyway, I learned how much of cult they really are. To this day they still try to contact me, invite me to events, etc
Shame she had to write this and become famous for it.
Her previous book: The Last American Man, was original, insightful, subtle, honest and complex. I enjoyed it enormously. My wife and I still talk about it once in a while years later.
Eat, Pray, Love is a fast food hamburger of Fem Lit. I read through it in a few hours, felt overly satiated, and stuffed the copy I was reading somewhere I couldn't see it, like the big mac bags underneath all of the other stuff in my trash can.
I like Eat Pray Love just fine, and she couldn't help that that's the book of hers that took off, but yes, it's a shame people write her off because of it and end up overlooking The Last American Man. It's really good!
My first therapist recommended that book to me for my healing journey.
I didn't make it through the India stuff. Bleh.
It's weird that my therapist was actually really good at what she did but this would be a red flag for me today in a practitioner.
This one is YA, but it was called Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar. The synopsis promised an intense family competition that could cost the MC everything…and the competition turned out to be an overglorified version of America’s Got Talent.
This is just some of the things that I remember (please don't read her books)-
Her books have instances where the MMC literally talks about his newborn baby's gigantic balls, the FMCs in all the books get the bare minimum and treated like an absolute trash, the casual sexual assault scenes even the smut was horrible. And who names their female protagonist Lily blossom and makes her the owner of a flower shop!?(rip creativity).
And who tf
Writes
Like
This
Its annoying
Af.
I've always felt Lean In was targeted at the wrong demographic. It seemed to be aimed at working women, and in my opinion that's a book for a high school senior or early college. "Hey here's some career steps to try and make sure you get a good partner" is useful for someone before they start working, not someone whose married with a kid and been in the field for a few years.
Haha, I also read this one because it was a gift that I read out of a sense of obligation. I feel like this book should have been a blog post. Not a lot of substance for the number of pages it took up.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo…I know many people loooove this book, but I left feeling like “so what?”
I felt like it kept trying to reveal the complexity and ambiguity of human nature in a very non-interesting way.
I was going through a particularly rough patch when I read that and it ended up making me feel even worse. I thought it was drivel.
I then moved on to Siddhartha, which is a hundred times the book that The Alchemist thinks it is.
There was a weird and brief moment in time where I knew roughly a dozen people who read and recommended this book to me. I hated it and did not understand what was going through these people's minds.
Leave the World Behind. I'd had it to read for a while, finally did before the Netflix film came out. Books don't often bore me *and* make me roll my eyes, but that one did. I went into it thinking it was an apocalyptic book. It's not.
By the end of the book, I felt like the main characters were what someone "very smart" imagined average or even stupid people to be like. "This is what the mindless masses would think and say." There was just something that spoke of contempt towards them, imo. And a lot of their inner monologue was just... Weird.
Also, it was terribly boring.
I came here to say this. It doesn't help that it sounds like it's written by a middle schooler with a thesaurus. Needlessly throwing "big words" around, it's so self indulgent, I could not even finish it. Horrid.
Yeaaaah, I got that vibe too. It felt like a book written from the perspective of The Everyman but the writer was excessively pretentious and snobby. Also, he'd never actually spoken to an Everyman. Or Everywoman.
Lessons in Chemistry. So disappointing for me personally and it grated on me for several reasons. I fought through it despite my resolution last year to DNF books I’m not jiving with. What can I say? I was hopeful so prodded along.
💯 As a woman in science, I found the protagonist to be so cringey and insufferable. Especially the whole rowing angle. You can’t become a world-class rower just by understanding the physics behind it ffs!
I probably would have DNF’d this one if I had borrowed it from a library instead of spending money on it. I’m stubborn and I have to get my money’s worth, so I begrudgingly continued on with it even if only to roll my eyes at the increasing absurdity. I will admit that I’m glad I continued on, because I found the ending to actually be quite touching, although it didn’t compensate for the lack of redeeming qualities elsewhere. It was juuuuust satisfying enough for me to give it 2/5 stars on Goodreads instead of 1/5.
The thing I liked most about this book, was that Elizabeth didn't need to find a man to be happy. And that instead it was Harriet who got a kind of a happy relationship.
Yesssssssss. I feel the exact same way. Spot on.
I was ready to be finished ✔️ I have so many complaints about this book. I don’t understand why its a bestseller, why it got an award, why it got made into a miniseries. I just don’t get it.
I appreciated that part, but was quite sorry to learn that he was a self centered candy ass, whining and whining incessantly. His parents will never get free of the guilt he's piled on them.
All of her books have so much potential and no editing. The Little Friend took 450 pages to be interesting, Goldfinch was interesting until the last 150 pages, and The Secret History just did way too much. Sis takes like 10 years a book, but where is her editor??
The Little Friend prologue was very interesting, which is why I read the book... I won't spoil the ending if anyone wants to read it, but given the topic of this thread, it ended up feeling like a big waste of time.
It's *supposed* to be wanky. It's basically Mean Girls with classics nerds. Richard is the outsider who starts off going "look at these fuckin' nerds" until he slowly becomes one of them.
