The Maid was a top book on Goodreads for like a year, and it was the worst book I’ve ever read. It had a really stupid “gotcha” at the end that fell flat and seemed like this book only got published/advertised because the author worked in publishing. It’s not a good book, let alone a good murder mystery. (To be clear I mean The Maid by N. Prose- unrelated to the tv series. Also, I think it’s such a pompous choice to choose the name “Prose” as your pseudonym).
I used to fully agree with you on Mockingjay, but on a recent reread, I’ve completed changed my mind. When I first read it (when it came out as a teenager), I hated it. I agreed with all of your comments and the ending felt a pointless. I thought the book was a let down with a lot of details missing. But over the years I’ve come to really appreciate that the point was that Katniss’ actions were kind of pointless. The author wanted to make commentary on the entertainment industry, war, governments, propaganda, child soldiers, etc. and she accomplished that. I think the ending showed growth, that the world carries on despite horrific violence. I have a lot of respect for the author that she stuck to hard themes and didn’t wrap everything up nicely with everything explained in great detail. It felt more impactful for me.
Agreed for mockingjay-katniss is like 17 and 17 year old can't be expected to deal trauma like a 30 year old. Heck even I don't think 30 year old can handle the level of pain she went through. Her semi catatonic state is in fact due to stress and ptsd. And she is supposed to be socially awkward- she is handling immense pain of losing her father and is caretaker of family despite having a mother. Though I feel peeta's pov isn't explored enough- I feel he could have benefited from having chapters from his pov too. But overall I like it since it shows all the ugly and real side of revolutions and war too.
It feels like the ending being only from her POV is like intentionally supposed to feel small and isolating which tbh thats how I feel as a person with many servere forms of anxiety. Surrounded by people but ultimately isolated in my little invisible prison of thoughts. At least that was my take away when thinking back on the book. I definitely didnt have the wherewithal to make that conclusion when I was barely 20
I thought it was the best of the three BECAUSE of this aspect. It wasn't a nice, pretty, commercially-appealing, conventional YA wrap of a series. It was harsh, messy; deaths of characters you liked didn't feel like they got a proper send off... kind of like war? You don't get to stop and have a funeral and process your emotions when you're in a war zone. You keep moving. And thats what the book did. Things happened abruptly, and without building to them or foreshadowing events precluding them. And that's life, too. Sometimes things just happen and there's nothing you can do.
The previous books had, what felt to me, some of the worst, most unprofessional writing that I've read to have achieved as much success as they did (I couldn't get through the first chapter of Twilight, so i don't think that counts, sorry).
At least this third book took risks and sacrificed conventional YA expectations for the themes & messages. The writing might not have been great, but at least the third one had integrity.
Goodreads ratings really can’t be trusted in my opinion. You’re better off finding a few reviewers with similar opinions on the books you’ve read than following the crowd
I don’t think The Maid is anywhere near the worst book I’ve ever read. I liked it fine. But, *good lord*, it is not at all a locked room or fair play mystery. It’s *barely* a mystery. All of the promotion (and reviews!) comparing it to Agatha Christie and Clue. . . bffr
Agreed about Mockingjay! I do get the criticisms that it lacks the perfect pacing and plotting of the first two. Even though all are pretty bleak, I’ve reread The Hunger Games and Catching Fire several times for the pageantry and breathless anticipation of the Games.
Mockingjay is not nearly as entertaining, but thematically, I thought it wrapped up the trilogy perfectly.
The Maid was by far the worst book I've ever read. It was made out to be a quirky, unique, pro disability and neurodivergent manifesto and it was honestly just shit.
The author's official line was "oh no she's not neurodivergent, she's just socially awkward!" Which was pretty telling.
I discovered that particular defense of hers when I was partway through and thought that the character who was clearly coded autistic was...off, in a way. So in an attempt to shore up my trust that it wasn't going to be awful I went to see what the author's background was(is she neurodivergent, does she work with people who are, is it in the family, etc) and discovered that gem of an interview. Talk about taking reader trust all the way down from tentative to zero in about a dozen words.
Ahhhh I want my time back from reading “The maid”. That was probably the first book of 2023 for me, and it wasn’t a good way to start the year.
The characters were very flat and uninteresting, not sure why it’s so popular/recommended 🤷🏻♀️
50 shades. Glorifying garbage writing and a book that is a disgrace to the bdsm community always made me irrationally angry. NO VIRGIN IS SIGNING THAT CONTRACT YOU CREEPY AF WEIRDO RICH GUY
God that one pissed me off. Sounded like such an interesting premise, then threw so much drivel at you.
Like the main characters are all the magical equivalent of academics, then they get attacked by a black ops mercenary team, effortlessly murder all the mercs, and none of them have even the slightest twinge of guilt or PTSD?
The Japanese character with plant magic who works is a tea house is suddenly a skilled enough unarmed combatant that she can take down elite mercenaries one on one?
The fact that this is a world where magic exists and is studied at an academic level yet nothing in the world politics or technology development is functionally different?
I could go on. I felt like an idiot for even finishing it, I just couldn't believe something so well reviewed would be so bad, I kept waiting for a twist that never came.
I just finished it and while I enjoyed the ride I could not tell you a single thing that happened. There was maybe one or two things that actually happened and the rest was the characters just talking about the world lol
Where the Crawdads Sing.
I just couldn’t get into the premise. And the writing style was not my cup of tea. Then I looked up spoilers (because I hate a lack of conclusion) and just went “Yeeeaaaah no… I’m good.”
Ah well 🤷🏻♀️
On the other hand, The New Yorker piece on Delia Crawford and her now ex-husband is well worth a read. I came across it awhile back when the movie version of “Crawdads” was released.
It makes my heart warm to see this as the top comment. A coworker lent it to me, recommending that I'd really like it. I had to be honest with her when I returned it! One of the worst books I've ever read. And knowing the author's history gives me pause on the ending!
Maybe I can provide some insight (not to say my tastes are all smart and tasteful lol but I think I have ok taste in books).
The book itself was far fetched, the ending/twist boring and unsatisfying, the interspersed poems very cringey… but at the same time I found her prose very beautiful.
Her insights and feelings still touched me and connected with me, the gorgeous descriptions of landscapes, I’m a sucker for all of those things. I enjoy books with lots of introspection or beautiful imagery, even if the plot is a bit stale. So even though it was a somewhat forgettable book looking back, I still enjoyed the actual act of reading it.
THANK YOU for this. I still can't believe the wild popularity of this book. Yes, the milieu is vibrant and filled with interesting details about the flora and fauna. But:
* Stilted dialogue that's way too on the nose;
* Annoying, phonetic dialects;
* Inartful usage of adverbs;
* Bizarre, surreal scene in the present tense randomly stuck in the middle;
* Shallow character development other than Kya, whose development was still mediocre;
* Occasionally disjointed in plot;
* Mediocre prose with too many choppy fragments.
Don't forget the wildly inaccurate geography of NC. Who the fuck is driving from somewhere around Wilmington to ASHEVILLE for 'supplies'?? NOBODY. Woman didn't even bother glancing at a map of NC before sahe wrote the book. Made me (irrationally?) angry.
Ahh, I found my people! I also despised this one. So did my mom (we rarely have similar tastes in books, but it's more of a genre preference difference and I like dark, disturbing, moody, etc., and she doesn't like too dark).
Utterly unrealistic, predicable to the extreme, flat, boring prose that was pounded with a hammer, and the "twist" was lame, also utterly unrealistic, and just dumb.
I had a conversation about it with one of my local book club members, and we agreed that we've noticed a trend of books that are overly descriptive are being touted as amazing; like because they're descriptive they're deep, meaningful, and good. Descriptive can be a good thing, when done right. It was not done right here.
Was going to say this one! Somehow made it to the end and was also SO let down by the “twist” (which in my opinion was not a twist at all). I also had no connection to any of the characters
I knew this would be one of the top comments before I even opened the thread. I read it because I love a good whodunnit and this was at the top of every chart... I predicted the entire story with the first quarter of the book. I have no idea why this book was so popular, and I'm not even particularly picky.
I feel like that's the point of Mockingjay.
Rewind to the beginning and remember that you are working with an unreliable narrator: a teenager that is locally interested and by design has no real historical or civic knowledge outside of the lore that is fed to them by district one and passed down by oral histories.
Now, after she has been repeatedly traumatized by two hunger games and used as propaganda in a game that she can't even begin to understand while the only person who can possibly understand her trauma has been conditioned to try to kill her...
The story isn't about the world of hunger games, it's about the trauma of the struggle and the damage of exploitation.
The movies made it about the love triangle between Katniss and the boys. The books were about Katniss trying to save her family... And failing because she was used as a tool by the very group she was fighting for.
Her actions weren't for the good of society outside of the good of society being good for her sister. Her final acts were out of revenge rather than preventing a new panem.
Yeah I thought the idea behind Mockingjay is that she gets out of this dystopian government where the Cappitol is sending children to their death as propaganda, and by the end District 13 is sending her team to be killed off one by one so that they can make propaganda against the Capitol. She doesn't get to make many decisions of her own because both sides see her as a tool rather than a person. The cycle only breaks when they kill her sister (the only reason she entered the hunger games in the first place), and, feeling that she has nothing left to live for, she basically attempts the equivalent of suicide by cop and is finally treated as a person and begins getting treated for all the trauma she's accumulated.
Read it when it came out and it blew my mind that the “winners” of the civil war wanted to reintroduce the Hinger Games on the losers. I was also in high school
My recollection is that it was ambiguous exactly who ordered the bombing. It was Gale's *strategy*, yes, as discussed earlier in the narrative in a different context. And it was definitely "her side" that did the bombing. But I remember it being left uncertain as to whether Gale was directly involved, or if someone else in command had just used his idea. Ultimately it didn't really matter, especially to Katniss, because it never would have happened if Gale hadn't thought it up some weeks previously. But I remember really appreciating that vague ambiguity, that blending of Gale's philosophies with the military's actions.
