Books you hate

[Purkake]

Instead of derailing all the other book threads, let's just have one where we list books that we have a personal grudge with and explain why. Bonus points for hating critically acclaimed books and no "trololol Twilight is teh worst!!111" without having actually read it and giving a semi-intelligent explanation. Feel free to use copious amounts of snark and be as clever as you want, we're all supposedly educated people here. Please use spoiler tags where appropriate.

 

I have quite a grudge against Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. What was once declared the best cyberpunk since self-slicing nanobread is actually a barely coherent sequence of "cool stuff" ranging from cyberspace katana fights to pizza mafia punctuated by the most boring and inane history lesson in a non-history book. You have characters who would need another dimension just to be able to fall over in a breeze, complete with self-referential post-modernist names just for the sake of it. I'd go into more detail about the plot, but I find that this excerpt from the wikipedia summary does a much better(and more hilarious) job than I ever could: (bear in mind that this is still cyberpunk)

 

As Stephenson describes it, one goddess/semi-historical figure, Asherah, took it upon herself to create a dangerous biolinguistic virus and infect all peoples with it; this virus was stopped by Enki, who used his skills as a "neurolinguistic hacker" to create an inoculating "nam-shub" that would protect humanity by destroying its ability to use and respond to the Sumerian tongue. This forced the creation of "acquired languages" and gave rise to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Unfortunately, Asherah's meta-virus did not disappear entirely, as the "Cult of Asherah" continued to spread it by means of cult prostitutes and infected women breast feeding orphaned infants; this weakened form of the virus is compared to herpes simplex. Furthermore, Rife has been sponsoring archaeological expeditions to the Sumerian city of Eridu, and has found enough information on the Sumerian tongue to reconstruct it and use it to work his will on humanity. He has also found the nam-shub of Enki, which he is protecting at all costs.

 

I guess one might argue that the whole book is a clever piece of satire, but if that's the case then I lack the mental capacity to distinguish it as such. The only thing the book taught me is to switch my brain off the moment the phrase "neuro linguistic programming" comes up.

[Malcador]

Any Dune novel written by Anderson and Brian Herbert. About the only novels that have made me angry at reading them, felt like burning my copy of Hunters, but it was a library book so. Just the style of writing is so simple, chapters are short as if you've ADD, things are constantly restated, then you get subplots that really aren't at all interesting or relevant.

 

Apparently Anderson felt Dune needed more action (said the destruction of Arrakis was kind of ignored and that was a bad thing), so sadly we get his Star Wars level action scenes. They also throw in some rather canon violating stuff, mostly minor thinking of it, like Paul leaving Caladan, cause of the Baron's obesity. Only one truly stupid one is the BG being able to cloak or do some Jedi-esque nonsense.

[Pidesco]

The Da Vinci Code.

 

Around the time it came out I had female friends of mine who praised its themes.

[Tale]

I used to be a big Stephen King fan. Then I tried reading Hearts in Atlantis and Eyes of the Dragon.

 

I can't even go into depth on what I don't particularly like about them. I used to be a big reader. A new book every two days. Then I tried to read Hearts in Atlantis. It was two years before I read a book for entertainment again. It killed reading for me.

 

Eyes of the Dragon I recall being very awkward. I think it has a 2nd person perspective. Which was jarring.

[Slowtrain]

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

 

 

Oh man, that was a bad book. It was hip, cool vapidity masquerading as William Gibsonesque science fiction.

 

I haven't read anything by Stephenson since. Maybe he's gotten better?

 

Question re: this thread content guidelines:

Can I trash a book if I've only read part of it? I don't usually make it more than halfway through a book I don't like and sometimes less than that. I try to give a book 100 pages at least before I toss it, but after that I often don't stick around if I think it's really bad.

[Monte Carlo]

I haven't read anything by Stephenson since. Maybe he's gotten better?

 

Sorry to interrupt the hate. Cryptonomicon is awesome. Read it.

[Purkake]

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

 

 

Oh man, that was a bad book. It was hip, cool vapidity masquerading as William Gibsonesque science fiction.

 

I haven't read anything by Stephenson since. Maybe he's gotten better?

 

Question re: this thread content guidelines:

Can I trash a book if I've only read part of it? I don't usually make it more than halfway through a book I don't like and sometimes less than that. I try to give a book 100 pages at least before I toss it, but after that I often don't stick around if I think it's really bad.

I haven't touched Stephenson since then either. Maybe he has, but is it really worth the potential horror?

