/lit/ - Literature

Probably some library schlock

>>21844296
Wuthering heights

>>21844296
Der Untergeher

>>21844296
wasp factory

>>21844296
Neuromancer

>>21844296
The Tanakh.

>>21844315
Never actually read this before. I know of it of course, but never actually got around to it. What were it's biggest issues?

>>21844315
>>21844711
He's a troll. To say "Wuthering Heights" had zero redeeming qualities is the most retarded thing to say. Either he's trolling or he's an incel.

>>21844296
The Handmaid's Tale, and I'm not saying this to be edgy. I was a pretty cringy feminist when I read it and it was one of the first "Emperor's New Clothes" moments for me

In terms of classics, I really didn't like the count of monte cristo. I bet the author's girlfriend got stolen and the entire book is just his daydream of "making her pay". It's so stupid, like I wrote better fanfiction at 17.

>>21844296

>>21844788
1,000% this. I'm sure there are many, many far worse books out there, but I've yet to read one that killed me the same way Ready Player One did. I read it very early on its initial post-publication period, when the "gen x redditor consoomer with hollow 80s nostalgia" archetype was just emerging and becoming possible to identify, but not yet crystalized. I almost want to argue RP1 did some of the legwork TO cement that archetype, since it served as a good shorthand way to sum up the ethos.

That whole passage where the author's self insert is just rattling off all the things he's nostalgic for, and they're all from the 80s despite the book being set in the future, and the conceit for why this is the case being that pop culture in the book's depiction of the future is determined by ANOTHER author self insert who grew up in the 80s within the plot of the book - that was a mindfuck watershed moment. That was funko pop aesthetics before funko pops existed. This novel was a harbinger of cringe.

>>21844296
Zazie dans le Métro.
Pure unfiltered shit.

A Death In Venice.
Some old faggot lusts after a pretty young boy for the entire fucking book.
How is this a classic?!

>>21844788
Good choice, goddamn.

>>21844296
The Sword of Shannara. Fuck Terry Brooks. I should have left it in the gutter where I found it.

>>21844878
You misunderstood it. It is about the artist and their relationship to beauty

Sherman Alexie

He's such a colossal racist I cant believe schools teach his shitty books to kids. His books read like one long crige post written by a professional complainer. Like those breakup stories that get posted by reddit throwaway accounts. His protagonists all putz around and bitch about white people and accomplish nothing. But what's really awful is when he thinks rhyming words in thr middle of dialog sounds spiritual. Here's an example of some SSS Sherman Alexie prose: "The white man looked at me, his eyes all hateful and fateful. Burning and churning my fallen ancestors within his evil mind."

He's like that Vietnamese webcomic guy who only makes comics about how evil white people are, except instead of being laughed at, he's been institutionalized into US education.

This pile of cowshit right here. Ya see, there's a thing I like to do every October; I'll go to a bookstore and grab something I'd never heard of before for something fitting to read during the Halloween season. I thought the title was cool and I (to this day) love the cover and I legit never felt so duped by a book. I'm not trying to be picky or hypercritical, but holy smokes is it fucking bad. It honestly felt like a green haired hyper hipster read the CliffsNotes version of The Haunting of Hill House, took 12 shots of everclear, then decided to write a book in one sitting. Usually, I pick good ones but man did I get burned this time.

>>21844788
The dubs of truth. I can’t think of a another book that has made me feel more disappointed and angry at once. My mom gave it to me for Christmas and I remember the exact moment I finished it. I asked her if she had the receipt still, handed her the book, and told her to read it. We went to get a new book once we got back from vacation.
>>21844823
These points are accurate. It shows the death of allusion for vapid reference. But evaluating the quality of the narrative is evaluating the liquid content of a bowl of diarrhea. The craft of the fiction is so piss-poor and oblique that I am astonished it gained any popular foothold. It is goyslop before goyslop, too.

>>21845216
Thanks for helping me dodge that bullet. Been eyeing it at my local bookstore.
>verification not required

Worst book I've finished in a long time, only picked it up because I was trying to read Normal People but it was checked out at the library so I just chose something by the same author.

MC is pretty obviously the author's self-insert (MC is successful female author who says she writes about people and complains about hating her fame) most of the book is these two women writing letters back and forth to each other. The letters are just a soap box for the author to spout her lib takes (I don't have any problem with politics but her takes are just braindead and hypocritical) and both women talk exactly the same in this really fake intellectual way. the "climax" of the book happens when she gets in a fight with the other girl, breaks a glass and threatens to kill herself and then they make up and are friends again. In a final letter she complains that everyone in the publishing industry is pretentious (while having taken the most pretentious stance ever for 90% of this book). I get the sense it was really cathartic for the author, but its incredibly boring and tedious to read when the plot takes a backseat to the author's shitty takes about climate change, covid, politics, and the woes of being a successful author

>>21844315
It's "withering" retard. If you're going to post in /lit/ at least speak English

>>21844296
Wizard's first rule by terry goodkind. One of the only books I've ever just stopped reading. Tossed it in the garbage actually, something I've never done with a book before.

Fuck this book and fuck all my dumb hipster friends who pretended to like it. Worthless trash.

>>21845216
Can you tell me more about it? The synposis? The twist? Shitty books always have a twist. Take a photo of an exceptionally bad page?

Atlas Shrugged

>>21845389
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z7HehLpTG4

This one is short but sweet. I can post a screenshot or two later but honestly, I have to bail and get to work. If the thread is still alive somehow later this morning I'll post them.

>>21845424
It's an anonymous board, retard. You don't get upcummies or clout by signaling that shit here.

