Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

It's probably like trends in music. Something new and different comes along and is randomly very successful and then people start to notice all the similar books that were there all along. Like this trend for "Nordic Noir" at the moment.

Disagree, I think there's a new breed of parasitic writers out there ready to jump on any new trend and capable of crapping out a book in a month or two, just take a look at the new releases section in any bookshop these days

REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. I can't describe how much I hated this book. Stopped reading after ~400/1100 pages. Most self indulgent over drawn out book I've ever read.

Anything by Christopher Ransom and The Haunted by Nikki Valentine.

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave.... My God, my eyes bled its was woeful

Dirty Dingus McGee wrote: »

Moyb Dick.I wasted 2 weeks getting through couple of hundred pages waiting for it to pick up and just gave up, If I wanted to read a textbook on the whaling industry in the 1800's I would have bought one

I agree with you on this. Pure torture

gg2 wrote: »

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave.... My God, my eyes bled its was woeful

Am with you on this. Easily the worst book I have ever tried to read.

cloudatlas wrote: »

I hated 'The Art of Fielding' by Chad Harbach. I can't believe this was a bestseller. It was plodding, pastiche, with lifeless stereotypical characters and a dead end plot.

I actually loved that book and recommended it all over the place, anyone else I know who read it loved it too, different strokes and all that.

I cannot believe that The City of Bohane won the IMPAC last week, I have a lot of time for Kevin Barry and think he is the best writer of short stories that there is but that book was rubbish, 250 pages too long.

Eat, Pray, Love - somehow ended up owning it, the longest thing I've every read and absolute crap.

Anything by Jodi Picoult - except maybe My Sisters Keeper
Anything by Nicholas Sparks
Two authors that don't know how to end a book other than "I don't want a cliche happy every after so lets kill off one of the main characters and the other is sad forever"

Yup, I have a few

Mansfield Park, utter, utter rubbish, a narrative about Victorian conformity and manners with a 1 dimensional utterly forgettable, insipid heroine, Fanny who does little more than articulate her inner most feelings on feeling either embarassed/shamed or appalled by Mr. Crawford being a cad.

Bleak House, more Victorian rubbish, with a long drawn out pursuit sequence for Lady Dedlock which goes on and on and on much like the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, utter crap. Dicken's needed an editor, the characters are your typical Victorian stiffs, expostulating on the importance of God, manners and yadda yadda.

Robinson Crusoe: 18th Christian propaganda, you are subjected to hundreds of pages of Crusoe going on about he's been punished by God for his social trangressions as a sailor. Then you have incredibly boring and detailed descriptions of how he makes corn and sheepskin clothes on his own. The offensiveness of the racism was funny even though it's equally deplorable , eg Friday, a native he rescues from Cannibals is instructed to call him "master." Then where it should end, when he gets off the island, the novel goes on (my problem with reading novels) and he rambles on about further adventures, one involving a pointless altercation with a bear in some mountains.

Jane Eyre, rubbish but it has some redeeming traits, namely that Jane Eyre seems to harbour a certain contempt for Victorian society, good on her! It also has some interesting flights of fancy, I wouldnt say avoid this one so much but it does get boring after the first 150 pages with only intermittent moments of interest afterwards.

The Wide Sargasso Sea: avoid, fan fiction at its worst and it's offensive in that it takes the universe of Jane Eyre and exploits it for its own 20th century political agenda. I dont have a problem with criticising 19th century literature, most of it is either rubbish or contemptible in terms of its politics, but nonetheless I find it's a violation of the universe of another author when you impose you own one on it.

I have wasted 2 months of my life reading these books, this is why I recommend you avoid them.

Oh yeah The Stand, great start, human race almost goes extinct, wahey! But therein the problem lies, from the ridiculous "come eat chicken with me, it's so dark" line of a ghoul, to a Lassie, superdog moment when Stu survives the fallout radius of a nuclear bomb and is nursed back to health by his trusty dog. Also Fanny, (why is it the worst female characters have this name) is utterly irritating, a weak, self centered protagonist who we're meant to sympathise with? Wtf?! The only characters who were likeable were Harold and Nadine and they were killed off as transgressor outcasts, a demonstration if anything Stephen King's insidious social conservatism. Additionally a folksy Maine knowledge of mechanics was seemingly enough to restart power plants and maintain/fly fighter jets. My arse.

emeraldstar wrote: »

Well, that's you on my ignore list!




Jane Austen, Time Traveller. Who knew?

Ah, I see, Georgian or Romantic or whatever, it felt like a Victorian novel all the same with its obsession on decorum and all that "she was ever so embarrased by lady or lord such and such noticing that she had held her fork at a 70 degree angle which bye the bye was a grevious trangression of table manners. I just cannot get into the headspace that Austen was in when she was writing whatever it is she writes, and the worst bit is that it goes on and on like that for 500 + pages! Like really?! Do you really need to write 540 something pages on how characters feel about social situations and...relationships? I didn't read it so much as looked at the lines and turned the pages. I hate that style of writing, novels lend themselves to a focus on realism and the present, things I shun. Bleak House may as well have been 19th century Eastenders.