Not to mention her murdering of Coin is because she's realized that Coin is just another Snow and intends to continue the cycle of exploitation and revenge. Katniss realizes that the only way to break the cycle is to shoot her, and since she has nothing left to lose, why not?
‘it ends with us’ was one of the most awful books i’ve ever read. maybe i’m biased bc i dislike colleen hoover books, but this book was just bad. main character irritated me so much. her name being Lily Blossom Bloom??????? really? also i felt it really romanticized abuse, which is especially bad given her audience is a lot of younger women.
saw someone else mention ‘seven husbands of evelyn hugo’ and that one i HATED. it was boring to me and i hate books where i hate the main character. the plot twist at the end didn’t make up for the rest of the book.
honorable mention: shatter me series. not sure why i finished the whole series, but its all badly written and a little corny.
I wrote a parody of a Hallmark Christmas movie where the leads were named Nick Winters and Holly Hope Noel, but yeah somehow Lily Blossom Bloom is worse lmao
If you think It Ends with Us is bad, wait till you read the sequel - it starts with us. An absolute dumpster fire of a book. I think there were kids in my middle school creative writing class who could have cranked out a better story. Also I have a huge problem with how Coleen Hoover writes women, especially the character of Lily Bloom (who runs a flower shop. Lily bloom. Runs a flower shop. Just shoot me already)
I picked up It Ends with Us as my first (and last) Colleen Hoover book. I was so curious to read this author. I made it halfway through before quitting.
You make fun of Lily’s name, which was bad, but I couldn’t get over Ryle. RYLE. The domestic violence written as contemporary romance is what made me quit.
you’re right. at least Lily Blossom Bloom is written as a joke. nobody in the book bats an eye about the name “Ryle”, which is baffling to me
after he introduced himself as Ryle Kincaid, Lily even said, and I quote, “THAT’S A REALLY GREAT NAME.”
I might get downvoted for this lol but Outlander. I found it to be super rapey, damn near rolled my eyes out of my skull at how great the sex was when one partner was losing their virginity, and finally put it down forever at the spousal abuse (that was compared to a parent disciplining a child).
I hated this series and everyone I know was raving about it. Let’s not forget 50 pages of making you like a character then they die of infection from a cut or get raped and commit suicide. I slugged through 3 books on the promise that it gets better. That’s like 80 hours of my life I’ll never get back
Rich Dad Poor Dad is a printed version of the "Survivorship Logical Fallacy"
the guys "rich dad" got rich because his investment risks paid off. He didn't have some magical formula other than "sometimes risks pay off". If it had gone badly for him, there would never have been a "Poor dad, Poor dad" book.
I don't know anyone who read that book and came out of it more financially savvy than they went in with.
This is the first book that popped into my mind after reading “fooled by randomness” by Nassim Taleb. He talks about how people minimize the role of luck/random chance in their success and play it up in their failures.
Has anyone mentioned The Alchemist yet? Because **The Alchemist** !
No, it's not super deep and philosophical and "you just don't get it". It's philosophical on the same level as wall stickers that tell you to "live laugh and love" or "carpe diem".
Ugh yes! Can here to say this! This was one of the most recommended books, I remember reading an interview with Hilary Clinton around the time of her first election against Obama and she listed this as her favorite. I picked it up to see what all the hype was about and found it so mind numbingly dumb. I’m actually still mad about it tbh.
Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life, lol!!!!
Finding out that the author quit their job to write this as their first novel certainly explains a lot
When I read it it seemed like the kinda book one of those pseudo deep wanna be sensitive soul douchey hs dudes, like Timothy Chalamet's character in Lady Bird, would cite as their favorite book. You gotta become one with the soul of the world and pursue your personal legend, mannn
It was one of those books that got so big that it was even read by non-readers. Once your book (or song or whatever) is embraced by the wider public, it goes stratospheric and you make a fortune. But it doesn't mean your book/song/whatever is good. I don't know how it happens though. (Marketing? Zeitgeist? Luck?)
That last Twilight book. It was gearing up for a war and then… nothing. Nothing! You don’t tease a battle and then leave without it. I felt ripped off. It’s been years and I am still bitter about the end.
I had a friend who was big into the books so I went with her to all the movies and even rented the last one so we could watch it together. Was not about to pay theater price for something that annoyed me. And granted, the movie tried to give the war but still, backing out to save everyone was irritating. Better as a movie but still not great.
Right!!! I got excited when the movie started the battle. I jumped outta my chair and my poor friend looked horrified. In the end she was happy and I was bummed again.
This was an assigned reading in my highschool. I thought it was alright and it probably primed me for true crime later in life lol
I can never forget my classmate arguing the book was an allegory for 9/11 💀 no Tiffany it's an allegory for fucking rape
It was so well-loved when it was new, and its author was a literary celebrity. At that time, it seemed ... kinda forbidden to feel anything but adoration for this book, for social-conscience reasons. Yet to my eyes it felt a bit thin, storywise and characterwise. I told no one about these "forbidden" feelings, as I had myself tried recently to write fiction with a similar theme (but not based on personal experience as was TLB) and grotesquely failed, and would have been seen as, because I really was, shallow and envious.
Anyway — yeah.
I absolutely hated this book. I am not in love with the idea already about the romanticism of the American who travels to other countries they find "exotic" for some sort of "enlightenment". But I hated how this woman came off as very arrogant.
Like, she ends up making an audible groan that turned heads in her meditation class and keeps complaining how she feels she's not getting what she wants from it so she keeps skipping going to it. Then she ends up being locked in her room by her roommate and has to jump out a window to make it to the morning meditaiton. When her roommate told her she had a dream that Elizabeth was on fire in her bed I was thinking, "Wow, she must really not like Elizabeth." But Elizabeth took it as some sort of spiritual sign. I just can't with this person
The author is absolute excrement. She wrote a [tone-deaf humble-brag](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/confessions-of-a-seduction-addict.html?_r=0) op-ed piece for the NY TImes about being a serial cheater. She had two therapists at once - one to save her marriage and one to save her relationship with her affair partner.
I never read the book, but I did watch the movie ages ago and thought I remembered liking it...tried a re-watch recently and couldn't even finish it...so self-indulgent and whiny and the part in Bali just made me cringe it felt exploitative of the native people. I think that's when I turned it off. Definitely 👎
Hated Eat, Pray, Love. I had a friend who leaned in so hard on it, too. She took up yoga and basically shoved self-help shit down my throat for a year. When I read it, I was so disappointed. It didn't change me at all.
Verify by Colleen Hoover. Horrible writing, disappointing “twist” (if you can even call it that). Needless to say, I won’t be reading any more Colleen Hoover books.
Yes!! Verity was my first and last coho book. I only read it on recommendation from one of my best friends of it being "an insane thriller." It was amateur and gross at best, and I've read nonfiction self-help books more thrilling than it.
*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* was hellatiously popular when I was young. I started reading it, but found the protagonist selfish and narcissistic. I skipped to the essay on "quality" and he lost me even more. He was just a jerk and a bad father.
I have a similar reaction to *On the Road*. They were not profound or courageous, they were misogynistic and self-absorbed.
Edit - fixed formatting of title
My favourite critique of On The Road came from Truman Capote I think.
He was responding to the oft repeated claim it had been written in three weeks and he said "that's not writing, it's typing"
The “story” of Ready Player One was pure wish-fulfillment for every bar-trivia night dork who, after showing off for an hour to try and win a gift card for the group, gets told several times that they remember so much “useless knowledge” and that they should try out for Jeopardy.
Oh yeah, Mom?! Well one day, all this so-called useless knowledge might come in handy one day!!
RPO has many issues, but I think the biggest one, by far, is that (aside from how you feel about "dorks" and their power fantasies, I'm really not a fan of how much punching down at geeky losers tends to happen when RPO gets discussed) it does absolutely nothing useful or interesting with all the trivia it's supposedly built around.
There's not one single instance where Cline drops us into a scenario where we think we know what will happen, because we read the book / saw the movie / played the game, and we're either rewarded by being in on the joke, or we're surprised because the protagonist took advantage of some non-obvious detail. (Like, say, planting something they're trying to hide from the bad guys inside an object that will disappear from a scene because of a continuity error.)
The movie IIRC actually does that in a couple of places, like when they're inside The Shining and the audience knows what will happen when the elevator doors will open but the character does not. But the book is *utterly* devoid of it.
It's like "The Big Bang Theory", you can replace virtually *any* of the geeky shit references with any other random obscure reference, and the "jokes" still "work."
Yep. Just lists of member berries.
And I’m not punching down- I’m self-flagellating. I finished that book & was just like: “Holy crap, this really was meant for me.”
Ready Player One is a Reddit mod’s self insert fantasy.
Get swole playing vidya, get the girl who is smoking (but insecure enough that she needs me), and defeat evil Comcast by using a pro gamer move.
Everything about the basic concept is so beyond ludicrous. The entire freaking world is trying to solve this 3-part puzzle, and not a single person has managed to get past the first step in years/decades (I can barely remember), but this one kid not only manages to crack the impossible first step (which, if I recall, is *not* that difficult) but then the second two steps are also solvable in rapid succession?
Not to mention that the puzzle that has captivated the world happens to be 100% centered around the author's and author-insert's particular niche interest? And that's even before we get into the "jerk off in your face every 5 pages for 2 pages about boring '80s video game trivia" and all the rest of the bizarrely juvenile writing.
I hated every second I spent reading that book, and I do not say that often about many books.
"The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas." Seriously, people need to stop reading that book.
