Anti-Recommend a Book!

[Nautilus]

There are quite a few "Recommend a Book" topics on these fora. What about books that I don't like? What about books that have completely failed to cause me to enjoy them?
Vent your feelings here.

I'll start:

Marco's Millions is a thin paperback with a hopelessly sci-fi-ish cover, aliens, stars in the background. It's about a kid who finds a hole in his basement that leads to a naked singularity. Long story short, he goes in and comes out to find that time had slowed down inside it and his entire family was dead. Good books can be depressing, and the science was accurate, but it was too depressing for me. I know good books can be depressing, but still, this is asking a bit much.

Go on. Vent!

[Azrael001]

Pilgrim, by the same author who brought you such cheerful and uplifting books as The Wars. This book centers around a depressed 'immortal' who wants to die, but can't because he (sometimes she) keeps reencarnating. She was raped by the homosexual Leonardo DaVinci, and then he was analysed by Carl Jung, then he died. Then end. I think, it's been a while. Bleeeegh was the whole feeling I had while reading the book.

[PAstrychef]

Hey-Tim Findley wrote bunches of great stuff and Pilgrim was nifty! Unwanted on The Voyage was my favorite.
As for books to avoid-how about most of "James Patterson"'s stuff? (Quotes because he actually writes very little of the stuff published under his name.) I'm sure there must be a tolerable volume or two in the masses he's got on the shelves, but I've not found one.

[Mother Superior]

Obligatory mention of The Da Vinci Code.

[Okapi]

Gee Willikers A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I didn't know classics could be bad. Then I read ATGIB. My innocence is ruined. Truly aweful, drags on, the happiest (and, coincidentally, most exciting and entertaining) scene is the one where she nearly gets raped. Aweful. Absolutely do NOT read. Might cause death, it is so bad. It's like if Old Man and the Sea was three hundred pages and the old man was a poor girl and the sea America and she nearly got raped or beaten up a bunch.

Actually, anything by Dickens is pretty bad, too, and most Hemingway sucks but is forgivingly short, but ATGIB really takes the disgusting blood-and-boredom-and-rape-covered cake for worst book I've ever read.

[masher]

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton.

I was made to read it in highschool. Just to make sure it wasn't just highschool, I did try to reread it. That didn't work.

Although it did work with Educating Rita and Macbeth.

[mmmcannibalism]

A Farewell to Arms, the writing is just so dreary I actually started laughing whenever someone died.

[Jahoclave]

and most Hemingway sucks but is forgivingly short

That and I think a lot of his work gets overhyped based on some of his better pieces. In fact, what they should really cover is his biography, it's by far about as badass as some of the Russian authors. Any man who went NAZI submarine hunting off his private yacht and then managed to blow his head off with a double barrel, getting both barrels off is deserving of at least some attention.

As for my anti-recommendation: Fenimore Cooper. Mark Twain doesn't even begin to do justice to just how bad Cooper's writing actually is, not to mention that Cooper got his ass kicked in the writing department by a woman. Honestly, the Linwoods is basically The Spy redone.

And limit your Poe. Just do that for your own sake before you realize that he recycles the same plots over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. They're good, but space them out over a lifetime, or you're just going to start realizing that you can predict what's going to happen in the story by about page two.

[Robstickle]

Does anyone else thing LOTR is one of the most overrated trilogies (Is it even considered a trilogy? Each book was two books after all.) ever written?

[wellingtonsteve]

Does anyone else thing LOTR is one of the most overrated trilogies (Is it even considered a trilogy? Each book was two books after all.) ever written?

Yes, very overrated.

*ducks*

[Okapi]

Most indubitably.
*Stands on tip-toe and opens mouth*

[Nautilus]

Drones a bit, honestly.
*commits hiri-kiri*

[johny223]

A Light in the Forest was pretty bad, essentialy the entire book was complaining about the evil whitemen only to become an evil whiteman and then get rejected by his own race.

[Kewangji]

Does anyone else thing LOTR is one of the most overrated trilogies (Is it even considered a trilogy? Each book was two books after all.) ever written?

I haven't actually read a lot of them so yes.

As for my anti-recommendation... Twilight? Though I didn't read more than the beginning of that. The Da Vinci code and that other, identical book Dan Brown wrote. The last parts of books by Stephen King, maybe.

[Jahoclave]

Does anyone else thing LOTR is one of the most overrated trilogies (Is it even considered a trilogy? Each book was two books after all.) ever written?

I haven't actually read a lot of them so yes.

As for my anti-recommendation... Twilight?

Remember how the title said "Book?" Yeah, Mormon vampire fanfiction doesn't fit that category.

