quote:Originally posted by Sister Annie: I'll see you and raise you. I read the first SIX BOOKS of the stupid series, all because this boy I loved thought they were the best thing ever created and I needed an excuse to keep having to borrow his books and talk to him about them.
I think I was going to the library to get the fourth when it struck me that I could not read the rest of the series and be perfectly happy. It was like a great weight lifted off my shoulders.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Me, I like much of Piers Anthony's work. Portrait of the Artist, Atlas Shrugged, and Dandelion Wine are NOT bad books. They may not be to your taste, but they are not badly written.
On the other hand, after reading Herbert's "Dune", I felt compelled to read every book in the whole series. After enough of those, it was like torture. I should have just stopped and cut my losses. But I kept returning the books to the library and checking out the next one. I tried to read them super-fast to get it over with quickly. Ugh! Like taking medicine!
Note: The series now continues, written by Son of Herbert. The new series is more competantly written than the one by Herbert Pere. And the compulsion has returned; I've read all THOSE, too. But they are not painful.
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Tangental observation: You know the Pern books...Todd McCaffery (Son of Anne) is writing them now too, and his aren't bad. I liked his first solo effort and the one he did with his mom.
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My vote would probably be one of the stylistically turgid anthropology or sociology books I read back in college -- something by Durkheim or Weber, say. I've no respect for academics who can't write, and I think most of the time they write dense prose on purpose to conceal how few ideas they actually have.
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quote:I'll see you and raise you. I read the first SIX BOOKS of the stupid series, all because this boy I loved thought they were the best thing ever created and I needed an excuse to keep having to borrow his books and talk to him about them.
This has happened to me several times, and it usually ends with me rethinking my crush. One boy from my freshman year LOVED the Elric books, and I was mad about the boy, but I still couldn't make through a single book. And I honestly tried. It didn't kill the crush, but later when it was time, it definitely helped me in getting over him. Seriously - Elric. Sheesh.
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It was a birthday gift from my now-ex. We didn't divorce over this, but the gift was symptomatic of a few things.
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The Mists of Avalon. I've never understood why so many people consider this a good book; not only did I strongly dislike the plot and characterization, the tone and style grated on me. The only reason I finished it was that it was the only book I had handy on a two-day train ride.
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I lOVED DIckens! Especially Great Expectations. Of course, I read it of my own free will when I was 12 or 13, after playing Estella in a one-act play at school. God, I loved that role.
But I admit, it probably pre-disposed me to like the book. However, I went on to read many more of his books and enjoyed most of them.
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Lord Jim. It took me FORVER to read that book, and it was so dull. I actually like the storyline itself, but it was written in the most boring possible way. I didn't really like Wuthering Heights, either. Partly because everyone in it was insane, and kept doing the worst thing they could do in the situation.
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Cold Sassy Tree... I had to finish that for summer reading once and it bored me to tears. To this day, I can't even remember what that book was about, only it's dreaded name!
I'd also like to throw in Anthem into the mix. Did not like it at all.
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quote: didn't really like Wuthering Heights, either. Partly because everyone in it was insane, and kept doing the worst thing they could do in the situation.
For some reason, that is exactly why I liked it. But then, I have not read it since I was a melodramatic, angsty (pre/)teen.
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quote:The book I wrote in HS. God I get prickly feelings of ick just thinking about it.
Heh. Last night I re-read the book I wrote last fall and it made me shake my head and sigh. At least I can recognize these things quickly.
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In OSC's Saints, I was getting a bit of a Dickensian feel, and I was Sooooooooooo glad that it didn't take the ENTIRE BOOK for the characters to escape it.
I loved A Tale of Two Cities, but most Dickens books are 498 pages of suffering and 2 pages of Money Ex Machina "happy" ending. I just can't take that much punishment.
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THere's one book I had to read in fourth or fifth grade-- it was agonizing. For the longest time, I couldn't remember the title or the plot, just that it happenned in the dark ages. I remember the year it took place though (1066) so now I think I can guess what the book was about.
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I loved Anthem AND Cold Sassy Tree! They took some of the stupidity out of having to Read Death Be Not Proud, and aforementioned.
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Ah, finally remembered the name of it! It's called The Warrior Within. It's this stupid, cliche story about some Lamanite warrior who visits a modern-day kid (Mormon, of course) who is struggling to "choose the right" because he lives in a town with very few Mormon kids. He eventually has to decide whether to date a girl or not after he finds out she's not a virgin, even though she wants to stay chaste now. There's a lot of other stuff I didn't appreciate in there, too. And the worst part is, there's a ton of editing mistakes! The spelling and grammar are so abysmal, I almost didn't get through it. (I was reading it because it was there and something I hadn't read before.) Oh, it was horrid. There was another book about some Mormon kid who's a baseball player and who lost a leg or something that I couldn't get more than a chapter into because the spelling and grammar are so bad, but this was the worst one I actually finished. *shudders*
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quote: It was published as one book first and then split in half for younger readers, I think. The first Wheel of Time book was definitely just one book when I read it twelve years ago.
