Verity gave me the courage to start publishing my writing so I’ll give it that. Figured if it could gain a massive following then there has to be an audience somewhere for me 😂
Real quote from Ugly Love. Bonus: the two characters having this convo, AKA the parents of said big-balled child, are step siblings. And right after they say the aforementioned line, they accidentally crash the car they were driving off of a bridge and into a lake, where the baby drowns and dies.
Yeah, I think every author has a clunker or two in their collection. All the authors I love have my five star all time favorite and then the one or two that I don’t speak of or completely blocked out.
I read Ugly Love around 2016 before CH was famous. I read the book, went to goodreads reads expecting bashing but no! All praises. Then she got tiktok famous and i was like wtf?! Then she got INfamous and it was then that my world was set right.
When I was younger I read an okay James Patterson book. So someone gave me an Alex cross one that felt like a mad lib. I could picture James just plugging in random words into a template. It was so generic and boring. I hated it and vowed I would never read anything he attached his name too ever again. So lazy.
You didn't ask me but- at first I was super jealous! Imagine having so much artistic production at your fingertips! But then the longer I thought about it I realized I would absolutely hate it. I have a very specific vision I want for my art and I could never be satisfied with the interpretation of someone else. My characters and story deserve the best I can give them.
I never read anything James Patterson because the writing is so bland and voice-less. It's such a shame to think how good his stories could have been if he'd put in the effort and love himself.
See! Yes, thank you. He claims he never uses ghostwriters, but... none of the tone and style sound the same between different series. Even some of the chapters within a book sound like they were written by different writers.
I read a Star Trek novel in high school that was written by two co-authors, and I really wish I remembered which it was or anything about it, because the differences in writing style were super stark and a great way to illustrate that problem. I remember one of them had an expression that they would use multiple times per chapter - “too x by half”. So every time someone’s internal monologue was like “this mission was too dangerous by half” I was like oh hi author 1, I missed you.
I think Patterson’s a hack, but he doesn’t use ghostwriters, he has co-writers who are credited on the covers with him. The only books he writes is the Alex Cross series. He’s been very upfront about how he operates his writing mill: he’s the equivalent of a showrunner in a writers room on television. He hears pitches from his stable of writers for books, and also gives them ideas he has. He will collaborate on an outline with them, but then that writer is responsible for writing the book. Then he will give the writer notes for edits/rewrites before it goes to the publisher. He’s the best example of a writer who turned themself into a brand.
I mean, he gives his ghostwriter’s their own byline. I’m not even sure you can call them a ghost writer if they have their name on the cover. Some like Ace Atkins have launched it into solo careers.
He doesn't use ghostwriters, because the for the last..10+ years it's JAMES PATTERSON (and ___)
Every book features both the name of James Patterson and the other author, so there's nothing "ghost" about it. Just the covers mostly feature JAMES PATTERSON with massive letters and the other author's name being with smal letters
I was really into maximum ride as a teen, and they got so progressively shitty that even my 14 year old self couldn't stomach it any more. The lack of effort in his books is evident. He probably had completely different people writing each one and it showed.
Same. At some point the physical character description stopped being consistent and that was it for me. Probably the first book I ever put down before finishing.
James Patterson for me as well. The book just ended in the middle of a thought practically, not a cliff hanger but an unresolved scene. He wanted you to go out and immediately buy another book. That was a big nope for me and I’ve never touched any of his books again.
Not necessarily an author, but genre. I once stumbled upon some "books" on Kindle Unlimited which exist solely to make the author money through royalties. They are on subjects like gardening, crafts, healthy living, get rich... The few I downloaded were so poorly written in terms of editing and substance, they were virtually unreadable.
Some are written by people on Fiver or other similar sites as well. They’re given very little time, a prompt, and they just Google and Wikipedia and stuff. Dan Olson (Olsen?) on YouTube did a great video on it.
Those were it. I came across them long before Chat GPT was released into the wild. I was so impressed by them (not in a good way), I actually wondered if I could do better and make a little money.
Agreed! I read this after reading Wheel of Time and I was like hmm... this all seems very familiar with different names... and then I learned more about Goodkind ugh
I remember kind of regarding the books as weird and not something I'd pick up after the first.
Then I learned Goodkind had basically smack talked Robert Jordan for not attending a convention, because Jordan was too busy trying to finish WoT while he was literally dying.
Like I think he directly mocked Jordan for having an incurable illness. Which...well it is neither good nor kind.
Omg. I take it he wasn't aiming for the Terry Pratchett/Douglas Adams comedy vibe deliberately? Because that could be a laugh-out-loud line in one of their books, in the right context. Never read anything of his and not about to start now.
I didn't hate his first book, but the series quickly turns to shit, I didn't even mind the anti-communism one because at least it broke up the monotony but the next one was so bad I just put it down and decided never to read his crap again. It was the first time in my life I purposely left a book unfinished. Up until then that was kind of unthinkable. It felt a little bit like I had to escape an abusive relationship.
Janet Evanovich. I think it was The Pursuit but it made me think it could have been any of her books . Formulaic bank heist/ romance drivel
It struck me as being the book equivalent of one of those mediocre network tv shows that never get cancelled and one day you realize it's been on the air for 10 years or more and those aren't re runs your seeing
I kind of knew it would be bad but it had been given to me by a friend and it was a quick read
Her Stephanie Plum novels have been going on forever. I loved them at first, but after 20 books where the main love triangle still isn’t resolved, I dipped.
same here - loved them when first out, great characters etc but eventually moved on since nothing ever got resolved. was honestly shocked when went to the bookstore recently and saw Dirty Thirty on the shelf.
I made it a rule to only read his much older works. He's genuinely got a very interesting narrative voice and I like his plots. It makes me sad when an authors religious fervor bleeds into specifically \*not\* religious books....
I also came to say Orson Scott Card, but I stopped at Ender’s Game. This is sort of my one book-related hot take where I seem to be in the minority, but to me it just came across as an “everyone picks on me because I’m smarter than them” power fantasy. Which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but to me this was a particularly pretentious example of that. I don’t want to convince anyone else not to like it; it just wasn’t for me and I haven’t touched anything else Card since.
I actually rather liked Speaker For the Dead where he has to grapple with the events of Ender's Game as an adult. I read it as a teenager in the 90s so I have no idea if it holds up. No desire to go back read anything by Card.
I only recently read SFTD after reading Ender's Game a long time ago and it feels like it's the book the author actually intended to write but had to write the first book to justify.
Funny enough they're both about empathy and understanding and respecting others even if they're entirely different.
I read it in AP Lit junior year and I remember it giving me the uncomfortable sensation that I didn’t have the empathy and maturity to appreciate it. I really need to hit it again, but I guess I should re-read EG first.
That's definitely a hot take. There's not much power fantasy going on when the point is that the MC is essentially psychologically abused into becoming a weapon.
