Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Shadowbrand wrote:A action novel with car chases and explosions and boobs.

Oh and girls in Nazi uniforms.

Take a look at Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream".

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

A similar phenomenom happens here. Saramago's Memorial of the Convent, the Maias by Eça de Queirós... and most people don't even ever finish reading them. I was one of the few that actually read the Maias.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho was a bit disappointing. A rather simplistic approach... I'll compare it to Paolini's Eragon* - Some good ideas but overall the writing style puts me off.

I rather liked Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I read twice (first in portuguese, then in english) because I really liked the big book. So the Maias in high-school wasn't really a waste on me

*I'm still waiting for the last Eragon book.

The Inheritance Cycle is my favourite series of books; where Harry Potter used to hold my all time high number of readings (first 3 about 7 times, 4th about 5 and 5th about 3, with 2 each on the final two), Eragon and Eldest got 12 complete readings each before Brisingr came out, which grew to 15 each and Brisingr with 3; I just love them.

Book 11 or so of Anita Blake.
When she had sex with the extremely sub character, nathan?. And i realised this character was nothing like the Anita Blake of the first few books. The author blamed the audeur (the character has to have sex, and is like a sex vampire). But i didn't care. Got up to that point, and stopped reading it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_X_(Star_Trek)

I'll get in early by pointing out it was a jokey gift before you start.

I've started it several times now and can get past a few pages and then... then... well..... look at it . There's things no man should have to read.

*Cowers in phaer*

malfred wrote:ERAGON.

Seriously, Eragon.

Worst book that I can remember, at least.

It wasn't that bad, yet i'm not that much of a harsh critic. The second and third book were better.

reds8n wrote:





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_X_(Star_Trek)

I'll get in early by pointing out it was a jokey gift before you start.

I've started it several times now and can get past a few pages and then... then... well..... look at it . There's things no man should have to read.

Looks good.

Set phasers to stun..................no its okay Wolverine has stabbed him.

The Great Gatsby.

We were made to read it for English in High School.

At thetime I was a voracious reader and could and would read anything, byt The Great Gatsby... lucky if I could handle 1 and a half pages at a time without putting it down for awhile.

"The gully dwarves" from the dragonlance saga... supossed to be "funnily dumb" but it was "awful dumb"
"Last Sons" From "DC universe" series... a crossover between Superman, J'onn J'onnz the martian manhunter and LOBO, despite the "self-styled Main Man" awesomeness and some sarcastic jokes from Superman (unexpected i must confess) the rest is very poor.
A book about holy matters that i will not ment due to, A: i don't want to begin a flamewar and B: There's no way to show in my post how much i hate it...
The trilogy of the inquisition war series... not really bad but, at least at my sight very uninspiring...

One of the worst has to be a Doctor Who novel called "Warmonger". At a glance it's written by Terrance Dicks, the guy who wrote a load of the Target novelisations of the original series. So he means a lot to a lot of Who fans, but this novel is utter trash. It's like a bad fan fic but somehow ended up being published. Basically it's an entirely unnecessary prequel to a story about a Timelord who tried to take over the universe. But the villain is turned into a bumbling rapist, which just makes the character detestable and pathetic. The to defeat this guy the sontarans, cybermen, humans, draconians and a load of others team up to defeat him, being led by the Doctor. It's a sad fanboys wet dream with some rape references put in to give the veneer of adultness. It's just dreadful, and the prose is pretty ropey too. An epic failure on all counts.

This, it put me off reading any of the prequel/sequel works.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:The Great Gatsby.

We were made to read it for English in High School.

At thetime I was a voracious reader and could and would read anything, byt The Great Gatsby... lucky if I could handle 1 and a half pages at a time without putting it down for awhile.

Ooh I forgot about that horror. Great Expectations was even worse than the NAFTA treaty. It made me die a little inside. I think its what made Stalin so nasty.

But hey I really liked Lord of the Flies.

The Claws of Helgedad by Joe Dever. The 5th book in the Legends of Lone Wolf series. It sucked.

The Vampire Armond by Anne Rice. I liked the first 3 books in the vampire series, but the homo-eroticism in this book was over the top.


Edit: I'll agree with the first hundred or so pages of The Lord of the Rings (through Bilbo's Party). Once Frodo gets on the road, the pace is much better. I skip the chapter on Tom Bombadil and miss nothing from the plot.