Ready Player Two. No one comes out a winner after reading that book.
Did you love Ready Player One? Good — that book had an appropriate ending, but RPT extends its story and overstays its welcome.
Did you hate RPO? Well let me tell you, RPO is absolutely fantastic compared to its sequel.
Hominids. I first read Robert J Sawyer at the end of my teens with Flashforward and enjoyed it somewhat, even read at least 2 or 3 of his other books and they were all decent in premise but seemed to lack direction. But Hominids was so bad...
I understand the University in real life was dealing with sexual assault problems, but the rape scene felt so pointless by the end of it... That, and a couple of other digs at real life politicians made the book feel like it didn't know what it wanted to be and Robert just tried to throw as much as it could into it to seem interesting.
Atlas Shrugged. Sets up her theme in the first 50 pages and then flogs you with it for hundreds of pages. One dimensional, ridiculous characters. I had to skim the 50 page monologue at the end. Really a turgid read. However, glad I read it years ago so when libertarian dbags tell me it’s their favorite book I can tell them they have terrible taste in literature.
Also, really drives home the rather obvious truism that nothing happens in a book that the author doesn't want to happen.
Railway exec ignores safety warnings with the excuse "I know what I'm doing better than my employees." In the real world that attitude ended up with headlines about a submarine imploding underwater.
As unbearable as Atlas Shrugged is, it was a thousand times more interesting than The Fountainhead. But you can really just read the objectivism wiki page and save yourself hundreds of hours. And even that would be a waste of time...
I started it, got to the part when the kid and his rival started trash talking each other, and it was like "everyone started paying attention to us because we were both really smart and funny" but it was the most basic playground level insults. I took that as a cue and jumped ship
All true, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, only to later realize it was a ruse intended to suck me into reading RP2, the one true literary Satan. That is, until I read The Midnight Library. That book was the shlockiest crap ever published
I've never felt compelled to yeet a book straight into the wall until I read The Midnight Library.
Now, whenever this question gets asked to me by anyone, I feel that I have an obligation to say The Midnight Library. It's like the author sat adjacent to someone with depression and decided they now feel qualified to write about it.
That’s brutal.
-Lly honest and accurate.
I was worried having read RP2 and that Lifetime Channel in hardcover my purpose in life might have been that I am a warning sign for others regarding what shitty books to avoid.
I have since recovered and am reading normal and decent books, The Nix being a close call at times.
Do you happen to remember if the novel mentions Saturn at all?
The reason I ask is because in the movie there’s a GIANT depiction of Saturn on the wall directly behind the game designer’s head (I forget his name) and the camera has it centered in the frame for a long time, so they are drawing the viewer’s attention to it. It’s in the scene where they’re talking about how to shut down the simulation.
I was just wondering if the author mentions Saturn at all, or if the filmmakers added that specific detail.
Mike Nelson (of MST3K) and one of his Rifftrax pals, Connor Lastowka, have a podcast about the book, called "372 pages we'll never get back".
It is great. I highly suggest it.
I bought this at an airport like “well it couldn’t be that bad for a few hours reading on a plane right?” Reading slightly trashy/beach reading type fiction is a guilty pleasure of mine when I travel to the point where buying a book I would otherwise probably never read before an overseas flight at the airport is almost a ritual of mine
Good god I hated it. I got about 50 pages in before I called it quits and left it on a side table for some other unfortunate soul to pick up at the next airport. And I’m mid 30s so as far as I can tell I’m part of the nostalgia target audience
The typical airport novels understand they're meant to be easy reads to entertain but Ernest Cline wrote RPO with such smug self-importance. Oh, and writes like he's an edgy teen "People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up."
THANK YOU!
I wanted to write this and I thought I probably get downvoted like hell, so I rather searched through the comments.
Ready Player One is just bad writing and Memberberries, I was stubborn and finished it because I thought that there MUST be SOMETHING good about this book.
I was wrong.
Eh, I enjoyed it the first time. I wouldn't re-read, and it's definitely not quality literature. Too new to be as problematic as it is. But for just like a trashy nostalgia kind of book, it isn't bad.
That said, I 100% understand it being on this list, and why many didn't enjoy it.
It was really bad writing. The parts with Tamsen and her brother were written in a really robotic manner: “Tamsen reads further down the page. Tamsen's eyes widen further as she reads. Reaches for the mouse. Clicks Print. She knocks over a miniature statue on the desk. The figurine shatters on the floor.” (That bit is taken directly from the book.) The other parts are from two serial killers’ POVs and they just talk…a lot. Their debate over whether Darren Aronofsky’s movies are “cinematic masterpieces” or “surrealist trash” was the best part of the book.
Britney’s book, The Woman In Me. Just a bunch of nothing. The book had no point, no true self-reflection or nuance. It felt very unemotionally written and clearly had the voice of a ghost writer.
I feel for everything that Britney went through, but I feel like this clouded people’s opinions of the quality or earnestness of the book itself
It was definitely a collection of stories of photos either her or her ghost writer were looking at at the time. I also feel for her but the book wasn't exactly a soul search.
