Books you finished and just thought: "Well...that was shit"

[Relish in Chaos]

Twilight. I was practically forced to read this book by my friends just to know what all the fuss was about. So I did. It's one of the most mind-numbingly boring, annoyingly angsty piles of poorly-paced shit I've ever laid my eyes upon, and it was only towards the end that anything remotely interesting actually happened.

Eragon. For a 17-year-old's first try at a book, it's good. But it was a pain to the read, to the heavy inspiration (and I use that word lightly) from similar fantasy novels, such as The Lord of the Rings (although that was shit too; could never get into it due to, again, the pacing and it's probably too dated for my liking).

Romeo & Juliet. It's not a classic, it's not a template for love stories. Maybe it was good at the time, but definitely not now. It's just pretentious bullshit about two stupid teenagers who'd deluded themselves into thinking that they'd fallen in "love at first sight", got married on impulse, and later both committed suicide after a stupid plan with clear holes from the beginning fucked up. And at the end, what was the lesson that we were supposed to come away with? I'll tell you: nothing, or at least one that wasn't common sense or something we hadn't heard before.

 

[Korten12]

The ending to the second Guild Wars book, the Edge of Destiny.

Spoiler

The heroes fail on the quest they've been building up to all along, and they all blame each other and go their seperate ways.

I don't read books all that much, but I was just really stumped by this ending.

If it's any consolation, one of the big parts of GW2 is to bring them back together.

I did guess that was going to happen, but I just still felt that a bit more effort could have been put into the book's ending than just "They don't like each other now, the end."

Side note: Is it bad that I'm sitting here with the beta login screen minimised, just to hear the music?

Nope, the menu music is awesome.

 

[ToffeeMC]

The Hunger Games and the Twilight series. I did not understand the love and hype for these books at all.

you baster you did not understand for these books they are awesome well maybe not the not the frist twlight book but apart from that there awesome and your the baster for not geting it

Oh hail thee, almighty troll/7th grader!

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

"A Darkness at Sethanon" by Raymond E. Feist.
I didn't exactly think "DAMN THAT WAS SHITTY." but I felt nonplussed. After reading the two preceding novels and it, I was done with him. Decent writer, but his stuff is a little too nicey-nicey for me. Blame it on starting with fantasy by the likes of Gemmell and Moorcock at a young age.

 

[sabercrusader]

I know you said no books your school made you read, but I'm going to put one anyways.

Goddamn was "To Kill a Mockingbird" horrible. It sucked balls, and while it was only what? 250 pages? It took me a couple days of straight reading to get through it(it was for a CP English summer project). I could not stand it.


Also, I read the first "Twilight", so yes, I can make an informed opinion about it. It was shit. Really, the ending was the only part that I actually liked remotely.

What about the ending? Because it was finally over?

Well, yes and no. No because the ending was kinda actually remotely interesting. Barely.

 

[DustyDrB]

I might make some enemies saying this, but I had pretty much the "Well that was shit" reaction when I finished A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

(glares)

Nah, i'm just kidding around.

(sharpens sword)

OT: Revan. What a fucking monstrosity. The whole thing was just Drew Karpshyn shoving his version of the character down our throat and telling us how awesome his blandness is, rather than focusing on the vastly superior Obsisian version. Oh, and they turned the Exile into a Revan fangirl, and did not comment on her

Spoiler

FUCKING FORCE WOUND THAT IS THE SINGLE MOST DEADLY THING IN THE STAR WARS CANON

at all.

Hey, that's a pretty cool sword you have there. Mind if I hold it? Ahhh! Why are you trying to hand it to me blade first in a stabbing motion?

I had that reaction to the Revan novel as well, though I didn't finish it. I got too disgusted with it about 2/3s the way through and deleted it off my Kindle. That's one downside of e-books. You can't burn them, hurl them into a lake, encourage my dog to pee on them, etc.

 

[tensorproduct]

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Just awful on every conceivable level. Condescending, preachy, mystical mumbo-jumbo horseshit. Damn, fifteen years later and I'm still angry that I read this fucking worthless crap.

So happy someone else said this. The thing that annoyed me even more was how many people got taken in by it. I would have ignored it except for the fact that some friends who's tastes I trusted put it on their favourite book lists (one had it up there with Anna Karrenin, another with East of Eden).
There was just a massive entitlement philosophy running through the whole thing. To achieve your dreams, you don't need a mix of hard work, natural talent and a good dose of luck. No, all you need is to REALLY want it. Then "the Universe will conspire to help you". That might be a great message for Oprah, but how about the millions of starving people who REALLY want food? Is their fault they just don't WANT it enough?
Disagreeing with the philosophy is one thing, there are plenty of books which I enjoyed even though I didn't share the authors views. That's because you at least had a good plot or characters or writing style to enjoy. The Alchemist had none of those.

Bah. Grrr.

I think that it's safe to say I wouldn't hate this anywhere near as much if there weren't so many people eager to push it as a great spiritual work.

The "spirituality" of it is utterly moronic as well. On the plus side, all those so willing to identify with this book makes it slightly easier to avoid selfish, gullible idiots.

 

[Freechoice]

Mass Effect: Deception.

Oh, I remember reading something about that on TV Tropes.