Hard Core... or Hard Case... hard something at least. I can't check because it was one of three books I have ever purchased and then thrown away. Not resold or traded in, thrown the feth away because I could not facilitate anyone else ever reading it in good conscience. Just... ugh. Totally unreadable. It made no sense from start to... about half way through when I tossed it. Plot lines started and dropped. Horrible characterizations, bad humor, bad sex, bad action. Gross for the sake of gross. A female lead who is an alien messiah because she is. This thing would have been a horrible fanfic and yet somehow it actually got published like it was a real book.

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

It is, but think about what they do. They shovel the "classics" down kids throats and get pissy when you are bored with them. Sorry, but a teenager has absolutely no frame of reference to relate to any of the classics. Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn maybe but Little Women, Oliver Twist, Moby Dick, etc? Really? Do you think a fifteen year old is going to care about reading Melville's whaling diatribe? That they're going to be able to relate to any of it? Hell no, it's boring nonsensical crap to them.

In my opinion the way to do it is just encourage kids to read. Find a book that interests them and read it. Doesn't matter how pulpy, how campy, how little "literary value" it has let them read it. The focus should be on getting kids to read first and then introducing the classics. Instead we just shove the classics down their throats and wonder why they loathe reading later on.

I can't say I have read a bad book. Maybe the first 20 pages of one, but never the whole book.

I can say that I know people who have read bad books. My wife read about 12 of the Anita Blake Series. From what I heard from her comments, those books are pretty horrid. She liked the first 4 and then kept reading them hoping the old Anita Blake would come back.

I should note for the H.P. Lovecraft haters, his stories are really boring for the first 10 pages or so. He sets up a sense of normalcy and then all hell breaks loose. I think he does it so you will read the book and have a sense of the character being almost a real person. Its boring but once stuff starts happening to the normal character you are dragged into the story.

JRRT: If I would have read them 50 years ago, I think I would have liked them better. He started up the fantasy genre we all love (Yes yes, I know Beowulf was first but JRRT made it mainstream). I think the fantasy genre has evolved past JRRT. With authors like Goodkind and Jorden, we have really been saturated by the genre and are unable to appreciate JRRT as much as someone who read it way before I was born.

"The Confessions" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau...I can't tell how much I hate this book and its author.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray"... boring....

Whatever melodramatic crap R.A. Salvatore has cooked up.

Also, Patricia Cornwall's "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed" is pretty awful too - Sickert? Really?

Gitkikka wrote:Whatever melodramatic crap R.A. Salvatore has cooked up.

Also, Patricia Cornwall's "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed" is pretty awful too - Sickert? Really?

I used to really like Salvatore, that is until I read some good books...

Destrado wrote:

A similar phenomenom happens here. Saramago's Memorial of the Convent, the Maias by Eça de Queirós... and most people don't even ever finish reading them. I was one of the few that actually read the Maias.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho was a bit disappointing. A rather simplistic approach... I'll compare it to Paolini's Eragon* - Some good ideas but overall the writing style puts me off.

I rather liked Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I read twice (first in portuguese, then in english) because I really liked the big book. So the Maias in high-school wasn't really a waste on me

Sorry for going off topic but Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is excellent imho
Thought I had read a translation of Miais but it was Miau a shorter novel thankfully and wholly forgetable.

Read Saramago's Blindness in English which is not enjoyable but was a good read, but failed with The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:The Great Gatsby.

We were made to read it for English in High School.

At thetime I was a voracious reader and could and would read anything, byt The Great Gatsby... lucky if I could handle 1 and a half pages at a time without putting it down for awhile.

They made you read Gatsby in Oz? It's one of my favorite books, but it's a pretty intensely American Novel. Some things just might translate as well culturally.

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

It was awful.

I'd totally blocked this one out. Lord it sucked. We had to read some horse book too that was really horrid. These kids manage to capture the legendary black horse that roams in the wild and then win a big race with it. Maybe Wild something?

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:The Great Gatsby.

We were made to read it for English in High School.

At thetime I was a voracious reader and could and would read anything, byt The Great Gatsby... lucky if I could handle 1 and a half pages at a time without putting it down for awhile.

I sort of liked the Great Gatsby. Mainly how it showed that even the upper class had it's flaws, and the people in it were also flawed. On a side note, F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife named Zelda, was used to name the princess in a very successful Nintendo game franchise.

Ah yes, the great Legend of Fitzgerald games; classics!

