Books you really, really **HATE**
 

Those of us who love to read run into some books we love, some we are indifferent to, and some we don't like.

But then there are those books that suck the life from us. Books that for some reason we finish reading despite the revulsion we feel page after page. Books that bring up hatred for the author, publisher, and everyone involved. Books that make you never want to read again.

Every aspiring writer should save a book that is so bad that when you read it, you are filled with the knowledge that anything you could possibly write will be better than that book. (I can't remember the author who I paraphrase here)


Don't point out piddly books that are just mediocre. I want you to point out books that are EVIL, WRONG, and very badly BROKEN.


The one book on my all time hate list is Michael Crichton's Sphere. This book started out okay, but the writing, the plot, the characters were all average or below average. The book has Crichton's typical philosophy of anti-science, but he has written before good science cautionary tales - Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park for example.

But what propels this book into its unique position of number one on my shit list is its ending. It was not just a contrived ending, it was an ending that had zero respect for the reader. It was so bad I finished the book and felt cheated. The ending was an insult to the reader's intelligence.

This one used bookstore in Montclair has outside several bookcases with the reject books they are trying to unload for a quarter each. While waiting outside for a friend, I counted about ten copies of Sphere scattered in the bookcases. I was tempted to buy them all and burn them in a bonfire.

Oh, and when I had HBO, I tried to sit through Sphere the movie to see if a typical Hollywood mangling of a book would cancel out Crichton's original mangled writing. Good God that movie sucked! They managed to keep the essence of the book and add to it the most wooden acting I have ever seen. Dustin Haufmann, the one actor I recognized, should have known better than to be in this movie.

Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.

I liked early Vonnegut; Cat's Cradle was good, and I thought Mother Night was terrific. But BoC isn't a novel; it's a meta-novel, writing about writing about writing, with a disjointed plot and a truly stupid ending.

I followed this up with Galapagos to see if it was an aberration, and found that novel to be boring as hell, but it was at least marginally coherent, instead of being a 20th-century Tristram Shandy knockoff.

“The Hiram Key”

It purports to be a scholarly look at the history of the Free Masons, written by two masons, of course. It ends up ”proving beyond doubt!” that free masonry began at the building of Solomon’s temple, that the Essenes of 1st C Palestine (Dead Sea Scrolls guys) were actually an enclave of free masons, that Jesus was a free mason (no kidding!), and that it was actually James, the brother of Jesus, who was crucified ….

Yeah. So. Go read it. It’s about as ‘scholarly’ as the Duh Vinci code.

-sm

I really liked Breakfast of Champions. Oh well.

Do I really need to express my hatred for the "Wheel of Time" series again?

"Eyes of the Dragon" by Stephen King. I was forced to read this pile of shit in high school. I'm not a fan of Stephen King, but I can understand his appeal. But this tripe, this book-bound mess of broken plotlines and contrived text, this... book... I cannot begin to express my loathing. I HATE this book.

House of Sand and Fog

Sucked. Really, just awful.

I liked Breakfast of Champions, but Galapagos was the only Vonnegut book I have had to quit reading because of pure boredom.

Eyes of the Dragon I wasn't impressed with, but I will tell you one thing that annoyed me about it. The blurb on the back dressed the book up as another Stephen King horror story, but it is a straight fantasy piece, not horror at all.

I can imagine seeing the book publishers little wheels spinning when they got this book 'but how do we market this to King's regular crowd? Aha! Let's make it look like all his other horror stuff, they won't know the difference!'


Edit:typo

I read the first 30 pages of that book and it was all I could do not to slit my wrists. My wife is Persian and got all excited when the movie came out and couldn't go soon enough. I told her I wasn't going because the story was too depressing so she took her sister. They didn't like the movie any more than I liked what little I read of the book.

Anything by Jane Austen or the Brontes. Let's just get that out the way right now, then move onto individual books.

The Fourth K by Mario Puzo. I picked this up out the library as I am a great fan of Puzo's work, and this looked like a good read. I slogged through it, hoping he would wave a wand and fix everything, but it never happened. The whole book - characters, plot, every base element of the work was impractical and unbelievable. Normally, I can submerge myself in anything Puzo writes, but this was almost a work of fantasy than drama. If you've read anything else by him - Godfather, The Last Don, The Sicilian, Omerta, The Family, anything - and think you have a good handle on his style and his voice, avoid Fourth K.

