Tom Sawyer. I don’t think i’d hate it as much if I read it today, but having to read it in middle school was a bitch
Hmm, maybe that’s why my English teacher assigned Huck Finn instead (which I remember liking).
Sirens of titan. Well, Vonnegut in general. His stories are fine, probably ground breaking for the time in the sense of exploration, but the characters have no depth. It’s like reading a book about npcs. Then there’s the misogyny. Women are simply livestock kept around for breeding in this one, worse than an afterthought.
I don’t think it’s valuable to read even from a historical standpoint. Wiki synopsis would be suggested.
The Tarot of the Bohemians.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
I can’t really remember of all time, but recently I started reading Dune: Messiah, and I had to stop reading it was so bad. I might be in the minority but the tonal shifts, changes in character attitudes, and jumping right into these assassination plots, all of it just came out weird and misplaced. Definitely did not slap with even 1/4th the power of Dune.
Herbert didn’t want to continue Dune and was pressured to write a follow up. It was an era when most science fiction was still published in periodicals. The first half of Messiah are the results that were then compiled into the start. It is like a really shitty draft. Everyone experiences the same thing. I put it down for quite a while too. If you can make it to the second half, it will become one you can’t put down, like the first. It does setup well for what is to come. After I got back into Messiah, I read all the way to the end of the entire series, even the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson stuff. Those last two are not like Frank’s writings, but are their own thing and still more readable than the first half of Messiah. IMO the first half of Messiah is a great example of what happens when Art takes a back seat to an anxious banking type mentality. Bankers make terrible artists and advisors.
GEoD is IMO the best book in the series as it eviscerates many cultural norms and deep assumptions like fascist altruism, eternal boredom, the coexistence of misogyny and feminism, manipulation that is both brutal and kind, and if an alien can be human. It even infers the question of potential delusional prescience in my opinion. It will make you think about the motivation of leaders and what you may endure because of their vision of a future.
Hell yeah this is great to hear, thank you. I’ll have to open it back up and try again. Then its time to read the Foundation.
Don’t read the prequels by Brin and Bear, they are not only awful but also steer the lore into really dumb place which i’m pretty sure was not intended by Asimov. Though to be honest the two prequels by Asimov are also much worse than the main series.
I mean, none of that is true, and Herbert stated he had parts of Messiah and Children written before Dune was even finished.
In the forward to Heretics of Dune: “Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact.”
A sequel to Dune (1965), it was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine in 1969, and then published by Putnam the same year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_Messiah
I forget where the rushed admission and poor quality was blamed on the periodical and premature release, but am certain that is somewhere out there.
Parts of the serialized story were fleshed out and became Dune.
I read the first four dune books this year and I think they all suffer from the same problem, that is they have interesting characters, original lore, great world building, but nothing interesting happens until the very ending of the book. They all felt like a slog to get through to me.
Wait until you get to chapterhouse!
I picked it up from the library years ago on a whim and surprisingly really enjoyed it.
Well, except maybe the multiple pages long chapter about varieties of whales. That was a bit much.
Two chapters, IIRC.
The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Its technically a novella but still. Hated it.
Might be different for me today if I reread it but I just mean from my first and sustained reaction reading it that was how I felt at the time, but I was also quite young
Catcher in the Rye. I try it again every couple of years just to see if I can relate to it, and nope - it’s still just as stupid as the first time I read it.
Is it just the (lead) character or do you think the book itself is also shit?
Everything about the book is just dull and frustrating.
I felt the same way (spoilers for whoever hasn’t read it). The protagonist just kept encountering significant people where it seems like there’s going to be a struggle to overcome, leading to character development and newfound maturity, but no. He just moves on to another scene instead and they’re not seen again. It was just annoying.
The teacher that feels he’s not living up to his potential? The private school friends that he hangs out with but often finds frustrating? The childhood friend who he shares unexplored romantic tension with? The nuns whose meals he pays for despite having dwindling funds? The prostitute he just wants to have a conversation with? Her pimp, who attacks him? The potentially rapist family friend? For pretty much all of them a relevant conflict is initiated just for him to leave it unresolved, probably after labeling them a phony.
The only exception is his sister, who he sees like two or three times. And then the final conflict at the end is like: “Hey sorry for taking your birthday money so I could keep wandering around these past couple of days instead of talking to our rich parents.” “That’s ok, I forgive you. You’re my brother and I love you. But I worry about you sometimes.” “Yeah anyway, I’m bitter about the world so I kinda want to disappear into the wilderness.” “Please don’t do that.” “Ok I won’t.”
The old man and the sea. I learned to hate reading because of assigned books in school and this was the one that drove that hatred most. At times in my childhood I enjoyed reading a couple of novels, but assigned books absolutely destroyed any interest I had. Also having religious cult like parents that always had something stupid to say about reading had a major impact.
bit of a cheat but 120 Days of Sodom
The one redeeming part is the guy who fucks a horse and it gives birth to a half man half horse and then the fucks that
the rest is descriptions of pedophilia, coprophagy and torturing children to death.
The movie was good! No horse fucking, though.
It was an insane movie that made a very poignant statement with some INSANELY FUCKED UP imagery, scenes, and themes. I’ve never read the book but I went into Saló looking for a shock film like August Underground, and went away thinking “that was so much less shitty than I thought it would be.”
Art of War in the Middle Ages. Just fucking interminable.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/44308/pg44308-images.html
It’s also FULL of errors
I haven’t read the entire book, but I’ve read like 10 pages of Fifty Shades of Grey when my then-girlfriend was reading it. Besides the story and subject matter, the writing itself is horrible.
First 10 pages was probably the bulk of the story; the rest was just email replies.
A book called The Night by a Venezuelan author.
I feel a bit bad saying this because there are definitely worse books but this one stuck with me as the premise sounded really interesting but the book was nothing like it.
There is a review on goodreads that sums it up pretty nicely.
Literature about literature, books about books, literature about books, books about literature, literature about literature, books about books, …
The Bible
Best selling work of fiction amirite
Yep. Bible. Pretentious, boring and way too much first - person stuff.
I wonder how many just check out when they get to the list of begats
the begats ain’t so bad, it’s only a couple short bits in the first book, as i recall, which is otherwise one of the best books that i read, with lots of relatively interesting short stories. the worst part in the early first books that i read in their entirety would have to be in exodus, where god spends ages going on and on to moses about the precise details of his dream tent. it feels like it goes on for a hundred pages, and then, a few chapters later, he does it all again.
The Silmarillion.
Probably the only book I excitedly pushed myself to read, but just couldn’t.That was actually my favorite Tolkien book. He was a terrible fiction writer with an excellent story to tell… but when he was writing non-fiction style in the Silmarillion he was really in his element… and/or the posthumous editing was top notch.
I had the same experience with the two towers. I can’t watch the movie of the two towers. And I can’t make it more than 60 or 70 pages into the book before my brain gives up and says they’ve been walking through the fucking Hills and talking to the trees for 30 pages this is some bullshit.
Maybe I’m cutting myself short by not pushing through but I just literally cannot build up the energy it takes to push through this wall of infinite text.
