i kinda wanna say atomic habits. the concepts it presents are functional but it presents them in an extermly forgettable and uninteresting way.
It’s probably “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. If you’re interested in any personal finance book, there is already nothing to learn.
The Bible
When I was an undergraduate, a friend of mine wrote a book review of the bible for the student newspaper.
The opening sentence was: “Not since Naked Lunch has such a boring book been saved by the constant barrage of sadomasochistic homosexual pornography.”
I wonder how many just check out when they get to the list of begats
the begats ain’t so bad, it’s only a couple short bits in the first book, as i recall, which is otherwise one of the best books that i read, with lots of relatively interesting short stories. the worst part in the early first books that i read in their entirety would have to be in exodus, where god spends ages going on and on to moses about the precise details of his dream tent. it feels like it goes on for a hundred pages, and then, a few chapters later, he does it all again.
Yep. Bible. Pretentious, boring and way too much first - person stuff.
Best-selling work of fiction amirite
that’s an easy one, Atlas Shrugged
That is, still, to this day, the only book I could not finish.
Got about 2/3rds of the way through it and violently set it down. I love books too much to set it on fire, but I wanted to. It was the worst pile of shit I’ve ever read in my life. Completely divorced from reality.
And she died penniless and depending on the support of the same social services that she demonized in her book to convince people that capitalist leaders are paragons of humanity and the rest of us are just peons.
It’s the cliche answer for good reason. I think I appreciated it better than most people who hate it, and I still barely finished it for class. All the clumsy symbolism and retro-futuristic sci-fi schlock was right up my alley. The premise about rich terrorists absconding with all of the fucking money… not so much. The whole third act is just Ayn Rand’s vengeance fantasy about killing everyone who ever failed to agree with her hard enough. I was skimming through by that point, and still had to double-take and re-read where her derision toward “looters” included farmers.
My final paper roundly calling it a bloated screed by a mediocre author largely criticized it on its own terms and still turned vicious. John Galt is is among the worst monsters in literature because he wouldn’t feel satisfied having his name carved into the face of the moon in recognition of everything solved with his infinite energy glitch. Any mere worker acting as Rand insisted they should died in the apocalypse her tradwife-cosplaying nobility deliberately caused. It is a bad story about bad people told badly by a bad person, and the worst part is that it’s so fucking boring.
That said, we watched the black and white adaptation of The Fountainhead mid-semester, and it kinda works. Big surprise that the woman who hired an editor purely to check for typos had a more cogent opinion about authorship than she did about economics or human interaction. Probably helps that the movie’s over in two hours. Definitely helps that Gary Cooper can get it.
The bible. Inconsistent, unethical, and immoral.
Tried a few times and can never get past the first few chapters.
LOL. Try the Quran, it has the same characters and same stories but written in a way that makes much more natural reading
Thanks, but no thanks. :)
Mein Kampf. I read it when i was still a succdem, expecting some genius rant that converted people en masse to nazism. Instead it was barely coherent disgusting racist drivel. I guess this book didn’t make anyone into nazi, it just given nazis what they would like to read. This and the fact nazi state bought huge amounts of it to distribute, making Hitler richest writer in Germany.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve read it, so this may not be a fair assessment. But, I fucking hated The Catcher in the Rye. I wasn’t even required to read it for school or anything, I just did. Perhaps I just found Holden to be insufferable. I think that was the point, but it did not make it a particularly enjoyable or insightful read at all, save for the overwhelming supertext of DO NOT BE LIKE THIS GUY. The part where he hires a prostitute and just cries in front of her really stuck in my mind. That was when it really sunk in for me that someone read this book and decided that Holden’s views were so accurate that he had to go shoot John Lennon with a gun for being phony. Almost unbelievable.
I’m curious at what age you read it. Because I first read it at 15 and thought it was the best book ever. I would even recommend it to people for years.
Then I read it again in my late 20s and had the same reaction you did. I thought he just came off as a whiny little shit. I still feel embarrassed that I recommended that book to people for over 10 years.
I remember telling my wife this after I reread it (she was someone I recommended it to) and she was like, “yeah, I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but I hated it.”
When I was 13 I thought “You go Holden! Tell off all those phonies!” At 18 I thought “This whiny asshole won’t stfu.” Then as an adult I realized “Oh, poor kid was dealing with a lot of unaddressed trauma.”
Then as an adult I realized “Oh, poor kid was dealing with a lot of unaddressed trauma.”
I hadn’t thought of that angel before. That’s actually a really good way to look it.
It was the end of 9th grade, so I was 15 or 16. I read it immediately after To Kill a Mockingbird, which did not make it look good in comparison 😂
Well 15 year old you had much better taste than 15 year old me
It’s gotten worse over the years, don’t worry ;)
My top recommended movie right now is Freddy Got Fingered
Wizard’s First Rule by Terry
BrooksGoodkind. I suffered through the whole thing because I was young enough that I thought that’s what you should do when you’ve started a book, but I was also old enough to know that it was very bad. I’ve heard many people say they read it as teens and loved it, but I assure you, it does not hold up.On a somewhat lower pedestal: Eragon. What a hugely derivative poorly written piece of crap. I’ve run D&D campaigns with better dialogue and pacing than that.
