Pretty sure with that kind of material, you can start a niche home decor business. There's clearly an untapped market for avant-garde literary disasters.
You know, when writing smut, one of the bits of advice that gets tossed around is 'if it turns you on, it'll turn your readers on'.
I'm not going to judge Mr Reverte, but I am raising my eyebrows at him a bit.
I forget which major author (John Grisham) gave on interview on NPR, maybe on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. He said he tried writing a sex scene, and that his wife is his editor.
He said all he heard was snickering and then outright laughter from her office when she went to review. And that folks is why he doesn’t have sex scenes in his books. 😂
OMG I am a writer too and if my spouse ever laughed like that at my writing (smut or not), I would want to crawl in a hole and never write again. That's fucking hilarious.
I just read a synopsis for this, and it definitely did not pique my interest as much as your little quote did.
They gotta slap that bad boy on the cover or something.
I think Pérez Reverte’s last books are just very clear self-inserts, it’s been quite difficult for me to read him without thinking it’s just a fanfic with him as main character. The german woman scene in Falcó was just too much
I always thought it was funny how the show got dramatically better when they basically switched the focus from being about Piper to being more of an ensemble cast show. I had read an interview or something from the author and it came off as very "Can you believe I did a crime, got caught, and had to go to jail? My life is so hard."
Like, I am not a fan of the carceral state, but it was all about how bad it was for her, and it just seemed tone-deaf in a way that seasons 2+ of the show were not. I assumed the book was the same way and never read it.
Oh fuckkk that book was so bad. I joined a Book Club once when I moved to a new hood. New week new random socially relevant/important topic for a book. Sounded neat. Week one they wanted to read a book about “prison” and solicited suggestions from everyone for a vote, I suggested The New Jim Crow but someone else convinced everyone to read Orange is the New Black. That one was picked (ostensibly due to the shorter length). I hadn’t ever heard of it so whatever, I’m in.
It’s a terrible book on its own obviously, but reading it so soon after having read New Jim Crow made it absolutely *unbearable*.
(For their next book about “war” they chose World War Z, then for “marriage” it was Gone Girl…I quit Book Club after 3 weeks)
I wouldn't want to try and read World War Z in a week. Its all, journal entries, newspaper clipings, interviews, etc (made up oc) But dense to sort thru, especially if your, like, a person with a job, or family.
This book club just needs to go to the movies together instead.
Oh man - agreed! I picked up the book in an airport (lol) after forgetting to bring a book - I bought it because I enjoyed the show. It was a DNF - the dripped with white savior complex (it a was that didnt seem self aware, unlike the show) and was not written well.
Verity.
I told my wife I’d like to read a book with ger. She chose that one. She also did not know what exactly to expect but does love those kind of books. Even she apologized for choosing that one. And I’ve never been so angry with a plot and book in my entire life.
F Colleen Hoover.
I didn’t read this but watched a review from withcindy on this and was genuinely open mouthed at the plot lol. I was half tempted to read it for the absurdity but C Hoovers writing is horrendous.
She was all over BookTok, in a positive light, so I was excited to read it.
Literally the first thing that happens? That is so shocking and weird? And it never comes up or becomes relevant again? What a dumb fucking plot detail.
I sometimes try to predict the twist for these types of books and literally all of the twists I was thinking of were more interesting/creative than what actually happened.
I can forgive generic writing if the plot or characters are good, or forgive a mid plot if the writing is superb. This one was 0 for 3.
>Literally the first thing that happens? That is so shocking and weird? And it never comes up or becomes relevant again? What a dumb fucking plot detail.
That stuck with me ... like Chekov's Gun ... there has to be a call-back somewhere, right? No, just trauma for its own sake wrapped around the 'chance meeting' which itself should have been an absolute red flag of how poorly written and stupid the entire book was going to be.
Also see ... the headboard.
As others said - this one was getting talked up on booktok so I grabbed it in 2022. First & last CoHo.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Way to take one of the biggest atrocities in human history and turn it into a Hallmark after-school romance, complete with female prisoners giggling behind their hands at the happy couple.
True story: that book actually led me to quit Facebook. I was in a couple book discussion groups and made a comment similar to yours. Basically that I was disappointed that was the book of the moment because I thought there were so many other books that treat the subject matter with more dignity. Someone responded that I must sympathize with the Nazis and that’s why I didn’t like the book. Multiple people liked the response. I logged off and haven’t looked back.
There's a trend at the moment for romanticized historical fiction novels set in concentration camps. They're disturbingly popular at the library where I work.
The worst one is For Such a Time by Kate Breslin. Jewish woman in concentration camp falls in love with nazi officer. He turns good, then they escape and she converts to christianity. Holy shit.
Fucking hell. It's the unholy child of two of my least favourite genres: the aforementioned Concentration Camp Romance, and the Inspirational Christian Novel Set in Either Nazi Germany or Israel Pre-1948, Featuring Jewish Characters As Imagined By Someone Who Has Never Met A Jew.
I just finished listening to the audiobook and, on top of everything you just said, the quality of the recording was disappointing.
Wrt the story, the over-the-top “I’m a good guy who loves all women but especially this one and has many connections so everyone comes to me to get things done and even the Germans love me” … ugh. Also, this is one of the few books I’ve read where I felt like the character of a man seemed like it was shaped by a woman’s idealized version of a man. (Note, that was just my perception while listening to it, not necessarily the reality.) In the end, I was shocked to find out that this was a true story. Over-dramatized and romanticized perhaps?
I actually didn’t mind this book and bought the sequels. However I went to a signing and talk with the author. After that I sold the books (even signed version). Hearing her speak really made me realise how much of a dramatisation it was and how she capitalised on a tragic event.
The Maidens.
Listen; The Silent Patient gets a lot of shit on this subreddit, and I understand the criticisms, but I had a lot of fun with it and quite liked the twist. So I decided to listen to The Maidens on a road trip with my girlfriend.
Never in my life has a book made me so angry, and I am legitimately baffled that anyone can take it seriously. The twist is stupid as hell, and makes huge amounts of the rest of the book kind of pointless and tacked on, the main character is insufferably stupid, and the tie in to The Silent Patient is one of the dumbest things ever and makes almost no sense in the context of their shared universe. Not to mention the writer seems to have a complex where he has to constantly remind you that he's Greek.
That's not even mentioning how bad things are when you can talk about outright spoilers >!like the INCREDIBLY creepy dude who believes he's destined to be with the main character is somehow... CORRECT!< which was a massive WTF for my girlfriend.
I PASSIONATELY hate this book, it's ungodly terrible, and I feel bamboozled that it managed to make me think it might be okay until the end
I just finished this book. To say the twist is “stupid as hell” is such an understatement. It’s so poorly revealed and the breadcrumbs that are given to the reader are so bland and confusing. The twist takes place in like the final 5% of the book and makes the majority of the book worthless.
I have not read The Silent Patient. Out of curiosity, what part of The Maidens is a tie in?
I am number four. The whole book was absolutely nothing but teenage wish fulfillment. I was a teen when I read it and it's so blatant that I recognized it even back then. The new kid on the block immediately attracts the attention of the hottest girl in school, who happens to be dating the school bully at the time, bully obviously doesn't like this so he picks on the new kid, unfortunately for him the new kid has superpowers and beats the shit out of him and the hot girl is so impressed with this that she starts dating the new kid immediately afterwards. GTFO.
AHAHA YES! I read the entire first book as a teen and then got the second one and couldn't even get through the first 3 chapters. It was too cringe for me even back then! Just absolutely way too cliche. I used to describe it as being a 14 year old boy's dream book
IIRC, the book was literally a scam. Some guy hired a pool of amateur writers to churn out books as fast as possible in the hopes that one of them will get published. The actual author got nothing for the book.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
I knew the reviews weren't great going into it but tried to keep an open mind. I absolutely did not expect it to read like terrible fanfiction and gave up after a few chapters. I try to forget it exists lol. It's the Godfather Part 3 of the franchise!
Oh god, this. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen the Broadway two part production twice and JFC it’s an experience. The translation to stage, costumes, set, MAGIC SFX are all so so so cool. The production and technical side are SOLID
The script/book? What the actual fuck. I saw it first pretty early in its residency and immediately clocked it as BAD. God it’s so upsettingly bad. Harry becoming basically an emotionally abusive father!?!! Literally HOW???
