quote: Since there are people here who were unfamiliar with the Eye of Argon, would someone like to explain how the game works?
It's easy. One person starts reading the story aloud, trying not to laugh. If he laughs, he passes the story to the person on his right. (The person on his left is the final arbiter of whether or not he has laughed.) The last person reading when they reach the end of the text "wins."
The crowd may do anything at all to break the concentration of the reader or cause him to laugh, with two exceptions: 1) no physical contact and 2) nothing may be thrown except 12-sided dice, which may only be thrown after the first full page is read and upon the completion of each page thereafter.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
The Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson.
I actually only read the first one, but it was easily the most poorly written book I have ever voluntarily finished in my life.
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
While the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant ranks as one of the most unenjoyable and unsatisfying series of books I've ever read, there is one book which is so astoundingly bad that I stand in awe of the fact that it was actually published.
The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadeth by H.P. Lovecraft.
I realize it was written a long time ago, but Lovecraft's only (as far as I know) attempt to write a non-horror novel is astonishingly bad.
If you've ever seen the author's game on Whose line is it anyway? (British version), there is one comedian who always does H.P. Lovecraft. I think this book is the inspiration.
The basic plot: A guy has a dream. He has to get somewhere. He can't wake up until he gets there. He journeys there in his dream, meeting an endless string of people who tell him the three or four(unpronounceable) names of every tree, rock, mountain, river, tribe, etc. that he encounters along the way. He arrives at his destination and wakes up. I don't have the book in front of me, but the prose goes something like this:
"And by midday, he arrived at the river Thilophineas, which is called Backsnorf by the hill people of Snooldown, upon whose banks the snaffle-fish breed, which are called pumbly-squirts by the Trandool people of Nagthor, and where the grall boats of the Dintog are anchored, being unused at this time of year due to the large numbers of percursiad flame-fish in the water."
A hundred and fifty pages of this. And none of it has any bearing on the plot. Yeesh.
Posts: 173 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
Tom forgot to add that training as a preacher and/or elementary school teacher is especially helpful.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Lovecraft's Dreamquest is actually my favorite Lovecraft story, and that's saying something.
As for the thread topic, one of the very worst books I've ever read was Fellowship of the Talisman by Clifford Simak. Absolutely dreadful.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
So, I just finished reading Crossroads of Twilight by Jordan. Of course, I was warned before reading it (actually I listened to it on cd while driving), so I braced myself for the worst. Plus I was able to skip a track whenever environmental details got started. So, I'm waiting to get Knife of Dreams from the library (I haven't contributed to Jordan financially yet, but I don't feel bad considering his later novels), and I'm wondering if I should start Terry Goodkind's series.
Is his writing bad? Some of the complaints I have heard are "repetitive" or "preachy". What does Hatrack think?
Posts: 684 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I'm shocked that no one mentioned "A Wrinkle In Time" yet....
I mean, that's heavy duty Sci-Fi crap. Most of the book goes like this: "5^7hX12G. For a moment, she understood. Then she realized, she didn't. Then her little freaky brother did something really smart, but everyone thought he was just autistic."
Posts: 803 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Ophelia: The Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson.
I actually only read the first one, but it was easily the most poorly written book I have ever voluntarily finished in my life.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was trying to remember something about this book I picked up once other than "written by Dune author's son and someone else."
But I made it nowhere near the end of the book. I might have read the first chapter all the way through, and was stunned that it had been published.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:I'm shocked that no one mentioned "A Wrinkle In Time" yet....
I loved A Wrinkle in Time as a child, but after some people recently talking about how much they'd loved one of her later books, I've been recently trying to wade through the sequels. I'm having a really hard time. I think they're much preachier and less interesting than the first; parts of them are so simplistic as to seem stupid, whereas other parts are incomprehensible.
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I only really like A Swiftly Tilting Planet. It's not particularly preachy and the story is pretty cool. It also has very few Meg scenes, which is a huge plus for me. I was ready to kill her by the end of A Wrinkle in Time.
