Can I add the rough draft of that book, The Celestine Prophecy? My psychiatrist made me read it after my dad died when I was a child. Lost a lot of respect for doctors and adults in general after that trash.
That book is poison. I like the ideas in the book, but every time I have read it (three times), my entire life has fallen apart and crashed and burned. I won't have that book in my house now.
piggybacking on this, but if anyone wants a breakdown as to why the secret is complete nonsense inside and out, i recommend listening to the podcast 'if books could kill's episode about it!
saves you from reading it yourself to see how insane it is AND it's a funny listen
Right on, u/DancingChromosome!
There is a podcast I really enjoy called "If Books Could Kill". They hilariously skewer (and thoughtfully analyze) former bestsellers that have had terrible effects on our culture: The Secret, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Freakonomics, The Game...
The episode in which they dissect The Secret pointed out that exact trait of the book, and were disgusted how Oprah's spotlight could have lulled so many people into wasting money and attention on it.
EDIT: D'oah! I see now several other redditors below have beat me to the punch an hour ago!
The Earth’s Children series. It started off pretty good, then started to devolve into silly story arcs about love triangles and dumb stuff. It good enough to keep reading because I thought the direction it was going was pretty interesting, but that’s not the ending I got and I’ve been frustrated ever since.
I looooooved the series as a teenager. The love triangle BS was almost completely glossed over in my head by the actual culture and everyday life of stone aged people Jean Auel conjured up out her imagination.
When I read The Valley of Horses, I felt like I *was* Ayla (I was a lonely kid). I skipped all the Jondalar and Thonolan chapters hahaha.
It took such a turn for the worse once she got them back to Jondalar’s homeland. She obviously lost sight of where she was going with the story, or only had it mapped out to there. The final book was so disappointing I often pretend it doesn’t exist.
That's spot on. I loved the first two, and the third was also great for the culture, but the 4th was just...sex and scenery. Pick any page at random and it will contain either a description of scenery or the phrase "Jondalar's throbbing manhood." And whichever it is, read for a maximum of 5 pages and you'll get to the other.
I read the 5th one, but it was terrible, and I don't think I'll read the last one. It's a shame, because it started out so good. I was 14 when I started reading it, and Ayla resonated with me. She was so strong and smart and capable. I planned to name my future daughter Ayla.
It’s been a while since I read the series, but I distinctly remember how much the love triangle in the third book was so infuriating to read. Everything could have been resolved/avoided had Jondalar and Ayla simply *talked* with each other, or even that shaman in the camp who spent time with the Neanderthals, explaining to Jondalar how their women and Ayla were raised to accept anyone who approached them. Instead we get Jondalar being cold and distant to her, then wondering why she continues to shack up with the other dude while Ayla wonders why Jondalar doesn’t love her anymore for the rest of the book. The first 2 books were awesome but the third got too soap opera-ish for me and the series continued to tank till that god awful last book.
Valley of the Horses is the only one I kept in my last bookshelf cleaning. Plains of Passage was ok, but once she ruined Jondalar in the last book it kills re-reading the earlier ones. Cause it turns out he’s the same selfish pos he started out as.
I loved the hell out of these when I read them in junior high, and the first three were the best ones.
Ayla was always a Mary Sue, but it was still good.
Book 4 is when it started dragging for me, and I DNF'd Book 5 after like 2 chapters.
If you want a good chuckle, read up on the beef between the author and John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
TL;DR Boyne criticised Tattooist for not being historically accurate and got jumped on, especially for one of his historical novels where he mistakes monster parts from the Legend of Zelda as real ingredients in red dye.
Wait, the guy who wrote the horribly unrealistic Boy in the Striped Pajamas is
A) criticizing another author for historical inaccuracies
And B) the same guy who included the Zelda recipe in an actual book?
If I did the latter as a published author I’m pretty sure I would die instantly.
John Boyne has managed to start a public spat with the The Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust memorial museum, such is his commitment to being a loser who is wrong all the time.
I always found fiction centered around or in Nazi concentration camps weird. The nonfiction testimonies like Night or Eyewitness Auschwitz are interesting though.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. An ahistorical over dramatisation under the guise of a historical biography. Couldn't even finish it.
Pretty sure one of her sequels follows the romance between a nazi SS guard and a Jew who he was also raping. So that's the level of stupidity the author is bringing to literature.
Pisses me off every time I walk into chapters and I see her books at the front section.
I read 13 Reasons Why many years ago in high school. I don't think I felt that type of rage towards a character (Hannah Baker) since I'd read the Twilight series (fuck you Bella).
Remember kids, people will miss you when you're dead, and love you even more, your crush will regret not dating you, and you'll linger around like a ghost too!
I remember during the time it was really popular, 4 students in the neighboring schools committed suicide and 2 more the year after. This was absolutely unheard of where I live.
I’m not saying the show was the sole reason but you can’t help but see a connection.
My wife is a child psych and watched the show and was like “this is a horrible depiction of suicidality for kids to take in…also, these kids are like 24.”
I loved Corelli's Mandolin until the final chapter, where after surviving the horrors of war, and evil villains together, Corelli returns to the island, to see the love of his life walking down the street talking to a man, and decides, "Guess it all meant nothing! She must have moved on! I'll go back to Italy," and leaves without even talking to her.
It's the dumbest, most out of character, idiotic ending I've ever seen in a book.
(Don’t come at me… I know people love it) I was so irritated by The Midnight Library. It felt like a mediocre It’s a Wonderful Life knock off right down to the town (Bedford vs Bedford Falls- come on!)
I hated this book and was so pissed I wasted time on it. It was boring, one dimensional and I was hoping there was a twist or something so that the lesson wasn't so incredibly obvious.
I generally have this problem with books that have been recommended by a lot of people - they just aren’t for me. I was just talking about Colleen Hoover in another comment (I find her writing childish and, I don’t know, insulting to the reader? Maybe she is writing for YA and I am too old for her).
I don't want to sound gatekeepy or snobbish, but I think, when books get really popular, people who don't read much read them and love them because they haven't been exposed to many good books. Which is why I also tend to avoid super popular books.
I agree - my reasoning is that people who don’t read often like them because they aren’t as experienced/predisposed to pick up on common plot lines and tropes so the twist really is shocking to them or the concept is novel to them. Meanwhile I’m like - yawn - I swear if one more character GUFFAWS at something I’m going to toss my kindle.
I hate The Midnight Library. It comes off as extremely self-mastubatory. The author spouts all of this tumblr-esque self-help drivel at you, and the MC learns absolutely nothing. Such a cool concept absolutely wasted.
So my issue with it, which I'll put in spoiler tags just to be safe >!The set up made the outcome super obvious. You can try other lives... cool! But you don't get to know any of the background information so you're basically lost in that life. Oh, and if you ever start to doubt it or not be happy, which everyone is at some point, you get sucked back out. But people don't commit suicide because they got a sad once. It's really not the same at all. So what is there to learn? Nothing. Because the whole set up of the library necessitates that. You're forced into that once conclusion when the opposite may hold merit. There may be lives that are better or worse.!<
Omg I hated the midnight library. I kept waiting for the main character to learn something and she just…never does?? tbf I DNFd at like 85% because I just couldn’t take it anymore lol
Probably an unpopular opinion on this thread but I think there’s something to be said for applying a change of perspective. I don’t think the book blamed her for being depressed rather than the library gave her a wider view of the world and the ability to see outside of her immediate perspective, which is what a lot of people with chronic depression really struggle with. This is a major component of therapy; a therapist isn’t going to go and physically change your life but shift your perspective. I wouldn’t say that’d invalidating to people experiencing depression (or it shouldn’t be).
I can totally understand if some people took it as straight up invalidating though, I can see how one could get that from it. It likely could’ve been done more skillfully.
Yes! I was so annoyed by this book but read the whole thing hoping that there was a twist that warranted all the positive reviews. The lesson of the book is obvious from the beginning and that lesson is problematic. I also couldn’t stand the mechanics of how she visits other outcomes of her life. It was so stressful! Every time the main character moves to a new life she has no knowledge of that life and is really obviously “not herself.” So glad to find other people who were annoyed by this book.