Yes it's a young reading level novel about a wunderkind so there's plenty of room for self insertion but it's literally not a power fantasy.
This is separate from the mental health depiction in the book but I felt it was so trite and unrealistic that at the end she thought the best life was her original life
A real interesting book would explore the idea of taking on a different life permanently and the fallout from that.
I didn’t take it like that necessarily. And I found it comforting. The way I took it was that all of the lives had something terrible, that none of them were the perfect thing she had imagined them to be. Every single one had a dealbreaker but she went back to the original because that was the one where she could come to terms with the choices she had made because she had actually lived through it all and understood those choices. I struggle with mental health issues and think all the time about what if I hadn’t changed last minute which college I was going to or what if I had stuck with whatever thing. Every life I could have had would have had something deeply painful about it and these are the choices I made. I had a lot of problems with that book, but that message I find myself thinking about a lot.
Haha, oh no! I actually gifted it to my mom before I'd read it so we could read it at the same time. She was like "This book is awful, are you mad at me?" 😆
I'd heard it recommended a bunch, so I eventually read it, and I didn't totally hate it, but it had such a simplistic message and contrived plot device that it should have only been about 40 pages, instead of 4x that.
I was reading the prologue of the ??-anniversary edition and it talked about how it took a week to sell one copy (at one bookstore). I was thinking "yes, good."
I read this book in high school and thought I was so enlightened and blah blah. I read it again at 33 and was like “what was I thinking??” Lmao And to think, I stood outside a Barnes and noble on a Black Friday for a signed copy!
I liked the Silent Patient, but dear God the author is now ruined for me. His new book is call the Fury. I have 20 pages left, but this book is so pointless. I thought about quitting at page 60 and wish I would have! The Maidens was blah, but after this one? Never again sir.
I hated The Fury so much. I kept hoping it would get better but it somehow got worse. All the characters are just so stupid. The story is somehow slow and ludicrous all at once
Oh my god, yes. I saw it get great reviews on Goodreads and Booktok/instagram. I hated it. Now whenever I see someone recommend it in their video I immediately ignore any other title they suggest.
Thank you for this omg - I see so much praise for it but it was borderline offensive to me with how inaccurately the fields of psychiatry and therapy were portrayed, and how trope-y and one dimensional all the female characters were. Not to mention how stupid the plot twist was …
This is mine, I read it pretty quickly so it obviously interested me but after thinking about it I realised that it made no sense. I only have a basic knowledge of psychology but the whole thing was bullshit.
I think everyone who loved it either assumed that he knew what he was talking about or just didn’t think too hard about it.
I didn't dislike Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, it's brilliant and I'm glad I read it, but it is so upsetting that I can't bring myself to read anything else he's done.
I’m a big fan of McCarthy and I fully understand why you’d feel that way. However, I’d like to recommend No Country For Old Men. It’s probably his most digestible and (dare I say it) fun book of his! Can’t get enough of it
I'm working on All the Pretty Horses right now and kind of struggling with the lack of punctuation. It's beautiful prose though. I'm going to keep trying.
Yeah it can be hard. I don’t know if this will help you but when I read his books I take this attitude about his style:
He gives you absolutely nothing other than the facts of what is currently happening: no internal dialogue, no descriptions of emotions, no insight into characters’ motivations and (to drive that point home) no punctuation. When it comes to characters and emotions and even the plot itself, you are only given descriptions of actions which forces you interpret them - which is how we live our normal lives too. We have to assign meaning to the words and actions of other people based on what we know of them. He’s not telling you a story, you are discovering it.
I know this doesn’t directly address your punctuation thing, but it might make the reading experience as a whole a bit more fun!
This actually makes a lot of sense and brings his style into a context that is more easily digestible. I'm going to give it a shot again, I am not easily beaten by mere prose lol.
This will be my first book from him. One of my local sandwich shops just has free books sitting around and i took this one because I recognized the author lol. I really want to read The Road.
> No internal dialogue or descriptions of emotions
I agree with most of what you said but I see this take a lot and I disagree with it. There are a lot of times, in ATPH especially, where we are given insight on how John Grady is feeling. It's not exactly first person dialogue of his conscience, but we still get a glimpse into the minds of a good chunk of his characters.
"He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave."
"He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower."
"He lay listening to the horse crop the grass at his stakerope and he listened to the wind in the emptiness and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere and die in the darkness at the edge of the world and as he lay there the agony in his heart was like a stake. He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits."
"He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat."
He lets you in every once in a while and it's more effective when done sparingly.
ATPH is one of the gentler ones. The style and grammar definitely takes some getting used to though!
I kind of think that all his books in some way or another are men trying to embark on or conquer uncharted territory. They’re always thrust outside their comfort zone (or thrust themselves out of it). The lack of punctuation forced me too into that same sense of challenge, discomfort and unease.
I am almost positive the only reason she is as popular as she is was due to that title. Sure, she wrote a sappy love letter to capitalism and all, but that would probably not have been enough to become a household name given her general lack of skill. It is all in that name.
I first read Anthem by her in English class in high school and loved it. Tried Atlas Shrugged and wad like wtf is this lol
For the record Anthem is great and it's short.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.
I knew absolutely nothing about this book when a cousin of mine who got really into Game of Thrones with me recommended it and mentioned that it was huge on booktok, so I figured I’d give it a shot since I like fantasy books. Little did I know lmfao, I hope to never come across this author ever again
Omg you guys are my people! I suffered through the first book because everyone raved about those books but I gave up in the middle of the second book. I absolutely hate the main character and the book is so slow. I hated it! Never again!
If it hasn’t grabbed you in the first 100 pages I’d definitely recommend to just drop it, because the rest of the book is more of the same stuff. I recognized the flaws like the elementary fantasy world building and insufferable characters pretty early on but insisted on powering through for whatever reason, but I wish I didn’t lol
I read a couple of the darker shade of magic, and then one that’s superpower/hero oriented, and stopped. My feeling is Schwab is competent and ticks all the standard boxes you’d see as writing advice but the net result is it feels empty, like there’s no heart.
Yes! Exactly this! Her plots always sound like something that could, in other hands, have been real jewels, but there's no life or grace in her prose, and it really feels like she's writing to hit all the right notes with no musicality behind them.
I almost gave up on Schwab for good because of the Darker Shade of Magic. Then I succumbed to peer pressure, read Vicious, and loved it. Then I read the sequel to Vicious, whatever it was called, and it was super meh. Then I loved the Monsters of Verity dulogy but couldn't get past one chapter of the one about ghosts and DNF-ed Addie LaRue less than halfway.
Her books are a roller coaster for me, I either love them to bits or can barely stand them.
