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There are many categories of books in this world- some are superb, some are good, some are mediocre, some are flat, some are bad... and some... some stand out as beacons of poor taste. Needless to say, this thread is about the last one. Feel free to post rants about any book you read that was bad enough to warrant warning off others from reading it or sharing the pain.

This is an example of what I mean.
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... hilit=Dune

I'm going to my rant about the Ishmael series (A trilogy of Ishmael, The Story of B and My Ishmael).

One of the main characters is a intelligent gorilla. Who is telepathic. And is cooking up a method to save the world. And works with the anti-Christ. To destroy human civilization as we know it. And gets a 12 year old girl to go to the Congo in order to get let him slip into the country and meet up with wild gorillas.

Sadly, I am not going to go after the oddness of the plot due to the fact that I have no taste and bigger fish to fry- specifically, the books horribly, horribly, horribly broken Aesop.

Feel free to add your own reviews.

All the Ian Slater WW3 books.. and all his other books too no doubt, reading the descriptions is warning enough. Thank god I didn’t pay for them but the WW3 series was so bad I had to keep reading to see how much dumber he could get. Sometimes I think the author actually does know his shit, and DELIBERATELY made EVERY technical reference dead wrong just to laugh at everyone he sold a book too… but somehow I think the truth is morel likely that he’s a retard and had fabricated credentials.

Radar guided torpedoes, and no that doesn't come up once, it comes up like a dozen times. I don't even need to go further then that.

Gentlemen, behold! (Disclaimer: I have never actually read this, but the summary alone makes it seem truly truly horrible).

Sookie Stackhouse is having man trouble. Her vampire boyfriend, Bill, has been distant and inattentive lately. Then he announces that he is going on a business trip, which clearly is more than it seems. After a werewolf tries to abduct Sookie at work, Bill's boss, Eric, tells her that Bill fell under the sway of his--Bill's, that is--ex, a sexy vamp named Lorena, and has been kidnapped. Eric wants Sookie's help in getting Bill back, and despite her hurt over Bill's betrayal, Sookie agrees to go to Jackson, Mississippi, to find her wayward lover. Eric has persuaded Alcide, a dashing werewolf, to get Sookie access to Josephine's, aka Club Dead, the local hangout of Jackson's supernatural element. In between dodging kidnappers, the advances of amorous Eric, and her growing feelings for Alcide, Sookie has to find out who kidnapped Bill and figure out a way to rescue him. With some droll touches--Elvis, now a vampire, is Sookie's faithful guard --Club Dead is ideal for readers who like their vampire fiction light, humorous, and fast-paced.

Although, somehow, HBO's True Blood series (based upon the Stackhouse stories) is actually a lot of fun. Most likely thanks to Alan Ball.

I admire youse guys' sticktuitiveness with the horrible books. If I find that I'm reading trash, I usually don't bother finishing it.

Kanastrous wrote:Although, somehow, HBO's True Blood series (based upon the Stackhouse stories) is actually a lot of fun. Most likely thanks to Alan Ball.

I stopped watching after five episodes because it was boring as shit.

JLTucker wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:Although, somehow, HBO's True Blood series (based upon the Stackhouse stories) is actually a lot of fun. Most likely thanks to Alan Ball.

I stopped watching after five episodes because it was boring as shit.

Not that you found it boring, of course, but in some objective, quantifiable way that's intrinsically what it *is.*

Kanastrous wrote:Although, somehow, HBO's True Blood series (based upon the Stackhouse stories) is actually a lot of fun. Most likely thanks to Alan Ball.

I had no idea it was ever turned into a television series. Quite frankly I find this incredibly frightening. . .but then again they did make Twilight into a movie. . .

General Zod wrote:

Kanastrous wrote:Although, somehow, HBO's True Blood series (based upon the Stackhouse stories) is actually a lot of fun. Most likely thanks to Alan Ball.

I had no idea it was ever turned into a television series. Quite frankly I find this incredibly frightening. . .but then again they did make Twilight into a movie. . .

I hadn't heard of the books, although I really liked what Ball did with Six Feet Under. I don't know how closely the show follows the books; to the degree it's enjoyable that might be because it, well, doesn't. It's constantly skirting silliness, but so far (for me, anyway) it's managed to not entirely fall in.