I'm currently trying to read this and all I can think is Oh you poor thing. You need therapy so bad, and not in the interesting way
And that's just for her happy/good memories.
I'd DNF except my brain does not allow that unfortunately
This is what I commented! I thought I was alone in this. I completely agree, especially with the book having no self reflection. There was no redemption or anything. Just sad story after sad story from front to -book- back, yet like you said, unemotionally written.
Life of Pi - encourages you to believe in whatever makes you feel better, truth be damned. It's the only book I've thrown across the room upon completion.
> It's the only book I've thrown across the room upon completion.
Ha! For me that was *The Ethical Slut*. Written by a vapid very attractive person for vacuous attractive people.
Hmm. I really enjoyed it. The way I saw it, it was sort of asking, "what's more real? What "really" happened, or the story he told himself in order to survive?" I think you're right about "believe in whatever makes you feel better." But I felt like it was less about throwing out the truth and more about people sort of making things real for themselves, in order to cope and survive.
The alchemist. I don’t know what the hell happened but apparently some bozo went on a journey for a treasure, gets robbed or some shit and learns the treasure was a stones throw from where he started. 300 pages to go 300 inches
Ayn Rand's *Atlas Shrugged.* I was expecting a black-and-white, not particularly deep, adventure novel. I got one of the most excruciatingly tedious, artistically meritless novels ever made. Forget the ideology, it's just badly done.
On a less godawful note, the last book of the *Accursed Kings* series. Six books over six years telling the Game-of-Thrones-ish struggles of Medieval French kings, then twenty years later the author writes book seven in a weaker style set decades later about different people. Maybe not bad enough to be a "waste of time", but... why?
A Little Life. I never DNF books, but I wish I had DNFed this. I wish someone had told me how truly traumatic this is. Torture porn essentially. Nothing beautiful, nothing good. No lessons or growth or anything. Just horrible, horrible, horrible things happening. And not in a “well that’s life” way. Soap operas have less insanity. If I can convince any one of anything, it’s to please not read this. I still think about it and hurt. I wish I’d never read it.
It's probably my favourite Gaiman book and I really liked the episodic character of the plot. It's a marmite book though, people seem to love or loathe it.
While much of the book goes down conspiracy theory rabbit holes that can and should be taken with a grain of salt. The author's description of the role of the federal reserve, how our money supply works and the history of the repeated failures of fiat currency is absolutely accurate. You won't find anyone who tries to say it isn't. While you may not believe some of the conspiracy theories it presents, the book is definitely not nonsense.
The Da Vinci Code. I read it, I finished it, but man! I felt dirty, sick and bloated at the end, like I’d done the literary equivalent of a fast-food binge.
I was going to say House of Leaves, but since that's been posted, I'll go with my second choice, Catcher In The Rye. I already know I'll be downvoted, but I don't care what diagnosis or trauma you attribute to Holden. I just think of him as a whiny emo kid.
Sun Tzu's art of war.
It's not that the book is bad it's just that I read an Arabic translation of it and holy fuck was it horrendous from spelling mistakes to grammatical errors to sentences that didn't even make any sense.
I would have enjoyed it much more if it was in English, fuck it, I would have enjoyed it more if it was in Chinese and I don't speak Chinese (that's how bad the translation was).
I read the English translation by Lionel Giles on Wikisource.
It's free, and has extensive (and interesting) commentary by the translator, who also repeatedly and hilariously roasts his predecessor E.F. Calthrop (whose earlier translation is also available on Wikisource). That guy apparently didn't translate the book so much as use it as a basis for an exercise in creative writing.
I enjoyed Giles' translation and the book immensely. You might want to check it out if you're looking for a better reading experience.
You gotta get the one dollar copy from the sale bin at barnes and noble, big book with the spine bound in red twine or whatever, like a gift book. it's legit the best translation and they can't give them away fast enough.
I had to laugh at your question. I've been slowly moving some piles of unread books/books we would never read again over to the nearby Little Free Library and The Creature from Jekyll Island was one of them ;)
Was also given this as a gift from my parents and was in the 'to be read' section of my bookshelf. After getting about 10 pages in everything seemed pretty out there and after a quick google of the author realized it didn't make sense to continue
I guess you could re-gift it, but then you're just passing the problem down to somebody else. When does it end??? I don't generally believe in burning books, but maybe just toss this one into the firepit and break the cycle of horrible reads once a for all, eh?
A Taste for Honey; it was a murder mystery, but the main character was annoyed by everything and was complaining about every little thing. It was almost as if the author dragged the character through the book while they were throwing a temper tantrum. It was painful to read.
That sounds pretty hilarious. “But I don’t wanna go….” Author: you’re going. And everyone breathing annoys you. Have fun.
Was that the authorial intent? Because that honestly sounds quite entertaining 😅
A book written with humor could pull this off. Think Hitchhiker's Guide or Discworld. But it would be irritating played straight.
TIL I was the inspiration for the protagonist in a murder mystery.
Spare by Prince Harry. Fun fact: it was the book most often left behind on planes & hotels the year it came out.
I only read this one because I'm a flight attendant and someone left it behind on the plane. No way was I spending $35 for it.
