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Thread: Worst thing you've ever read
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2012-05-08, 10:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-08, 10:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
That's rather the point. Twilight exists in an uncanny valley in literature, where it is neither good enough to read nor bad enough to sneer at. It has utterly failed as entertainment, a job which even My Immortal has managed. A bad book can be fun, but a boring book is like a prison sentence: You cannot wait to be rid of it. That's why I personally dislike the book: It is a black hole where fun gets sucked in and is never seen again.
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Originally Posted by The Lost Eyeball
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2012-05-08, 10:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-08, 10:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-09, 01:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Sacrilege!
My personal Hates:
- Atlas Shrugged. Awful, one-dimensional characters and a plot that feels like the longest, slowest train ride ever. I just kept wishing violent deaths for every single character that appeared. When I realized I had gotten halfway through the book I hurled it against the wall before it could infect me with fail.
- Intruder in the Dust. It just didn't work. I checked sparknotes when I was done, and I couldn't believe it was the same book. What garbage.
- Anything and everything ever constructed by that vile, puss-spewing fat-head HG Wells. I have never been so bored to tears, so disgusted with any literature. The man was walking literary cancer. I read a lot of older books, from Robert E Howard to Twain, to friggin' Dante, so it's not an age thing, it's a Taste thing.
Excuse me, I have to rifle through my Discworld collection now, before the red mist will abate.
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2012-05-09, 04:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
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2012-05-09, 09:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-09, 01:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
The Time Machine was one of my favorite childhood books. I never thought of Wells as a bad writer, but maybe I need to try rereading it.
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2012-05-09, 01:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Any book based on a computer game (especially Planescape: Troment and Baldur's gate came to my mind)
Also The Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan - I can't realise why many people hate twilight but have no fealings for that one. It's characters are so bland, one dimentional and Mary Suish that even Mookie would be impressed
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2012-05-09, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Virginia Woolf. /controversy
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2012-05-09, 02:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Does the FATAL rulebook count?
^~Cody T.~^
"I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." - Mewtwo
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2012-05-09, 06:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Heart of Darkness. A book where every word drags like lead.
All Comicshorse's posts come with the advisor : This is just my opinion any difficulties arising from implementing my ideas are your own problem
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2012-05-09, 07:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
I don't think it's any crime to write a boring book, so long as the author is getting something out of it (Not money, I mean on an emotional level), but to write something downright bad is different entirely. Like Water For Chocolate was painful to read—there's such a thing as a good romance, and this isn't it. At times the writing was just plain awful, (though that may have been the translation), and I simply did not care about a single character presented therein. The magical realism feels boring & forced.
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"It's like we fell down the rabbit hole and ended up in Stephen King's basement..."
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2012-05-09, 07:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
The Harry Potter series - my wife said i wasn't allowed to make fun of the movies because i hadn't read the books which were much better! I got through the first three before i decided making fun of the movies wasn't worth the pain.
I now just remain respectfully quiet when she is watching one.
Edit: I should add i know i have read worse books but none of them spring to mind.Last edited by Kaun; 2012-05-09 at 08:31 PM.
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2012-05-09, 09:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Oh, man. It doesn't seem fair to get mad at what students write in a creative writing class, but awful stuff does seem to come out of them.
I took a creative writing class about a year ago. This one sort-of-friend of mine was also taking it. He wrote stories before even taking the class and was just looking for some pointers. He mentioned near the end of the semester that he was working out a publishing deal. I wasn't sure whether to feel happy for my sort-of-friend's success or horrified; his stories were awful. Better than what most people in class came up with, but most people weren't working on getting published. I'd like to think a real editor would help improve his writing, but I wouldn't count on it.
What was wrong? I don't want to go into detail in case by some chance he actually visits this forum and figures out I'm talking about him (fantasy writer and gamer. There's a possibility!) I still see him pretty often, and he'd probably be really pissed.
So, the problems. Well, he was good at what made a teacher happy; lots and lots of unnecessary detail and incomprehensible metaphors. I would sometimes have to read his stories five times before I could figure out what the heck happened. Once I did understand, I would realize he didn't think the story through very well. Only once did I ask him to explain something close to be beginning that made no sense. It was pretty standard monsters-aren't-really-monsters story, in this case werewolves. The main character becomes a werewolf at the end. I should emphasize that there was no hint that the character was predestined to get involved with werewolves.
Me: So, why was -insert nonsensical detail about character here-?
Student: Because then -insert major detail about werewolves- can happen later.
Me: But why is it like that in the first place? It doesn't make sense, even in the context of the story.
Student: It makes sense because he becomes a werewolf at the end!
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2012-05-09, 10:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2011
Re: Worst thing you've ever read
@Whiffet: Point. I've long held that no one writes as well as they think they do. I'm currently attending progressive art school, and there's an awful lot of encouragement going on, and not near enough brutal criticism. The result being that we produce about 50% good writers, and 50% arrogant half-wits.