Oh yes I agree! And I’m a huge dragon fan, so it was extremely disappointing. That one I gave up on after maybe 50 pages. I couldn’t get past the prose. So I didn’t even get to the heavily recycled tropes, but I did see the movie once and they were plenty obvious from that.
I got to “Barges? BARGES? We don’t need no steenking BARGES” and threw the book away
In the later books they accidentally open a portal to the part of the world where there are communists and for a while afterwards Richard finds himself unable to eat cheese as penance for all the communists he’s killing but then he realizes that communists are so evil it’s ok to kill them so he can eat cheese again
I don’t know if it’s the absolute worst I ever read but the parts I read were pretty bad. At some point I was like “What kinda Ayn Rand bullshit is this?” and quit reading. It turns out that he was a Ayn Rand make-super-improbable-and-convoluted-examples-in-my-fictional-fantasy-world-to-justify-terrible-political-views school of writing type guy.
It’s probably not the worst for me either but it’s easily the first thing I think of. Really left a bad taste I guess.
I read a bunch of those books because my roommate was in love with them. It established an idea of a writing flaw in my mind that I called “The Heirachy of Cool”. Basically the guy practically has an established character list of who is the coolest. Whichever character in any given scene is at the top of the hierarchy is mythically awesome. They have their shit together, they are functionally correct in their reasoning, they lead armies, they pull off grand maneuvers, they escape danger whatever…
But anyone below them in the Heirachy turn into complete morons who serve as foils to make the people above them seem more awesome whenever they share page time together. These characters seem to have accute amnesia about stuff that canonically happened very recently (in previous books) so they can complicate things for the hierarchy above, they usually make poor decisions due to crisises of faith in people above them in the hierarchy… But because that hierarchy is infallible it’s predictable. Less cool never is proven right over more cool.
… Until that same character is suddenly alone and they go from being mid of the hierarchy to the top and all of a sudden they have iron wills and super competence…
Once I caught onto that pattern it became intolerable to continue.
Remember when Richard defeated the evils of socialism without his magic by pulling himself up by his bootstraps really really hard by (without practice or training) carving a really really good statue and all the lazy worthless slacker librulls were like dang, I love capitalism now, and then everyone looked directly into the metaphorical camera and said “Communism: Don’t let it happen to you”?
That was the beginning of the end for me. I think by the time I got to that part the series had already been going downhill but I remember that being a really sharp turning point.
I tried to press on a little further. The introduction of the straw man nation with the innocent child king who’s only existence was to be blown the fuck out by the brilliance of objectivism is when I finally decided I just couldn’t go on.
To be honest no… Because I think I violently expunged it from my memory and mind as my brain probably interpreted it as some kind of threat to my cells.
Funniest part of that was that Terry Goodkind clearly did not know anything about socialist realism
What I remember most vividly from that series is how absolutely bone-chilling everything about the Confessors were. You could absolutely have a really cool and interesting fantasy series in which they’re the main villains, but Terry Goodkind’s political views just wouldn’t allow it.
Or even just digging into their internal struggles due to the inherent loneliness that their powers creates. Instead we got a wierd post period sex blowjob to Richard role playing as his brother or something stupid that I can’t remember
Glad I’ve blocked that out
Wizards First Rule is Goodkind not Brooks, Brooks wrote Shanarra
Ack thank you, I mix them up even though I’ve never read Brooks, who seems to be better loved.
I’d rate them about the same, personally. Though Brooks is at least just derivative and juvenile; Goodkind gets increasingly self indulgent.
Damn I legit liked this book, one of my top series. I just enjoyed the magic system, the antagonists, and the over the top nature. I might just have bad taste though lol.
Me too, friend.
After ruminating on it though, everything I liked was just lifted from better works.
Leatherclad red-themed group of women who enjoy causing pain and are able to negate men’s magic? Red ajah.
What other examples are there?I for sure see the links between SoT and Wheel of Time. I started seeing a lot of things lifted after reading both. But I still find myself liking both for different reasons. I dunno, I’ve accepted that I do like some things that are generally viewed as “bad” and I’ve come to terms with it haha.
Yeah but some things are bad because they are deliberately trying to make you bad too
Maybe. But I think it matters of entertainment it’s not as evil as that. Sure engaging with bad media might fuel them to repeat that behavior, but IMO if it harms no one it’s not an issue. Like for example I’ve read the SoT series a few times and I’m not a Marxist or what have you.
Ahh I think you’ve misunderstood.
He’s a raging, obnoxious capitalist who thinks poor people are poor because they don’t try.Haha that’s how much I missed it I guess. Well I do appreciate you clarifying that, I never got a good, concise answer about what people we’re hating on it for.
The third Twilight book ended by dumping everything which was built up to in the previous book out.
“Meteor” by Dan Brown (could be a different name in the original language). It was the first time I read something that was bad. Up until then book were cool and fun and interesting. It was a puzzling experience.
Edit: it’s called “Deception Point” in the original.