[Okapi]

Yeah. I read the entire first one and had to resist vomiting. Apparently the last one is so absurd it's actually worth reading. Really, though, it is possibly the most terrible thing that ever happened to me, and I have literally stumbled off a cliff (without safety equipment). Stephen King's boring, but not bad enough to write home about.

[Garzahd]

King is sort of hit and miss with me. Books like The Stand I really enjoyed, as well as the Dark Tower series. But, the more recent stuff I've read is more ho-hum (Cell, Under the Dome).

Spoiler:

The Dome was put down by aliens!

Ethan Frome was pretty horrible. Let's sled down a hill and kill ourselves!

[Jorpho]

I'm kind of surprised this thread doesn't already exist.

I came out swinging against Cyteen a while ago. What a through waste of time. Gagh.

I have also often made known my feelings about Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, which are just so much worse for being the followups to the wholly excellent Hyperion and its sequel. They are nothing more than boring travelogues to places that don't exist, strewn with plot points that are announced to absolutely zero effect. (Well, I suppose the Vatican does exist, but I reckon Dan Brown's got that more than covered.)

[artifex]

If you're interested in Meme Theory, I'd like to anti-recommend Viruses of the Mind by Richard Brodie. I picked up a copy expecting a serious look into the idea of memes, with data, information about differing opinions on the subject, and a sense of scientific skepticism, but what I got was basically a self-help book, written by an actual professional self-help guru (although he did apparently invent the squiggly line that spell-checkers put under words).

[dg61]

I liked The Sun Also Rises only because it was fun to foist grail myth onto. But yeah, Hemingway is best as a short-story guy.

[SecondTalon]

Here's what I'd like to see -

Book Title
Well structured, thought out reasons as to why it sucks
Conclusion.


Because as is, there's not a whole lot separating this thread from Worst/Overrated Books.

As Best Book and Recommend A Book are two different things, I'd like to see this one follow the Recommend A Book method, minus the requesting first. I'd like to see people explaining in detail why they could not recommend a particular book, even if others found it wonderful. Books where you can see where they were trying to go and failed. Books that just didn't work for you.

Case in point mentioned already - The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you're just going to say it's overrated, do it in the other thread. Explain why you can't recommend it to someone else, or get to the other thread.

Stranger in a Strange Land. By Heinlein, which may tell you everything you need to know right there.

It's basically a several hundred page ramble about how if we'd all just live in clumps of people and (non-reproductively) fuck like bunnies, we'd be better off. Because the only reason a person wants to do harm to another is because they haven't had a part of them inside themselves, I guess.

I mean, polyamory is fine if that's what you're in to. But much like monogamy, if it's not your thing then trying to shoehorn yourself into it is only going to lead to heartbreak and bad times all around.

Really, the whole thing reminds me of various author tracts that pretty much state "Look how awesome the society I created works in this fictional world I created! Why aren't we like this?" which seems to completely ignore that whole "free will" and "Personal Choice" thing. The only real good thing I see rolling out of that book is Grok.

Was it good? Wasn't bad, no. I can see how a lot of people would really like it, but I can't say I'd recommend it.

[Nautilus]

Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire.
What Maguire does is interesting- he takes old stories and retells them from someone else's point of view. He wrote Wicked, which is an excellent book. However, Mirror, Mirror was not nearly as engaging as Wicked. While I was reading it I got the sense that either there was way too much allegory was going on or I was just completely inept at understanding books. Characters do one thing and then they do something that seems like the opposite of what they would have previously done and then they're dismembered by fishwives. The ending was completely unsatisfactory and... just ughh.

Spoiler:

It's also disturbingly Anti-Vatican. The author somehow got from the story Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to naked bastard daughters of the Pope bathing in liquid mercury. ughh.

[mmmcannibalism]

It's also disturbingly Anti-Vatican. The author somehow got from the story Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to naked bastard daughters of the Pope bathing in liquid mercury. ughh.

I think you made a mistake there; now I kind of want to read that.

[CulturalSolipsism]

Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker.

Leaped in with great expectations; I had previously devoured his epic fantasy series The Prince of Nothing, which more or less restored my faith that fantasy can be thought-provoking, intelligent and interesting (and which I whole-heartedly recommend). Neuropath was a genre shift, being a near-future quasi-sci-fi "thriller" concerned with the ramifications of advancing neuroscience on the concept of free will, and a guy who's very obsessed with everyone else understanding the implications.