Gentlemen, I submit this:



Quite literally the most appalling book I've ever read. It's absolute dog gak. On the surface it just looks like a fun little book containing some interesting facts about clandestine organisations, and that's the basis upon which I picked it up in the library. A nice light read, kill a bit of time.


Hoo boy.

Words can't explain how excruciating it is. I almost recommend that you all go out and track down a copy, just to check it out. It's THAT bad. The premise of the book is that it's a totally factual account of the inner workings of secret societies, supported by extensive research. But wait! That's not all - she's also ably assisted by her 'spirit guide' Francine.

Yes, you read that right. A lot of the 'research' this charlatan's done is basically her spirit guide 'talking' to her and letting her in an all the secrets of organisations like the Bilderberg Group, or Opus Dei. The worst thing about this tosh is that it is presented straight-facedly as a factual account. I lasted till about the third page, when the 'author' starts a sentence with 'Francine tells me that...' then goes on to discuss the inner workings of the Masons. I actually threw it across the room in disgust.

I hate 'psychics' and 'mediums' anyway - they're just shills out to try and fleece the vulnerable and ignorant. However, they have a certain entertainment value, and if you don't take it seriously it can be quite enjoyable as a display of cold reading - which is a genuine skill, though not supernatural. But this is presented as a factual document, no mentions of 'Francine' on the cover - a cynical attempt to exploit, and financially profit from, the credulous. There's no way she actually BELIEVES the crap she writes, surely?



I would also probably boot Dan Brown's teeth down his neck if I ever met him. Jerk-off.

Albatross wrote:I hate 'psychics' and 'mediums' anyway - they're just shills out to try and fleece the vulnerable and ignorant.

Word. If I wasn't plowing through Imperial Armor 9 and 10 right now, I might be tempted to pick this one up to see how horrible it is.

Francine doesn't like your review. She has many credible sources in the spirit world.

The Kite Runner I don't know, I just can't stand the main character. The main character is such an annoying little donkey hole. I really can't stand that....

I don't loathe the LotR trilogy, but in all honesty it's far too slow. Tolkien was a linguist, not an author, and it shows. He was less interested in telling a story, than he was in showing off every little nook and cranny of his world, and yeah...the battle scenes in Two Towers and Return of the King are good though, and I happily read those chapters again and again, but besides that....just too slow. The Hobbit was a much better book, simply because it was meant to be a book.

Hmm, and also the Tom Clancy books after Debt of Honor they just get these ludicrous plots, and ESPECIALLY Bear and the Dragon sometimes feel like really really bad internet fiction with better grammar and nicer description. I mean, seriously, the main thing about it was just so contrived, and so out there that....ugh...it pains me to even think about it. That and the battle scenes are always ZOMG THE US USED THIS FANCY TECH THINGAMABOB TO KILL ALL THE BAD GUYS FROM A HUNDRED MILES AWAY!!!!11one!! lulz!!

I miss the days when his books were at least decent to read...

Oh, and just to throw it out there...I actually didn't think Twilight series was the most horrible thing ever written. Bella and Edward are probably the worst main characters ever devised, or passed off as role models, but ignoring that...sometimes I actually cared about the secondary characters! I actually liked, and found them interesting! Of course, Stephenie Meyer doesn't want that, she just wants to write about her wet dreams, so we get stuck with a thinly disguised author avatar, and her fantasy creation.

Lord Scythican wrote:I can't say I have read a bad book. Maybe the first 20 pages of one, but never the whole book.

I can say that I know people who have read bad books. My wife read about 12 of the Anita Blake Series. From what I heard from her comments, those books are pretty horrid. She liked the first 4 and then kept reading them hoping the old Anita Blake would come back.

I should note for the H.P. Lovecraft haters, his stories are really boring for the first 10 pages or so. He sets up a sense of normalcy and then all hell breaks loose. I think he does it so you will read the book and have a sense of the character being almost a real person. Its boring but once stuff starts happening to the normal character you are dragged into the story.

JRRT: If I would have read them 50 years ago, I think I would have liked them better. He started up the fantasy genre we all love (Yes yes, I know Beowulf was first but JRRT made it mainstream). I think the fantasy genre has evolved past JRRT. With authors like Goodkind and Jorden, we have really been saturated by the genre and are unable to appreciate JRRT as much as someone who read it way before I was born.

I know that lovecrafts books do pick up after a bit but I find his writing style and attempts at horror to be dull.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Francine doesn't like your review.

Yeah? Well, Francine tells me that when you whack-off to my facebook page she cries.