Authors who suck and why they suck:

William Shatner's Kirk-wanking 'Star Trek' stories. Why is it necessary to downright lobotomize the TNG cast so Kirk will look good in comparison?

Anne Rice and her vampire stories. Really, the Queen of the Damned wants to kill off men because they're warmongers, with the exception of a small group of sperm factories? Doesn't that make her a worse warmonger? And Lestat... helping the Devil... make people believe in Jesus Christ?!

L. Ron Hubbard. Schizophrenic nut downright condemns capitalism in 'Battlefield Earth', wanks Libertarianism and says all nations should become corporations in 'Mission Earth', and wanks monarchies and condemns usurpers and pretenders in the same damn dekalogy.

Tom Clancy after the Cold War ends. Really, Commie terrorists remain a threat despite the absence of Soviet support?

Dale Brown. Imagine George Lucas trying to become the next Tom Clancy, but forced to work with a much smaller budget.

Kevin J. Anderson's 'Star Wars' novels. He makes the same fucking mistake William Shatner makes, i.e., lobotomizing established characters (Luke) to make his self-insert look good (Kyp), but without the status of star of the series to let him get away with it.

With some droll touches--Elvis, now a vampire, is Sookie's faithful guard --Club Dead is ideal for readers who like their vampire fiction light, humorous, and fast-paced.

Dear God, just reading the description is awful. I'm not an expert, but isn't a vampire supposed to be... you know... a FUCKING MONSTER?

I mean, I like humane vampires and it can be an interesting element to a character, but holy shit, since when is shagging a walking corpse that drinks blood considered sexy?

Zixinus wrote:I mean, I like humane vampires and it can be an interesting element to a character, but holy shit, since when is shagging a walking corpse that drinks blood considered sexy?

Vampires are immortal; as long as they have blood, they can keep themselves looking young and beautiful. Who isn't tempted by immortal youth and beauty?

Close contact with their room-temperature flesh could be a little bit creepy.

The more I hear the more it seems like Ball just too the basic premise of the books, and ran with it.

The recent Clive Cussler books. The Oregon Files, oh my god... Each piece of crap gets worse and worse. I think ghostwriting must be at work here.

Excuse me while I curl up into a ball on the floor.

24 novels are also pretty shitty and farfetched.

Pelranius wrote:The recent Clive Cussler books. The Oregon Files, oh my god... Each piece of crap gets worse and worse. I think ghostwriting must be at work here.

Excuse me while I curl up into a ball on the floor.

Does he use more or less self inserts in order to save his protagonist as a deus ex?

Michael Z Williamson's The Weapon. Seriously creepy lolbertarian wank. See my review of it here.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

This gets a special note because it's supposedly a "classic" of literature and is thus forced onto countless students who really should spend their time reading something more deserving. It's supposed to be something about unrequited love and usual romantic bullshit like that.

It's really just a story about some inbred country squire-types who have apparently no contact with the outside world and nothing to do except attack each other. Totally serious about the inbreeding. Cousins marrying first cousins nonstop because there are only like two families in their entire little world. Also I'm convinced that Heathcliff was actually Catherine's half brother, but that's a different thing. Angst, angst, angst, snipe, snipe, snipe, whine, whine, whine, then dramatically die for no reason, a little more angst, then cousins marry and everything's peachy again. Why is this supposed to be great literature? It was stupid. At best, it's a vapid romance novel without a sex scene, but vapid romance novels aren't held up as paragons of wondrous writing, except in this case.

Now that you remind me, Pride and Prejudice.

That book was so incredibly dull I just couldn't make myself read it. I ended up getting a poor grade on the quiz because I just couldn't do it. It was epic how totally I didn't give a damn about the characters or what was going on. I cared about it so little I'd forget who the characters were as I read, because I just couldn't give a flip about any of it.

Then my Prof was talking about Jane Austen's "gripping" writing style. I looked at him as if he'd gone completely crazy.

Jane Eyre also deserves a mention for having a subtle commentary on imperialism ... that consisted of an absolutely horrific Broken Aesop. I never thought I'd see an anti-imperialism argument that could manage to be so awesomely superdickerish.

