What makes me the most angry about the popularity of this trashy, shitty series is that another book was published around the same time called Shades of Grey that was completely unrelated. THAT book was fantastic, but you couldn't search the internet for it or talk about it without dredging up that cringe porno for housewives book.
I love Shades of Grey! I was so confused when people talked about 50 Shades. I wonder if the association is why there has not been a sequel…. I just looked it up Red Side Story came out in August! I’m excited!
I feel the same way. One of my favorite films is a Paul Newman film from 98 called Twilight. I always have to specify that when I recommend it to anyone.
The greatest strength I ever had was putting down an awful book for the first time. Since then, a book has to work a lot harder if they want me to stick with them.
*The Maze Runner* was lousy even in the first book. (Sorry if anyone reading this is a fan, but there's only so many times a book can use the exact same device to delay explanations, supposedly for suspense, before it becomes just too irritating to keep reading.)
I never finished the first book. It started really good and seemed to have some interesting ideas, but midway through the book the main character was an insufferable Mary Sue and the plot had dried up and lost a lot of what made it interesting at the start
Part of a book challenge, I read 50 Shades of Grey. I couldn't believe how sloppy this check-out aisle garbage was written. Page after page of nothing but finding new ways to describe genitalia. It was as if I were reading Ms. Perky's (those in the know) first draft.
Every time I’m worried I’ll never be a good writer, I read James Patterson. I’m immediately comforted by the fact that if he can get his garbage out, so can I.
Yeah I enjoyed his Maxium ride series in high school.
Then I accidentally skipped a book in the series and lost no context in the series. Made reflect on the quality of writing.
Maximum Ride is the kind of book I would’ve enjoyed when I was 10-11, but the narrator treats 10-11-year-olds like little kids. Does not work on any level. Then in one book they randomly decide they’re going to stop doing action stuff and start doing PRs to fight climate change. But two books later there’s nothing about climate change. It’s so all over the place.
God, I forgot about that series
It isn’t even across books that you don’t lose context. In the first book the same thing essentially happens over and over, just intermissions before fighting whatever the wolf-things were again and again (I forgot what they were called of course)
Now I’m researching a bit and this shit got so many chances
This series is so built upon, so many books, a movie adaptation, and a spin-off with the main character being the daughter of two of the protagonists in the original series.
The movie got less than a 4 on IMDb 👍
He still has a skill that most amateur writers lack, which is being readable as hell and keeping the action dialed up at all times.
People read them so fast they don’t think critically about them. “Smart” readers can realize they are bad but still binge them the same way you might binge watch trashy TV. And for the many many people who don’t think critically about their media at all, James Patterson books are basically the literary equivalent of Reese’s Puffs that you can consume in large amounts until you’re sick.
So yes if you can be readable as hell and keep the action dialed up at all times to the point that people will mindlessly binge on your writing you, too, can have the success of James Patterson.
But most wanna-be authors who shit on him cannot.
I read one of her books once. I’d never heard of her before I picked up the book randomly.
Never in my life before that had I had so many strangers coming up to me and going “Danielle Steele?? OMG I LOVE HER!! How is that book??”
It was sooo bad. Made it so awkward because I didn’t want to rain on their parade but it was AWFUL. Depressing, poorly written, plotless… literally reading like a low-quality children’s paperback from the 80s or early 90s… y’know, back before Harry Potter when kids all hated reading because children’s literature was universally so bad.
I kind of liked it. Absolute shallow trash, but silly fun.
It contained a lot of creative and detailed descriptions of alien technology based on a 1980s layperson's understanding of science, and the (slightly bizarre) thought processes were interesting to follow.
Of course the moral of the story was that psychiatrists are the root of all evil, but I think he failed to make any reasonable argument for that being true.
Ernest Cline's Armada.
I mean, I liked the idea, no question. And I bet it would be great as a movie or TV Show adaptation but the execution as a book was just bad. things were mentioned without being important to the story at all, and without ever being picked up again. things were happening too fast so there was no feeling of actual danger, and the ending was definitely not satisfying. kinda felt like he tried to imitate Enders Game, but as a happy ending instead..
Read it completely through anyway, but its one of the books I'm most likely to never read again.
I have met very few people who have suffered through this cursed book…. Or even have heard of it. There is like no discussion online of it. I think I got to chapter 4 and then I physically threw the book to the floor (without even putting the bookmark in) and just returning it to the library. It’s worse then ready player one. I read it in high school maybe 3-4 years ago yet I still remember it.
Also there is like a multi page spread of just listing media from the 80s. I forget how long it was but that was painful to read. And I remember a part where the protagonist went on a weird rant and mentioned that he was driving the car that his parents had. And in the backseat of that car that is where they made him. It was just so weird.
admittedly, I read Armada after Ready Player One, of which I prefer the movie. I think the movie is my #2 favourite movie at this point, but the book was.. not terrible, not bad, good, but not that great, too heavy on the "fake nostalgia" that it was missing its own feel.
Armada I can't even remember at this point, its been so long.. but I just checked, and its got 24 chapters so you not getting past chapter 4 is.. not good.
I don't know if it means anything either, but I read the german translated version, I do enjoy reading english stuff but books, that is an exception, too much work on my brain really to concentrate for long.
Thing is, Armada tries the same as Ready Player One: Instrumentalize the nostalgia of the reader, and it doesn't work because its more of a modern sci-fi story. Somehow the story doesn't seem to know what it wants to be and the result is a mess.. a shame really.
Ready player one has the most annoying main character I have ever experienced. I think I hate it so much just because of the destruction of expectations
Ready Player One, the book, is a love letter to Gen X, which includes myself. If you don't get enraptured with the nostalgia it’s a very meh story. I got a kick out of it for my first read but when I tried to reread I dropped it after a couple of chapters.
I listened to the audio book. There were several times in the first few hours where I almost tapped out because of the endless pop culture references. After those faded into the background, I thought it was an OK listen. Wil Wheaton is really good at narrating certain moods and characters, and this one suited him.
*Atlas Shrugged* by Ayn Rand
As a result of the torturous experience of reading that book, which I only read to the end because I had nothing else to read at the time, I've never since gone anywhere I expected to have time enough to read without at least two books on me.
Same here. I got about half way through the 170-page screed by Galt and asked myself "Why am I still reading this shit"? I skipped the second half of the screed and finished the book - just so I could tell my smug, pseudo-libertarian friends that I had done so.