>>21845429
I just read the synopsis on amazon and it's abysmal.
>Cat joins her old friends, who are in search of the perfect wedding venue, to spend the night in a Heian-era manor in Japan. Trapped in webs of love, responsibility and yesterdays, they walk into a haunted house with their hearts full of ghosts.
Webs of love? Hearts full of ghosts? This means nothing.
>This mansion is long abandoned, but it is hungry for new guests, and welcomes them all – welcomes the demons inside them – because it is built on foundations of sacrifice and bone.
Well if there have been literal sacrifices then of course there would be bones so that's redundant.
>Their night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as the house draws them into its embrace. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.
Holy horror cliches batman! And I dont mean the premise is cliche (it is) "spirals into nigthmare," "draws them into its embrace," "lurking in the shadows?" How many cliches can you rattle off in two sentences?
Figures the person who wrote this worked for Ubisoft. Lol.

A book called The Great Goddess, or something like that.
Got it at a thrift shop for 2 bucks.
Anyway I thought it would be a anthropology book about historical religious practices or something like that.
Turned out to be a feminist blatantly making shit up, miss quoting references, and in general being ultra intentionally deceitful to push a narrative that is historically totally untrue and has no evidence to support it.
Like I went hard on the book as practice for crosschecking stuff, since it was something I recently learned at school at the time, and every single time I did it to something the book said it would come up bullshit.
It also made me notice that such things were actually pretty common for feminist writings. When you actually fact check the shit they write more often then not they are ether making shit up or intentionally misrepresenting things because they truly believe their ideology is more important then the truth. To them the truth is subjective anyway and facts don't really matter.

It's the book that actually woke me up to how bullshit feminism actually is.

Oh, also it had spelling mistakes, typos, and format errors all over the book too, which was annoying for something professionally produced and had a editor.
It also insisted on spelling woman weird for ideological reasons. At least it wasn't retarded enough to call history herstory, like I have seen in later feminist books.

But yeah, hated the book, totally dreadful, but was very good practice for cross referencing and fact checking, so wasn't a complete waste of time and money.

>>21845424
If that was the worst you read then consider yourself lucky.

It was autistic as fuck but on a technical level it wasn't incompetent written.

>>21845439

>>21845439
>It's an anonymous board,
So?
>retard.
You're actually signaling that you worship Atlas Shurg. On /lit/
And you have the gall to call him that?
>You don't get upcummies or clout by signaling that shit here.
>upcummies
You're from r/AynRand re**it aren't you. Fuck outta here, retard.

Does Goodreads sell ratings?

>>21845485
It's a mediocre book written by a demented kike with a rape fetish. But you smoothbrain commies just love to jack each other off about how much you hate it and omg it's the worstest book ever written! Well it's fucking tedious watching you do that and so I called you out on it. Clearly this hurt your feelings and wow I'm just so sorry about that.

>>21844296
"Differently Morphous". Call me whatever you like, but up until that book I enjoyed every single one of Yahtzee's novels, from the "Will Save the Galaxy For Food" series to Mogworld and Jam. But that one, that single book, was so bad and cringe inducing I just couldn't even finish it. Right now, it sits on my shelf, taunting me.

>>21844296This might just be me, but having read both Austerlitz and The Sound and The Fury for college back in the day I can honestly say those two are utter shit. Austerlitz has the redeeming quality that at least you get the general gist of the story but The Sound and the Fury is pure undecipherable garbage. I was less confused about the story before I started reading it. You can glimpse that Faulkner is actually good at writing but its the whole meme of "I was just pretending to be retarted"

>>21845367
I'm both impressed and disappointed that no one took this bait.

>>21844336
I agree that it never quite landed fully, but I found it had some redeeming qualities.
>>21844296
Naked Lunch. The only novel I've ever intentionally permanently bailed on.

Nectar in a Sieve. They made me read it in HS as part of a diversity literature program and it just made me racist toward Indians.

>>21845634
>he is dismissive of one the greatest American novels in history because he can't be arsed to google the plot.

>>21845659
I dont want to make a fight of this but I'm a firm believer that if your book requires the reader to do research beforehand its probably missing something integral. But in the end its just my opinion

>>21844296
Robinson Crusoe. DOGSHIT, Crusoe is an unlikable fucktard. At one point he hides in his hut for 3 fucking days debating if the footsteps he seen in the sand or his or someone else's, to which he finally gets the idea to put his foot into the footprint.

>>21845165
Tell it to the judge, pedo

>>21845589
meds

>>21844296
The Great Gatsby.
Absolute drivel; the only "redeeming quality" is the elementary-level symbolism. Fitzgerald's "old money/new money" distinction was already common knowledge in the middle ages. Get fucked, high school teachers, you should've had us read Dostoyevsky. Not all of us are incapable of reading.

>>21845442
Oh yeah man, this book is no fucking joke. As terrible as it all is in terms of plot and theme...the true rockstar is the prose. Goddamn is it embarrassing. I can hardly describe how tryhard it wants to be as far as being clever goes. It may be my new high standard of dogshit.

>>21844788
Can confirm.

>>21845650
I bailed on Naked Lunch too. I had to look up if the whole thing was going to be like that, and when I realized it was I just dipped.

Some weird post apocalyptic Christian novel by a woman, I read it because I knew her but it was not good, unsure how it got published since it was even worse than Gardner. I forget the name of it

For me it's a tie: Steppenwolf by Hesse is derivative and leads nowhere, The Night Land by Hodgson is a cool concept but probably the worst writing style ever, incredibly repetitive. And probably even worse: Les Miserables by Hugo. Constant pandering to 'the poor', nonsensical situations, Mary Sues and nonsensical coincidences, it's got everything (erong).

Really hated Auster's 'New York Trilogy'

The epitome of modern fiction's obsession with itself, of being "meta" and subversive of some established genre (Mystery) to cover the lack of any real substance or quality. All the book you are led along like a puppy, to wonder, "Oh what is Auster doing!? We hapless readers have no clue now, but surely the cunning master will tell us later!", yet of course the final part ends with a question mark, as if he's teasing you, "Now you have to figure out my puzzle teehee!", and by this part you're just exhausted and put it back on the shelf not to open it again.

In terms of non-fiction I hate Baudrillard. He is not unique compared to his generation, except perhaps for his degree of inanity and audacity, but unlike the others I was promised this one really had something to say.