There's one book I read called The Forging of the Shadows, if I recall correctly. I think it was written by one of those people who do the choose your own adventure books. I don't remember which one, though. I bought it because I felt like reading about an army of the undead, and this book had an army of the undead.

Anyway, there was this fire wizard, who'd accidentally burnt his face off, so he was constantly angsting about that, and to hide his shame he wore a mask... that looked exactly like his face. And then there was the prince, who wanted to go back so he could avenge the princess, of the city that the unded had taken over, and then he got there and discovered that the princess had been forced into prostitutin, and he was all, "WHORE! You should have killed yourself instead of suffering the indignity!" And the princess was all, "No."

The most hilarious bit was the bit with the leader of the army of the undead. They were all vamires, you see.The kind that turns you into a vampire just by killing you. They'd been feeding off of the population of this city for a while, so as you can imagine, the vampire-human ratio was becoming significantly lopsided. So the head vampire had all of these crazy sustainable biting ideas going on. So while all of the other vampires were ignoring him and just killing people left, right and centre without any concern for the future, and he was stuck in his palace, futilely screaming, "No! You must use leeches!"

The whole thing was written as though a high-school student had written it. Strangely enough, I quite enjoyed it, despite the fact that it was quite obviously crap. My housemate had the same opinion.

I mean, I like humane vampires and it can be an interesting element to a character, but holy shit, since when is shagging a walking corpse that drinks blood considered sexy?

At some point (I'm going to say Dracula, but someone else might know better), vampires were popularised as erotic cassanovas. Even the whole "drinking your blood" thing is often portrayed as an almost sexual experience. That actually makes a bit of sense, given that "drinking your blood" is also half of what a vampire needs to do to make new vampires.

My girlfriend just read Wuthering Heights, Mayabird. She brought it up after I mentioned how bad the writing is in Twilight.

Jane Austen's shit is terrible. I'm not going to defend myself against bullshit arguments that I'm sexist, though. I had to do enough of that in English class. Fucking professor...

Twilight is one of the worst books I have ever read myself. That author just needed a good editor, I thought. And then I realized, she needed a ghost-writer to make it decent. How can everyone be smouldering all the god damned time? I expected some fire eventually, but noooo, that would be wrong....

Why has nobody mentioned Goodkind, now the proud owner of a TV series (made by the same people who made Xena, but without the humor and with 5-minute long objectivist monologues instead, because Goodkind is Serious Business), and Richard's Thing that keeps rising at the sight of atrocities he and his buddies commit?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Thomas Hardy is the worst author I've ever read. Just consistently bad.

Terry Brooks - The Sword of Shannara. Blatant Tolkien ripoff with very poor characterization.

Phantasee wrote:My girlfriend just read Wuthering Heights, Mayabird. She brought it up after I mentioned how bad the writing is in Twilight.

Jane Austen's shit is terrible. I'm not going to defend myself against bullshit arguments that I'm sexist, though. I had to do enough of that in English class. Fucking professor...

Twilight is one of the worst books I have ever read myself. That author just needed a good editor, I thought. And then I realized, she needed a ghost-writer to make it decent. How can everyone be smouldering all the god damned time? I expected some fire eventually, but noooo, that would be wrong....

Hehehe, small world.

And speaking of authors who needed an editor: Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged could have been cut to half its size without losing anything except the annoying repetitious speeches. As much as I disagree with the moral of the story and her assumptions, there was actually an interesting speculative plot buried in the crap, and she made her point with just the stuff in the story without everybody having to speechify every three steps. Fifty straight fucking pages of fucking monologue.


And on to science fiction:
Richter 10. Arthur C. Clarke's name is on it, but I have serious doubts that he had anything to do with it aside from maybe tell the other author about the general idea he had. Partly because he was already well in decline when the book was written, and also partly because the book utterly sucks in totally different ways from Clarke's usual weaknesses. A search determines that it was some dude named Mike McQuay, whose novels I plan to never again read, ever, especially since I won't be tricked into reading them by reading some other author's name on it while a teenager.