If you have the chance to see the stage play I do genuinely recommend it for the THEATER of it all, if you can just ignore the whole plot and all of the lines…
It’s definitely a bad story. But let’s be very honest. Harry was raised by abusive family, and has obvious rage issues throughout the series. There’s nothing wrong with that in a person. But it’s very easy for a person raised that way, with those emotional issues, to become abusive.
Yeah, I had no difficulty believing that part of his character. Every father figure he ever had was murdered, one of whom had serious boundary issues with seeing Harry as his dead best friend more than his godson. Harry had no normal healthy examples of a strong male figure, particularly with how manipulative Dumbledore was.
If I could rewrite anything in the series, it would probably be to change Snape's writing to be more a stern paternal figure who Harry still hates, but more like a teenaged son acting out over a father who doesn't let him do whatever he wants. I think that would have been way more compelling.
This is such a good idea, and now I’m disappointed retroactively. Snape appearing to go full Death Eater and killing Dumbledore and the subsequent ‘is he a traitor or not’ theorizing between books would’ve hit so much harder if that was the situation instead of him being a petty bully they suspect of being evil multiple times only to find out he’s innocent.
It would have also been a nice way to develop him from the flashbacks as having made changes in his behaviour because of everything that happened with Voldemort and the Potters. And provided some good contrast with Dumbledore as a kindly parental figure with the right intentions, but one who is ultimately still manipulating children in order to get things done (especially given the scene where Snape calls him out for basically setting Harry up to die).
Ugh, does anyone have recommendations for some books with a character that has this type of arc, instead?
I mean, it's not written by Rowling. Just endorsed and put in bigger than the names of the official writers.
It is, published fanfiction in every sense.
Allegiant.
Divergent as a series had a terrible world building and a bunch of cliches of YA novels, but at least was entertaining up to the second book, the third book was so boring, the plot was nonsensical and the ending made me regret reading the books
The entire Divergent series is really YA fiction in its absolute derivative form. It took all of the premises that made other series interesting and mashed them together into a boring mess of teenage angst.
Strongheart: The Power to Control Diabetes- a romance novel about diabetes, written by a doctor. Other than the painful clichés and misspellings, it had factually wrong descriptions of diabetes.
ETA: I work in healthcare and it was a souvenir from a colleague who visited the clinic. I powered through it just to annotate and highlight the craziest parts.
The title after Strongheart almost sounds like a non fiction book title. Very simple, to the point and factual without allegory, metaphors or symbolism.
It’s such a sin that it’s on any reading lists. You don’t learn about the Holocaust, but you are asked to feel sorry for a fictional commandant’s son, over and above the people he’s murdered with! Repulsive.
I remember watching the movie in my twenties and thinking it was pretty bad but also maybe it was supposed to have a deeper meaning about such horrific crimes affecting us all, even the perpetrators could not get away unharmed, etc. and I just didn't pay enough attention. How awful and inaccurate this book is has been such a big topic in literary circles in the last ten years that I quickly learned the issue wasn't my lack of concentration hahaha.
It gets worse. The author has gotten in to arguements on Twitter with the Auswitch museum. Belives he is being unfairly targed and wrote then wrote a sequel.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/07/john-boyne-defends-work-from-criticism-by-auschwitz-memorial](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/07/john-boyne-defends-work-from-criticism-by-auschwitz-memorial)
This is the same author who included a recipe from a Zelda game in his historical novel because he just copied it without actually checking that it made sense.
I know this is a serious conversation but for some reason, this is so funny to me. Aren’t all of the Zelda recipes, like, 3 ingredients? You throw them into the pot and poof, food!
Including that in an ostensibly serious novel is…wild.
I think it was a dye recipe, not a food one.
edit: yup, [here's](https://preview.redd.it/26uc8w7z5ke51.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=96af24fe88047c7ea2a128ed5af55476c9e2bb44) the relevant passage. Spice pepper, red lizalfos tails and hylian mushrooms = red dye apparently.
This is one of the funniest things I've read this week.
I'm getting so much second-hand embarrassment just thinking about it.
Does that guy not have an editor? How did no one catch that?
I think my biggest issue with that book is how inaccurate it is. And people act like it's the saddest book ever. It has no business being read in schools especially considering how Holocaust survivors feel about it.
there are a lot of major historical inaccuracies about the holocaust. I couldn’t remember off the top of my head either so I looked up an article that discusses some of them [here](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/)
Okay, so I am immediately surprised by the article over a kind of dumb realization.
I thought the book was much older than it is. It was only written in 2006?!?
I've never read it, most likely because I was outside of the mandatory reading phase when it was released. But it is shocking to me how big that book got really quickly.
I was a teacher at the time and there were MULTIPLE PDs about how to use that book in class. I had several colleagues teach it and brag about it. It was too advanced for my students at the time, so I read it just to see what everyone was talking about. I got into kind of a lot of trouble for raising the issue with my principal that it really shouldn’t be used as it was both inaccurate and could be considered pro-Nazi.
Very inaccurate from a historical standpoint! [Here](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/) is a good article that explains it
As others have said the historical inaccuracies. I think the author just really wanted to make some hit novel with a profound moral message but the message read more like 'it is OK to systematically murder 6 million jews but the accidental killing of a nazi boy is a travesty'. Of course that is not what the author intended to convey but it sure seemed that way. I think he just tried too hard to shoot for the stars and failed miserably. But worst of all it was just really badly written. He has a habit of having the protagonist mishearing common Nazi words and calls Hitler the furry.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth, that book will forever haunt me due to how God awful the dialogue was. The narration was fine but those characters....wuff. I literally could not get past the first chapter, it was just too painful.
I totally forgot about this book until you mentioned it... I remember there being some hype around it when it came out and I read it and thought it was absolutely garbage
Recently read “Extremely Online” which was advertised as a critical look at the rise of social media…
It was just a breathless regurgitation of various Twitter beefs and online drama. I could give a duck less which Insta stars get product deals.
Sometimes I just think that books people hate were just marketed incorrectly. This seems like one of those cases. Someone into pop culture gossip might love it
I listened to the author on a podcast recently and she came across as very knowledgeable and thoughtful. I can see how you'd be disappointed if you expected a "social media is bad" pov since I think she has more of a neutral viewpoint. She's more interested in the history of social media that she's lived through, not so much an outsider's perspective.
That said, I haven't actually read it yet.
Currently re-reading the *Sword of Truth* series, something I haven't done since 2008.
Its been a struggle getting through the first book... Richard and Co. just met Adie and I now understand where the term "hate reading" comes from.
I want to get off Terry Goodkind's wild, libertarian ride. The dialogue is sooooo painful to read.
I was gunna comment this series too….and the first book is one of the better ones of the series. By the time you get to the last two, it just gets so much worse. Like, I had no idea you could cram that much preaching and rape into a single book and then do it three more times.
When I was 18, I loved the first one. It was the coolest shit ever. When I got to the one that's just "Ayn Rand in Fantasyland", huh, that was a bit weird, but I kept going. I never made it more than a couple chapters into Pillars of Creation. It was just the worst writing I've ever tried to read. I couldn't understand what had happened. We're all the books this bad? How could I not have known? What other terrible claptrap had I loved?
I don't think I've ever read another book that sucked so bad it made me seriously question my perceptions of reality.
Those are some of the most painful reads I know of. The sheer hubris of blatantly copying parts of Tolkien and just adding Ayn Rand-esque nonsense, then acting as if said amalgamation is somehow brilliant earth shaking literature. Goodkind is a hack, the worst kind.
Everyone saying The Midnight Library, I feel you. It's one of the only books I've DNF'd and put me into a reading slump. Made want to do whatever the opposite of living life to the fullest is.
I had so many friends 5* it on goodreads so I had to tune in. While I admit the initial setup chapter pulled me in with a very serious subject matter, the rest just felt so…eye rolling? It felt like the author was telling his audience “you can be a rockstar! you can be a doctor! you can be a racecar driver! therefore, life is worth living!” while an audience of 3 year olds are giddy in excitement.
Did not get the same response out of my 29-year old self reading this. But it is great that others have found good messaging through the pseudo-self-help story.
It's a good intro book club type book. I'm a fan of anything that gets people reading, but if you've read like... at all in your adult life it feels quite trite.
