Ever read a book so bad that you actaully stopped reading?
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Ya one book, let me see if I can find it... http://www.lulu.com/product/book/the-day-my-butt-went-psycho/7512004?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1 her it is. The Day My Butt Went Psycho, incase you haven't figured it out, this guy's idea of humor is just improperly inserting the word butt where he can. Butt-guns, Buttcano, Butt-Police, Butt-mobile, I read this when I was seven, and I still thought it was insanely immature. It's bad, lazy writing, that hinges on the fact that the audience won't know any better. Unfortunately for that book, I did, after getting to the second Chapter where the main-character get's rescued (from a swarm of sentient asses) by this group called The B-Squad (Yes B stands for Butt), at this point I chucked the book out of disgust into a wall, and let it slide behind an arm-chair, where I let it stay until we moved out of that house.
Once and Future Cities. I picked up this book (and in hardback too, so it cost more) on the basis of the blurb and a quick skim of the first short story. I managed to read through a few more before it dawned on me what drivel I was reading.
It wasn't notoriously bad, just more the fact each story (at least the ones I read) failed to establish themselves or build to any kind of a satisfying conclusion. The short story I got maybe a third of the way through before packing the whole thing in was called "Stoners" and perhaps appropriately seemed to consist of a group of people sitting about talking - which is great when you're sitting about talking with your mates but it doens't make for very good reading.
Also, I wouldn't say it's bad, but I just couldn't finish The Silmarillion.
It wasn't notoriously bad, just more the fact each story (at least the ones I read) failed to establish themselves or build to any kind of a satisfying conclusion. The short story I got maybe a third of the way through before packing the whole thing in was called "Stoners" and perhaps appropriately seemed to consist of a group of people sitting about talking - which is great when you're sitting about talking with your mates but it doens't make for very good reading.
Also, I wouldn't say it's bad, but I just couldn't finish The Silmarillion.
M. John Harrison - Light
MAYBE it actually is a good book... but I just don't get it.
The description sold it as a "normal" science fiction novel...
but what I got was an incomprehensible mess.
Present time and the future mix in a very confusing way and
I could not get past the first 100 pages.
MAYBE it actually is a good book... but I just don't get it.
The description sold it as a "normal" science fiction novel...
but what I got was an incomprehensible mess.
Present time and the future mix in a very confusing way and
I could not get past the first 100 pages.
Theres been a few, cant remember them off the top of my head though.
Plus i read loads of books and i read fast, so i have run into the odd awful book from time to time.
Actually series like star wars, star trek, warhammer etc tend to have the odd rubbish book in them, as theres just so many of them, though that depends how much you like them in the first place really.
Plus i read loads of books and i read fast, so i have run into the odd awful book from time to time.
Actually series like star wars, star trek, warhammer etc tend to have the odd rubbish book in them, as theres just so many of them, though that depends how much you like them in the first place really.
Girl with the Pearl Earing. I didn't even finish the first chapter it was so badly over-written that I just counldn't take it anymore, I mean how does a woman speak with a voice like polished brass!?!
It could also be the translation. The Ginsburg translation is pretty unwieldy. If you're interested, I would definitely recommend picking up the translation by Burgin and O'Conner with annotations. Not only is the translation a significant improvement on the original, but it also offers important insight on the satirical aspects of the novel.Ti0k0 said:
I couldn't get through the first 7 pages of fotr, but a book that I really hate is the book Code Orange. Absolutely nothing happened for the middle 250 pages, and then in the end it turned out the conflict was only a figment of imagination that had gone too far. It's the book equivalent of Monster a go-go.
I can't think of any books I've legitimately stopped reading, but I have two that I would have stopped if they weren't for English Literature class.
A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - Quite simply insulting. I take no issue with feminism, and I believe fully in equal rights for women, but this book was tripe. All the men were portrayed as filthy rapists and all the women were pitiful victims. Absolute nonsense, and poorly written to boot.
Emma by Jane Austen - This book didn't really offend me, but it is no longer effective as a comedy and the setting is so far removed from modern society to the point where the characters are borderline impossible to empathise with. There's a point where two characters, who have been best friends for the majority of the book, have to stop being friends because they discover one is of a lower class than the other. It may have been like that back then, but it holds no relevance now.
A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - Quite simply insulting. I take no issue with feminism, and I believe fully in equal rights for women, but this book was tripe. All the men were portrayed as filthy rapists and all the women were pitiful victims. Absolute nonsense, and poorly written to boot.
Emma by Jane Austen - This book didn't really offend me, but it is no longer effective as a comedy and the setting is so far removed from modern society to the point where the characters are borderline impossible to empathise with. There's a point where two characters, who have been best friends for the majority of the book, have to stop being friends because they discover one is of a lower class than the other. It may have been like that back then, but it holds no relevance now.
That was exactly my issue with it. Wells essentially wrote an essay on the social classes of Victorian England, slapped a half-baked plot on it, and halfway through the book said, "screw it, I'm just going to descend into preaching".Kadoodle said:
Also, the book was full of all these "look at me I know about stars and maps and druids; I'm so smart" references.
Some Sherrilyn Kenyon book my mother checked out from the library one time years ago, which I picked up for shits and giggles. They're apparently shitty semi-fantastical pulp romances, and this one was the literary equivalent of the 5.2 second ejaculation. I was fourteen pages in when the semi-fantastical part of the premise happened (the mystical summoning of some Macedonian guy to be a sex-slave) and I'm like, "Okay, done."
Also, The Red Badge of Courage, which I had to read for my freshman English class in high school. It was such an unholy slog just to get through the first chapter that I literally could not read the rest of the book. I could stare at the words on the page all day long, but the very knowledge that these words were part of the Red Badge of Courage meant that I could not take them in or process them.
Also, The Red Badge of Courage, which I had to read for my freshman English class in high school. It was such an unholy slog just to get through the first chapter that I literally could not read the rest of the book. I could stare at the words on the page all day long, but the very knowledge that these words were part of the Red Badge of Courage meant that I could not take them in or process them.
. . . I'm going to pretend this is somehow a joke. I picked up Great Gatsby in the morning, and suddenly it was mid-afternoon and the book was done. That's probably the greatest book of all timeEternalFacepalm said: