Anyone smart enough here to read books? >:D

Name the worst book by an otherwise good author that you've ever read.

The Fourth Hand, by John Irving.

AWFUL. HORRIBLE. Unworthy of the author's name. I hope the mortgage he paid off (or whatever he did with the advance) was worth it. I wil be cringing and hesitating when it's time to buy the next Irving novel - and he's one of my favorite authors. :evilfrown:


Edited to change the subject because if I start one more thread that gets zero replies I will have to start drinking again. :evilfrown: :evilfrown: :evilfrown:

Any book I don't like, I never finish.....


<posted so you don't start drinking again! :-)>

You're a sweetie! :hug:

but I never finish them - even the ones they "forced" me to read in school. I never read them.

:shrug:

"Duluth" and "Myron." I think Vidal was delighted into giggles by these "inventions" of his, but neither could hold a candle to "Myra Breckenridge" or "Kalki."

I'm not sure if "Myron" needed to be written. But I leave that to Vidal.

I thought "Duluth" was hilarious. :-)

but his worst was "Live from Golgotha"

"The Smithsonian Institution"

But even on his worst days, Vidal is better than 99.999999% of the writers out there. A national treasure.

very gossipy and witty. MY favorite part had to be when he was talking about working with Heston on Beh Hur. "Heston had all the personality of a wooden Indian"

My God...George Santanaya, Tennessee Williams, Jack and Jackie Kennedy, Lionel and Diana Trilling...and on and on and on.

"Palimipsest" is the remarkable memoir of a remarkable life.

I think I have read it about 8 times.

I love giving that book as a gift.

I should say that I TRIED to read this book. Just an incomprehensible mess, IMO. Wallace is a talented guy...but "Jest" was just unreadable.

:hi: to one of my favorite DUers!

DFW is on my list of authors to get to before the year is out, after many recommendations. I'll mark this one off the list.

Thanks! :hi:

If you can get through it...you're a better man than I, my friend. :-)

:hi: to one of my favorite DU'ers!

:-)

Terry

A book club I was in a few years ago assigned that. I read about 3 pages and tossed it aside and said "nuh uh. Not gonna do it."

...his capricious use of undefined acronyms(e.g. WRT*), highly informal style and constant repetition did me in.

*WRT = with respect to. He NEVER defines this so you spend however many pages it takes you to figure it out in a state of distracted irritation.

He's got a new short story book out last month, I think.

The first story is 66 pages and goes into excruciating detail about a focus group, I bet it has a great payoff at the end, but I can't get past page 13.

DFW, yes, you're talented, you're just too talented

American Falls by Barry Gifford

very fascinating, readable, noir short stories by the author of Wild at Heart and Perdita Durango.

The Whore's Child by Richard Russo, and
You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

two beautifully sad volumes. You can read some of the best stories out there on your lunch hour. Especially Adam Haslett.

Horrible. I don't know anyone who likes Pynchon who likes this book.

Oh, and "Infinite Jest" is great. One of my favourite novels of the past 10 years.

Disappointing ... It was like there was a good idea for a novel someplace in there ... actually, I think it was probably the same good idea that launched "The Crying of Lot 49."

This is one of my favorite "desert island" books.

Dreadfully boring, and I don't care what Hemingway himself says about it, the critics had it right to begin with - it fucking sucks.

That's one of the ones they forced me to read in school and I actually finished...

I didn't think it was THAT bad...
I wish I could remember the name of that book they wanted me to read in my Jr year in HS, that was god-awful (early American writer, set in 18th century I think???)

Read it in high school; don't remember much of the text, but the story will always be with me.

Did you read the whole thing? The ending is magnificent. The beauty is in the simplicity.

If you did read the whole thing, did you catch the Christ symbolism at the end?

There's a lot more to that book than most people think. I've taught it for years and my eighth graders (especially boys) really liked it. Especially when they caught on to how HUGE that marlin was and that it pulled HIM out to sea for three days.

I should note I'm a writer myself and hold a degree in literature. I still found it mundane to read. I feel like the critics who were initially very hard on this book were right to begin with.

Now, I know a lot of people can't stand Anne Rice, but I love everything she's written, even Feast of All Saints, Violin, and the Sleeping Beauty books--stuff that Rice fans themselves are divided on.

Merrick, ugh. I bought that book the day it came out, and even managed to get it signed, but it is collecting dust on my shelf. I can't make it through the first chapter. It's AWFUL. First of all, the fans were seriously duped. Everyone was excited about it because it was being pushed as a crossover between the Vampire Chronicles and the witch books (her best and most popular work). So what do I get when I finally read it? Literally, on the first page, it says that yes, the title character Merrick is indeed a Mayfair, but she has nothing to do with the Mayfairs (Rowan, Unca Julian and all them), and that this story has nothing to do with them. :wtf: I was so pissed off I didn't even try to read the rest of the book till months later, and to this day I can't get through the first chapter.