Many people decried the novel for its genre shift (silly, as nothing about it indicated it would be a continuation of his other work or fantasy at all) or its philosophical/scientific premise (also a silly reason, as even if you disagree, nothing in it glaringly contradicts modern scientific understanding and the extrapolation of future developments is quite reasonable with a somewhat pessimistic view). What floored me was the atrocious writing, especially coming from someone who had previously displayed such talent. The characters are uninteresting cliches, the plot decently frenetic but ultimately hole-riddled and anticlimactic, and large portions of the text seem to be written by an undergrad attending the Ayn Rand Institute for Overbearing Explanation of Subjective Viewpoints (though thankfully with far more brevity than Rand was capable of).

The book might have seemed better if written by someone new and unfamiliar, but Bakker is far, far better than this novel indicates.

[DMPRook]

On the Road... was a gift from a girlfriend. Never let her buy me another gift again.

[theGoldenCalf;]

"Being There" by Jerzy Kosinsky. I can't believe they actually taught us this book at highschool.

It is a short, terse and unimaginative account of an unreliable story about a young man named "Chance" (yes. chance. ugh.) who, for as far as he can remember, spent his whole life either mowing lawn or watching TV, alone in his rich patron's house. When rich patron dies, he is sent out into the world and somehow becomes a government official in the course of a few dozen pages. He then has some kinky sex with a man who's other functions in the world are unclear, and is being thought of as a possible candidate for presidency. The end.

It is not even the arbitrary narrative or lack of any really interesting insights into the (again, unreliable) situation of the protagonist and the social reality he embodies. The main thing that turned me off was how much the whole affair was superfluous and plain badly written, a roughly-constructed attempt at saying something clever and disturbing about modern-day TV-watching society which feels like it was written in a two-hour fit of rage after having a TV documentary project shut down or something... A personal, lousy rant that doesn't suffer from a huge surplus of artistic or academic attention.

All that, and the fact that it's considered a masterpiece, was made into a film, and appears in official school curriculum

[CorruptUser]

People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. You can't just look at the atrocities that occured in/by the US and then gloss over the rest of the world. Newsflash: people were viciously butchering each other long before the US existed, and still do so today.

EDIT: The admin is playing games; "America" and "Freedomville" are switched.

OOPS: As are "EDIT" and "OOPS", apparently.

Wow, the moderator likes to have fun with me.

[Dave_Wise]

This post had objectionable content.Hey, I wasn't kidding about the Flamebaiting bit. Now, if you want to try again, feel free. But I expect quite a bit more than just that. - ST

[lollypatrolly]

I strongly anti-recommend the Sword of Truth (I think that's what it was called anyways...) series by Terry Goodkind. It's been a while since I threw away the books in disgust, but from what I can remember, it had deus ex machina galore and one-dimensional characters. It got particularly grating in the third book, which is where I cut off reading, though I can't seem to recall exactly why.

[SecondTalon]

I strongly anti-recommend the Sword of Truth (I think that's what it was called anyways...) series by Terry Goodkind. It's been a while since I threw away the books in disgust, but from what I can remember, it had deus ex machina galore and one-dimensional characters. It got particularly grating in the third book, which is where I cut off reading, though I can't seem to recall exactly why.

Probably because that's where it went from being a crappy fantasy series to crappy BDSM porn.

[rnbguru]

I agree on LOTR. It seemed far too wordy and the songs were just boring to me.

Also, for me, I just read Olive Kitteridge. It won a Pulitzer Prize but lordy, she's so wordy. Every sentence had four or five commas and stretched on for nearly a paragraph.

[michaelyw]

I cannot anti-recommend a book less worth your time:
The New World War: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Why and How Militant Muslims Plan to Destroy Western Civilization by John Clark Mead

This 172 page monstrosity is a radical Christian's story about how he infiltrated an unnamed "secular university" in order to get credentials as a sociologist. Then he traveled to an unnamed country in the Arab world and socialized with radical Muslims who were affiliated with an unnamed organization who supported an unnamed terrorist organization.

Yes, it really is that vague and unverifiable.


Another one not worth your time is the Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan. Several friends recommended this series and I picked up the first one. Rich in description. Painfully slow. Lacks a plot. When I complained to my friends how dull the book was they said, "Yeah, but it really gets good in Book 4!" Books 1, 2, and 3 total over 2100 pages. Any book or series of books that takes over 2k pages to "get good" is not worth the time.

[lollypatrolly]

I strongly anti-recommend the Sword of Truth (I think that's what it was called anyways...) series by Terry Goodkind. It's been a while since I threw away the books in disgust, but from what I can remember, it had deus ex machina galore and one-dimensional characters. It got particularly grating in the third book, which is where I cut off reading, though I can't seem to recall exactly why.

Probably because that's where it went from being a crappy fantasy series to crappy BDSM porn.

