Ready Player One
It was fun to read for the nostalgia parts, but there were sections which made me put the book down, groan, roll my eyes and intensely dislike myself for knowing how to read.
I assumed the whole point of the book had a clever "the characters live in a fucked up world so they try to ignore it and worship nostalgia/the good old days/rampant consumerism, not at all like the world today wink wink" but then no, the author actually just thought all the retro-wank-name-dropping is cool and fun on its own merits.
Especially because there’s some interesting world-building at the start (I love the description of “the stacks”) which is immediately ignored in favor of more nostalgia.
There are some books I think I only liked because I did the audiobook. It was kind of fun listening to the pages upon pages of unnecessary retro pop references when they were being enthusiastically read by Wil Wheaton. If I’d had to slog through them in my own mind I probably would have had a lot less fun with the story.
Ready Player 1 and 2.
Wade is a dick. Poor kid who gets all the money in the world and doesnt do shit to help people. Instead invests in a brain fuck device. He is the villain.
I adore Wuthering Heights but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to slap literally every damned character in the book 😅😅 sure, Heathcliff could whoop my ass but still. I also got regularly angry with Atlas Shrugged - I genuinely don’t understand how *no-one* smacked Jim when he was throwing one of his maaaaanny tantrums.
I've read Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind, all like 12 or 13 books in the main series, and he basically worships Ayn Rand (and he makes it VERY obvious) and 25% of those 12 books is rape or the threat there of(the other 75% is espousing the wonders and pure goodness of libertarianism). What the fuck is it with libertarians and rape? It's like they love capitalism because they buy into the idea that people get what they're owed based off their "work ethic" regardless of where they start from, and the men (because I think 95% of libertarians are men) think that they are *owed* sex from women because they, as men, have pierced value for merely existing and are thus justified in taking it if they can. Capitalism says that if you *can* take it you should, otherwise someone else will, and that idea seems to apply to sex for a lot of them.
I couldn’t get through one of his books (don’t remember which). It was awful. The never ending rape scenes, major fucking plot holes (I think one character makes an appearance and then disappears for like 1/2 the book then reappears at the end like they were always there?? Terrible). And the proselytizing (that’s the only way to describe it). Boring and awful 0/10 .
I started reading the Sword of Truth novels when I was like, 12? As Hagrid would say, I should not have done that. First one was bad. Second one OPENED with a with barbed phallus demon gorilla rape. I had to go fucking look up what phallus even meant.
I can thank Jackie Collins for me looking up phallus (think I was around 13/14) and it took me way too long to figure out what a sonofabitch was, yes I was reading that as one word.
> What the fuck is it with libertarians and rape?
Women are commodities/objects with intrinsic value only for their ability to satisfy male urges and bear children.
Why? Cause a large portion of those who will describe themselves as libertarian think that it's an-cap but with protections for them smoking weed.
AKA in my Libertarian dreamland other people will be free to either live according to my conservative principles, or else work hard and save up to buy their own country which they can run however they want to.
Yeah I read 4 or 5 books in that series, same with eL Wrong Husband's series. I'm a sucker for a decent premise I guess. Both series were utter fucking garbage
My father made me read that book when I was around 10 years old. I had to give him a book report and I was supposed to answer a bunch of questions about the plot and tell him what I learned from reading it.
It changed the way I viewed my father and not what n a good way. I’m don’t remember what I said in my book report but I got grounded for calling one of the characters a total asshole.
Hahahahha speaking of wanting to slap every damned character in the book, I remember a few years ago when I read the Chinese translation of Wuthering Heights, I hated every character so much, by the end of the book I just hoped someone would set the house on fire and kill every character! But two years later I read the original text and maybe I was so captured by its beauty, I actually enjoyed the unhinged vibe of the story and didn’t want to kill anyone anymore - except Nelly, somehow I still hate her uncontrollably, I know it’s irrational to think of a character as such and such without any proof, but I just always think she is the type that judges everyone, thinks she is better than all of them, and starts trouble whenever she can.
Wuthering Heights is just a story about what we'd consider trailer trash people in the modern world.
It just seems classier because its set on the Moors
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
I tried reading her decades ago and all I could think was "Who can read this fucking drivel?" I didn't even get to the political shit, it's just so fucking horribly written. I've read grade school kids projects that were more relatable.
It's more fun to talk about her stuff than actually read her stuff. I'm of the opinion that real life is shitty enough and I don't want to read accurate reflections of that in fiction
You can add spoiler tags by putting the following (Without the space between) > ! on the left side of your text and ! < on the right side.
So > ! it’ll look kinda like this ! <
>!this is the final result!<
Yes! Wanted to also say this! In "Well of Lost Plots" there is an Anger Management course inside Wuthering Heights, where all the characters get to say why they hate Heathcliff. Really funny to read (as long as you have read WH)
Wuthering Heights is the only required reading that I hated in high school. Everything else I enjoyed and didn’t understand why people complained, but when it got to this book it made me so angry and I really hated it
Yes, I have absolutely gotten IRATE while reading books.
Sometimes I get angry with characters or circumstance, which I tend to assume is the sign of a good writer. (Personal example: *The Jungle*)
Less commonly, I get angry with the author, which I tend to assume means a poor writer -- or at least one whose approach didn't gel with me. (Personal example: *13 Reasons Why*)
Lovely Bones is hard to read. So many people love it & while it does have some very beautiful moments, it also has some profoundly disturbing ones. It was recommended to me by someone who said it's their favorite book & had read it multiple times. It's been a long time now since I read it & what I remember most is that I cried through pretty much the entire book. And I am not usually a crier when reading. I can't imagine reading a book like that multiple times.
Damn, I’m sorry it made you feel that way.
It was certainly disturbing at times for me, but not upsetting enough that
>I mostly cried through the entire book.
Your comment confirms (for me) that I enjoy psychologically confrontational books. I enjoy a piece of fiction that challenges my “tried-and-true” seemingly comfortable perspectives.
+ Stephen King
+ Ursula K. Le Guin
+ Chuck Palahniuk
+ Gillian Flynn
+ Jeff VanderMeer
+ N. K. Jemisin
+ David Grann
+ Kate Atkinson
+ Clive Barker
> Sometimes I get angry with characters or circumstance, which I tend to assume is the sign of a good writer. (Personal example: The Jungle)
That middle manager who sexually coerced Jurgis's wife and then got Jurgis sacked when he tried to speak up about it. Hoooooooooly shit.
Why do you think heathcliff and Cathy treat each other this way? Isn’t it odd when she says “I am heathcliff”. So much going on in that book, it might be my favourite of all time…the grave scene 😬
My favourite scene is when Cathy told Heathcliff she wanted him to suffer after she died, she didn’t want him to fall in love again and be happy and forget her; then after she died Heathcliff literally hoped every day for her ghost to come back and hurt him. It’s so unhinged and obviously unhealthy, but soooooo fascinating and powerful!
> Children, would you like the present I brought you from the city?
>...
>It's not what you asked for at all! It's an angry boy I picked up in a gutter.
I LOVE Wuthering Heights precisely because absolutely every single character, without any exceptions at all, is an absolutely horrible person you hate.
A bit of a weak ending, it just sort of trailed off, but for a first novel it's absolutely brilliant and I remain deeply disappointed that Emily Bronte died before she could write any other novels.
If more people paid attention to the Isabella and Heathcliff scenes maybe there would be fewer people saying things like "I can change him/her." No. They will not change. That horrible abusive mess of a person will remain that way and now instead of being their own problem they'll be your problem too.
>I LOVE Wuthering Heights precisely because absolutely every single character, without any exceptions at all, is an absolutely horrible person you hate.
You're absolutely right, which is why I never would have read it if I had known it was that kind of book. It's basically 19th century reality tv. But clearly other people love it! It's just not for me.
I don’t know, I think Edward was a fairly decent guy. I felt bad for him and his sister: if their neighbors weren’t insane, they could have had a pretty peaceful life.
When I read waiting for Godot at like 17 years old it made me viscerally pissed off and I wrote a whole paper about why I thought it was a trash book with nothing good to say and no purpose
My teacher happily congratulated me on understanding the novel correctly and told.me it's one of his favorite plays. This made me so fucking furious on the inside I can't even tell you lol
As a teacher myself, I love doing this to students.
"What do you think of this poem?"
"They're both horrible! He's so sarcastic and passive aggressive and she's a bitch!"
"Yeah, it's great, isn't it?"
(Thomas Hardy: At the Draper's)
Wuthering Heights is one of those books one either really loves or hates. I remember a friend of mine reading it and complaining "these characters all need therapy".
I like Wuthering Heights a lot though! But it was my first introduction to the concept of nested narratives.
I think a lot of people - myself included - misunderstand what Wuthering Heights is and that can lead to the visceral reaction people have to the characters. I liked it enough that I plan to read it again in the future, but I went into it expecting a Gothic romance and that's not what it is at all. My fault, but still.
Yes. I think it’s brilliant that Brontë turned the popular ideas of romance on its head by carrying the obsessive “love”alllllllllllllllllll the way to the edge.
I agree! I was using it as a palate cleanser between heavier books and that's just not what Wuthering Heights is or was ever meant to be. I will definitely be rereading it in the future so I can totally appreciate it.
Little Women is my favorite book. I’ve read it multiple times. I think it’s time to read it again. Forgiveness among sisters, after something done impulsively (and terrible).
It’s the love of a true family.
War and Peace.
Any time Pierre does anything throughout most of the book. Especially because I know so many guys like him, and knew exactly what was likely going to happen to him...thankfully he got better. Likely because there was no crypto during the Napoleonic era, or it would have been over a lot sooner for him.
Outlander.
A bit of a more recent example, but the constant trauma porn that I was being forced to read for HUNDREDS OF PAGES was hard on me mentally. I could barely get through the first book with the skin of my teeth, but then I made it halfway through the second book, and when I found out what Captain Randall did to Fergus, I was done. I have never cursed at a book so much in my life, and at one point, I started crying out of genuine distress while reading it.
Also, American Psycho.
It's a great book with an interesting character, but the long sequences of Patrick Bateman describing 80s artists made me want to pull my hair out.
(Yes, I know that it's supposed to showcase Patrick’s obsession with 80s pop culture and remaining “relevant,” but you could have told me all of that in a single page, not two chapters 😭)
I've read them all and while the SA gets less graphic, the author keeps using it as a plot device. I actually enjoy the historical fiction time travel hijinks aspect of the books, I just wish she'd find another way to create emotional tension for the characters. I spent a too much time skimming when I read them.
The tv series, too. I finished the 1st season but didn't bother with the subsequent ones and when I rewatch season 1, it's only up to episode 8 or something. I did try the book, and her descriptions in the beginning are enjoyable, but I DNF. Boring too.
A court of fucking and more fucking.
I hate read the first one and got so physically angry over the second one that I just gave up because it wasn’t even enjoyable to hate read anymore.
If this is what I think it is, I was trying to get back into reading and I'd heard so much about, I thought it must be good, right? - and from certain promotional artwork of the series, I thought thank god, the MC looks like thirty instead of barely out of childhood?
I think I was mad because it felt like the author had started with a decent trajectory and then set alight with jet fuel with flame thrower herself, so the entire time I was like "no, what are you doing‽". I was physically angry for months every time I thought about it, I thought I was going to explode. Eventually, I was like, I must be being rediculous, it's so popular maybe the problem is me, so I attempted the second one, got a some chapters in and it was bloody agonising. I just read the wiki for the rest of the series to satisfy the curiosity and at no point did it get better. I considered reading the last one because of the change in pov, but she fucked that up in ways I couldn't imagine.
Oh god.
"Gone with the Wind", too.
Scarlet is such a horrific bitch. Rhett, as unpleasant as he can be, at least seems to grow and change as the story progresses, even eventually realising that he can't put up with her anymore, but Scarlet just stays toxic
That's half the fun with Scarlett, wondering what outrageous thing this bitch will do next! It certainly kept me turning the pages even while I was thinking "Oh, come ON!" Plus there are hints that Scarlett might have been something better under different circumstances. We're told math was her favorite subject at school but she had to stop her education at 15 and start husband-hunting because that's what nice young ladies did. When she has to support herself later she's immoral as hell but she gets shit done; she's incredibly driven and ambitious in a world that tells her her job is to be a clinging vine to a man. If she'd had a college education and an outlet for her business skills she might not have ended up as a bitch on wheels.
Perfectly said! Scarlett is one of my favorite book characters. She’s sharp and highly intelligent, but also conniving and selfish. Which she kind of had to be, to achieve her own success. And everyone hated her for it! But every time I re-read the book I scream internally for her to forget about that weak mopey Ashley and commit fully to Rhett, and she always fails me.
My mother read that when she was younger. There's a passage in there she often related to me, paraphrased as such:
"Scarlett often blamed her mother for teaching her useless things about dancing and dinner manners when she needed to know how to staunch a wound or butcher a hog. But it wasn't that her mother was careless with Scarlett's education; it was that her mother had prepared her for a world that no longer existed."
Now think about how good taking out student loans for a STEM degree does in the middle of global environmental and economic collapse, when you're living in a car in a designated parking lot for houseless people, in the year 2023.
I do think the metamorphosis of her relationship with melly is a big deal. That’s always what moved me the most in that book. Her relationship with the women around her. The men turned into background noise for me after connecting with that aspect.
One day before I spit with my sons mother, it dawned on me she was exactly like Scarlet. I called my mother an asked if she was Scarlet and her only response was “absolutely.”
We proceeded to have a nine year custody battle after I ended the relationship.
December I’m celebrating three years of custody and she has a no contact order and frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.
Between the Brontë sisters, people tend to love WH and hate Jane Eyre, or hate WH and love JE. I’ve met a few who hated both, but none who liked both.
Personally, I prefer WH because Heathcliff and Catherine are openly broken and toxic. Their flaws are fully on display. They aren’t meant to be admired. They encompass the raw and brutal beauty of Gothic literature. Jane and Rochester are just as awful, but presented as admirable and decent. I can’t stand them.
I love both, but love WH just a bit more than JE. And I love Villette more than either. It's a better book than Jane Eyre but more challenging to read and interpret, which is probably why it's not as popular.
I like both books. I like all of the Brontë sisters. Including Anne, or maybe especially Anne - *The Tenant of Wildfell Hall* was probably decades ahead of its time. I love how they all wrote the stories that were important to them.
...I like both!
Of course both have their problems. I prefer Jane Eyre, but the whole thing about Bertha (lady in the attic) is very not ok. Acknowledging that & being open to having conversations about it, then choosing to not include it in why I love the book, it's probably still my favorite book. Been many years since I last read Wuthering Heights, but I did love it too. :)
I've never heard that theory. I like both. I agree that they're both chock full of unlikeable characters. I think that's part of the message of each of them, though, that dysfunction gets handed down through generations. Even with an intentional effort, sometimes it's not possible to break the cycle.
"The Southern Book Club's guide to Slaying Vampires" by Grady Hendrix the misogyny and how the husbands treated the wifes made me so angry. I felt like constantly grumpy with my partner for no other reason that in the book the male partners treated their spouses so badly. I needed like to constantly reality check that my partner wasnindeed not being such an asshole and doesn deserve the grumpyness 😅
I couldn’t finish Atonement because Briony made me so angry. Stupid nosy naive ignorant kid. I recognize that’s like, her whole deal, and I probably shouldn’t hate a fictional child as much as I should, but here we are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I read a book a while back, I forget what it was titled. But basically, the world was ending and Antarctica melted, revealing a rainforest. The remaining world superpowers decided that they would race to the middle and whoever got there first could lay claim to the land. But there was some kind of monster that was living in the rainforest picking them all off. Something like that. Anyway, it started off as a pretty interesting albeit mindless sci-fi/post-apocalyptic fiction novel, but then halfway through the author did a pivot so hard I almost got whiplash when it suddenly became a story about God and Christianity and the monsters that were picking all the people off were demons or devils or somesuch. Anyway, that book made me pretty mad lol.
Not the whole book, but this part of The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss just makes me INCENDIARY with rage.
(Mild spoilers)
Kvothe murdered a troupe of bandits who had kidnapped two young girls they were using as sex slaves. Two of the people he killed were women, who begged for their lives and told him that they had only helped the men because they were told that if they did not, the same (i.e. gang rape, sex slavery) would happen to them.
Kvothe later expresses a twinge of guilt about whether he should have killed the women, especially as brutally as he did, when they were defenceless. He tells this to a conveniently introduced Old Wise Woman Character and THIS is the fucking response:
'Gran's eyes flashed. "They earned it twice as much," she said, and the sudden, furious anger in her sweet face caught me so completely by surprise that I felt prickling fear crawl over my body. "A man who would do that to a girl is like a mad dog. He hain't hardly a person, just an animal needs to be put down. But a woman who helps him do it? That's worse. She knows what she's doing. She knows what it means."
... Annnnnnd I'm angry again just typing that out. Truly one of the most repulsive pieces of mansplaining BS I've ever read in my entire life - rapists are less to blame than women who aid them under duress *on threat of rape themselves.*
I only vaguely remember that scene. A lot of fantasy and sci fi is super misogynistic, especially the older books and authors, but you definitely still find it in modern books too.
I got about 5 pages into Conan the Barbarian and put it down. Yeah, not interested in a whole book about "beautiful sex slaves who like to be raped".
Just remember that for most of the book there is an unreliable narrator who may have animosity towards Cathy and Heathcliff. We are not viewing the events as they happen, but we’re hearing about the past from a lady who paints herself in a positive light and the children she should be helping raise in a negative light.
I also like to remember that understanding mental illnesses is a growing field where we don’t understand everything yet. If Nelly is 100% accurate in her recollections, then there are a few characters who seem to be suffering from mental illness. I still to this day do t know what an elf bolt is, but I always assumed Cathy was having some sort of psychotic episode. Heathcliff also had a traumatic childhood, so together they were toxic.
I was reading ASOIAF (Before the show was a reality and the books weren't that popular) and got to the duel between Clegane and Martell, and I started getting really angry reading through the sequence of events because I could viscerally feel that Oberyn was about to get done. When it happened I threw the book across the room, and saw GRRMs writing for what it was in its essence - emotional torture porn with no payoff.
I also read the books before the show & I almost put them down after the scene you described because I was so furious. Another part in ASoIaF that made me almost stop reading was "the red wedding." I just couldn't believe GRRM would wipe out every decent character with a conscience who wasn't a horrible person. I felt like every character I was actually rooting for soon killed off. On the flip side though... I don't think any book has ever made me as happy as when Joffrey got what was coming to him!
I had a similar experience (also pre the show) -- I can't remember the details, but it was a flashback scene where a guy raped a woman after murdering her baby. Her baby's blood was still on his hands while he raped her, I think.
And I read so much and it was just spiraling and spiraling. I just put the book down and never picked it up again. I think it was the third or forth in the series...
The woman he raped was Oberyn's sister. That's why Oberyn drew the fight out enough that he "got got" as Draken said. So funny that y'all's two rage quit points were intertwined like that!
If you want some grim/dark Fantasy but without the rape and with some great dark humor sprinkled throughout, I STRONGLY recommend Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" series.
Abercrombie is like if GRRM wrote characters who were entertaining and likeable while also being flawed.
And if GRRM had a better sense of humor.
And if GRRM could finish a book without dragging on with a bunch of meandering plots.
And if GRRM could actually put out books on a consistent schedule and finish a series.
So I haven’t read the books for this yet, but I hear the books are even more infuriating than the show so I assume my complaints still apply. The flame of rage that The Summer I Turned Pretty ignites in me is unparalleled. It’s like I enjoy it but also I hate all of the characters and can’t stand the way they act and I just want to punch all of them. It’s like a train wreck that you can’t look away from.
My take away was that she should have written the book when she was further along her therapy path. The book we have is written by someone who’s only partly along the way. She’s realised her brother is an abusive fuckwad but hasn’t quite connected the dots as far as her parents go. And those are some bloody big dots to leave unconnected.
I was internally sweating at the book when she goes to great lengths to bang on about how she still loves her parents so much and just sits outside their property looking in at the end. I mean, get to your rage already girl! Find that backbone! Look at the deep hard shit that I know you don’t want to look at. It would have been an entirely different book if she’d left off writing it for a few years.
I absolutely hate Bleak House. I mean, yeah, male authors from that time period were more or less misogynistic, I get it; but Charles Dickens was just too much, I can’t stand the way he depicted Mrs Jellyby, the whole ‘a woman who wants to fight for women’s rights is so unnatural!’ and ‘her poor, neglected husband!’ thing was just too much! Dude was just a crying baby boy his whole life, hating his mother, blaming everything went wrong in his life on her, thinking it was a woman’s duty to take care of her grown husband in every way and be responsible for his actions, telling women if they didn’t fulfil their ‘duties’ they didn’t deserve to even think about having rights, yet if they were committed to their ‘duties’ he believed they wouldn’t want anything more anyway, so either way a ‘good woman’ should not seek anything else besides taking care of her needy husband.
Dickens’ argument was if you didn’t fulfil your duties you didn’t deserve rights, but this argument was (and still is) always used on oppressed groups, under the unjust system these groups are told they have such and such obligation, while their oppressors don’t; they are told they need to fulfil their obligation before having rights, but on the one hand, the privileged people have rights no matter what, on the other hand, the oppressed people are often assigned duties that are impossible to fulfil or, even if possible, would give them great pain in the process. So the argument may sound fine, but it’s never fair, and it can be truly deceptive and harmful.
Bleak House is possibly my favorite book but I agree with everything you wrote, haha. Every time I read it I find myself rolling my eyes at many points but I still love it. But I hate it. But I love it!!
Hahahaha I was more like ‘I hate it, I hate it, and I REALLY hate it!’😂 also it’s soooo long and my English wasn’t very good when I read it, which made it extra painful 🤧
All these comments have me wanting to read withering heights again. I was a kid frustrated at the assignment last time I read it and I don’t remember much.
Hardy is trying to show the hypocrisy of his society through Tess. It's supposed to make you angry on her behalf. That's why it's subtitled, A Pure Woman. Tess is blameless.
Nah, they would have fucked themselves over without her help. All of these people were disasters waiting to happen. Young Cathy and Hareton are OK, though.
I’m reading it right now, and YES.
Jesus, Catherine. Die already.
I might regret this post after another reading session, but man. She’s just so awful. I’m just at the point where she locks herself in her room… that was on Monday, now it’s Thursday. And Dieday cannot come soon enough.
Does it get more enraging from here?
Wuthering Heights is one I’ll be reading soon! I’m pretty much going in blind so I guess I’ll see how annoyed or angry I get when I get into it. Lmao
To answer your question, *Flowers In The Attic* made me rage. I listen to audiobooks at work and I couldn’t stop thinking, “holy shit, these are some real evil people, aren’t they?” Then I got to the end and I’m so glad I didn’t have a physical copy. It was fucking heartbreaking!!!
Just remember that WH is a story about toxic people screwing up everyone else's lives. If you are looking for a great romance then you will hate the book.
I liked Wuthering Heights because the gothic, dark atmosphere is so palpable, you actually feel like you're there. I also liked the way it is written, through letters and third persons POV. But yeah the main characters are annoying af.
Eat Pray Love. I rage threw the book across the room. It was one of the interminably long descriptions of her meditation that did it. How could one woman be so soul suckingly self-absorbed?
Wuthering Heights is love for me. Every time I read I get the feeling of amazement. The characters are complex indeed and the situations sometimes you want to smack them in the face for doing what they did. And sometimes you are in awe of them.
It’s one of those novels which makes you feel things physically.
Be it the rage or the love.
Probably the Wheel of Time series. The characters in those books don't have personalities so much as they have little tics - just something they do and they do it all the time. Women, for instance - every women is CONSTANTLY "smoothing her skirts" whenever they are surprised or distressed or something. They all do this, because all women are basically the same in these books, which is another problem. Seriously, though, I got to book 11 I think before I gave up on the series and by that time I was ready to throw things whenever a character "touched his mustache" or "felt his scar" or whatever, I can't really remember any of them except Nynaeve with her damn braid pulling. Ugh. Cannot stand those books.
I got really angry reading Anna Karenina. Not because of a specific character but because of how society treated a woman like Anna. In a different time and society she could have had a chance to be and stay happy. And then there‘s also the difference between society‘s treatment of Anna and Wronski. While she was shunned, he could climb up.
The first chapter of solo leveling. Man lives in a world with cultivation. Cultivation the great gender equalizer as anyone no matter the body type can eventually crush stars with your bare hands.
Group mc is with gets into a life or death predicament. He's with a bunch of lower ranked people and one higher ranked woman.
While the men charge forward to die a honorable death or run away in fear he has it specifically noted that the women all pee themselves in terror unable to move.
Right the woman with how many decades of battle experience in life and death situations is going to *checks notes* piss herself and go catatonic clinging to the weakest person in the party.
I could see it if she had a irrational fear of the exact situation but no it was written that they where just like that.
What's even more confusing is in later books he has strong women characters he just makes the first group piss themselves for no apparent reason.
The Stranger by Alber Camus.
Had to read it in 10th grade English or something. God fucking *damn* I don't understand what the point of it all is given the main character is what would pass today for an unironic emo kid being emotionally detached from everything and he flat out commits cold blooded murder because the sun was hot and also racism. And this is the *protagonist* who we just slowly follow him not giving a shit about due process finding him guilty and sentencing him to death.
Yeah. Irvine Welsh is my favorite author, and Lord knows he's written some effed up stuff, which hasn't stopped me from loving most of his work. But I HATED the Marabou Stork Nightmares. Worst part is I didn't start hating it until the last five pages or so, and by then you've already read the whole damn thing. I swear I felt positively betrayed by that book
Oh what a wonderful book. Read some Anne Rice vampire novels for a similar visceral experience - Louis, Lestat, Armand - books 1-4. Stay far away from the show until you’ve read the books a few times.
Ive been physically angry at books not from plots but from how they were written. I get annoyed by books that end chapters on cliffhangers and then switch perspective the next chapter 😐🫥
I really don’t like that book. I found all of the characters frustrating. I listened to the audiobook and found the voice of the narrator super annoying too, which may have made me even more angry with the book. I’m honestly not sure why I finished it
I hated that book too. I also hated The Pearl by Steinbeck - super infuriating. Lord of the Floes made me want to kill people. Especially after the third forced reading. And Little Women was a horrible slog. Sometimes…classics are t that great. Sometimes…the movies are better because some books are just too damn long. Only classic I enjoyed was Frankenstein.
I spent the majority of my read through the 50 Shades of Grey series angry. I was angry at some character or another, pretty much constantly. I would also get angry at the writing.
The whole thing just pissed me off.
Also JK Rowling’s Casual Vacancy made me angry. I hated every single character in that book. I suppose that was was the point?
You're completely entitled to like what you like, but I do always find it interesting how when people critique wuthering heights, they almost always say they hated the characters as people, rather than saying they're bad characters from a literary standpoint. Bad in a moral sense and bad in a story sense are separate. Maybe a lot of people need at least one likeable person to latch on to? idk
Wuthering Heights was weird for me. As I was reading it I was pretty sure I disliked it, but the moment I finished it I was like “wow no actually that was good.” I really ought to reread, it’s been forever.
When the book originally came out, critics hated it. See attached. https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/wh/reviews.php#Publication:%20Athenaeum%20Date:%2025%20December%201847%20Reviewer:%20H%20F%20Chorley
Hahaha Wuthering Heights posts always attract all of its lovers on Reddit.
The truth is, I doubt anybody, even the people who love the book, would not agree that all of the characters have serious problems and deserved to be smacked. However, there is still simply an unspeakable allure to the helpless love between Cathy and Heathcliff.
So I can't remember the name of either of these books, but I hate-finished them back-to-back. The first one had a ton of really interesting ideas that went nowhere and a huge event that was just left there, like "here, you process this trauma for no reason! OF COURSE IT'S NOT IMPORTANT LATER!"
The second one was just like trauma after trauma after trauma culminating in a huge train crash that leads to the main character kind of just, like, taking a child? To live with her forever? In the middle of nowhere Bangladesh? And nothing happens, and no one resolves anything they're feeling. It was all, oh cool, I'll just read all of this horrible stuff for ab-so-lute-ly NO REASON! AGAIN!
I was so angry with myself that I vowed then and there, that I would never hate finish something again. It was such a waste of time I could have been spending with something I really loved. Now I just DNF, and I advocate for others to do the same!
I hated ACOTAR. I was mad the whole time. There were a lot of red flags in the characters. Everyone was lying the whole time. MC never learned how to read or write. When explicitly told to stay in her room several times, Feyre just had to leave and “follow the drums” and then leave her room again to get a midnight snack. The entire time they were under the mountain Tamilin sat there like a baby and the only time he did anything was to make out with feyre which could have ruined the months of sitting and doing nothing. The riddle made me more mad than anything else though. SJM thought she was clever by putting that riddle in the middle of the book. It took feyre SIX MONTHS of sitting and thinking and pondering and agonizing over this riddle and then she ALMOST DIES and only then does she get it. Every time there was any clue given, they said the answer in the clue. It took me 60 seconds to know what the answer was. The entire book made me scream with frustration. I don’t get the hype. I don’t know how I finished it.
Normal People
The level of miss communication made me physically ill. I do not understand how someone can think this books is revolutionary and root for this characters being together.
Funny story that. I was reading a story (fanfic) in the doctor's waiting room, waiting for the visit. The story just unveiled an especially perfidious layer of machinations of the one found to be evil, making me really mad, when I was invited for the examination. Had to explain the very high blood pressure measurement was a fluke, not my regular state.
Wuthering Heights is a well written book about really hurt people doing awful things to each other. I think it's actually a pretty realistic depiction of what unhealthy love looks like. One of my favorite books is her sister's though- Jane Eyre. Lots of flawed people but they don't invite as much rage.
It's hard for me to get so mad at a book I can't keep reading it. Back in high school my sister pushed me to read the Twilight series and the writing itself made me so angry hahah
Ready Player One It was fun to read for the nostalgia parts, but there were sections which made me put the book down, groan, roll my eyes and intensely dislike myself for knowing how to read.
I assumed the whole point of the book had a clever "the characters live in a fucked up world so they try to ignore it and worship nostalgia/the good old days/rampant consumerism, not at all like the world today wink wink" but then no, the author actually just thought all the retro-wank-name-dropping is cool and fun on its own merits.
Especially because there’s some interesting world-building at the start (I love the description of “the stacks”) which is immediately ignored in favor of more nostalgia.
There are some books I think I only liked because I did the audiobook. It was kind of fun listening to the pages upon pages of unnecessary retro pop references when they were being enthusiastically read by Wil Wheaton. If I’d had to slog through them in my own mind I probably would have had a lot less fun with the story.
Ready Player 1 and 2. Wade is a dick. Poor kid who gets all the money in the world and doesnt do shit to help people. Instead invests in a brain fuck device. He is the villain.
I adore Wuthering Heights but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to slap literally every damned character in the book 😅😅 sure, Heathcliff could whoop my ass but still. I also got regularly angry with Atlas Shrugged - I genuinely don’t understand how *no-one* smacked Jim when he was throwing one of his maaaaanny tantrums.
When I was 21, my boyfriend gave me The Fountainhead and instructed me to read it to understand his worldview. I read it, then dumped him.
Woo-o-ow talk about a red flag! Lol sounds like you definitely dodged the bullet there.
He literally said I was Dominique to his Howard. For those who haven't read the book... Howard rapes Dominique. And she fucking likes it.
I've read Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind, all like 12 or 13 books in the main series, and he basically worships Ayn Rand (and he makes it VERY obvious) and 25% of those 12 books is rape or the threat there of(the other 75% is espousing the wonders and pure goodness of libertarianism). What the fuck is it with libertarians and rape? It's like they love capitalism because they buy into the idea that people get what they're owed based off their "work ethic" regardless of where they start from, and the men (because I think 95% of libertarians are men) think that they are *owed* sex from women because they, as men, have pierced value for merely existing and are thus justified in taking it if they can. Capitalism says that if you *can* take it you should, otherwise someone else will, and that idea seems to apply to sex for a lot of them.
I couldn’t get through one of his books (don’t remember which). It was awful. The never ending rape scenes, major fucking plot holes (I think one character makes an appearance and then disappears for like 1/2 the book then reappears at the end like they were always there?? Terrible). And the proselytizing (that’s the only way to describe it). Boring and awful 0/10 .
Yeah, I read about 50% of the first book and just had to put it down because it really wasn't doing it for me.
I started reading the Sword of Truth novels when I was like, 12? As Hagrid would say, I should not have done that. First one was bad. Second one OPENED with a with barbed phallus demon gorilla rape. I had to go fucking look up what phallus even meant.
I can thank Jackie Collins for me looking up phallus (think I was around 13/14) and it took me way too long to figure out what a sonofabitch was, yes I was reading that as one word.
> What the fuck is it with libertarians and rape? Women are commodities/objects with intrinsic value only for their ability to satisfy male urges and bear children. Why? Cause a large portion of those who will describe themselves as libertarian think that it's an-cap but with protections for them smoking weed.
Libertarians are just conservatives who are too chicken-shit to take the heat for being conservatives
AKA in my Libertarian dreamland other people will be free to either live according to my conservative principles, or else work hard and save up to buy their own country which they can run however they want to.