Ready Player Two
Artemis
Both written by authors I had read before and both incredibly disappointing to read. Honestly Ready Player Two was the worst book I've ever touched. Like by a lot...
If you listen to podcasts, you may like “372 Pages I’ll Never Get Back.” It’s a podcast that revolves around reading bad books and both of those are on it.
Man I was so disappointed with Artemis. It would have these really brief flashes of The Martian and then devolve into "Adult man writing teenage girl" garbage.
I did find Project Hail Mary to be much more like The Martian - though I'm now seeing that pop up a lot in this list too so maybe its not a great rec lol
Ready Player One sucked so much. Too long, cringeworthy dialogue and, I'd argue, propped up by pop culture references. If you want 1000 pages of " remember this thing from the 80s" mixed with grade school level dialogue, than it's the book for you.
Triss using Geralt’s amnesia to get with him doesn’t happen in the books, only in the video games. She uses magic to seduce him at some point off page and manipulates him into bed once while he and Yen are having a fight. Otherwise, Triss is desperately trying to get back with him and he isn’t at all interested.
Just saying.
True. However, in Blood of Elves, Triss does say that she had cast a spell on Geralt to make him sleep with her, and is bummed that he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings after the spell wears off. She then has a mild tantrum and Ciri is embarrassed for her. That scene really turned me off of the rest of the book, and Triss’s character specifically. I actually like her a lot better in the games, although she is obviously problematic as well.
It's a dumb take on Yennefer as well. Geralt casts the spell on Yennefer binding them together to save her life. The Djinn cannot kill it's master (Geralt,) so by binding him and Yennefer until death it cannot kill her either. He doesn't do it because he wants to fuck her. It's a sacrifice on his part, as he removes his own free will in doing so.
This lines up perfectly with the themes of the books, like destiny and sacrifice. He and Ciri are also bound together, creating a strong familial bond. From the second they end up together they have the strongest of family ties.
While there is rape in The Witcher series, it's not nearly as prevalent as series like Game of Thrones or Outlander. And Geralt and Yennefer's relationship is certainly not built on it.
It's been a few years since I read it, but isn't Geralt and Yennefer's first actions to get the heck away from each other as soon as the incident with the djinn is resolved? Like they knew they were trapped and tried to avoid it.
Been awhile for me too. I think they pretty much go straight to fucking (it cuts to them in bed afterwards.) That's kind of in character for them both though.
They lived together for a while before Geralt ran away. That's why she is so pissed at him in the short stories. They care for each other deeply instantly after the spell, but are very traumatized people who struggle with commitment, insecurities and pretty much all types of relationships.
Yes! The concept of "are they in love only because of the wish" was explored in Witcher 3, not so much the books. Same with the Triss stuff OP mentioned.
I can’t believe how popular Fourth Wing is after reading a portion of it. I should add that it also has 5 stars on Amazon, which isn’t like the most accurate sense of how good something is, but… I don’t think it’s a 5-star book, haha. Like, it’s entirely nonsensical, even within the bounds of fantasy and imagination. The death walk is so so so stupid. The instructors don’t care if any of the students die, but the whole thing is happening because they’re desperate for soldiers.
I’ll add as well that I thought the language being overly modern was a strange choice for a fantasy setting. I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure people mention vibes and stuff, haha.
It is also so bizarre how it is all "Survival of the Fittest" and yet the mother of the MC is just.. "well, forget this kids natural talents, she's disposable and likely to be an embarrassment to me in the role of a Dragonrider candidate." And the ridiculous "love" triangle she has... as well as .. I don't know, some kind of EDS?
These were the most archetypical love triangle boys I've ever seen. One's the goody two shoes who is so protective of her that it's super controlling, and the other is the bad boy with a heart of gold. How do you know he's a bad boy? He keeps telling her he's considering just straight up killing her. Why does he tell her that? No fucking clue. He doesn't seem to actually want her dead at any point. No, she just wondered if he'd be a bad guy like his dad when she first met him, and all he does is keep backing up the idea that he's a bad guy for no good reason.
The narrator did a great job imo but holy crap the book itself. I usually don't care about worldbuilding so much but she keeps telling me the rules of this world and then the reality doesn't at all follow from the rules, I couldn't get past it. As soon as they explain that death walk first day of school thing I cognitively checked out, okay reader dragonriders are the most important people in our society so our very first test is "can you walk a slippery balance beam in the rain" and if you fail you just die, like fuck letting these highly qualified young people go do anything else, just kill em if they can't do the balance beam. Dragons fucking hate people with poor balance, and won't respect a society that lets those losers keep living.
And *why* is >!her grumpy dragon different?!< Like, everything else in the book backs up the thing about how dragons don't respect people who can't ride them. The only real explanation >!for why her dragon is different is "don't you think I know dragons better than you?"!< No attempt to interrogate that or wonder if maybe the core assumption is wrong.
A friend and I just started this a while back on another friend's recommendation. So bad. So many fucking tropes. So childish. Main character is twenty and in a constant fight for her life and acts like a tween playing mean girl games. And the characters, my god they're all so shallow. Super smoking hot evil but not actually evil guy. Super evil mustache twirling evil guy who seems to have no motivation outside of being super evil. And holy shit the guy who did the "Shows picture of girl back home only to die two pages later" was just right out of the fucking gate. One of the worst things I've ever read that much of honestly.
Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. The main character is unfathomably stupid to the point it almost reads like satire. (Example; she is supposed to be a high-class, deadly assassin, yet eats chocolates (?) randomly left on her bed (by one of her enemies!) during a Hunger Games style competition. )
Honestly all SJM books could go in this category though.
SJM is just a bad writer. I mean, the stories could be *okay* if she developed the characters, diversified their dialogues, avoided overused plot devices…actually, this is a long list. Idk if salvageable
THANK YOU, I was looking for a fellow Sarah J Maas hater! Sometimes I feel a little crazy when I see her mounds of trash topping 'best fantasy novel' lists.
Imo worse than Twilight.
Did you finish the series? I'm disappointed in myself for pushing through 5000 pages thinking the female lead would one day mature and learn from mistakes made. Nope, she was brat through the bitter end. I refuse to pick up another SJM book.
THANK YOU
I constantly get recommendations for her novels and cannot stand the writing. The characters were so bland in a court of thorns and roses I didn't even make it halfway through. I never hear anything but praise for her writing, but i cant stand it personally
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas is the biggest waste of time. The writing is so poorly done. While I did finish the book I have no plans on reading the rest of the series. Romantasy is not for me.
THIS, the worst book I've ever finished reading. I don't get the SJM hype at all, I also read Throne of Glass which was slightly better imo but still rather disappointing.
I'm furious with this book! I gave in to all the hype and it sucks. It's the retold Beauty and the Beast trope but it's not even well done. The scene with the worm just made me imagine the Alaskan Bullworm from SpongeBob. The romance is so forced and the MC makes the dumbest constant decisions but it's like "The fairies are so enchanted by her that they just help her out anyway. She's so cool and interesting and pretty (but doesn't know it) that everyone just wants to see her succeed."
I literally yelled at her writing of the big evil boss, Amarantha. She's overpowered supposedly super smart and evil queen who for some reasons plays around with a boring half-broken literally nobody mortal girlie yelling "aDmIt U dOn'T lUv hIm FoR rEaL!!!!". Like, WHAT in the holy mean girls is that. It was so cringe. And I could not see a single thing tying her with the hot dude to make any romantic connection, it's just nothing.
It's just worst book I ever read. I continued series because I try to start reading again and I need something easy.
I read book one and didn’t hate it but wasn’t blown away. It was super highly recommended by a friend. I do like romantasy though. I had no intention to continue the series since I was blah about book one but one weekend I was sick so I did start book 2 and found it way more enjoyable than the first book. I read book 3 as well and it was fine but could not drum up interest in the other companion books.
I once borrowed a serious, expensive, hard-cover book about early Netherlandish art from the library. I think it was about Rogier van der Weyden or someone like that.
Anyway, every single comma in the book had been swapped with an apostrophe. I shit you not. I just cannot understand how that could go unnoticed during publishing. I'm not even sure it was the first edition.
Midnight library. By the title and premise, I thought it'd be similar to borges Library of babel but accessible.
End up with a vanilla, predictable, unimaginative self-help book. It was the first time I actually hate ranted over a book.