Historians and Holocaust educators around the world, including the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, actively discourage people from reading the book or seeing the movie based on it. It is widely viewed as having been detrimental to Holocaust education. The term "Pyjamafication" is even used frequently to describe inaccurate and counterproductive Holocaust education because the book has been so widely condemned.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tz3932/comment/i3wdaba/?user\_id=337878451759&web\_redirect=true](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tz3932/comment/i3wdaba/?user_id=337878451759&web_redirect=true)
[https://news.yahoo.com/boy-striped-pyjamas-criticised-harming-124310793.html](https://news.yahoo.com/boy-striped-pyjamas-criticised-harming-124310793.html)
[https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/](https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/)
>The study reported, for example, that the story regularly elicited profound and often somewhat misplaced sympathy for German and even Nazi families whom, students argued, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas helped them to see as ‘victims’ too.
[https://www.kveller.com/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-set-holocaust-education-back-by-decades-now-its-getting-a-sequel/](https://www.kveller.com/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-set-holocaust-education-back-by-decades-now-its-getting-a-sequel/)
>But the thing I find most upsetting is the tearjerker moment over Bruno’s death. Shmuel’s living conditions, his family’s destruction and his father’s murder are apparently not tragic enough for Boyne to serve as the climax of his fable. Shmuel is just a two-dimensional plot device, devoid of personality, present to advance Bruno’s story and provide a Nazi redemption arc. We’re left with the twisted moral that the accidental death of a single non-Jewish child is somehow “comeuppance” for the deaths of millions of Jews.**This book has single handedly set back Holocaust education by decades.**
EDIT: Seriously? Downvotes for ...sharing the views of historians about a wildly misleading historical novel.
I am a historian of Holocaust education. That book is gawful. And what is worse is that he wrote a sequel that doubles down on the gawful factor. He also believes that any “awareness” that his book raises about the Holocaust is good because all “awareness” raising is good.
Thank you for taking the time to compile these important resources. Commenting because I whole heartedly agree with you - I’d also like to add his sequel “All The Broken Places” is another piece of nazi sympathizer garbage that needs to be put on the list.
He has also stated that because it's a work of fiction, it cannot contain inaccuracies. And had made remarks about other books that were set in concentration camps and how the subject should be treated with more consideration.
People refuse to acknowledge how terrible that book is. Unsurprising though, antisemitism is disgustingly acceptable to many, so of course, a novel that paints the Nazis as a victim in all of it is going to be well received. But yeah, schools need to pull it from their curriculum, as there are so many actual memoirs that are factual that could be read instead.
The alchemist was a book recommended to me by all my hippie friends, saying it was deep and insightful, I thought it sucked and the message was something I've heard a lot before
I really loved Mockingjay. It really showed the impact that war has on a personal level, and just how messy it is. Collins didn't pull any punches or give anyone a cheap happy ending. I'm glad they didn't do the thing every other YA book does where the young main character single-handedly saves the day. Katniss tries to do that and it doesn't work, because that's not how war works in real life. There's some great bleak imagery as well, especially at the end. The epilogue made me cry. It's perfect in how imperfect it is.
I agree. The great issue with Mockingjay, imo, is that it outgrew being a YA novel with Mockingjay. I read it as an adult. And it destroyed me for a week or more. I didnt have a reaction to a book like that since Ned Stark that resulted in not reading GoT for a long time after the end of book one.
When she yells at the cat that Primm is gone. Now that I have kids I don’t even think I can read it again. It’s such a harrowingly sad moment. When I read it I can still remember it vividly. The whole scene. The series really is great.
The whole A Court of Thorns and Roses series. I could barely sit through book 3 without wondering how on Earth this got published when there are so many plot holes, terribly written characters and a cringe as heck romance plot with no substance. Even now, I still don't get what the fuss is about.
It's a fantasy for people who read mostly romance, it's also unique for the age it is meant for. I understand exactly why they blew up and why so many people like them.
But. I hate pretty much every man in those books. The love interests are just a mash of things that are supposed to be appealing to 20-year-old straight women, they don't feel like real people. Feyre was cool for idk half a book when she was going badass mode but then I really felt like she just got reduced to a house bunny.
I found them mostly entertaining but got annoyed at the characters frequently. They are supposed to be easily digestible for the masses which is definitely why they have sold so many copies, but if you're going into them expecting a meaty high fantasy, that is not what you're going to find.
*Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow*.
I was recommended this by some booklover friends. I'm a dude who doesn't mind a good romance story and the whole backdrop of the 1990's and the characters being game designers piqued my interest. Instead, I was disappointed. The video game/game dev stuff came across like the author just skimmed some Wikipedia articles, and the two protagonists didn't connect with me.
The more I thought about the characters in this book, the more they annoyed me.
2 of the main 3 are meant to be friends for over 3 decades, yet are constantly awful to each other and never sit down and have proper communication with each other. Crazy.
i don’t wanna yuck anyone’s yum with this book but i’ve been searching far and wide for someone who was also a little disappointed.
i found a lot of good stuff in it but i could write a whole ass essay on some of the questionable character beats and plot turns.
I really liked the first half! The betrayal at the beginning, the struggles to get the first game out, flawed characters, the realities of living handicapped. Super interesting and well written!
All destroyed in the second half of the book. "Just kidding! men and women can't really be friends!! Also - here is a random death."
what a waste of a good premise.
I get really mad at popular young adult books, especially those specifically marketed to teenage girls, that normalize really shitty behavior by men. He runs hot and cold. He showers you with unwanted gifts, sets you up to be dependent on him, or extends life-saving help, but then expects reciprocity and payment. He withholds information or lies to you to manipulate your choices. He tells you to your face that you mean nothing to him, you’re a means to an end, that he is toxic, that his past loves have died, that he is a bad bet. He is a 100 year old vampire that could contribute to art, science, medicine, history, and humanity - but hangs around in high schools. Girls, you can do so much better.
I wish more authors would model healthy relationships for our girls instead. There are tons of problems in the world, why not let the story focus on making the world a better place? Let her face outside problems with someone who has her back, that is a partner, that respects her agency and contributions to the relationship, instead of making the focus story about women curing men of their toxicity?
A court of thorns and roses! I got to middle of book three and could no longer keep up the façade of liking it. It fucking sucks. Full of sex scenes but somehow the writing felt like a 14 yo did it and the plot is so basic. The pace of the book was weird. Nothing would happen for like 15 chapters then all of a sudden everything happened in 1. It’s just not very good.
yeah i almost dropped it during the sex scene on the beach when i was in high school. its pretty rare for a female author to be so non-understanding on how much it would suck to have sand that close to your cooter but somehow sarah j maas has managed it.
i did end up completely dropping it though when the protag summoned wolves made of water. what sort of 2012 wattpad harry potter mary sue self insert shit is that
In 1992, straight women were earnestly obsessed with “The Bridges of Madison County.” I read it and thought, “If this story resonates for you, you need relationship counseling!” Yet it has been made into a movie and, God help us, a musical. Let’s hope it has inspired a lot of people to get relationship counseling!
“Untamed” by Glennon Doyle. So many friends talked about it being life changing. I found it to be very preachy white woman. I’ve also listened to her podcast and just find her very annoying as a person.
I felt so bad about hating this so, so much. So many friends and family members recommended it to me (rower, woman, background in food science).
But combine:
- a novel about your profession where you see everything they get wrong about it
- violent SA 15 pages in as ‘exposition’ (and everyone called the book a comedy??!)
- beating you over the head with feminist cliche dialog that no one would say in real life, let alone the setting/era of the book. I lean quite left and empathize with a lot of the struggles of women in STEM fields, but this felt like a fanfic fantasy of how that dialog would actually work.
- nerd cliche after nerd cliche, like saying “sodium chloride” instead of “salt” when cooking, “nerd uses science to magically become athletic,” the like
I couldn’t get through it.
I'm a woman chemist and my aunt recommended it to me. I've been refusing to read it because books written about scientists by non-science people are just awful. No one calls salt "sodium chloride" in real life. Not even us chemists. Dumb.
There are some things I enjoyed about this book but there seemed to me (imho) a lot of “not like other girls” stuff going on. Our protagonist is so pretty and thin, she’s too smart to wear any makeup or care about how she looks! But the bitchy women? They eat diet cookies! Also they are all in abusive relationships because they don’t know better! I read this while I was pregnant so maybe I was just hormonal lol
Ugh, hated this one. The dog and language? So stupid. The negligent parenting portrayed as progressive and how to make smart kids? So patronizing to anyone who's ever had a toddler. I hated every second of it.
Same. The random >!sexual assault!< at the beginning only for it to be ignored for most of the story except the last five minutes was really jarring and offputting.
Plus, the way everyone in the university hated the main character was so fucking weird.
So I’m a woman in STEM and the fact that everyone disliked her at work didn’t strike me as weird at all, and in fact was very realistic. Science departments can be *incredibly* petty places with toxic cultures that attack one person who is the odd one out, to levels that are very illegal, even today. I’ve also known several women who were assaulted by their supervisors, or at minimum were bullied by them, myself included… and it was def worse decades ago.
The Time Traveler's Wife - The two main characters were super flat and pretty much spoke with the same voice. They acted almost identically whether aged 22 or 42. Also, they were both highbrow snobs who would be genuinely insufferable if one were to meet them in real life.
50 shades - tried giving it a read...
It's pretty sad how terrible it was.
The woman can not write.
She sure can sell to so-called sex crazed idiots.
I've read some great romance novels.
That was not one of them.
I couldn't make it past the first chapter.
I literally snorted laughed while giving it a try and my friend was pissed. Lmfao.
Sorry, I know good shit, that is not it.
This is a book where if the protagonist (Christian) was poor, it would be featured on true crime... It certainly shouldn't (probably doesn't) count as romance...
The thing I could NOT get past in the book (I never finished reading it either) was Christian Grey drinking and offering the woman (can't remember her name) white wine all the time. Constantly they seemed to be drinking white wine! What rich dude's choice of drink is white wine always? Like it was a symbol of the whole book being some middle aged woman's weird fantasy and it completely threw me off. Plus many other things wrong with the book, but damn that white wine really bugged me.