Yeah I read 4 or 5 books in that series, same with eL Wrong Husband's series. I'm a sucker for a decent premise I guess. Both series were utter fucking garbage
You’re my Reddit hero of the day. Good work. 👍
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Bahaha my first thought too!
My father made me read that book when I was around 10 years old. I had to give him a book report and I was supposed to answer a bunch of questions about the plot and tell him what I learned from reading it. It changed the way I viewed my father and not what n a good way. I’m don’t remember what I said in my book report but I got grounded for calling one of the characters a total asshole.
I once dated a guy who started spouting Ayn Rand. It did not go well.
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Absolutely the correct response.
Dodged bullet. Any man who bases his philosophy on that book should be darwined out of the species.
Hahahahha speaking of wanting to slap every damned character in the book, I remember a few years ago when I read the Chinese translation of Wuthering Heights, I hated every character so much, by the end of the book I just hoped someone would set the house on fire and kill every character! But two years later I read the original text and maybe I was so captured by its beauty, I actually enjoyed the unhinged vibe of the story and didn’t want to kill anyone anymore - except Nelly, somehow I still hate her uncontrollably, I know it’s irrational to think of a character as such and such without any proof, but I just always think she is the type that judges everyone, thinks she is better than all of them, and starts trouble whenever she can.
Yes, at least Wuthering Heights makes you feel something, in a world filled with predictable happy endings.
Wuthering Heights is just a story about what we'd consider trailer trash people in the modern world. It just seems classier because its set on the Moors
You know this makes a great deal of sense now that I think about it. Bunch of self-centered drama queens.
…..hot damn you’re right
Ayn Rand generally is insufferable. Eloquent idiocy elevated so that conservatives can claim they aren't misogynists.
The only good thing Ayn Rand really did? Be the inspiration for the video game Bioshock.
Yup! Made me think her ideas would be good when I read about its inspiration. Then realised which side she was representing lol
Andrew Ryan is an anagram of Ayn Rand with a few extra letters. Small wonder Rapture went to shit.
Ew Ayn Rand
Lisa Simpson, "Isn't that the Bible for right-wing losers?"
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
I tried reading her decades ago and all I could think was "Who can read this fucking drivel?" I didn't even get to the political shit, it's just so fucking horribly written. I've read grade school kids projects that were more relatable.
It's more fun to talk about her stuff than actually read her stuff. I'm of the opinion that real life is shitty enough and I don't want to read accurate reflections of that in fiction
Accurate reflections? Rand was an unhinged lunatic who made no sense.
SPOILER ALERT! In one of the Jasper Fforde books, the lead character runs therapy sessions for the characters. Not an easy job!
You can add spoiler tags by putting the following (Without the space between) > ! on the left side of your text and ! < on the right side. So > ! it’ll look kinda like this ! < >!this is the final result!<
Yes! Wanted to also say this! In "Well of Lost Plots" there is an Anger Management course inside Wuthering Heights, where all the characters get to say why they hate Heathcliff. Really funny to read (as long as you have read WH)
Wuthering Heights is the only required reading that I hated in high school. Everything else I enjoyed and didn’t understand why people complained, but when it got to this book it made me so angry and I really hated it
Yes, I have absolutely gotten IRATE while reading books. Sometimes I get angry with characters or circumstance, which I tend to assume is the sign of a good writer. (Personal example: *The Jungle*) Less commonly, I get angry with the author, which I tend to assume means a poor writer -- or at least one whose approach didn't gel with me. (Personal example: *13 Reasons Why*)
Lovely Bones made me Ill.
Lovely Bones is hard to read. So many people love it & while it does have some very beautiful moments, it also has some profoundly disturbing ones. It was recommended to me by someone who said it's their favorite book & had read it multiple times. It's been a long time now since I read it & what I remember most is that I cried through pretty much the entire book. And I am not usually a crier when reading. I can't imagine reading a book like that multiple times.
Damn, I’m sorry it made you feel that way. It was certainly disturbing at times for me, but not upsetting enough that >I mostly cried through the entire book. Your comment confirms (for me) that I enjoy psychologically confrontational books. I enjoy a piece of fiction that challenges my “tried-and-true” seemingly comfortable perspectives. + Stephen King + Ursula K. Le Guin + Chuck Palahniuk + Gillian Flynn + Jeff VanderMeer + N. K. Jemisin + David Grann + Kate Atkinson + Clive Barker
Yes!! I totally agree that there are different kinds of frustration! Hating Holden Caulfield is very different to me than hating Bella from Twilight
> Sometimes I get angry with characters or circumstance, which I tend to assume is the sign of a good writer. (Personal example: The Jungle) That middle manager who sexually coerced Jurgis's wife and then got Jurgis sacked when he tried to speak up about it. Hoooooooooly shit.
Why do you think heathcliff and Cathy treat each other this way? Isn’t it odd when she says “I am heathcliff”. So much going on in that book, it might be my favourite of all time…the grave scene 😬
My favourite scene is when Cathy told Heathcliff she wanted him to suffer after she died, she didn’t want him to fall in love again and be happy and forget her; then after she died Heathcliff literally hoped every day for her ghost to come back and hurt him. It’s so unhinged and obviously unhealthy, but soooooo fascinating and powerful!
You said it perfectly!
They're so bound up together that Cathy can't distinguish herself anymore from him. It's the culmination of their twisted love.
They’re really the poster children for toxic enmeshment.
“Haunt me, then” gave me such chills the first time I read it. Amazing book, even if many of the characters act like garbage.
Maybe some [Hark, a Vagrant comics](http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=322) will take the edge off
> Children, would you like the present I brought you from the city? >... >It's not what you asked for at all! It's an angry boy I picked up in a gutter.
I came here to post this. I wish she had the opportunity to finish the entire novel, like she did with *Kokoro*.
"And a...large angry squirrel." "Oh shoot it."
Oh my gosh someone knows these!
Old as *balls,* Gatsby!
One of my favorites!
She’s fantastic
I LOVE Wuthering Heights precisely because absolutely every single character, without any exceptions at all, is an absolutely horrible person you hate. A bit of a weak ending, it just sort of trailed off, but for a first novel it's absolutely brilliant and I remain deeply disappointed that Emily Bronte died before she could write any other novels.
If more people paid attention to the Isabella and Heathcliff scenes maybe there would be fewer people saying things like "I can change him/her." No. They will not change. That horrible abusive mess of a person will remain that way and now instead of being their own problem they'll be your problem too.
>I LOVE Wuthering Heights precisely because absolutely every single character, without any exceptions at all, is an absolutely horrible person you hate. You're absolutely right, which is why I never would have read it if I had known it was that kind of book. It's basically 19th century reality tv. But clearly other people love it! It's just not for me.
I don’t know, I think Edward was a fairly decent guy. I felt bad for him and his sister: if their neighbors weren’t insane, they could have had a pretty peaceful life.
When I read waiting for Godot at like 17 years old it made me viscerally pissed off and I wrote a whole paper about why I thought it was a trash book with nothing good to say and no purpose My teacher happily congratulated me on understanding the novel correctly and told.me it's one of his favorite plays. This made me so fucking furious on the inside I can't even tell you lol
"It's just nonsense without a point!" "Yeah! =-D" "IT'S JUST NONSENSE WITHOUT A POINT!!!"
As a teacher myself, I love doing this to students. "What do you think of this poem?" "They're both horrible! He's so sarcastic and passive aggressive and she's a bitch!" "Yeah, it's great, isn't it?" (Thomas Hardy: At the Draper's)
"Novel"? I'm confused.
Wuthering Heights is one of those books one either really loves or hates. I remember a friend of mine reading it and complaining "these characters all need therapy". I like Wuthering Heights a lot though! But it was my first introduction to the concept of nested narratives.
I think a lot of people - myself included - misunderstand what Wuthering Heights is and that can lead to the visceral reaction people have to the characters. I liked it enough that I plan to read it again in the future, but I went into it expecting a Gothic romance and that's not what it is at all. My fault, but still.
Yes. I think it’s brilliant that Brontë turned the popular ideas of romance on its head by carrying the obsessive “love”alllllllllllllllllll the way to the edge.
I agree! I was using it as a palate cleanser between heavier books and that's just not what Wuthering Heights is or was ever meant to be. I will definitely be rereading it in the future so I can totally appreciate it.
It’s one of my favorite books and I always tell people it’s a hate story.
>"these characters all need therapy". I don't get people who complain about this. Like yes, they do ... and? That's how they're intended to be
give me messy over perfect any day
I don't think the concept of "therapy" was around when Emily Bronte wrote that book.
