What's the worst book you have ever read?

betamax · Post by **betamax** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:02 pm 0

ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.

I'm not usually this blunt, but- Nonsense.

grue · Post by **grue** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:05 pm 0

betamax wrote:
ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.

I'm not usually this blunt, but- Nonsense.

It's not that simple, my mum has trouble reading SF even though she reads about 4-6 books average every month. So there

ophion · Post by **ophion** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:08 pm 0

betamax wrote:
ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.
I'm not usually this blunt, but- Nonsense.

Read Aaron's Rod. Read Herzog. Then read any science fiction.

Dio · Post by **Dio** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:28 pm 0

There's a lot of atrocious writing (by which I mean the words used, rather than the ideas employed) in SF though. It's been a bit trendy to mention it since Douglas Adams said it, but it does seem to me to be true. Personal taste to how much it gets in the way.

seibu · Post by **seibu** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:35 pm 0

ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.

Try Kurt Vonnegut. "Hack" isn't a word that springs to mind.

TiltedKitty · Post by **TiltedKitty** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:39 pm 0

seibu wrote:
ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.
Try Kurt Vonnegut. "Hack" isn't a word that springs to mind.

Or Phillip K Dick
Or Iain M Banks (note the use of the M there)

betamax · Post by **betamax** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:47 pm 0

Catalyst wrote:
seibu wrote:
ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.
Try Kurt Vonnegut. "Hack" isn't a word that springs to mind.
Or Phillip K Dick

Beat me to it. Also see the many "all pop music is shit" jihad threads for why "All of X is Y" is a very unwise position to take.

Yes, I did notice the "Almost".

TiltedKitty · Post by **TiltedKitty** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:49 pm 0

betamax wrote:
Catalyst wrote:
seibu wrote:
ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.
Try Kurt Vonnegut. "Hack" isn't a word that springs to mind.
Or Phillip K Dick
Beat me to it. Also see the many "all pop music is shit" jihad threads for why "All of X is Y" is a very unwise position to take.

Although I'll admit he has a very unfortunate name...

P Dick. Can understand why he keeps the K in there...

Dvorak · Post by **Dvorak** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 4:05 pm 0

Worst book? "GÃ¶del, Escher, Bach".
I read it some 15 years ago, and it made me really angry. To that time Hofstadter's understanding of 'hard' symbolic AI was outdated already, and the way he bent Zen just to make it fit into his concepts was ridiculous.
Well, that's what I thought to that time at least (I was a bit on a crusade for the 'proper' understanding of these things).

craigt · Post by **craigt** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 5:15 pm 0

Shadowmancer by G.P. Taylor.

After just the first chapter I was starting to think that the good things I heard about it were not that accurate, but I was determined to finish it considering it was only 200 pages long...

Unfortunatly, it was the most poorly written piece of crap which I have ever had the misfortune to set my eyes on. Nothing in the book works. Apparently his follow up, Wormwood, is supposed to be even worse.

Sometimes I wonder if the publishers bothered to read the thing before they started printing. It's the only book that I am seriously thinking about throwing out.

wanye · Post by **wanye** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 5:36 pm 0

i havent really read many bad books, but ones i got bored of or couldnt be arsed with:

kerouac - on the road (dull)
bitch - elizabeth wurtzel (too american)
the wasp factory - iain banks (required too much concentration to read)

Mr Dom · Post by **Mr Dom** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 5:53 pm 0

Picked up in a 2nd hand book store...

'Cyberia' by someone I dont care to remember.

Avoid like the plague.
Tho if you see it - try reading the first page. It is such utterly pretentious twaddle - sci-fi parsed through a language obfuscator, or written entirely using a thesaurus as reference.

I half-heartedly looked for it so I could post a paragraph, then decided I really couldnt be arsed.

Aglaranna · Post by **Aglaranna** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:15 pm 0

HGFB wrote:
Oaf wrote:I quite liked the first series of David Eddings (the Belgariad, yeah?), but I got partway through the first book of the second series and realised he was telling the same story all over again!
That was actually part of the story believe it or not.

Exactly. The Elenium is better - but it's basically the same characters, just older and more life-weary.

Actually, there's a web site out there somewhere which summarises books - For the Mallorean they simply put 'see the Belgariad'.

I kind of liked some bits of Redemption of Althalus - until the end effectively negated all the events earlier in the book, and turned it all into a massive waste of time.

Aglaranna · Post by **Aglaranna** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:24 pm 0

Catalyst wrote:
seibu wrote:
ophion wrote:Nearly all science fiction. I always want to like it (and the ideas are often there), but the writers are horrible hacks.
Try Kurt Vonnegut. "Hack" isn't a word that springs to mind.
Or Phillip K Dick
Or Iain M Banks (note the use of the M there)

Anne McCaffrey - as long as you don't mind a little fantasy in with your SF. Try her Tower and Hive books, or Pegasus series. For fantasy that becomes more sf as you go on, her Dragonriders of Pern series are fabulous. My Dragonbooks are just about falling apart, they've been read so much.

And Julian May.

Fil · Post by **Fil** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:32 pm 0

DutchLlama wrote:
Fil wrote:Worst books i've read have to be Mein Kampf, Hitler couldn't write for shit
You read that? That's a crime over here.

Seems a bit silly to make it illegal, to do that is to gloss over it and totally prevent academic study. The copy I read belonged to the school library but there's always a copy in Waterstones, its essential reading for anyone studying that period.