Catcher in the Rye. I try it again every couple of years just to see if I can relate to it, and nope - it’s still just as stupid as the first time I read it.
Is it just the (lead) character or do you think the book itself is also shit?
Everything about the book is just dull and frustrating.
I felt the same way (spoilers for whoever hasn’t read it). The protagonist just kept encountering significant people where it seems like there’s going to be a struggle to overcome, leading to character development and newfound maturity, but no. He just moves on to another scene instead and they’re not seen again. It was just annoying.
The teacher that feels he’s not living up to his potential? The private school friends that he hangs out with but often finds frustrating? The childhood friend who he shares unexplored romantic tension with? The nuns whose meals he pays for despite having dwindling funds? The prostitute he just wants to have a conversation with? Her pimp, who attacks him? The potentially rapist family friend? For pretty much all of them a relevant conflict is initiated just for him to leave it unresolved, probably after labeling them a phony.
The only exception is his sister, who he sees like two or three times. And then the final conflict at the end is like: “Hey sorry for taking your birthday money so I could keep wandering around these past couple of days instead of talking to our rich parents.” “That’s ok, I forgive you. You’re my brother and I love you. But I worry about you sometimes.” “Yeah anyway, I’m bitter about the world so I kinda want to disappear into the wilderness.” “Please don’t do that.” “Ok I won’t.”
The first 5 or so of Trump’s books. No meaningful lessons in business to be had. Just him bragging about people he knew, people he’d screwed over, how good he thought he was at pretty much everything. How he got back at anyone who crossed him. Insufferable. I knew he was one of the worst people ever before he even mentioned getting into politics.
And in those 5 books, he probably name-dropped every New York socialite he ever met. It’s consistent with his whole image of self-worth and needing to look and feel important. You know who he didn’t mention? Someone we’ve seen him with in several photos? Who he definitely would have mentioned if there wasn’t a reason not to? Jeffrey Epstein.
I have to ask what possessed you to not give up after the first couple
I already bought the books + it was like watching a car accident. I just couldn’t believe this guy was a successful businessman.
Spoiler: he wasn’t. It was “The Apprentice” that made his fortune, before that it was just him squandering an inheritance.
[My initial reply got posted top- level for some reason]
True, he straight up admits many times in the books that he would lie about his wealth so that other people would work with him. I assume that came out during his fraud case in NY.
He had a few deals that worked out - all starting with dad’s money. He managed to squander 4 out of 5 of everything he tried. Casinos in Atlantic City, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Ice, Wollman Rink, etc. It’s a long list. But the 1 or 2 that worked is why he has any money at all. If I remember correctly, it’s mostly the golf courses and an option he bought in the 70s for an old railroad yard in lower west side Manhatten I think. He really fucked someone over on that one. He bragged about how much he screwed them for pages and pages. Like it brought him more joy to fuck someone over than it did to have a success. He’s a complete psychopath.
Stephen King’s It
Great story, but the writing was exceedingly dull, apart from the first chapter. I even tried getting through it via audiobook and still only made it halfway through. It’s just a chore.
I don’t get Stephen King. I’ve never read a thing by him that I thought warranted the accolades.
I like some of the films based on his books, but those are all punched up quite a bit.
I also like some of the films, so I tired to read “The Stand” as it was one of his more lauded books. My mistake was buying some anniversary edition which came in two tomes and was apparently a longer uncut version the author had initially written, that was then edited down to the produce the initial release.
Couldn’t finish even half of the first tome. King writes good, but loooves to write a lot. I quickly understood why the classic version of the book was cut down so much - I was screaming for all this exposition to cut to the action finally, and it just didn’t come, always being teased as being behind the corner.
Also I found out that as any classic his style has been immitated so much in literature and other media, that by now I’ve basically consumed a ton of Stephen King-like stories and I really don’t get much more from reading his books. So I just gave up on that front, while appreciating him as an author and perpetuum-idea-generator.
No, King writes well. It’s very much from the heart and you can relate to the emotions he lays down effortlessly on every page. I think his strength is creating mysteries, and his weakness is over-explaining said mysteries.
Maybe you relate to the emotions “he lays down effortlessly on every page”, but I sure don’t. If you enjoy reading King, go for it, read it, even share your opinion and preference to contrast mine.
No need to tell me my opinion is wrong. Both things can be true that you like King’s writing and I don’t.
When I said “No”, the tone wasn’t “No. You are wrong. Prepare for assimilation.”, it was a gentle musical inflection of “nooo, here have a sandwich and let me tell you about the butterflies I love so much.”
👍 comment retracted then. I’ve been getting quite a bit of “your opinions are trash” stuff lately, it’s been feeling like some of the reddit subs I had blocked back in the day.
The lemmiverse has been feeling pretty active lately
I enjoyed it…until the insanely problematic ending.
I tried reading two different series from Stephen R. Donaldson, and it seemed to me he was somehow unable to write a book without a horrific rape. I just stopped reading the first book in each case because I felt like they were salacious and hateful.
‘How to write with style’
me, clueless thinking its going to be a good resource to help with my fiction writing
Author in the first 50 pages;
So heres why the USSR was evil
bro who asked