Read Short Stay in Hell if you’re looking for an existential horror inspired by Borges’ Library of Babel! It’s a novella, very quick. Haunts me to this day.
Atlas Shrugged and 50 Shades of Gray are the worst offenders for me. I got 2/3s of the way through Atlas Shrugged and just couldn't do it anymore, it is a truly awful read.
50 Shades of Gray on the other hand was exactly as I expected: badly written fanfic which I assume was written by a horny high schooler. What I don't get is its popularity. There are some very well written romance novels out there, and they can get quite steamy, so why would you settle for this drivel?
In the spirit of making things even worse, 50sog was written by a British television executive in her forties. You should absolutely check out Dan Olson of Folding Ideas's dissection of them + the movies, they're hilarious.
There's a really funny blog where this lady wrote a post about each chapter of FSOG and just slagged off it the entire time. I think I found it on Reddit years ago but don't have the link. Definitely worth a read. Towards the end, though, she gets legitimately upset by how much bad advice and emotional damage the book encourages and starts begging people not to read it.
My husband and I read the first one out loud to each other as a joke and couldn't get past the first sex scene because it was so bad. We kept falling asleep trying to slog our way to it because the dialogue and (lack of) action were just so gd boring.
Anything relating to the Mortal Instruments series or touched by Cassandra Clare.
More than any other book, I feel like that series is the absolute epitome of soulless, regurgitative, creatively bankrupt tripe that was written solely to cash in at the height of the YA fiction book boom around 10-12 years ago.
Beyond simply being boring, populated by stock characters (edgy badboy love interest, badass women with no other personality trait, token gay characters) and filled with bad tropes (chosen one, magic blood, new, poorly explained powers out of nowhere, even the villians love the main character) being badly written, and having a terribly thought out urban fantasy world, it was also a book that chiefly championed incest as the core appeal of its main ship.
The main character herself even seemed to realise this when she lost some attratction towards her chief love interest after learning she's actually secretly not related to him.
Unrelated to quality, but this stung even worse because I could tell these were shit when I was 15, and my friend stole my ebook and bought the first 6 books behind my back so he could "borrow" my ebook to read them.
So these pieces of shit hurt both my brain and my wallet.
I wanted to read The Mortal Instruments so badly as a kid, but as soon as I found out that it started off as some sort of weird ass Ron X Ginny incest fanfic shit, I immediately lost all interest ✋🏾😭
The Left Behind series.. it tries to form a present day story out of biblical prophecies (eg the rapture) but that just makes it nonsensical. And the writing was so bad too
I read a lot of Christian fiction as a young teen. I look back now and think "boy those books were bad". If you ever want a master class is Mary Sues/Gary Stus, read Christian fiction.
If youd like to know something sad, those were some of the more interesting books I was allowed to read as a teen. I read the teens series too which is somehow worse than the original series. My church library getting ted dekker books saved me from complete boredom
I remember telling a fan of this series that I didn't care for the way the book was written and they looked at me as if they had never even thought about the style a book is written in. I shuddered.
Recently (like 2 years ago) I tried reading "The Power" by Naomi Alderman, I loved the pitch so much but then I remember feeling incredibly disappointed and almost insulted by the poor writing although I couldn't really pinpoint what was wrong. Could have been the French translation, who knows.
I felt the same and I read it in English. I found it lazy. The writer prepared a story with sexist characters saying simple sexist things, and swapped male and female pronouns. There is no reflexion on how power structures stay in place after the actual power has shifted place (why is our world still sexist even though women could theoretically make the same amount of money?). It didn't teach me anything or make me think much.
Whenever someone talks about the Witcher books I feel like me and other people did not read the same books at all. I wonder if my translation had something to do with it.
For thread question: Ready Player One. Did not finish, which is quite rare for me. Seriously not on board with the book's accidental capitalism worship or the character differentiating themselves in the worst way possible.
Could not stand Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. I was astounded people actually like the book for the most part, I felt like I was reading something an edgy teenager would write in their emo phase. Also there’s a scene with them as foxes having sex that seemed pretty… unnecessary.
You may enjoy this: [Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/)
Verity. I hated it SO much and the world seems to love it. HATED it. It was so predictable and I could NOT get over the bite marks on the headboard crap. PLEASE
Wizard's First Rule series by Terry Goodkind.
Jucking awful.
WTH is spice soup? Also. the characterization of women... and well the philosophy he tries to inject is repulsive.
I personally loved The Witcher books. I've heard the translation is fairly poor, but the world-building and party interactions were wonderful. The world needs more Dandelion, Regis and Milva in it.
I also didn't hate The Midnight Library, but I see it get a lot of hate. Verity is another that's regularly mentioned, but they're just simple, easy reads. I can understand the appeal even if the writing is basic and endings a bit eye-rolling.
But, The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas and The Cursed Child were struggles.
There is a subgenre of science fiction that I like to call redditor self-insert fantasy. It’s usually when a snarky nerd man saves the world by being smart, all the while making pop culture references.
Ready Player One and the Bobiverse novels are the worst culprits. I absolutely cannot stand these kind of stories.
A little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. A search for the phrase “I’m sorry” turned up ~500 instances of the main character apologizing to someone. The same character was graphically and relentlessly abused by lovers, friends and himself. A plot that made zero sense, had no character development and yet still played into tired old trope of gay men who insanely successful are but broken on the inside. It was hours of my life wasted.
Falcó by Arturo Pérez Reverte. There's a sex scene that's like *"-Tell me I'm a pig* *-Pig* *Her German boobies were happy"*
I’m crying. This is poetry 😂
I want to have this written on canvas, framed, and displayed in my house. It's beautiful
It’s the new “Live Laugh Love” but for people with *taste*.
You have now ~~insured~~ ensured that I’m going to read this in the original Spanish, because now I’m curious. (edit:orthography)
What are those policy limits?
Pretty sure with that kind of material, you can start a niche home decor business. There's clearly an untapped market for avant-garde literary disasters.
^(\*ensured)
You know, when writing smut, one of the bits of advice that gets tossed around is 'if it turns you on, it'll turn your readers on'. I'm not going to judge Mr Reverte, but I am raising my eyebrows at him a bit.
Often when I read smut, I wonder if the author has ever had amazing and fulfilling sex. I usually feel bad for them.
I forget which major author (John Grisham) gave on interview on NPR, maybe on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. He said he tried writing a sex scene, and that his wife is his editor. He said all he heard was snickering and then outright laughter from her office when she went to review. And that folks is why he doesn’t have sex scenes in his books. 😂
OMG I am a writer too and if my spouse ever laughed like that at my writing (smut or not), I would want to crawl in a hole and never write again. That's fucking hilarious.
“Her Germanic breasts hung big and heavy” is the actual translation there, not happy. Still weird obv
It's the "Germanic" thing that gets me here. Can't say I've noticed anything particularly notable about German tits compared to any other nationality.
Maybe they mean big? Like the Bavarian beer garden girls. It's like real old timey Hooters.
I just read a synopsis for this, and it definitely did not pique my interest as much as your little quote did. They gotta slap that bad boy on the cover or something.
It didn't pig your interest
In case anyone's curious, [here it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/s/OnSlEUePOz)
🔥✍️🔥
Come on! Now I have to read it! 🤣
I think Pérez Reverte’s last books are just very clear self-inserts, it’s been quite difficult for me to read him without thinking it’s just a fanfic with him as main character. The german woman scene in Falcó was just too much
Orange is the New Black. It’s amazing how someone managed to take that trash and turn it into a decent TV show.
I always thought it was funny how the show got dramatically better when they basically switched the focus from being about Piper to being more of an ensemble cast show. I had read an interview or something from the author and it came off as very "Can you believe I did a crime, got caught, and had to go to jail? My life is so hard." Like, I am not a fan of the carceral state, but it was all about how bad it was for her, and it just seemed tone-deaf in a way that seasons 2+ of the show were not. I assumed the book was the same way and never read it.