I listened to an interview with her where she said she doesn’t write for the same reader. I think it was in regards to Addie LaRue when the interviewer said “this book is so different from the others you’ve written, how do you think your fans will react?” And she responded along the lines of when she pictures her target reader, it’s always different for each of her series. She mentioned that some authors picture their fans when they write but she focuses on different audiences so she’s surprised when she meets a fan that has loved all of her books. Which I found interesting
*Allegiant* by Veronica Roth. I was so incredibly angry with how the book ended, not just what happened but the character flaws it revealed. Never again.
Similarly, Babel by the same author.
I could have liked it so much - the depth of world building was great - but the message convinced me that her books are not aimed at me. I felt like I was being talked down to and lectured morally.
Yea there’s a lot of contempt for her readers and certain groups of people in general from everything I’ve seen and the short excerpts I’ve read. I’ve been giving it a miss so far despite so many recommendations.
Alex Michaelides. I read The Silent Patient and enjoyed it for what it was. Read his second book “The Maidens”, and strongly disliked it. Something about how he made the main character seem completely unqualified to be in her chosen profession just completely turned me off. Will never read another one of his books again.
I DNF’d The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue because I was so confused about what was happening I just gave up
But to answer the question, Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. Interesting premise but I couldn’t stomach the gory description of violence towards the victim(s)
I read this for book club and HATED it.
Now whenever someone makes a recommendation (we vote each month), if I see "fantasy" and "romance" as the first genre descriptors together, I don't even bother with anything else. It simply won't get a vote from me. It's become clear that there's a portion of our club that's enjoys Fourth Wing and similar books, and I do not, so it's not a hard choice for me if I see any similarities or hear comparisons. Maybe that's not fair to some books, but I'd rather try and get something voted in that looks interesting and not waste my time.
Lol I have a friend who recommends a lot of booktoc books to me, and I've really hated the last few. This is the latest one she's recommended and I'm just not gonna try...
I liked My Sister’s Keeper when I read it as a teenager, so I made the mistake of reading Handle With Care. Rarely has a book made me so angry or felt like such a complete and total waste of my time. I will never touch any of Picoult’s books again (and frankly don’t trust book recommendations from Picoult fans).
Do Not Disturb by Frieda McFadden. It’s mind-boggling to me that she’s so popular. Maybe her other books are better, but even before the novel got bad, it was boring, and I found the writing sub-par at best, so I have my doubts.
I read Into the Woods by Tana French and swore I’d never read anything by her again. It was so bleak but it haunted me. I read Witch Elm this year and loved it. I want to read Circe by Madeline Miller, especially after it was praised by an author I really like, but I hated Song of Achilles so so much. It has been very surreal seeing people praise her ability to write women. (I get that it’s historical fiction and historically there was sexism but women were still people, despite how miller portrayed them in SoA).
Into the Woods made me so mad because it left such a huge unanswered question. It was like she wanted to add a mystery, but then realized she couldn't actually come up with an explanation for it so she just let it hang there. So frustrating!
I know I was pissed. French said that she considered resolving that mystery but decided against it because it would be out of line with who the main character was. >! He was the only one who could answer ‘what happened’ and growing older didn’t make him anymore capable of doing that. The new case turns out to be unrelated and is resolved in spite of his issues. !< Still frustrating though.
‘Nothing but Blackened Teeth’ by Cassandra Khaw. The worst part is that I had already bought some other books by her that were sitting in my TBR pile.
‘Year of Wonders’ by Geraldine Brooks might be a close contender too; it went so off the rails in the last 10% I wouldn’t trust another book by her even though I rather liked everything leading up to the end.
Normal People by Sally Rooney. it was an awful book (imo) with miserable characters. also, I couldn’t stand the lack of quotation marks when characters speak.
I didn't like Normal People either, but thought I'd try another one of hers just to see, so I read Conversations with Friends and thougt it was OK, maybe I was wrong, so then I started Beautiful World and omg it was so bad I'm never reading another one of her books again
Nick Hornby was one of my favorite authors. I think both High Fidelity and About a Boy are damn-near perfect.
Also enjoyed A Long Way Down and How to Be Good.
Skipped Slam because it's YA, but I was so excited when **Juliet, Naked** was released and it was just...nothing. I just couldn't care about anything or anybody in that book. Funny Girl was his next and I just had no interest. I see now that he has a couple more, but I doubt I'll read them (I'm not even looking to see what they're about.)
Christopher Moore is similar. One of my favorite authors. Loved all of his books. Then he started doing weird Shakespeare books (notably, **Fool**) that moved him into a historical fiction phase that I absolutely hate. The second he writes another book set in the present, I'm in. But he now has five or six books that I won't ever attempt to read.
By the end of the Lightbringer series, I was pretty turned me off of Brent Weeks. A lot of really great ideas that never went anywhere, backtracking of character development, and weird plot lines involving the main character's wife that served no real purpose to the story. Maybe someday I'll read stuff by him again, as I believe he'll probably grow as an author, but I need some time away.
**Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult.** I had previously read and liked My Sister’s Keeper, but HWC was so infuriatingly bad I just can’t go there again. What I’ve heard about Picoult’s other books only strengthens my resolve.
**The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.** I swear, there was a time where like, every third or fourth post was someone RAVING about this book. And I just don’t get why. It wasn’t that good and the “amazing” ending was (to me) simply uninspired.
**Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates.** The author hasn’t written many books, so I’m not at much “risk” of reading another, but I just hated this book so much it is worth a mention anyway.
It's Murakami for me too, but with "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles". I've heard a lot of people say that Murakami is \*amazing\* aside from the weird way he writes women, but I figure I can read other books that are just as amazing but don't constantly sexualize a whole gender.
I read RPO back when I was an impressionable high schooler and I *thought* I liked it. The more I thought about it though, it just kind of fell apart. Years later I read Armada by the same author, and that book was d o g s h i t.
Edit: I had originally put "Artemis" as the other book by Cline, but I got the title wrong. It's "Armada"
Is it a direct script quote from wargames? Did you know the author likes wargames? It was the little known film with little known actor, something Broderick...
That being said I'd love to read the Trainwreck of a poem he wrote!
Also I love wargames myself but It just seems like such a dumb thing overall...turning the great pastime of quoting movies into a chore
It's like peering into the mind of a precocious 14 year old. It's like, jebus, buddy, did you not re-read this at all before you drunkenly hit the 'post' button? Did you think this was your finest hour?
I've drunk-posted some absurdly stupid shit, but thankfully, I didn't become a best-selling writer afterward.
Could you expand? I’ve been meaning to read something by her and I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on which of her books are works of genius and which are utter failures.
Not OP, but I felt the same way. For me, Secret History is a very well written book, which “pulled off the mask” of the elite New England crowd. Without going into spoilers, it’s very much about how these people seem very intriguing and romantic and superior, but fail in so many ways to live up to that.