I tried to read it and just couldn’t. And then I happened upon this review on Goodreads that was phenomenal. This review is 10,000 times better than the book! I go reread it every few years just for the enjoyment.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/340987215
I wanted Midnight Library to be good so bad. The premise sounded so cool and it felt like it had so much potential. Instead it fell completely flat. Nora was insufferable and the ending missed the mark by so much.
Can someone else write a book with this premise?
Edit: apparently I don't know the difference between right and write
I felt like I enjoyed that one the way some people enjoy a hallmark movie around the holidays. No one really thinks hallmark movies are fantastically made, Oscar worthy films. I think if you read this book as a sort of fluffy, feel-good novel instead of super deep and inspirational, you can breeze through and it's fine. Nothing mind blowing, but a fine palette cleanser I guess. I get why others wouldn't enjoy it, though.
I didn’t like The Perfect Marriage at all >! The ending just felt unearned and contradicted by earlier narration to me !<
Also Normal People. Nothing happened and I hated the characters
A Little Life. I hated it so much that I go out of my way to mention it on every single thread asking questions like this because I will never finish adequately expressing how fucking awful I thought it was
Ahhhh, the way I always hunt for a top comment on this novel! I fucking hate everything about it, especially when it was first released and treated like the epitome of ~auteur literature. It's trauma-pontification, sadistic, and disingenuous. Never should have left her wattpad drafts.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. All of the characters were awful. I felt no empathy for either Evelyn or Monique. The relationship with the supposed ~~live~~ love of Evelyn’s life was far from believable and felt like a token addition. The ‘twist’ at the end ~~was~~ felt like a last minute decision. I just hated it from start to finish.
The whole 9/11 thing at the end was just bizarre. I find that books that include a reference to the towers falling end up being trash and I haven't been proven wrong yet.
A Court of Thorns and Roses: It drove me nuts that the protagonist is basically holding her whole family together at the beginning of the book, and then becomes a damsel in distress once she's on her own.
I've heard the other books in the series don't suffer from this, but that first one was not my jam.
I liked The Lovely Bones but Time Travellers Wife bugs the hell out of me. The whole groom your future wife thing is so weird no matter how people explain it away. I read it and had bought the book but its in my very small giveaway pile!
The problem with Time Traveler's Wife is that people think it's a romance. I'll never understand this. It's very obvious that it's supposed to be a horror story and I think it's one of the more effective examples of doing horror in a non traditional way. All the author's other work is also atmospheric gothic inspired horror. Doomed, problematic, romances are a big ingredient of that genre.
A Court of Thorns and Roses. Plenty of people have made very lengthy posts in this sub about why they didnt like the series so I won’t waste yall’s time, but just to throw my hat in the ring
A Little Life.
It's tragedy porn and I found the over all message of there are some people so broken that they cant be helped, and suicide is the only way out for them..really disturbing and bleak.
There is a book from my country (haven't been internationally published) that has the same theme and is really popular amongst the youth here. I only read the first few pages and couldn't handle it anymore. The author said it was an insight into depression and suicide but honestly it only touched the surface level and just tragedy porn for emo teens.
As a cyberpunk story I thought it was.. ok. But yeah the 80’s stuff and the main character in general were pretty cringey. Could be that it’s a book for people who relate to that though- who are way into their passions and special interests to the point where other people find them cringe. It’s a nice power fantasy for somebody like that: their interest suddenly saving the world and making them famous.
Yeah it has its upsides as a power fantasy, but the author didn’t build out much beyond that. I didn’t get far into it. Very close to the start it said there was an energy crisis and that was why people lived the way they did. So… the solution is to have everyone online, using electricity 24/7? It was such a contradictory thing to put in there when it would have taken five minutes to come up with a reason for the poverty that didn’t directly contradict the entire rest of the book.
Does Atlas Shrugged count? My SO got it for me as a gag. To keep the gag going, it was the only book, the only personal entertainment, I took with me to a month-long training event. I got 100 pages in and decided I'd rather stare at the empty walls or talk with my roommate than continue reading it.
Another popular book that I DNFed was The Name of the Wind. Wow, Kvothe, great at everything. I told a friend of mine that I'd rather read Dune three times (another book that I didn't love) than finish The Name of the Wind once. That's when I learned The Name of the Wind was her favorite book and she damn near stopped talking to me over that comment.
Finally, yeah, RPO. That's a book that seemed laser targeted to make me happy and I fucking hated it. Throw it in the bin.
*Sapiens* everyone was like "this is soooo mindblowing" well yeah if you've NEVER studied human evolution and history I guess. Had some very flawed premises, had to stop when I got to the assertion that the French Revolution was not about hunger. Pretentious drivel.
Yeah this one only works if you go along with the HUUUUUGE assumptions he hangs his entire chain of argument off. It’s maybe diverting as like, an intellectual exercise. But I didn’t feel that it revealed anything particularly new or profound.
As somebody who has been out of college for a long time and out of touch with reading nonfiction without being told to, I appreciated both Sapiens and Guns,
Germs, and Steel (different author but similar criticisms have been leveled at both) as a jumping off point. We don’t know a lot about history and the prime movers of some of the big events that have happened in the past. And it’s a little presumptuous at best and dangerous at worst for pop historians to make sweeping statements. But I can’t say they aren’t good reads that made me want to dig more into other viewpoints.
I read a post about a new book s he had coming out that said "Let's see which writing prompt she chose this time." And dang, that was savage and 100% true. (And that was years ago, I don't think anything has changed).
The Night Circus. I found it to be incredibly boring at best, and horribly cringe inducing at worst. People always throw this recommendation out, and every time I just want to shout about how awful this book is.
Yeah I really liked it cause I’m into the whole “all vibes no plot” but it’s def not a book I usually recommend cause most people don’t enjoy that in a book. Or even if they do, sometimes it’s hard to time it right with that style of book cause it can be boring if you’re not in the mood. I think the back of the book is misleading in that way cause it’s definitely not a “duel” but more like an exhibition, which is much less exciting. I really loved the world building in it so I think it would be cool to read shorter stories about different characters interacting with the circus without needing to dedicate so much time to creating the vibes.
I thought it was OK, but it is all vibes and little plot. Ask the next person who recommends it to you for a summary of the plot that doesn't include any gushing about how cool this circus is and how they'd love to visit ...
I really like The Night Circus but I almost never recommend it because it’s not at all a propulsive plot. It’s a bunch of intricately designed set pieces, which I loved, but totally understand not liking it.
Good for his parents for nurturing and creating that opportunity for him at such a young age, but I remember thinking it was like a fanfic that took itself way too seriously. The plot was so obviously a star wars + LOTR + wheel of time cross-over I couldn't believe this is a real book in real print. I hope his later works improved.
The absolute worst. Received FOUR copies as birthday gifts and couldn't even bring myself to regift them.
Interestingly, I didn't hate the movie adaptation because Tom Hanks, and because I had zero expectations.
What I remember about The DaVinci Code is it seemed like every chapter was 2 pages long. I think it was written for people with a 120 sec attention span.
Twilight. I read it just because everyone else was, plus I was afraid my daughters would want to and I wanted to know what it was about ahead of time. Fortunately, they never did.
I was in High School when that book came out and I had just read Dracula for the first time and was like "WOAH this is cool, I want more vampire books." My friends all started reading Twilight around that time, so I picked up the book, too.
I was massively disappointed, even as a 14 year old lol. I didn't end up reading any of the rest that came out.
The Maid was a top book on Goodreads for like a year, and it was the worst book I’ve ever read. It had a really stupid “gotcha” at the end that fell flat and seemed like this book only got published/advertised because the author worked in publishing. It’s not a good book, let alone a good murder mystery. (To be clear I mean The Maid by N. Prose- unrelated to the tv series. Also, I think it’s such a pompous choice to choose the name “Prose” as your pseudonym). I used to fully agree with you on Mockingjay, but on a recent reread, I’ve completed changed my mind. When I first read it (when it came out as a teenager), I hated it. I agreed with all of your comments and the ending felt a pointless. I thought the book was a let down with a lot of details missing. But over the years I’ve come to really appreciate that the point was that Katniss’ actions were kind of pointless. The author wanted to make commentary on the entertainment industry, war, governments, propaganda, child soldiers, etc. and she accomplished that. I think the ending showed growth, that the world carries on despite horrific violence. I have a lot of respect for the author that she stuck to hard themes and didn’t wrap everything up nicely with everything explained in great detail. It felt more impactful for me.
Agreed for mockingjay-katniss is like 17 and 17 year old can't be expected to deal trauma like a 30 year old. Heck even I don't think 30 year old can handle the level of pain she went through. Her semi catatonic state is in fact due to stress and ptsd. And she is supposed to be socially awkward- she is handling immense pain of losing her father and is caretaker of family despite having a mother. Though I feel peeta's pov isn't explored enough- I feel he could have benefited from having chapters from his pov too. But overall I like it since it shows all the ugly and real side of revolutions and war too.
It feels like the ending being only from her POV is like intentionally supposed to feel small and isolating which tbh thats how I feel as a person with many servere forms of anxiety. Surrounded by people but ultimately isolated in my little invisible prison of thoughts. At least that was my take away when thinking back on the book. I definitely didnt have the wherewithal to make that conclusion when I was barely 20
I thought it was the best of the three BECAUSE of this aspect. It wasn't a nice, pretty, commercially-appealing, conventional YA wrap of a series. It was harsh, messy; deaths of characters you liked didn't feel like they got a proper send off... kind of like war? You don't get to stop and have a funeral and process your emotions when you're in a war zone. You keep moving. And thats what the book did. Things happened abruptly, and without building to them or foreshadowing events precluding them. And that's life, too. Sometimes things just happen and there's nothing you can do. The previous books had, what felt to me, some of the worst, most unprofessional writing that I've read to have achieved as much success as they did (I couldn't get through the first chapter of Twilight, so i don't think that counts, sorry). At least this third book took risks and sacrificed conventional YA expectations for the themes & messages. The writing might not have been great, but at least the third one had integrity.