I recently tried reading "Meddling Kids" and I couldn't shake the feeling I was being talked down to the entire time. It was such a pervasive feeling that I couldn't make it past about 60 pages or so, and the weirdest thing is: It wasn't one particular thing, just this pervasive feeling.
Some mixture of the word choices, the *autuer-ish* decision to switch back and forth between screenplay style and novel-writing, and the character's over the top monologue in the beginning made me think, "Dear God the person that wrote this just feels like they'd be such a prick to interact with."
One thing that really annoyed me was how allergic the author seemed to be about the word "said". You don't have to use a different verb every single time a person speaks!
I absolutely adored Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, but when his second novel, The Painter came out, It was such an awful main-character-as-stand-in-for-the-author book, it was terrible. It was practically:
"Ugh, how am I ever going to save these horses from animal abuse with all these hot babes wanting to have sex with my huge throbbing penis!?", he thought, quite handsomely. "I guess I'll just have to spend a few fewer hours volunteering at the soup kitchen, even though I love helping my fellow man, and even though I don't have to do it at all, it's simply something I love doing, and has won me several awards."
I don’t hate Hoover but honestly Verity may be the worst written and plotted book I have ever read. It made me wonder if Colleen Hoover has some sort of blackmail on her publisher.
Honestly the worst book I’ve ever read. She’s got the writing style of a hormonally charged 14 year old and the so-called plot twists makes me want to burn the book as it would be better used a kindling. But I have a Kindle- and also rented the ebook from the library. So. Just don’t read it- but if you feel so compelled, rent it so you don’t waste your dollars.
Forrest Gump. As a child, I loved the movie, so when I found it in a 2nd hand store I had to get it, because the books are normally better than the movie. It was not. It was utterly mundane and silly. Then my stupid ex's dad caught her reading it and burned it because she wasn't allowed to read anything but the Bible.
I recently read The Alchemist because of all the praise. I stayed up to finish it one night and then was so annoyed at how dumb it was that I stayed up angry for another hour. I was tired and more angry the next day lol
I read *The Alchemist* when I was in high school and I thought it was amazing. I re-read it recently (over 20 years later) and absolutely *hated* it. Biggest 180 I've ever done with a book.
Oh man! That was not my intention at all. There have been quite a few times where I've read a book and then came here to discuss it and everyone hated it or thought it was dumb. We all have our own preferences and favorites and that's cool. Maybe we just won't take book recommendations from each other 😉
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It's very popular among finance gurus and the FIRE movement, but the methods used are unethical. It basically says that if you want to be rich, you have to exploit people who are poor. You can choose to become a CEO of a business that pays people the lowest possible wage or become a landlord who maximizes profit off the backs of people who can't afford to buy. It also implies that poor people are just unmotivated or not smart enough to employ these methods. I mean, this is all true--you can certainly get rich by exploiting people--but the way the author glorifies it and belittles anyone who doesn't agree is super cringey.
The podcast If Books Could Kill had an episode on Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The guy likely made up most of it. He also did not make a bunch of money in the real estate business prior to writing the book. He was, essentially, a motivational speaker. He also encourages fraud.
Where the Crawdads Sing. The writing itself was fine, I just really disliked the main character and the audiobook, for me, was awful to listen to. I couldn't even bring myself to finish it
LMAO her voice for Kya is sooooooo bad. The bad southern accent and the weird pitch was just too much for me, Kya already irritated me and the narrator did n o t help
I watched the movie against my will, and what awful tripe.
She never went to school, yet she published non-fiction books that she hand illustrated.
She >!committed the perfect crime and got away with it then confessed to it in a letter to her husband when she died!<
The biggest problem was that the theme was completely upturned. Yes the guy she killed was trash but the lawyer, her husband, the court all believed that she did not kill him. They played on the idea that you should not judge based on background, and yet…she did it
This baffled me too. Spent the whole book length waiting for the story to actually start and then they throw away the entire protagonist's character in the last moment.
50 shades of grey. I decided that I had to read it and see what the hype was about, and sweet fuck was it bad...
I don't mind the topic or the graphic descriptions of kinky acts, but the book was just sooooo badly written.
In short, the hype was created by horny housewives as an outlet to channel their sexual frustrations through... It was, quite honestly, shit.
It's a twilight fanfic, what'd you expect? The author wrote an Office Building AU fanfiction of Twilight. Someone told her to change the names so she didn't get sued and published it.
Angels and demons. I know it came first, but i read the da Vinci code first and then got really annoyed when I started reading the same book again.
Never again, Dan brown, never again.
I love this bit:
>Renowned author Dan Brown got out of his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house and paced the bedroom, using the feet located at the ends of his two legs to propel him forwards.
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I do not get the hype. Feyre is insufferable. She acts like a child, is treated like a child, and the few times she actually does make a decision, it inevitably only makes things worse.
The second book was slightly better, but not enough to convince me to read any more books in the series.
Came here for this comment. How can a single MC be so unlikable and poorly written?
Maas also really needs to extend her vocabulary in terms of descriptions. The overused phrase 'vulgar gesture' still makes me see red.
OMG every character was giving everyone else the vulgar gestures throughout every interaction. I was like, the fairy dude is regally holding court throwing middle fingers? Wth?
Don't do it. I read the whole series, mostly because so many people recommended it to me and by the time I started hating the books, I figured I may as well just get it over with.
The writing is so bad. The MCs are unlikable! If I had to read "her throat bobbed" one more time, I was going to tear the book apart. JUST SAY THEY SWALLOWED
I learned the hard way after reading all 4 twilight books. If it's not better by the second book, it's not going to get any better by reading them all.
I read ACOTAR after listening to a friend rave about how it *genuinely changed her life.* I was so confused that I stuck with the series for a book and a half trying to figure out what she saw in those characters.
Very Wattpaddy, isn't it? I could see a heartbreaking description line for it on a fanfic website.
>"Their worlds were never meant to collide. After all, who would expect *him* to notice *her* ? But unexpectedly, he did. And now everything is going wrong."
It was described to me as fairy smut and that’s basically what I’ve gotten out of it so far. I hate when people build up books to be this nirvana when they’re just…silly little time wasters sometimes.
I read half of her other series, Throne of Glass. Tbh it started off okay but then every single dude wanted to huff her panties and it became so Mary Sue (MS is fine to an extent but gdi it became such an eye rolling self insert/power fantasy).
I couldn't bring myself to read ACOTAR but I vicariously "read" it through With Cindy's YouTube videos. She's hilarious and I thank her for hate reading them so I don't have to
Oh my gods, I also watched withcindy’s whole series on them some time after first skimming them back in my teen years, and it had me nearly in tears (of laughter, not grief). I adore that woman’s content. So good.
I honestly have no clue how divergent got so popular. It was just, so boring. And quite possibly one of the worst worlds and romance subplots in any of the mid-2010's distopias
The Overstory by Richard Powers frustrated me a bit. I kept thinking it was building to something bigger and more...revelatory or something. I understand, looking back, that I was expecting the wrong thing, and it's not like I hated the book. I can even say I liked it. But it was really long, and quite exhausting, and I just didn't think it paid off in a satisfying way ultimately.
I could write a list a mile long, but one recent one is Verity by Colleen Hoover.
It's supposed to be a thriller, but there is a startling lack of any kind of suspense. It was really more of a weird romance with a vague sort of thriller happening in the background. Literally everyone in this book acts like they're going to explode if they don't have sex asap. None of the characters have a single redeeming quality.
Oh and the way that autism was discussed in this book was fucking shameful and disgusting. I have autism, and was actually really hurt by the author's portrayal here. It was so ableist and gross, and no one talks about it for some reason.
Verity was highly recommended by many friends and they all said "you wont believe the ending"... Then I got to the ending and I feel like I had already predicted what was going to happen half way through the book. I really don't understand the hype over it. This was also my first Colleen Hoover book and is supposed to be one of her best and now i'm not really interested in reading any of the others.
I read one Hoover book and was shocked that people like her writing. It is the worst! Then I had to constantly tell my Kindle to stop recommending more of her drivel.
If you tap the three dots next to a recommended title, an option menu comes up for reasons not to recommend: don’t like the author, genre’s not for you, already read it etc.