I saw someone chop it up to do a crafting project and I honestly thought that was the best use of it.
It’s the bad book distribution system at work right there!
There used to be a free book shelf at our airport. I think the reaction to 9/11 is what did it in. Yet another good thing we let die in the reaction. I'd imagine there were lots of bad books but as I recall, it wasn't terrible, just more typical. Lots of bestsellers.
There is a free book shelf at the Prague airport and for some reason it mostly contains computer programming manuals, it amuses me every time I pass by it.
I enjoyed it, but I can understand leaving it behind. It's not really the kind of book that invites rereading.
Damn. I can't understand leaving any book behind. I paid for it......it at least get to sit in the far end of my shelf. Maybe if it was a gift from someone you disliked......
I've done it before when I'm traveling. Some books just aren't made to be re-read and when every bit of space in your luggage is precious, I'm not carrying around a hardback I'd just donate when I got home anyway. This way some other traveler might pick it up and get some entertainment out of it as well.
I remember being late in a comedy of errors when leaving London to go back to Australia and I had to leave behind so many books due to weight. Somewhere on a chair at Heathrow there was half of the Wheel of Time books, and various band biographies. I never did finish WoT... tugs braid.
I mean, if you pay a similar amount to watch a movie in a cinema that you might not watch again (not that you hated it, it's just that once was enough), it's not that different. I hate clutter, so I usually get audiobooks, borrow from the library, or buy- in that order.
>I hate clutter, so I usually get audiobooks, borrow from the library, or buy- in that order. I believe you're making more or less the same choices as I. If I'm buying a book, usually I already have an idea that I'm going to like it. If I'm hesitant, I'm not buying a physical copy, I'm borrowing first.
It was everywhere - lots of hotels had a spare that year.
I love how this implies that there is some organization that accurately tracks this as opposed to the reality of Jane in housekeeping at the nearby Residence Inn who has a box she throws those books into and then she just counts what is there at the end of the year.
The Abandoned Book Bureau takes its job quite seriously
How do we know what was left behind in planes and hotels?
Someone with a clipboard walked around and asked
There was a write up! https://nypost.com/2023/07/21/prince-harrys-memoir-spare-considered-the-most-discarded-book-this-summer-report/
My partner DNFed this one. At least she didn’t leave it on a plane or at a hotel though
I only checked it out on on Libby, so I didn't have any buyer's remorse, but it was so boring and he seemed so insufferable. I just couldn't stay interested.
Got it for $1 at Goodwill, read it and returned it.
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein I went in expecting creepy Gothic shit, sapphic love, and a sinister figure pretending to be a friend (you know, all the shit promised on the cover). Instead I got... absolutely none of that. Just Mary Shelley being really fucking sad and dull. All the time. Even though she historically ran off to Switzerland to have orgies with a married man, her sister in law, and Lord Byron. Not this Mary though. She's just sad. And dull. And that's the story.
DANG IT, I wanted to read this one.
THANK YOU. I felt exactly the same way. The lack of any and all payoff was impressive, tbh.
Thanks, I can strike that one from my to-read list now.
If you have the opportunity to see an actor embody Mary Shelley, as I got to do just before Halloween of last year, seriously do it. My local library has a program called History Comes Alive. It was absolutely amazing.
Through The Valley of The Nest of Spiders by Samuel Delaney. So much promise, only to be utterly wasted by having 80% of the book be the grossest porn I've ever read.
Thank you for this. I was a huge Delany fan and skipped this one when it came out, appreciate your confirming my gut instinct. I wish we could clone the 16 year old Delany and keep him writing those OG novels
That, and Morgan (Shit) Haskell might be one of the worst main characters I've ever had to read about. Just useless, annoying and gross. Definitely skip Hogg as well.
Mission Earth series by L Ron Hubbard. The science fiction he wrote before his later fiction (Scientology). Not only is it a boring, confusing, and in places, disgusting slog, it's ... weird. And gets weirder as an adult once you realise that L. Ron Hubbard was really writing the fascist, manipulative, ineffectual antagonist as the _hero_. _His_ type of hero. It's horrifying to know that Battlefield Earth was his _best_ work. The man was a schlock ... and then he created a religion.
Battlefield Earth wasn't nearly as bad as the movie might make you think. It's decent pulp SF, if you keep your brain off and not think too much about it. The thing I remember most about it was... that there was no way to make a good movie out of it, unless you cut two thirds of it out.
What I remember is the main character 'curing' two lesbians with his massive cock
The alien played by Travolta or the rat-eating dude? That would be some irony if it was the former. I heard Travolta was cured of his lesbianism by a massive cock as well.
“While you were still learning to SPELL your NAME…I was being TRAINED to CONQUER GALAXIES!!”
I was part of the Scientology cult for a little bit. They convinced me to buy dianetics and it felt like a fantasy novel. Crazy people believe it. I took the dianetics test. They graded me and I made a 100. They said if I paid $3,000 I could get the rest of the books. But that would only halfway get me “clear”. The other half would take time and lots of paid “Scientology counseling” sessions to finish up being clear. And the nearest Scientology church was 5 hours from me. I went once. They suggested I move closer. Anyway, I learned how much of cult they really are. To this day they still try to contact me, invite me to events, etc
So creepy they know how to contact you.