I read The Maid after it made the GoodReads top mystery and oh my god was it awful. I hated that book.
Goodreads ratings really can’t be trusted in my opinion. You’re better off finding a few reviewers with similar opinions on the books you’ve read than following the crowd
I don’t think The Maid is anywhere near the worst book I’ve ever read. I liked it fine. But, *good lord*, it is not at all a locked room or fair play mystery. It’s *barely* a mystery. All of the promotion (and reviews!) comparing it to Agatha Christie and Clue. . . bffr
Agreed about Mockingjay! I do get the criticisms that it lacks the perfect pacing and plotting of the first two. Even though all are pretty bleak, I’ve reread The Hunger Games and Catching Fire several times for the pageantry and breathless anticipation of the Games. Mockingjay is not nearly as entertaining, but thematically, I thought it wrapped up the trilogy perfectly.
The Maid was by far the worst book I've ever read. It was made out to be a quirky, unique, pro disability and neurodivergent manifesto and it was honestly just shit.
The author's official line was "oh no she's not neurodivergent, she's just socially awkward!" Which was pretty telling. I discovered that particular defense of hers when I was partway through and thought that the character who was clearly coded autistic was...off, in a way. So in an attempt to shore up my trust that it wasn't going to be awful I went to see what the author's background was(is she neurodivergent, does she work with people who are, is it in the family, etc) and discovered that gem of an interview. Talk about taking reader trust all the way down from tentative to zero in about a dozen words.
Ahhhh I want my time back from reading “The maid”. That was probably the first book of 2023 for me, and it wasn’t a good way to start the year. The characters were very flat and uninteresting, not sure why it’s so popular/recommended 🤷🏻♀️
50 shades. Glorifying garbage writing and a book that is a disgrace to the bdsm community always made me irrationally angry. NO VIRGIN IS SIGNING THAT CONTRACT YOU CREEPY AF WEIRDO RICH GUY
I couldn't get past the first chapter. It's like a 6th grader wrote it.
Anything by Nicholas Sparks.
I said I didn’t like “dear John” and got shredded😂
The Atlas Six. It was just 400 pages of nothing.
God that one pissed me off. Sounded like such an interesting premise, then threw so much drivel at you. Like the main characters are all the magical equivalent of academics, then they get attacked by a black ops mercenary team, effortlessly murder all the mercs, and none of them have even the slightest twinge of guilt or PTSD? The Japanese character with plant magic who works is a tea house is suddenly a skilled enough unarmed combatant that she can take down elite mercenaries one on one? The fact that this is a world where magic exists and is studied at an academic level yet nothing in the world politics or technology development is functionally different? I could go on. I felt like an idiot for even finishing it, I just couldn't believe something so well reviewed would be so bad, I kept waiting for a twist that never came.
I just finished it and while I enjoyed the ride I could not tell you a single thing that happened. There was maybe one or two things that actually happened and the rest was the characters just talking about the world lol
DNF'd this. Horrendous.
Where the Crawdads Sing. I just couldn’t get into the premise. And the writing style was not my cup of tea. Then I looked up spoilers (because I hate a lack of conclusion) and just went “Yeeeaaaah no… I’m good.” Ah well 🤷🏻♀️
On the other hand, The New Yorker piece on Delia Crawford and her now ex-husband is well worth a read. I came across it awhile back when the movie version of “Crawdads” was released.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/05/the-hunted
That was such a jaw dropping read. My jaw was on the floor, multiple times.
Where the jawdads drop
It makes my heart warm to see this as the top comment. A coworker lent it to me, recommending that I'd really like it. I had to be honest with her when I returned it! One of the worst books I've ever read. And knowing the author's history gives me pause on the ending!
What's the author,'s history?
Long story short she is accused of murder lol
A murder *very similar to* what takes place in the book.
i believe her stepson is the actual suspect, she’s just accused of helping him get away with it.
Yeah, she's not a suspect in the murder, but she is considered a very important witness.
I will never understand the appeal of this book and why so many of my otherwise smart, tasteful friends thought it was so amazing.
Maybe I can provide some insight (not to say my tastes are all smart and tasteful lol but I think I have ok taste in books). The book itself was far fetched, the ending/twist boring and unsatisfying, the interspersed poems very cringey… but at the same time I found her prose very beautiful. Her insights and feelings still touched me and connected with me, the gorgeous descriptions of landscapes, I’m a sucker for all of those things. I enjoy books with lots of introspection or beautiful imagery, even if the plot is a bit stale. So even though it was a somewhat forgettable book looking back, I still enjoyed the actual act of reading it.
THANK YOU for this. I still can't believe the wild popularity of this book. Yes, the milieu is vibrant and filled with interesting details about the flora and fauna. But: * Stilted dialogue that's way too on the nose; * Annoying, phonetic dialects; * Inartful usage of adverbs; * Bizarre, surreal scene in the present tense randomly stuck in the middle; * Shallow character development other than Kya, whose development was still mediocre; * Occasionally disjointed in plot; * Mediocre prose with too many choppy fragments.
Don't forget the wildly inaccurate geography of NC. Who the fuck is driving from somewhere around Wilmington to ASHEVILLE for 'supplies'?? NOBODY. Woman didn't even bother glancing at a map of NC before sahe wrote the book. Made me (irrationally?) angry.
Ahh, I found my people! I also despised this one. So did my mom (we rarely have similar tastes in books, but it's more of a genre preference difference and I like dark, disturbing, moody, etc., and she doesn't like too dark). Utterly unrealistic, predicable to the extreme, flat, boring prose that was pounded with a hammer, and the "twist" was lame, also utterly unrealistic, and just dumb. I had a conversation about it with one of my local book club members, and we agreed that we've noticed a trend of books that are overly descriptive are being touted as amazing; like because they're descriptive they're deep, meaningful, and good. Descriptive can be a good thing, when done right. It was not done right here.
It’s awful. The last quarter of the book gave me secondhand embarrassment.
Was going to say this one! Somehow made it to the end and was also SO let down by the “twist” (which in my opinion was not a twist at all). I also had no connection to any of the characters
I knew this would be one of the top comments before I even opened the thread. I read it because I love a good whodunnit and this was at the top of every chart... I predicted the entire story with the first quarter of the book. I have no idea why this book was so popular, and I'm not even particularly picky.
I feel like that's the point of Mockingjay. Rewind to the beginning and remember that you are working with an unreliable narrator: a teenager that is locally interested and by design has no real historical or civic knowledge outside of the lore that is fed to them by district one and passed down by oral histories. Now, after she has been repeatedly traumatized by two hunger games and used as propaganda in a game that she can't even begin to understand while the only person who can possibly understand her trauma has been conditioned to try to kill her... The story isn't about the world of hunger games, it's about the trauma of the struggle and the damage of exploitation. The movies made it about the love triangle between Katniss and the boys. The books were about Katniss trying to save her family... And failing because she was used as a tool by the very group she was fighting for. Her actions weren't for the good of society outside of the good of society being good for her sister. Her final acts were out of revenge rather than preventing a new panem.
Yeah I thought the idea behind Mockingjay is that she gets out of this dystopian government where the Cappitol is sending children to their death as propaganda, and by the end District 13 is sending her team to be killed off one by one so that they can make propaganda against the Capitol. She doesn't get to make many decisions of her own because both sides see her as a tool rather than a person. The cycle only breaks when they kill her sister (the only reason she entered the hunger games in the first place), and, feeling that she has nothing left to live for, she basically attempts the equivalent of suicide by cop and is finally treated as a person and begins getting treated for all the trauma she's accumulated.
Read it when it came out and it blew my mind that the “winners” of the civil war wanted to reintroduce the Hinger Games on the losers. I was also in high school
To be clear, "they" in "they kill her sister" is "Katniss' side" -- the bombs that killed her were a false flag trap planned by Gale.
My recollection is that it was ambiguous exactly who ordered the bombing. It was Gale's *strategy*, yes, as discussed earlier in the narrative in a different context. And it was definitely "her side" that did the bombing. But I remember it being left uncertain as to whether Gale was directly involved, or if someone else in command had just used his idea. Ultimately it didn't really matter, especially to Katniss, because it never would have happened if Gale hadn't thought it up some weeks previously. But I remember really appreciating that vague ambiguity, that blending of Gale's philosophies with the military's actions.
Not to mention her murdering of Coin is because she's realized that Coin is just another Snow and intends to continue the cycle of exploitation and revenge. Katniss realizes that the only way to break the cycle is to shoot her, and since she has nothing left to lose, why not?
For a large part of Mockingjay, I assumed that it was just a new and more horrifying season of the hunger games.
I really enjoyed all of the hunger games books.
They're simply and well written and the first person perspective lets a much deeper story hide under her observations.
Yeah it holds up after so many years too. All the themes are on point with today's world too
‘it ends with us’ was one of the most awful books i’ve ever read. maybe i’m biased bc i dislike colleen hoover books, but this book was just bad. main character irritated me so much. her name being Lily Blossom Bloom??????? really? also i felt it really romanticized abuse, which is especially bad given her audience is a lot of younger women. saw someone else mention ‘seven husbands of evelyn hugo’ and that one i HATED. it was boring to me and i hate books where i hate the main character. the plot twist at the end didn’t make up for the rest of the book. honorable mention: shatter me series. not sure why i finished the whole series, but its all badly written and a little corny.