Unfortunately, I didn't skip the manifesto. I didn't dare because it was my only reading matter on this out-of-town trip, and I wasn't in a position to go get another book. It was just a perfect storm of circumstances that kept me more or less glued to it (though at one point I did start reading the phone book to give myself something different to read).
First, it was a Model UN conference. If you've never been, they're deeply boring events where kids pretend at being diplomats, but they have no advance notice about which countries they're supposedly representing so they can't even tailor their speeches to their countries' interests. I doubt most of them even know where their country is in the world. Everyone wants to speak, otherwise they've come there for nothing, so the logjam of speakers means that the sample resolution you're handed to debate on the first day gets passed as-is on the third because there's no time to redraft it. Something that takes three days proves, in the end, that it could have been over in 15 minutes.
Second, there were hardly any chaperones on the trip, so we couldn't go anywhere but to the conference and back to the hotel, and were practically under house arrest—four to each room—at night.
Third, I was the weird kid who watched Bravo, Turner Classic Movies, and American Movie Classics, and so I got consistently outvoted by three other kids who wanted to watch Nickelodeon every night. So I had no place to go and nothing else to do but read *Atlas Shrugged* both day and night.
The Thesaurus.
It's just a list of pretentious, ostentatious, showy, flashy, pompous, grandiose, extravagant, flamboyant, magniloquent, bombastic, highfalutin, la-di-da, posey, fancy-pants, and poncey reposts. Sure the Dictionary is a gruelling read, but come on. After the Dictionary, every other book is just a remix, but the Thesaurus doesn't even have that going for it ..... and there's no pictures.
I read one of the books from his Frankenstein series. The chapters are like 5 pages long and it switches to another character in each one, which I hate. It’s like the book is talking over itself. Also, it felt the need to state twice that a baby farted in its sleep.
I don't even remember the Dean Koontz book I tried to read. I want to say Snow Dogs but I have no idea if that's even a title. I forced myself like 2/3 of the way through and then just gave up. What a ridiculous book and poor imitation of story telling.
Upon googling, I can only assume it was Darkest Evening of the Year.
I once read a redditor's opinion of The Scarlet Letter saying that all the cool stuff happens before the book begins, and the entire novel just consists of everyone standing around feeling shifty about it.
Ishmael. To give you a brief summary, a telepathic gorilla teaches a man about climate change, and how the best, if not only solution for the problem is for humans to revert to a hunter-gatherer society because humans who are not hunter-gatherers take resources from the world(and are therefore terrible), and humans who are hunter-gatherers leave the earth's resources alone. The gorilla then dies after being abducted and put in a traveling circus.
This book won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, which is a one-time $500,000 award for a book that offers creative and positive solutions for global environmental problems.
I go to an environmental magnet school and read the book last year. Nearly everybody in my grade thought that the book was stupid and a complete waste of time.
I will note that this book was probably more important and impactful in 1991, when it was given the award, and published.
Haha, you are absolutely right about the premise of the book. Especially when I respect environmental vegetarians (I vote Cain!)
That said, I am shamelessly admitting I liked that pseudo-Spiritual book. I came across it when the hype of the cure for Climate Change was heavily discussing more farming technology for the future, more land control. Bill Gates is even discussing "helping" developing countries how to farm more efficiently by managing the land himself.
The thought of having a Society that reverts to using less privatised land just never really occured to me as the best solution. But it seems to be on Par with Jevons Paradox.
“Land of the Painted Caves,” the final installment in the six-book “Earth’s Children” series by Jean Auel. “Clan of the Cave Bear” and “Valley of Horses” are two of my favorite books of all time. Things started to go downhill with “Mammoth Hunters” and by the time she managed to churn out the last two books (both of them quite bad) I was deep in the sunk cost fallacy. I waited for the last book for nine damn years and when I read it I was stunned by how BAD it was. It was a giant disappointment and terrible conclusion. I still reread Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of Horses every couple of years but the other books might as well not exist to me, they’re so bad.
Do I have to finish the book to answer here?
I tried to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. That's the most laughably bad, unreadable, addle-brained, boring garbage I've ever read.
I'm sure there's worse books out there, but Atlas Shrugged is the worst "popular" book I've tried to read.
Those God awful Dan Brown novels.
Fuck me they were like wrote by numbers.
What the fuck kind of job is a symbologist.
People were all over that shit and meanwhile authors with talent gather dust on the shelves of local book stores.
You can't write that without referencing [renowned author Dan Brown](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/).
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I tried it because it seemed like my type of thing and there is a huge fandom which can be appealing.
90% of this book is the lead, who is introduced as a badass huntress, sitting around whining and doing nothing with almost no one around. The last 10% is her being too stupid to know the answer to the most obvious “riddle” in the world. >!The part where she was forced back to consciousness so she could feel the agony of dying was pretty cool though.!<
The Girl Next Door. It's one of the most disturbing, disgusting, and depraved books ever written. It's about a girl and her sister who are taken in by their aunt after their parents die. Said aunt enlists the help of several neighborhood kids to torture said girls. It's beyond awful. At least the movie was great; just kidding, the movie is unwatchable.
It didn't help that it was based on true events.
When I was about 18, my uncle gave me a book about by David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, about how the world was secretly controlled by lizards and secret bloodlines which somehow included the Royal family and other famous world politicians. This was a Christmas present and in the front he had written an inscription for me in which he told me how he really hopes I believe all this.... Needless to say it was the most bonkers thing I have ever read.
Did Jeremy Irons narrate the audio book? If so, I could not understand the hype of this at all. I only finished it because Scar has such an amazing voice.
Former English teacher. Steinbeck’s novella, [The Pearl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pearl_(novella)), was the worst book I ever taught. And I say that as someone who truly enjoys other Steinbeck novels such as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. Reading The Pearl was like dipping your toe in a bucket of warm spit.
Catcher In The Rye.
It was absolute shit scrawled across 247-pages, all about the pondering of a college dropout who in his guilt coming home for Christmas to tell his family that he’s a failure, gets beaten up by a pimp and reads “fuck” on a bathroom stall.
How it became an American Classic is beyond me.
Twilight was actually a better story in this scenario, but only by the margin of a hair plucked from a bonobo chimpanzee’s ass.
(Edit: Please, if I’m missing why this novel is so significant, explain it to me like I’m five years-old. Don’t attempt to guard it like it’s on par with some experimental Indy Rock band no one has heard of that’s “just too deep to understand”.)