To this day, I don't believe the man really wrote the book, it was some cousin or whatever slapping his name to get an entry into the bookstores.

"Eyes of the Dragon" by Stephen King. I was forced to read this pile of shit in high school.

Dude, you got to read Stephen King in high school? I'll trade you "Eyes of the Dragon" for "The Scarlet Letter" any damn day of the week.



Anyone can hate books that everyone hates. But *I* hate a book that everyone loves. Ok, everyone ready to verbally abuse me?

I HATE "Catch-22." Quit after only a couple of chapters. It felt so contrived, so beating-you-over-the-head with the symbolism, and so NOT FUNNY.

I refuse to read anything Clancy, I've tried but for some reason I can not stand his style of writing.

Nope, had to read the Scarlet Letter too. My English teacher tried a bunch of different books to see what worked well with kids at that age. "Lord of the Flies" was one that I enjoyed, as was "Huckleberry Finn". She actually confided in me once during my senior year that she hated the book too, but it was a hit with most students, so she kept it.

As expected there are a lot of "hates" here that are other people's likes ... (I liked Breakfast of Champions, and enjoy Clancy, but can only take so much of him at one sitting)

I read a lot and luckily have managed to pick more winners than losers over the years. I'm magnanimous enough to forgive Michael Crichton books like "Sphere" when he has given us things as wonderful as "Eaters of the Dead," "A Case of Need (which I read BEFORE it was revealed to be Crichton)" "The Terminal Man," and "Airframe."

On the other hand, no matter how much I like "Dune," can I get beyond the awfulness of all of the sequels. (both the real ones, and the raping my father's literary legacy for the cash ones)

Books I hate, usually beyond redemption, include

Romance Novels. Anything with Fabio on the cover, or that can be described as a bodice ripper. I do like the "male equivalent of a romance novel," i.e., the Hairy Chested Men's Adventure Novel ... Particularly "They Call me the Mercenary," "Saigon Commandos," and "The Survivalist."

I will confess that I DID like The Raj Quartet (series of romancy type books that the PBS series "The Jewel in the Crown" was based on, but I honestly don't think they count as romances. The story is too richly detailed for that. And besides, it's British.)

Interview with a Vampire, or anything else written by Anne Rice.

Slow. Tedious. Lousy Plotting. Ick.

"Novelizations" of movies, rather than books that movies were based on.

Even well written novelizations RARE!!! tend to be based on early versions of the scripts, and leave out important bits of the movie, or go on tedious tangents that are of great interest to the author and pretty much no one else and don't do a damn thing to further the plot.

I know I'll come up with some specific examples of bad, horrible, evil books as soon as I end this ...

Oh. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

Had to read it in college. So bad that I threw darts at it. A lot.

Didn't have access to a firearm at that time, or I would have shot it.

I had a slow day at work a few years ago, and read Sphere that day. Oh my. What a terrible book. You're right about the ending. It's kind of like those bad TV episodes where the main character is having a horrible day and at the end you find out it was only a dream. A weasel way out for a writer. It's a fast read though. Not difficult at all. Kind of like Steven King.

Dune was my favorite book for a while in my youth. I was able to get through the first sequel, but couldn't stomach the rest. They were pretty lame. Admittedly, I only tried to read the third one, and never bothered with the rest.

The book that sticks out in my mind was one I read not too long ago: The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith. It's a critically aclaimed book, but it was horrible. She can write well, and is able to build suspense, but she just leaves you there in suspense, and never really resolves it. She's a tease. You get a feeling of uneasyness as you are reading the book, and keep expecting something very bad to happen, but nothing does. Then the book is over. I read it on my wife's recommendation. She loved it, and kept asking my how I liked it as I was going along. Maybe that added to my dissapointment.

CHARLIE-BROWN-AAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

That book was EXECRABLE. I, too, had to read it in college and had to fight the urge to vomit on it before returning it to the campus library.