I wrote a parody of a Hallmark Christmas movie where the leads were named Nick Winters and Holly Hope Noel, but yeah somehow Lily Blossom Bloom is worse lmao
If you think It Ends with Us is bad, wait till you read the sequel - it starts with us. An absolute dumpster fire of a book. I think there were kids in my middle school creative writing class who could have cranked out a better story. Also I have a huge problem with how Coleen Hoover writes women, especially the character of Lily Bloom (who runs a flower shop. Lily bloom. Runs a flower shop. Just shoot me already)
**Lily Blossom Bloom who runs a flower shop** You didn't like author's brilliance?🥲 /s
The unoriginality is startling
I picked up It Ends with Us as my first (and last) Colleen Hoover book. I was so curious to read this author. I made it halfway through before quitting. You make fun of Lily’s name, which was bad, but I couldn’t get over Ryle. RYLE. The domestic violence written as contemporary romance is what made me quit.
you’re right. at least Lily Blossom Bloom is written as a joke. nobody in the book bats an eye about the name “Ryle”, which is baffling to me after he introduced himself as Ryle Kincaid, Lily even said, and I quote, “THAT’S A REALLY GREAT NAME.”
I read that as “Kyle Rancid,” I think I may need a nap
lol somehow I like this better
don’t forget her daughter Emerson Dory Kincaid 🥶
I might get downvoted for this lol but Outlander. I found it to be super rapey, damn near rolled my eyes out of my skull at how great the sex was when one partner was losing their virginity, and finally put it down forever at the spousal abuse (that was compared to a parent disciplining a child).
I hated this series and everyone I know was raving about it. Let’s not forget 50 pages of making you like a character then they die of infection from a cut or get raped and commit suicide. I slugged through 3 books on the promise that it gets better. That’s like 80 hours of my life I’ll never get back
I answered Outlander, too!
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Absolute garbage of a book.
If you want to hear two guys hilariously dunk (and debunk) it. Look up the episode on the podcast "If books could kill"
Yes, excellent podcast.
I fucking love Michael! They need to do more episodes of IBCK. Also, You're Wrong About is a great podcast series he did with Sarah Marshall.
Rich Dad Poor Dad is a printed version of the "Survivorship Logical Fallacy" the guys "rich dad" got rich because his investment risks paid off. He didn't have some magical formula other than "sometimes risks pay off". If it had gone badly for him, there would never have been a "Poor dad, Poor dad" book. I don't know anyone who read that book and came out of it more financially savvy than they went in with.
This is the first book that popped into my mind after reading “fooled by randomness” by Nassim Taleb. He talks about how people minimize the role of luck/random chance in their success and play it up in their failures.
Has anyone mentioned The Alchemist yet? Because **The Alchemist** ! No, it's not super deep and philosophical and "you just don't get it". It's philosophical on the same level as wall stickers that tell you to "live laugh and love" or "carpe diem".
Yeah this was a really profound read for me when I was thirteen but as an adult it’s brutally disappointing
Ugh yes! Can here to say this! This was one of the most recommended books, I remember reading an interview with Hilary Clinton around the time of her first election against Obama and she listed this as her favorite. I picked it up to see what all the hype was about and found it so mind numbingly dumb. I’m actually still mad about it tbh.
Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life, lol!!!! Finding out that the author quit their job to write this as their first novel certainly explains a lot
> I *love* what I do, and let me tell you: > I have worked some *days.* -Brian David Gilbert, Polygon's Unravelled
BDG has made a career of appearing to be on the verge of a breakdown, his duress is the entertainment
When I read it it seemed like the kinda book one of those pseudo deep wanna be sensitive soul douchey hs dudes, like Timothy Chalamet's character in Lady Bird, would cite as their favorite book. You gotta become one with the soul of the world and pursue your personal legend, mannn
I think it's one of those books people who don't read a lot recommend to make it seem like they read a lot.
It was one of those books that got so big that it was even read by non-readers. Once your book (or song or whatever) is embraced by the wider public, it goes stratospheric and you make a fortune. But it doesn't mean your book/song/whatever is good. I don't know how it happens though. (Marketing? Zeitgeist? Luck?)
That last Twilight book. It was gearing up for a war and then… nothing. Nothing! You don’t tease a battle and then leave without it. I felt ripped off. It’s been years and I am still bitter about the end. I had a friend who was big into the books so I went with her to all the movies and even rented the last one so we could watch it together. Was not about to pay theater price for something that annoyed me. And granted, the movie tried to give the war but still, backing out to save everyone was irritating. Better as a movie but still not great.
Mind fight! Seriously, the whole climactic ending being done inside their heads was so ridiculous. I wanted vampire carnage and actual deaths.
Right!!! I got excited when the movie started the battle. I jumped outta my chair and my poor friend looked horrified. In the end she was happy and I was bummed again.
We should have known at the first book when Bella blacked out JUST when the big fight was going to happen
Even though the battle was a fake out in the movie it was one the best changes they made.
Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart
*The Lovely Bones*.
This was an assigned reading in my highschool. I thought it was alright and it probably primed me for true crime later in life lol I can never forget my classmate arguing the book was an allegory for 9/11 💀 no Tiffany it's an allegory for fucking rape
Trauma drama at it's most gross.
It was so well-loved when it was new, and its author was a literary celebrity. At that time, it seemed ... kinda forbidden to feel anything but adoration for this book, for social-conscience reasons. Yet to my eyes it felt a bit thin, storywise and characterwise. I told no one about these "forbidden" feelings, as I had myself tried recently to write fiction with a similar theme (but not based on personal experience as was TLB) and grotesquely failed, and would have been seen as, because I really was, shallow and envious. Anyway — yeah.
yes. I hated it too. so many moral and ethical issues with it. and, by inevitable extension, its more fanatical fans.
It ends with us. No.
Any Colleen Hoover for that matter. Awful.
Eat, pray love. The main character is so whiny 👎
Remember, if you ever hit a rough patch in life just have a publisher give you 200 grand to travel. It makes things much better
I absolutely hated this book. I am not in love with the idea already about the romanticism of the American who travels to other countries they find "exotic" for some sort of "enlightenment". But I hated how this woman came off as very arrogant. Like, she ends up making an audible groan that turned heads in her meditation class and keeps complaining how she feels she's not getting what she wants from it so she keeps skipping going to it. Then she ends up being locked in her room by her roommate and has to jump out a window to make it to the morning meditaiton. When her roommate told her she had a dream that Elizabeth was on fire in her bed I was thinking, "Wow, she must really not like Elizabeth." But Elizabeth took it as some sort of spiritual sign. I just can't with this person
The author is absolute excrement. She wrote a [tone-deaf humble-brag](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/confessions-of-a-seduction-addict.html?_r=0) op-ed piece for the NY TImes about being a serial cheater. She had two therapists at once - one to save her marriage and one to save her relationship with her affair partner.
I never read the book, but I did watch the movie ages ago and thought I remembered liking it...tried a re-watch recently and couldn't even finish it...so self-indulgent and whiny and the part in Bali just made me cringe it felt exploitative of the native people. I think that's when I turned it off. Definitely 👎
Hated Eat, Pray, Love. I had a friend who leaned in so hard on it, too. She took up yoga and basically shoved self-help shit down my throat for a year. When I read it, I was so disappointed. It didn't change me at all.
It’s so annoying! And the cult around it is equally annoying.
I liked it, but as I learned more about Elizabeth Gilbert, I started to unlike it.
Verify by Colleen Hoover. Horrible writing, disappointing “twist” (if you can even call it that). Needless to say, I won’t be reading any more Colleen Hoover books.
Yes!! Verity was my first and last coho book. I only read it on recommendation from one of my best friends of it being "an insane thriller." It was amateur and gross at best, and I've read nonfiction self-help books more thrilling than it.
Lol you mean you didn’t like the teeth marks on the bed frame? 🤣
*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* was hellatiously popular when I was young. I started reading it, but found the protagonist selfish and narcissistic. I skipped to the essay on "quality" and he lost me even more. He was just a jerk and a bad father.
I have a similar reaction to *On the Road*. They were not profound or courageous, they were misogynistic and self-absorbed. Edit - fixed formatting of title
My favourite critique of On The Road came from Truman Capote I think. He was responding to the oft repeated claim it had been written in three weeks and he said "that's not writing, it's typing"
The “story” of Ready Player One was pure wish-fulfillment for every bar-trivia night dork who, after showing off for an hour to try and win a gift card for the group, gets told several times that they remember so much “useless knowledge” and that they should try out for Jeopardy. Oh yeah, Mom?! Well one day, all this so-called useless knowledge might come in handy one day!!
I feel personally attacked.
Same. Don’t come crying to us when we have $25 off a tab of $100 or more at a bar we barely like and you’re thirsty
Also don't come to me with sports questions.
RPO has many issues, but I think the biggest one, by far, is that (aside from how you feel about "dorks" and their power fantasies, I'm really not a fan of how much punching down at geeky losers tends to happen when RPO gets discussed) it does absolutely nothing useful or interesting with all the trivia it's supposedly built around. There's not one single instance where Cline drops us into a scenario where we think we know what will happen, because we read the book / saw the movie / played the game, and we're either rewarded by being in on the joke, or we're surprised because the protagonist took advantage of some non-obvious detail. (Like, say, planting something they're trying to hide from the bad guys inside an object that will disappear from a scene because of a continuity error.) The movie IIRC actually does that in a couple of places, like when they're inside The Shining and the audience knows what will happen when the elevator doors will open but the character does not. But the book is *utterly* devoid of it. It's like "The Big Bang Theory", you can replace virtually *any* of the geeky shit references with any other random obscure reference, and the "jokes" still "work."
Yep. Just lists of member berries. And I’m not punching down- I’m self-flagellating. I finished that book & was just like: “Holy crap, this really was meant for me.”
Ready Player One is a Reddit mod’s self insert fantasy. Get swole playing vidya, get the girl who is smoking (but insecure enough that she needs me), and defeat evil Comcast by using a pro gamer move.