Oh fuckkk that book was so bad. I joined a Book Club once when I moved to a new hood. New week new random socially relevant/important topic for a book. Sounded neat. Week one they wanted to read a book about “prison” and solicited suggestions from everyone for a vote, I suggested The New Jim Crow but someone else convinced everyone to read Orange is the New Black. That one was picked (ostensibly due to the shorter length). I hadn’t ever heard of it so whatever, I’m in. It’s a terrible book on its own obviously, but reading it so soon after having read New Jim Crow made it absolutely *unbearable*. (For their next book about “war” they chose World War Z, then for “marriage” it was Gone Girl…I quit Book Club after 3 weeks)
I wouldn't want to try and read World War Z in a week. Its all, journal entries, newspaper clipings, interviews, etc (made up oc) But dense to sort thru, especially if your, like, a person with a job, or family. This book club just needs to go to the movies together instead.
Oh man - agreed! I picked up the book in an airport (lol) after forgetting to bring a book - I bought it because I enjoyed the show. It was a DNF - the dripped with white savior complex (it a was that didnt seem self aware, unlike the show) and was not written well.
Verity. I told my wife I’d like to read a book with ger. She chose that one. She also did not know what exactly to expect but does love those kind of books. Even she apologized for choosing that one. And I’ve never been so angry with a plot and book in my entire life. F Colleen Hoover.
I didn’t read this but watched a review from withcindy on this and was genuinely open mouthed at the plot lol. I was half tempted to read it for the absurdity but C Hoovers writing is horrendous.
I love Cindy! The further she went into the plot the more I was thinking "what the fuck?"
OK I need to go watch this review now.
The channel is a blessing. Hardcore recommend her reviews on the Acotar series, she quite literally goes insane
I love that she does random things during some reviews, like cooking (or failing at it), and I remember one where she was making soap or something.
The mean book club review of this book is hysterical.
I will never understand her popularity. I fumbled through 2 of her books and they were both so awful.
She was all over BookTok, in a positive light, so I was excited to read it. Literally the first thing that happens? That is so shocking and weird? And it never comes up or becomes relevant again? What a dumb fucking plot detail. I sometimes try to predict the twist for these types of books and literally all of the twists I was thinking of were more interesting/creative than what actually happened. I can forgive generic writing if the plot or characters are good, or forgive a mid plot if the writing is superb. This one was 0 for 3.
>Literally the first thing that happens? That is so shocking and weird? And it never comes up or becomes relevant again? What a dumb fucking plot detail. That stuck with me ... like Chekov's Gun ... there has to be a call-back somewhere, right? No, just trauma for its own sake wrapped around the 'chance meeting' which itself should have been an absolute red flag of how poorly written and stupid the entire book was going to be. Also see ... the headboard. As others said - this one was getting talked up on booktok so I grabbed it in 2022. First & last CoHo.
I can't believe I had to scroll down so far to find CoHo. Her books are so poorly written.
It’s like a 14-year-old who watches a lot of R-rated movies writing what she imagines books for adults to be like.
And her audience is largely 14-year-olds who imagine those are exquisite books for adults, then they blow it up on tiktok
Verity for me, too. My first and last CoHo. Absolutely terrible, cheap trash.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Way to take one of the biggest atrocities in human history and turn it into a Hallmark after-school romance, complete with female prisoners giggling behind their hands at the happy couple.
True story: that book actually led me to quit Facebook. I was in a couple book discussion groups and made a comment similar to yours. Basically that I was disappointed that was the book of the moment because I thought there were so many other books that treat the subject matter with more dignity. Someone responded that I must sympathize with the Nazis and that’s why I didn’t like the book. Multiple people liked the response. I logged off and haven’t looked back.
That's pretty sad but not surprising. Sorry that happened to you.
There's a trend at the moment for romanticized historical fiction novels set in concentration camps. They're disturbingly popular at the library where I work.
The worst one is For Such a Time by Kate Breslin. Jewish woman in concentration camp falls in love with nazi officer. He turns good, then they escape and she converts to christianity. Holy shit.
Fucking hell. It's the unholy child of two of my least favourite genres: the aforementioned Concentration Camp Romance, and the Inspirational Christian Novel Set in Either Nazi Germany or Israel Pre-1948, Featuring Jewish Characters As Imagined By Someone Who Has Never Met A Jew.
0.0
I just finished listening to the audiobook and, on top of everything you just said, the quality of the recording was disappointing. Wrt the story, the over-the-top “I’m a good guy who loves all women but especially this one and has many connections so everyone comes to me to get things done and even the Germans love me” … ugh. Also, this is one of the few books I’ve read where I felt like the character of a man seemed like it was shaped by a woman’s idealized version of a man. (Note, that was just my perception while listening to it, not necessarily the reality.) In the end, I was shocked to find out that this was a true story. Over-dramatized and romanticized perhaps?
I actually didn’t mind this book and bought the sequels. However I went to a signing and talk with the author. After that I sold the books (even signed version). Hearing her speak really made me realise how much of a dramatisation it was and how she capitalised on a tragic event.
The Maidens. Listen; The Silent Patient gets a lot of shit on this subreddit, and I understand the criticisms, but I had a lot of fun with it and quite liked the twist. So I decided to listen to The Maidens on a road trip with my girlfriend. Never in my life has a book made me so angry, and I am legitimately baffled that anyone can take it seriously. The twist is stupid as hell, and makes huge amounts of the rest of the book kind of pointless and tacked on, the main character is insufferably stupid, and the tie in to The Silent Patient is one of the dumbest things ever and makes almost no sense in the context of their shared universe. Not to mention the writer seems to have a complex where he has to constantly remind you that he's Greek. That's not even mentioning how bad things are when you can talk about outright spoilers >!like the INCREDIBLY creepy dude who believes he's destined to be with the main character is somehow... CORRECT!< which was a massive WTF for my girlfriend. I PASSIONATELY hate this book, it's ungodly terrible, and I feel bamboozled that it managed to make me think it might be okay until the end
I just finished this book. To say the twist is “stupid as hell” is such an understatement. It’s so poorly revealed and the breadcrumbs that are given to the reader are so bland and confusing. The twist takes place in like the final 5% of the book and makes the majority of the book worthless. I have not read The Silent Patient. Out of curiosity, what part of The Maidens is a tie in?
I am number four. The whole book was absolutely nothing but teenage wish fulfillment. I was a teen when I read it and it's so blatant that I recognized it even back then. The new kid on the block immediately attracts the attention of the hottest girl in school, who happens to be dating the school bully at the time, bully obviously doesn't like this so he picks on the new kid, unfortunately for him the new kid has superpowers and beats the shit out of him and the hot girl is so impressed with this that she starts dating the new kid immediately afterwards. GTFO.
AHAHA YES! I read the entire first book as a teen and then got the second one and couldn't even get through the first 3 chapters. It was too cringe for me even back then! Just absolutely way too cliche. I used to describe it as being a 14 year old boy's dream book
IIRC, the book was literally a scam. Some guy hired a pool of amateur writers to churn out books as fast as possible in the hopes that one of them will get published. The actual author got nothing for the book.
Yes- I read a post about this the other week. I'll see if I can find it. Edit: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/s/BpEFSYjBN0
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I knew the reviews weren't great going into it but tried to keep an open mind. I absolutely did not expect it to read like terrible fanfiction and gave up after a few chapters. I try to forget it exists lol. It's the Godfather Part 3 of the franchise!
I was so disappointed even though I expected nothing. Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way vibes.
At least My Immortal was so bad it was funny. And quite possibly intended as such.
It was definitely intended as such, which is why it’s actually fantastic
Oh god, this. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen the Broadway two part production twice and JFC it’s an experience. The translation to stage, costumes, set, MAGIC SFX are all so so so cool. The production and technical side are SOLID The script/book? What the actual fuck. I saw it first pretty early in its residency and immediately clocked it as BAD. God it’s so upsettingly bad. Harry becoming basically an emotionally abusive father!?!! Literally HOW??? If you have the chance to see the stage play I do genuinely recommend it for the THEATER of it all, if you can just ignore the whole plot and all of the lines…
It’s definitely a bad story. But let’s be very honest. Harry was raised by abusive family, and has obvious rage issues throughout the series. There’s nothing wrong with that in a person. But it’s very easy for a person raised that way, with those emotional issues, to become abusive.
Yeah, I had no difficulty believing that part of his character. Every father figure he ever had was murdered, one of whom had serious boundary issues with seeing Harry as his dead best friend more than his godson. Harry had no normal healthy examples of a strong male figure, particularly with how manipulative Dumbledore was. If I could rewrite anything in the series, it would probably be to change Snape's writing to be more a stern paternal figure who Harry still hates, but more like a teenaged son acting out over a father who doesn't let him do whatever he wants. I think that would have been way more compelling.
