Author Topic: Really bad books you've read  (Read 20573 times)

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #200 on: 28 December, 2020, 08:42:30 pm »
I may as well mention The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Perhaps it's not a bad book per se, but I never got on with it. OK, it's clever in places and there are some very good, pithy one-liners, but it's most a death march of nerdy jokes and enforced quirkiness. It gets tiresome quickly. By about page 4. The plot is basically random wacky events wrapped like I do Christmas presents. It was sort of the book equivalent of a laughter track left on play. I never tried the sequels. The perhaps worse thing is that it's the sort of book that haunts because people won't shut about it. Ha ha, zorgonic pffazlefaz or somesuch. I say people, but it's always men. Oh, I'm sure there's a rule-proving female exception, but it's a book that channels a peculiar form of nerdy masculinity. It's the book equivalent of the workplace posters that declare 'you don't have to mad to work here but it helps.' The only solution to those requires a flame thrower.

See also 'Red Dwarf'. 

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #201 on: 28 December, 2020, 08:46:21 pm »
Ah, Pratchett... I've always been borderline allergic to the charms of Pratchett but have lately softened my stance thanks to a couple of decent adaptations on the radio - Small Gods and Mort. I've since read the first book, and found it moderately enjoyable. Might even read some more.

Dune is one I read as a teen, and was suitably impressed. I read the first sequel but then lost interest after that. I still love the David Lynch film though, which is entirely as ridiculous as it needs to be. Feeling somewhat sceptical about the new one.

Also read the original Hitchhikers trilogy as a teen and enjoyed those. Mostly for the one-liners, eg "Hurry up or you'll be late - as in the late Dentarthurdent. It's a kind of a threat." - that one has stuck with me down the years, although it may not be an entirely accurate quote. Didn't bother with any of the later books. Quite enjoyed Dirk Gently though.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #202 on: 28 December, 2020, 09:20:11 pm »
Dune; I couldn't finish the first page.
Hotel du Lac was the opposite; I got to the penultimate page and lost interest.

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #203 on: 29 December, 2020, 12:51:22 am »
Pratchett (with the exception of his work with Gaiman) made me think of someone trying to write visual slapstick comedy.
Dune was a bit meh, the book wasn't much better than the film, but it had more sequels
I liked the Hitchhikers's Guide, but then I was a young teenager - not sure how funny it would be now.  I wouldn't rate it in the same list as Pratchett, let alone Potter or Dan Brown though.
simplicity, truth, equality, peace

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #204 on: 30 December, 2020, 10:35:32 am »
Ah, Pratchett... I've always been borderline allergic to the charms of Pratchett but have lately softened my stance thanks to a couple of decent adaptations on the radio - Small Gods and Mort. I've since read the first book, and found it moderately enjoyable. Might even read some more.

Dune is one I read as a teen, and was suitably impressed. I read the first sequel but then lost interest after that. I still love the David Lynch film though, which is entirely as ridiculous as it needs to be. Feeling somewhat sceptical about the new one.

Also read the original Hitchhikers trilogy as a teen and enjoyed those. Mostly for the one-liners, eg "Hurry up or you'll be late - as in the late Dentarthurdent. It's a kind of a threat." - that one has stuck with me down the years, although it may not be an entirely accurate quote. Didn't bother with any of the later books. Quite enjoyed Dirk Gently though.

That HHGTTG episode was the first one I heard on the radio. The line you quote has stuck with me as well, along with:
...rushing up towards me, big and round; I'll call it 'ground'. Hope it's friendly.
Did you know your robot can hum just like Pink Floyd?
Careful not to step in the whale meat.
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #205 on: 30 December, 2020, 09:29:15 pm »
I may as well mention The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Perhaps it's not a bad book per se, but I never got on with it. OK, it's clever in places and there are some very good, pithy one-liners, but it's most a death march of nerdy jokes and enforced quirkiness. It gets tiresome quickly. By about page 4. The plot is basically random wacky events wrapped like I do Christmas presents. It was sort of the book equivalent of a laughter track left on play. I never tried the sequels. The perhaps worse thing is that it's the sort of book that haunts because people won't shut about it. Ha ha, zorgonic pffazlefaz or somesuch. I say people, but it's always men. Oh, I'm sure there's a rule-proving female exception, but it's a book that channels a peculiar form of nerdy masculinity. It's the book equivalent of the workplace posters that declare 'you don't have to mad to work here but it helps.' The only solution to those requires a flame thrower.

See also 'Red Dwarf'.

Yes, it's shit, isn't it? Unless you're endlessly amused by grown-ups saying 'smeg.'

I only remember Dune being mostly dull, and it was a billion years ago when I read it. Those long deserts of italicized monologue that should have been subtitled tedious bit you'd shouldn't need to read.

I put Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy here because it is a bad book, in the sense that it doesn't really assemble as anything other than a couple of badly connected sketches that people far, far less funny than Douglas Adams keep reciting to me.