>>21845747
Gatsby is the go-to high school novel because the symbolism is so obvious you can't not see it.

>>21846251
this one is pretty bad actually, i'll give you that

>>21845165
I couldn't get past the gay pedo crap to see any other qualities.
Why couldn't his target have been an age-appropriate female?

>>21844823
I didn't have to read it to know it was shit. The nature of the reviews and massive market push heralded how sloppy it was going to be. I will say that I think he captured the hollow zeitgeist of geek culture, although Eltingville did it better.

Stranger in a Strange Land - boomer fedora cringe

>>21845188

I wonder what this period of groid cringe will be known as in the future

>>21844296
Bataille's poetry.

>>21846193
Holy fuck. I looked at the Amazon preview and was almost dead on the floor within the first few paragraphs.

>>21846403
Because then it would be about fucking. And it can't be a older woman looking at a younger woman, because then it's about jealousy

>>21844711
It had SOME redeeming qualities but I hated the whole fucking book. Waste of paper really. Fuck Heathcliff and fuck the annoying cunt Nelly.

>>21846495
What's wrong with this besides being bland and boring.

>>21845439
No, he’s right, you’re the retard

>>21846473
The great cuckening

>>21844296
genrefaggots, this is the worst mystery I have ever read in my life. I picked it up for a cozy Christmas read and the prose was legitimately the worst. It's melodramatic, the character writing is weak, and the author was too focused on writing horrific Christmas metaphors, asskissing lesbians, and weaving these dogshit anagrams into every chapter and she forgot to write anything even remotely approaching a good book. It was cringe personified and the "author" is a fucking writing teacher. I highly recommend you kill yourself rather than reading this.

>>21846514
It grates on me, but I'll try to break it down into quantifiable statements:
>...palmed the back of his neck, looking sheepish.
Redundant. If he's rubbing the back of his neck, it's a sheepish or awkward gesture. Pick one or the other, preferably the first as it "shows" rather than "tells" (admittedly this is an autistic nitpick)
>his broad quarterback frame
Cringe and teen girl writing, Wattpad-esque. (Another nitpick as your mileage may vary)
>Poster-boy perfect: every one craved him like a vice.
>every one
Also cringe and clumsy. Could be forgiven sans the error if the rest of the passage wasn't so grating.
>Caaaaat.
This way of writing dialogue is annoying and weird. But where it gets truly bad is the follow-up paragraph about the cold lake and the neurons. This is why the previous anon called it tryhard.
>I licked the corner of a tooth.
what the fuck
TLDR it seems like the author read too much Wattpad fanfiction and it shows. Tastes may vary but there is at least a little objectively bad writing going on here.

>>21846472
I really quite enjoyed the first third of it because of the interesting premise, but yeah it rapidly went to shit after that

>>21844296
Factotum by Charles Bukowski. Completely irredeemable trash.

>>21846528
This sounds pretty ridiculous.

>>21846495
I honestly just let my copy fall open to 3 random pages so I'm just gonna post those. I haven't touched it since autumn and looking at this cracked me up. Guess it turned out to be good for something after all.

>>21847954

>>21847960

>>21844391
What was bad about it? Just the style, or something else?

>>21844788
You could write multiple essays about how bad this one is. But the fact that even normies hate it now is indicative of just how much internet culture changed from the late 2000s and early 2010s to now. Just a completely different era.

>>21844296
I really dont know why. Also the expanse series

>>21845188
I actually liked Smoke Signals, mostly because it was an all native story with no White people in it. Are Alexie's actual books so much worse?

>>21844296
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. That shit won the Hugo, and it is literally nothing but one hamfisted, blatant attempt after another to shove woke ideology down the readers throat. It reads like an ideological propaganda pamphlet rather than a normal novel. I couldnt make it more than a third of the way in before it became unbearable. Those woke assholes have ruined science fiction.

>>21844296
It made me want to rip out all of Gaddis' IVs and hasten his death so he didn't gain any profit from publishing this :)

>>21844711
A bunch of main characters acting in the most emotional, irrational, overwrought and histrionical manner imaginable throughout the whole book.

>>21848022
That's just Romanticism, anon. You're free to not like it, but it's not bad writing, it's a deliberate stylistic choice.

I don't finish books I'm not enjoying.

>>21845589
>I admit it's a bad book but you're not allowed to say it's a bad book

>>21848025
Can a book really be good if it makes me want to shoot every single character?

>>21845188
My mom used to love him until she saw him speak, and he wouldn't stop bitching about white people. My mom is quite left-leaning and she found him annoying irl. I liked part-time injun because he fucks trees and I thought that was neat as a 14 year old

>>21848034
What, you don't like The Great Gatsby either?

>>21847954
>Glib as the first word out of a babe's milk-wet mouth
>how the testes sat in their gunny sacks of tanned skin
KEK This is honestly impressive in a way

>>21845216
I also nominate this. It's a ghost story that's more interested in preachy, "socially conscious" millennial cattiness than actually being a ghost story. It also has some of the most insufferably purple prose written in God knows how long. There was like one decent paragraph about pulling teeth but the rest is a trash fire worse than this anon is making it sound. I only finished it because it was short but I wanted to drop it maybe 15 pages in. If I die never knowing worse, for lack of a better word, "writing" than this then I consider myself to have lived a blessed life.

>>21845650
I heard Naked Lunch gets very boring after a time. You can only read so many dense descriptions of blood, semen, and shit before you get tired of it.

>>21844391
All style and no substance for sure, but credit where it's due there's some style to it. I didn't love it but I don't regret giving it a try.

>>21844391
I have no idea what Gibson is trying to communicate when he talks about physical objects or unique settings in Neuromancer. It sucks.

>>21848158
>blood shit semen drugs psychosis non-stop for 250 pages
I think Naked Lunch is worthwhile as an illustrative look into the average gay man's brain.

>>21848448
I won't disagree, I masturbated like 20 times while on various drugs in the course of reading that book.

>>21848158
>>21848448
I love the Cronenberg movie, but I heard it's like a pastiche of the novel and some of Burroughs' own personal shit tossed in. This true?