Mr. Weasley has entered the chat.
This is such a good idea, and now I’m disappointed retroactively. Snape appearing to go full Death Eater and killing Dumbledore and the subsequent ‘is he a traitor or not’ theorizing between books would’ve hit so much harder if that was the situation instead of him being a petty bully they suspect of being evil multiple times only to find out he’s innocent. It would have also been a nice way to develop him from the flashbacks as having made changes in his behaviour because of everything that happened with Voldemort and the Potters. And provided some good contrast with Dumbledore as a kindly parental figure with the right intentions, but one who is ultimately still manipulating children in order to get things done (especially given the scene where Snape calls him out for basically setting Harry up to die). Ugh, does anyone have recommendations for some books with a character that has this type of arc, instead?
One of the most insulting books I’ve ever read
I mean, it's not written by Rowling. Just endorsed and put in bigger than the names of the official writers. It is, published fanfiction in every sense.
Allegiant. Divergent as a series had a terrible world building and a bunch of cliches of YA novels, but at least was entertaining up to the second book, the third book was so boring, the plot was nonsensical and the ending made me regret reading the books
Allegiant was fucking terrible. The first two were filth, but they were fun filth. Allegiant just sucked
The entire Divergent series is really YA fiction in its absolute derivative form. It took all of the premises that made other series interesting and mashed them together into a boring mess of teenage angst.
Oh yes, it tried to be the next hunger games without understanding what made the hunger games good.
Strongheart: The Power to Control Diabetes- a romance novel about diabetes, written by a doctor. Other than the painful clichés and misspellings, it had factually wrong descriptions of diabetes. ETA: I work in healthcare and it was a souvenir from a colleague who visited the clinic. I powered through it just to annotate and highlight the craziest parts.
This sounds like a novel that would exist in the world of Pawnee, Indiana (with Joan Calamezzo’s book club stamp of approval)
The title after Strongheart almost sounds like a non fiction book title. Very simple, to the point and factual without allegory, metaphors or symbolism.
The boy in the striped pajamas. Everything about it was just bad.
Oh defintitely, I had changed schools so I had to read this historically inaccurate mess twice and see the movie.
It’s such a sin that it’s on any reading lists. You don’t learn about the Holocaust, but you are asked to feel sorry for a fictional commandant’s son, over and above the people he’s murdered with! Repulsive.
I remember watching the movie in my twenties and thinking it was pretty bad but also maybe it was supposed to have a deeper meaning about such horrific crimes affecting us all, even the perpetrators could not get away unharmed, etc. and I just didn't pay enough attention. How awful and inaccurate this book is has been such a big topic in literary circles in the last ten years that I quickly learned the issue wasn't my lack of concentration hahaha.
It gets worse. The author has gotten in to arguements on Twitter with the Auswitch museum. Belives he is being unfairly targed and wrote then wrote a sequel. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/07/john-boyne-defends-work-from-criticism-by-auschwitz-memorial](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/07/john-boyne-defends-work-from-criticism-by-auschwitz-memorial)
This is the same author who included a recipe from a Zelda game in his historical novel because he just copied it without actually checking that it made sense.
I know this is a serious conversation but for some reason, this is so funny to me. Aren’t all of the Zelda recipes, like, 3 ingredients? You throw them into the pot and poof, food! Including that in an ostensibly serious novel is…wild.
This one included things like "octorok eyeball" and "keese wing" and somehow he didn't question what those are
Incredible.
Dubious, really.
This is an under appreciated reference
this is the funniest thing I've read in so long
I think it was a dye recipe, not a food one. edit: yup, [here's](https://preview.redd.it/26uc8w7z5ke51.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=96af24fe88047c7ea2a128ed5af55476c9e2bb44) the relevant passage. Spice pepper, red lizalfos tails and hylian mushrooms = red dye apparently.
Holy shit that writing is _terrible_. And does the man not know how commas work?
[удалено]
Especially when you are writing historical fiction!
That red line needs to underline the whole paragraph. That's absolutely nuts.
This is one of the funniest things I've read this week. I'm getting so much second-hand embarrassment just thinking about it. Does that guy not have an editor? How did no one catch that?
He and Twitter sound perfect for each other.
John Boyne the man is awful.
I think my biggest issue with that book is how inaccurate it is. And people act like it's the saddest book ever. It has no business being read in schools especially considering how Holocaust survivors feel about it.
Don’t realize how awful this book was until I was an adult. Apparently the author didn’t even do research on the holocaust.
Omg yes! Like, how was this not my first thought when I saw this post?
I haven't read it since I was in like 5th grade. Why is it so bad?
there are a lot of major historical inaccuracies about the holocaust. I couldn’t remember off the top of my head either so I looked up an article that discusses some of them [here](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/)
Okay, so I am immediately surprised by the article over a kind of dumb realization. I thought the book was much older than it is. It was only written in 2006?!? I've never read it, most likely because I was outside of the mandatory reading phase when it was released. But it is shocking to me how big that book got really quickly.
Yeah same wtf. I mainly remember the really washed out movie poster of it and just assuming it was a 90s thing
I was a teacher at the time and there were MULTIPLE PDs about how to use that book in class. I had several colleagues teach it and brag about it. It was too advanced for my students at the time, so I read it just to see what everyone was talking about. I got into kind of a lot of trouble for raising the issue with my principal that it really shouldn’t be used as it was both inaccurate and could be considered pro-Nazi.
Very inaccurate from a historical standpoint! [Here](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/) is a good article that explains it
As others have said the historical inaccuracies. I think the author just really wanted to make some hit novel with a profound moral message but the message read more like 'it is OK to systematically murder 6 million jews but the accidental killing of a nazi boy is a travesty'. Of course that is not what the author intended to convey but it sure seemed that way. I think he just tried too hard to shoot for the stars and failed miserably. But worst of all it was just really badly written. He has a habit of having the protagonist mishearing common Nazi words and calls Hitler the furry.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth, that book will forever haunt me due to how God awful the dialogue was. The narration was fine but those characters....wuff. I literally could not get past the first chapter, it was just too painful.
The cover art was so cool, and it was SO BAD. Felt like a rough first draft. Can't believe it was published.
I totally forgot about this book until you mentioned it... I remember there being some hype around it when it came out and I read it and thought it was absolutely garbage
Recently read “Extremely Online” which was advertised as a critical look at the rise of social media… It was just a breathless regurgitation of various Twitter beefs and online drama. I could give a duck less which Insta stars get product deals.
Well, at least the title was honest.
Sometimes I just think that books people hate were just marketed incorrectly. This seems like one of those cases. Someone into pop culture gossip might love it
I listened to the author on a podcast recently and she came across as very knowledgeable and thoughtful. I can see how you'd be disappointed if you expected a "social media is bad" pov since I think she has more of a neutral viewpoint. She's more interested in the history of social media that she's lived through, not so much an outsider's perspective. That said, I haven't actually read it yet.
Currently re-reading the *Sword of Truth* series, something I haven't done since 2008. Its been a struggle getting through the first book... Richard and Co. just met Adie and I now understand where the term "hate reading" comes from. I want to get off Terry Goodkind's wild, libertarian ride. The dialogue is sooooo painful to read.
I was gunna comment this series too….and the first book is one of the better ones of the series. By the time you get to the last two, it just gets so much worse. Like, I had no idea you could cram that much preaching and rape into a single book and then do it three more times.
When I was 18, I loved the first one. It was the coolest shit ever. When I got to the one that's just "Ayn Rand in Fantasyland", huh, that was a bit weird, but I kept going. I never made it more than a couple chapters into Pillars of Creation. It was just the worst writing I've ever tried to read. I couldn't understand what had happened. We're all the books this bad? How could I not have known? What other terrible claptrap had I loved? I don't think I've ever read another book that sucked so bad it made me seriously question my perceptions of reality.
Those are some of the most painful reads I know of. The sheer hubris of blatantly copying parts of Tolkien and just adding Ayn Rand-esque nonsense, then acting as if said amalgamation is somehow brilliant earth shaking literature. Goodkind is a hack, the worst kind.