But onto the story:
Kid's in earthquake. Kid's parents die in earthquake in an incredibly contrived situation. Kid hates earthquakes forever. Kid gets superpower to always sense when there's tectonic activity because the arm that got injured in the earthquake starts hurting. Wait, what?

It gets worse. And worse.

Now it's the future, way off in the year 2024 or something. The ozone layer is gone, Europe got asploded by Israel suiciding because Iran was invading or some shit and the magic nuclear cloud of DEATH is circling the world, two Chinese corporations (one of which is named Yo-Yu. I shit thee not) [at this point Marina ran away saying "Oh god, I've read enough already"] own the U.S. and are the two political parties, and EVIL MUSLIMS have taken over much of the world (like South America...buh) and the entire U.S. black population, which secedes from the U.S. by making the entire old Confederacy into a black Muslim state funded by growing cotton because they were pissed off because all these racist laws were passed to keep them from going outside at night and being forced to live in ghettos. [takes a break] Also England is now a U.S. state. And some other stupid shit.

Alright, so the kid is now the UBER SUE DOCTOR who is always right and now has super technology powers to predict earthquakes, which he calls EQs. And this makes no sense to me, as "earthquake" is two syllables and turning it into two letters still keeps it too syllables. It's not saving any time. It's like the writer was too lazy to type out "earthquake" every single time. Guess fucking what, dumbass: you're writing a book about a guy who predicts earthquakes. You will thus have to type "earthquake" a lot, even if the word starts to make no sense anymore because you see it too much. If you don't like it, write about nanite puppies or something.

Where was I...oh yeah, naturally, since UBER SUE DOCTOR is always right, everybody hates him and doesn't listen to him because it's against Allah, or because the writer is hardening everybody's brains so nobody listens to him. Except after the second New Madrid quake occurs right on schedule (real schedule, which didn't work before because their stupid technobabble was stupid at first) then everybody knows he's right. And then he's like "I can stop earthquakes and volcanoes forever!" And everybody's like, "How?" and he's like "Nukes!" And everybody's like "???" and he's like "Using nukes to spot-weld the tectonic plates together so they don't move anymore" and I'm like "first off, how is that going to stop volcanoes on hot spots?" and nobody else even asks that very basic simple question because they're all as stupid as the author.

But he gets the go-ahead and gets like Tsar Bomba x 9000 and starts doing his thing but then EVIL MUSLIM TERRORISTS jump in and go RAR! and destroy his project and kill his wife and son because they're EVIL!!!!

And then he starts a moon colony because some guy gives him a billion dollars and he forms it on the far side of the moon with four thousand people because humanity's going extinct everywhere else and they're going to be the last people to survive or something. This is directly stated by Uber Sue Doctor himself. Or maybe some holographic copy of himself. I dunno. The End!

(Note: I left a lot of stuff out. Believe me, that stuff only makes it worse. Like the characters. Horrible, stilted characters that I wanted to die.)

I nominate the novelization of Tom Clancy's Endwar. I got like 30ish pages into and threw it into the bin. The damn thing read like a poorly written fanfic.

General Zod wrote:Gentlemen, behold! (Disclaimer: I have never actually read this, but the summary alone makes it seem truly truly horrible).

The series isn't that bad, at least for light reading.

Zixinus wrote:Dear God, just reading the description is awful. I'm not an expert, but isn't a vampire supposed to be... you know... a FUCKING MONSTER?

I mean, I like humane vampires and it can be an interesting element to a character, but holy shit, since when is shagging a walking corpse that drinks blood considered sexy?

That's a rather annoying characteristic of much of the urban fantasy genre in general (though some series, such as the Dresden Files and the Kim Harrison novels, have vampires as both sexy and scary, and at least try to come up with a rational as to why that is so).

In the Stackhouse books, at least, there's at least something of a rationale - Sookie, being telepathic, hasn't been able to develop a relationship with a human (it's kind of hard to get intimate when you can constantly "hear" your partner's running commentary on your body or performance flaws); since she can't read the minds of vampires (and to a lesser extent that of the later-discovered shapeshifters) they're pretty much her best choice.


And I can't believe we've gotten this far without mentioning Anita Blake.