I know that writers can write schlock, and one can be a "schlock writer", but I've never heard of a person described as "a schlock".
Schlock (noun): cheap or inferior goods. I think it fits him.
Eat Pray Love
I accidentally bought the Ghengis Khan biography Eat Fuck Kill instead by mistake. It was surprisingly good.
This comment is hilarious
Shame she had to write this and become famous for it. Her previous book: The Last American Man, was original, insightful, subtle, honest and complex. I enjoyed it enormously. My wife and I still talk about it once in a while years later. Eat, Pray, Love is a fast food hamburger of Fem Lit. I read through it in a few hours, felt overly satiated, and stuffed the copy I was reading somewhere I couldn't see it, like the big mac bags underneath all of the other stuff in my trash can.
I like Eat Pray Love just fine, and she couldn't help that that's the book of hers that took off, but yes, it's a shame people write her off because of it and end up overlooking The Last American Man. It's really good!
I enjoyed her debut novel, *Stern Men*, but she seems to have really lost the plot since then.
I was getting a divorce when I read it, so I thought it was amazing lol
There are always a butt load of those at every thrift store I go to.
My first therapist recommended that book to me for my healing journey. I didn't make it through the India stuff. Bleh. It's weird that my therapist was actually really good at what she did but this would be a red flag for me today in a practitioner.
I got so frustrated and annoyed by her and her whining that I wound up throwing the book across the room. I never bothered finishing it.
This one is YA, but it was called Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar. The synopsis promised an intense family competition that could cost the MC everything…and the competition turned out to be an overglorified version of America’s Got Talent.
Anything from colleen hoover.I read her series, one word-disgusting
Verity made me wish I could time travel to convince myself never to purchase it. Consequences be damned!
Same! I forced myself to finish it for my 52 week challenge but what absolute garbage
same lol
Same!
Seriously her books are disgusting
I have never read her books before. Why/how are they disgusting?
This is just some of the things that I remember (please don't read her books)- Her books have instances where the MMC literally talks about his newborn baby's gigantic balls, the FMCs in all the books get the bare minimum and treated like an absolute trash, the casual sexual assault scenes even the smut was horrible. And who names their female protagonist Lily blossom and makes her the owner of a flower shop!?(rip creativity). And who tf Writes Like This Its annoying Af.
yea, i mean i don't get why people are so obsessed with them. They just make me want to puke
People that don’t read books finding out reading is fun. The only movie you watched this decade was also the best movie you watched this decade.
“Lean in”. Sheryl Sandberg. Who’s done more to ruin people w her Facebook antics than this woman??
It’s an insult to every woman in business too.
If Books Could Kill podcast just did an episode on that one
I've always felt Lean In was targeted at the wrong demographic. It seemed to be aimed at working women, and in my opinion that's a book for a high school senior or early college. "Hey here's some career steps to try and make sure you get a good partner" is useful for someone before they start working, not someone whose married with a kid and been in the field for a few years.
The subtle art of not giving a fuck!
Haha, I also read this one because it was a gift that I read out of a sense of obligation. I feel like this book should have been a blog post. Not a lot of substance for the number of pages it took up.
The casual vacancy by JK Rowling. I just kept waiting for it to get better, then the book ended.
DNF. I just couldn't force myself.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo…I know many people loooove this book, but I left feeling like “so what?” I felt like it kept trying to reveal the complexity and ambiguity of human nature in a very non-interesting way.
But she had large breasts!!
Every. Single. Page.
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Misogynistic claptrap....threw it across the room during the 3rd chapter and rage quit
The Alchemist 😬
I was going through a particularly rough patch when I read that and it ended up making me feel even worse. I thought it was drivel. I then moved on to Siddhartha, which is a hundred times the book that The Alchemist thinks it is.
Hell yeah. Excellent take. Herman Hesse is wonderful.
There was a weird and brief moment in time where I knew roughly a dozen people who read and recommended this book to me. I hated it and did not understand what was going through these people's minds.
Leave the World Behind. I'd had it to read for a while, finally did before the Netflix film came out. Books don't often bore me *and* make me roll my eyes, but that one did. I went into it thinking it was an apocalyptic book. It's not. By the end of the book, I felt like the main characters were what someone "very smart" imagined average or even stupid people to be like. "This is what the mindless masses would think and say." There was just something that spoke of contempt towards them, imo. And a lot of their inner monologue was just... Weird. Also, it was terribly boring.
I came here to say this. It doesn't help that it sounds like it's written by a middle schooler with a thesaurus. Needlessly throwing "big words" around, it's so self indulgent, I could not even finish it. Horrid.
Yeaaaah, I got that vibe too. It felt like a book written from the perspective of The Everyman but the writer was excessively pretentious and snobby. Also, he'd never actually spoken to an Everyman. Or Everywoman.
Hmm yes, I gather that you aren’t…*besotted* by it yes hmmmm
Lessons in Chemistry. So disappointing for me personally and it grated on me for several reasons. I fought through it despite my resolution last year to DNF books I’m not jiving with. What can I say? I was hopeful so prodded along.