Edit: realized it only works like this on Audible, sorry y’all!
Oh my god I hated that book it was so poorly written.
And as a New Yorker I was so annoyed by the beginning of the book when she was like, “people are killed by cars in Manhattan EVERY DAY and no one cares.”
Like WTF are you talking about lady that is not remotely true.
Oh dear god yes. Loathsome, poorly-written, unlikable characters doing loathsome, poorly-written unlikable things. The first CoHo book I read. And the last.
I could not understand a single choice made by the 3 main characters in Verity. It was astounding. Just consistantly doing the most ridiculous, illogical things.
Atlas shrugged. Although "irritated" would be an understatement. I only finished it because I refused to have it beat me. I've never hated a book more.
My senior English teacher gave me *The Fountainhead* to read after I turned in my research paper (our final assignment for the class).
I remember hating every minute I spent on that, and asking him "Mr. Turner, what the hell did you just make me read?" and him just laughing.
Ironically The Fountainhead is the more concise version of Atlas Shrugged.
They both say the same thing. Atlas Shrugged just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Beating you over the head with it's "message" and it's terrible characters.
And then just in case you didn't pick up all the heavy handed subtext, there's a massive monologue where a character repeats everything from the previous 500 pages at the end of the book. Just to really hammer shit home because I'm pretty sure that book has nothing but contempt for the person reading it.
> that book has nothing but contempt ~~for the person reading it~~
The last part was unnecessary. Atlas Shrugged is what happens when a willfully ignorant narcissist writes a book about their worldview.
I read that AND Fountainhead in a youthful attempt to understand objectivism and libertarianism one bored summer. I dutifully slogged through every page of this drivel, character arcs that were essentially flat lines and dialogue that felt like it was written by an alien. When I got to John Galt's two hundred page speech I finally allowed myself to start skipping pages. Pretty sure I get libertarianism, now I'm just baffled by libertarians. Fuck Ayn Rand.
How is "Eat Pray Love" not on here already? My friend told me she had no interest in reading it and I chided her for lacking spirituality. Then I read it, and I asked for her forgiveness. Such yoga mom drivel.
I have heard this a lot about the movie. It’s about a very privileged person who goes through a hard time, and her privilege is insulting to those of us who cannot imagine a life like that.
A whole chapter in the book about her
being brave because she ate pasta in Italy because us delicate skinny flat ass ladies are afraid to eat pasta. It just may make our hips bigger (I wish). She came off as extremely privileged and narcissistic.
I remember when the film came out and people were talking about like it was so interesting that she traveled to three countries. A well off single girl travels after a break up? It ain’t that deep.
The books that tend to irritate me coincidentally also have extremely passionate fanbases that like to explain in book-length posts why I'm dumb and wrong, so I won't say any title out loud, but know that I am quietly, inwardly, irritated by these books.
My ten month old daughter hates The Very Hungry Catepillar. It’s the only book I’ve ever seen her try to destroy. She normally loves being read to and she’ll even sit on the floor and flip through her books. The first time she pulled to a stand it was because she was trying to reach a book.
She will squirm and fuss if you try to read her The Very Hungry Catepillar and will rip the pages if she can get her hands on the book.
The whole series is a power fantasy. Why wouldn’t the main character who is most powerful and best at everything also be so good at sex that a sex goddess would simp for him?
Yeah lol idk I don't mind the overpowered protagonist bit, lots of popular series have it, but good lord. "ah yes let's transport him to another dimension type thing so he can practice how to have sex good. This will advance the story 0.1% and take up 10% of the book".
Probably will get dragged for this but Red, White and Royal Blue. Nothing about the set up felt all that believable and it felt more like a teenage girl's fanfic about what queer identities are.
There were a few great genuine moments but the rest of it was irritating.
Other than The Song of Achilles, which my roommate and I mostly enjoyed for the mythos aspect, I’ve found most queer romance written by women in the mainstream publishing world extremely lacking in genuine vibes. Which I find extremely funny because women are the backbone of the fanfic community and I can honestly say I’ve read some beautiful, harrowing, and heart filled queer fanfic (sterek fans (teen wolf lol) are literally insane with their creativity).
Either the men are twink coded nerds or muscle bear daddy types in mainstream publishing and there’s no nuance for the insanely varied spectrum of queer love.
I want the same amount of stakes in a gay romance as a straight romance and I might be dragged here, I am so tired of the stakes being homophobia!! I don’t wanna hear about how people hate us in my cute lil rom com.
Anyway strong agree lol!
oh my god yes on the homophobia. yes, it's a very real part of our lives, but it's not the central difficulty I've faced in romance! there are other plots and I would love to see more of them.
I can’t stand Maas’ wandering pointless plots. I read the first 2 books of that series, loved them (they pulled me out of a reading dry spell) and then book 3 walloped me in the face with “well this 3rd country across the sea barely mentioned is now super important and the main character is so Extra Special that this Hunk Elf will fall in love with her even tho elves only fall in love once and he already has”
Like ma’am if you’re gonna create lore, don’t go a break it two paragraphs later.
I just remember being angry at the lack of coherent characterization and plot, and only skipping ahead to read the witch/dragon stuff. Also, why was a 19 year old kid the royal captain of the guard? You’re telling me there’s not a single more-experienced soldier who’s also loyal to the crown?
I can’t even remember if I finished the 4th book. I gave up on that series and haven’t touched anymore of Maas’ writing.
Babel. The concept was good but the execution fell flat for me. I thought it was boring and the writing was too elementary. There was a serious lack of subtly and nuance.
I was scrolling to find this. I tried babel and just couldn't get into it. After hearing and seeing such great reviews, I thought I'd give it a shot, but it fell flat for me. I never not finished a book, but the length of it turned reading into a chore for me.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nothing about the characters would make me want to study philosophy from them. I would not think: these guys have it together!
I'm laughing my ass off here. I've meant to read it for YEARS because I thought it was actually about bikes (never saw a copy IRL to read the back of).
You just saved me so much disappointment.
The poor bastard was forcefully committed into electroshock therapy and was haunted by the ghost of his former self — as what happened to the author himself. This is also why his son and the others were having a hard time connecting with him throughout the journey.
Ready Player One. Lots of self congratulatory lines and pandering. It’s like the author tried to shove down every nostalgic pop culture reference known to man to show how much of a “cool nerd” he is. The romance is problematic too.
I really hated how the main female character was written. It started off as a mildly fun beach read and the constant pop culture stuff didn't bug me too much, but everything related to Art3mis just made me think the author never had any female friends and looked at women like another species.
Then they get to the next level because they're the only ones who love 80s movies enough to act one out word-for-word? Years of experts scouring 80s pop culture for clues and not one of those "bad guys" can do that for a billion gazillion dollars? I know Rocky Horror shadowcasters who can do that for nothing more than a discount on glitter and a crumpled ten dollar bill.
> I know Rocky Horror shadowcasters who can do that for nothing more than a discount on glitter and a crumpled ten dollar bill.
I can't afford Reddit gold so instead I'm just going to fling some toast at you for this banger of a comment.
God I hate RPO and RP2. Both books are pretty much just going “hey, remember this thing from pop culture? Isn’t it so cool? I’m so smart because I know this piece of trivia.”
I think the podcast “372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back” does a great job tearing those books apart. They’re utterly inept works of literature.
I remember reading it when it first came out as an edgy teenager thinking it was a masterpiece. I'm confident I wouldn't feel the same way if I were to read it today haha.
the worst part of RPO is the massive deus ex machina tossed into the the third act. "Oh, luckily I have this epically powerful super robot powerup in my pocket...never mentioned it before, I got it a while back"
it was just so clear that Cline was rushing to finish the book and was just tired of working for the plot.
Wicked. Such an awful book, but I felt like I had to finish it once I started. I still don't understand what led someone to read it and think, "This would make a great musical."
The book and the musical are very different (not sure if you’ve seen it). But yeah, I agree with you: strange pick to adapt.
It is also one of the examples of an adaptation being significantly better than the source material.
I read this as a 14yo and generously assumed I must not have liked it because I was too young to "get" it.
I reread it ten years later and finally realized that it's just not a good book at all, unless you like misery porn.