I don't remember ever hating a book, though I'm sure I must have at some point in school, but I gave up on "The Greenlanders".

I enjoyed "the Autobiography of Malcolm X", but got pretty sick of it when an ex-Black-Panther English teacher spent a semester on it. I also ended up seeing the movie twice (once with the class, and once with friends).

Anything by Margaret Lawrence. I was forced to read "The Stone Angel" and "A Jest of God" in high school.

I found all the male charcaters were one of three types; A) Weak and spineless B) Brutal and selfish C) Perfect and unatainable.

And the heroines were completely unfathomable to my adolescent male mind.

I just kept getting more confused and pissed off the more I read.

Thanks wolf, you've reminded me of another book I utterly hate. Piers Anthony wrote a novelization of Total Recall. He wrote in work-arounds to the obvious and not so obvious plot holes in the movie to make it all more consistent. However, these patches stand out of the narrative the same way white out corrections stand out on canary yellow paper. Sure, you fix some mistakes, but now you've got these smudge all over the place.

So real crappy writing combined with glaring plot correction efforts put this book in the crapper for me.


I should have known better than to even start reading it.

I find Clancy's a fantastic battle writer, he can craft a conflict very well. However, it's when he attempts to do political writing that he falls short. He's just so naive, it's sad.

Case in point: I read "Executive Orders"; everything outside of the political realm was quality work. But within the political realm, the overuse of deus ex machina and just oversimplification of the landscape makes the book incredulous to read at times. Again, a shame.

Crossing Antartica

Book based on the true story of a group of people crossing the entire width of Antartica by foot. Courageous adventure but absolutely BORING in book form. The entire thing thing can be summed up as follows:

"It was cold, we are hungry, one of our sled dog had puppies (most interesting moment), it was really f**king cold."

Pretty much the entire book right there. Any Dean Koontz fans out there? Good, I don't like him either.

"Distance Haze"

I have no idea who wrote it and no interest in remembering, either. It had a cool-looking cover and what looked like an interesting premise (what if science investigated religion?). I was also too young to know better.

Incredibly big mistake. It was an awful book about a man's mid-life crisis and a drug-addled prostitute he became enfatuated with. I shredded it, soaked it, and burned it. Then I took a cold bath and considered myself cleansed.

The day before, I had read "A Calculus of Angels", by J. Gregory Keyes. It also qualifies as a hated book. It was useless and stupid.

Just read "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick. It's all you really need to do.

You reminded me of something else ... any book after the second one in any series written by Piers Anthony. LAME.

I waded through those - found them pretty depressing at times.

When I ready the first book in the Sword of Truth (?) series, I quickly decided I'dnot begin another series where the hero whined more than my little sisters did.

Good call. They've gotten worse and worse. But through some annoying quirk in my personality, I have to keep reading them to see the end of the story. :(

Ah, this sounds like my experience with

Blue Latitudes Boldly Going Where Captian Cook Has Gone Before.

I was hoping someone would jump (or even fall) overboard just to add some interest.

Forced to read as a student:
"My Antonia" (DULL, dull, dull dull dull)
"Moby Dick" (Does the term "turgid" mean anything to you)

Anything stream of consciousness, though I did manage to grit my teeth and enjoy one of Greg Bear's SoC offerings ("Queen of Angels", I think)

SF written in "futuristic slang" dialect usually results in a book bouncing off a wall, though I haven't gotten any complete books like that lately. Some stories have resulted in a bouncing anthology.

Sound like you would just love A Clockwork Orange :)

Ha, and I thought I was the only one! I stay away from those novels too. I just cringe when I see the covers with women swooning in the arms of a piece of man candy. I like books that aren't so...obvious, y'know?

Quote:

Interview with a Vampire, or anything else written by Anne Rice. Slow. Tedious. Lousy Plotting. Ick.

Aw, and I'm such an Anne Rice 'ho. :D I even have the books that she wrote under another name (Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure).

I don't really have a list of evil books, but the only one that I can think of that's in my collection is The Dark Lady by Richard North Patterson. For some odd reason, I.just.can.not get past a certain point of that book without resisting the urge to just throw it across the room! I sort of feel bad for saying that, as I scope out his website. Something about the writing...*shrugs*. I must have started over a dozen times, and I can't finish it! :angry:

Heh, indeed.