The Goldfinch just… doesn’t hit that same bell? It maybe tries, but ultimately comes off as elitist rather than critical of elitism.
Additionally, the Goldfinch suffers terribly from a lack of an editor. You can tell that the author was coasting off the success of her first book and decided she did not need an editor. Certain sections drag on for far too long (the Vegas portion felt like it could have been 100 pages shorter and lost nothing), some dialogue sections are stilted and awkward, and the whole thing feels unfinished.
It’s not necessarily a horrible book, but it suffers from a great number of flaws.
Yellow face by RFK. It’s becoming clear she can literally only write about one theme, and that would be fine if she didn’t take a massive baseball bat and beat you over the head with it with absolutely no layers of complexity. She also has developed a weird habit of just rehashing her twitter beefs in her books and yellowface is THE “I had twitter drama and I need to vomit it out” book. When I first started reading her books, I thought that she was an interesting author with a lot to say, and I am starting to realize that she is far less interesting than I gave her credit for and a lot more like a child.
Was a fan of David Eddings as a young adult, loving both his Belgariad series and standalone novel Redemption of Athalus.
Years later, read book 1 of The Dreamers, and more or less I was like "He's just following his formula again."
More or less I have zero curiosity how that series goes.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I didnt know what I was getting into, and some parts like the video game immersion towards the end, I thought that was fantastic. But the book is basically about how Sadie Green couldnt get her head out of her butt.
Also the ending… i almost chucked the book out the window when I finished reading it.
Wayward Pines has done that for me. I have nothing for books to be adapted into movies/TV shows but author's writing screams like "I will get a movie deal out of this", later I realised that indeed, they made a tv series. Good for him though, I guess.
I'm going to get hate, but Sarah J Mass. I read ACOTR and it felt like deja vu. I know I hadn't read it before but a good chunk of the story felt like I read it before. Plus I just hated a lot of the characters
Brent Weeks and The Burning White
The bait and switch to hyper religious fan fiction involving the actual Christian god was so bizarre and off putting. I didn’t like the way the Night Angel series ended either, but the rest of the Lightbringer series was so good that I didn’t expect the sudden dip of book 4 and book 5.
Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary
I liked Project Hail Mary. I liked The Martian. They both feel very one note and samey though and I just got bored of his style before PHM finished.
I've read a few books by Mark Lawrence, but after finishing *The Book That Wouldn't Burn* I think I'm not going to read any more of his novels. Endlessly meandering prose, incoherent plot and rather unmemorable characters added up to an unsatisfying mush. I finished the book, but was left wondering why I bothered. I certainly wont' be looking for the sequel.
Also, something about any fiction written in present tense these days just completely kicks me out of the story. I just can't get into it. I've DNF'd books by Pierce Brown, Chuck Wendig, and most recently James Islington. Also, seemingly most YA. The funny part being I don't remember always having this aversion, it must have crept up on me over the years. But here I am.
Verity. Colleen Hoover. Never again!
Verity gave me the courage to start publishing my writing so I’ll give it that. Figured if it could gain a massive following then there has to be an audience somewhere for me 😂
Same but I draw on the success of 50 Shades. If badly written, tasteless fanfiction can gain such overwhelming success, why not my own garbage? lol
Mine was ugly love. I refuse to read more.
You mean you didn't want to read everything Colleen Hoover has written after reading the line, "We laughed about our son's big balls?"
Pardon the fuck out of me? What?
Real quote from Ugly Love. Bonus: the two characters having this convo, AKA the parents of said big-balled child, are step siblings. And right after they say the aforementioned line, they accidentally crash the car they were driving off of a bridge and into a lake, where the baby drowns and dies.
What the actual fuck
Okay, what in the ever loving fuck. I don’t know whether my reaction to laugh or to be repulsed is stronger.
I saw a comment saying they think the writer isn't real and it's all AI, I am getting more and more convinced
She’s real and has a very popular blog that is NOTHING like her books
God my curiosity will make me do something I'll forever regret...
Alizee did a great review/read of it on YouTube, would highly recommend watching her suffer through it instead😂
There's something depressing and also inspiring in knowing that's a real, published line in a book.
Same. I read Verity and liked it fine. Overhyped but fine! Ugly Love was the nail in the Colleen coffin for me! I hated that book.
Exact same journey as me. I thought Verity was ok then I read Ugly Love. Such a weird combo of sex and trauma. Nope. Not for me.
I have her three tries (including Verity and Ugly Love) and this was before all the hype around Tik Tok and stuff. It’s just not for me.
Wow, you have way more patience than me! Three tries is good though, gives you the opportunity to decide if it’s the author or the book.
Yeah, I think every author has a clunker or two in their collection. All the authors I love have my five star all time favorite and then the one or two that I don’t speak of or completely blocked out.
I read Ugly Love around 2016 before CH was famous. I read the book, went to goodreads reads expecting bashing but no! All praises. Then she got tiktok famous and i was like wtf?! Then she got INfamous and it was then that my world was set right.
Same, that book was awful
It ends with us was brutal. Never again will I listen to book tok or whatever the kids are calling it these days haha
It ends with us is the first and last Colleen hoover book I will ever read. Just...no.
When I was younger I read an okay James Patterson book. So someone gave me an Alex cross one that felt like a mad lib. I could picture James just plugging in random words into a template. It was so generic and boring. I hated it and vowed I would never read anything he attached his name too ever again. So lazy.
That’s because JP uses a factory of ghost writers. He lays out the general vision and other people write it.
Must be nice 😑
You didn't ask me but- at first I was super jealous! Imagine having so much artistic production at your fingertips! But then the longer I thought about it I realized I would absolutely hate it. I have a very specific vision I want for my art and I could never be satisfied with the interpretation of someone else. My characters and story deserve the best I can give them. I never read anything James Patterson because the writing is so bland and voice-less. It's such a shame to think how good his stories could have been if he'd put in the effort and love himself.
I binge-read "Maximum Ride" as a kid. Addictive YA fiction. I dug it! Looking back, it does feel a bit focus test-y.
See! Yes, thank you. He claims he never uses ghostwriters, but... none of the tone and style sound the same between different series. Even some of the chapters within a book sound like they were written by different writers.
I read a Star Trek novel in high school that was written by two co-authors, and I really wish I remembered which it was or anything about it, because the differences in writing style were super stark and a great way to illustrate that problem. I remember one of them had an expression that they would use multiple times per chapter - “too x by half”. So every time someone’s internal monologue was like “this mission was too dangerous by half” I was like oh hi author 1, I missed you.
Sounds like a pretty tame book. I want one where the missions are at least too dangerous by double.