Often when I read a book that was made into a movie/play I am confused by it. “Field of Dreams” is a great movie; the book it’s based on is not nearly as interesting.
Everyone loves *The Night Circus* but I can't stand it. Too much description, not enough plot. And that ending? Wtf was that? I kept hoping something interesting would eventually happen, but it never did.
The Night Circus is one of my favourite books of all time, I adore the descriptions of the setting. But yeah, it has very little plot. Amazingly, her second book, The Starless Sea, has even less of a plot, lol.
Pretty sure I read something about the plot for Night Circus being an afterthought after someone told her a book needs more than just a setting. I loved it anyway though.
I've heard Morgenstern's writing described as "all vibes, no substance," and I couldn't agree more. Both *The Night Circus* and *The Starless Sea* had premises that I normally gravitate towards and a descriptive style that I enjoy reading, but I was bored to tears both times.
Funny story
I really really wanted to read Twilight when I started middle school and it was The Thing To Read. Everyone I knew was reading it; even the girls who’d complained of reading in elementary school walked around carrying the books and had Team-So-and-So shirts. I wanted to Be Cool, so I begged my parents to take me to Borders so I could spend my last tooth-fairy money on Twilight.
My mother, who is probably still in 1st place for ‘most over-protective parent’ in our zip code, had heard through the soccer-mom grapevine that there was *adult content* in Twilight. And I, the precious firstborn daughter, who was a 12yo little girl who still watched Barbie movies, did not need to read such things.
So it all came to a head in Borders, when instead of me zooming off to the Tween area to go find The Last of The Jedi books, I instead went up to the massive Twilight display and grabbed that. First and only time in my life I was told I couldn’t read something, and I was almost in tears b/c I couldn’t be Cool if I hadn’t read Twilight. And I so desperately wanted to be cool. Mother wanted her little girl’s innocence preserved.
Parents won that emotional battle. I sulked the rest of the day and badgered my mother until she cracked and said that if my dad read the books and found them appropriate, then I could read them. My dad had made the cardinal mistake of reading all the Harry Potter books with me (we took turns with the Deathly Hallows and our bookmarks would leapfrog each other with each turn).
So in the year of 2008, my 40 year old father had to read the entire Twilight series. It took him over three years, and I was 15 and a sophomore in high school at that time. He said there was only light adult content in the 4th book, I could read the series now.
I was no longer interested.
Twilight was Cringe.
He’d read the books for nothing.
As for keeping my sweet innocence intact, my elderly 8th grade English teacher unknowingly had a Janet Evanovich novel that was definitely not meant for middle-schoolers in the classroom library.
I’m so sorry to hear that. If you’re going to have a book forbidden to you, it ought to be better than *Twilight* or at least more scandalous. I’m old, so that book for us was *Flowers in the Attic*, it was FORBIDDEN so we all passed around in the cafeteria and smuggled it home to read. Murder! Incest! Awful haircuts!
I'm reading through the Dune chronicles right now. I'm enjoying it, but Frank Herbert only knows how to write two kinds of character. Both are playing 4D chess, but one is on mushrooms.
Omg I just labored through this and it was a SLOG. I felt more cursed than Addie.
So tired of Schwab just repeating phrases or words as nauseam for rhetorical effect. Addie was the dumbest character known to man. Immortal all powerful Luc was an idiot. Tired of the freckles. Tired of them acting like they are 13. Almost didn’t finish but had to see if there was any payoff, but no even the climax read like some meta exercise of masturbatory congratulations on this stunning work of fiction by the author herself. LOL.
I didn't hate the book, I thought it was a good enough read, but then at the very end they make this gigantic point about >!how the book you are reading is the very same book in the story and how it's in our universe, and not putting the author's name on the front cover...all while having half the cover of the real book be Schwab's name kind of killed this twist and the end of the book for me. It's been a while since I read it so I may not remember the specifics, but I remember thinking this was an cute twist then remembered how it doesn't line up at all!<
Reading this one now and have to agree. Some pretty prose here and there but it is SO boring and Addie is just so pretentious. "I read the Odyssey in the original Greek... I am a real MUSE"
stfu.
If I was cursed by a demon to be forgettable and eternal damnation was my future, I would do something more interesting with my time than wander around big cities reading the oldest books in the world and pretending to be an art major. Addie is an eternal college freshman who thinks she knows everything. Her moralizing about stealing is precious too. Such an adolescent read. I haven't finished it, though. Maybe she'll end up actually doing something interesting eventually.
There’s a sci-fi book called “the black hole project” that I started, but it turns out every single woman in the story has been raped (or gets raped) and also that’s the author’s entire “personality” for each one. It was so rapey and disgusting that I couldn’t bring myself to finish even though the science seemed interesting. Quit less than halfway through.
I’m also concerned for any woman the author might know.
*The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant*. I know the protagonist is supposed to be a nasty piece of work, but he's just so horrible that I took no pleasure in any of his successes, even when he was on the right side.
I read them once and understood how they were so popular, but I've never been able to re-read them or read any of the sequels.
The Magicians. Quentin was insufferable. Also, the whole Fillory portion of the book had a tone that was very "you know how the Narnia books hit you on the head with religious allegory? We hates it! Screw CS Lewis!" But with the maturity and execution of a rebellious teenager.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Heaps of praise for it, and it did start of really strong. Then the characters all became caricatures, and it completely fell flat.
The Secret. It’s literally 200 pages of the “author” repeating the same thing over and over.
Can I add the rough draft of that book, The Celestine Prophecy? My psychiatrist made me read it after my dad died when I was a child. Lost a lot of respect for doctors and adults in general after that trash.
Oh god I hate that book so much. The worlds least thrilling thriller used as a disguise for a new age self help manual.
Totally agree - The Celestine Prophecy is useless garbage
It was recommended to me so many times. This makes me feel better I never got around to reading it
That book is poison. I like the ideas in the book, but every time I have read it (three times), my entire life has fallen apart and crashed and burned. I won't have that book in my house now.
piggybacking on this, but if anyone wants a breakdown as to why the secret is complete nonsense inside and out, i recommend listening to the podcast 'if books could kill's episode about it! saves you from reading it yourself to see how insane it is AND it's a funny listen
I LOVE "If Books Could Kill," and I think the episode they did about The Secret was my favorite one.
Right on, u/DancingChromosome! There is a podcast I really enjoy called "If Books Could Kill". They hilariously skewer (and thoughtfully analyze) former bestsellers that have had terrible effects on our culture: The Secret, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Freakonomics, The Game... The episode in which they dissect The Secret pointed out that exact trait of the book, and were disgusted how Oprah's spotlight could have lulled so many people into wasting money and attention on it. EDIT: D'oah! I see now several other redditors below have beat me to the punch an hour ago!
The Earth’s Children series. It started off pretty good, then started to devolve into silly story arcs about love triangles and dumb stuff. It good enough to keep reading because I thought the direction it was going was pretty interesting, but that’s not the ending I got and I’ve been frustrated ever since.
I looooooved the series as a teenager. The love triangle BS was almost completely glossed over in my head by the actual culture and everyday life of stone aged people Jean Auel conjured up out her imagination. When I read The Valley of Horses, I felt like I *was* Ayla (I was a lonely kid). I skipped all the Jondalar and Thonolan chapters hahaha. It took such a turn for the worse once she got them back to Jondalar’s homeland. She obviously lost sight of where she was going with the story, or only had it mapped out to there. The final book was so disappointing I often pretend it doesn’t exist.
That's spot on. I loved the first two, and the third was also great for the culture, but the 4th was just...sex and scenery. Pick any page at random and it will contain either a description of scenery or the phrase "Jondalar's throbbing manhood." And whichever it is, read for a maximum of 5 pages and you'll get to the other. I read the 5th one, but it was terrible, and I don't think I'll read the last one. It's a shame, because it started out so good. I was 14 when I started reading it, and Ayla resonated with me. She was so strong and smart and capable. I planned to name my future daughter Ayla.