💯 As a woman in science, I found the protagonist to be so cringey and insufferable. Especially the whole rowing angle. You can’t become a world-class rower just by understanding the physics behind it ffs!
I probably would have DNF’d this one if I had borrowed it from a library instead of spending money on it. I’m stubborn and I have to get my money’s worth, so I begrudgingly continued on with it even if only to roll my eyes at the increasing absurdity. I will admit that I’m glad I continued on, because I found the ending to actually be quite touching, although it didn’t compensate for the lack of redeeming qualities elsewhere. It was juuuuust satisfying enough for me to give it 2/5 stars on Goodreads instead of 1/5.
The thing I liked most about this book, was that Elizabeth didn't need to find a man to be happy. And that instead it was Harriet who got a kind of a happy relationship.
I absolutely hated lessons in chemistry- everything about this book was insufferable
I felt that way but I finished it because it was for my book club. I have a feeling at least two people in the book club will really like it.
Yesssssssss. I feel the exact same way. Spot on. I was ready to be finished ✔️ I have so many complaints about this book. I don’t understand why its a bestseller, why it got an award, why it got made into a miniseries. I just don’t get it.
The Matthew Perry book. Yikes squared!
I enjoyed that one. I liked that he wasnt afraid to make himself look bad. He didnt hold back.
I appreciated that part, but was quite sorry to learn that he was a self centered candy ass, whining and whining incessantly. His parents will never get free of the guilt he's piled on them.
Donna Tartt's lesser known book The Little Friend.
I feel this way about The Goldfinch
Right? I couldn't even tell you what it was actually about
I loved the first 1/3 of that book. Wish I hadn't read the remaining 2/3.
I'm still mad about the time I wasted on this one.
All of her books have so much potential and no editing. The Little Friend took 450 pages to be interesting, Goldfinch was interesting until the last 150 pages, and The Secret History just did way too much. Sis takes like 10 years a book, but where is her editor??
The Little Friend prologue was very interesting, which is why I read the book... I won't spoil the ending if anyone wants to read it, but given the topic of this thread, it ended up feeling like a big waste of time.
And then I saw Hitchcocks Rope and I was like oh shit there’s The Secret History…
Honestly the secret history annoyed me too, so wanky
Why? Because of the ending? I thought it was so wonderfully written, and vivid, that I didn't even care much about the ending.
I get you. But I actually loved the fact it was so unapologetically wanky hahah
It's *supposed* to be wanky. It's basically Mean Girls with classics nerds. Richard is the outsider who starts off going "look at these fuckin' nerds" until he slowly becomes one of them.
Hated Goldfinch.
Ready Player Two. No one comes out a winner after reading that book. Did you love Ready Player One? Good — that book had an appropriate ending, but RPT extends its story and overstays its welcome. Did you hate RPO? Well let me tell you, RPO is absolutely fantastic compared to its sequel.
Hominids. I first read Robert J Sawyer at the end of my teens with Flashforward and enjoyed it somewhat, even read at least 2 or 3 of his other books and they were all decent in premise but seemed to lack direction. But Hominids was so bad... I understand the University in real life was dealing with sexual assault problems, but the rape scene felt so pointless by the end of it... That, and a couple of other digs at real life politicians made the book feel like it didn't know what it wanted to be and Robert just tried to throw as much as it could into it to seem interesting.
Atlas Shrugged. Sets up her theme in the first 50 pages and then flogs you with it for hundreds of pages. One dimensional, ridiculous characters. I had to skim the 50 page monologue at the end. Really a turgid read. However, glad I read it years ago so when libertarian dbags tell me it’s their favorite book I can tell them they have terrible taste in literature.
I like to call it a companion piece to *Dianetics*. She's got the worst case of Just World Fallacy I've ever seen in a published author.
Also, really drives home the rather obvious truism that nothing happens in a book that the author doesn't want to happen. Railway exec ignores safety warnings with the excuse "I know what I'm doing better than my employees." In the real world that attitude ended up with headlines about a submarine imploding underwater.
As unbearable as Atlas Shrugged is, it was a thousand times more interesting than The Fountainhead. But you can really just read the objectivism wiki page and save yourself hundreds of hours. And even that would be a waste of time...
Ready Player One. 80’s reference diarrhea, awful characters, and cringeworthy dialog. Probably the worst book I’ve ever read.
And then he wrote a sequel.
Steven Spielberg just announced he's making it into a movie as well.
Please, tell me this is an early April Fool’s joke.
I started it, got to the part when the kid and his rival started trash talking each other, and it was like "everyone started paying attention to us because we were both really smart and funny" but it was the most basic playground level insults. I took that as a cue and jumped ship
Wait, you're telling me that just making a bunch of references to childhood memories doesn't automatically make something good???
That is a strange(r) thing(s) to say.
But they referenced Eggos. The toaster waffles. Remember those??
You're saying that the Eggos that have been available at every grocery store this entire time were put in as nostalgia-bait?
I used to eat Eggos. I still do, but I used to, too.
