Book Anti-Recommendations

[KuraTheChibiSleepingBeauty]

^If the title was kept in a literal fashion, it would be The Of Vinci Code. 🙄

[Evren]

6 hours ago, KiannaKitter said:

The Bible 😂

if you read it as fiction, its pretty good  

[daveb]

4 hours ago, CustardCream said:

The Silmarillion

I tried to read it a couple of times when I was younger, being a Tolkien fan and wanting more of his world-making. Couldn't get into it. Then last year I found the Prancing Pony Podcast, hosted by 2 guys who are big Tolkien fans. They go chapter by chapter (sometimes taking 2 or 3 episodes to cover one chapter if there was a lot going on), delving into all sorts of stuff from word nerdery to mythology to Tolkien's life, etc. I'd read a chapter and then listen to the podcast for that part, or vice versa. With that help I was able to finally read the whole book. I wouldn't say I loved it, but at least I got some understanding and some background that informs more of LOTR for me.

 

A book I really could NOT stand was the first book of the Thomas Covenant series. I wouldn't even try any further books in the series.

[Atheno]

2 hours ago, Evren said:

if you read it as fiction, its pretty good  

I haven't read the majority of the Bible, but I would say a lot of it fails terribly on all levels.  Some of it is good as fiction, but some of it is just long lists, endless repetition, just bad.  I've read only the first few pages of the Koran, but it's rather tedious too.  Book of Mormon from the page or two I attempted of it seems to be about the most boring thing ever.  And my understanding of all of these is that the "morality" is rather abhorrent, there's some good stuff, but there's also some really horrible stuff.

To an extent, I'll second The Great Gatsby, not that I'd go quite as far as an anti-recommendation since a lot of people like it, I actually kind of liked it, but I wasn't exactly wowed by it.  Some of Poe's stuff is great, some is rather boring and not great.  Herman Melville's Redburn-- I gave up, it was just boring, the narrator's commentary was uninteresting and it didn't have much of a plot.  I imagine something may have happened in the latter part of the book and it did start out okay.  I may attempt Moby Dick some time; I remember liking Billy Budd.

Wasn't a big fan of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it had some things going for it, but a lot of it was pretty boring, lot of fish lists.  Wouldn't necessarily quite classify it as an ant-recommendation either though.

Read what you want.

[Ashmedai]

5 hours ago, Evren said:

if you read it as fiction, its pretty good  

That's if you can keep track of what's going on half the time

[acearchivist]

16 hours ago, Lichley said:

Pretty sure it’s on purpose to contrast him with his siblings. If he’s just all “everyone’s life is so precious”  no one would see how much like his brother he is. Plus it’s about his internal journey as much as it is about mass genocide. At least it’s better than a whiney pacifist or a military worshipper. 

I mean I'm well aware what Card was trying to do -- doesn't change the fact Ender sucks in the first book lmao. I can only hope he grows into a better person in the sequels 💁‍♀️

[Karst]

I've never really liked Card's stuff (too damn militaristic) but at least Ender's Game raises some interesting philosophical questions, which is better than most of the stuff in that sub-genre.  

[Lichley]

8 hours ago, acearchivist said:

I mean I'm well aware what Card was trying to do -- doesn't change the fact Ender sucks in the first book lmao. I can only hope he grows into a better person in the sequels 💁‍♀️

As someone who has read the sequels (spoilers) he doesn’t  

[Luftschlosseule]

Buddenbrooks. Made me glad that Thomas Mann is dead and I don't run a chance of ever meeting the guy.

[Guest]

On 8/8/2019 at 9:05 PM, Rockblossom said:

The Oxford English Dictionary.  Interesting details, but I could just never grasp the overall plot.

😂 Am I the only one who reads parts of it for fun though? In school we had a copy in our classroom and I'd read parts of it during breaks. It's a bit of an unusual thing to do but it made me learn a lot of vocabulary!

 

[daveb]

3 hours ago, Aldis Friedman said:

Am I the only one who reads parts of it for fun though?

Nope. Well, I didn't have access to the OED, but always enjoyed looking up words, meanings, etymology, etc.  

[Guest]

2 hours ago, daveb said:

Nope. Well, I didn't have access to the OED, but always enjoyed looking up words, meanings, etymology, etc.  

It's a great way to expand our vocabulary! And I agree on the etymology part. As I study Classics, it's very useful.

[kiaroskuro]

7 hours ago, Luftschlosseule said:

Buddenbrooks. Made me glad that Thomas Mann is dead and I don't run a chance of ever meeting the guy.

This just strenghtened my resolve not to read this book. Never understood why Mann's books are considered to be absolutely essential reads, and I never felt compelled to read Buddenbrooks even though one is "supposed" to have read it.