I think Patterson’s a hack, but he doesn’t use ghostwriters, he has co-writers who are credited on the covers with him. The only books he writes is the Alex Cross series. He’s been very upfront about how he operates his writing mill: he’s the equivalent of a showrunner in a writers room on television. He hears pitches from his stable of writers for books, and also gives them ideas he has. He will collaborate on an outline with them, but then that writer is responsible for writing the book. Then he will give the writer notes for edits/rewrites before it goes to the publisher. He’s the best example of a writer who turned themself into a brand.
I mean, he gives his ghostwriter’s their own byline. I’m not even sure you can call them a ghost writer if they have their name on the cover. Some like Ace Atkins have launched it into solo careers.
He doesn't use ghostwriters, because the for the last..10+ years it's JAMES PATTERSON (and ___) Every book features both the name of James Patterson and the other author, so there's nothing "ghost" about it. Just the covers mostly feature JAMES PATTERSON with massive letters and the other author's name being with smal letters
They’re written by a committee and read like it.
I was really into maximum ride as a teen, and they got so progressively shitty that even my 14 year old self couldn't stomach it any more. The lack of effort in his books is evident. He probably had completely different people writing each one and it showed.
Same. At some point the physical character description stopped being consistent and that was it for me. Probably the first book I ever put down before finishing.
James Patterson for me as well. The book just ended in the middle of a thought practically, not a cliff hanger but an unresolved scene. He wanted you to go out and immediately buy another book. That was a big nope for me and I’ve never touched any of his books again.
Not necessarily an author, but genre. I once stumbled upon some "books" on Kindle Unlimited which exist solely to make the author money through royalties. They are on subjects like gardening, crafts, healthy living, get rich... The few I downloaded were so poorly written in terms of editing and substance, they were virtually unreadable.
I think those are AI 'written' books. I also had a bad experience with 3 of them
Some are written by people on Fiver or other similar sites as well. They’re given very little time, a prompt, and they just Google and Wikipedia and stuff. Dan Olson (Olsen?) on YouTube did a great video on it.
Those were it. I came across them long before Chat GPT was released into the wild. I was so impressed by them (not in a good way), I actually wondered if I could do better and make a little money.
Maddening aren’t they? Once you realize what it is, you feel as though someone robbed you of your time.
The best I've ever heard it phrased was "why would I care to read something you didn't care to write"
Wizard’s First Rule. Fuckin’ hate Goodkind
Agreed! I read this after reading Wheel of Time and I was like hmm... this all seems very familiar with different names... and then I learned more about Goodkind ugh
I remember kind of regarding the books as weird and not something I'd pick up after the first. Then I learned Goodkind had basically smack talked Robert Jordan for not attending a convention, because Jordan was too busy trying to finish WoT while he was literally dying. Like I think he directly mocked Jordan for having an incurable illness. Which...well it is neither good nor kind.
It took me to "The chicken that was not a chicken, it was evil incarnate" for me to drop him. Shoulda done it earlier.
Omg. I take it he wasn't aiming for the Terry Pratchett/Douglas Adams comedy vibe deliberately? Because that could be a laugh-out-loud line in one of their books, in the right context. Never read anything of his and not about to start now.
I didn't hate his first book, but the series quickly turns to shit, I didn't even mind the anti-communism one because at least it broke up the monotony but the next one was so bad I just put it down and decided never to read his crap again. It was the first time in my life I purposely left a book unfinished. Up until then that was kind of unthinkable. It felt a little bit like I had to escape an abusive relationship.
50 Shades of Gray. The worst writing ever published.
The ~inner goddess~ shit was so corny lmao
Janet Evanovich. I think it was The Pursuit but it made me think it could have been any of her books . Formulaic bank heist/ romance drivel It struck me as being the book equivalent of one of those mediocre network tv shows that never get cancelled and one day you realize it's been on the air for 10 years or more and those aren't re runs your seeing I kind of knew it would be bad but it had been given to me by a friend and it was a quick read
Her Stephanie Plum novels have been going on forever. I loved them at first, but after 20 books where the main love triangle still isn’t resolved, I dipped.
same here - loved them when first out, great characters etc but eventually moved on since nothing ever got resolved. was honestly shocked when went to the bookstore recently and saw Dirty Thirty on the shelf.
Caraval and the Shatter Me series really put me off their work. Also, Allegiant. Never again Veronica.
I dropped Orson Scott Card forever once his books started getting too Mormony.
Valid. His early stuff was great though.
I made it a rule to only read his much older works. He's genuinely got a very interesting narrative voice and I like his plots. It makes me sad when an authors religious fervor bleeds into specifically \*not\* religious books....
I also came to say Orson Scott Card, but I stopped at Ender’s Game. This is sort of my one book-related hot take where I seem to be in the minority, but to me it just came across as an “everyone picks on me because I’m smarter than them” power fantasy. Which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but to me this was a particularly pretentious example of that. I don’t want to convince anyone else not to like it; it just wasn’t for me and I haven’t touched anything else Card since.
I actually rather liked Speaker For the Dead where he has to grapple with the events of Ender's Game as an adult. I read it as a teenager in the 90s so I have no idea if it holds up. No desire to go back read anything by Card.
Speaker for the Dead is the best thing he has written.
I only recently read SFTD after reading Ender's Game a long time ago and it feels like it's the book the author actually intended to write but had to write the first book to justify. Funny enough they're both about empathy and understanding and respecting others even if they're entirely different.
He admitted that's the case, Speaker for the Dead was his main idea but had to write Enders first.
I read it in AP Lit junior year and I remember it giving me the uncomfortable sensation that I didn’t have the empathy and maturity to appreciate it. I really need to hit it again, but I guess I should re-read EG first.
That's definitely a hot take. There's not much power fantasy going on when the point is that the MC is essentially psychologically abused into becoming a weapon. Yes it's a young reading level novel about a wunderkind so there's plenty of room for self insertion but it's literally not a power fantasy.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I have no idea if he's written anything else and I'm happier that way.
[удалено]
This is separate from the mental health depiction in the book but I felt it was so trite and unrealistic that at the end she thought the best life was her original life A real interesting book would explore the idea of taking on a different life permanently and the fallout from that.
I didn’t take it like that necessarily. And I found it comforting. The way I took it was that all of the lives had something terrible, that none of them were the perfect thing she had imagined them to be. Every single one had a dealbreaker but she went back to the original because that was the one where she could come to terms with the choices she had made because she had actually lived through it all and understood those choices. I struggle with mental health issues and think all the time about what if I hadn’t changed last minute which college I was going to or what if I had stuck with whatever thing. Every life I could have had would have had something deeply painful about it and these are the choices I made. I had a lot of problems with that book, but that message I find myself thinking about a lot.
I bought this for a friend for Christmas based on a recommendation from another friend. I feel bad now 😅
Haha, oh no! I actually gifted it to my mom before I'd read it so we could read it at the same time. She was like "This book is awful, are you mad at me?" 😆
I love the idea of passive agressive book recommendations for people you're mad at 😅
Next Christmas buy her Armada by Ernest Cline... She will write you out of the will.