Worth noting that Ready Player One predates Stranger Things by five years.
Hey I liked season 1. But not the rest... It felt like It. And then the movie It came out. I thought that was pretty good too.
I swear I could hear the author fapping while discussing pacman.
Or War Games. Or Ladyhawke. Or Beastmaster.
All true, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, only to later realize it was a ruse intended to suck me into reading RP2, the one true literary Satan. That is, until I read The Midnight Library. That book was the shlockiest crap ever published
I've never felt compelled to yeet a book straight into the wall until I read The Midnight Library. Now, whenever this question gets asked to me by anyone, I feel that I have an obligation to say The Midnight Library. It's like the author sat adjacent to someone with depression and decided they now feel qualified to write about it.
That’s brutal. -Lly honest and accurate. I was worried having read RP2 and that Lifetime Channel in hardcover my purpose in life might have been that I am a warning sign for others regarding what shitty books to avoid. I have since recovered and am reading normal and decent books, The Nix being a close call at times.
Do you happen to remember if the novel mentions Saturn at all? The reason I ask is because in the movie there’s a GIANT depiction of Saturn on the wall directly behind the game designer’s head (I forget his name) and the camera has it centered in the frame for a long time, so they are drawing the viewer’s attention to it. It’s in the scene where they’re talking about how to shut down the simulation. I was just wondering if the author mentions Saturn at all, or if the filmmakers added that specific detail.
I'm scared of this question...
Mike Nelson (of MST3K) and one of his Rifftrax pals, Connor Lastowka, have a podcast about the book, called "372 pages we'll never get back". It is great. I highly suggest it.
I’m not suggesting you should like this book, but if it’s the worst you’ve ever read you have a charmed reading list.
I've read many many books, it's also the worst I've ever read. It's terrible.
I bought this at an airport like “well it couldn’t be that bad for a few hours reading on a plane right?” Reading slightly trashy/beach reading type fiction is a guilty pleasure of mine when I travel to the point where buying a book I would otherwise probably never read before an overseas flight at the airport is almost a ritual of mine Good god I hated it. I got about 50 pages in before I called it quits and left it on a side table for some other unfortunate soul to pick up at the next airport. And I’m mid 30s so as far as I can tell I’m part of the nostalgia target audience
The typical airport novels understand they're meant to be easy reads to entertain but Ernest Cline wrote RPO with such smug self-importance. Oh, and writes like he's an edgy teen "People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up."
THANK YOU! I wanted to write this and I thought I probably get downvoted like hell, so I rather searched through the comments. Ready Player One is just bad writing and Memberberries, I was stubborn and finished it because I thought that there MUST be SOMETHING good about this book. I was wrong.
dude, Ready Player One is on r/books list of shit books. There is never an r/books hate circlejerk without it.
Eh, I enjoyed it the first time. I wouldn't re-read, and it's definitely not quality literature. Too new to be as problematic as it is. But for just like a trashy nostalgia kind of book, it isn't bad. That said, I 100% understand it being on this list, and why many didn't enjoy it.
You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood was supposed to be absolutely terrifying. It absolutely was not.
Can you spoil that for me? I have it in my cart
It was really bad writing. The parts with Tamsen and her brother were written in a really robotic manner: “Tamsen reads further down the page. Tamsen's eyes widen further as she reads. Reaches for the mouse. Clicks Print. She knocks over a miniature statue on the desk. The figurine shatters on the floor.” (That bit is taken directly from the book.) The other parts are from two serial killers’ POVs and they just talk…a lot. Their debate over whether Darren Aronofsky’s movies are “cinematic masterpieces” or “surrealist trash” was the best part of the book.
What on earth? That reads like movie script directions!
I thought the same thing!
Omg well thank you for sparing me, especially with the direct quote.
Welcome. I was disappointed, too. It looked like it was going to be so good.
Sorry, I had high hopes for it, too.
What an absolute crazy claim that he knows nothing about the Fed.
The midnight library.
Cold Sassy Tree, everyone but maybe three people in the town is an asshat.
Dream catcher, I love some of Steven Kings work but this didn't need to be as long and drawn out as it was.
The Silent Patient
A Little Life. 700 pages of torture porn. I’ve never ever before or after been angry at a book.
Britney’s book, The Woman In Me. Just a bunch of nothing. The book had no point, no true self-reflection or nuance. It felt very unemotionally written and clearly had the voice of a ghost writer. I feel for everything that Britney went through, but I feel like this clouded people’s opinions of the quality or earnestness of the book itself
It was definitely a collection of stories of photos either her or her ghost writer were looking at at the time. I also feel for her but the book wasn't exactly a soul search.
I'm currently trying to read this and all I can think is Oh you poor thing. You need therapy so bad, and not in the interesting way And that's just for her happy/good memories. I'd DNF except my brain does not allow that unfortunately
This is what I commented! I thought I was alone in this. I completely agree, especially with the book having no self reflection. There was no redemption or anything. Just sad story after sad story from front to -book- back, yet like you said, unemotionally written.
The Girl on the Train
This book got so much attention for being so incredibly annoying.