Maybe I'm too harsh with Pratchett, I tried a few and they were uninspiring. He's not Tolkien, who should have been buried in lead coffin and sunk at sea. Preferably before he put pen to paper for the first time.

cygnet

  • I'm part of the association
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #206 on: 30 December, 2020, 09:47:12 pm »
Re: Dune, LOTR
I found self-editing all the italics (speeches/questionable "poetry"/ballards) out of the books worked very well and kept the story flowing. I don't seem to have missed any plot enhancements by doing so.

Never tried reading Red Dwarf. Was is a book first?
I Said, I've Got A Big Stick

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #207 on: 30 December, 2020, 09:53:33 pm »
Never tried reading Red Dwarf. Was is a book first?

No, but it's a perfectly readable novelisation of a TV sit-com..  Best done in the back row of a Year 9 maths class, admittedly.

The problem with Red Dwarf (in whatever medium) is when people get all trekkie (smeggie?) about it and start geeking the plot-holes and continuity errors.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #208 on: 30 December, 2020, 10:06:47 pm »
I liked Dune, when I was 17. I read all 6 of them that were available then. Compared to my then boyfriend's mecha fiction it was litchrature and it gave me something to do. you can get all nerdy about it, and then grow up and out of it all. I keep meaning to try a reread to see if I could stomach them now - probably not. I always liked the first 2 and last 2, the middle 2 were dullsville which I'd skimread on my yearly rereads.

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #209 on: 31 December, 2020, 04:13:03 am »
This book I got by some really old guy, William Shakespeare. What planet was he from? They are plays and every talks so weird. It's like they are foreign and don't talk proper English. When I got it they said it was funny, yeah right, I got more laughs out of Karl Marx. I binned it.
Move Faster and Bake Things

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #210 on: 31 December, 2020, 11:40:41 am »
^ You know how the book is better than the Film?  It's the other way round with ol' Bill.

...

Does make you question why he's covered in English lessons and not Drama.
simplicity, truth, equality, peace

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #211 on: 31 December, 2020, 12:32:04 pm »
Does make you question why he's covered in English lessons and not Drama.

For the language, presumably. It’s hard to overstate Shakespeare’s influence on the development of English - so many common words and phrases we owe to him.

One of my A-level texts was Antony & Cleopatra, and thanks to having an excellent teacher, I got a lot out of it - many great lines have stayed with me down the years.

However, it’s true that to really get to understand a play, you have to study it in the right context. And reading a Shakespeare play as a book is certainly not the way to get the most from it.

Same is true for any theatrical script. Another of my A-level texts was The Lady’s Not For Burning by Christopher Fry. I loved it. But I learned more about the play over six weeks of rehearsals for a student theatre production than I did from studying it for two years at school.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #212 on: 31 December, 2020, 01:09:27 pm »
^^That.^^ Even worse than studying song lyrics without music.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #213 on: 31 December, 2020, 08:09:53 pm »
Oddly, I was the peculiar child who liked Shakespeare at school (we did Twelfth Night). I liked the twisty-turny language.

We also did Shaw's Pygmalion. I'm not sure whether that was on the curriculum or expressed our English teacher's wish that we'd all learn to talk proper. We'd already destroyed a number of French teachers.

It always makes me laugh that every DH Lawrence adaption has people sounding like they're from Yorkshire.

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #214 on: 01 January, 2021, 12:57:07 am »
Oh, no, I did like Shakespeare.  For some reasons I never found it hard to understand what they were saying.  But I get aggrieved at it not being taught as a play.
simplicity, truth, equality, peace

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #215 on: 01 January, 2021, 08:27:22 pm »
I'm actually not sure why the only two pieces I remember from my O Level English Lit were plays. I sure there must have been a book or two in there somewhere. Actually, I'm not sure where the boundary between English Lit and plain old English was. Or, for that matter, what we did in English as we were the generation spared the rigours of grammar.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #216 on: 15 January, 2021, 12:35:48 pm »
Picked up Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson yesterday. It's been on my Kindle since, like, forever but I've never got round to actually reading it. I just started browsing it idly and before I knew it, I was over halfway through - not what you'd call an intellectually challenging read. If my guess at how it ends isn't correct*, I promise I'll read Ulysses next by way of penance.

My favourite line so far (my emphasis):
"I lifted pictures up to see if there were others taped beneath them, layers of history overlain like strata."

So many words, so few of them needed...

I remember this was recommended to me by the same person who recommended Gone Girl, which I also hated. I should have known better.


*
(click to show/hide)
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #217 on: 15 January, 2021, 03:02:51 pm »
That's a splendidly awful line. It's not just the layer/strata, but the fact it adds absolutely nothing to the description of lifting the picture to check if there was anything underneath.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #218 on: 15 January, 2021, 03:22:04 pm »
That's a splendidly awful line. It's not just the layer/strata, but the fact it adds absolutely nothing to the description of lifting the picture to check if there was anything underneath.