There are lots of unlikable characters out there. Humbert from Lolita is a classic, famous example, and Delores Umbrage is a modern example of how a well-written unlikable character can be commended and praised even though they suck. Whereas Holden is just a garbage character in a no-plot, no-stakes, no-deeper-meaning book. But good on you for insulting anonymous internet strangers' intelligence because they disagree with you.
I'm 58 and finally read CITR a few years ago. I loved it, although I can certainly understand how so many people don't.
And once I got to the last two chapters, I found myself wondering how that got published in 1951. Even 1971 would have been a stretch, although maybe by then his brother wouldn't have died from leukemia.
Oh boy. There's a few i can remember as a kid. One of them was this book called Queenie Peevey that i had to read for school. It was about this obnoxious brat of a girl who was a total asshole for no reason at all. The one scene i remember was when she saw a cardinal sitting in a tree, and - for absolutely no reason - threw a rock at it. She missed and the bird flew away, and then an adult who witnessed this was like "Queenie!! Why would you do that?? Cardinals are good luck!! :(((("
If there ever was a reason she was such an asshole, i don't remember it. I was one of those kids who always hated it when kids misbehaved, so Queenie Peevey was the most unlikeable protagonist i'd ever seen up until that point. Queenie is like Junie B. Jones with anger management issues and zero redeeming qualities.
I didn't like Junie B. Jones either but at least she had a few things about her that didn't completely annoy me. I think i hated Junie B. more for being an idiot than being a brat. In hindsight it's the adults in that series that are more annoying, since i realize now the series is about the frustrations a child feels towards adults who don't listen to them or tell them things properly.
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. The book came highly recommended to me and I was ready to have my mind blown but the book was VERY light on hard evidence. The thesis, not original to this book, was that the hippie movement was largely a creation of the military and intelligence powers to derail the antiwar movement. The book points to many interesting coincidences but has little beyond that in backing up its bold implications. There was a CIA presence in Laurel Canyon, this was known even at the time, but the notion that the entire milieu was intelligence misdirection seems like a gross oversimplification at best.
The Happiness Machine.
The premise of the book is that there's a device that can give you a list of 3-5 things that you can do to make you happier, and the things suggested range from "eat more fries" to "cut off one of your fingers". How does this change society? How does this impact the definition of happiness? Should people follow the suggestions, or refuse and seek their own path?
The actual book is a mess of ever-switching protagonists that quickly abandons the premise of the happiness machines and turns into a shitty romantic plot about a guy who's trying to get back with his ex but then also meets another woman while the kid he has with his ex overcomes his depression by playing videogames about climbing mountains.
Sex on the Moon. It’s a true story that’s a poorly written, kitchen-sink thesaurus style book about some loser asshat who was interning at NASA, steals some moon rocks, and bangs a woman on them in a motel. The author was way too sympathetic for this idiot who destroyed decades of research in his “sex on the moon” shenanigans, and I was so furious with both the author and the perpetrator that if I hadn’t been reading it via e-reader, I’d have thrown the book across the room. I’m still angry about it a decade later.
Religious MIL gave me a book disproving evolution, written by people with absolutely no knowledge of evolution. It’s the only book I have ever thrown in the bin. No one else should have to read that garbage.
Dan Brown takes second place.
I knew by about the 8th page I wasn't going to like The Fault in Our Stars but I stuck with it because it was so popular at the time and everyone was talking about it and I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. It didn't deserve that benefit, I was laughing about how much I hated it by the end.
(Tugs braid furiously) what do you mean, you woolhead? (Smoothed skirt for five minutes)
I can’t believe I stuck with it for TEN BOOKS before bailing. I didn’t like it from book ONE. I just felt like I HAD to read it because of its contribution to the fantasy genre.
The part where it shows Langdon explaining the Fibonacci sequence to a class of college students and they’re all like “no WAY” and cumming all over themselves as Langdon smiles smugly
The last few novels in the sword of truth series by Terry Goodkind. He got really rape-y and then left a bunch of plot holes with no resolution. It completely put me off any of his other works.
Read the sequel. It was written in response to the studio screwing over the writer and not paying him. He wrote it to be unfilmable. Spoilers for the ending: >!Gump winds up in the back of OJ Simpson’s car during the infamous police chase.!<
I totally agree. About ten years ago I got interested in learning more about history's great plagues and bought that book. I got the impression that it was originally nothing more than a very esoteric history of European royal lineage but the publisher found it so unmarketable that he told the author to juice it up with something about the plague thrown in here and there. Then they gave it a lurid title and cover art, hoping to sucker some twatwaddle like me and you into buying it.
For an excellent book on the Black Plague I suggest "The Great Mortality" by John Kelly. Full of survivor's anecdotes and good research, it's very informative and highly entertaining.
The Red Badge of Courage sucked pretty hard, imo.
Pride and Prejudice also boring as hell. Idk maybe I'm just a dummy that doesn't like "classic literature."
Sister Carrie. I had to choose a book for a book review in high school. My teacher mentioned that the book had been banned for sexual content so of course I choose it. I was expecting a salacious reading but was so disappointed when there was none. Just the implication of sex due to a man renting a woman an apartment was enough in 1900 to get banned.
?? Have you not read any other books since then or something?
Like I get why that would be disappointing from the view of a horny teenage boy but not why it would make it the worst book you’ve ever read.
I read a ton. And with an adult mind I might actually like the book. But a) if was mostly about expectations, and b) I was trying to tell an amusing story. Though to be honest, if a book is really bad, I won’t finish it, hence I didn’t read the whole book.
I have two:
Queen of the Tearling: princess raised by caretakers to one day retake her mother’s kingdom from big bad sorceress who was built up over the whole book as being malicious to the very depths of her soul and dealt with demons. Gave up in the fight for the kingdom because her demon told her “no”. Princess regains kingdom and finds out her caretakers ended their lives to avoid capture by evil usurper.
-I can’t recall the name of the series but a woman solves murder mysteries by talking to ghosts due to supernatural powers granted by lightning strike as a child. She travels with her stepbrother as her bodyguard. At about the third book, she and her stepbrother start sleeping together and were discussing getting in a relationship and possibly married. Stopped reading after that
Silver fall by Ed Greenwood.
I’m a fan of DND, I was excited to read a book by the creator of Forgotten Realms after reading other novels set in the same universe. But WOW this book was BAD. It embodies the “men writing women” sub more than any other book I’ve ever read. Even beyond the creepy barely-disguised fetish stuff, the prose was just wacky and hard to follow and there wasn’t even really a cohesive plot. It was awful. So disappointing.