 

My anti-recommendation is The Kite Runner. I have more, but there are less well-known and/or not written in English.

[Rhaenys]

Anything by E.L James cause all she seems to be good at is romanticizing abusive relationships. The Mister is the same thing as 50 just throw in some human trafficking.

 

Game of Thrones Series: Mostly for people who just watch the tv show because the book has sooo much more characters and plots it is easy to get lost and forget a lot of details. 

[Sally]

The Kite Runner.   Why it had such literary and commercial success I don't know.  

 

Wuthering Heights.  That was THE most depressing book I've ever read and possibly the most depressing book ever written.  

[Callum]

H.G. Wells “The War of the Worlds”, is a good book. Personally I would read it again 

[Tunhope]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Regarding The Bible, which version you're reading has an effect, I think. The NIV is boring, to me, from start to finish, but I can read parts of Isaiah, the Psalms and Ecclesiastes in the New King James and I think the language is beautiful. (Doesn't mean to say I believe it. Just talking about the language)

Brighton Rock and Cider with Rosie. Both supposed to be two modern English classics but I just didn't see it.

[FindingTheta]

A person that I knew gave me a book his friend wrote called The Dome of Ares: I couldn't read it all because of the frequent grammatical and punctuation errors, unrealistic character dialogues, dunks on NASA and the public sector in general while idolizing the public sector a good deal, mentioning breast sizes, attire, and hip shapes in multiple parts of a book to describe female characters (also described a stereotypically Middle-Eastern character, but noted that she "Americanized" her dress so she didn't stand out), and they were described as having to put up with the protagonist's sexist remarks and attitude because "he was brilliant".

 

There were other aspects of the book that I thought were terrible such as mining asteroids for billions of dollars in 2006 money (it'll cost trillions and bankrupt nations in short order), and his frequent use of Deus ex Machina whenever he wrote himself into a corner.

 

I immediately dropped the book and grabbed another; it was the best decision I made that day.

[Amethyst Raven]

It really depends- I'm a nut for all types. I love that old 1800 style of writing where the writers just add comas everywhere. So, I'm going to try my best to give a mostly unbiased opinion when it comes to bad books (by that I mean I'll come from a standpoint of a average reader)

I greatly dislike the series of books Onision made- they're completely terrible. They're utter garbage. The character development is so crap that it couldn't even be used for fertilizer.

I also absolutely hate the 'original' Creepypasta stories- though these may not be books, steer far far away from them-they're god-awful, ridden with spelling and grammatical errors, and are edgier than a slip-n-slide made of knives. And I'm super edgy, so that is DEFINITELY a bad thing. They use terrible topics like rape, murder, and pedophilia very casually and thrown around, not giving any weight to the characters, only to justify why the killers brutally murder other people. I think the worst would have to be "Clockwork-Your Time is Up", and unless your a masochist, I really wouldn't recommend torturing yourself with it. 

[Amethyst Raven]

On 8/8/2019 at 1:26 PM, Kimchi Peanut said:

Lord of the Flies

Aww man I really love that book

I think a lot of people would enjoy it if it wasn't forced upon them to read in school, but that's just my opinion...everyone has their own taste.

[Skycaptain]

@Amethyst Raven, I agree with you about books being forced upon school children putting them off that author. Especially as most books they call "literature" I call "over-analysed to find things the author probably never intended and we can't ask them because they're dead" 

[Sally]

54 minutes ago, SkyenAutowegCaptain said:

 "over-analysed to find things the author probably never intended and we can't ask them because they're dead" 

I have come to realize that I don't really like book clubs, for that reason.  Whether the authors are dead or alive, they're not there to tell us what their intention was, and it's both pretentious and boring to make assumptions.  Just read the damn book and either enjoy it or don't.  (I'm a painter and I hate people asking me what I intended with a painting also.)

[Luftschlosseule]

2 hours ago, Sally said:

I have come to realize that I don't really like book clubs, for that reason.  Whether the authors are dead or alive, they're not there to tell us what their intention was, and it's both pretentious and boring to make assumptions.  Just read the damn book and either enjoy it or don't.  (I'm a painter and I hate people asking me what I intended with a painting also.)

I hated that so much in school!

Though I guess it depends on the book club? I am currently - but online, maybe that's different - re-reading the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan and we're talking about details in the book or apply the world building. It's about what if Greek gods were still there and sexually active and we get these halfbloods with supernatural abilities, they have a camp they go to and each major entity has their own building for their offspring. We get basic descriptions, like the cabin of Artemis glows in the moonlight, but it leaves much to your imagination.

Or which is you favourite non human character? Which ability is the coolest, which the most practical?