>>21844788
I was going to talk at length about why I hate these two books but I really just despise the only thing of substance being
>"HEY"
>"REMEMBER THIS?"
also the part in the second book where the author spergdumps about Prince for 2 pages and then puts the characters in an anime fight void of stakes or consequence that's really just an excuse to put more of Prince's wikipedia page into the book

>>21844296
B.F. Skinner - Beyond Freedom & Dignity. Seriously, fuck that guy.

>>21844296
Petals in the Hail. Read it just recently after the author shilled it here. I even tried to bring my critique to the author (situated on deviant art btw). He blocked me for “ridiculing” him.

This was absolutely worst. Makes Gardner's stuff read like Ligotti

>>21846403
Because the artist’s quest is one of obsession, self destructive tendencies and he is often misunderstood by the masses. There is a lot of good literary criticism on this novella worth checking out. It has been put into better words by others. Hell, even check out the Norton Critical Edition

The worst in recent memory was The Great Gatsby, but this is from a steady diet of classic novels for several years. Fitzgerald's writing style was much too convoluted and sloppy for my liking and it felt bloated. Are there redeeming qualities? Yes, probably more than I am willing to admit, but it still stands that it is a hot, 130-ish page mess.

I am considering reading some of Amanda McKittrick Ros books. (The worst author according to C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, who used to read portions of her books to each other to see ho long it would take for them to burst out laughing).

>>21847954
>>21847960
>>21847965
I don't know how to describe this prose. It's like pretentious goosebumps. Very short and simple sentences like something from a middle school fiction, but then it's got all these similes that are either cliche or extremely strange. At times it seems like it's trying to be gothic, but the syntax is so modern it just doesn't work.
>legs like stilts
kind of goofy
>smile like a Christmas miracle
what?
>laughed like a note in a cello's long throat
cellos don't have throats. They have a neck which doesn't produce sound.
>corporeal body
why would you describe a body as corporeal?
Oh I just noticed, this author refuses to use the words "he said" or "she said." Everything has to be some goobledy-gook. It's like I'm being assaulted by the author's cleverness and none of it really fits.

>>21846495
Is this a fictionalized version of Tommy Wiseau?

>>21845367
Dangerously good bait, but alas no bites.

>>21848416
Seconded. Felt like impenetrable nonsense

>>21848759
The movie is great. Maybe one of the only examples I can think of where the movie is actually way better than the book. Cronenberg pulled what he could from Burroughs' insane faggot shit and turned it hetero somehow. And the parts he couldn't turn hetero he portrayed as a moral warning or straight up body horror. And he somehow added a plot!

What a fantastic movie. People say The Fly is Cronenberg's best but that is a mid opinion.

>>21844296
If the book is shit I don't finish it. Quality doesn't magically pick up at the three quarters point.

>>21849434
Honestly, you're not far off.

>>21844296
Sapiens

Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Dude was clearly a self-hating Yid and it shows. And not even in a ha-ha sorta way, either.

>>21849403
That's what's so funny about it to me. I actually love flowery prose and shit like that, but this was so sloppy and ridiculous that when I first read it, it almost felt like a spoof. Not in a clever meta way either. I almost couldn't believe it.

No Longer Human.

It's the book that made me realize that everyone on here is 17 and I should never listen to a book recommendation from you people ever again.
Also it made me realize that I wasn't depressed, nor did I want to be. There is nothing cool or desirable about that aesthetic. All you dumbasses watched Drive, and somehow got it into your head that being an introverted loner is cool and mysterious (spoiler: it's not).
I now devote my reading to nothing but positive things, and you losers can wallow in depressing nihilism all you want. I have no interest in it.

>>21844878
I used to consider Mann to be one of my favorite writers, but once I found out that basically his entire body of work is just one long attempted justification of homo faggotry, I stopped ranking him so highly. The character of Hippe in The Magic Mountain is also a young boy that the protagonist lusts over. Of course, wrapped up in some pseudo-Freudian psychobabble to make it look artsy and deep and disguise the actual fact.
He's like the Michael Jackson of literature. He's too good of a writer to be entirely demonized. MJ was disgusting, but everyone jams out to Smooth Criminal once in a while.

>>21844296
Probably pic related.

>>21849605
Ian Holm is superb. Radiates anxiety and menace without seeming to do anything

Rise of Endymion

>>21850608
I can't stress this enough. This book is utter and complete shit and longest of them all of this godforsaken series that started out great but turned into something disgusting.
After trying to finish the book (I didn't), I stopped reading scifi altogether and instead started with the greeks.

>>21850437
That's just it, she's actually trying to be "meta" and "subversive". You're not really getting the wrong idea. Somehow the actual story is worse than the prose - love how she's trying to use horror tropes to explore racial injustices or whatever, and yet the token privileged white guy is the only one spending any time TRYING to pretend they're in a questionable situation. Seriously, the ghost spends more time in the background watching these characters argue like a Jerry Springer episode and chuckling than actually being a menacing presence.

>>21847954
>>21847960
>>21847965
>>21850437
I want to read this now just to laugh at how bad it is. Is there some way I can do that without actually buying the book? Libraries in my country don't carry English books.

>>21844296
Sons and Lovers

Catcher in the Rye

>>21848759
I read the excerpt from Naked Lunch where a kid is being raped and he is killed partway through and there was so much detail I got tired from just that one excerpt. Afterwards, I read that the whole book is like that. I'm fine with gross shit in a novel but not when its every page written in the most detailed prose possible. I was also like 14 when I read this excerpt on google previews so idk how accurate it is now.

>>21848025
You are gay, why are you gay?

>>21848025
The style IS the problem

>>21848090
Gay wuthering heights defender probably a pedo too

>>21844391
>>21845379
Toss up between these two.

>>21846251
In a too cute environment, Auster at least executes it. Postwar AmeriBoomer lit is a wasteland.