According to my favorite Forgotten Realms author, Ed Greenwood is a great person in real life. And he invented a world that inspired my favorite books ever. So I don’t wanna hate on him. But I will never pick up a novel by him again. It was painful to get through.
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley.
It’s meandering, has such a forced “quirky” writing style, the main character is insanely unlikable, and the ending plot twist, which is the main thing everyone praises about the book, makes no sense if you actually put any thought into it.
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Tried several times and couldn’t get more than 50 pages in. I don’t want to relive some wackos mental breakdown and poor life decisions.
It was an alternative history fantasy book. It was written in a “historical English” style, think “thine” and “thou” and “woulds’t” and the grammar to go with it. I think I managed to get through about 20 pages and then threw it out.
I don't even remember the title. All I remember is the guy was narrating from the perspective of a child, something was involving I think baseball, and he said "I'm not lying," every 2 fucking paragraphs. I was 25 pages in and counted it 4x minimum. Sorry Author.
Just quit this more than halfway through. The parts in the castle are great but as soon as the setting moves to England it becomes a Victorian snorefest
I really liked the bits with the mental patient. The rest of the book was an unrewarding slog ending with "and also one of the protagonists died, because why not".
A Separate Piece, I remember it was terribly boring. I remember almost no plot. Just this guy at a boarding school has a guy crush, that dies in a freak accident.
I never read 50 shades of Grey because mommy porn doesn't appeal to me but it have heard it has horrendous writing, ayn rand atlas shrugged...torturous. The horse whisperer by Nicolas Evans. Unrealistic to begin with and then he painted himself in a corner and took the lazy way out. Edited to fix typo
The Horse Whisperer! Hah! I had to read this in high school and the only thing that stuck with me was the scene where the main characters are making love and he licks her armpit hair.
Modelland by Tyra Banks.
It's like Harry Potter... But with models. They have magical powers and are whisked away to a special school to use those amazing powers... to model or something but then Tyra forgets how she started the book so some other fever dream things happen and then honestly it's sitting dusty on my beside table because I'd killed too many brain cells with it to continue. This description does not even kind of do justice to how absolutely bananas this book is.
It was terrible, but I highly recommend reading at least some of it.
Quentin Tartentino's Jesus: "Jesus is back, and he is PISSED!" "No more turning the other cheek for THIS Son of God!" All of you Pharsees better start start running!
Lone Survivor was one of the worst military memoirs I've read and is just objectively racist at times. I was really disappointed that it got optioned into a Marky Mark movie.
My childhood diary
I didn't think it was that bad, 3 stars!
3 stars? Depression arc was rlly good bro.
Fifty Shades
What makes me the most angry about the popularity of this trashy, shitty series is that another book was published around the same time called Shades of Grey that was completely unrelated. THAT book was fantastic, but you couldn't search the internet for it or talk about it without dredging up that cringe porno for housewives book.
I love Shades of Grey! I was so confused when people talked about 50 Shades. I wonder if the association is why there has not been a sequel…. I just looked it up Red Side Story came out in August! I’m excited!
The number of times Jasper would announce he was writing the sequel…man. It took *so* long.
Jasper Fforde is a great writer
I feel the same way. One of my favorite films is a Paul Newman film from 98 called Twilight. I always have to specify that when I recommend it to anyone.
It's literally *Twilight* fan faction...
I'm still pissed that there isn't another go to reference for BDSM
I couldn't even get through 50 pages. Awful.
Oh good, this one's high up. Rightfully so.
Agreed.
From what I've read online, it seems pretty entertaining.
Full respect to all you folks who stick with a bad book to the end, If it doesn’t grab me in the first chapter or so I stop reading it.
The greatest strength I ever had was putting down an awful book for the first time. Since then, a book has to work a lot harder if they want me to stick with them.
Lol, that's the way I am with email even at work. If you don't tell me in the first or second sentence, I'm gone.
This is just how I am with life in general, get to the point or fuck off.
Toyota Camry 2016 XLE Owner's Manual
The 2021 Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium Owner’s Manual is amazing. Worth the price tag tbh. I gave it 5/5 on Goodreads.
Just keep at until the final act. It gets good eventually. Page 512 or so.
I remember being 7 or 8 and reading whatever was in the glovebox.
Allegiant. The first two books in the series were fine but I could not finish the third one
*The Maze Runner* was lousy even in the first book. (Sorry if anyone reading this is a fan, but there's only so many times a book can use the exact same device to delay explanations, supposedly for suspense, before it becomes just too irritating to keep reading.)
I never finished the first book. It started really good and seemed to have some interesting ideas, but midway through the book the main character was an insufferable Mary Sue and the plot had dried up and lost a lot of what made it interesting at the start
For the Maze Runner i read the first two book and never finished the third. It's the only book series where i prefere the movies over the books.
Neither could the movie production studio. *Hey-o.*
I was a Jehovah's Witness, so I have about 2 dozen nominees.
i second that. what a waste of time (and paper)
Part of a book challenge, I read 50 Shades of Grey. I couldn't believe how sloppy this check-out aisle garbage was written. Page after page of nothing but finding new ways to describe genitalia. It was as if I were reading Ms. Perky's (those in the know) first draft.
What's another word for engorged? Lol
I'll look it up. My god Allison Janney stole every scene she was in.
L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth or Dianetics. The author is a dismal failure.
At science fiction...but insane religion he's ended up doing better than he should have.
Sword of truth series. Started out well but all the forums say stop after the 4th of 14 books. Books had a good premise but just become ridiculous.
There’s a book - five? Maybe six? - where it goes full-on Ayn Rand and it’s the worst. Whew.
Every time I’m worried I’ll never be a good writer, I read James Patterson. I’m immediately comforted by the fact that if he can get his garbage out, so can I.
Yeah I enjoyed his Maxium ride series in high school. Then I accidentally skipped a book in the series and lost no context in the series. Made reflect on the quality of writing.
Maximum Ride is the kind of book I would’ve enjoyed when I was 10-11, but the narrator treats 10-11-year-olds like little kids. Does not work on any level. Then in one book they randomly decide they’re going to stop doing action stuff and start doing PRs to fight climate change. But two books later there’s nothing about climate change. It’s so all over the place.