I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce senior year, and rather liked it. Though to be fair, one book isn't enough to pass judgement on the SoC genre as a whole, one way or the other.

Heh. I love Larry Niven, but he can't invent slang to save his life. "Tanj" and "Tanstaafl" are amusing acronyms, but far too unpronouncable to be believable as slang.

Then again, I like "Smeg" and "Frell".

Okay, I know the word smeg from watching so much Red Dwarf :) I saw a clip from a convention where the cast is on stage taking questions. A little girl asks them 'what does smeg mean?', and the cast collapse off their chairs onto the floor and try to crawl offstage.

'Gimboid' is my Red Dwarf favorite, 'smeghead' is in second place.

What is 'Frell'?

Niven to me recollection has only ever used two invented slang words in his stories. My opinion is we should be thankful for that, because they are pisspoor slang.

Edit: Oh, he also coined 'rishathra' :3eye:

It was used in "Farscape", which was peculiar at times, but fun. And the characters cursed up a storm in their alien languages - and it all sounded authentic.

.......We*do* have romance ye know.....

I cant believe the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever made it into this list! I lurved that sequence. I thought it was like......Tolkien for grownups...Now theres a book I really thought was overhyped. Lord of the Rings... I read about a third of it before I gave it up as a bad lot. The few female characters are mystical and unknowable ( I have heard Tolkien since described by one of his proteges as a mysogonist and that toally fits with my reading of LOTR ) and I felt pretty excluded by the authors vision.

I enjoyed "Galapagos." That was the last book I read before completing "The Last Juror" 2 weeks ago.

I had to read a biography on Napoleon in my college European Civ class that was just awful...my God, talk about a snoozer.

"The Marriage Art"

I picked it up, actually, because I flipped through it in a used book store, and it pissed me off so much that I had to buy it so I could write comments in the margins. This is the most chauvanistic book I've ever read. I swear, it makes the bible (on women) look positively LIBERAL!

Anything by Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter

I found this book while swimming up and down the fiction isles at my local Borders:

http://fox.org/~vince/log/daily/119.jpg

In seeing this, I'd love to know what gets rejected by publishers.

Stuff that people wouldn't know everything about by seeing the cover.

That is scary, but truly no scarier than the MOUNTAIN of books based on D&D ... I have NONE of those, but I do have a couple of the books based on the ShadowRun games (I think that was the only time I actually fell for the books-based-on-a-game genre, I only bought the first one or two, because I was trying to get a better feel for the game world to prepare a scenario for my gaming group).

I often suspect that the books that don't get published are the ones of such awe-inspiring quality that they remind editors of their own lack of writing ability.

Speaking of bad fantasy, has anyone here read any of the Gor series by John Norman. It is supposed to be a fantasy series about a professor who ends up on a alternate world of sorts.

I read a copy of Rogue of Gor many years ago, and I have never been found a book more poorly written. It honestly reads like some dysfunctional thirteen year old boy's fantasy interspersed with philosophical tirades on the "inherent submissiveness of women".

It is probably the only book that I can say that I truly hate.

Scarily enough, one of the books was made into an equally bad movie.

Sam, frighteningly enough there are bunches of people who live out a Gor fantasy. There are sites about it online and conventions.....and people living it 24/7....until they get sick of being someone's toy.....

*shudders and looks at google in utter disbelief*

To use those novels as the philosophical basis of your lifestyle.....wow....I don't know whether to be sad or terrified.

All right, I'm being a pedant, but TANSTAAFL was coined by Robert Heinlein, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL

- Pie

I loved that show. I watched it when it was aired first time. Such a pity about Craig Charles and the rape charge. He was cleared of all charges but not before he'd spent a fair amount of time on remand in jail ......kind of broke the show's flow to have such a gap between series...

One of my friends gushed over them ... telling me how amazingly good they were, etc. etc.

Found out within a small number of pages that they were exceedingly horrid, and the only reason she liked them was the D/s aspects.

Last I heard she had become a minor slave in someone's household.