The problem is, I am just not emotionally invested in all these new characters she keeps trying to throw at us. The vampires are compelling--Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius, etc. All of them have some kind of tragedies in their pasts, they are larger than life figures who capture my imagination. They have strong personalities. Ditto with the Mayfairs. These new people feel like pretenders to all that. I understand that she wants to take the mythology into new directions and whatnot, but I just want a good old fashioned Louis and Lestat story. Is that so much to ask?

Merrick was what actually killed my love of Anne Rice. Blood and Gold was a damn fine book, right up there with what I consider the holy trilogy (Interview, Vampire Lestat & Queen of the Damned), but it all went downhill from there. I won't even get started on this latest travesty she's foisted on us, this god awful Mary Sue fanfic of a novel where I've heard Lestat and Rowan Mayfair fall in love with each other. The woman has clearly lost her mind and I'm done with her.

I used to really like her work. I wasn't that impressed with the Mayfair witch story but her writing was compelling. Until Merrick. I've tried twice, can't remember how far I got, and haven't ever finished it.

It wasn't that it was awful per se, but it was unspeakably depressing. And that's coming from someone who's read Animal Dreams - not exactly the world's most cheerful book - three times. I've loved all of her other books enough to read them over and over, but The Poisonwood Bible was one that I was glad to put down at the end.

It was too much like The Mosquito Coast. And I had loved her previous things - especially The Bean Tree and Animal Dreams.

I haven't read anything of her's since.

I'm pretty sure that one came out after The Poisonwood Bible. I was glad - after that one I wasn't sure what to expect...

anything. Even if it's a good cause. Its just gets too intense for me. Like when they take off on women's rights and start sermonizing instead of just working it into an interesting plot. I feel so strongly about environment that it is difficult for me to read about it. I already know how bad it is - I don't need to have it ground in even deeper.

they are just horrid...however the sex scenes are worth finding to get a good laugh...

"he tore at the lacings on her bodice".....hahahaha

by Norman Mailer. Absolutely no reason for that book to exist.

The critics loved it. Everyone was reading it. My book club sent it to me as the selection of the month. And so I read it.

The beginning was depressing. I kept reading on, because so many people said how wonderful it was, I figured it was just one of those books that took some time to get into.

Struggling on, it was not only depressing, but boring. Still I kept reading. It had to get better, I was sure.

It didn't.

Then there was a glimmer of hope. As I neared the end, it seemed that all the threads were pulling together to an end that would make the time taken to slog through the first nine tenths of the book worth while.

They didn't. The end sucked. Big time. It was even worse than the rest of the book.

Sometimes, I think book reviewers get together and decide, just as a joke or maybe an exercise in showing themselves how powerful they are, pick out THE absolute worst book on their review lists and all give it glowing reviews just to show they can.

I have yet to talk to anyone who read COLD MOUNTAIN and liked it... Not even one luke warm "Well, it was okay, I guess," type reaction. Mostly, "God! Wasn't that horrible!"

Ask me anything.

The Skin

saying, "To hell with it, life is too short to read another page of this." I'm a person who usually slogs on through a boring book. After all, I've always read cereal boxes at breakfast. . .

But "Cold Mountain" irritated me. The characters weren't believable. Among my reading friends, half agree with me that it's a terrible book, the other half swoon over the book, which has led me to seriously question their intelligence! Some read it again after the film came out, so I had to listen to "Oh, 'Cold Mountain' is so good" again. Bah, humbug, says I.

I think that Edgar Allen Poe was the only one I could stand. JRR Tolkien comes to mind with the dreadfully wordy boring shit written around the action in the Lord of the Rings series.
Duckie

But even I admit Fellowship of the Ring is quite possibly one of the most boring books I've ever read. The man was a genius, but I could do without the 30 page descriptions of a tree.

If you think LotR is bad with that, I'd avoid the Silmarillion like the plague if I were you. Granted, we can blame Christopher Tolkien for most of it, but it reads like the Bible. So-and-so begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so...:silly:

It's for the hardcore fan only. I'm one and I even struggle with it. I've read LotR upwards of 30 times or more over the years, but I've only gotten through the Silmarillion once.

I tried, over and over, to read it after I read LOTR. I'm the sort of person who can find entertainment reading a dictionary, so it seemed like it *ought* to have been interesting, but I couldn't stay with it.

That ranks as one of the funniest putdowns of Lord of the Rings I've ever heard!

:toast:

and the name of my website. "Domain of Arnheim" is actually a short story that is almost cheery and uplifting.

If so I'll have to defend Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others.

The Skin

Cast aspersions on Lewis Carroll would you? Slithy Tove! :D

.. even if "Sylvie and Bruno" goes on a bit ...

The Skin

An Edwardian by birth, post WWII by publication.

And if you can't handle language... what do you want? That we should all be writing for 4th graders?