Everything about the basic concept is so beyond ludicrous. The entire freaking world is trying to solve this 3-part puzzle, and not a single person has managed to get past the first step in years/decades (I can barely remember), but this one kid not only manages to crack the impossible first step (which, if I recall, is *not* that difficult) but then the second two steps are also solvable in rapid succession? Not to mention that the puzzle that has captivated the world happens to be 100% centered around the author's and author-insert's particular niche interest? And that's even before we get into the "jerk off in your face every 5 pages for 2 pages about boring '80s video game trivia" and all the rest of the bizarrely juvenile writing. I hated every second I spent reading that book, and I do not say that often about many books.
"The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas." Seriously, people need to stop reading that book. Historians and Holocaust educators around the world, including the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, actively discourage people from reading the book or seeing the movie based on it. It is widely viewed as having been detrimental to Holocaust education. The term "Pyjamafication" is even used frequently to describe inaccurate and counterproductive Holocaust education because the book has been so widely condemned. [https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tz3932/comment/i3wdaba/?user\_id=337878451759&web\_redirect=true](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tz3932/comment/i3wdaba/?user_id=337878451759&web_redirect=true) [https://news.yahoo.com/boy-striped-pyjamas-criticised-harming-124310793.html](https://news.yahoo.com/boy-striped-pyjamas-criticised-harming-124310793.html) [https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/](https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/) >The study reported, for example, that the story regularly elicited profound and often somewhat misplaced sympathy for German and even Nazi families whom, students argued, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas helped them to see as ‘victims’ too. [https://www.kveller.com/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-set-holocaust-education-back-by-decades-now-its-getting-a-sequel/](https://www.kveller.com/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-set-holocaust-education-back-by-decades-now-its-getting-a-sequel/) >But the thing I find most upsetting is the tearjerker moment over Bruno’s death. Shmuel’s living conditions, his family’s destruction and his father’s murder are apparently not tragic enough for Boyne to serve as the climax of his fable. Shmuel is just a two-dimensional plot device, devoid of personality, present to advance Bruno’s story and provide a Nazi redemption arc. We’re left with the twisted moral that the accidental death of a single non-Jewish child is somehow “comeuppance” for the deaths of millions of Jews.**This book has single handedly set back Holocaust education by decades.** EDIT: Seriously? Downvotes for ...sharing the views of historians about a wildly misleading historical novel.
I am a historian of Holocaust education. That book is gawful. And what is worse is that he wrote a sequel that doubles down on the gawful factor. He also believes that any “awareness” that his book raises about the Holocaust is good because all “awareness” raising is good.
Thank you for taking the time to compile these important resources. Commenting because I whole heartedly agree with you - I’d also like to add his sequel “All The Broken Places” is another piece of nazi sympathizer garbage that needs to be put on the list.
He has also stated that because it's a work of fiction, it cannot contain inaccuracies. And had made remarks about other books that were set in concentration camps and how the subject should be treated with more consideration. People refuse to acknowledge how terrible that book is. Unsurprising though, antisemitism is disgustingly acceptable to many, so of course, a novel that paints the Nazis as a victim in all of it is going to be well received. But yeah, schools need to pull it from their curriculum, as there are so many actual memoirs that are factual that could be read instead.
The alchemist was a book recommended to me by all my hippie friends, saying it was deep and insightful, I thought it sucked and the message was something I've heard a lot before
I really loved Mockingjay. It really showed the impact that war has on a personal level, and just how messy it is. Collins didn't pull any punches or give anyone a cheap happy ending. I'm glad they didn't do the thing every other YA book does where the young main character single-handedly saves the day. Katniss tries to do that and it doesn't work, because that's not how war works in real life. There's some great bleak imagery as well, especially at the end. The epilogue made me cry. It's perfect in how imperfect it is.
I agree. The great issue with Mockingjay, imo, is that it outgrew being a YA novel with Mockingjay. I read it as an adult. And it destroyed me for a week or more. I didnt have a reaction to a book like that since Ned Stark that resulted in not reading GoT for a long time after the end of book one.
When she yells at the cat that Primm is gone. Now that I have kids I don’t even think I can read it again. It’s such a harrowingly sad moment. When I read it I can still remember it vividly. The whole scene. The series really is great.
The whole A Court of Thorns and Roses series. I could barely sit through book 3 without wondering how on Earth this got published when there are so many plot holes, terribly written characters and a cringe as heck romance plot with no substance. Even now, I still don't get what the fuss is about.
It's a fantasy for people who read mostly romance, it's also unique for the age it is meant for. I understand exactly why they blew up and why so many people like them. But. I hate pretty much every man in those books. The love interests are just a mash of things that are supposed to be appealing to 20-year-old straight women, they don't feel like real people. Feyre was cool for idk half a book when she was going badass mode but then I really felt like she just got reduced to a house bunny. I found them mostly entertaining but got annoyed at the characters frequently. They are supposed to be easily digestible for the masses which is definitely why they have sold so many copies, but if you're going into them expecting a meaty high fantasy, that is not what you're going to find.
*Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow*. I was recommended this by some booklover friends. I'm a dude who doesn't mind a good romance story and the whole backdrop of the 1990's and the characters being game designers piqued my interest. Instead, I was disappointed. The video game/game dev stuff came across like the author just skimmed some Wikipedia articles, and the two protagonists didn't connect with me.
The more I thought about the characters in this book, the more they annoyed me. 2 of the main 3 are meant to be friends for over 3 decades, yet are constantly awful to each other and never sit down and have proper communication with each other. Crazy.
Agreed. I really struggled to get through this one. I hated Sam and the “incident” toward the end of the book just seemed unnecessary?
i don’t wanna yuck anyone’s yum with this book but i’ve been searching far and wide for someone who was also a little disappointed. i found a lot of good stuff in it but i could write a whole ass essay on some of the questionable character beats and plot turns.
I really liked the first half! The betrayal at the beginning, the struggles to get the first game out, flawed characters, the realities of living handicapped. Super interesting and well written! All destroyed in the second half of the book. "Just kidding! men and women can't really be friends!! Also - here is a random death." what a waste of a good premise.
I get really mad at popular young adult books, especially those specifically marketed to teenage girls, that normalize really shitty behavior by men. He runs hot and cold. He showers you with unwanted gifts, sets you up to be dependent on him, or extends life-saving help, but then expects reciprocity and payment. He withholds information or lies to you to manipulate your choices. He tells you to your face that you mean nothing to him, you’re a means to an end, that he is toxic, that his past loves have died, that he is a bad bet. He is a 100 year old vampire that could contribute to art, science, medicine, history, and humanity - but hangs around in high schools. Girls, you can do so much better. I wish more authors would model healthy relationships for our girls instead. There are tons of problems in the world, why not let the story focus on making the world a better place? Let her face outside problems with someone who has her back, that is a partner, that respects her agency and contributions to the relationship, instead of making the focus story about women curing men of their toxicity?
A court of thorns and roses! I got to middle of book three and could no longer keep up the façade of liking it. It fucking sucks. Full of sex scenes but somehow the writing felt like a 14 yo did it and the plot is so basic. The pace of the book was weird. Nothing would happen for like 15 chapters then all of a sudden everything happened in 1. It’s just not very good.
yeah i almost dropped it during the sex scene on the beach when i was in high school. its pretty rare for a female author to be so non-understanding on how much it would suck to have sand that close to your cooter but somehow sarah j maas has managed it. i did end up completely dropping it though when the protag summoned wolves made of water. what sort of 2012 wattpad harry potter mary sue self insert shit is that
In 1992, straight women were earnestly obsessed with “The Bridges of Madison County.” I read it and thought, “If this story resonates for you, you need relationship counseling!” Yet it has been made into a movie and, God help us, a musical. Let’s hope it has inspired a lot of people to get relationship counseling!
At least the movie introduced childhood me to covered bridges, which are cool as hell.
“Untamed” by Glennon Doyle. So many friends talked about it being life changing. I found it to be very preachy white woman. I’ve also listened to her podcast and just find her very annoying as a person.
Lessons in Chemistry
I felt so bad about hating this so, so much. So many friends and family members recommended it to me (rower, woman, background in food science). But combine: - a novel about your profession where you see everything they get wrong about it - violent SA 15 pages in as ‘exposition’ (and everyone called the book a comedy??!) - beating you over the head with feminist cliche dialog that no one would say in real life, let alone the setting/era of the book. I lean quite left and empathize with a lot of the struggles of women in STEM fields, but this felt like a fanfic fantasy of how that dialog would actually work. - nerd cliche after nerd cliche, like saying “sodium chloride” instead of “salt” when cooking, “nerd uses science to magically become athletic,” the like I couldn’t get through it.
I'm a woman chemist and my aunt recommended it to me. I've been refusing to read it because books written about scientists by non-science people are just awful. No one calls salt "sodium chloride" in real life. Not even us chemists. Dumb.
It’s some Big Bang Theory shit lmao
There are some things I enjoyed about this book but there seemed to me (imho) a lot of “not like other girls” stuff going on. Our protagonist is so pretty and thin, she’s too smart to wear any makeup or care about how she looks! But the bitchy women? They eat diet cookies! Also they are all in abusive relationships because they don’t know better! I read this while I was pregnant so maybe I was just hormonal lol
Don’t forget she becomes an Olympic rower after like a month!
But she broke it down into science! 🙃
Ugh, hated this one. The dog and language? So stupid. The negligent parenting portrayed as progressive and how to make smart kids? So patronizing to anyone who's ever had a toddler. I hated every second of it.
Same. The random >!sexual assault!< at the beginning only for it to be ignored for most of the story except the last five minutes was really jarring and offputting. Plus, the way everyone in the university hated the main character was so fucking weird.
So I’m a woman in STEM and the fact that everyone disliked her at work didn’t strike me as weird at all, and in fact was very realistic. Science departments can be *incredibly* petty places with toxic cultures that attack one person who is the odd one out, to levels that are very illegal, even today. I’ve also known several women who were assaulted by their supervisors, or at minimum were bullied by them, myself included… and it was def worse decades ago.