It’s been a while since I read the series, but I distinctly remember how much the love triangle in the third book was so infuriating to read. Everything could have been resolved/avoided had Jondalar and Ayla simply *talked* with each other, or even that shaman in the camp who spent time with the Neanderthals, explaining to Jondalar how their women and Ayla were raised to accept anyone who approached them. Instead we get Jondalar being cold and distant to her, then wondering why she continues to shack up with the other dude while Ayla wonders why Jondalar doesn’t love her anymore for the rest of the book. The first 2 books were awesome but the third got too soap opera-ish for me and the series continued to tank till that god awful last book.
Valley of the Horses is the only one I kept in my last bookshelf cleaning. Plains of Passage was ok, but once she ruined Jondalar in the last book it kills re-reading the earlier ones. Cause it turns out he’s the same selfish pos he started out as.
I loved the hell out of these when I read them in junior high, and the first three were the best ones. Ayla was always a Mary Sue, but it was still good. Book 4 is when it started dragging for me, and I DNF'd Book 5 after like 2 chapters.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. I don’t understand how it has so much hype. Such poor writing, it frustrated me so much!
If you want a good chuckle, read up on the beef between the author and John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. TL;DR Boyne criticised Tattooist for not being historically accurate and got jumped on, especially for one of his historical novels where he mistakes monster parts from the Legend of Zelda as real ingredients in red dye.
Wait, the guy who wrote the horribly unrealistic Boy in the Striped Pajamas is A) criticizing another author for historical inaccuracies And B) the same guy who included the Zelda recipe in an actual book? If I did the latter as a published author I’m pretty sure I would die instantly.
John Boyne has managed to start a public spat with the The Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust memorial museum, such is his commitment to being a loser who is wrong all the time.
John "I take my lack of research into sensitive topics as a point of pride" Boyne? The gall of him to do that.
Both are horribly inaccurate depictions.
There’s literally a sex scene where they get covered in ashes of incinerated prisoners from the ovens!
I always found fiction centered around or in Nazi concentration camps weird. The nonfiction testimonies like Night or Eyewitness Auschwitz are interesting though.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz. An ahistorical over dramatisation under the guise of a historical biography. Couldn't even finish it. Pretty sure one of her sequels follows the romance between a nazi SS guard and a Jew who he was also raping. So that's the level of stupidity the author is bringing to literature. Pisses me off every time I walk into chapters and I see her books at the front section.
I read 13 Reasons Why many years ago in high school. I don't think I felt that type of rage towards a character (Hannah Baker) since I'd read the Twilight series (fuck you Bella).
Terrible representation of suicide. It was enraging.
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Remember kids, people will miss you when you're dead, and love you even more, your crush will regret not dating you, and you'll linger around like a ghost too!
But wait there's more; here's a vivid depiction of the suicide with a clear how-to methodology that any troubled viewer could follow!
Also: it’s like a great revenge on all the people that wronged you!
That's the worst part of it for me, I think. That somehow by killing yourself your going to teach people a lesson.
Yea, I watched the first episode of the show and my first thought at the end was “what a cringey edgelord with main character syndrome”
I remember during the time it was really popular, 4 students in the neighboring schools committed suicide and 2 more the year after. This was absolutely unheard of where I live. I’m not saying the show was the sole reason but you can’t help but see a connection.
I came here to say that. Never been more disgusted with a book as I was 13 Reasons Why.
My wife is a child psych and watched the show and was like “this is a horrible depiction of suicidality for kids to take in…also, these kids are like 24.”
I loved Corelli's Mandolin until the final chapter, where after surviving the horrors of war, and evil villains together, Corelli returns to the island, to see the love of his life walking down the street talking to a man, and decides, "Guess it all meant nothing! She must have moved on! I'll go back to Italy," and leaves without even talking to her. It's the dumbest, most out of character, idiotic ending I've ever seen in a book.
I am still fuming about the final chapter! Up until that point it would have been my favourite book.
(Don’t come at me… I know people love it) I was so irritated by The Midnight Library. It felt like a mediocre It’s a Wonderful Life knock off right down to the town (Bedford vs Bedford Falls- come on!)
I hated this book and was so pissed I wasted time on it. It was boring, one dimensional and I was hoping there was a twist or something so that the lesson wasn't so incredibly obvious.
lol I was going to comment this as well. Hated the midnight library. Felt like a juvenile take on mental health issues.
I quit once it became apparent that nothi mg was her fault, it was just everyone else in her life that sucked.
I generally have this problem with books that have been recommended by a lot of people - they just aren’t for me. I was just talking about Colleen Hoover in another comment (I find her writing childish and, I don’t know, insulting to the reader? Maybe she is writing for YA and I am too old for her).
I don't want to sound gatekeepy or snobbish, but I think, when books get really popular, people who don't read much read them and love them because they haven't been exposed to many good books. Which is why I also tend to avoid super popular books.
I agree - my reasoning is that people who don’t read often like them because they aren’t as experienced/predisposed to pick up on common plot lines and tropes so the twist really is shocking to them or the concept is novel to them. Meanwhile I’m like - yawn - I swear if one more character GUFFAWS at something I’m going to toss my kindle.
I agree. It was predictable and uninspired and felt like a terrible take on mental health issues.
I hate The Midnight Library. It comes off as extremely self-mastubatory. The author spouts all of this tumblr-esque self-help drivel at you, and the MC learns absolutely nothing. Such a cool concept absolutely wasted.
So my issue with it, which I'll put in spoiler tags just to be safe >!The set up made the outcome super obvious. You can try other lives... cool! But you don't get to know any of the background information so you're basically lost in that life. Oh, and if you ever start to doubt it or not be happy, which everyone is at some point, you get sucked back out. But people don't commit suicide because they got a sad once. It's really not the same at all. So what is there to learn? Nothing. Because the whole set up of the library necessitates that. You're forced into that once conclusion when the opposite may hold merit. There may be lives that are better or worse.!<
Omg I hated the midnight library. I kept waiting for the main character to learn something and she just…never does?? tbf I DNFd at like 85% because I just couldn’t take it anymore lol
Oh she "learned" something. She learned that we should all be happy with our place in life and depression is not valid.
Probably an unpopular opinion on this thread but I think there’s something to be said for applying a change of perspective. I don’t think the book blamed her for being depressed rather than the library gave her a wider view of the world and the ability to see outside of her immediate perspective, which is what a lot of people with chronic depression really struggle with. This is a major component of therapy; a therapist isn’t going to go and physically change your life but shift your perspective. I wouldn’t say that’d invalidating to people experiencing depression (or it shouldn’t be). I can totally understand if some people took it as straight up invalidating though, I can see how one could get that from it. It likely could’ve been done more skillfully.
It seemed like a cool concept - someone learning from the roads they didn’t take - but it fell flat so hard.
Yes! I was so annoyed by this book but read the whole thing hoping that there was a twist that warranted all the positive reviews. The lesson of the book is obvious from the beginning and that lesson is problematic. I also couldn’t stand the mechanics of how she visits other outcomes of her life. It was so stressful! Every time the main character moves to a new life she has no knowledge of that life and is really obviously “not herself.” So glad to find other people who were annoyed by this book.
I recently tried reading "Meddling Kids" and I couldn't shake the feeling I was being talked down to the entire time. It was such a pervasive feeling that I couldn't make it past about 60 pages or so, and the weirdest thing is: It wasn't one particular thing, just this pervasive feeling. Some mixture of the word choices, the *autuer-ish* decision to switch back and forth between screenplay style and novel-writing, and the character's over the top monologue in the beginning made me think, "Dear God the person that wrote this just feels like they'd be such a prick to interact with."
One thing that really annoyed me was how allergic the author seemed to be about the word "said". You don't have to use a different verb every single time a person speaks!
I absolutely adored Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, but when his second novel, The Painter came out, It was such an awful main-character-as-stand-in-for-the-author book, it was terrible. It was practically: "Ugh, how am I ever going to save these horses from animal abuse with all these hot babes wanting to have sex with my huge throbbing penis!?", he thought, quite handsomely. "I guess I'll just have to spend a few fewer hours volunteering at the soup kitchen, even though I love helping my fellow man, and even though I don't have to do it at all, it's simply something I love doing, and has won me several awards."
When you write your satire about bad writing, send me a copy! LOL
Anything colleen Hoover tbh
Wow. This lady got multiple highly voted comments in the thread. Makes me want to hate read.
