Kevin's Watch

What? I thought Job was a great book. Black comedy. Not Heinleins best, but certainly one of my favourites.

I loved his take on god and the devil.

--A

The Swrod of Shannarah...cliches were more plentiful than the links on Dick Cheney's bad karma chain

Wow, I enjoyed a lot of the books you folks mentioned. And Frankenstein was fantastic. Yeah, bits didn't age so well. I found Dracula a LOT less interesting than Frankenstein.

The one that I have to agree with is the Wheel of Time books. It started off well, set a good mood and feel, and felt like some light fantasy reading about action and plot instead of going much deeper. Then character after character after character, and every woman introduced being in love with...Rand, was it? I felt like I was reading Ranma 1/2. I love Ranma 1/2, but don't really want to read it for 1000+ pages through several books. I just kept reading it, hoping it would get better and I could understand why it was such a big thing, but it never happened. I think I read until Crown of Swords, so I put in my time. But I'd had it.

I'd say dullness is a less pardonable sin than just bad. I've read a lot of awful stuff that I was entertained by, and, having a degree in English Lit, I've read a bunch of stuff that was "good" but bored me to tears. I'd say out of all of it, the stuff I should have enjoyed but just really didn't was Charles Dickens. Just couldn't find the interest or humor in it at all. Pity that my teacher at the time enjoyed him so much.

I dont think that I've ever HATED a book before, But I've tried to read Children of Dune four times and havent been able to get past the first few chapters. Speaking of which, I think Im overdue to try again.

CHILDREN OF DUNE was a relief to me after DUNE MESSIAH. It took me six rereads to appreciate DUNE MESSIAH.

Note that I did reread it 6 times. There had to be good stuff in it.

I've read two Michael Crichtman books (I won't call them novels and I don't care that I spelled his name wrong): The Andromeda Strain and Airframe. They both sucked giant goat 'nards. I'm not sure which was worse, to be honest, although I guess I have to go with Airframe, since he wrote it 25 years later, and you would expect the loser to get better at writing. I also read a Robin Cook book once that sucked hard. I don't care to remember the name.

Oops, the Xanth thread reminded me of about 5 or 6 xanth novels I read that sucked hard. I think I finally quit with A Crewel Lye, where the main character was a freaking baby. That was a horrible book. The second Adept series was also terrible.

sgt.null wrote:Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was a crashing bore. I tried it after Dracula by Stoker and couldn't have chosen a worse book to follow.

Actually, I read Dracula when I was a kid, and was really bored. On a whim, I re-read it when I was about 25, and it blew me away. I had rarely been so hooked on a book. Damn masterpiece!

That Taurus book actually sounds really interesting . . . I want to read it.

Worst book I ever read? Hmmm....possibly The Pirates of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's only a short book, though I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Geez, the writing style was sooo boring. I have leafed through plenty of books with worse writing than Pirates of Venus, though - and I have no doubt there are worse novels out there...but this was the worst one that I have read the most of.

Excalibur (nothing to do with the movie) which had lines like "Only one Druid walks with a limp!" Cannot recall the author, though.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, essentially a mysoginistic, anti-capitalist rant in parable form.

You guys need to read Nights with Sasquatch. Now that was a bad book.

God Emperor of Dune.

Dune was good.

Dune Messiah was nice. You got to see what happened in the aftermath.

Children of Dune was good.

God Emperor -- FOURHUNDREDSOMETHINGPAGESOFWHINING!

Heretics of Dune -- Duncan Idaho

Spoiler

makes me wish I had panties, so they could be moist.

don't read that. I really like the Duncan.

Chapterhouse: Dune -- Makes you cry.

But God Emperor of Dune was just horrible. I still really don't like most of it. The only parts of it I like are where Leto is whining, because his whining is more interesting and actually valid than the other characters', and because he's just such an interesting character.

A Gunslinger wrote:The Swrod of Shannarah...cliches were more plentiful than the links on Dick Cheney's bad karma chain

Meh, Sword of Shannara would be ok if it was just about cliches, but it can simply be called "LOTR rewritten, but not as well, and the main villain actually shows up at the end but it turns out he just needed to realize he didn't exist or something."

Flowers in the Attic.......


.....and another one like Cail's that involved some undead/satanworship crap around 1980'ish that I can't remember the name of.....some sex scenes with an evil undead overlord have never left my brain......

Oh.. Oh no. You just made me remember the Namble rape scene in Terry Goodkind's Stone of Tears. Damn you.

Actually, I've changed my pick - I just remembered the worst novel of all time: Book of the Dead, by John Tigges. About a guy who gets a book made by the devil which makes all of his wishes come true. There's only one catch - "those who read the book become . . . of the dead". What that actually means, and the contents of the book, are never really made all that clear. Truly the most mediocre writing I've ever read. My first thought after finishing it was: "I can't believe I finished that book".

Even the repetitious and gratuitous sex scenes couldn't elevate this book above deeply boring.

Full of such brilliant examples of literature as:

"You refuse my priapus? My cock?" Satan roared with mirthless laughter.

Such a bad book, I would thoroughly recommend it to all of humanity. It needs to preserved for all time and fired into a probe into space so that intelligent lifeforms - if they are out there - will read it and choose to wipe us all out.

American Psycho. Not because it was badly written, but because it was disgusting and unnecessary. I stopped after a 100 pages. I simply couldn't stomach anymore.

I saw the film when it came out, and I thought that the plot idea was good, but 400 pages of that disgusting gore??? No way José! A 50 page novella would have sufficed.

And did I hear trapper bad-mouthing the great John Irving????

Montressor wrote:

sgt.null wrote:Frankenstein by Mary Shelly was a crashing bore. I tried it after Dracula by Stoker and couldn't have chosen a worse book to follow.

Actually, I read Dracula when I was a kid, and was really bored. On a whim, I re-read it when I was about 25, and it blew me away. I had rarely been so hooked on a book. Damn masterpiece!

I've never managed to finish Dracula. Technically, I'm still reading it, about 18 months after starting my second attempt. Frankenstein was a bit of a chore, but I did enjoy it overall; Dracula just doesn't hold my attention.

Esmer wrote:Flowers in the Attic.......


.....and another one like Cail's that involved some undead/satanworship crap around 1980'ish that I can't remember the name of.....some sex scenes with an evil undead overlord have never left my brain......

It wasn't Crucifax was it? If so, ditto!

If I don't like a book I stop reading it. I feel like I'm wasting my time. Probably the book I was farthest along when I did so was Atlas Shrugged.

Damelon wrote:If I don't like a book I stop reading it. I feel like I'm wasting my time. Probably the book I was farthest along when I did so was Atlas Shrugged.

You figured it out, then, eh?

Emotional Leper wrote:

Damelon wrote:If I don't like a book I stop reading it. I feel like I'm wasting my time. Probably the book I was farthest along when I did so was Atlas Shrugged.

You figured it out, then, eh?

Just a little slow in that case.