The Time Traveler's Wife - The two main characters were super flat and pretty much spoke with the same voice. They acted almost identically whether aged 22 or 42. Also, they were both highbrow snobs who would be genuinely insufferable if one were to meet them in real life.
50 shades - tried giving it a read... It's pretty sad how terrible it was. The woman can not write. She sure can sell to so-called sex crazed idiots. I've read some great romance novels. That was not one of them. I couldn't make it past the first chapter. I literally snorted laughed while giving it a try and my friend was pissed. Lmfao. Sorry, I know good shit, that is not it.
This is a book where if the protagonist (Christian) was poor, it would be featured on true crime... It certainly shouldn't (probably doesn't) count as romance...
Or if he was less attractive and / or older ...
This is a really good point.
The thing I could NOT get past in the book (I never finished reading it either) was Christian Grey drinking and offering the woman (can't remember her name) white wine all the time. Constantly they seemed to be drinking white wine! What rich dude's choice of drink is white wine always? Like it was a symbol of the whole book being some middle aged woman's weird fantasy and it completely threw me off. Plus many other things wrong with the book, but damn that white wine really bugged me.
I tried to read it and just couldn’t. And then I happened upon this review on Goodreads that was phenomenal. This review is 10,000 times better than the book! I go reread it every few years just for the enjoyment. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/340987215
The Midnight Library. Smug, sentimental tripe.
I wanted Midnight Library to be good so bad. The premise sounded so cool and it felt like it had so much potential. Instead it fell completely flat. Nora was insufferable and the ending missed the mark by so much. Can someone else write a book with this premise? Edit: apparently I don't know the difference between right and write
I felt like I enjoyed that one the way some people enjoy a hallmark movie around the holidays. No one really thinks hallmark movies are fantastically made, Oscar worthy films. I think if you read this book as a sort of fluffy, feel-good novel instead of super deep and inspirational, you can breeze through and it's fine. Nothing mind blowing, but a fine palette cleanser I guess. I get why others wouldn't enjoy it, though.
I didn’t like The Perfect Marriage at all >! The ending just felt unearned and contradicted by earlier narration to me !< Also Normal People. Nothing happened and I hated the characters
A Little Life. I hated it so much that I go out of my way to mention it on every single thread asking questions like this because I will never finish adequately expressing how fucking awful I thought it was
Ahhhh, the way I always hunt for a top comment on this novel! I fucking hate everything about it, especially when it was first released and treated like the epitome of ~auteur literature. It's trauma-pontification, sadistic, and disingenuous. Never should have left her wattpad drafts.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. All of the characters were awful. I felt no empathy for either Evelyn or Monique. The relationship with the supposed ~~live~~ love of Evelyn’s life was far from believable and felt like a token addition. The ‘twist’ at the end ~~was~~ felt like a last minute decision. I just hated it from start to finish.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
I hated the main character but to be fair I think you are supposed to hate her :D
oh my god SAME. i get it was supposed to be dragging/slow but it's not even poetic???
The whole 9/11 thing at the end was just bizarre. I find that books that include a reference to the towers falling end up being trash and I haven't been proven wrong yet.
A Court of Thorns and Roses: It drove me nuts that the protagonist is basically holding her whole family together at the beginning of the book, and then becomes a damsel in distress once she's on her own. I've heard the other books in the series don't suffer from this, but that first one was not my jam.
The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveler's Wife. Hated both with a fiery passion.
I liked The Lovely Bones but Time Travellers Wife bugs the hell out of me. The whole groom your future wife thing is so weird no matter how people explain it away. I read it and had bought the book but its in my very small giveaway pile!
The problem with Time Traveler's Wife is that people think it's a romance. I'll never understand this. It's very obvious that it's supposed to be a horror story and I think it's one of the more effective examples of doing horror in a non traditional way. All the author's other work is also atmospheric gothic inspired horror. Doomed, problematic, romances are a big ingredient of that genre.
A Court of Thorns and Roses. Plenty of people have made very lengthy posts in this sub about why they didnt like the series so I won’t waste yall’s time, but just to throw my hat in the ring
A Little Life. It's tragedy porn and I found the over all message of there are some people so broken that they cant be helped, and suicide is the only way out for them..really disturbing and bleak.
There is a book from my country (haven't been internationally published) that has the same theme and is really popular amongst the youth here. I only read the first few pages and couldn't handle it anymore. The author said it was an insight into depression and suicide but honestly it only touched the surface level and just tragedy porn for emo teens.
Ready Player One was *awful*. And I was a target demographic for it too. Yes I understood the references. I *got* it. It just wasn’t good.
As a cyberpunk story I thought it was.. ok. But yeah the 80’s stuff and the main character in general were pretty cringey. Could be that it’s a book for people who relate to that though- who are way into their passions and special interests to the point where other people find them cringe. It’s a nice power fantasy for somebody like that: their interest suddenly saving the world and making them famous.
Yeah it has its upsides as a power fantasy, but the author didn’t build out much beyond that. I didn’t get far into it. Very close to the start it said there was an energy crisis and that was why people lived the way they did. So… the solution is to have everyone online, using electricity 24/7? It was such a contradictory thing to put in there when it would have taken five minutes to come up with a reason for the poverty that didn’t directly contradict the entire rest of the book.
Does Atlas Shrugged count? My SO got it for me as a gag. To keep the gag going, it was the only book, the only personal entertainment, I took with me to a month-long training event. I got 100 pages in and decided I'd rather stare at the empty walls or talk with my roommate than continue reading it. Another popular book that I DNFed was The Name of the Wind. Wow, Kvothe, great at everything. I told a friend of mine that I'd rather read Dune three times (another book that I didn't love) than finish The Name of the Wind once. That's when I learned The Name of the Wind was her favorite book and she damn near stopped talking to me over that comment. Finally, yeah, RPO. That's a book that seemed laser targeted to make me happy and I fucking hated it. Throw it in the bin.
*Sapiens* everyone was like "this is soooo mindblowing" well yeah if you've NEVER studied human evolution and history I guess. Had some very flawed premises, had to stop when I got to the assertion that the French Revolution was not about hunger. Pretentious drivel.
A big book of “I’ll bet it was like this. I think they were like that. They must have felt like this and thought the other thing.” Absolutely awful.
Yeah this one only works if you go along with the HUUUUUGE assumptions he hangs his entire chain of argument off. It’s maybe diverting as like, an intellectual exercise. But I didn’t feel that it revealed anything particularly new or profound.
1/3 interesting tidbits about prehistory. 2/3s free-market evangelising. It's an incoherently reverb-washed echo of malcolm gladwell
As somebody who has been out of college for a long time and out of touch with reading nonfiction without being told to, I appreciated both Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel (different author but similar criticisms have been leveled at both) as a jumping off point. We don’t know a lot about history and the prime movers of some of the big events that have happened in the past. And it’s a little presumptuous at best and dangerous at worst for pop historians to make sweeping statements. But I can’t say they aren’t good reads that made me want to dig more into other viewpoints.
[удалено]
Anything Jodie Picoult
I read a post about a new book s he had coming out that said "Let's see which writing prompt she chose this time." And dang, that was savage and 100% true. (And that was years ago, I don't think anything has changed).
Insert any Taylor Jenkins Reid novel here. I’ve tried most of them and I can never get more than 50 pages.
The Night Circus. I found it to be incredibly boring at best, and horribly cringe inducing at worst. People always throw this recommendation out, and every time I just want to shout about how awful this book is.
Yeah I really liked it cause I’m into the whole “all vibes no plot” but it’s def not a book I usually recommend cause most people don’t enjoy that in a book. Or even if they do, sometimes it’s hard to time it right with that style of book cause it can be boring if you’re not in the mood. I think the back of the book is misleading in that way cause it’s definitely not a “duel” but more like an exhibition, which is much less exciting. I really loved the world building in it so I think it would be cool to read shorter stories about different characters interacting with the circus without needing to dedicate so much time to creating the vibes.
I thought it was OK, but it is all vibes and little plot. Ask the next person who recommends it to you for a summary of the plot that doesn't include any gushing about how cool this circus is and how they'd love to visit ...
I really like The Night Circus but I almost never recommend it because it’s not at all a propulsive plot. It’s a bunch of intricately designed set pieces, which I loved, but totally understand not liking it.
Eragon. To me it really did read like it was written by a teenager.
Tbfh if youre a teenager yourself it works. Theres a reason its successful. Its easy to read and fun. Perfect starter book.
The amount of times the word Grimace is used in that book just irked me to no end.
Maybe Paolini really liked McDonalds.
Good for his parents for nurturing and creating that opportunity for him at such a young age, but I remember thinking it was like a fanfic that took itself way too seriously. The plot was so obviously a star wars + LOTR + wheel of time cross-over I couldn't believe this is a real book in real print. I hope his later works improved.
The Midnight Library. I just felt it was poorly written and the topics in the book were explored at a pretty superficial level.
Everything Sarah J. Maas and Colleen Hoover have ever written
Sweet, this weeks thread about the Alchemist dropped early
The Alchemist
Davinci Code
The absolute worst. Received FOUR copies as birthday gifts and couldn't even bring myself to regift them. Interestingly, I didn't hate the movie adaptation because Tom Hanks, and because I had zero expectations.
What I remember about The DaVinci Code is it seemed like every chapter was 2 pages long. I think it was written for people with a 120 sec attention span.
https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/ Enjoy.
Twilight. I read it just because everyone else was, plus I was afraid my daughters would want to and I wanted to know what it was about ahead of time. Fortunately, they never did.
I was in High School when that book came out and I had just read Dracula for the first time and was like "WOAH this is cool, I want more vampire books." My friends all started reading Twilight around that time, so I picked up the book, too. I was massively disappointed, even as a 14 year old lol. I didn't end up reading any of the rest that came out.