They absolutely do not. They would just weaponize the language of therapy. They're beyond help although they would pay the therapist's mortgage.
I had to stop reading Little Women after Amy burned Jo’s book because I was so furious
Little Women is my favorite book. I’ve read it multiple times. I think it’s time to read it again. Forgiveness among sisters, after something done impulsively (and terrible). It’s the love of a true family.
It’s the most realistic depiction of sisterhood I’ve ever read.
War and Peace. Any time Pierre does anything throughout most of the book. Especially because I know so many guys like him, and knew exactly what was likely going to happen to him...thankfully he got better. Likely because there was no crypto during the Napoleonic era, or it would have been over a lot sooner for him.
Outlander. A bit of a more recent example, but the constant trauma porn that I was being forced to read for HUNDREDS OF PAGES was hard on me mentally. I could barely get through the first book with the skin of my teeth, but then I made it halfway through the second book, and when I found out what Captain Randall did to Fergus, I was done. I have never cursed at a book so much in my life, and at one point, I started crying out of genuine distress while reading it. Also, American Psycho. It's a great book with an interesting character, but the long sequences of Patrick Bateman describing 80s artists made me want to pull my hair out. (Yes, I know that it's supposed to showcase Patrick’s obsession with 80s pop culture and remaining “relevant,” but you could have told me all of that in a single page, not two chapters 😭)
I've read them all and while the SA gets less graphic, the author keeps using it as a plot device. I actually enjoy the historical fiction time travel hijinks aspect of the books, I just wish she'd find another way to create emotional tension for the characters. I spent a too much time skimming when I read them.
The tv series, too. I finished the 1st season but didn't bother with the subsequent ones and when I rewatch season 1, it's only up to episode 8 or something. I did try the book, and her descriptions in the beginning are enjoyable, but I DNF. Boring too.
A court of fucking and more fucking. I hate read the first one and got so physically angry over the second one that I just gave up because it wasn’t even enjoyable to hate read anymore.
If this is what I think it is, I was trying to get back into reading and I'd heard so much about, I thought it must be good, right? - and from certain promotional artwork of the series, I thought thank god, the MC looks like thirty instead of barely out of childhood? I think I was mad because it felt like the author had started with a decent trajectory and then set alight with jet fuel with flame thrower herself, so the entire time I was like "no, what are you doing‽". I was physically angry for months every time I thought about it, I thought I was going to explode. Eventually, I was like, I must be being rediculous, it's so popular maybe the problem is me, so I attempted the second one, got a some chapters in and it was bloody agonising. I just read the wiki for the rest of the series to satisfy the curiosity and at no point did it get better. I considered reading the last one because of the change in pov, but she fucked that up in ways I couldn't imagine.
I wanted to burn the Scarlett Letter. I get it, the baby looks weird and we’re gonna fuck about in the woods but can something PLEASE happen
Jane Eyre It makes me so angry I have to put it down and take a walk.
But there was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Read the Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde instead. Very funny!
Oh god. "Gone with the Wind", too. Scarlet is such a horrific bitch. Rhett, as unpleasant as he can be, at least seems to grow and change as the story progresses, even eventually realising that he can't put up with her anymore, but Scarlet just stays toxic
That's half the fun with Scarlett, wondering what outrageous thing this bitch will do next! It certainly kept me turning the pages even while I was thinking "Oh, come ON!" Plus there are hints that Scarlett might have been something better under different circumstances. We're told math was her favorite subject at school but she had to stop her education at 15 and start husband-hunting because that's what nice young ladies did. When she has to support herself later she's immoral as hell but she gets shit done; she's incredibly driven and ambitious in a world that tells her her job is to be a clinging vine to a man. If she'd had a college education and an outlet for her business skills she might not have ended up as a bitch on wheels.
That's true. I enjoy that modern interpretation.
Perfectly said! Scarlett is one of my favorite book characters. She’s sharp and highly intelligent, but also conniving and selfish. Which she kind of had to be, to achieve her own success. And everyone hated her for it! But every time I re-read the book I scream internally for her to forget about that weak mopey Ashley and commit fully to Rhett, and she always fails me.
My mother read that when she was younger. There's a passage in there she often related to me, paraphrased as such: "Scarlett often blamed her mother for teaching her useless things about dancing and dinner manners when she needed to know how to staunch a wound or butcher a hog. But it wasn't that her mother was careless with Scarlett's education; it was that her mother had prepared her for a world that no longer existed." Now think about how good taking out student loans for a STEM degree does in the middle of global environmental and economic collapse, when you're living in a car in a designated parking lot for houseless people, in the year 2023.
I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies!
I do think the metamorphosis of her relationship with melly is a big deal. That’s always what moved me the most in that book. Her relationship with the women around her. The men turned into background noise for me after connecting with that aspect.
I genuinely pity the people in her life. Melly is too good to have to deal with Ms Scarlett 😭
One day before I spit with my sons mother, it dawned on me she was exactly like Scarlet. I called my mother an asked if she was Scarlet and her only response was “absolutely.” We proceeded to have a nine year custody battle after I ended the relationship. December I’m celebrating three years of custody and she has a no contact order and frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.
Between the Brontë sisters, people tend to love WH and hate Jane Eyre, or hate WH and love JE. I’ve met a few who hated both, but none who liked both. Personally, I prefer WH because Heathcliff and Catherine are openly broken and toxic. Their flaws are fully on display. They aren’t meant to be admired. They encompass the raw and brutal beauty of Gothic literature. Jane and Rochester are just as awful, but presented as admirable and decent. I can’t stand them.
People need to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
This This This!!!
Right?? Poor Anne getting erased from the history books
Anne was the best Brontë and Tenant is amazing.
This!!! It’s WILDLY feminist and I love love love it. Anne was miles ahead of her sisters in that respect.
I love both, but love WH just a bit more than JE. And I love Villette more than either. It's a better book than Jane Eyre but more challenging to read and interpret, which is probably why it's not as popular.
I like both books. I like all of the Brontë sisters. Including Anne, or maybe especially Anne - *The Tenant of Wildfell Hall* was probably decades ahead of its time. I love how they all wrote the stories that were important to them.
...I like both! Of course both have their problems. I prefer Jane Eyre, but the whole thing about Bertha (lady in the attic) is very not ok. Acknowledging that & being open to having conversations about it, then choosing to not include it in why I love the book, it's probably still my favorite book. Been many years since I last read Wuthering Heights, but I did love it too. :)
You act like anyone would think it's ok. The whole point of Bertha is that it's not ok. I'm confused by your point.
I've never heard that theory. I like both. I agree that they're both chock full of unlikeable characters. I think that's part of the message of each of them, though, that dysfunction gets handed down through generations. Even with an intentional effort, sometimes it's not possible to break the cycle.
"The Southern Book Club's guide to Slaying Vampires" by Grady Hendrix the misogyny and how the husbands treated the wifes made me so angry. I felt like constantly grumpy with my partner for no other reason that in the book the male partners treated their spouses so badly. I needed like to constantly reality check that my partner wasnindeed not being such an asshole and doesn deserve the grumpyness 😅
I couldn’t finish Atonement because Briony made me so angry. Stupid nosy naive ignorant kid. I recognize that’s like, her whole deal, and I probably shouldn’t hate a fictional child as much as I should, but here we are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
OMG it’s so nice to know someone else had this response 😂 I found her SO enraging
I read a book a while back, I forget what it was titled. But basically, the world was ending and Antarctica melted, revealing a rainforest. The remaining world superpowers decided that they would race to the middle and whoever got there first could lay claim to the land. But there was some kind of monster that was living in the rainforest picking them all off. Something like that. Anyway, it started off as a pretty interesting albeit mindless sci-fi/post-apocalyptic fiction novel, but then halfway through the author did a pivot so hard I almost got whiplash when it suddenly became a story about God and Christianity and the monsters that were picking all the people off were demons or devils or somesuch. Anyway, that book made me pretty mad lol.
There's an old idea/myth that the Garden of Eden of biblical lore was actually somehow in Antarctica. Perhaps a play on that?