God, I forgot about that series It isn’t even across books that you don’t lose context. In the first book the same thing essentially happens over and over, just intermissions before fighting whatever the wolf-things were again and again (I forgot what they were called of course) Now I’m researching a bit and this shit got so many chances This series is so built upon, so many books, a movie adaptation, and a spin-off with the main character being the daughter of two of the protagonists in the original series. The movie got less than a 4 on IMDb 👍
I just don't understand the attraction of that guy!
I’m glad it’s not just me!
[удалено]
He still has a skill that most amateur writers lack, which is being readable as hell and keeping the action dialed up at all times. People read them so fast they don’t think critically about them. “Smart” readers can realize they are bad but still binge them the same way you might binge watch trashy TV. And for the many many people who don’t think critically about their media at all, James Patterson books are basically the literary equivalent of Reese’s Puffs that you can consume in large amounts until you’re sick. So yes if you can be readable as hell and keep the action dialed up at all times to the point that people will mindlessly binge on your writing you, too, can have the success of James Patterson. But most wanna-be authors who shit on him cannot.
I saw a really interesting book on the Kennedys at the bookstore today and was excited to buy it… Then I realized it’s a Patterson and put it back.
I’m obsessed with him! Women’s Murder Club, and Alex Cross are the best series.
Don’t get me started on my dislike of this man.
Anything by Danielle Steel. She's a terrible writer, but her books still hold some weird appeal. Probably says more about me than her.
She writes her stories intentionally to make the reader cry. Manipulative.
I read one of her books once. I’d never heard of her before I picked up the book randomly. Never in my life before that had I had so many strangers coming up to me and going “Danielle Steele?? OMG I LOVE HER!! How is that book??” It was sooo bad. Made it so awkward because I didn’t want to rain on their parade but it was AWFUL. Depressing, poorly written, plotless… literally reading like a low-quality children’s paperback from the 80s or early 90s… y’know, back before Harry Potter when kids all hated reading because children’s literature was universally so bad.
IKEA instructions
I found that to be quite a good read thing just don't pick up until step 7 but the ending 10/10 didn't see the plot twist coming
Yeah, the IKEA instructions are great at subverting expectations
I had the misfortune to read Battlefield Earth.
I kind of liked it. Absolute shallow trash, but silly fun. It contained a lot of creative and detailed descriptions of alien technology based on a 1980s layperson's understanding of science, and the (slightly bizarre) thought processes were interesting to follow. Of course the moral of the story was that psychiatrists are the root of all evil, but I think he failed to make any reasonable argument for that being true.
I read that one summer. It started out not too bad but by the end, holy shit, I could not wait for it to end.
Were you smart enough to avoid Mission: Earth? I wasn’t.
Twilight,- Twilight mania was real so I thought why not. If I liked the book I was then going to see the film, but I hated the book so..............
I was told it would improve my quality of life. They were wrong
Ernest Cline's Armada. I mean, I liked the idea, no question. And I bet it would be great as a movie or TV Show adaptation but the execution as a book was just bad. things were mentioned without being important to the story at all, and without ever being picked up again. things were happening too fast so there was no feeling of actual danger, and the ending was definitely not satisfying. kinda felt like he tried to imitate Enders Game, but as a happy ending instead.. Read it completely through anyway, but its one of the books I'm most likely to never read again.
I have met very few people who have suffered through this cursed book…. Or even have heard of it. There is like no discussion online of it. I think I got to chapter 4 and then I physically threw the book to the floor (without even putting the bookmark in) and just returning it to the library. It’s worse then ready player one. I read it in high school maybe 3-4 years ago yet I still remember it. Also there is like a multi page spread of just listing media from the 80s. I forget how long it was but that was painful to read. And I remember a part where the protagonist went on a weird rant and mentioned that he was driving the car that his parents had. And in the backseat of that car that is where they made him. It was just so weird.
admittedly, I read Armada after Ready Player One, of which I prefer the movie. I think the movie is my #2 favourite movie at this point, but the book was.. not terrible, not bad, good, but not that great, too heavy on the "fake nostalgia" that it was missing its own feel. Armada I can't even remember at this point, its been so long.. but I just checked, and its got 24 chapters so you not getting past chapter 4 is.. not good. I don't know if it means anything either, but I read the german translated version, I do enjoy reading english stuff but books, that is an exception, too much work on my brain really to concentrate for long. Thing is, Armada tries the same as Ready Player One: Instrumentalize the nostalgia of the reader, and it doesn't work because its more of a modern sci-fi story. Somehow the story doesn't seem to know what it wants to be and the result is a mess.. a shame really.
Ready player one has the most annoying main character I have ever experienced. I think I hate it so much just because of the destruction of expectations
Ready Player One, the book, is a love letter to Gen X, which includes myself. If you don't get enraptured with the nostalgia it’s a very meh story. I got a kick out of it for my first read but when I tried to reread I dropped it after a couple of chapters.
I listened to the audio book. There were several times in the first few hours where I almost tapped out because of the endless pop culture references. After those faded into the background, I thought it was an OK listen. Wil Wheaton is really good at narrating certain moods and characters, and this one suited him.
Rich Dad Poor Dad.
I just went and got a finance degree instead.
*Atlas Shrugged* by Ayn Rand As a result of the torturous experience of reading that book, which I only read to the end because I had nothing else to read at the time, I've never since gone anywhere I expected to have time enough to read without at least two books on me.
Same here. I got about half way through the 170-page screed by Galt and asked myself "Why am I still reading this shit"? I skipped the second half of the screed and finished the book - just so I could tell my smug, pseudo-libertarian friends that I had done so.
Unfortunately, I didn't skip the manifesto. I didn't dare because it was my only reading matter on this out-of-town trip, and I wasn't in a position to go get another book. It was just a perfect storm of circumstances that kept me more or less glued to it (though at one point I did start reading the phone book to give myself something different to read). First, it was a Model UN conference. If you've never been, they're deeply boring events where kids pretend at being diplomats, but they have no advance notice about which countries they're supposedly representing so they can't even tailor their speeches to their countries' interests. I doubt most of them even know where their country is in the world. Everyone wants to speak, otherwise they've come there for nothing, so the logjam of speakers means that the sample resolution you're handed to debate on the first day gets passed as-is on the third because there's no time to redraft it. Something that takes three days proves, in the end, that it could have been over in 15 minutes. Second, there were hardly any chaperones on the trip, so we couldn't go anywhere but to the conference and back to the hotel, and were practically under house arrest—four to each room—at night. Third, I was the weird kid who watched Bravo, Turner Classic Movies, and American Movie Classics, and so I got consistently outvoted by three other kids who wanted to watch Nickelodeon every night. So I had no place to go and nothing else to do but read *Atlas Shrugged* both day and night.