 

I guess halfway through is good enough, if you got a clear idea of what it was about, but I'd prepare myself for lots of "it gets better" in any case.

 

I read 3/4 of The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe and decided that while I could see what he was doing there, I needed to be taking a lot more drugs to make any sense of it.

[Malcador]

Sorry to interrupt the hate. Cryptonomicon is awesome. Read it.

 

Hm, it's ok. Does tend to meander into Crichton-esque "Hey look what I know" territory a bit, and the ending sucks. Only book I've quit while reading was Executive Orders. Way too much Jesus Ryan, heh.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Malcador

[Hurlshort]

Like Slowtrain, I rarely get further than 100 pages into a book I dislike. Even in college when I was assigned certain books, if it was not good I just skimmed it for talking points.

 

I used to read Piers Anthony books in middle school, but he seemed to slowly turn into a dirty old man as he wrote them, and so I gave those up.

[Calax]

I kinda hate Edding's Elenium and Tamuli. Mainly because they're the exact same book, but also because they seem to mostly ignore half of the consequences of what is set up.

 

The main character is a knight of the church, who also just happens to be one of the highest ranking figures in the political hierarchy of a country. They sort of hand wave the entire thing with "well the country will NEVER stray from the chuches ideals!" Probably the biggest thing is the books approach to politics. Guys who have little to no experiance in a political arena are able to easily out politik the career politicians in both church and state, even if they've been gone for two years and the entire political landscape has changed.

 

The entire thing reads like a Catholics wet dream of western europe (the most powerful military is the churches, and all of society is basically controlled by the church except for a few people who easily could be strong-armed into anything).

[Purkake]

Like Slowtrain, I rarely get further than 100 pages into a book I dislike. Even in college when I was assigned certain books, if it was not good I just skimmed it for talking points.

 

I used to read Piers Anthony books in middle school, but he seemed to slowly turn into a dirty old man as he wrote them, and so I gave those up.

Interesting that you should bring up Piers Anthony. I just read On a Pale Horse and while the premise seemed good, it turned into a "weird weird let's gang up on Satan because of a contrived plot device" thing by the end. Also, the weird pseudo-magical future was completely unnecessary. If they weren't written when they were, I'd say mr Anthony read American Gods and decided that it wasn't straightforward enough and diluted it some more. Also, his 50+ page afterword didn't help either.

 

As for giving up, the real contenders here are the books that manage to lull you into reading them until the end.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Purkake

[Oerwinde]

I couldn't even get through half of the Sword of Shanarra.

 

And I second Eyes of the Dragon. Someone got it for me because it was their favorite Stephen King book. First and last Stephen King book I'll read most likely.

[HoonDing]

Eug?nie Grandet. An incredibly boring story combined with 19th century literary French = hell.

 

EDIT: lulz, the forum doesn't recognize an "accent aigu"?

Edited July 11, 2011 by virumor

[Pidesco]

I think the forum hasn't recognized some accents since the server was upgraded last week.

 

I wasn't sure until now. I'll pass the info along.

[LadyCrimson]

without having actually read it and giving a semi-intelligent explanation.

If I hate a book, it typically means I tossed it across the room after about 150 pages and then burned it in the fireplace.

 

...it's rare that I truly hate a book. There are some that I find too boring for my tastes and don't quite finish or finish and think "meh", or others where I love the story but dislike the author's writing style (Drizzt novels) but grit my teeth and keep reading them because of the characters. But if I even come close to finishing it, I didn't hate it.

[Purkake]

Don't you have friends who won't get off your case until you've read something or succumbed to high internet praise and forced your way through it just to see what all the fuss is about? I mean eventually you'll learn to avoid such things, but I'm sure there's that one book that lured you in with sweet promises and then let you down like a Peter Molyneux game.

 

Or perhaps you decided to force your way through an all-time classic just to add that little bit of cultural identity to yourself even though you hated every second of the pretentious post-modern crap?

Edited July 11, 2011 by Purkake

[LadyCrimson]

Don't you have friends who won't get off your case until you've read something or succumbed to high internet praise and forced your way through it just to see what all the fuss is about? I mean eventually you'll learn to avoid such things, but I'm sure there's that one book that lured you in with sweet promises and then let you down like a Peter Molyneux game.

 

Or perhaps you decided to force your way through an all-time classic just to add that little bit of cultural identity to yourself even though you hated every second of the pretentious post-modern crap?

Nope. Friends/family, if I'm not interested, nothing makes me read something. Teachers forcing me to read some it in classes was annoying, but usually after the first irritation of having to get used to reading obscure old styles of writing passed, I'd at least kind of enjoy them.