>>21847965
>>21847960
>>21847954
>>21845216
I'm reading this trash right now and holy shit, it's bad. The author literally used the word "penumbra" instead of shadow. Holy shit. And listen to what the dialog is like when you cut out all the verbose fluff between each and every word.
>Yeah. She’s probably like the Queen of the Damned or something. I wonder what she’d look like. Bet she's hot.
>“I don’t think you can be hot after so many years dead.”
>“Have some imagination. Sure, the corporeal body might have suffered from decomposition. But her spiritual manifestation is probably something else.”
>“You’re crass, Phillip.”
>“Just a hot-blooded male, doing what hot-blooded males do."
>“Cute. Promise me you’ll rein it in.”
>“I promise I’ll try.”
>“Talk to the hand.”
>“Just trying to make you laugh, Cat. That’s all.”
>“That’s what he said.”
>“You wound me.”
>“Your ego wounds you. I was just its instrument.”
>“You’re good people, Cat. You know that, right? And good people deserve happiness.”
Holy shit, there are oodles of "poetic" bullshit between each and every one of these pithy exchanges. It's agonizing.

>>21851534
When I still worked at my local public library, I would actually cringe each time I made eye contact with this book on the shelves. I did read it, God knows why. It's so bad that it ruins the incredible cover by association.

>>21851046
>>21851051
>>21851057
No matter how much you wish you were, you are not above human emotion and irrationality. Androids don't exist; you are just as stupid and crazy and passionate as the rest of us.

>>21844788
I wasn't a fan of the part where its just him being depressed in his goon cave.

>>21850730
Likening to the character drama to Jerry Springer trash is actually pretty spot on.

>>21850743
I can't guarantee but every damn book seems to have a scan/torrent out there somewhere. Maybe you can track it down. Honestly, bringing it up in this thread has made me start to love it in almost a cringe masterpiece sorta way. I couldn't describe how irritated I was when I read it though, Jesus.

>>21851534
Yeah, the sheer volume of her trying to be brilliant/clever 5 times in each goddamn sentence and always missing the mark is what truly snapped my mind in half.

>>21844823
>a harbinger of cringe
Fucking kek

>>21845367

>>21845690
Crusoe is not about the protagonist, it's about pretending that you live on a cosy island where you just hang out with your pet goats and eat grapes all day
Filtered

>>21846571
Also
>were glit and glory and good stitching
This is just grammatically wrong (not because it uses 'and' twice (that's a style choice and is acceptable (I use it all the time)) but because if you remove the first two parts it reads "the letter of his name was good stitching")

>>21849395
>The worst author according to C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, who used to read portions of her books to each other to see ho long it would take for them to burst out laughing
Based as fuck
Same energy as the watching female comedians until I laugh guy

>>21850437
The problem is that the flowery prose isnt supported by anything substantial. You can't have elegant prose and follow it up by someone says "talk to the hand lol" "im a hot blooded male" "she'd be hot, iD FUCK that ghost if you know what I mean"
It comes off as disingenuous. You cant even really pull it off on purpose, in a juxtapositional LE META kind of way, because it will feel silly. If youre going to have beautiful prose, you need beautiful content, themes, dialogs, etc. Otherwise you make both aspects of the work worse. It's like combining steak and icecream. You CAN do it. Doesn't mean you should.

>>21844296
When I was a teenager, I used to read a lot of YA. I read Maze runner, Hunger games, and others.
Anyways, one day I read Divergent, at that point I realized all the retarded cliches of YA, I couldnt even finish the first book but I got pretty far, after that I stopped reading by 6 years in a row.

>>21845379
Filtered

>>21852200
>You CAN do it. Doesn't mean you should.

Amen to that shit.

>>21844296
the peregrine (falcon)
absolute wank, somehow even worse than a chesterton story. no wonder everyone hates aglos.

>>21852200
I wish I could say this was millennial fanfiction LARPing as gothic pastiche but it really can't even commit to that. It's just millennial fanfiction with a bit more makeup than usual.

>>21852506
I'd be willing to bet that the author feels like a skilled conman getting away with a juicy heist, honestly. I mean, she likely owes EVERYTHING to the cover artist of the book which suckered most people, including me, into going for it in the first place.

>>21844296
My diary desu
It's genuinely unintelligible schizobabble with absolutely dogshit opinions mixed in

>>21846528
This seems like a nightmare

>>21844296
It sucks so badly

>>21852902
For better or for worse, my copy was ruined when a bottle of water spilled on it, but I found an excerpt

>>21849403
I have noticed in many young fiction books the sentence structure is childishly simple, but with occasional extremely complex words, but if you write the unknown word into Microsoft Word and right click for the synonym option, then you will always find a very common regular word. I think a lot of authors use Words synonym function to make their sentences sound more intellectual by taking words at random and changing them to the most complex sounding synonym, but it ends up just making them awful to read because no one else knows what that word is either.

>>21853066
This is pretty accurate. It's like when Joey on friends wrote a letter and used a thesaurus on every single word lmao

>>21853066
yeah, I'm reading this shit right now and she's using all the wrong words. She describes a hug as being "crushed against his sternum." Chest would have done just fine. A chest and a sternum are not the same thing. Sternum is a medical word. Like imagine looking at a webm of a k-pop dancer and say "wow she's got beautiful ulnas." What the fuck? And this sort of synonym error happens in every page.

>>21853308
I kind of want to hate read this now.

>>21844296
Super Mario Brothers 3: Brick by Brick

>>21845557
mediocre book, definitely nowhere near absolute worst

>>21852432
You pretend to like nonsense books because you see other people pretending to like them and you're afraid these people will call you dumb. It's extremely pathetic and I would advise you to grow a fucking spine but I think it's too late for that.

>>21853322
>An in-depth, step-by-step record of the author's play-through of every level, boss-battle, minigame
Holy Fucking Kek this is a real book. You read this shit?

>>21845352
Sounds genuinely awful. I hate nepotism so much its unreal.

>>21848009
I couldnt enjoy Smoke Signals because I hated the author and his books so much. The film was probably better than the book.