We're basically of the opinion that the author wanted a) to tell a story and b) spread knowledge about Greek mythology. He says somewhere he was a Latin teacher and annoyed because so few people knew the stories.

 

So you'd need a book club in which everyone is of your opinion on that.

 

 

I tried reading the Perks of being a Wallflower last week and didn't get far. Yes, okay, I knew it would be YA, and about high-schoolers. Not my favourite but I was prepared. What I wasn't prepared for was the huge amount of triggering topics.

Spoiler

It starts with a suicide, and then random topics that need to adressed in a very different way were thrown in to add spice.

Yes, I know it's 20 years old. I know that we have come a long way since that, especially in YA. I know that it has loads of fans. But nope. If I have to fight myself to get through the first few pages it probably won't get better.

[DarkStormyKnight]

I've tried to read anything by Haruki Murakami so many dang times and I just never enjoy it he just can't have a female character without talking about their boobs INCESSANTLY it got so dang annoying.

[fuzzipueo]

3 hours ago, Luftschlosseule said:

6 hours ago, Sally said:

I have come to realize that I don't really like book clubs, for that reason.  Whether the authors are dead or alive, they're not there to tell us what their intention was, and it's both pretentious and boring to make assumptions.  Just read the damn book and either enjoy it or don't.  (I'm a painter and I hate people asking me what I intended with a painting also.)

I hated that so much in school!

Though I guess it depends on the book club? I am currently - but online, maybe that's different - re-reading the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan and we're talking about details in the book or apply the world building. It's about what if Greek gods were still there and sexually active and we get these halfbloods with supernatural abilities, they have a camp they go to and each major entity has their own building for their offspring. We get basic descriptions, like the cabin of Artemis glows in the moonlight, but it leaves much to your imagination.

Or which is you favourite non human character? Which ability is the coolest, which the most practical?

We're basically of the opinion that the author wanted a) to tell a story and b) spread knowledge about Greek mythology. He says somewhere he was a Latin teacher and annoyed because so few people knew the stories.

 

So you'd need a book club in which everyone is of your opinion on that.

That kind of thing can be fun, because you're not under pressure for a grade or to impress the teacher, but to enjoy the story and to hear other peoples opinions about what you're reading. And it's fun to speculate the 'what if?' scenarios. I would love to have someone to discuss the Magnus Chase books, also by Riordan, which visit Norse Mythology, for similar reasons. Or Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence - which predate Harry Potter by a good 30+ years.

[Blaiddmelyn]

Pride and Prejudice. Genuinely one of the most boring things I have ever read.

 

The Fifth Season by NK Jemsin. It's way more dense than it needs to be.  I liked one of the three arcs but that's it.

 

Opposites by Karin Bishop. It starts off well but it becomes too happy ever after/a how to guide...

[not_all_who_wander]

1. It feels kind of rude to anti-recommend one of Toni Morrison's books right after she just died, but I would warn against The Bluest Eye, especially for sex-repulsed aces. Morrison is a beautiful writer who did important work, but I was just grossed out by that book. Very tragic and graphic. I was genuinely bothered and disturbed after reading it. 

 

2. I'm also not a fan of Out Stealing Horses--I guess if I was pressed I'd say it was a book about about a middle aged guy remembering this one summer from his childhood when he visited his dad, but that makes it sound more cohesive than it was. It consisted of way too many passages about people cutting down trees.

 

3. And to round it out, Catcher in the Rye. I'm an English teacher and so many people love it, I know, but I can't stand Holden. And that last minute twist ending that's supposed to change the way you look at the whole book has always struck me as random and unneccessary. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DarkStormyKnight]

4 hours ago, not_all_who_wander said:

1. It feels kind of rude to anti-recommend one of Toni Morrison's books right after she just died, but I would warn against The Bluest Eye, especially for sex-repulsed aces. Morrison is a beautiful writer who did important work, but I was just grossed out by that book. Very tragic and graphic. I was genuinely bothered and disturbed after reading it. 

 

Mm yeah not going to lie but I feel similarly about "Sula" and "Beloved." I don't think I ever quite *got* Morrison as a writer... Which is fine because I understand that she's writing primarily for POC which isn't me.

[Skycaptain]

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzenheitsyn

 

Anyone who can plough through that lot has too much spare time on their hands 

[Sally]

23 minutes ago, SkyenAutowegCaptain said:

The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzenheitsyn

 

Anyone who can plough through that lot has too much spare time on their hands 

Two Solzhenitsyn books that don't belong on the bad books list:  The Cancer Ward and The First Circle.  Both beautifully written, emotionally involving, and really interesting historically.  

 

But  agree with the Gulag -- zzzzzzzzzzzz.