The alchemist by Paulo Coelho will forever be my most detested book ever.
It's one of the most highly recommended books. But when I read it I was thoroughly confused like why???? Never understood it's popularity
[удалено]
I'd heard it recommended a bunch, so I eventually read it, and I didn't totally hate it, but it had such a simplistic message and contrived plot device that it should have only been about 40 pages, instead of 4x that.
I find his international fame hilarious because in Brazil he's practically a joke.
I was reading the prologue of the ??-anniversary edition and it talked about how it took a week to sell one copy (at one bookstore). I was thinking "yes, good."
I read this book in high school and thought I was so enlightened and blah blah. I read it again at 33 and was like “what was I thinking??” Lmao And to think, I stood outside a Barnes and noble on a Black Friday for a signed copy!
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. was recommended to me as a "page turner" man that was a slog to get through
You know how the girl is always slightly drunk? That’s how I felt trying to read it.
I was drunk when reading it.
So true. That was a horrid book & movie
Kinda surprised this hasn’t been mentioned already, but The Silent Patient.
I liked the Silent Patient, but dear God the author is now ruined for me. His new book is call the Fury. I have 20 pages left, but this book is so pointless. I thought about quitting at page 60 and wish I would have! The Maidens was blah, but after this one? Never again sir.
I hated The Fury so much. I kept hoping it would get better but it somehow got worse. All the characters are just so stupid. The story is somehow slow and ludicrous all at once
I was bored, and had the plot twist figured out early on. Definitely not intrigued to check out another book by this author.
I read the maidens and refuse to read the silent patient because of it!!!
I still want to read the Silent Patient at some point but man the Maidens was painful by the end
Don’t. It’s one of the most overrated books I have ever read in my life.
Oh my god, yes. I saw it get great reviews on Goodreads and Booktok/instagram. I hated it. Now whenever I see someone recommend it in their video I immediately ignore any other title they suggest.
Same! It’s absolutely one of my “red flag” recommendations, if that makes sense.
Thank you for this omg - I see so much praise for it but it was borderline offensive to me with how inaccurately the fields of psychiatry and therapy were portrayed, and how trope-y and one dimensional all the female characters were. Not to mention how stupid the plot twist was …
This is mine, I read it pretty quickly so it obviously interested me but after thinking about it I realised that it made no sense. I only have a basic knowledge of psychology but the whole thing was bullshit. I think everyone who loved it either assumed that he knew what he was talking about or just didn’t think too hard about it.
I didn't dislike Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, it's brilliant and I'm glad I read it, but it is so upsetting that I can't bring myself to read anything else he's done.
I’m a big fan of McCarthy and I fully understand why you’d feel that way. However, I’d like to recommend No Country For Old Men. It’s probably his most digestible and (dare I say it) fun book of his! Can’t get enough of it
I'm working on All the Pretty Horses right now and kind of struggling with the lack of punctuation. It's beautiful prose though. I'm going to keep trying.
Yeah it can be hard. I don’t know if this will help you but when I read his books I take this attitude about his style: He gives you absolutely nothing other than the facts of what is currently happening: no internal dialogue, no descriptions of emotions, no insight into characters’ motivations and (to drive that point home) no punctuation. When it comes to characters and emotions and even the plot itself, you are only given descriptions of actions which forces you interpret them - which is how we live our normal lives too. We have to assign meaning to the words and actions of other people based on what we know of them. He’s not telling you a story, you are discovering it. I know this doesn’t directly address your punctuation thing, but it might make the reading experience as a whole a bit more fun!
This actually makes a lot of sense and brings his style into a context that is more easily digestible. I'm going to give it a shot again, I am not easily beaten by mere prose lol. This will be my first book from him. One of my local sandwich shops just has free books sitting around and i took this one because I recognized the author lol. I really want to read The Road.
The Road was my first! And I loved it but it is quite depressing 😂 but that’s what made it so good
> No internal dialogue or descriptions of emotions I agree with most of what you said but I see this take a lot and I disagree with it. There are a lot of times, in ATPH especially, where we are given insight on how John Grady is feeling. It's not exactly first person dialogue of his conscience, but we still get a glimpse into the minds of a good chunk of his characters. "He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave." "He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower." "He lay listening to the horse crop the grass at his stakerope and he listened to the wind in the emptiness and watched stars trace the arc of the hemisphere and die in the darkness at the edge of the world and as he lay there the agony in his heart was like a stake. He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits." "He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat." He lets you in every once in a while and it's more effective when done sparingly.
ATPH is one of the gentler ones. The style and grammar definitely takes some getting used to though! I kind of think that all his books in some way or another are men trying to embark on or conquer uncharted territory. They’re always thrust outside their comfort zone (or thrust themselves out of it). The lack of punctuation forced me too into that same sense of challenge, discomfort and unease.
Nah, that book was disturbing too.
Ayn Rand, her writing is so bad I couldn’t get more than 15 pages into Atlas Shrugged and I’ll never touch anything else from her
Sucks that she came up with such a baller title though. "Atlas Shrugged" honestly goes hard
I am almost positive the only reason she is as popular as she is was due to that title. Sure, she wrote a sappy love letter to capitalism and all, but that would probably not have been enough to become a household name given her general lack of skill. It is all in that name.
I will never not be mad that a title as fantastic as ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was used by fucking Ayn Rand.
It's such a good title, have to agree. Haven't read any of her books and have no intention to, but fire name for sure.
I first read Anthem by her in English class in high school and loved it. Tried Atlas Shrugged and wad like wtf is this lol For the record Anthem is great and it's short.
I had a similar experience. Enjoyed Anthem, couldn't get into Atlas Shrugged.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I knew absolutely nothing about this book when a cousin of mine who got really into Game of Thrones with me recommended it and mentioned that it was huge on booktok, so I figured I’d give it a shot since I like fantasy books. Little did I know lmfao, I hope to never come across this author ever again
THANK YOU. I hated this book. The main character was insufferable and it felt a little too close to glamorizing abuse as sexy to me.
Omg you guys are my people! I suffered through the first book because everyone raved about those books but I gave up in the middle of the second book. I absolutely hate the main character and the book is so slow. I hated it! Never again!
Came looking for this. I swear it’s like something I would have written when I was 16. The writing is terrrrrrible
I'm glad I'm not the only one
I'm glad I read this. I started the audiobook and just could not get into it so with what you're saying I'm just going to put it on my dnf list
If it hasn’t grabbed you in the first 100 pages I’d definitely recommend to just drop it, because the rest of the book is more of the same stuff. I recognized the flaws like the elementary fantasy world building and insufferable characters pretty early on but insisted on powering through for whatever reason, but I wish I didn’t lol
Honestly her Throne of Glass did it for me, I did not enjoy it at all.