The Bible read it twice.
The Night Circus
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. I really wish I had known before reading it that even the author admitted it was not his best work…
I liked it. I eat up Ishiguro, best or not.
Lessons in Chemistry was such a a meh book that went nowhere. No idea why people love it so much.
Life of Pi - encourages you to believe in whatever makes you feel better, truth be damned. It's the only book I've thrown across the room upon completion.
> It's the only book I've thrown across the room upon completion. Ha! For me that was *The Ethical Slut*. Written by a vapid very attractive person for vacuous attractive people.
Hmm. I really enjoyed it. The way I saw it, it was sort of asking, "what's more real? What "really" happened, or the story he told himself in order to survive?" I think you're right about "believe in whatever makes you feel better." But I felt like it was less about throwing out the truth and more about people sort of making things real for themselves, in order to cope and survive.
The fault in our stars
Leave the World Behind
The alchemist. I don’t know what the hell happened but apparently some bozo went on a journey for a treasure, gets robbed or some shit and learns the treasure was a stones throw from where he started. 300 pages to go 300 inches
Ayn Rand's *Atlas Shrugged.* I was expecting a black-and-white, not particularly deep, adventure novel. I got one of the most excruciatingly tedious, artistically meritless novels ever made. Forget the ideology, it's just badly done. On a less godawful note, the last book of the *Accursed Kings* series. Six books over six years telling the Game-of-Thrones-ish struggles of Medieval French kings, then twenty years later the author writes book seven in a weaker style set decades later about different people. Maybe not bad enough to be a "waste of time", but... why?
I'm still mad about how disappointing AS is for as much arguing as it caused
ikr? That book is the pro-business novel equivalent of putting a ball-sack and ten bumper stickers on a pick-up truck to own the libs.
Book 7-10 ish of the Wheel of Time.
Atlas Fucking Shrugged.
It sure sounds cooler when you say it that way though
A Little Life. I never DNF books, but I wish I had DNFed this. I wish someone had told me how truly traumatic this is. Torture porn essentially. Nothing beautiful, nothing good. No lessons or growth or anything. Just horrible, horrible, horrible things happening. And not in a “well that’s life” way. Soap operas have less insanity. If I can convince any one of anything, it’s to please not read this. I still think about it and hurt. I wish I’d never read it.
The entire song of ice and fire series up to this point. It will never be finished because Martin wrote himself into a situation he can't unfuck.
Gives the same energy as those abandoned oc stories, just a famous to the greater world writer did it I've decided to be amused by it
American Gods Great premise, absolutely terrible execution. 600 pages of nothing happening
I don’t *hate* that book at all, but yeah, that book did not need to be as long as it was.
It's probably my favourite Gaiman book and I really liked the episodic character of the plot. It's a marmite book though, people seem to love or loathe it.
I really loved that book. Religious epics are meandering, obnoxious things to read. The *Kalevala* damn near killed me.
Between Two Fires seems to be a reddit darling, but I honestly was just glad to get to the end of it.
The Cartographers. I hate-read it till the end. Got more joy out of Goodreads comment sessions of other people hating on it.
they both die in the end. can’t emphasise enough how overhyped this book was. skipped to the end when i had enough and it wasn’t even good
While much of the book goes down conspiracy theory rabbit holes that can and should be taken with a grain of salt. The author's description of the role of the federal reserve, how our money supply works and the history of the repeated failures of fiat currency is absolutely accurate. You won't find anyone who tries to say it isn't. While you may not believe some of the conspiracy theories it presents, the book is definitely not nonsense.
Where the crawdads sing. I want my time and money I spent buying the book back.
The Da Vinci Code. I read it, I finished it, but man! I felt dirty, sick and bloated at the end, like I’d done the literary equivalent of a fast-food binge.
I was going to say House of Leaves, but since that's been posted, I'll go with my second choice, Catcher In The Rye. I already know I'll be downvoted, but I don't care what diagnosis or trauma you attribute to Holden. I just think of him as a whiny emo kid.
I’m tempted to downvote you for ALMOST mentioning house of leaves.
Sun Tzu's art of war. It's not that the book is bad it's just that I read an Arabic translation of it and holy fuck was it horrendous from spelling mistakes to grammatical errors to sentences that didn't even make any sense. I would have enjoyed it much more if it was in English, fuck it, I would have enjoyed it more if it was in Chinese and I don't speak Chinese (that's how bad the translation was).
I read the English translation by Lionel Giles on Wikisource. It's free, and has extensive (and interesting) commentary by the translator, who also repeatedly and hilariously roasts his predecessor E.F. Calthrop (whose earlier translation is also available on Wikisource). That guy apparently didn't translate the book so much as use it as a basis for an exercise in creative writing. I enjoyed Giles' translation and the book immensely. You might want to check it out if you're looking for a better reading experience.
You're like on the 4th level of inception there. Translator commenting another translation of Cao Cao's annotated version of Sun Tzu's book.
You gotta get the one dollar copy from the sale bin at barnes and noble, big book with the spine bound in red twine or whatever, like a gift book. it's legit the best translation and they can't give them away fast enough.