Read like a sequel, but it was the first book in the series. So many unanswered questions about what the fuck was going on, right up until the end.

>>21853313
It's VERY hate readable.

>>21853017
Yeesh.

>>21853066
True. Outside of just being bad and cringe, someone once said that the gravest mistake you can make with writing is erecting walls between you and your reader with overly complicated words thrown in just for self wankery. I agree all the way. You should always know when and when not to pat yourself on the back.

>>21844296
the pale king by david faggy wallace

>>21853750
The dude was on the verge of suicide when he wrote that, give him a break

>>21853749
Always make sure your big words are discernable through context

>>21845216
Yeah so if the title of your horror novel sounds like it’s been ripped from the middle of a sentence or else sounds like it can precede a lengthy paragraph detailing the full tumult of your narrator’s mental spiral, it’s simply not getting read. It’s 100% dogshit written by critical theory poisoned faggots. Everyone titles their shit like Zora Neale Hurston personally turned their bussy out in college. Shit’s sickening. It’s not even trend chasing anymore and it’s worse than cliche because cliche comes with knowledge, “oh I like this it’s been done before I want to do this”. This titling convention is entirely cynical and I doubt they even understand that they’re copycats, but rather think this is simply the sound of profundity, that all significant titles have this shape. Pieces of shit. Fucking garbage

>>21853785
This is her by the way. I'm sure she's nowhere near being insufferable.

>>21844788
Why would you willingly read reddit cancer in book form?

>>21844788
You’re not really special for bashing this book. Not saying it’s particularly great but picrel

>>21850443
I’ve become of that mentality lately

>>21853017
Reading this is so unpleasant... I wish I knew why. I can't point my finger at anything exactly I just know I don't like it

Notes from Underground, literally the only book I've refused to continue reading.

>>21845453
How did it spell woman?

Also,
>herstory
Do feminists not know how to open an etymological dictionary before screaming "sexist" at everything? Same goes for "mankind" (in Old English "man" meant human in general, not just "male").

>>21845634
Light in August is about a complexed mutt who runs away from home and becomes a serial murderer and in the meantime a cuck sires his goblin child. Or some shit like that, I dont remember. Quite forgettable.
I dont get the whole hype around Faulkner, although I never read The Sound and the Fury.

>>21846225
Steppenwolf felt like it was written by some young degenerate psychology student who just found out about Jung and decided to write a boring novel whose ending is inspired by some acid trip he had. It has a sugarcoating of pretentiousness all around it but in the end it is vacuous and uninspired.

>>21844296
Anything by Coelho

>>21844296
Morrissey's Autobiography, half of it is whining about the Smiths royalties court case

>>21853954
I did somewhat like Alchemist but he did drop his ball with later books.

>>21853885
First of all, the two characters are named lily and liliana, which are basically the same name. Furthermore they both speak exactly the same, so it sounds like a character is just talking to themselves. Beyond that, there's nothing gripping about the prose. The majority of sentances are simple and short. There's almost no variety there. The one time ther is variety is when the author compares the char's eyes, which is one of the most overdone things ever. The dialog itself is also cringe. Not because theyre speaking weirdly, that's just a stylistic choice, but because theyre saying alot for no reason and having so much back and forth(which again, just sounds like one person talking to themselves) that any actual meaning in the conversation gets lost. It is possible to say more with less.
For example. Instead of that entire first portion, imagine this

>you will be coming for Christmas, won't you?
>you know I can't-
>what about your mother?
>unfair. That's unfair! You can't invoke her name like that! This is only a game... This is only about the house, I-
>this is about much more than a house. Much more than a game. This is life and death
>tell me what you mean, then.
Blah blah blah
Somewhat better than the original because it doesnt interupt you to tell you how the kid is FEEEELING. instead it shows through her speech
Overall, the biggest crime is that it's forgettable. I already don't remeber which of these two characters is which

>>21853885
You're not the only one.

>>21853341
Filtered

>>21847954
Gq puts movie stars, musicians, and athletes on the cover. I have never once seen a politician.

Am I the only one who's turned off by long passages of dialog? Dialog is important in a story, but I think unless the conversation is terribly interesting it should be a get in get out quickly. What is with all these books where 90% of the content is just dialog interspersed with raised eyebrows and scowls and descriptions of eyes and hair color? IT'S SHIT. Have the characters talk but then make them DO SOMETHING.
>>21854047
Even if you fixed all these problems it still wouldnt be an interesting conversation.

>>21854151
>even if you fixed all these problems it still wouldnt be an interesting conversation
Yes. And that is why this is the biggest sin of the passage. Maybe it would become interesting if you knew the context, but I seriously doubt it, lol

>>21854148
I didn't even think of that, lol. good point

>>21854151
Alot of times writers tend to write the entire conversation, including the little annoying things like affirming what the other person said, or stuff like that. That makes it boring. Good writers will have dialog, but then also have portions where they say there was dialog, but not include it, only give the outcome or the gist of what was said. You are right tho, alot of people use it as a crutch and a replacement for actual action or content. One book I'm reading right now does this fairly well. That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis. There is alot of dialog, sure, but there is one particular plotline where it is almost entirely comprised of conversations between people, because it's a political underworld type story. However, almost none of those conversations are shown, only the result of them, the feeling of the character going through them, the long term implications of that conversation on the rest of the story, etc. When they are shown, theyre simple to follow, but reveal important things about the plot or character dynamics; it never feels like you've read a conversation that had no purpose. There was even a part where the character is talking to someone who is extremely objective and cares the utmost about efficiency. At that point the dialog was completely different from the rest of the conversations that were shown because there was almost no humanity in it at all. It was straight up soulless infodumping, because that character is specifically (almost literally) a soulless husk of a person.
What I'm trying to say is that dialog is the easiest to write badly but extraordinarily rewarding for the reader when done right

>>21854254
I read The Painted Bird, a pretty controversial book, but one interesting stylistic thing about it is there is no dialog. All conversations are summarized and it works really well. If two characters argue, there's no back and forth, I said he said, it just cuts straight to the meat of the argument and gets it over with in a paragraph. You'd think a whole book like that might get annoying but it works. I recommend it for that alone.