What I was referring to were not the youth books. I think it was a promotion when it first came out. The first book was clearly marked free like sndrakes's. However, I've been trying for about forty minutes to find proof of my claim and I can't. So I dunno. Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote: This is easy. It’s the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” I’m still trying to figure out why people like it. Horrible book.
Are you kidding me? I think it's the greatest Sci-Fi comedy book ever written. And probably the funniest BOOK I've ever read. It's also possibly the best place (trilogy of books) ever to get quotes from.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I loved Dandelion Wine!
Me too. Because that boy had the same feeling I had growing up. I had never read about the sudden happy feeling of knowing you're alive before. I also loved Running with Scissors in a "It's too freaky to be made up" sort of way. But none of these books could suck more than Gate to Women's Country did. What is the use of keeping those stupid warlike lunky men around? Just for sex while the servitors who are much better men get to be practically eunuchs. How is that fair? They are the ones that father all of the children, yet no one wants to have sex with them. Lame.
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Atlas Shrugged is an awful book. 600+ pages of the same story told three times. I would have said it, but the thread title was the worst book I ever finished. This is one of two books I ever failed to finish.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an awful book too. Self-indulgent, self-conscious, and self-absorbed. It's just not as bad as Wizard's First Rule, though.
And I've read every book in the series. >_<
-o-
Wizard's First Rule is actually not the worst book I ever finished, though. Just the worst one I figured anybody would have ever heard of. The worst book I ever read (worse than Atlas Shrugged. even) was this one. It was given to me as a gift, and it's the most offensive, laughably badly written tripe ever. And the average customer rating is four stars!! Even with one person who only gave it one star! This makes me wonder if this is a pretty typical example of "Christian Fiction," and if the standards are just low in that field. I wish I were enough of a hack to capitalize on that.
I thought about a thread asking this question at the time I read it, but I didn't because I sort of know the author, and I was afraid of someone stumbling across my thread. (This is why I neither wrote the title of the book nor the author's name. Hopefully no Google hits that way.)
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Scott R, I thought you said you didn't finish Black House . . . ?
I thought it started of just awful, but it got better. Not great, but not nearly the worst book I've ever read. If that's the worst one you read you are truly blessed.
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I liked Battlefield Earth both the book and the movie, but the bok I'ld say that I never finihsed would be "The Bear and the Dragon" by Tom Clancy. I liked the Russian plotline but everything else was the equivilent of America being the ultra good guy that akes no mistakes whatsoever and achieves the impossible in getting a spy in the Politbureau.
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Ever read This Present Darkness? I gave up on page 91, and had to endure months of hearing my fellow students praise it. Mostly because it was the only Christian fiction like that at the time. Peretti lets you 'see' spiritual influences opressing people, etc.
For a lot of people, it was a revelation to thgink of things that way. All it did was give me flashbacks to zealots holding me down and praying for my 'deliverance' so, natch *shrug*
But it doesn't count 'cause I never finished it. I was sitting with my mother in the hospital for some minor procedure. It was the only book I had with me, and I couldn't pick it up once I had put it down.
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I was waiting to see if Tom posted out here. I recently sent him my copy of the second book in Ricardo Pinto's series The Stone Dance of the Chameleon
I just wanted to see if he selected Book 1 (The Chosen) or Book 2 (The Standing Dead), or the as-yet-to-be-written Book 3 as the worst book he's ever finished reading.
For me, it's Book 2, but I'd like to reserve a slot for Book 3, which I'm sure will never be written. There are so many holes and loose ends in the first two books that I suspect the author will implode before ever finishing this series.
So... Book 2 with a possible slot for book 3.
By the standards of Mr. Pinto's writing, Atlas Shrugged and Battlefield Earth are works of simple beauty.
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Saints was not so bad, but I was frustrated when the main character left her children behind. I cannot even say what book recently frustrated me even though I finished it.
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I liked Saints. I thought it was the most honest presentation of the subject that I've ever seen. It made no excuses. Definately a good tool for understanding.
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It's interesting to read everyone's different tastes.
I definitely enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, can't stand Dickens in any quantity (I don't think it's bad; I just don't enjoy reading it), and enjoyed Dark Tower VII. I can't count the last book of the WoT series, because I couldn't force myself to finish it.
I would have to say, though, that the book I most regretted finishing was Stephen King's Gerald's Game. I was very much a strong Stephen King fan until that book.
