Very Bad Things

[digitaldiscipline]

jay_lake asks: ?otD: What's the worst book you've ever read?

There are four novels I have begun reading, and will never, ever finish:

- Underworld (Dom DeLillo)
- Shardik (Richard Adams)
- The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien)
- Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)

The worst book I've ever finished is Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, which offended me so greatly that I have refused to pick up any of his subsequent work in protest.

[ETA] I somehow managed to blank out the fact that I read James Patterson's Jester, which... wow, I wish I hadn't remembered I'd read it. Just flat fucking awful.

Comments

[smjayman.livejournal.com]

I think I made it to page 4 of the Silmarillion. LOTR I enjoyed. I read some others by Stephenson, he's all over the map. Never read Quicksilver, never wanted to. I tried to read House of Leaves, gave up on that damn thing too.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I will happily re-read Stephenson's early stuff - snow crash, diamond age, cryptonomicon - but after being taken down the primrose path for a hundred-plus pages with nary a hint that the narrator was grossly unreliable leading up to the climax of quicksilver, as well as the incessant and improbable amazingness of the protagonist, i'd had enough of his crap.

Stephenson

[sloot.livejournal.com]

the baroque trilogy (of which quicksilver is part of) is a rambly rambly book I couldn't get through.

I WANTED to like it, but I can't follow that many characters at once.


I enjoyed Anathaem. It was less rambly, but more than his early stuff.

I think he thinks he gets paid by the word.

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

LOTR is one of my favorite books ever, but I abandoned the Silmarillion in utter boredom. I suspect some of it is crap because he was already dead when it was published and probably hadn't bothered to publish it previously for very good reasons.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Also, simlarillion is not well-suited for twelve year olds.

[inyou.livejournal.com]

I still have it on my shelf, bookmark in place, where I stopped reading it. My copy has an ironic note in it, a sequence of two notes actually:

1. Christmas 1977 To Dana With Much Love Mom + Dad
2. Dana Hunter didn't keep the book I did L. G. Onstead

(and that's not my name.. lol)

[vatine]

Silmarillion is, well, less of a novel and more of assorted world design snippets published in book-like form.

I think, so far, the worst I've endured is Deadly Friend.

It MAY be that reading Anathem will rehabilitate "new Stephenson" for you.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

The summaries and reviews I've read of it have failed to capture my imagination. Monks doing math sounds about as engaging as watching flies fuck.

[vatine]

Yep. But, strangely, it works. It's written in (more or less) diary form and essentially chronicles one fraa's journey from "OK, so now what" through a sequence of LOTS of change (my wife was most amused at my explamations of "Twist!" whenever the plot veered of into unexpected).

However, I shall not try to force you to read it. It does take a while to pick the pace up, but I found it well worth reading (and re-reading, my bookmeme posts are here and here, for the re-read).

I think, but am not sure, I have the equivalent for Quicksilver and eth remaining Baroque Cycle.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

For me, it's pretty much anything Piers Anthony wrote in a series after about book 3 or so. Maybe 4. And a fair amount of other stuff he wrote. "In The Barn" made me want to shower.

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

Worst book I ever finished: The Da Vinci Code. I'll never read anything by Dan Brown again. He committed some serious crimes against prose.

Worst book I couldn't finish: any of the Bourne books. Again, bad prose. The action was interesting...but that man was seriously verbose.

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

Have to agree with Silmar...oh, fuck, it's not even worth the effort to figure out how to spell it.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I finished LotR once, when I was about 9, but gods below, it was a struggle. I tried again several times over the following decade or so and never got beyond the eleventy-first page.

Silmarillion... hmm... I don't think I got beyond page 4 either.

Yes, Jester was really crap.

[ladyheatherlly.livejournal.com]

I love, love, love The Silmarillion. I've had a tradition of reading that, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy around once a year for nearly a decade now.

Of course, most of our taste in reading material is probably fairly opposite, I'm sure. I just find this particular instance of it really amusing... that whole "one man's trash is another man's treasure" concept taken to extremes. Because for me, I consider basically anything by Tolkien to be among the best material ever written.

Also, I love you for giving me an excuse to use the icon for the first time in forever. ;)

[poisongirl.livejournal.com]

Despite my deep love of Clive Barker, I loathe The Great and Secret Show. Sadly, I've read it about 5 times b/c I seem to block it out upon completion and pick it up again later.
I have since put a note to myself in every copy (somehow I wound up with 3) "You hate this book. Back away."

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

Wow. I hate that book with the hate of a thousand burning suns. It was so bad that I threw it away halfway through. I threw it away so I could never get drunk and pick it up and try to finish it.

[poisongirl.livejournal.com]

Funny. That's usually when I get the urge to pick it up. I should toss my copies. (I have multiple copies thanks to gifts.)

[y2kdragon.livejournal.com]

I may get punched by several people for saying this, but "Snowcrash". I gave the book a couple of chapters. But, my $deity, that was worse than anything I could have dreamed up when I actually DID deliver pizza. People say it gets better. Maybe it does. But I'm also the guy who walked out of "District 9" after 35 minutes because I tired of the preachiness, and I absolutely HATED the "hero", and would have preferred him to be a greasy smear than watch him do anything else.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

The pizza delivery sendup of traditional c-punk gets tossed out the window about the same time he trashes the delivery van.