>>21845634
Bastard I fuck you bitch

>>21844296
https://youtu.be/1sFyrfqTdcg

This.
This fucking shit.

>>21854386

Oh man. Seriously, my condolences. I mean that.

>>21854151
>Am I the only one who's turned off by long passages of dialog?
Yes. This is why Gaddis filters me.

I once, may Allah forgive me, read a star trek novel

>>21854461
I'm morbidly curious about this. Please explain.

>>21854473
My dad died a couple years back and we used to watch star trek voyager/ds9/tng reruns together back in the day early 2000s. A few days after his burial I went to a thrift store to buy some furniture and picked up a star trek book (ship of the line) for 50 eurocents.

Pic related, its Frasier on the cover. The writer (a woman) wrote a one-off kelsey grammer character with maybe 15 seconds of screentest from a TNG episode into a novel just because its fucking frasier crane. This really shows because she writes captain Bateman and his first officer as frasier and niles. Its weird and terrible.

>>21854386
I remember liking it when I read it, but it's probably because I was 15.

>>21853341
You got angry at my comment because you know it's true. If you didn't tought it was tru you would've taken it as shitpost.

>>21853902
If I remember correctly (it's been over 15 years) they spelled it womyn.

>>21844296
Irene Iddesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros. It is the definition of purple prose, except it's practically dialed to eleven. Considered by many to be one of the worst books ever written.
Read it if you don't believe me, and come back to me after you've feasted your eyes on how godawful it really is.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34181/34181-h/34181-h.htm

>>21844296
Irene Iddesleigh (1897) by Amanda McKittrick Ros. It is the definition of purple prose, except it's practically dialed to eleven. Considered by many to be one of the worst books ever written.
Read it if you don't believe me, and come back to me after you've feasted your eyes on how godawful it really is.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34181/34181-h/34181-h.htm

>>21854546
It's not bad. It's just that kind of cringe you can't see because you are cringe. I think a lot of YA writers consciously capitalize on that as an appeal, but don't know the full extent of the cringe they present. I thought the darker themes were handled well, at least.

One of my classmates she was reading a Paulo Coelho book, I just asked if I could read it, I skimmed through it was the worst piece of literature I have read in years and note this I actively read Machine Translated Chinese novels, I could not bear to read to read it further.

Pic is what I came away with when I went into a bookstore looking for the worst thing I could find. I have a habit of being too critical of my own writing and I thought that having something on hand that had been published despite being garbage would help to remind me that my writing doesn't have to be perfect, just better than the competition.

I was working on a fantasy novel at the time so I spent a couple hours in the fantasy/sci-fi section, skimming the first 5-10 pages of everything that looked bad. This one was not only the worst I could find, but a NYT bestseller as well. The guy at the register was excited to see what I was buying from his "favorite author". I said something about it being a gift for my younger sister, which was much kinder than the truth. I've since learned that this is a very well-respected author and series within the genre, this particular book having a 4.8/5 on Amazon with 30k reviews.

I flipped through it just now and while it's not nearly as bad as some of the examples in this thread, it is aggressively generic. When people talk about AI replacing writers, this is exactly the sort of writing I have in mind as being ripe for automation.

But it has been helpful and for any aspiring, self-critical writers out there, I highly recommend having a few examples on hand of published garbage from your genre. No matter how critical I may be feeling, it always gets toned down when I flip though this book and think,
>yeah, my writing isn't where I want it, but at least it's better than this shit

>>21854680
It looks like if a middle schooler rewrote their draft changing every single word that wasn't a conjunction, using a thick thesaurus, not knowing or caring that the meaning of the replacement words are similar but different in context enough to cause the meaning of the sentence to be all fucked up.
Still wouldn't call it the worse but it's definitely really bad, and I would never willingly read it all the way through.

A few paragraphs are funny to behold. A whole book and the fun fades and existential dread creeps in due to how shit it is.

>>21845188
>burning and churning
formerly sneed's

>>21854500
The concept of space Frasier actually seems entertaining in a weird way.

I don't usually read bad books unless ordered to, and as such I can't name a "trash" one, but this was the one with the most "this shit again" moments. I like to hate girls once in a while too, but Maugham is like the Supreme fucking Commander-in-Chief of sexism. You have to hate women like a cancerous tumor to write disgusting women getting everything they want this good. I respect the work, but this was probably the most repulsive one.

>>21854680
It's overwrought for sure and it's easy to forget there's supposed to be a character here apparently, but that first chapter still shits on Cassandra Khaw.

>>21855157
>tfw I actually liked the first chapter

>>21854148
Blocks your path

>>21854688
Thanks for the insight, anon. Will probably give it another read for nostalgia value.

>>21855175
It'd be fairly mediocre gothic prose if she just reeled it in a bit and didn't immediately jump into describing the mansion after dedicating like 2 sentences to establishing the main character. It almost functions as a first draft, which is to say it almost functions at any level at all. A bit of tonal contrast that isn't utter inanity like "quaint grandeur" would go a long way but it's cranked to 11 from the start.

>>21854680
Aparently whe was the worst author ever acording to C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, who used to read portions of her books to each other to see ho long it would take for them to burst out laughing
Lmao
>watching female comedians until I laugh

>>21854802
>but a NYT bestseller as well
This is a meme. It means nothing. Publishers will buy their own books and put them in a warehouse so they can get this accolade printed on the front of the book because it tricks normies into thinking it's good
Also
>my writing doesn't have to be perfect
Lmao, ngmi

>>21855261
Obunga was more of a celebrity than a president, desu

>>21845188
Yet he still lusts after the white girl that is self-insert easily gets with

>>21855261
You know, looking at him now...I kinda miss this faggot. He was terrible, make no mistake. Still, at least we weren't ankle-deep in clown world, which we are now.

