L. Ron Hubbard’s “Mission Earth” series. I was young, and I’d read damn near all the sci fi that my local library had, I was acught up on the Wheel of Time that had been published to that point (I think it was still about five books before Jordan died), and gave it a try.
It was fucking awful.
Given that I was maybe 12 at the time, that’s saying something; it was just trash.
Friends don’t let friends read Hubbard.
I read Dianetics and I’m still not “clear.” Must’ve done something wrong before birth.
Instructions unclear: thetans stuck in volcano
Almost every book I read back when I was a school student.
Each month we had to read a boring book chosen by the school, and at the end of each month we had a annoying test with questions like: “When the protagonist discovered the truth, what was the emotion he felt?” Or “How did the author felt when writing this?” So I had to read 300 pages of a boring book and pay attention to each detail each month.
I don’t dislike reading, actually I enjoy good books, but reading something against my will is sickening.
The goddamn Grapes of Wrath.
“What did the dust on the plain signify?”
Who the fuck caaaares, this book is boring and depressing.
I’ve always been a bookworm but fuck a lot of the shit they made us read in high school.
Well it’s a series, but Three body problem. It should have been right up my alley, but I got so tired of every decision by every character being stupid that I couldn’t be bothered to read the last fifty pages of the last book.
Even if I charitably assumed the point of the book was to show that people are weak and stupid, the series was such a ham-handed strawman as to undercut its own commentary. And even worse, it had just enough interesting ideas to lead me to believe it was going somewhere worthwhile, but it never did.
It’s been years and I’m still pissed off that I wasted a week on it.
Not read the book, but isn’t it meant to be quite dramatically different in some aspects? I’m sure I heard that all those annoying young adults characters were invented for the show? Someone who knows can correct me on that.
Agreed though that the show was a pile of crap. I enjoyed the first couple and quite enjoyed the last in the season, but the in between was pretty awful.
Just tried to read some of Anne Rice’s books last week because I was enchanted by the AMC adaptation of Interview with the Vampire.
I can’t even adequately express how much I dislike her writing and “story telling”, if you can even call it that. Her vampire lore/rules for her vampires are cool, but that’s pretty much all she has going for her.
Interview with a Vampire:
8/10
3/10 with Rice
Atlas Shrugged.
There are very few books that have left me with a “This is the face of evil” impression. I tried to give it a fair shake, but this one did, alongside the fact that it devolves into stimulant-addled ranting.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not inherently opposed to stimulant-addled ranting - I like On the Road, for instance - but it just left an awful taste in my mouth.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the Fountainhead, but I was young, usually stoned, and took away an ‘integrity of artistic vision’ interpretation that resonated. I do not know if this would survive a re-read.
I thought it was kind of interesting until the 50 page long rant that John Galt has where he explains why greed and selfishness is good, but all his arguments only work within the bubble of the made up, fantasy society that Rand created. I don’t know how anyone could read that and come away thinking “Boy, this sure is relative to modern society. I better base my whole ideology off of it!”
For anyone that didn’t know, Ayn Rand was a welfare queen 💅
Dies The Fire by S.M. Stirling.
I didn’t hate the plot of the book, but something about the writers treatment of the character interactions, physical descriptions, and sex scenes creeped me out. I just… I don’t know. It was gross. I got the feeling that the writer was fulfilling their own fantasies through the novel. I told this to someone about 10 years ago, and they also felt that way, so I feel slightly vindicated and not like a weirdo who reads too much into things.
I tried rereading both of those series recently (there were maybe 6 Change novels out when i read them, so it was many years ago) and I just couldn’t.
Island in the Sea of Time is worse. Some credit for having some better developed female characters than most male authors at the time, I guess. But the SA scenes were fuckin awful.
Life of Pi.
2 of my kids had to read it for school, I was looking for something to read, picked it up, they both said “NO, it’s so bad.” I thought, whatever, it’s a slim volume, short read, how bad can it be?
I want that hour or two back. They were right and I wish I’d never read it.
Never read it, but the adaptation - a.k.a. “Cinematography: The Movie” is an amazing watch as long as you ignore the plot.
“The movie is good as long as you ignore the movie.”
They literally named the part of the movie that they appreciate.