But even though I hated Meg, I don't think A Wrinkle in Time was particularly poorly written.
posted
I loved them all, but A Swiftly Tilting Planet was my favorite.
I think we should also look at these books in context. A Wrinkle in Time was not written for adults. I probably read it in fifth grade. Just because I loved it when I was in fifth grade doesn't mean I'd love it now, and just because I don't love it now doesn't mean it's not a great book.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
The Transcriber's note at the end of 'The Eye of Argon' is almost as funny as the story itself.
Posts: 466 | Registered: Sep 2003
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"Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of hell, barbarian", gasped the first soldier. "Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!" returned Grignr.
"You"; ejaculated the Ecordian in a pleased tone. "I though that I had seen the last of you at the tavern, but verilly I was mistaken."
OMG OMG OMG CLASSIC
The humor I think is in the poorly placed verbs. For instance, the author seems to feel a need to vary his 'speaking' verbs so that not a one recurrs through the whole peice, it reads like a vocabulary assignment gone horribly wrong.
I gotta edit one more time and just say that I am about ready to puke I am laughing so hard. Every sentence of the travesty reeks of the heady pungent powerful use of the grotesque vocabulary of the immortalized author. I am weak in the knees and must be caused to sit down, or I may faint with a flourish and drown in my own astonished thoughts flowing through my heroic and handsome head which is above my wide and powerful heroic shoulders.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Crow: I think I've finally figured out how this Jim Theis guy thinks.
Tom: Jim Theis =thinks=?
Crow: Sure. You just have to get yourself into a certain frame of mind. Here, you say something, and I'll say it like Jim would say it.
Tom: Umm... "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation."
Crow: Easy. "Four, or maybe five, it cannot be told, scorr and also sevn revolutions around the red orb of heat, those warrors who bought us life to us and belong to us and also upon this sward, a land less ancient than the moulderng corpse starng blindly at Grignr."
Mike: Wow! That was really something! Try this: "I have a dream that one day my four little children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Crow: No problem. "As Grignr sleeping, morbid notions prnacing morbidly into his oval. `The reddish orb of heat beng in the crimson sky.' Stated the terrible fetid nightmar. And his ofspring of four -- or maybe forty, however it may be -- will hav the dark morbid hand of blood juridicating over all of Ecordia. `Not red! Not reddish! not crimson! Not rose red! Not blood red!' Sayeth Dsipk the judge. But by the fetid entrails will the small rodents be accontd." [Gypsy enters.] Gypsy: Hey, guys, whatcha doin'? Tom: Gypsy, say something! Gypsy: What should I say? Mike: Anything! Whatever pops into your head. Gypsy: Richard Basehart! Crow: "Possesed of many baubles, the Sward unyielding to grignr, less noble than a fetid dog! Organ of blood pumping." Mike: That was just beautiful. Tom: Now never, ever do it again.
quote:Originally posted by Celaeno: I loved them all, but A Swiftly Tilting Planet was my favorite.
I think we should also look at these books in context. A Wrinkle in Time was not written for adults. I probably read it in fifth grade. Just because I loved it when I was in fifth grade doesn't mean I'd love it now, and just because I don't love it now doesn't mean it's not a great book.
I was in fourth or fifth grade when I first read it, and I hated Meg from the beginning. I actually came to appreciate A Wrinkle in Time more as I got older, perhaps because I was better able to ignore the parts I didn't like. At any rate, my dislike of Meg aside, it was a pretty decent book. It was probably the first science fiction that I read, which has to count for something.
quote:You let the pros do it.... by quoting someone else?
Um, yeah, because they were the pros, not me.
The MST3K version of Eye of Argon is a brilliant work of literature. I have it saved on my hard drive and whenever I'm having a bad day, I can just open it to a random page and know that I will soon be laughing.
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