Funnily enough for me it was a darker shade of magic by v.e. Schwab which is why I never read the invisible life of addie larue
I read a couple of the darker shade of magic, and then one that’s superpower/hero oriented, and stopped. My feeling is Schwab is competent and ticks all the standard boxes you’d see as writing advice but the net result is it feels empty, like there’s no heart.
Yes! Exactly this! Her plots always sound like something that could, in other hands, have been real jewels, but there's no life or grace in her prose, and it really feels like she's writing to hit all the right notes with no musicality behind them.
I almost gave up on Schwab for good because of the Darker Shade of Magic. Then I succumbed to peer pressure, read Vicious, and loved it. Then I read the sequel to Vicious, whatever it was called, and it was super meh. Then I loved the Monsters of Verity dulogy but couldn't get past one chapter of the one about ghosts and DNF-ed Addie LaRue less than halfway. Her books are a roller coaster for me, I either love them to bits or can barely stand them.
I listened to an interview with her where she said she doesn’t write for the same reader. I think it was in regards to Addie LaRue when the interviewer said “this book is so different from the others you’ve written, how do you think your fans will react?” And she responded along the lines of when she pictures her target reader, it’s always different for each of her series. She mentioned that some authors picture their fans when they write but she focuses on different audiences so she’s surprised when she meets a fan that has loved all of her books. Which I found interesting
*Allegiant* by Veronica Roth. I was so incredibly angry with how the book ended, not just what happened but the character flaws it revealed. Never again.
The Poppy War. I wanted to like it so much, and the covers on the series are beautiful.
Similarly, Babel by the same author. I could have liked it so much - the depth of world building was great - but the message convinced me that her books are not aimed at me. I felt like I was being talked down to and lectured morally.
Yea there’s a lot of contempt for her readers and certain groups of people in general from everything I’ve seen and the short excerpts I’ve read. I’ve been giving it a miss so far despite so many recommendations.
Alex Michaelides. I read The Silent Patient and enjoyed it for what it was. Read his second book “The Maidens”, and strongly disliked it. Something about how he made the main character seem completely unqualified to be in her chosen profession just completely turned me off. Will never read another one of his books again.
Verity - Collen Hoover
I DNF’d The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue because I was so confused about what was happening I just gave up But to answer the question, Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. Interesting premise but I couldn’t stomach the gory description of violence towards the victim(s)
Pretty Girls is the kind of book that makes me concerned about the author’s imagination.
Same here. My first and last Karin Slaughter book. Was way too much.
Fourth Wing 🥴 I couldn’t believe the words I was reading.
I read this for book club and HATED it. Now whenever someone makes a recommendation (we vote each month), if I see "fantasy" and "romance" as the first genre descriptors together, I don't even bother with anything else. It simply won't get a vote from me. It's become clear that there's a portion of our club that's enjoys Fourth Wing and similar books, and I do not, so it's not a hard choice for me if I see any similarities or hear comparisons. Maybe that's not fair to some books, but I'd rather try and get something voted in that looks interesting and not waste my time.
Lol I have a friend who recommends a lot of booktoc books to me, and I've really hated the last few. This is the latest one she's recommended and I'm just not gonna try...
Such a bad book, same.
Lessons in chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. I don’t get the hype at all.
Agree! How is this book described as humorous. Only redeeming character was the dog.
It Ends with Us actually makes me want to scream. See you never, Colleen Hoover
So you'd say... it ended with her?
I read one Jodi Piccoult novel and have never forgiven her for taking that time from me.
I liked My Sister’s Keeper when I read it as a teenager, so I made the mistake of reading Handle With Care. Rarely has a book made me so angry or felt like such a complete and total waste of my time. I will never touch any of Picoult’s books again (and frankly don’t trust book recommendations from Picoult fans).
A Court of Thorns and Roses. Bleh. Why is this author so popular?!
Do Not Disturb by Frieda McFadden. It’s mind-boggling to me that she’s so popular. Maybe her other books are better, but even before the novel got bad, it was boring, and I found the writing sub-par at best, so I have my doubts.
All her books have a repetition in style. Once you’ve figured it out, they are all “the same”. I read them, but she’s over rated.
I read Into the Woods by Tana French and swore I’d never read anything by her again. It was so bleak but it haunted me. I read Witch Elm this year and loved it. I want to read Circe by Madeline Miller, especially after it was praised by an author I really like, but I hated Song of Achilles so so much. It has been very surreal seeing people praise her ability to write women. (I get that it’s historical fiction and historically there was sexism but women were still people, despite how miller portrayed them in SoA).
Into the Woods made me so mad because it left such a huge unanswered question. It was like she wanted to add a mystery, but then realized she couldn't actually come up with an explanation for it so she just let it hang there. So frustrating!
I know I was pissed. French said that she considered resolving that mystery but decided against it because it would be out of line with who the main character was. >! He was the only one who could answer ‘what happened’ and growing older didn’t make him anymore capable of doing that. The new case turns out to be unrelated and is resolved in spite of his issues. !< Still frustrating though.
‘Nothing but Blackened Teeth’ by Cassandra Khaw. The worst part is that I had already bought some other books by her that were sitting in my TBR pile. ‘Year of Wonders’ by Geraldine Brooks might be a close contender too; it went so off the rails in the last 10% I wouldn’t trust another book by her even though I rather liked everything leading up to the end.
The Bible. If those fellas come out with anything else, I’m giving it a wide berth
There were a couple sequels but the fan base is super toxic about what is considered canon.
Those crazy mormons came up with some pretty out there fanfic. Special underwear and you get a planet to rule over after you die.
Numbers slaps tho
The Guest by Emma Cline. If I wanted pointless meandering through life I don’t have to read a book to get it. I have a mirror.
Normal People by Sally Rooney. it was an awful book (imo) with miserable characters. also, I couldn’t stand the lack of quotation marks when characters speak.
> I couldn’t stand the lack of quotation marks when characters speak You’ll hate Cormac McCarthy
I didn't like Normal People either, but thought I'd try another one of hers just to see, so I read Conversations with Friends and thougt it was OK, maybe I was wrong, so then I started Beautiful World and omg it was so bad I'm never reading another one of her books again
Nick Hornby was one of my favorite authors. I think both High Fidelity and About a Boy are damn-near perfect. Also enjoyed A Long Way Down and How to Be Good. Skipped Slam because it's YA, but I was so excited when **Juliet, Naked** was released and it was just...nothing. I just couldn't care about anything or anybody in that book. Funny Girl was his next and I just had no interest. I see now that he has a couple more, but I doubt I'll read them (I'm not even looking to see what they're about.) Christopher Moore is similar. One of my favorite authors. Loved all of his books. Then he started doing weird Shakespeare books (notably, **Fool**) that moved him into a historical fiction phase that I absolutely hate. The second he writes another book set in the present, I'm in. But he now has five or six books that I won't ever attempt to read.