Pcat

I adore most Irving, but 'Son of a Circus' left me a little underwhelmed, and 'widow for one year' got read only becuase I was on a long flight to Mexico. Haven't read 'The Fourth Hand', but I've gotten the feeling that John has been slipping for awhile now.
kinda sad.


In the World according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
:hi:



Noodleboy

Greatest book summary ever:


Owen Meany, the only son of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is.

I read Owen Meany during the first Iraq war. (I was of Draftable age then)

Read Cider House during pro-life nastiness in Kansas, also during the early 90's


Read 'The Water Method Man' while nude duck hunting.... OK I made that one up.

he isn't considered a GREAT author, but in his early days, Stephen King wasn't half bad. So I enjoyed a few of his novels and the best thing he ever wrote, in my opinion, was the novella "The Langoliers."

Well I can't remember what it was, but sometime in the mid-90s, I tried him out again and blech. Couldn't even make myself finish it. He's formulaic and tired.

Read it at bedtime and it is guaranteed to cure insomnia. Took me forever to finish and I usually cannot put a King book down.

I don't "do" King anymore as a rule. Too much good stuff out there to spend my time on.

I'm currently reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlien, someting I MEANT to read YEARS ago.

That was the last Stephen King book I ever read. Until then I was a pretty big fan, but that book struck me as a bloated overindulgent POS.

What was he thinking?

I don't believe he can judge the quality of his own work. He always grumbles about how terrible Pet Semetary was and I always thought this one of his best and most unflinching. I liked Cujo and Carrie as well. But sometimes his work is just...thin. There is real talent there if only he had an editor with a machete.

Impenetrable. Put me off Mailer probably forever.

I've always liked his non-fiction books (like "The Executioner's Song") more than his fiction.

:shrug:

and Irving's "Son of the Circus" left a lot to be desired.

4th hand was ... WTF? I'm still a bit ambivalent on Widow for one year, too. (Recognize that the books he's written that I love have gone through multiple copies and I give them away... Cider House, Garp and Meany being 3...)

Being prolific can do that to you. I feel that way about some late Asimov, some mid-career Heinlein... I'm still debating Hannibal with myself.

I don't finish books I don't like.

Pcat

I read the whole thing, but mentally argued with him and the copyeditor all the way through. It was the fourth time he had written the same damn novel, and it was getting a bit tedious, IMO.

bad luck, but my most favorites are the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I have somewhere around 4-5,000 of them at any given time, and I've read all of them but those recent arrivals waiting for my attention. I weed a couple of times a year, and pass on books I wasn't impressed with, but I hang on to most, so my need for shelves...or just a whole new building...keeps growing.

Interestingly, sometimes I read books that I think are well written, quality pieces, and they leave me cold. Uninterested. I almost always finish them anyway, even when I don't like them. I'm able to recognize good writing whether it appeals to me or not.

Other times, I love books that I know are badly written, but the story or a character resonates so strongly that the book overcomes poor form.

I don't know about the WORST. I can't rank them in absolute order, and if I didn't like them, they are long since weeded out and gone. I don't tend to remember much about the books I don't like. The most recent "good" book I weeded out, about a year ago, was






Keep scrolling, this is a much loved book by some great DUers and I don't want to upset them...







Remember, I think it was well-written; I just didn't like it, not that this particular author wrote/published too much else......






A Confederacy of Dunces -- John Kennedy O'Toole

Hated Bonfire of the Vanities.

I loved the adventures of moll flanders (also by defoe) but robinson crusoe was excrutiatingly painful for me to read. I never even finished it. I just couldn't stomach it. That's very rare for me.

"Enduring Love" so I looked forward to the critically-recommended "Atonement," which was short-listed for the Booker Prize ("Amsterdam" won the Booker in its year.) "Atonement" wasn't as good as the other two I've mentioned, however. I was quite disappointed, after the hype I'd read about it. At least it was better than "Cold Mountain"! ;-)

Lethem *was* one of the most promising, original, visionary authors of the past 20 years. While I really loved "Motherless Brooklyn" I think his mainstream success lured him away from his strength--books like his debut "Gun, with Occassional Music" and "Amnesia Moon."

And I made it about halfway through. Then it went south for me. Go figure.

of course, everything is relative. Maybe it's because I read A&D first. :shrug:

Let me tell you, if you didn't like A&D, DO NOT read Deception Point--that totally sucked, IMHO. :puke:

"Women in Love" by D.H. Lawrence - Sorry but there was nothing womanly or loving about it. It was the coldest iceberg I've ever tried to read and having read his short fiction which is superb I can't help feeling he went wrong somewhere - like he was trying to be the "Picasso" of the novel but did not master classical form first and took too many short cuts.

Anything by Milan Kundera except "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". That was such a great book I didn't expect him to better it. Again, his short fiction is superb and that one novel which is more than I ever accomplished so I feel like a big phony criticizing...so I'll stop now and think about that for awhile.