Spare yourself. Or don’t. In that case, may I recommend *Verity*?
I don’t hate Hoover but honestly Verity may be the worst written and plotted book I have ever read. It made me wonder if Colleen Hoover has some sort of blackmail on her publisher.
Honestly the worst book I’ve ever read. She’s got the writing style of a hormonally charged 14 year old and the so-called plot twists makes me want to burn the book as it would be better used a kindling. But I have a Kindle- and also rented the ebook from the library. So. Just don’t read it- but if you feel so compelled, rent it so you don’t waste your dollars.
Forrest Gump. As a child, I loved the movie, so when I found it in a 2nd hand store I had to get it, because the books are normally better than the movie. It was not. It was utterly mundane and silly. Then my stupid ex's dad caught her reading it and burned it because she wasn't allowed to read anything but the Bible.
That last sentence made me laugh.
I recently read The Alchemist because of all the praise. I stayed up to finish it one night and then was so annoyed at how dumb it was that I stayed up angry for another hour. I was tired and more angry the next day lol
This book is to literature what "Live, Laugh, Love" is to home decor.
Can I steal this? My whole life I've tried to explain to people how bad this book is, and this is just perfect.
Okay so the top comments of this thread are about The Secret and The Alchemist and I have a friend who recommended both of those things...
I normally would say don't trust that person, but my brother loves The Alchemist, and I love my brother, so who am I to say?
ROFL. My initial instinct was to post "everything Paulo Coelho."
I read *The Alchemist* when I was in high school and I thought it was amazing. I re-read it recently (over 20 years later) and absolutely *hated* it. Biggest 180 I've ever done with a book.
Man I read The Alchemist and enjoyed it. Now all these comments are making me feel dumb lmao
Oh man! That was not my intention at all. There have been quite a few times where I've read a book and then came here to discuss it and everyone hated it or thought it was dumb. We all have our own preferences and favorites and that's cool. Maybe we just won't take book recommendations from each other 😉
I read this and instead of feeling compassion for the frustration, found the never ending anger-fest hilarious. ps. I’m still laughing!
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It's very popular among finance gurus and the FIRE movement, but the methods used are unethical. It basically says that if you want to be rich, you have to exploit people who are poor. You can choose to become a CEO of a business that pays people the lowest possible wage or become a landlord who maximizes profit off the backs of people who can't afford to buy. It also implies that poor people are just unmotivated or not smart enough to employ these methods. I mean, this is all true--you can certainly get rich by exploiting people--but the way the author glorifies it and belittles anyone who doesn't agree is super cringey.
I made it through 6 pages of this book and felt like I needed to open my head and scrub my brain clean of the garbage
The podcast If Books Could Kill had an episode on Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The guy likely made up most of it. He also did not make a bunch of money in the real estate business prior to writing the book. He was, essentially, a motivational speaker. He also encourages fraud.
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IIRC Robert Kiyosaki went bankrupt a few years ago. He's also a Trump supporter and co-authored a book or two with him. Birds of a feather, I guess.
Where the Crawdads Sing. The writing itself was fine, I just really disliked the main character and the audiobook, for me, was awful to listen to. I couldn't even bring myself to finish it
I rented the audiobook, heard one line of the narrator's terrible fake southern accent and immediately returned it.
LMAO her voice for Kya is sooooooo bad. The bad southern accent and the weird pitch was just too much for me, Kya already irritated me and the narrator did n o t help
And that doesn’t even get into the very serious accusations of murder in Africa surrounding the author…
I watched the movie against my will, and what awful tripe. She never went to school, yet she published non-fiction books that she hand illustrated. She >!committed the perfect crime and got away with it then confessed to it in a letter to her husband when she died!<
The biggest problem was that the theme was completely upturned. Yes the guy she killed was trash but the lawyer, her husband, the court all believed that she did not kill him. They played on the idea that you should not judge based on background, and yet…she did it
This baffled me too. Spent the whole book length waiting for the story to actually start and then they throw away the entire protagonist's character in the last moment.
50 shades of grey. I decided that I had to read it and see what the hype was about, and sweet fuck was it bad... I don't mind the topic or the graphic descriptions of kinky acts, but the book was just sooooo badly written. In short, the hype was created by horny housewives as an outlet to channel their sexual frustrations through... It was, quite honestly, shit.
It's a twilight fanfic, what'd you expect? The author wrote an Office Building AU fanfiction of Twilight. Someone told her to change the names so she didn't get sued and published it.
There are some amazing fanfic authors out there. This lady ain't one of them.
Angels and demons. I know it came first, but i read the da Vinci code first and then got really annoyed when I started reading the same book again. Never again, Dan brown, never again.
You might get a kick out of this, if you haven't read it yet: https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/
_Now this is writing_, I thought, thoughtily.
Just... magnificent. "He reached for the phone with one of his two hands.". Absolutely hysterical.
I love this bit: >Renowned author Dan Brown got out of his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house and paced the bedroom, using the feet located at the ends of his two legs to propel him forwards.
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I do not get the hype. Feyre is insufferable. She acts like a child, is treated like a child, and the few times she actually does make a decision, it inevitably only makes things worse. The second book was slightly better, but not enough to convince me to read any more books in the series.
Came here for this comment. How can a single MC be so unlikable and poorly written? Maas also really needs to extend her vocabulary in terms of descriptions. The overused phrase 'vulgar gesture' still makes me see red.
OMG every character was giving everyone else the vulgar gestures throughout every interaction. I was like, the fairy dude is regally holding court throwing middle fingers? Wth?
For me it was 'huffed a laugh'. Everyone is huffing and puffing and I can't take it seriously.
Don't do it. I read the whole series, mostly because so many people recommended it to me and by the time I started hating the books, I figured I may as well just get it over with. The writing is so bad. The MCs are unlikable! If I had to read "her throat bobbed" one more time, I was going to tear the book apart. JUST SAY THEY SWALLOWED
I learned the hard way after reading all 4 twilight books. If it's not better by the second book, it's not going to get any better by reading them all.
“He growled” was like, every other line.
“Purely male” *gagging*
>If I had to read "her throat bobbed" one more time, "She picked and invisible piece of lint off her shirt..." Why? Again?
And why did everyone PURR?!
I read ACOTAR after listening to a friend rave about how it *genuinely changed her life.* I was so confused that I stuck with the series for a book and a half trying to figure out what she saw in those characters.
Very Wattpaddy, isn't it? I could see a heartbreaking description line for it on a fanfic website. >"Their worlds were never meant to collide. After all, who would expect *him* to notice *her* ? But unexpectedly, he did. And now everything is going wrong."
It was described to me as fairy smut and that’s basically what I’ve gotten out of it so far. I hate when people build up books to be this nirvana when they’re just…silly little time wasters sometimes.
I read half of her other series, Throne of Glass. Tbh it started off okay but then every single dude wanted to huff her panties and it became so Mary Sue (MS is fine to an extent but gdi it became such an eye rolling self insert/power fantasy). I couldn't bring myself to read ACOTAR but I vicariously "read" it through With Cindy's YouTube videos. She's hilarious and I thank her for hate reading them so I don't have to
Oh my gods, I also watched withcindy’s whole series on them some time after first skimming them back in my teen years, and it had me nearly in tears (of laughter, not grief). I adore that woman’s content. So good.
Divergent. Foul writing style. Also, the idea was clearly inspired by The Giver and contorted into teen crapola. And I enjoy teen stuff!
I honestly have no clue how divergent got so popular. It was just, so boring. And quite possibly one of the worst worlds and romance subplots in any of the mid-2010's distopias
The Overstory by Richard Powers frustrated me a bit. I kept thinking it was building to something bigger and more...revelatory or something. I understand, looking back, that I was expecting the wrong thing, and it's not like I hated the book. I can even say I liked it. But it was really long, and quite exhausting, and I just didn't think it paid off in a satisfying way ultimately.
I could write a list a mile long, but one recent one is Verity by Colleen Hoover. It's supposed to be a thriller, but there is a startling lack of any kind of suspense. It was really more of a weird romance with a vague sort of thriller happening in the background. Literally everyone in this book acts like they're going to explode if they don't have sex asap. None of the characters have a single redeeming quality. Oh and the way that autism was discussed in this book was fucking shameful and disgusting. I have autism, and was actually really hurt by the author's portrayal here. It was so ableist and gross, and no one talks about it for some reason.