Spoiler: THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED

I'd love to see a link for that tropes page. Also, his colon had also be an adrenaline ajunkie for whats coming next.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/MassEffectDeception

There ya go. Cannot be arsed to bb it, but there ya go.

 

[White-Death]

Hunger Games:Mockingjay.
HOLY FUCK do I hate this book, Catpiss Jellybean just whines & bitches mostly, and has SO many character deaths that are blown way out of proportion, its passed Call of Duty levels.
Hunger games books are...meh,well written(The first two only), with well developed characters, but now its becoming...Twilight.
Now I heard Battle Royal was a hell of a book...
Still have to get through Inheritance and Game of Thrones.

 

[Eamar]

Romeo & Juliet. It's not a classic, it's not a template for love stories. Maybe it was good at the time, but definitely not now. It's just pretentious bullshit about two stupid teenagers who'd deluded themselves into thinking that they'd fallen in "love at first sight", got married on impulse, and later both committed suicide after a stupid plan with clear holes from the beginning fucked up. And at the end, what was the lesson that we were supposed to come away with? I'll tell you: nothing, or at least one that wasn't common sense or something we hadn't heard before.

Ooo yes, this. So, so much. I actually love a lot of Shakespeare, including some of his romances, but Romeo and Juliet just plain pisses me off.

Greatest love story of all time my arse...

 

[repeating integers]

Romeo & Juliet. It's not a classic, it's not a template for love stories. Maybe it was good at the time, but definitely not now. It's just pretentious bullshit about two stupid teenagers who'd deluded themselves into thinking that they'd fallen in "love at first sight", got married on impulse, and later both committed suicide after a stupid plan with clear holes from the beginning fucked up. And at the end, what was the lesson that we were supposed to come away with? I'll tell you: nothing, or at least one that wasn't common sense or something we hadn't heard before.

I don't much like it either, but the basic lesson is supposed to be "Puppy Love is stupid".

 

[evilneko]

I've never finished a book I thought was shit. If I thought it was shit, I wouldn't bother finishing it.

I guess the closest I ever came to that though would be the first DOOM novel. I finished it and thought "meh."

 

['Record Stops.']

I'd have to say when I was a younger teenager and I read the final book in a trilogy I had been rather fond of. The name of the first book in the series was Dragon Fire and it was about a woman and her daughter who make pottery dragons that come to life who meet a tenet who wishes to stay at their home. The second book was named Ice Fire and was also very good, delving more into the past of the women and the tenets own character. The final book Star Fire was...horrible.

It butchered the story, created an incredibly stupid plot twist involving extra dimensional body posessing aliens where the adults were evil and hated dragons for some reason, killed off the main character, and generally was a horrible ending to a (more or less) good series

 

[Lord Merik]

I read the entire Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. The first 4 books were great. The next 7 went on and on filled to the brim with obvious preaching about Mr Goodkind's political views being very thinly veiled by books and ending with an ass pull victory vs Jagang in the last book almost like he realized he wrote an unbeatable enemy and had to resort to bullshit to vanquish him (similar to the ass pull in Bleach vs Aizen in terms of stupidity).
The last 7 of those books were so horrendous I think they combined to take away 7 years from my life expectancy.

same. I read them thinking they were cool. Now years latter I feel them eating at my brain. But I would go one further then you. The whole thing was crap. The first book had 200 pages of S&M. 200 pages of Mr. Goodkind's sex fantasy. For some reason I read the whole thing. I still regret it. I cannot believe I thought they were good.

 

[OrpheusTelos]

Personally, I love Ice and Fire. I'd agree that Crows (book 4) was the weakest of them (it doesn't get going for a long time), they're still very well-written, and if you're like me and really got into the characters, it's still an enjoyable series. I just think Martin needs to trim the hedge a bit. Too many characters compeating for space. Dragons was a promising return to form, though.

Worst book? The new Legend of Drizzt books are pretty shite.

 

[wolf thing]

land under englend, i must admit i did not finish it. it is a really same because it started off so good, it had a dark and intrestiong world but when the main character find the tribes under the ground it get so boring and reopetaive. my option is life is to short for bad books.

 

[wolf thing]

I don't remember what it's called but there is a book that's the unoffical sequel to "catcher in the rye", it was complete and utter shit.

Captcha: well read

its "the catcher in the rye"

and i think the sequel was call "coming through the rye".

 

[Zoe Lynn]

"Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys. God, what a shit ending.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. The other books in the Old Man's War series were great. The first one (Old Man's War) was amazing, the second (The Ghost Brigades) very good, the third (The Last Colony) still a good read, although there were some plot-holes you could park an aircraft carrier in. Now, the fourth book, Zoe's Tale, just seems to exist to explain all these plotholes, but does that from the perspective of a young girl so smug and glib and arrogant, you'll want to peel off her face with a toothpick.

 

[hashtag]

Catcher in the Rye. My english teacher built up so much fucking hype about it; saying the language was strong, it was a rebel's book and stuff like that. Holden says "fuck" like twice and he came across as prissy rich ****.
Romeo and Juliet. Just shit. Be ashamed Shakespeare.
And a few people have mentioned Maximum Ride: The Final Warning. Yeah that was pretty terrible.