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The Temple was rent asunder

Who would have thought that Jesus and A mass had so much in common.

Digital Fortress... tripe.

Nothing really springs immediately to mind, but I'd say the novel that bugs me the most at the moment is Alasdair Gray's Poor Things. It probably would speak to me more if I didn't know how bloody prentious the author was about the publishing- ie he had it edited only by a close circle of his friend, most of them authors whose work I dread to read, before presenting it to the publishers as it was and saying that it was perfect as it was, any changes would muck about with the oh so intricate structure that he had come up with, if they didn't like it there's always more publishers out there. Eugh, its a convuluted rambling that tries to make a pun of so many others authors work with its haughty attitude, and having it taught to me as though it was goldust during my English classes really did my head in- being forced to read a book you think is crap and write about it on airs for essays is something that bugs me to no end. So yeah, if hadn't been rammed down my throat and told that I should be able to connect to it as its by a Glaswegian writer about Glashow (¬¬) for a year it may have come off slightly better, but its still the author's attitude of superiority that you can feel on every page as he mocks his peers is somethinh I detest, all the more so by a class of stuck up sods who probably saw a little bit of themself in the author, or the supposed heroine of the novel as she seeks out yet more foolish underclassmen, or "Poor things" as she goes on about to no end. ....Heh, just give me The Beach or something any other day/. =P

Crom wrote:

halonachos wrote:
Nonsense, Jesus never blew anything up existed.

There fixed that for you

2 pages before the fire starting. Bravo.

In before the lock as there is no disputing that historically there was an itinerant preacher wandering around causing hassle about 20-40AD in Israel...

Mein Kampf.

It is a long rant. And very political which I find about as fun as watching paint dry in wintertime.

Shadowbrand wrote:Mein Kampf.

It is a long rant. And very political which I find about as fun as watching paint dry in wintertime.

I'm sorry but what the feth did you expect Mein Kampf to be if not a political rant...

A action novel with car chases and explosions and boobs.

Oh and girls in Nazi uniforms.

Now if Addy had only so expressed himself the world would have had yet another gakky novel but would have been a far far better place in the 20th century.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Now if Addy had only so expressed himself the world would have had yet another gakky novel but would have been a far far better place in the 20th century.

Uh you mean this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream

^^

I have to say... it has to be the book "a separate peace"...

WORST BOOK EVER....

An attempt to discredit Joseph Campell as a rascist?
Nah
definitely don't mean that

A Separate Peace is not that bad when compared to the other books you have to read in English class now.

Lord of the Flies
The Kite Runner
Any other vomit i've been forced to read in my English classes.
Anything by C.S. Goto
Everything by C.S. Goto
The name 'C.S. Goto'
Harry Potter books 6 and 7; or 'Harry Potter and the Trite and Contrived Ending Focussed on Milking the Cash Cow Until it is Blue in the Face'

It is ironic that English class pushes people away from good literature

It'd be easier if we weren't set task to analyse whole novels for hidden meanings and underlying standards that the author probably didn't bloody mean to be there.

Going back over some of the stuff i've written over the years, I can pick bits of it apart and find hidden meanings I know damn well I didn't intentionally put there.

"The author wrote _______ which is obviously related to _________."

"Or maybe it's just a coincidence?"

"HERESY!"

My eigth grade homework assignment book *shudders*

corpsesarefun wrote:

Shadowbrand wrote:Mein Kampf.

It is a long rant. And very political which I find about as fun as watching paint dry in wintertime.

I'm sorry but what the feth did you expect Mein Kampf to be if not a political rant...

Something about a struggle you know, it could've been about him boxing tigers after all. He turned it into a political rant and ruined the entire thing.

corpsesarefun wrote:It is ironic that English class pushes people away from good literature

That "Dick and Jane" book was way overrated. The plot was thin, the characters horribly under-developed and it could have been written by a third grader.

If only Addy had vented his rage with pugilistic vigour against a large feline. There would have been a cat with dyspepsia. but the twentieth century would have been so much the better for it.

One of the John Norman GOR books.

Fellowship of the ring. Just tedious.
(I've read and re-read the Snorri Sturlisson eddas and they are fine prose. It's just rather obvious where Tolkein got his influences from).

Otherwise, I tend to stay clear of books with topics that don't interest me. Like Fantasy genre stuff (unless it doesn't take itself seriously).