Exactly! The whole book is like this. A decent editor could have cut it in half without losing anything.

Aside from the atrocious writing, the plot is high-concept tosh, about as plausible as Star Wars. The best thing I can say about this book is it's a quick read. Albeit not a painless one.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #219 on: 15 January, 2021, 07:17:12 pm »
I remember this was recommended to me by the same person who recommended Gone Girl, which I also hated. I should have known better.
I had a former tutee, who was doing A-level English Lit, who reckoned that was her favorite book.  I reckon it may have been the only book she ever read to be fair ...
simplicity, truth, equality, peace

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #220 on: 15 January, 2021, 09:46:41 pm »
I did read Gone Girl and it wasn't awful. But I might have read it in an airport lounge so I'm measuring it on the scale between the recreational sticking of discarded plastic satay sticks from the buffet into my eyeballs and eating at Sbarro's.

I really miss airport lounges. They are recreationally dull places. I'm pretty sure that when I die* that's where I'll end up. An eternal airport lounge. Not first, business, of course. So I'll have to get stuff from the buffet myself.

I once got chased by an old lady attendant for wandering into the first lounge instead of business. Come back sir, come back! Sedentary job and seventy-ish years on the clock, she was never going to catch me. But I hid in the loo for twenty minutes just in case. Not my finest twenty minutes.

I also smuggled an entire contingent of Congolese doctors into the first lounge at OR Tambo with just a giant stuffed lion toy (so big that South African gave it the empty business class next to me, bless them**). I held it up in front of the receptionist while they snuck behind me. Look, it's a lion, LOOK!

I am contemplating writing a really bad book or just my memoir.

*having been dead, I know stuff you don't. But I can't say. First thing that happens when you're dead is the NDA, just in case they revive you. Let's just say that where I went, they have lawyers there. Pretty much all of them. Excellent barbecue though.

**after the first couple of times of answering the question 'is that for your kid?' with 'no, me' it proved expedient to say 'yes, she's four.' Unfortunately, once you invent a child, you have to stick with it, so don't do it when you're trapped on a plane for ten hours with the person you gave that answer to.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Really bad books you've read
« Reply #221 on: 15 January, 2021, 10:45:14 pm »
I actually quite enjoyed the film of Gone Girl, for all its preposterousness. I’m willing to accept the possibility that I was just in the wrong mood when I read the book. I really enjoyed her other book I’ve read, Sharp Objects - in fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s very good.

Before I Go To Sleep is truly dreadful though. It gets even worse towards the end (honestly, there’s nothing I like more than a middle-aged woman masturbation scene written by a 30-something man).

It was entirely unsurprising to discover via the notes at the end of the book that it was spawned by a creative writing course.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #222 on: 16 January, 2021, 07:03:53 pm »
To be honest, those are the books I only read if they're 99p. I think my brain mixed it up with The Girl on the Train which is something else entirely. I don't recall reading Sharp Objects – though a brief google tells me she (or someone with the very same name) also wrote the splendidly killy Amazon version of Utopia which I recently really enjoyed.

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #223 on: 16 January, 2021, 08:52:18 pm »
Oddly, I was the peculiar child who liked Shakespeare at school (we did Twelfth Night). I liked the twisty-turny language.

We also did Shaw's Pygmalion. I'm not sure whether that was on the curriculum or expressed our English teacher's wish that we'd all learn to talk proper. We'd already destroyed a number of French teachers.

It always makes me laugh that every DH Lawrence adaption has people sounding like they're from Yorkshire.

Ian, are you old enough to have seen the Python sketch in which Lawrence's father (Graham Chapman, I think), dressed working-class-wise, berates DH (Palin) along the lines of "You could've been a writer or a painter, or musician, like everyone else, but no, you had to ponce about down the pit....."?   I'm doing it from memory, but I think I've got the essence!

Ah think that were Yorkshire, rather than the East Midlands cockney of Nottamunshire, too, but it was very funny.

ian

Re: Really bad books you've read
« Reply #224 on: 16 January, 2021, 09:18:18 pm »
I think I might have and yes, I believe it was Yorkshire. It always is. You will never hear a proper Erewashian accent and if you did, you'd wish you hadn't. It's not an accent that travels.

I've told the story of when I brought my American girlfriend back to the UK to meet my family. As we toiled back to Heathrow she looked at me and said 'I didn't understand a thing. For the entire weekend." To be fair, she'd trained by watching Four Weddings and Funeral and I've elocuted myself into a stupid semi-posho accent that's probably even worse than I think it sounds. Every time I speak to my family, I have to do that cognitive adjustment*. To be fair, when people yell eh oop me duck at you, you do have to wonder if you're about to be Clockwork Oranged or somesuch.

*this the same one Americans always have to do when they deal with a British accent that isn't Hugh Grant-ish. As a plus, any kind of British accent is mesmerizing for some American women, a power which I, of course, used responsibly.