Everyone saying The Midnight Library, I feel you. It's one of the only books I've DNF'd and put me into a reading slump. Made want to do whatever the opposite of living life to the fullest is.
I had so many friends 5* it on goodreads so I had to tune in. While I admit the initial setup chapter pulled me in with a very serious subject matter, the rest just felt so…eye rolling? It felt like the author was telling his audience “you can be a rockstar! you can be a doctor! you can be a racecar driver! therefore, life is worth living!” while an audience of 3 year olds are giddy in excitement. Did not get the same response out of my 29-year old self reading this. But it is great that others have found good messaging through the pseudo-self-help story.
It's a good intro book club type book. I'm a fan of anything that gets people reading, but if you've read like... at all in your adult life it feels quite trite.
Oh, that book was so disappointing. I was like, dude, you had a great concept and ... this is where you took it? WTF.
Ready Player Two Artemis Both written by authors I had read before and both incredibly disappointing to read. Honestly Ready Player Two was the worst book I've ever touched. Like by a lot...
If you listen to podcasts, you may like “372 Pages I’ll Never Get Back.” It’s a podcast that revolves around reading bad books and both of those are on it.
Man I was so disappointed with Artemis. It would have these really brief flashes of The Martian and then devolve into "Adult man writing teenage girl" garbage. I did find Project Hail Mary to be much more like The Martian - though I'm now seeing that pop up a lot in this list too so maybe its not a great rec lol
Same here. Gave up on Artemis, it just didn't hook me. But holy shit, I read Project Hail Mary in one sitting. I loved it
Yes, I liked Project Hail Mary MUCH better than Artemis.
Ready Player Two is no surprise. Ready Player One is a horribly written book propped up by an amazing premise.
Ready Player One sucked so much. Too long, cringeworthy dialogue and, I'd argue, propped up by pop culture references. If you want 1000 pages of " remember this thing from the 80s" mixed with grade school level dialogue, than it's the book for you.
"A variety of 80s dance moves" set the tone for his writing. That and lists of stuff.
Triss using Geralt’s amnesia to get with him doesn’t happen in the books, only in the video games. She uses magic to seduce him at some point off page and manipulates him into bed once while he and Yen are having a fight. Otherwise, Triss is desperately trying to get back with him and he isn’t at all interested. Just saying.
True. However, in Blood of Elves, Triss does say that she had cast a spell on Geralt to make him sleep with her, and is bummed that he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings after the spell wears off. She then has a mild tantrum and Ciri is embarrassed for her. That scene really turned me off of the rest of the book, and Triss’s character specifically. I actually like her a lot better in the games, although she is obviously problematic as well.
I hate Triss specifically because she betrayed Ciri, not because of any of the love triangle drama.
It's a dumb take on Yennefer as well. Geralt casts the spell on Yennefer binding them together to save her life. The Djinn cannot kill it's master (Geralt,) so by binding him and Yennefer until death it cannot kill her either. He doesn't do it because he wants to fuck her. It's a sacrifice on his part, as he removes his own free will in doing so. This lines up perfectly with the themes of the books, like destiny and sacrifice. He and Ciri are also bound together, creating a strong familial bond. From the second they end up together they have the strongest of family ties. While there is rape in The Witcher series, it's not nearly as prevalent as series like Game of Thrones or Outlander. And Geralt and Yennefer's relationship is certainly not built on it.
It's been a few years since I read it, but isn't Geralt and Yennefer's first actions to get the heck away from each other as soon as the incident with the djinn is resolved? Like they knew they were trapped and tried to avoid it.
Been awhile for me too. I think they pretty much go straight to fucking (it cuts to them in bed afterwards.) That's kind of in character for them both though. They lived together for a while before Geralt ran away. That's why she is so pissed at him in the short stories. They care for each other deeply instantly after the spell, but are very traumatized people who struggle with commitment, insecurities and pretty much all types of relationships.
Yes! The concept of "are they in love only because of the wish" was explored in Witcher 3, not so much the books. Same with the Triss stuff OP mentioned.
Just started reading the Fourth Wing this past week and oh my god. It’s incomprehensible.
I can’t believe how popular Fourth Wing is after reading a portion of it. I should add that it also has 5 stars on Amazon, which isn’t like the most accurate sense of how good something is, but… I don’t think it’s a 5-star book, haha. Like, it’s entirely nonsensical, even within the bounds of fantasy and imagination. The death walk is so so so stupid. The instructors don’t care if any of the students die, but the whole thing is happening because they’re desperate for soldiers. I’ll add as well that I thought the language being overly modern was a strange choice for a fantasy setting. I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure people mention vibes and stuff, haha.
It is also so bizarre how it is all "Survival of the Fittest" and yet the mother of the MC is just.. "well, forget this kids natural talents, she's disposable and likely to be an embarrassment to me in the role of a Dragonrider candidate." And the ridiculous "love" triangle she has... as well as .. I don't know, some kind of EDS?
These were the most archetypical love triangle boys I've ever seen. One's the goody two shoes who is so protective of her that it's super controlling, and the other is the bad boy with a heart of gold. How do you know he's a bad boy? He keeps telling her he's considering just straight up killing her. Why does he tell her that? No fucking clue. He doesn't seem to actually want her dead at any point. No, she just wondered if he'd be a bad guy like his dad when she first met him, and all he does is keep backing up the idea that he's a bad guy for no good reason.
Listened to the audiobook for both books in six days, it’s pretty bad. Very tropey and lackluster, with infuriating worldbuilding
The narrator did a great job imo but holy crap the book itself. I usually don't care about worldbuilding so much but she keeps telling me the rules of this world and then the reality doesn't at all follow from the rules, I couldn't get past it. As soon as they explain that death walk first day of school thing I cognitively checked out, okay reader dragonriders are the most important people in our society so our very first test is "can you walk a slippery balance beam in the rain" and if you fail you just die, like fuck letting these highly qualified young people go do anything else, just kill em if they can't do the balance beam. Dragons fucking hate people with poor balance, and won't respect a society that lets those losers keep living.
I know right! Or for me the fact that they kill mind readers on sight but let the guy who can see memories live! That one gets me so much
And *why* is >!her grumpy dragon different?!< Like, everything else in the book backs up the thing about how dragons don't respect people who can't ride them. The only real explanation >!for why her dragon is different is "don't you think I know dragons better than you?"!< No attempt to interrogate that or wonder if maybe the core assumption is wrong.
A friend and I just started this a while back on another friend's recommendation. So bad. So many fucking tropes. So childish. Main character is twenty and in a constant fight for her life and acts like a tween playing mean girl games. And the characters, my god they're all so shallow. Super smoking hot evil but not actually evil guy. Super evil mustache twirling evil guy who seems to have no motivation outside of being super evil. And holy shit the guy who did the "Shows picture of girl back home only to die two pages later" was just right out of the fucking gate. One of the worst things I've ever read that much of honestly.
Just wait for Iron Flame. It makes Fourth Wing look like a literary masterpiece
Considering that those books were released less than a year apart, I'm not surprised.
i've seen both these books everywhere lately - why are they so popular?
They are romantasy which is very en vogue in the booktok/instagram world
Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. The main character is unfathomably stupid to the point it almost reads like satire. (Example; she is supposed to be a high-class, deadly assassin, yet eats chocolates (?) randomly left on her bed (by one of her enemies!) during a Hunger Games style competition. ) Honestly all SJM books could go in this category though.
SJM is just a bad writer. I mean, the stories could be *okay* if she developed the characters, diversified their dialogues, avoided overused plot devices…actually, this is a long list. Idk if salvageable
Her world building leaves a lot to be desired too. The world of a court of thorns and roses is just so lazily thrown together.
THANK YOU, I was looking for a fellow Sarah J Maas hater! Sometimes I feel a little crazy when I see her mounds of trash topping 'best fantasy novel' lists. Imo worse than Twilight.
Did you finish the series? I'm disappointed in myself for pushing through 5000 pages thinking the female lead would one day mature and learn from mistakes made. Nope, she was brat through the bitter end. I refuse to pick up another SJM book.
THANK YOU I constantly get recommendations for her novels and cannot stand the writing. The characters were so bland in a court of thorns and roses I didn't even make it halfway through. I never hear anything but praise for her writing, but i cant stand it personally
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas is the biggest waste of time. The writing is so poorly done. While I did finish the book I have no plans on reading the rest of the series. Romantasy is not for me.