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:If only Addy had vented his rage with pugilistic vigour against a large feline. There would have been a cat with dyspepsia. but the twentieth century would have been so much the better for it.

I disagree, what if the feline receiving the beating was to eat the next dictator? If Addy broke the feline's jaw and the feline didn't eat the dictator to be a lot more people could've died, people like your ancestors so you wouldn't of been born. So Hitler being in power allowed you to be the living thing you are now.

Nope
Hitler having not being eaten by a tiger tried his level best to blast my dearest Mama into the next county anyway. And very nearly succeeded.

Chances of weedy old Addy breaking a tiger's jaw with an uppercut=0
Even if he had, tigers have nature's own power claws
Angry tiger with power claws is not good.

I like the scenario better than the previous one as this way there is one less dictator and one less gakky novel.

Too bad he didn't get into art school.

A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. You might remember it as being the book Oprah loved until people did some research and found out it was all bs, then she went after him for decieving his readers.

I stumbled across a copy about a year ago, on a bookshelf owned by a disciple of Oprah, who bought the book because Oprah said it was great, but didn't read it because later on Oprah said it was all lies. Ignoring the fact that it's obviously fiction beceause almost everything that happens is so implausible, the biggest problem that it's terrible fiction. So many ridiculous characters, the guy is supposed to make friends with a mafia don for feth's sake. All he does is hug people and cry (including the mafia don), and talk about how tough their lives are as wealthy people recovering from drugs, but because they're tough and accept their problems they'll make it through (completing ignoring the fact that they're in a high price recovery facility so they're really, really not making it through by themselves).

But mostly it's the hugging and crying. It's like porn, except instead of sex there's everyone talking about how miserable their lives are, and instead of orgasm there's crying.

Perkustin wrote:Remembered a really bad 'book'. Wanted by Mark Millar is atrociously bad, has like one good idea in the whole thing (the preacher villian bloke), read a couple of the 'nemesis' comics and they were terrible also.

I've only read Wanted, but that's probably my number 2 worst book of all time. It had a really great concept at the meta-level, suggesting that the bad guys won as an explanation for why comics went all grim dark in the 90s. But then it decided it's protagonist should be a guy who looks like Eminem, who's super power is shooting really good, and who learns that raping celebrities and slaughtering whole police stations is ultimately unfilfilling, and what's really needed is to achieve closure with daddy. And then make one of the villains a poo monster called gak.

Not quite the worst thing I've ever read, but certainly the most puerile.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

corpsesarefun wrote:It is ironic that English class pushes people away from good literature

It's more ironic given that some of the most complained about books are actually really good. I guess it's the product of resenting reading something you're made to read, coupled with hating on something being an easy way to score credibility.

Well, and good books aren't for everyone.

ERAGON.

Seriously, Eragon.

Worst book that I can remember, at least.

The Alchemisl by Paulo Coelho I heard was a really good book but was disappointed and struggled to complete it.

Started but gave up on the Cloud Atlas and the Life of Pi very quickly. bleh!

At school a lot of the books were great till we started O level.
Our selected reading was a collection of short stories. Victorian Loves and Deaths. I didn't love it and it made me wish I was dead.

It included the Withered Hand by Hardy which was a jolly jape. The Nun's Priest's tale for poetry and Julius Caesar to cap off Eng Lit with a knife.
I was rubbish but luckily the turgid teaching of Eng Lit failed to kill off my subsequent enjoyment of Shakespeare and reading.
Bloody Chauser for O level. I was crap at French and ye olde engelish was as incomprehensible!

Why did they not explain that if you read Chaucer a la the Muppet's Chef it makes perfect sense!
(Prolly cos the Muppets hadn't been invented back then!)

The Alchemist was rather short, and had some very good ideas and motivations themes to it.

Read it a couple or so years back and it has faded from memory. There was just something contrived but can't remember why but it wasn't my bag.

Hesse's Siddhartra have read a few times now and could read again, but the Alchemist would not be able to touch.

(there must be a joke about Frank Siddhartra there somewhere if I look hard enough.)

"To be is to do." Heidigger
"To do is to be." Sartre
"Dobedobedo." Siddhartra

Island of the Blue Dolphins or whatever the crap that stuff was they made me read in grade school.

It was awful.