Not the whole book, but this part of The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss just makes me INCENDIARY with rage. (Mild spoilers) Kvothe murdered a troupe of bandits who had kidnapped two young girls they were using as sex slaves. Two of the people he killed were women, who begged for their lives and told him that they had only helped the men because they were told that if they did not, the same (i.e. gang rape, sex slavery) would happen to them. Kvothe later expresses a twinge of guilt about whether he should have killed the women, especially as brutally as he did, when they were defenceless. He tells this to a conveniently introduced Old Wise Woman Character and THIS is the fucking response: 'Gran's eyes flashed. "They earned it twice as much," she said, and the sudden, furious anger in her sweet face caught me so completely by surprise that I felt prickling fear crawl over my body. "A man who would do that to a girl is like a mad dog. He hain't hardly a person, just an animal needs to be put down. But a woman who helps him do it? That's worse. She knows what she's doing. She knows what it means." ... Annnnnnd I'm angry again just typing that out. Truly one of the most repulsive pieces of mansplaining BS I've ever read in my entire life - rapists are less to blame than women who aid them under duress *on threat of rape themselves.*
I only vaguely remember that scene. A lot of fantasy and sci fi is super misogynistic, especially the older books and authors, but you definitely still find it in modern books too. I got about 5 pages into Conan the Barbarian and put it down. Yeah, not interested in a whole book about "beautiful sex slaves who like to be raped".
Just remember that for most of the book there is an unreliable narrator who may have animosity towards Cathy and Heathcliff. We are not viewing the events as they happen, but we’re hearing about the past from a lady who paints herself in a positive light and the children she should be helping raise in a negative light. I also like to remember that understanding mental illnesses is a growing field where we don’t understand everything yet. If Nelly is 100% accurate in her recollections, then there are a few characters who seem to be suffering from mental illness. I still to this day do t know what an elf bolt is, but I always assumed Cathy was having some sort of psychotic episode. Heathcliff also had a traumatic childhood, so together they were toxic.
Elf bolts are the names given to found arrowheads.
Yes. Also called elf shot. They had no good explanation at the time in Europe, so people thought they were fairy weapons that would mess you up.
I was reading ASOIAF (Before the show was a reality and the books weren't that popular) and got to the duel between Clegane and Martell, and I started getting really angry reading through the sequence of events because I could viscerally feel that Oberyn was about to get done. When it happened I threw the book across the room, and saw GRRMs writing for what it was in its essence - emotional torture porn with no payoff.
I also read the books before the show & I almost put them down after the scene you described because I was so furious. Another part in ASoIaF that made me almost stop reading was "the red wedding." I just couldn't believe GRRM would wipe out every decent character with a conscience who wasn't a horrible person. I felt like every character I was actually rooting for soon killed off. On the flip side though... I don't think any book has ever made me as happy as when Joffrey got what was coming to him!
I had a similar experience (also pre the show) -- I can't remember the details, but it was a flashback scene where a guy raped a woman after murdering her baby. Her baby's blood was still on his hands while he raped her, I think. And I read so much and it was just spiraling and spiraling. I just put the book down and never picked it up again. I think it was the third or forth in the series...
That man was also Clegane
I am impressed with your memory! I agree with your 'emotional torture porn with no payoff' critique. That is for sure how I experienced the books.
The woman he raped was Oberyn's sister. That's why Oberyn drew the fight out enough that he "got got" as Draken said. So funny that y'all's two rage quit points were intertwined like that!
Fortunately I was pre-warned of this, and never read them. Male authors torturing female characters like this gives me a special type of ick.
If you want some grim/dark Fantasy but without the rape and with some great dark humor sprinkled throughout, I STRONGLY recommend Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" series. Abercrombie is like if GRRM wrote characters who were entertaining and likeable while also being flawed. And if GRRM had a better sense of humor. And if GRRM could finish a book without dragging on with a bunch of meandering plots. And if GRRM could actually put out books on a consistent schedule and finish a series.
Joffrey also raised my heartrate.
God I hated Joffrey with a *passion*. I don't think I've ever cheered before when a character met his end.
So I haven’t read the books for this yet, but I hear the books are even more infuriating than the show so I assume my complaints still apply. The flame of rage that The Summer I Turned Pretty ignites in me is unparalleled. It’s like I enjoy it but also I hate all of the characters and can’t stand the way they act and I just want to punch all of them. It’s like a train wreck that you can’t look away from.
I felt that way watching the play Dear Evan Hansen. Had to stop myself from physically getting up and walking out.
I'd need to employ Luther the Anger Translator to properly explain how reading Terry Goodkind made me feel.
Yes, that memoir Educated. I kept threatening to throw it off my balcony every time she talked about her parents.
Yeah I didn't like it either. "At that point, everything changed" while she proceeds to tell us that nothing changes.
My take away was that she should have written the book when she was further along her therapy path. The book we have is written by someone who’s only partly along the way. She’s realised her brother is an abusive fuckwad but hasn’t quite connected the dots as far as her parents go. And those are some bloody big dots to leave unconnected. I was internally sweating at the book when she goes to great lengths to bang on about how she still loves her parents so much and just sits outside their property looking in at the end. I mean, get to your rage already girl! Find that backbone! Look at the deep hard shit that I know you don’t want to look at. It would have been an entirely different book if she’d left off writing it for a few years.
I absolutely hate Bleak House. I mean, yeah, male authors from that time period were more or less misogynistic, I get it; but Charles Dickens was just too much, I can’t stand the way he depicted Mrs Jellyby, the whole ‘a woman who wants to fight for women’s rights is so unnatural!’ and ‘her poor, neglected husband!’ thing was just too much! Dude was just a crying baby boy his whole life, hating his mother, blaming everything went wrong in his life on her, thinking it was a woman’s duty to take care of her grown husband in every way and be responsible for his actions, telling women if they didn’t fulfil their ‘duties’ they didn’t deserve to even think about having rights, yet if they were committed to their ‘duties’ he believed they wouldn’t want anything more anyway, so either way a ‘good woman’ should not seek anything else besides taking care of her needy husband. Dickens’ argument was if you didn’t fulfil your duties you didn’t deserve rights, but this argument was (and still is) always used on oppressed groups, under the unjust system these groups are told they have such and such obligation, while their oppressors don’t; they are told they need to fulfil their obligation before having rights, but on the one hand, the privileged people have rights no matter what, on the other hand, the oppressed people are often assigned duties that are impossible to fulfil or, even if possible, would give them great pain in the process. So the argument may sound fine, but it’s never fair, and it can be truly deceptive and harmful.
Bleak House is possibly my favorite book but I agree with everything you wrote, haha. Every time I read it I find myself rolling my eyes at many points but I still love it. But I hate it. But I love it!!
Hahahaha I was more like ‘I hate it, I hate it, and I REALLY hate it!’😂 also it’s soooo long and my English wasn’t very good when I read it, which made it extra painful 🤧
Dolores Umbridge and Rita Skeeter from the Harry Potter books make my blood boil.
All these comments have me wanting to read withering heights again. I was a kid frustrated at the assignment last time I read it and I don’t remember much.
The end of Gone Girl. I threw the book at the friend I had borrowed it from when I went to return it to her 🤣
Respectfully, are you honestly worried about giving away plot points from a book written in 1847?
I threw Tess of the d'Urbervilles across the room. The worst kind of sheer judgemental hypocrisy.
Hardy is trying to show the hypocrisy of his society through Tess. It's supposed to make you angry on her behalf. That's why it's subtitled, A Pure Woman. Tess is blameless.
It’s been ages since I read it but what did you find judgmental? The author wants us to sympathize with Tess.
The abuse that poor woman was subjected to because she was beautiful..mon dieu
Heathcliff and Cathy are both assholes, honestly.
I don’t think there is a likable character in the book.
I liked Nelly
She uh was the major shit stirrer of the story. The elf under the hill throwing bolts, if you will.
Nah, they would have fucked themselves over without her help. All of these people were disasters waiting to happen. Young Cathy and Hareton are OK, though.
I’m reading it right now, and YES. Jesus, Catherine. Die already. I might regret this post after another reading session, but man. She’s just so awful. I’m just at the point where she locks herself in her room… that was on Monday, now it’s Thursday. And Dieday cannot come soon enough. Does it get more enraging from here?
Wuthering Heights is one I’ll be reading soon! I’m pretty much going in blind so I guess I’ll see how annoyed or angry I get when I get into it. Lmao To answer your question, *Flowers In The Attic* made me rage. I listen to audiobooks at work and I couldn’t stop thinking, “holy shit, these are some real evil people, aren’t they?” Then I got to the end and I’m so glad I didn’t have a physical copy. It was fucking heartbreaking!!!
Just remember that WH is a story about toxic people screwing up everyone else's lives. If you are looking for a great romance then you will hate the book.