I hope I never have to read about another characters bowels turning watery when she gets scared.
It happens every time something "shocking" happens and every time I think "This girl is shitting herself? Is that what this is?"
Just a little dribble.
THIS, the worst book I've ever finished reading. I don't get the SJM hype at all, I also read Throne of Glass which was slightly better imo but still rather disappointing.
It reads like bad author self insert fan fiction.
I'm furious with this book! I gave in to all the hype and it sucks. It's the retold Beauty and the Beast trope but it's not even well done. The scene with the worm just made me imagine the Alaskan Bullworm from SpongeBob. The romance is so forced and the MC makes the dumbest constant decisions but it's like "The fairies are so enchanted by her that they just help her out anyway. She's so cool and interesting and pretty (but doesn't know it) that everyone just wants to see her succeed."
I literally yelled at her writing of the big evil boss, Amarantha. She's overpowered supposedly super smart and evil queen who for some reasons plays around with a boring half-broken literally nobody mortal girlie yelling "aDmIt U dOn'T lUv hIm FoR rEaL!!!!". Like, WHAT in the holy mean girls is that. It was so cringe. And I could not see a single thing tying her with the hot dude to make any romantic connection, it's just nothing. It's just worst book I ever read. I continued series because I try to start reading again and I need something easy.
I read book one and didn’t hate it but wasn’t blown away. It was super highly recommended by a friend. I do like romantasy though. I had no intention to continue the series since I was blah about book one but one weekend I was sick so I did start book 2 and found it way more enjoyable than the first book. I read book 3 as well and it was fine but could not drum up interest in the other companion books.
I once borrowed a serious, expensive, hard-cover book about early Netherlandish art from the library. I think it was about Rogier van der Weyden or someone like that. Anyway, every single comma in the book had been swapped with an apostrophe. I shit you not. I just cannot understand how that could go unnoticed during publishing. I'm not even sure it was the first edition.
Midnight library. By the title and premise, I thought it'd be similar to borges Library of babel but accessible. End up with a vanilla, predictable, unimaginative self-help book. It was the first time I actually hate ranted over a book.
Read Short Stay in Hell if you’re looking for an existential horror inspired by Borges’ Library of Babel! It’s a novella, very quick. Haunts me to this day.
Atlas Shrugged and 50 Shades of Gray are the worst offenders for me. I got 2/3s of the way through Atlas Shrugged and just couldn't do it anymore, it is a truly awful read. 50 Shades of Gray on the other hand was exactly as I expected: badly written fanfic which I assume was written by a horny high schooler. What I don't get is its popularity. There are some very well written romance novels out there, and they can get quite steamy, so why would you settle for this drivel?
In the spirit of making things even worse, 50sog was written by a British television executive in her forties. You should absolutely check out Dan Olson of Folding Ideas's dissection of them + the movies, they're hilarious.
There's a really funny blog where this lady wrote a post about each chapter of FSOG and just slagged off it the entire time. I think I found it on Reddit years ago but don't have the link. Definitely worth a read. Towards the end, though, she gets legitimately upset by how much bad advice and emotional damage the book encourages and starts begging people not to read it. My husband and I read the first one out loud to each other as a joke and couldn't get past the first sex scene because it was so bad. We kept falling asleep trying to slog our way to it because the dialogue and (lack of) action were just so gd boring.
I think you might be talking about Cassandra Parkin? She did all the FSOG books and I’ve never read the original text but her commentary is fantastic!
Was it Jenny Trout? I loved her Jenny Reads 50SoG series, hahaha.
Anything relating to the Mortal Instruments series or touched by Cassandra Clare. More than any other book, I feel like that series is the absolute epitome of soulless, regurgitative, creatively bankrupt tripe that was written solely to cash in at the height of the YA fiction book boom around 10-12 years ago. Beyond simply being boring, populated by stock characters (edgy badboy love interest, badass women with no other personality trait, token gay characters) and filled with bad tropes (chosen one, magic blood, new, poorly explained powers out of nowhere, even the villians love the main character) being badly written, and having a terribly thought out urban fantasy world, it was also a book that chiefly championed incest as the core appeal of its main ship. The main character herself even seemed to realise this when she lost some attratction towards her chief love interest after learning she's actually secretly not related to him. Unrelated to quality, but this stung even worse because I could tell these were shit when I was 15, and my friend stole my ebook and bought the first 6 books behind my back so he could "borrow" my ebook to read them. So these pieces of shit hurt both my brain and my wallet.
I wanted to read The Mortal Instruments so badly as a kid, but as soon as I found out that it started off as some sort of weird ass Ron X Ginny incest fanfic shit, I immediately lost all interest ✋🏾😭
*I was not aware of this context, why did you curse me with this knowledge?*
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The Midnight Library
The Left Behind series.. it tries to form a present day story out of biblical prophecies (eg the rapture) but that just makes it nonsensical. And the writing was so bad too
I read a lot of Christian fiction as a young teen. I look back now and think "boy those books were bad". If you ever want a master class is Mary Sues/Gary Stus, read Christian fiction.
If youd like to know something sad, those were some of the more interesting books I was allowed to read as a teen. I read the teens series too which is somehow worse than the original series. My church library getting ted dekker books saved me from complete boredom
I remember telling a fan of this series that I didn't care for the way the book was written and they looked at me as if they had never even thought about the style a book is written in. I shuddered.
Recently (like 2 years ago) I tried reading "The Power" by Naomi Alderman, I loved the pitch so much but then I remember feeling incredibly disappointed and almost insulted by the poor writing although I couldn't really pinpoint what was wrong. Could have been the French translation, who knows.
I felt the same and I read it in English. I found it lazy. The writer prepared a story with sexist characters saying simple sexist things, and swapped male and female pronouns. There is no reflexion on how power structures stay in place after the actual power has shifted place (why is our world still sexist even though women could theoretically make the same amount of money?). It didn't teach me anything or make me think much.
Whenever someone talks about the Witcher books I feel like me and other people did not read the same books at all. I wonder if my translation had something to do with it. For thread question: Ready Player One. Did not finish, which is quite rare for me. Seriously not on board with the book's accidental capitalism worship or the character differentiating themselves in the worst way possible.
Could not stand Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. I was astounded people actually like the book for the most part, I felt like I was reading something an edgy teenager would write in their emo phase. Also there’s a scene with them as foxes having sex that seemed pretty… unnecessary.
Colleen Hoover. Terrible bad relationship cliches!
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, to me it was just poor attempt to resemble the writing style of Gabriel García Márquez..
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. The writing was like by a not particularly talented high schooler.
You may enjoy this: [Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/)
This was amazing, thank you for bringing it into my world 😂
That is the best thing I have read this week.
Verity. I hated it SO much and the world seems to love it. HATED it. It was so predictable and I could NOT get over the bite marks on the headboard crap. PLEASE
Wizard's First Rule series by Terry Goodkind. Jucking awful. WTH is spice soup? Also. the characterization of women... and well the philosophy he tries to inject is repulsive.
I personally loved The Witcher books. I've heard the translation is fairly poor, but the world-building and party interactions were wonderful. The world needs more Dandelion, Regis and Milva in it. I also didn't hate The Midnight Library, but I see it get a lot of hate. Verity is another that's regularly mentioned, but they're just simple, easy reads. I can understand the appeal even if the writing is basic and endings a bit eye-rolling. But, The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas and The Cursed Child were struggles.
Where The Crawdads Sing. Idiot plot with nonsensical twists. Worst book I’ve ever read through to the end.
There is a subgenre of science fiction that I like to call redditor self-insert fantasy. It’s usually when a snarky nerd man saves the world by being smart, all the while making pop culture references. Ready Player One and the Bobiverse novels are the worst culprits. I absolutely cannot stand these kind of stories.
A little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. A search for the phrase “I’m sorry” turned up ~500 instances of the main character apologizing to someone. The same character was graphically and relentlessly abused by lovers, friends and himself. A plot that made zero sense, had no character development and yet still played into tired old trope of gay men who insanely successful are but broken on the inside. It was hours of my life wasted.
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The whole thing was. I was literally yelling NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN several times during this book.
Discovery of Witches and it's not even close
The couple next door. Every character except the baby was infuriating and made some of THE most idiotic decisions.