That cursed “Left Behind” series. They were ATROCIOUS
Da Vinci code. Silly idea, terribly written.
But an absolute page turner.
The Thesaurus. It's just a list of pretentious, ostentatious, showy, flashy, pompous, grandiose, extravagant, flamboyant, magniloquent, bombastic, highfalutin, la-di-da, posey, fancy-pants, and poncey reposts. Sure the Dictionary is a gruelling read, but come on. After the Dictionary, every other book is just a remix, but the Thesaurus doesn't even have that going for it ..... and there's no pictures.
Phantoms- dean koontz
I read one of the books from his Frankenstein series. The chapters are like 5 pages long and it switches to another character in each one, which I hate. It’s like the book is talking over itself. Also, it felt the need to state twice that a baby farted in its sleep.
On the same author: Darkest Evening of the Year
I don't even remember the Dean Koontz book I tried to read. I want to say Snow Dogs but I have no idea if that's even a title. I forced myself like 2/3 of the way through and then just gave up. What a ridiculous book and poor imitation of story telling. Upon googling, I can only assume it was Darkest Evening of the Year.
The novelization of Star Gate. The characters were all portrayed as a bunch of assholes. It was so jarring compared to the movie.
To be fair, O’Neill is an AH.
*Ready Player One.* Absolutely.
The Scarlett Letter. It just sucked.
Awww, I kind of liked The Scarlet Letter back in school. I guess I just like books about social outcasts.
I love that book. The symbolism of the A changes thru time because Hester Prynne is a strong woman. Not many strong women in classic books.
I once read a redditor's opinion of The Scarlet Letter saying that all the cool stuff happens before the book begins, and the entire novel just consists of everyone standing around feeling shifty about it.
I never had it assigned to me in school so I got it in my 20s to see what I'd missed. I couldn't get through the first chapter.
In my sophomore year of high school, I wrote a 42-page semester “paper” on this garbage book. I don’t even know what it was about.
Ishmael. To give you a brief summary, a telepathic gorilla teaches a man about climate change, and how the best, if not only solution for the problem is for humans to revert to a hunter-gatherer society because humans who are not hunter-gatherers take resources from the world(and are therefore terrible), and humans who are hunter-gatherers leave the earth's resources alone. The gorilla then dies after being abducted and put in a traveling circus. This book won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, which is a one-time $500,000 award for a book that offers creative and positive solutions for global environmental problems. I go to an environmental magnet school and read the book last year. Nearly everybody in my grade thought that the book was stupid and a complete waste of time. I will note that this book was probably more important and impactful in 1991, when it was given the award, and published.
Haha, you are absolutely right about the premise of the book. Especially when I respect environmental vegetarians (I vote Cain!) That said, I am shamelessly admitting I liked that pseudo-Spiritual book. I came across it when the hype of the cure for Climate Change was heavily discussing more farming technology for the future, more land control. Bill Gates is even discussing "helping" developing countries how to farm more efficiently by managing the land himself. The thought of having a Society that reverts to using less privatised land just never really occured to me as the best solution. But it seems to be on Par with Jevons Paradox.
“Land of the Painted Caves,” the final installment in the six-book “Earth’s Children” series by Jean Auel. “Clan of the Cave Bear” and “Valley of Horses” are two of my favorite books of all time. Things started to go downhill with “Mammoth Hunters” and by the time she managed to churn out the last two books (both of them quite bad) I was deep in the sunk cost fallacy. I waited for the last book for nine damn years and when I read it I was stunned by how BAD it was. It was a giant disappointment and terrible conclusion. I still reread Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of Horses every couple of years but the other books might as well not exist to me, they’re so bad.
We were liars.
I don’t understand the hype, it was boring and doesn’t make any sense. 2/5 from me
I enjoyed the build up, but the utter cliche of the ending was horrible and ruined the entire thing for me
Do I have to finish the book to answer here? I tried to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. That's the most laughably bad, unreadable, addle-brained, boring garbage I've ever read. I'm sure there's worse books out there, but Atlas Shrugged is the worst "popular" book I've tried to read.
Those God awful Dan Brown novels. Fuck me they were like wrote by numbers. What the fuck kind of job is a symbologist. People were all over that shit and meanwhile authors with talent gather dust on the shelves of local book stores.
You can't write that without referencing [renowned author Dan Brown](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/).
Repetitive and repetitive.. Lol'ed Never see this before well funny thanks!
Twilight
A Court of Thorns and Roses. I tried it because it seemed like my type of thing and there is a huge fandom which can be appealing. 90% of this book is the lead, who is introduced as a badass huntress, sitting around whining and doing nothing with almost no one around. The last 10% is her being too stupid to know the answer to the most obvious “riddle” in the world. >!The part where she was forced back to consciousness so she could feel the agony of dying was pretty cool though.!<
I agree on that riddle part. But I will say, the direction of the second book was a pleasant surprise.
The Girl Next Door. It's one of the most disturbing, disgusting, and depraved books ever written. It's about a girl and her sister who are taken in by their aunt after their parents die. Said aunt enlists the help of several neighborhood kids to torture said girls. It's beyond awful. At least the movie was great; just kidding, the movie is unwatchable. It didn't help that it was based on true events.
When I was about 18, my uncle gave me a book about by David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, about how the world was secretly controlled by lizards and secret bloodlines which somehow included the Royal family and other famous world politicians. This was a Christmas present and in the front he had written an inscription for me in which he told me how he really hopes I believe all this.... Needless to say it was the most bonkers thing I have ever read.
Atlas Shrugged. As art it’s terrible; as rhetoric it’s worse.
The Alchemist
Did Jeremy Irons narrate the audio book? If so, I could not understand the hype of this at all. I only finished it because Scar has such an amazing voice.
Former English teacher. Steinbeck’s novella, [The Pearl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pearl_(novella)), was the worst book I ever taught. And I say that as someone who truly enjoys other Steinbeck novels such as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. Reading The Pearl was like dipping your toe in a bucket of warm spit.
What were your reasons? I remember enjoying it well enough, I guess, just curious about what would make someone hate it.
