What's the WORST fiction you've read recently?

After enjoying The DaVinci Code, I took up The DaVinci Codex. Baaaaad book. Closed it and thought, "what an utter waste of time!"

What have you read lately that you wish you hadn't?

The Da Vinci Codex is based on some of Da Vinci's inventions and theories. Simply awful writing, poorly put together, but I will concede that there was an interesting plot twist.

Terrible work of Satan inspired fiction.

No, I'm kidding. I've never actually read it. Since it's all lies. I don't have to read it to know it's lies.

Go to hell Jerry!

Foulwell and Rob'em'some both have a special circle of Hades reserved just for them!

Awful. Terrible. A few hours of my life that I want back. I kept waiting for something new or different or interesting to happen, and.... it never did.

Lies, Lies, Lies ! And more lies.

Fiction is a waste of time. I guess some find the same kind of solace in it as watching television for fun, or movies. But if I'm going to read, I'm going self-help, or history, or liberal politics.

Some good reads of late, American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips, and Blowback, By Chalmers Johnson.

I'll argue that one can find self-help, history, and liberal politics in fiction.

Some of the most enduring works of literature are to some degree works of social criticism.

Thanks for saying what I'm afraid to say. I really get bored by fiction. Used to read it like crazy when I was a kid, but there is so much I feel I need to learn now.

...the novel I am currently sweating blood to finish writing. (That is, when I'm not wasting hours on DU!)

Of course I'll read your novel. :)

And I don't think there's anything wrong with fiction reading. Right now I am antsy to learn everything I can though, for I have recently been pretty ill without much energy to read or keep up with current affairs, I was also isolated in my home; so now I try to reach out and grab the "real world" every chance I get.

edit sp

Don't ask..*shakes head* Yeah, don't ask, please...

The Way Things Outta Be - Limbaugh

any book by O'Reilly

"Prisoner of Vandam Street"


Read it ONLY if your only other choice is a Dan Brown book. (Especially "Digital Fortress") x(

I actually liked Digital Fortress. Not great literature, but an entertaining airplane read -- got me from MD to CO.

...then realize their importance 200 pages later.

I hate it when I'm smarter than purported top symbologists, cryptographers, etc. I want to learn something cool, not scream in frustration for hundreds of pages because they can't see a simple anagram right in front of their faces. :eyes:

DeLint is supposed to be the 'Master of Urban Fantasy' and I really enjoyed his book 'The Little Country'.

But there was no payoff in 'Trader'. I muddled through the 490 pages and when I finished, I closed the cover and went "WTF was 'that' about?"

If it wasn't for the fact that I enjoy his style, and that his books tend to be heavy on the 'music is magic' angle, I would have put it down halfway through.

one of the most idiotic books I have ever read. Why I forced myself to read it I do not know. I will not be reading the DaVinci Codex.

I don't read much fiction so be nice, Rice fans, there wasn't much to choose from "lately" :P

Seemed to be a little too rambling for me, Louis especially just went on & on about how every little brick made him sad. That in itself is ok but the style in which it was presented was a little too, I dunno, vaporous or something. Louis would go on for 3 pages and you're never really there with him...


cool story, I just didn't really dig the style of narration...

I've never been a Rice fan. I just can't get myself to care about her characters.

The rest...ugh.

It took me about 6 months to wade all the way through "The Witching Hour." But I thought if I'd gone that far, I'd be damned if I'd give up halfway through.

To Rice's credit though, I looked her up on the "Friends and Neighbors" donations page, and she gave $2000 to Dean! I may go buy some of her stuff just because. Then dump it at a used bookstore.

That's one of the best fiction books ever!

It's bad!

The ideas in the book were really interesting, like about the "mother tree" and all, but it took too long to get to the point. Also, it was pretty predictable, especially when the main character falls in love. Romance has no place in sci-fi novels!!!!!!!!!! :grr:

(I read them for a book club.) Two-dimensional, overwritten, self-conscious, Randian CRAP.

I don't think fiction is a waste of time, but I will say that much recent fiction is sloppy, unedited, and lacking in message. Go back and read Faulkner or Henry James.

how differently people perceive things. I loved Cryptonomicon, and while I appreciate Faulkner and James, they're not my faves. I find James a bit overwritten and tedious. Hemingway, on the other hand, is terse, taut, and spare -- my kind of writing.

I loved "The Sun Also Rises" but that was definitely his apex. I liked the earlier short stories too. I enjoyed Zelda Fitzgerald's comments on him. She called him 'bogus' and said referred to him and his work as "bullfighting, bullslinging, and bullshitting."