And, though I don't think it's bad, I also disliked reading The Great Gatsby.
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The thing with Atlas Shrugged is that it literally is the same story three times, and if you read The Fountainhead, it is the same story as that, but at least in The Fountainhead you only have to read it once! I've been trying to think of how it was that I could put a book down (because my O/C normally makes that impossible for me), and I think what it comes down to is I decided two-thirds of the way through that I had finished the story, three times, in fact (because I had read The Fountainhead) and therefore it wasn't stopping reading something, but simply deciding not to read it again.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Mostly because it was the only Christian fiction like that at the time. Peretti lets you 'see' spiritual influences opressing people, etc.
For a lot of people, it was a revelation to thgink of things that way. All it did was give me flashbacks to zealots holding me down and praying for my 'deliverance' so, natch *shrug*
Yes! Precisely! (And in this case, how Hindus, arabs, Wiccans, and people who do yoga are all actively in league with Satan, just want to kill white Christians, etc etc.
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These were the first three things we had to read for AP English my senior year, each one worse than the next. When we finally got to our fourth reading, Oedipus, everyone sighed in relief at finally getting to read something remotely interesting.
First was Ethan Frome. However many pages of pure boredom, and then two of the main characters try to kill themselves by sledding into a tree. And fail. So then we get their crippled whining. Urgh. The paper that I wrote on that book was my only truly awful grade on a high school paper, mostly because I could not bring myself to look back in the novel for relevent quotations.
Next came Promethius Bound. A whole freaking play where the main character is chained to a rock whining about how Zeus wronged him, when he is guilty of breaking a law that Zeus had clearly defined ahead of time. Too bad, Promethius, but I don't feel sorry for you. You knew what you were doing was a crime, idiot. Stop whining and take your dang punishment like a man.
Third, and by far the worst, was As I Lay Dying. I don't like talking to really, really, really stupid people. I also don't like reading about really, really, really stupid people. Especially when it's "stream of consciousness" and I have to read it as they think. Although I still don't believe that even really, really, really stupid people think like that.
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There were a lot of books that I was forced to read in 11th and 12th grade that I absolutely despised, but then I'm not sure I actually finished any of them. For example I found The Scarlett Letter and Wuthering Heights to be incredible bores and Catch-22 to be just plain offensive, but I never finished any of them.
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quote: Note: The series now continues, written by Son of Herbert. The new series is more competantly written than the one by Herbert Pere. And the compulsion has returned; I've read all THOSE, too. But they are not painful.
No. No, no, no. I read the first prequel. While I thought the story was interesting, more interesting than the story of the 6th book of the original series (which I agree was . . . ungood, compared to, say, the first three), I could not go on to read the second prequel because the writing was just. So. Painful. Honestly, I could have written it better, and I was probably 16! It was horrible.
*wishes Leto II were still here to back this opinion up*
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Tante Shvester: Me, I like much of Piers Anthony's work. Portrait of the Artist, Atlas Shrugged, and Dandelion Wine are NOT bad books. They may not be to your taste, but they are not badly written.
On the other hand, after reading Herbert's "Dune", I felt compelled to read every book in the whole series. After enough of those, it was like torture. I should have just stopped and cut my losses. But I kept returning the books to the library and checking out the next one. I tried to read them super-fast to get it over with quickly. Ugh! Like taking medicine!
Note: The series now continues, written by Son of Herbert. The new series is more competantly written than the one by Herbert Pere. And the compulsion has returned; I've read all THOSE, too. But they are not painful.
:dies:
The Dune prequels are something that should have never been written. In all honesty the authors seem some Dune fans with no writing talent. The whole action is so linear, the style... wait, what am I saying, there is NO style!!! Ugh... I've only been able to read them as a historic chronicle written by a very untalented writer. If I would have tried to read them for the entertainment value I would have left them after 10 pages. I've still to read the "Houses" books, but I'm not sure I'll ever do it... If they are like the Jihad prequels it's just not worth it. Those books are "action" books and for God's sake, Dune was NOT an action series. It was much more than that, it was deep, it was religious, it was philosophical! I'm really sad that someone can like the prequels better than the original series... Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I lOVED DIckens! Especially Great Expectations. Of course, I read it of my own free will when I was 12 or 13, after playing Estella in a one-act play at school. God, I loved that role.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
There's a lot of other stuff I didn't appreciate in there, too. And the worst part is, there's a ton of editing mistakes! The spelling and grammar are so abysmal, I almost didn't get through it. (I was reading it because it was there and something I hadn't read before.) Oh, it was horrid. There was another book about some Mormon kid who's a baseball player and who lost a leg or something that I couldn't get more than a chapter into because the spelling and grammar are so bad, but this was the worst one I actually finished. *shudders*
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