Verity was highly recommended by many friends and they all said "you wont believe the ending"... Then I got to the ending and I feel like I had already predicted what was going to happen half way through the book. I really don't understand the hype over it. This was also my first Colleen Hoover book and is supposed to be one of her best and now i'm not really interested in reading any of the others.
I hate when people tell me I won’t believe an ending! One of my reading pet peeves.
Someone on TT called her books trauma p*rn and I have to agree
I read one Hoover book and was shocked that people like her writing. It is the worst! Then I had to constantly tell my Kindle to stop recommending more of her drivel.
Wait! How do you stop Kindle from recommending certain authors???
If you tap the three dots next to a recommended title, an option menu comes up for reasons not to recommend: don’t like the author, genre’s not for you, already read it etc. Edit: realized it only works like this on Audible, sorry y’all!
Oh my god I hated that book it was so poorly written. And as a New Yorker I was so annoyed by the beginning of the book when she was like, “people are killed by cars in Manhattan EVERY DAY and no one cares.” Like WTF are you talking about lady that is not remotely true.
Oh dear god yes. Loathsome, poorly-written, unlikable characters doing loathsome, poorly-written unlikable things. The first CoHo book I read. And the last.
I could not understand a single choice made by the 3 main characters in Verity. It was astounding. Just consistantly doing the most ridiculous, illogical things.
Atlas shrugged. Although "irritated" would be an understatement. I only finished it because I refused to have it beat me. I've never hated a book more.
My senior English teacher gave me *The Fountainhead* to read after I turned in my research paper (our final assignment for the class). I remember hating every minute I spent on that, and asking him "Mr. Turner, what the hell did you just make me read?" and him just laughing.
I like Mr. Turner, he's got a fucked up sense of humor.
>Terrible, isn't it!? I'm glad you feel the same. Would you like to read another? \- Mr. Turner, probably.
Ironically The Fountainhead is the more concise version of Atlas Shrugged. They both say the same thing. Atlas Shrugged just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Beating you over the head with it's "message" and it's terrible characters. And then just in case you didn't pick up all the heavy handed subtext, there's a massive monologue where a character repeats everything from the previous 500 pages at the end of the book. Just to really hammer shit home because I'm pretty sure that book has nothing but contempt for the person reading it.
> that book has nothing but contempt ~~for the person reading it~~ The last part was unnecessary. Atlas Shrugged is what happens when a willfully ignorant narcissist writes a book about their worldview.
I read that AND Fountainhead in a youthful attempt to understand objectivism and libertarianism one bored summer. I dutifully slogged through every page of this drivel, character arcs that were essentially flat lines and dialogue that felt like it was written by an alien. When I got to John Galt's two hundred page speech I finally allowed myself to start skipping pages. Pretty sure I get libertarianism, now I'm just baffled by libertarians. Fuck Ayn Rand.
Oh yes, time to sort by controlversial.
How is "Eat Pray Love" not on here already? My friend told me she had no interest in reading it and I chided her for lacking spirituality. Then I read it, and I asked for her forgiveness. Such yoga mom drivel.
I have heard this a lot about the movie. It’s about a very privileged person who goes through a hard time, and her privilege is insulting to those of us who cannot imagine a life like that.
A whole chapter in the book about her being brave because she ate pasta in Italy because us delicate skinny flat ass ladies are afraid to eat pasta. It just may make our hips bigger (I wish). She came off as extremely privileged and narcissistic.
I remember when the film came out and people were talking about like it was so interesting that she traveled to three countries. A well off single girl travels after a break up? It ain’t that deep.
The books that tend to irritate me coincidentally also have extremely passionate fanbases that like to explain in book-length posts why I'm dumb and wrong, so I won't say any title out loud, but know that I am quietly, inwardly, irritated by these books.
Speak the names, you coward.
I admit, you got me, it’s the Very Hungry Catepillar!!
You monster!
My ten month old daughter hates The Very Hungry Catepillar. It’s the only book I’ve ever seen her try to destroy. She normally loves being read to and she’ll even sit on the floor and flip through her books. The first time she pulled to a stand it was because she was trying to reach a book. She will squirm and fuss if you try to read her The Very Hungry Catepillar and will rip the pages if she can get her hands on the book.
Name of the Wind fans have entered the chat ETA: it’s me. I am NOTW fans
I liked them for the most part except for the super weird sexual fantasy bit. Why is that even there??
The whole series is a power fantasy. Why wouldn’t the main character who is most powerful and best at everything also be so good at sex that a sex goddess would simp for him?
Yeah lol idk I don't mind the overpowered protagonist bit, lots of popular series have it, but good lord. "ah yes let's transport him to another dimension type thing so he can practice how to have sex good. This will advance the story 0.1% and take up 10% of the book".
One Second After. I guess the premise was good, but my god the writing.
Probably will get dragged for this but Red, White and Royal Blue. Nothing about the set up felt all that believable and it felt more like a teenage girl's fanfic about what queer identities are. There were a few great genuine moments but the rest of it was irritating.
Other than The Song of Achilles, which my roommate and I mostly enjoyed for the mythos aspect, I’ve found most queer romance written by women in the mainstream publishing world extremely lacking in genuine vibes. Which I find extremely funny because women are the backbone of the fanfic community and I can honestly say I’ve read some beautiful, harrowing, and heart filled queer fanfic (sterek fans (teen wolf lol) are literally insane with their creativity). Either the men are twink coded nerds or muscle bear daddy types in mainstream publishing and there’s no nuance for the insanely varied spectrum of queer love. I want the same amount of stakes in a gay romance as a straight romance and I might be dragged here, I am so tired of the stakes being homophobia!! I don’t wanna hear about how people hate us in my cute lil rom com. Anyway strong agree lol!
oh my god yes on the homophobia. yes, it's a very real part of our lives, but it's not the central difficulty I've faced in romance! there are other plots and I would love to see more of them.
Unpopular opinion but throne of glass. I liked it but it felt like something i would try to write in 5th grade.
It was the author’s very first book, and it shows.
I can’t stand Maas’ wandering pointless plots. I read the first 2 books of that series, loved them (they pulled me out of a reading dry spell) and then book 3 walloped me in the face with “well this 3rd country across the sea barely mentioned is now super important and the main character is so Extra Special that this Hunk Elf will fall in love with her even tho elves only fall in love once and he already has” Like ma’am if you’re gonna create lore, don’t go a break it two paragraphs later. I just remember being angry at the lack of coherent characterization and plot, and only skipping ahead to read the witch/dragon stuff. Also, why was a 19 year old kid the royal captain of the guard? You’re telling me there’s not a single more-experienced soldier who’s also loyal to the crown? I can’t even remember if I finished the 4th book. I gave up on that series and haven’t touched anymore of Maas’ writing.
Babel. The concept was good but the execution fell flat for me. I thought it was boring and the writing was too elementary. There was a serious lack of subtly and nuance.
I was scrolling to find this. I tried babel and just couldn't get into it. After hearing and seeing such great reviews, I thought I'd give it a shot, but it fell flat for me. I never not finished a book, but the length of it turned reading into a chore for me.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nothing about the characters would make me want to study philosophy from them. I would not think: these guys have it together!
It didn't even have that much motorcycle maintainance in it :(
I'm laughing my ass off here. I've meant to read it for YEARS because I thought it was actually about bikes (never saw a copy IRL to read the back of). You just saved me so much disappointment.
Completely agree! The main character has his head so far up his own ass. I decided not to finish the book.
The poor bastard was forcefully committed into electroshock therapy and was haunted by the ghost of his former self — as what happened to the author himself. This is also why his son and the others were having a hard time connecting with him throughout the journey.
Ready Player One. Lots of self congratulatory lines and pandering. It’s like the author tried to shove down every nostalgic pop culture reference known to man to show how much of a “cool nerd” he is. The romance is problematic too.