I think Neal Stephenson needs an editor, desperately. I don't care particularly for his Libertarian and materialistic philosophies, but he also made mis-statements in that book that drove me nuts, such as saying that the dwarves created the Rings of Power (wrong, it was the elves.) And naming a main character after a nursery rhyme was too cutesy and I don't think he really followed up on the allusion. In fact, his whole book was fall of pseudo-references, presumably to show off his reading.

about Hemingway's inconsistency. I suppose I like him at his best. TSAR and his short stories are my favorites as well.

Not trying to start an argument, but I want to make sure people don't see this and think this book is no good. I thought it was spectacular.

It didn't get you when Joe said matter-of-factly "It made me feel like the worst man in the world?" His entire reason for existing, for leaving his wife and child, final fulfillment of his ultimate dream and it made him feel like the worst man in the world? Come on, that's good stuff.

Hmm. Maybe I am trying to start an argument.

I thought the characters were boring, they never came to life. I thought it was an unedited mess. I thought the "Shackleton" episode in the Antarctic was completely superfluous. I cannot stand the literary device of mingling real characters into a book of fiction. I thought that it telegraphed every single incident in the book.

I enjoyed the first half of the book, but then it seemed like he was just trying too hard in the second half. You are completely right about the Anarctic part, totally unnecessary and way out there.

It reminded me of why I limit my fiction reading almost exclusively to mysteries: you have to keep the plot moving, you have to hold the reader's interest, the plots deal with contemporary social issues in many cases, and there are some damned fine writers in the genre who could match any practitioner of so-called "serious" (more often really "pretentious" literature) well-turned phrase for well-turned phrase.

(Many years ago, there was an article in The Washington Monthly that claimed that future social historians would read mysteries to find out what American and British society were really like, warts and all.)

Even the shlocky mysteries are rarely boring or pretentious.

The worst mystery I read recently was John Lescroart's The First Law, but even it was tolerable.

:D

Can't remember the author. After I read the "Rings" triology I decided I wanted to read another multiple book story and picked up the first book of the Wheels of Time which at the time was only nine "Chapters" long.

The first few books were entertaining but by the 3rd volume it was obvious that the guy was going to stretch out a two-three volume story into infinity. I gave up about 100 pages into the fourth title after the umpteeth "astral plane/reincarnation flashback"

is the author, and I loved those books as well, though he did begin to overreach himself by the fourth book; the tale became a bit unwieldy.

but I'm FURIOUS with Jordan. He left us hanging, and then wrote a prequel.

n/t

But I tried to read Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd" recently and almost died of boredom. It's one of my dad's favorite books, and I was looking forward to discussing the story with him, but I just couldn't take another description of another goddamn tree in the goddamn sunlight.

I guess I'm just a philisitine.

I don't like Hardy. He's so fatalistic and depressing and I don't think he's a great writer either.

is a more engaging read, though it's not much cheerier than Jude. I do like Hardy, though.

as far as reading, though they all kind of make you want to give up.

We had a high school teacher who insisted on calling it Tess of the Dee Urbervilles, and despite all our pleading, she would not change. You'd think she would have seen that a corruption of D'Urberville to Darbyfield was logical and that would have swayed her, but she simply would not budge.

I think it's on the "Matching Tie and Handkerchief" album.

It's all about Hardy trying to write the Wessex novels, but they treat it like an athletic event.

"He's written a word....and it looks like a noun of some kind. It's 'THE'!

Yes, he appears to be on a roll!"

They'll seem much more enjoyable with a little chuckle from Python in your head beforehand.

kind of boring.

and i didn't hate it or anything, i just couldn't get in to it the way most people could.

that's one's not a good example. i usually enjoy the books i read, so it's hard to think of any.

but don't expect me to go into that again. I already discussed this at length with some friends (who are fans) of that facist.
Pity...the SoT series started out as okay fantasy...now it's right-wing Ayn Rand-ish crap.

throughout the book, the protagonist, who is supposed to be an actual medical examiner and a hunter, refers to a 12-gauge "rifle." I cannot abide that kind of error in a book; it pulls one completely out of the story.

The story itself was the usual forgettable woman-in-jeopardy-from-horrible-serial-killer mishmash. It wouldn't have been that bad for a day home sick with the flu if not for egregious errors. I really can't abide when authors don't do their homework. How does that kind of stuff get past editors, anyway?

that epistolatory novel sucked.

strange though, i do now remember what Smollett was attempting with literature in the way he wrote it. but the story was essentially Fielding's Tom Jones in letter form.