Thanks, it's all coming back to me now... In addition to the gorn and almost-rapes, the hero is portrayed a the knight in shining armour and upholder of morality by the delusional author, while in actuality he's basically acting like the Big Bad incarnate. Searching around on the internet reveals a vast collection of satire, snark, trollfictions and general trolling on him. It turned out to be infinitely more rewarding than actually reading the books. I'm posting this because while you should definitely steer clear off the books, the internet backdraft is certainly worth dedicating a few minutes to. I'll link a site if anyone's interested

[Jorpho]

Searching around on the internet reveals a vast collection of satire, snark, trollfictions and general trolling on him. It turned out to be infinitely more rewarding than actually reading the books. I'm posting this because while you should definitely steer clear off the books, the internet backdraft is certainly worth dedicating a few minutes to. I'll link a site if anyone's interested

Oh, please do. I was going to say "No wonder all of his books have these bizarrely buff statues on the cover!", except that only applies to Faith of the Fallen.

I am suddenly reminded of the classic Houseplants of Gor - though I doubt Mr. Goodkind could possibly be selling so well if John Norman's BDSM fantasies were an appropriate comparison.

(I like how Google suggested "Houseplants of Gor" before I even finished typing "of".)

[lollypatrolly]

Oh, please do. I was going to say "No wonder all of his books have these bizarrely buff statues on the cover!", except that only applies to Faith of the Fallen.

I am suddenly reminded of the classic Houseplants of Gor - though I doubt Mr. Goodkind could possibly be selling so well if John Norman's BDSM fantasies were an appropriate comparison.

(I like how Google suggested "Houseplants of Gor" before I even finished typing "of".)

Well, sorry to derail the thread a bit, but here's a link: The Goodkind Parodies There's a load of stuff on that site, which sources several massive forum threads containing tens of thousands of posts. It was fairly hard to navigate, but I found it amazing that even some of the forum threads managed to stay funny and not break the sarcasm / satire routine for several pages straight. Those guys are dedicated, I'll give them that.

And on a different but still completely offtopic note, I took a look at your link and I feel a little dumber after reading that. Does it help having read the source material?

[ConMan]

The Ancient Future trilogies (there are two of them) by Traci Harding.

The original Ancient Future novel was, in my opinion, not a bad fantasy novel that combined Arthurian legend (or more accurately the legends that then became Arthurian) with some aspects of New Age pseudo-Oriental spirituality, and a kick-ass modern day protagonist, Tory Alexander, who brought martial arts into the Middle Ages. At this point, the only hint of what was to follow is the fact that one of the characters in the past resembles Tori's brother. The following novels (excluding the fourth, which comprised side stories to the first trilogy) then introduced a number of sci-fi elements and simultaneously upped the spirituality while diminishing the fantasy component, as well as changing the rules pretty much every book. For example, while the second book took a trip to ancient Atlantis to find a cure (actually an immortality potion), in future novels immortality is apparently about as common as blue eyes, thanks to a bunch of gods (who are actually just super-evolved alternative humans) screwing around on Earth, not to mention the fact that apparently all the main characters reincarnate through the ages until one of their incarnations becomes immortal. And the "magic powers" in the original novel are just really super-advanced psychic powers (sort of like if Arthur C. Clarke were a Wiccan). But then it turns out that there are actually lots of planets of different humanoid evolutions from other species (read: furries) and in fact some of them are immortal too. Only in fact there's a weapon that can effectively kill immortals by flash-freezing them and smashing them into dust. Only then Tory gets hit with this weapon, but she's able to reintegrate herself but gets amnesia and falls in love with an avian incarnation of her husband. Then her spirit gets taken to an alternative universe Earth where she acts as a muse for the author of the series, inspired by the fact that Harding apparently actually felt that Tory was watching her and helping her write. And all the immortal reincarnations are actually a bunch of dual entities (in the sense that the immortals are all paired off because they were originally one soul split into two or something) and they all recombine at the end and it turns out that Tory and her husband were really Lucifer, but he wasn't evil he just gave humanity its soul and intelligence and so he was cast as the bad guy by some other bunch of god-like beings who just used humans as their slaves. Or something; it's been a while since I read the books.

So in summary, you know how people say that if you don't like a sequel, or remake, or whatever, then it doesn't stop you from enjoying the original? When the sequels manage to so thoroughly screw around with the rules established in the original, that rule does not apply.

[Nath]

Neuromancer, by William Gibson.
From another thread:

I expected to like it, but it turned out to be quite disappointing. I'm sure those ideas were quite original at the time, but they've all been copied to death since. Also, Gibson seemed so obsessed with being stylish that he forgot little things like characterization and storytelling.

