Books to Avoid

[BrokenQuill92]

Vegan Virgin Valentine by Caroline Mackler

Reason: I couldn't make it through the first half hour of the audiobook without the protagonist being critical or judgmental of someone. It's like Miss Mackler took lesson from the Stephenie Meyer School of Writing. I believe in show don't tell, DO NOT tell your audience how they are supposed to feel about a person or situation.

[Zen Badger]

The title is enough to put me off

[BrokenQuill92]

The title is enough to put me off

I should have known too but I told myself don't judge a book by its title

[Kayenneh]

50 Shades of Grey. Don't read it. Just don't. Three books that don't have enough content for one decent book. Shitty writing, flat characters, no plot, no proper BDSM, nothing interesting, no development, nothing memorable, but a huge, stinking and revolting pile of shit.

..just don't touch it. Leave it be.

[Minimalist]

The title is enough to put me off

I should have known too but I told myself don't judge a book by its title

Sometimes you can.




Avoid this piece of shit like the plague!

[Rev. Rye]

Reason: I couldn't make it through the first half hour of the audiobook without the protagonist being critical or judgmental of someone. It's like Miss Mackler took lesson from the Stephenie Meyer School of Writing. I believe in show don't tell, DO NOT tell your audience how they are supposed to feel about a person or situation.

Honestly, that's the way I felt when I read the first pages of the book version of Silver Linings Playbook. Seriously, the protagonist spoke like he was six or something, and his tirade against "Farewell to Arms" made me almost give up on the book. Granted, I had very similar things to say about "To The Lighthouse," but I at least gave better reasons than 'how dare Papa Hemingway write a story that didn't have a happy ending'. To be fair, it did improve eventually, but the movie version is MUCH better.

That said, I know of a novel much, much worse, and it can be found here. I hereby disclaim any responsibility for any brains broken while reading this.

[Alex K]

The eye of Argon...


No, but seriously: The Last Theorem by fucking Arthur C Clarke and some guy named Pohl. It's such a mess. Ok, there's the story of a young guy who discovers his homorotic tendencies and has a run in with his father. That's a relatively pointless, somewhat tedious, but at least readable plotline. The remainder? It must be the most climsily shoehorned in space alien plot line I've ever seen, and that includes my attempts at writing SF when I was 15. There is supposed to be big excitement about space elevators in the protagonist, but there is nothing there, no substance. There is supposed to be this deep connection of the main character with maths, and in particular fermats last theorem, but the maths explanations in between were partly trite, trivial, or even wrong! The only explanatian I have is that ACC was too decrepid to notice that someone stole his lettethead to send in their homoerotic fermat space alien fanfic under his name. Unbefuckinglievable. Gave up when the aliens were mentioned the third time round or so. I was like: WTF??? Life is too short!

[Bittersmart]

Officer Jones by Derek Ciccone. It was a free (or .99 cent) Kindle eBook, and I was like, what the hell, I'll read it. I managed to get through the whole thing, but I hated all the characters in it. The things that the characters did near the end of the book were just...wacky. Not believable at all. It just pissed me off.

[Clueless Morgan]

Avoid Twilight like the plague. The ONLY reason I have "read" the books is because my sister gave me the audiobooks and I had nothing else to do at work while I did CAD work.

To this day, when I see plans of the hospital I was working on when listening to those books, I recall passages from Twilight.

Beware.

It'll haunt you the rest of your days.

50 Shades of Grey. Don't read it. Just don't. Three books that don't have enough content for one decent book. Shitty writing, flat characters, no plot, no proper BDSM, nothing interesting, no development, nothing memorable, but a huge, stinking and revolting pile of shit.

..just don't touch it. Leave it be.

Avoid 99% of all fanfiction. 50 Shades falls into that category for me, and I did to 50 Shades what I've done to many a craptastic piece of fanfic: read the first pages, decided it was shitty, and moved on.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I've been avoiding 'The Canterbury Tales' for years. I dozed off in class once, and the instructor threw a copy at me - hit me dead on the bean.

I jumped up and shouted, 'What the HELL was that??'

The instructor smiled at me and said, 'That, sir, was a flying Chaucer.'

Boru

[NB: For our humour-impaired members, the above is a joke. It did not happen. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled kvetching.]

[NB: For our Yiddish-impaired members, 'kvetch' is an intransitive verb meaning to complain often. Thank you.]