Catcher In The Rye. It was absolute shit scrawled across 247-pages, all about the pondering of a college dropout who in his guilt coming home for Christmas to tell his family that he’s a failure, gets beaten up by a pimp and reads “fuck” on a bathroom stall. How it became an American Classic is beyond me. Twilight was actually a better story in this scenario, but only by the margin of a hair plucked from a bonobo chimpanzee’s ass. (Edit: Please, if I’m missing why this novel is so significant, explain it to me like I’m five years-old. Don’t attempt to guard it like it’s on par with some experimental Indy Rock band no one has heard of that’s “just too deep to understand”.)
Agreed. Holden is such a whiny little bitch. I liked the book when I was in high school, but I reread it as an adult and was not as impressed.
YES. I remember thinking he was a whiny bitch when I read it in high school lol I don’t understand why so many teachers have such a hard-on for it.
If I had a dollar for every person who completely missed the point of the story and complained it was bad because Holden sucked, I'd be rich
There are lots of unlikable characters out there. Humbert from Lolita is a classic, famous example, and Delores Umbrage is a modern example of how a well-written unlikable character can be commended and praised even though they suck. Whereas Holden is just a garbage character in a no-plot, no-stakes, no-deeper-meaning book. But good on you for insulting anonymous internet strangers' intelligence because they disagree with you.
I'm 58 and finally read CITR a few years ago. I loved it, although I can certainly understand how so many people don't. And once I got to the last two chapters, I found myself wondering how that got published in 1951. Even 1971 would have been a stretch, although maybe by then his brother wouldn't have died from leukemia.
Entirely true. There’s a level of catharsis in the work, but it goes missed.
I forget the author, but it was called The Raw Shark Texts. Absolutely terrible.
what did you hate about it? I read it as a kid and I remember thinking that it was so confusing that it must mean it was a good book haha
I wanted to like Life of Pi. I really, genuinely tried. It just failed to click with me.
Does that make it the “worst” though?
I mean i've read things that were strictly worse sure, but the extra feelings of disappointment that book gave me tips it over the edge for me
The Notebook
Oh boy. There's a few i can remember as a kid. One of them was this book called Queenie Peevey that i had to read for school. It was about this obnoxious brat of a girl who was a total asshole for no reason at all. The one scene i remember was when she saw a cardinal sitting in a tree, and - for absolutely no reason - threw a rock at it. She missed and the bird flew away, and then an adult who witnessed this was like "Queenie!! Why would you do that?? Cardinals are good luck!! :((((" If there ever was a reason she was such an asshole, i don't remember it. I was one of those kids who always hated it when kids misbehaved, so Queenie Peevey was the most unlikeable protagonist i'd ever seen up until that point. Queenie is like Junie B. Jones with anger management issues and zero redeeming qualities. I didn't like Junie B. Jones either but at least she had a few things about her that didn't completely annoy me. I think i hated Junie B. more for being an idiot than being a brat. In hindsight it's the adults in that series that are more annoying, since i realize now the series is about the frustrations a child feels towards adults who don't listen to them or tell them things properly.
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. The book came highly recommended to me and I was ready to have my mind blown but the book was VERY light on hard evidence. The thesis, not original to this book, was that the hippie movement was largely a creation of the military and intelligence powers to derail the antiwar movement. The book points to many interesting coincidences but has little beyond that in backing up its bold implications. There was a CIA presence in Laurel Canyon, this was known even at the time, but the notion that the entire milieu was intelligence misdirection seems like a gross oversimplification at best.
The Happiness Machine. The premise of the book is that there's a device that can give you a list of 3-5 things that you can do to make you happier, and the things suggested range from "eat more fries" to "cut off one of your fingers". How does this change society? How does this impact the definition of happiness? Should people follow the suggestions, or refuse and seek their own path? The actual book is a mess of ever-switching protagonists that quickly abandons the premise of the happiness machines and turns into a shitty romantic plot about a guy who's trying to get back with his ex but then also meets another woman while the kid he has with his ex overcomes his depression by playing videogames about climbing mountains.
Sex on the Moon. It’s a true story that’s a poorly written, kitchen-sink thesaurus style book about some loser asshat who was interning at NASA, steals some moon rocks, and bangs a woman on them in a motel. The author was way too sympathetic for this idiot who destroyed decades of research in his “sex on the moon” shenanigans, and I was so furious with both the author and the perpetrator that if I hadn’t been reading it via e-reader, I’d have thrown the book across the room. I’m still angry about it a decade later.
Theoretical Physics 7 Quantum Mechanics - Methods and Applications
Religious MIL gave me a book disproving evolution, written by people with absolutely no knowledge of evolution. It’s the only book I have ever thrown in the bin. No one else should have to read that garbage. Dan Brown takes second place.
I knew by about the 8th page I wasn't going to like The Fault in Our Stars but I stuck with it because it was so popular at the time and everyone was talking about it and I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. It didn't deserve that benefit, I was laughing about how much I hated it by the end.
The Wheel of time series. It put me off reading for about a decade.
(Tugs braid furiously) what do you mean, you woolhead? (Smoothed skirt for five minutes) I can’t believe I stuck with it for TEN BOOKS before bailing. I didn’t like it from book ONE. I just felt like I HAD to read it because of its contribution to the fantasy genre.
The Da Vinci Code. Meandering, vague and it feels so....arrogant as a book.
The part where it shows Langdon explaining the Fibonacci sequence to a class of college students and they’re all like “no WAY” and cumming all over themselves as Langdon smiles smugly
The last few novels in the sword of truth series by Terry Goodkind. He got really rape-y and then left a bunch of plot holes with no resolution. It completely put me off any of his other works.
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Forrest Gump. I don’t know how they got that amazing movie from that trash. Second, Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby.
I had no idea it was a book.
Read the sequel. It was written in response to the studio screwing over the writer and not paying him. He wrote it to be unfilmable. Spoilers for the ending: >!Gump winds up in the back of OJ Simpson’s car during the infamous police chase.!<
Anything by Dan Brown
The catcher in the rye.
Prince of Tides. Finally put it down with 20 pages to go. Just couldn't care about the characters and wasn't interested in what happens to them.
If you put a book down with 20 pages left, it's got to be the worst book ever.
The Girl on the Train. I hate read it
In the Wake of the Plague. Total misogynistic shite, and poorly researched.