 

But now that I'm thinking on it, there was one book that I hated and kept reading for almost the whole thing....Jean M. Auel's The Shelters of Stone. I loved Clan of the Cave Bear when I was a kid, and have bought every book in the series since then, even after it largely became a romance novel series describing the exploits of 'most amazing & gorgeous cave woman evah, who invents everything known to modern man'. But then Shelters of Stone came along, and in the first 50 pages the writing was so atrocious I was ready to toss it on the fire. It was as if Auel had been secretly ghost-written for all these years and she finally decided to get rid of the ghost writer, and Auel herself couldn't write for crap. Grammar, sentence structure were all abysmal. But I and many other fans kept reading anyway, hoping it would get better. It didn't.

 

I haven't bought Land of Painted Caves yet and I think I probably won't.

[Slowtrain]

I used to read Piers Anthony books in middle school, but he seemed to slowly turn into a dirty old man as he wrote them, and so I gave those up.

 

 

I was going to rip every Xanth novel ever written, but decided it would take way too long to even list them.

[Slowtrain]

I couldn't even get through half of the Sword of Shanarra.

 

 

The weird thing about Brooks is that he started OK, moderately derivitive as hell but fueld by a certain energy. Sword is a bit tedious, but Elfstones has a decent enough story and character and Wishsong has

almost every major character die

, which was somewhat suprising. But after a while he developed in almost a parody of himself, which is like being a parody of a parody of a parody or something.

 

I kinda hate Edding's Elenium and Tamuli. Mainly because they're the exact same book, but also because they seem to mostly ignore half of the consequences of what is set up.

 

 

I kinda like those many years ago. Mostly because they just walk around killing everything that twitches. It's like a monty python skit.

 

 

 

Feist to me is the best example of a fantasy author who has basically written the exact same book over and over again for the last thirty years.

 

edit: added spolier tags because you just never know.

Edited July 11, 2011 by Slowtrain

[LadyCrimson]

Some of you seem really picky about your books. Of course, a lot of these books (Shannara, Xanth) I read when I was 10-15, and they were great then but not so great now that I'm 40+.

 

I loved the first few Xanth books (when I was 12)...the puns amused me. He's a simplistic writer tho, and the Xanth books in particular were just meant to be light humorous reads I think. That series went on way too long and became horrid tho, I'll agree to that. Except, I did like the one with Jumper the spider. Jumper was awesome. Piers also has a tendency to write an ok initial book (Incarnations of Immortality) but then the rest become auto-pilot works. His Blue Adept trilogy wasn't bad...but I haven't tried the more recent new trilogy set in the same world. I imagine it to be ... not as decent.

[HoonDing]

It's rather Eddings who writes the same story over and over again, with the same characters included.

 

Feist at least managed to craft an interesting world in Riftwar (two, actually) with one being medieval low-magic (magic being very rare) and the other one more the typical high fantasy with fantastical creatures and what not. The clash between these two worlds in Riftwar (first series) was pretty interesting. He had the political intrigue down pretty good as well. Another thing Feist generally does really well is describing large scale battles, especially sieges.

 

It's all downhill after Riftwar, though, where the series quickly devolves into parody territory. I managed to trudge through Serpentwar but stopped after that.

[LadyCrimson]

The clash between these two worlds in Riftwar (first series) was pretty interesting.

Yeah, I loved Magician. The rest...not so much.

Piers Anthony's Blue Adept series interested me for the same reason - magic world (Phaze) and non-magic world (Proton).

[Slowtrain]

It's rather Eddings who writes the same story over and over again, with the same characters included.

 

 

I remember reading an article about Eddings or an interview with him and, to the best of my recollection, which might not be very good) it talked about how after a time as an unsuccessful mainstream writer he sat down with a bunch of bestselling fantasy books, made notes on how everything worked and what needed to be included, then basically developed a system for all his books and just kept doing ti all over and over again.

 

 

I give the guy credit for making money at it.

[Slowtrain]

That series went on way too long

 

 

That's what I remember most about the Xanth series. Not the first couple, but the 73 or so that came afterwards.

 

And the puns. omg, the puns.

 

I thought the whole Blue Adept series (only three books!) to be markedly better.

[LadyCrimson]

That's what I remember most about the Xanth series. Not the first couple, but the 73 or so that came afterwards.

 

And the puns. omg, the puns.

And he's still writing them!

 

(wiki)

# 35 Well-Tempered Clavicle (2011; in production)

# 36 Luck Of The Draw (2012; being written)