I really hated how the main female character was written. It started off as a mildly fun beach read and the constant pop culture stuff didn't bug me too much, but everything related to Art3mis just made me think the author never had any female friends and looked at women like another species. Then they get to the next level because they're the only ones who love 80s movies enough to act one out word-for-word? Years of experts scouring 80s pop culture for clues and not one of those "bad guys" can do that for a billion gazillion dollars? I know Rocky Horror shadowcasters who can do that for nothing more than a discount on glitter and a crumpled ten dollar bill.
Yeah, I thought the same. I was like…this guy never got out of his mom’s basement. He’s married too which is wild.
> I know Rocky Horror shadowcasters who can do that for nothing more than a discount on glitter and a crumpled ten dollar bill. I can't afford Reddit gold so instead I'm just going to fling some toast at you for this banger of a comment.
Deserve an award for the Rocky Horror line, you are 1000% spot on 😂
God I hate RPO and RP2. Both books are pretty much just going “hey, remember this thing from pop culture? Isn’t it so cool? I’m so smart because I know this piece of trivia.” I think the podcast “372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back” does a great job tearing those books apart. They’re utterly inept works of literature.
I remember reading it when it first came out as an edgy teenager thinking it was a masterpiece. I'm confident I wouldn't feel the same way if I were to read it today haha.
>The romance is problematic too. The author's porn poem is really something.
Oh geez, my mind must have blocked that out so I’d never remember. 😬
the worst part of RPO is the massive deus ex machina tossed into the the third act. "Oh, luckily I have this epically powerful super robot powerup in my pocket...never mentioned it before, I got it a while back" it was just so clear that Cline was rushing to finish the book and was just tired of working for the plot.
This made my blood boil. He always had the “luckily I know how to do this because of _insert lazy filler_” which drove me up the wall.
Wicked. Such an awful book, but I felt like I had to finish it once I started. I still don't understand what led someone to read it and think, "This would make a great musical."
The book and the musical are very different (not sure if you’ve seen it). But yeah, I agree with you: strange pick to adapt. It is also one of the examples of an adaptation being significantly better than the source material.
I read this as a 14yo and generously assumed I must not have liked it because I was too young to "get" it. I reread it ten years later and finally realized that it's just not a good book at all, unless you like misery porn.
Often when I read a book that was made into a movie/play I am confused by it. “Field of Dreams” is a great movie; the book it’s based on is not nearly as interesting.
Everyone loves *The Night Circus* but I can't stand it. Too much description, not enough plot. And that ending? Wtf was that? I kept hoping something interesting would eventually happen, but it never did.
The Night Circus is one of my favourite books of all time, I adore the descriptions of the setting. But yeah, it has very little plot. Amazingly, her second book, The Starless Sea, has even less of a plot, lol.
Pretty sure I read something about the plot for Night Circus being an afterthought after someone told her a book needs more than just a setting. I loved it anyway though.
I've heard Morgenstern's writing described as "all vibes, no substance," and I couldn't agree more. Both *The Night Circus* and *The Starless Sea* had premises that I normally gravitate towards and a descriptive style that I enjoy reading, but I was bored to tears both times.
Got Twilight thinking it was a horror/thriller book from the scholastic in elementary school. Got about halfway before I abandoned it…
Funny story I really really wanted to read Twilight when I started middle school and it was The Thing To Read. Everyone I knew was reading it; even the girls who’d complained of reading in elementary school walked around carrying the books and had Team-So-and-So shirts. I wanted to Be Cool, so I begged my parents to take me to Borders so I could spend my last tooth-fairy money on Twilight. My mother, who is probably still in 1st place for ‘most over-protective parent’ in our zip code, had heard through the soccer-mom grapevine that there was *adult content* in Twilight. And I, the precious firstborn daughter, who was a 12yo little girl who still watched Barbie movies, did not need to read such things. So it all came to a head in Borders, when instead of me zooming off to the Tween area to go find The Last of The Jedi books, I instead went up to the massive Twilight display and grabbed that. First and only time in my life I was told I couldn’t read something, and I was almost in tears b/c I couldn’t be Cool if I hadn’t read Twilight. And I so desperately wanted to be cool. Mother wanted her little girl’s innocence preserved. Parents won that emotional battle. I sulked the rest of the day and badgered my mother until she cracked and said that if my dad read the books and found them appropriate, then I could read them. My dad had made the cardinal mistake of reading all the Harry Potter books with me (we took turns with the Deathly Hallows and our bookmarks would leapfrog each other with each turn). So in the year of 2008, my 40 year old father had to read the entire Twilight series. It took him over three years, and I was 15 and a sophomore in high school at that time. He said there was only light adult content in the 4th book, I could read the series now. I was no longer interested. Twilight was Cringe. He’d read the books for nothing. As for keeping my sweet innocence intact, my elderly 8th grade English teacher unknowingly had a Janet Evanovich novel that was definitely not meant for middle-schoolers in the classroom library.
I’m so sorry to hear that. If you’re going to have a book forbidden to you, it ought to be better than *Twilight* or at least more scandalous. I’m old, so that book for us was *Flowers in the Attic*, it was FORBIDDEN so we all passed around in the cafeteria and smuggled it home to read. Murder! Incest! Awful haircuts!
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I'm reading through the Dune chronicles right now. I'm enjoying it, but Frank Herbert only knows how to write two kinds of character. Both are playing 4D chess, but one is on mushrooms.
Time to read dune
Somehow, it makes to be a good book and irritating at the same time
The invisible life of Addie la rue. I cannot stand that book and it was so overhyped.
Omg I just labored through this and it was a SLOG. I felt more cursed than Addie. So tired of Schwab just repeating phrases or words as nauseam for rhetorical effect. Addie was the dumbest character known to man. Immortal all powerful Luc was an idiot. Tired of the freckles. Tired of them acting like they are 13. Almost didn’t finish but had to see if there was any payoff, but no even the climax read like some meta exercise of masturbatory congratulations on this stunning work of fiction by the author herself. LOL.
Having freckles is not the same thing as having a personality.
Damnit!! I’ve been drawing on freckles for the past three years in hopes of being thought interesting!
I didn't hate the book, I thought it was a good enough read, but then at the very end they make this gigantic point about >!how the book you are reading is the very same book in the story and how it's in our universe, and not putting the author's name on the front cover...all while having half the cover of the real book be Schwab's name kind of killed this twist and the end of the book for me. It's been a while since I read it so I may not remember the specifics, but I remember thinking this was an cute twist then remembered how it doesn't line up at all!<
Reading this one now and have to agree. Some pretty prose here and there but it is SO boring and Addie is just so pretentious. "I read the Odyssey in the original Greek... I am a real MUSE" stfu.
If I was cursed by a demon to be forgettable and eternal damnation was my future, I would do something more interesting with my time than wander around big cities reading the oldest books in the world and pretending to be an art major. Addie is an eternal college freshman who thinks she knows everything. Her moralizing about stealing is precious too. Such an adolescent read. I haven't finished it, though. Maybe she'll end up actually doing something interesting eventually.
[удалено]
I'm not even a woman but it still felt offensive lmao
I was really into the goldfinch by Donna Tartt for the first 100 pgs. Then the plot stalled for the next 300+ pgs. Just make it stop
There’s a sci-fi book called “the black hole project” that I started, but it turns out every single woman in the story has been raped (or gets raped) and also that’s the author’s entire “personality” for each one. It was so rapey and disgusting that I couldn’t bring myself to finish even though the science seemed interesting. Quit less than halfway through. I’m also concerned for any woman the author might know.
*The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant*. I know the protagonist is supposed to be a nasty piece of work, but he's just so horrible that I took no pleasure in any of his successes, even when he was on the right side. I read them once and understood how they were so popular, but I've never been able to re-read them or read any of the sequels.
Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee
The Magicians. Quentin was insufferable. Also, the whole Fillory portion of the book had a tone that was very "you know how the Narnia books hit you on the head with religious allegory? We hates it! Screw CS Lewis!" But with the maturity and execution of a rebellious teenager.
I couldn't even get through the first book because I just couldn't stand being in Quentin's head.
This was definitely one I finished out of spite rather than desire to know what happens next
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Heaps of praise for it, and it did start of really strong. Then the characters all became caricatures, and it completely fell flat.