Fiberoptic Elflord avatar by Guest#1!
"It's like we fell down the rabbit hole and ended up in Stephen King's basement..."
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2012-05-09, 10:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Are we talking just computer games, or also video games? Because I remember those Nintendo Adventure Books (based on Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda) were pretty fun.
Also The Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan - I can't realise why many people hate twilight but have no fealings for that one.
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2012-05-10, 12:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
I agree with you wholeheartedly. What appalling trash. I would probably put Ayn Rand ahead of it but I didn't manage to finish that, so American Gods is probably the worst thing I've ever actually read through, mostly because someone I knew was raving endlessly about it.
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So the song runs on, with shift and change,
Through the years that have no name,
And the late notes soar to a higher range,
But the theme is still the same.
Man's battle-cry and the guns' reply
Blend in with the old, old rhyme
That was traced in the score of the strata marks
While millenniums winked like campfire sparks
Down the winds of unguessed time. -- 4th Stanza, The Bad Lands, Badger Clark
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2012-05-10, 12:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of the trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise.
-Camus, An Absurd Reasoning
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2012-05-10, 12:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-10, 12:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
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2012-05-10, 01:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
I nominate Nikolai Tolstoy's "The Coming of the King", simply because it's the only book I can remember actually struggling to get through. You think the Silmarillion is a bit dry? This has it beat...
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2012-05-10, 08:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-10, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-05-10, 01:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Worst I've read (at all): The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand. This has the distinction of being one of only a handful of books I've started but never finished.
Worst I've actually finished: Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan. I bought it hardcover, right when it came out. Most disappointing reading experience I've ever had. I felt cheated out of my $20. On the plus side, it was a motivating factor to really get to work on my own book. It was my, "And he gets paid for this?!" moment.
Honorable Mentions: Beloved, Toni Morrison. Johnny Tremaine, Esther Forbes. (Why they continue to subject students to this, is beyond me).Last edited by Telonius; 2012-05-10 at 01:54 PM.
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2012-05-10, 02:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
The Dragonbone Chair. Nothing happens for the first 6 or so chapters and the life of the totally uninteresting servant boy is so bloody quaint that I fell asleep twice trying to read the thing.
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2012-05-10, 05:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Their eye’s were watching god. Had to read it for school years ago and it was a horrible chore to make it through all the heavy southern dialect. Lucky my mind seems to have purged all details about what the book was about. Other then that probably the second and third Eragon books. The first wasn’t to bad but wasn’t good either the others to I had to constantly stop reading and put down and eventually let people know that while yes I enjoy fantasy books about dragons and such to not get me any of the other books as gifts.
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2012-05-10, 05:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Worst books I've ever read:
1. The Sheppard's Are Coming by Earl Pilgrim. The copy I've linked appears to be a later edition, because they removed the apostrophe from the title. Yes, the edition I read had an error IN THE TITLE. I couldn't finish this.
2. I got drunk and read the first few pages of Twilight, or one of its sequels; I don't really remember any specifics, all I know is we laughed and laughed.
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2012-05-10, 07:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Wading very slowly through the second book of that series. (By which I mean, I started it late lasy year while on holiday and got about half way through and have read to odd chapter since.) My Mum, who's read the whole series, said it got much better in the third and forth books, so we'll see.
It's... definately slow, to put it mildly, and there seem a few too many pointless character deaths for my liking, but we'll see...
Still, it's not as bad as some stuff I've read, and it's something for holiday reading. (I have a policy of only buying and reading books for holidays, since we can't afford the storage space otherwise; other times, I tend to voraciosuly read fanfic. (Well, decent fanfic, anyway; which does exist, you just have to be prepared to find a fanbase with a modicum of intelligence and do a lot of wading through crap!))
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2012-05-10, 11:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Worst thing you've ever read
Thinking about it, the worst book I can recall finishing was Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, which I read about ten years ago. Its antagonist, Artemis Fowl, was described as prodigal genius, yet none of his actions actually demonstrated that he was one. Its plot was unmemorable, especially since Artemis was supposed to be some sort of criminal mastermind. Its other characters were one-dimensional - they had maybe one trait and that was that. Its humor lacked wit and the action lacked excitement; both seemed really contrived. But really, what bothered me so much about it was that are actually a lot of good books aimed at preteens that are much better and that I could have read instead.
I think the second-worst (at least right now) book that I've finished is Anne Rice's The Witching Hour, mainly because it was a 1000 page slog with an unsatisfying ending. It wasn't really scary, it wasn't really insightful, and mostly it had me feeling grossed out. Granted, the writing itself was fine.
I hated Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, but I didn't finish it. Also, some of the Thieves' World stories were really awful.
As far as Neil Gaiman is concerned, I liked Anansi Boys, American Gods, and Sandman (at least the first 2 volumes, which are the ones that I've finished) a lot. I wasn't as crazy about Neverwhere, but I wouldn't call it one of the worst books I've read.