The biggest problem was that none of the characters seemed remotely human. They served no purpose other than to walk around in trenchcoats beneath a sky the color of television tuned to a dead channel.

The second biggest problem was the use of metaphors like the one above.

[Jorpho]

Well, sorry to derail the thread a bit, but here's a link: The Goodkind Parodies There's a load of stuff on that site, which sources several massive forum threads containing tens of thousands of posts.

My word! How can a parodist ever possibly hope to top

Spoiler:

Kahlan frantically tried to think as the chicken bawk-bawk-bawked

!? I'm nearly tempted to start reading the books to witness the miracle of their publication.

And on a different but still completely offtopic note, I took a look at your link and I feel a little dumber after reading that. Does it help having read the source material?

Well, it's not funny if I have to explain it. But given that I've never read the source material either, not much explanation is needed.

Neuromancer, by William Gibson.
From another thread:

I expected to like it, but it turned out to be quite disappointing. I'm sure those ideas were quite original at the time, but they've all been copied to death since. Also, Gibson seemed so obsessed with being stylish that he forgot little things like characterization and storytelling.

Did I write that? I wish I had.

[lollypatrolly]

Well, I do understand that it substituted BDSM with plant watering, even retaining some of the hilarious dialogue. I still retain that I feel dumber, and would like to know the source material, so I'll go google it now

Oh and don't forget gems such as:

Spoiler:

Richard laughed. Owen laughed. Cara gave Marilee an approving clap on the back. And then all the men laughed.

[Kendo_Bunny]

Well, anyone who has read the Twilight thread knows my strong feelings about just how bad the book series is.

Another thing I can recommend to avoid like the plague: 'The Chronicles of the Cheysuli'.

My sister lent me this book, where the heroine does absolutely no wrong. She can also shape-shift into two different animals, while her husband can shape-shift into one, and women of the tribe she finds out she's a part of after they kidnap her usually can't shape-shift at all, so she's SPECIAL! Her husband has to go off to war, and he told her not to come, because he was a warrior, and she was the shoemaker's daughter. The most fighting she had ever done in her life was probably at the mideval fantasy version of a really good sale. Also, she's pregnant. But no, she sneaks after him and follows him into battle. What's more, she transforms into the two animals to catch up to Hubby, even though no one knows how shape-shifting could effect an unborn child. At first he's mad at her for putting herself and their child in danger, but then he chalks it up to her being a lovable scamp and she's just proving her love. So he says she can come. But first, she forces a detour to pick up the captured prince, even though the entire army decided it was a bad idea, but since her husband is the general and she's pregnant with his first child, she decides that running off to the enemies camp and getting her stupid butt captured will force him to re-direct the troops to rescue her and the prince. Which he does, and then he compliments her on how wise she was and tells her how pleased he is that she left the safety of the fortress, ran off and got herself captured, put the entire army in jeopardy, and let the capital fall. And he actually means it. Then when they get to the flaming capital, he implores her to stay in a safe house while they went to rescue the king. But no, Mrs. Hero has to go skipping tra-la through the enemy-filled streets- without a weapon, pregnant, and she finds a baby in the streets, so she brings it along. Then she finds her husband locked in mortal combat, so she does what anyone would do if they had only a kernel of candy corn for a brain and screams his name. This distracts him for long enough that his enemy gets a stranglehold on him. So of course, she does what any heavily pregnant woman would do, and launches herself at his enemy. Her husband manages to escape the stranglehold, and stabs the enemy, and then thanks her very sincerely for saving his life. It was her fault his life was in danger in the first place!
They don't manage to rescue the king, but the prince hasn't realized that she's married to the leader of the army, so he begs for her hand, because she's so wise and brave and smart and beautiful and perfect and the sun shines out her rear end.

There's also a big sub-plot about how her half-brother is constantly trying to either rape or seduce her. At first, it was because he didn't know she was his half-sister, but after he finds out, his ardor cools for like two chapters, and then he's back trying to get into her breeches. She's also married to his half-brother- on the other half that she's not related to. She and Sister-Fetishist have the same mother, Sister-Fetishist and Hubby have the same father. There's also a quick detour that Hubby may have a child by some other chick, so he may have to marry her, but of course, it's not his! So he can marry his beautiful, perfect, idiot bride, but not before she gets all incredibly dramatic on him and everyone else. And not before her brother proposes to her, or suggests they at least sleep together.

My sister was offended that I wouldn't give the rest of the series a chance after reading the first book, but the heroine was hateful and the constant threat of sister-rape had me so squicked out that I never wanted to find out if he succeeded.