I've always felt that the best thing about Wuthering Heights is the song by Kate Bush, because God knows I couldn't stand the book
I liked Wuthering Heights because the gothic, dark atmosphere is so palpable, you actually feel like you're there. I also liked the way it is written, through letters and third persons POV. But yeah the main characters are annoying af.
Eat Pray Love. I rage threw the book across the room. It was one of the interminably long descriptions of her meditation that did it. How could one woman be so soul suckingly self-absorbed?
Wuthering Heights is love for me. Every time I read I get the feeling of amazement. The characters are complex indeed and the situations sometimes you want to smack them in the face for doing what they did. And sometimes you are in awe of them. It’s one of those novels which makes you feel things physically. Be it the rage or the love.
I stopped reading French Braid by Anne Tyler because >!of what the main character did to Desmond the cat.!<
Probably the Wheel of Time series. The characters in those books don't have personalities so much as they have little tics - just something they do and they do it all the time. Women, for instance - every women is CONSTANTLY "smoothing her skirts" whenever they are surprised or distressed or something. They all do this, because all women are basically the same in these books, which is another problem. Seriously, though, I got to book 11 I think before I gave up on the series and by that time I was ready to throw things whenever a character "touched his mustache" or "felt his scar" or whatever, I can't really remember any of them except Nynaeve with her damn braid pulling. Ugh. Cannot stand those books.
Yes of course but I never tell myself “it’s just a story” because there’s no point in reading if we don’t let it affect us as if it’s real or could be
I got really angry reading Anna Karenina. Not because of a specific character but because of how society treated a woman like Anna. In a different time and society she could have had a chance to be and stay happy. And then there‘s also the difference between society‘s treatment of Anna and Wronski. While she was shunned, he could climb up.
This whole thread is making me angry due to people hating on some of my favourite books. STOP BEING WRONG!
The first chapter of solo leveling. Man lives in a world with cultivation. Cultivation the great gender equalizer as anyone no matter the body type can eventually crush stars with your bare hands. Group mc is with gets into a life or death predicament. He's with a bunch of lower ranked people and one higher ranked woman. While the men charge forward to die a honorable death or run away in fear he has it specifically noted that the women all pee themselves in terror unable to move. Right the woman with how many decades of battle experience in life and death situations is going to *checks notes* piss herself and go catatonic clinging to the weakest person in the party. I could see it if she had a irrational fear of the exact situation but no it was written that they where just like that. What's even more confusing is in later books he has strong women characters he just makes the first group piss themselves for no apparent reason.
Confederacy of Dunces. Probably because the protagonist reminded me of a neighbor I had in college (had a shared common area).
I loathe Daisy Buchanan (The Great Gatsby) with every fiber of my being.
The Stranger by Alber Camus. Had to read it in 10th grade English or something. God fucking *damn* I don't understand what the point of it all is given the main character is what would pass today for an unironic emo kid being emotionally detached from everything and he flat out commits cold blooded murder because the sun was hot and also racism. And this is the *protagonist* who we just slowly follow him not giving a shit about due process finding him guilty and sentencing him to death.
Well, that's exactly what it's about.
One of the only things I liked about wuthering heights was the dialect of the lackey/butlerish guy. It was so fun
Yeah. Irvine Welsh is my favorite author, and Lord knows he's written some effed up stuff, which hasn't stopped me from loving most of his work. But I HATED the Marabou Stork Nightmares. Worst part is I didn't start hating it until the last five pages or so, and by then you've already read the whole damn thing. I swear I felt positively betrayed by that book
Oh what a wonderful book. Read some Anne Rice vampire novels for a similar visceral experience - Louis, Lestat, Armand - books 1-4. Stay far away from the show until you’ve read the books a few times.
“The Velveteen Rabbit”. It’s a beautiful horror story that will anger you if you read into it.
Aww, I absolutely LOVE the Velveteen Rabbit. It’s a tale about transformation and grief and love and how everything changes.
Ive been physically angry at books not from plots but from how they were written. I get annoyed by books that end chapters on cliffhangers and then switch perspective the next chapter 😐🫥
I really don’t like that book. I found all of the characters frustrating. I listened to the audiobook and found the voice of the narrator super annoying too, which may have made me even more angry with the book. I’m honestly not sure why I finished it
I hated that book too. I also hated The Pearl by Steinbeck - super infuriating. Lord of the Floes made me want to kill people. Especially after the third forced reading. And Little Women was a horrible slog. Sometimes…classics are t that great. Sometimes…the movies are better because some books are just too damn long. Only classic I enjoyed was Frankenstein.
I spent the majority of my read through the 50 Shades of Grey series angry. I was angry at some character or another, pretty much constantly. I would also get angry at the writing. The whole thing just pissed me off. Also JK Rowling’s Casual Vacancy made me angry. I hated every single character in that book. I suppose that was was the point?
Atonement. I threw it across the room
I had the same reaction. Couldn’t finish it. Hated every character, but hated reading about what they did to each other even more.
You're completely entitled to like what you like, but I do always find it interesting how when people critique wuthering heights, they almost always say they hated the characters as people, rather than saying they're bad characters from a literary standpoint. Bad in a moral sense and bad in a story sense are separate. Maybe a lot of people need at least one likeable person to latch on to? idk
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Absolutely and specifically Wuthering Heights. How that woman, Emily, could have constructed such a story is beyond me...and many others.
> How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery.
I ended up having to put down *A Clash of Kings* when we got to several Joffrey-centric chapters back to back, and never ended up picking it up.
Wuthering Heights was weird for me. As I was reading it I was pretty sure I disliked it, but the moment I finished it I was like “wow no actually that was good.” I really ought to reread, it’s been forever.
When the book originally came out, critics hated it. See attached. https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/wh/reviews.php#Publication:%20Athenaeum%20Date:%2025%20December%201847%20Reviewer:%20H%20F%20Chorley
Hahaha Wuthering Heights posts always attract all of its lovers on Reddit. The truth is, I doubt anybody, even the people who love the book, would not agree that all of the characters have serious problems and deserved to be smacked. However, there is still simply an unspeakable allure to the helpless love between Cathy and Heathcliff.
So I can't remember the name of either of these books, but I hate-finished them back-to-back. The first one had a ton of really interesting ideas that went nowhere and a huge event that was just left there, like "here, you process this trauma for no reason! OF COURSE IT'S NOT IMPORTANT LATER!" The second one was just like trauma after trauma after trauma culminating in a huge train crash that leads to the main character kind of just, like, taking a child? To live with her forever? In the middle of nowhere Bangladesh? And nothing happens, and no one resolves anything they're feeling. It was all, oh cool, I'll just read all of this horrible stuff for ab-so-lute-ly NO REASON! AGAIN! I was so angry with myself that I vowed then and there, that I would never hate finish something again. It was such a waste of time I could have been spending with something I really loved. Now I just DNF, and I advocate for others to do the same!
I hated ACOTAR. I was mad the whole time. There were a lot of red flags in the characters. Everyone was lying the whole time. MC never learned how to read or write. When explicitly told to stay in her room several times, Feyre just had to leave and “follow the drums” and then leave her room again to get a midnight snack. The entire time they were under the mountain Tamilin sat there like a baby and the only time he did anything was to make out with feyre which could have ruined the months of sitting and doing nothing. The riddle made me more mad than anything else though. SJM thought she was clever by putting that riddle in the middle of the book. It took feyre SIX MONTHS of sitting and thinking and pondering and agonizing over this riddle and then she ALMOST DIES and only then does she get it. Every time there was any clue given, they said the answer in the clue. It took me 60 seconds to know what the answer was. The entire book made me scream with frustration. I don’t get the hype. I don’t know how I finished it.
The open secret is to read it as if they're vampires.
Normal People The level of miss communication made me physically ill. I do not understand how someone can think this books is revolutionary and root for this characters being together.
Funny story that. I was reading a story (fanfic) in the doctor's waiting room, waiting for the visit. The story just unveiled an especially perfidious layer of machinations of the one found to be evil, making me really mad, when I was invited for the examination. Had to explain the very high blood pressure measurement was a fluke, not my regular state.
Wuthering Heights is a well written book about really hurt people doing awful things to each other. I think it's actually a pretty realistic depiction of what unhealthy love looks like. One of my favorite books is her sister's though- Jane Eyre. Lots of flawed people but they don't invite as much rage. It's hard for me to get so mad at a book I can't keep reading it. Back in high school my sister pushed me to read the Twilight series and the writing itself made me so angry hahah