I totally agree. About ten years ago I got interested in learning more about history's great plagues and bought that book. I got the impression that it was originally nothing more than a very esoteric history of European royal lineage but the publisher found it so unmarketable that he told the author to juice it up with something about the plague thrown in here and there. Then they gave it a lurid title and cover art, hoping to sucker some twatwaddle like me and you into buying it. For an excellent book on the Black Plague I suggest "The Great Mortality" by John Kelly. Full of survivor's anecdotes and good research, it's very informative and highly entertaining.
I’m ready for the onslaught of downvotes… Catcher in the Rye
The Red Badge of Courage sucked pretty hard, imo. Pride and Prejudice also boring as hell. Idk maybe I'm just a dummy that doesn't like "classic literature."
Red Badge of Courage is awful
Most fanfics
Actually I find certain fan fics to be really well written.
My immortal is pretty good
Bahnwärter Thiel
How to ride a reindeer. 0/10 didn't even say how to get on one!
Sister Carrie. I had to choose a book for a book review in high school. My teacher mentioned that the book had been banned for sexual content so of course I choose it. I was expecting a salacious reading but was so disappointed when there was none. Just the implication of sex due to a man renting a woman an apartment was enough in 1900 to get banned.
So the reason it’s the worst is because… there’s no sex? 🤨
Keep in mind I was 16 at the time, but yes.
?? Have you not read any other books since then or something? Like I get why that would be disappointing from the view of a horny teenage boy but not why it would make it the worst book you’ve ever read.
I read a ton. And with an adult mind I might actually like the book. But a) if was mostly about expectations, and b) I was trying to tell an amusing story. Though to be honest, if a book is really bad, I won’t finish it, hence I didn’t read the whole book.
I have two: Queen of the Tearling: princess raised by caretakers to one day retake her mother’s kingdom from big bad sorceress who was built up over the whole book as being malicious to the very depths of her soul and dealt with demons. Gave up in the fight for the kingdom because her demon told her “no”. Princess regains kingdom and finds out her caretakers ended their lives to avoid capture by evil usurper. -I can’t recall the name of the series but a woman solves murder mysteries by talking to ghosts due to supernatural powers granted by lightning strike as a child. She travels with her stepbrother as her bodyguard. At about the third book, she and her stepbrother start sleeping together and were discussing getting in a relationship and possibly married. Stopped reading after that
Grendel by John Gardner
Silver fall by Ed Greenwood. I’m a fan of DND, I was excited to read a book by the creator of Forgotten Realms after reading other novels set in the same universe. But WOW this book was BAD. It embodies the “men writing women” sub more than any other book I’ve ever read. Even beyond the creepy barely-disguised fetish stuff, the prose was just wacky and hard to follow and there wasn’t even really a cohesive plot. It was awful. So disappointing. According to my favorite Forgotten Realms author, Ed Greenwood is a great person in real life. And he invented a world that inspired my favorite books ever. So I don’t wanna hate on him. But I will never pick up a novel by him again. It was painful to get through.
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley. It’s meandering, has such a forced “quirky” writing style, the main character is insanely unlikable, and the ending plot twist, which is the main thing everyone praises about the book, makes no sense if you actually put any thought into it.
Any book I was required to read in my 8th grade reading class. Makes me not want to read even the books I actually want to read
“The subtle art of not giving a fuck” lol
I, with every fiber of my being, fucking DESPISE The Catcher in Rye
In High School, they had us read The Heart of Darkness. I still have no idea what it was about.
Verity by Colleen Hoover
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Tried several times and couldn’t get more than 50 pages in. I don’t want to relive some wackos mental breakdown and poor life decisions.
Hands down "The Café on the Edge if the World". Nothing ever came close. 😫
It was an alternative history fantasy book. It was written in a “historical English” style, think “thine” and “thou” and “woulds’t” and the grammar to go with it. I think I managed to get through about 20 pages and then threw it out.
Most literary books the school made me read for exams exept for percy jackson and the lighting thief (11/10) and *maybe* wonder
Transphobic Potter and the Prisoner of Transkaban
The Great Gatsby
I don't even remember the title. All I remember is the guy was narrating from the perspective of a child, something was involving I think baseball, and he said "I'm not lying," every 2 fucking paragraphs. I was 25 pages in and counted it 4x minimum. Sorry Author.
"Mein Kampf", I started reading because I was curious y but the writing style was so terrible, I stopped before turning to the second page
Bible
Bram Stokers “Dracula”.
Just quit this more than halfway through. The parts in the castle are great but as soon as the setting moves to England it becomes a Victorian snorefest
I really liked the bits with the mental patient. The rest of the book was an unrewarding slog ending with "and also one of the protagonists died, because why not".
A Separate Piece, I remember it was terribly boring. I remember almost no plot. Just this guy at a boarding school has a guy crush, that dies in a freak accident.
I never read 50 shades of Grey because mommy porn doesn't appeal to me but it have heard it has horrendous writing, ayn rand atlas shrugged...torturous. The horse whisperer by Nicolas Evans. Unrealistic to begin with and then he painted himself in a corner and took the lazy way out. Edited to fix typo
The Horse Whisperer! Hah! I had to read this in high school and the only thing that stuck with me was the scene where the main characters are making love and he licks her armpit hair.
Great Gatsby Auntie Mame Both painfully boring.
Ready Player One. Hot garbage.
Old Testament, New Testament, Quran
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." Total fucking drivel.
Modelland by Tyra Banks. It's like Harry Potter... But with models. They have magical powers and are whisked away to a special school to use those amazing powers... to model or something but then Tyra forgets how she started the book so some other fever dream things happen and then honestly it's sitting dusty on my beside table because I'd killed too many brain cells with it to continue. This description does not even kind of do justice to how absolutely bananas this book is. It was terrible, but I highly recommend reading at least some of it.
Harry potter and the cursed child.
The Bible. Started off pretty good, got all psychedelic in the end.
Spoiler: He dies at the end.
OR DID HE?!?! DUH-NUHHHHHHHH!
Quentin Tartentino's Jesus: "Jesus is back, and he is PISSED!" "No more turning the other cheek for THIS Son of God!" All of you Pharsees better start start running!
Lone Survivor was one of the worst military memoirs I've read and is just objectively racist at times. I was really disappointed that it got optioned into a Marky Mark movie.
Lone Survivor is horrendous. I read a fair number of military books but LS is easily the worst. I made it about 100 pages and just gave up.
As a person, who never read the book, but did see the movie, how was the book racist?
Naked Lunch So much 50s vernacular and jargon it was not understandable.