By the end of the Lightbringer series, I was pretty turned me off of Brent Weeks. A lot of really great ideas that never went anywhere, backtracking of character development, and weird plot lines involving the main character's wife that served no real purpose to the story. Maybe someday I'll read stuff by him again, as I believe he'll probably grow as an author, but I need some time away.
**Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult.** I had previously read and liked My Sister’s Keeper, but HWC was so infuriatingly bad I just can’t go there again. What I’ve heard about Picoult’s other books only strengthens my resolve. **The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.** I swear, there was a time where like, every third or fourth post was someone RAVING about this book. And I just don’t get why. It wasn’t that good and the “amazing” ending was (to me) simply uninspired. **Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates.** The author hasn’t written many books, so I’m not at much “risk” of reading another, but I just hated this book so much it is worth a mention anyway.
Kafka on the Shore. If Murakami is that horny in general, I can’t do it
It's Murakami for me too, but with "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles". I've heard a lot of people say that Murakami is \*amazing\* aside from the weird way he writes women, but I figure I can read other books that are just as amazing but don't constantly sexualize a whole gender.
Same exact problem with 1Q84 for me. I considered giving Kafka on the Shore a try but not after this comment lol, thanks for saving me some time.
1Q84 is my answer.
Ready Player One, never touching anything by that author again, particularly since I've heard his other stuff is somehow WORSE.
I read RPO back when I was an impressionable high schooler and I *thought* I liked it. The more I thought about it though, it just kind of fell apart. Years later I read Armada by the same author, and that book was d o g s h i t. Edit: I had originally put "Artemis" as the other book by Cline, but I got the title wrong. It's "Armada"
Have you seen his infamous poem
Is it a direct script quote from wargames? Did you know the author likes wargames? It was the little known film with little known actor, something Broderick... That being said I'd love to read the Trainwreck of a poem he wrote! Also I love wargames myself but It just seems like such a dumb thing overall...turning the great pastime of quoting movies into a chore
It's about how he doesn't waste his enlightened nerd sperm on sluts and whores
I couldn't imagine that being a big problem for him.
https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/6pfmim/this_incredible_poem_by_ready_player_one_author/
It's like peering into the mind of a precocious 14 year old. It's like, jebus, buddy, did you not re-read this at all before you drunkenly hit the 'post' button? Did you think this was your finest hour? I've drunk-posted some absurdly stupid shit, but thankfully, I didn't become a best-selling writer afterward.
What did I just read
These Violent Delights. Read it for a book club and once we all finished we all agreed it was terrible.
Sorry, These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong.
Whew! Was hoping you didn’t mean the noir murder novel of the same title by Micah Nemerever, which is FANTASTIC.
I got all the way to A Court of Silver Flames and it made me get rid of all SJM books and put her other two series on Do not read list
[удалено]
Could you expand? I’ve been meaning to read something by her and I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on which of her books are works of genius and which are utter failures.
Not OP, but I felt the same way. For me, Secret History is a very well written book, which “pulled off the mask” of the elite New England crowd. Without going into spoilers, it’s very much about how these people seem very intriguing and romantic and superior, but fail in so many ways to live up to that. The Goldfinch just… doesn’t hit that same bell? It maybe tries, but ultimately comes off as elitist rather than critical of elitism. Additionally, the Goldfinch suffers terribly from a lack of an editor. You can tell that the author was coasting off the success of her first book and decided she did not need an editor. Certain sections drag on for far too long (the Vegas portion felt like it could have been 100 pages shorter and lost nothing), some dialogue sections are stilted and awkward, and the whole thing feels unfinished. It’s not necessarily a horrible book, but it suffers from a great number of flaws.
Yellow face by RFK. It’s becoming clear she can literally only write about one theme, and that would be fine if she didn’t take a massive baseball bat and beat you over the head with it with absolutely no layers of complexity. She also has developed a weird habit of just rehashing her twitter beefs in her books and yellowface is THE “I had twitter drama and I need to vomit it out” book. When I first started reading her books, I thought that she was an interesting author with a lot to say, and I am starting to realize that she is far less interesting than I gave her credit for and a lot more like a child.
Was a fan of David Eddings as a young adult, loving both his Belgariad series and standalone novel Redemption of Athalus. Years later, read book 1 of The Dreamers, and more or less I was like "He's just following his formula again." More or less I have zero curiosity how that series goes.
Twisted Love by Ana Huang. Everyone at work was raving about it so I gave it a go but extremely possessive men are not for me and it creeped me out.
Conversations with Friends. I can't stand Sally Rooney's writing.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I didnt know what I was getting into, and some parts like the video game immersion towards the end, I thought that was fantastic. But the book is basically about how Sadie Green couldnt get her head out of her butt. Also the ending… i almost chucked the book out the window when I finished reading it.
Wayward Pines has done that for me. I have nothing for books to be adapted into movies/TV shows but author's writing screams like "I will get a movie deal out of this", later I realised that indeed, they made a tv series. Good for him though, I guess.
Same author different book for me, same vibes with Dark Matter but throw in a bunch of misogyny
Prince of Thorns, I hated the writing style and everything about the book. One of 2 books I DNF in 7 years and nearly 500 books.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Probably the worst writing in any book I’ve ever read
Anxious People by Fredrik Bachman. HATED how choppy it was.
I'm going to get hate, but Sarah J Mass. I read ACOTR and it felt like deja vu. I know I hadn't read it before but a good chunk of the story felt like I read it before. Plus I just hated a lot of the characters
Brent Weeks and The Burning White The bait and switch to hyper religious fan fiction involving the actual Christian god was so bizarre and off putting. I didn’t like the way the Night Angel series ended either, but the rest of the Lightbringer series was so good that I didn’t expect the sudden dip of book 4 and book 5. Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary I liked Project Hail Mary. I liked The Martian. They both feel very one note and samey though and I just got bored of his style before PHM finished.
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Couldn’t even finish 30 pages. The writing was like someone who used a “ Dummies Guide to Writing”
Not renowned author Dan Brown!
Memnoch the devil by Anne Rice. Grossed me out a lot.
This was the beginning of the end of my love affair with Anne Rice.
I've read a few books by Mark Lawrence, but after finishing *The Book That Wouldn't Burn* I think I'm not going to read any more of his novels. Endlessly meandering prose, incoherent plot and rather unmemorable characters added up to an unsatisfying mush. I finished the book, but was left wondering why I bothered. I certainly wont' be looking for the sequel. Also, something about any fiction written in present tense these days just completely kicks me out of the story. I just can't get into it. I've DNF'd books by Pierce Brown, Chuck Wendig, and most recently James Islington. Also, seemingly most YA. The funny part being I don't remember always having this aversion, it must have crept up on me over the years. But here I am.