>>21856195
Anonsama. He was one of the harbingers of the clownworld.. they all were. Trump broke the timelines and we were in glory days for a few years, but it was a dead cat bounce. Now we're stuck with this present situation

>>21844296
Turner Diaries (first few dozens of pages, still too much to repair the braindamage), The Inequality of human races by Goblineau, (1st tome only, cause it got boring very fast after he couldnt pull off a single argument on supperiority of aryan races for how many pages?) On basis of 19th century by Chemeberlain, Rosenbergs spiritual sequel to this "book" with 20th century in its name, Growth of the Soil by Hamsun (and everything else he wrote after that which i obviously wont going to bother to read). Since im currently suffering and slugging through Sartres Nausea, im going to add thiss one here preemptively too. + 99.99% of all modern prints including Hughewlqcb or what is his name.

Madam Bovary and Anna Karenina are the best books ive ever read if you want to know what my positively praised books are.

>>21844296
Some novel about a Cuban girl hiding from communism or dictatorship or something with her family while in grade 9, it was long and felt worse to read than studying math. I think the girls name was Rosita and the book cover had this disgusting babyshit reddish brown look to it

>>21853346
Listen, "Movie" Bob Chipman is the hero /lit/ needs.

>>21856401
Pic related

>>21856401
>That's a fairly low amount of YA novels for the average sized person I'd say?
>The reason YA novels are written so fast and last so short is because there's not a lot of density to them

>>21845442
>Figures the person who wrote this worked for Ubisoft.
Ubishart has some of the worst storytelling ability out of any game company

>>21856425
I spit out my drink

>>21856414
>Karl Jaspers asked, “How can a man as retarded as MovieBlob be the hero /lit/ needs?” Heidegger cut Jaspers off abruptly. “What he says is irrelevant. Just look at his wonderful hands!”

>>21853833
Guy who posted that here. Like another anon, my mom gave it to me when I was in middle school (I'm a zoomie) because I liked both reading and vidya so she thought it seemed like a good gift, and even then I found it completely insipid. When I had her read some of it she ended up completely agreeing that it was a dumpster fire lol

>>21845424
Bloated but actually not bad. Slog to get through at times

>>21856425
>>21856581
>I wouldn't WANT to read 20 novels about a teenage girl and her pet wolf in that timeframe, but I could easily.

>>21846225
I’m sorry but Steppenwolf is a beautiful book. Filtered as fuck.

>>21853891
So fucking filtered

I read the first book in the "Anita Blake" series. It's an urban fantasy mystery series about a vampire hunter solving crimes. I only read it because of a Penny Arcade comic mocking it, saying how the series devolves into erotic fiction about fucking werewolves and shit. So I read the book and it was truly an exercise in pain. I dont remember much about it, but I remember the author really liked the word "akimbo" and used it several times in strange and puzzling ways. And there was a smart Chinese character who was supposed to "sound smart" but the author couldnt emulate intelligence, so everything sounded stilted and off kilter. Imagine Ms. Braniac Chung adjusting her eyeglasses and saying, "Even though that may very well be true, supposing we were to illuminate the mystery at hand, it would do naught but further complicate our current situation, would it not?" But in like a racist sort of Chinese way.

>>21857813
I remember hearing about Anita Blake but never heard just how shit it apparently was. Interesting.

Pride and prejudice was completely unremarkable

>>21844296
As far as acclaimed books and authors go, someone who jumps to mind from recently is Jose Saramago. His style is unbelievably tedious.

>>21856369
Muh communism and muh Nazis are common plotlines in shit books that normies find profound.

>>21844336
Yeah, I read this at someone's house one time. It goes beyond being merely incompetent and is actively poisonous. People think "woohoo, unpleasantness, cool!" but there are different sorts of unpleasantness. King Lear has a lot of unpleasantness but it is a good thing to have it inside your head. The Wasp Factory isn't good at all; it's just depressing. It's like De Sade. There's nothing in there that makes you a happier or more effective human being.

>>21846225
>Steppenwolf by Hesse
If there are people out there who don't like Hesse there is hope for the world. His bibliography is a merit-free zone.

>The Night Land by Hodgson is a cool concept but probably the worst writing style ever
So much SF&F is like this. I haven't tried TNL but if it stands out as bad even in that genre it must be awful.

>And probably even worse: Les Miserables by Hugo. Constant pandering to 'the poor', nonsensical situations, Mary Sues and nonsensical coincidences
Dickens does everything VH does, but better.

>>21850449
>his entire body of work is just one long attempted justification of homo faggotry,
This. I remember the straw that broke this particular camel's back. I was reading Felix Krull and there's an episode where Felix is working at an hotel as a lift attendant and this rich lady seduces him. After they've had sex he starts praising her and she cuts him off and says no, women aren't beautiful, we're crap, it's young, firm men who are the attractive ones. She salivates over them for about a page. You realize it's just Mann being Mann. He's worse than Proust.

(Gore Vidal loved Mann and often shilled him. That alone ought to set off a few warning bells.)

>>21849605
Haha, if David Cronenberg makes your book less distasteful, that's when you know you're in a bad place.

>>21853308
sternum is an anatomical word, brainlet, thus a term of science and art.

>>21844296
Middlemarch, this is said to be England's War and Peace but it doesn't offer much commentary as that book and the writing isn't as good. The pacing isn't very good and one of the themes is introduced far too late, the characters aren't likable but are still presented like they should be. The writing is dull and plodding. The marriage theme is boring, some people think they are in love but aren't and it falls apart, not interesting and a waste of time. Morality and debt and the use of money comes up but far too late and again it isn't interesting.
I wanted to see Middlemarch destroyed by the end of the book.

>>21855650
Haha, reminds me of this from The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

>>21844296
test

>>21859310
yeah, I know sternum is an anatomical word. That's exactly why it doesn't fit. Its not anatomy class. It's not a dissection. It's a hug. And if we take the sentence literally, it's a hug where she is crushed against only the very middle of his chest, without touching his ribs.
>thus a term of science and art
I don't know why you wrote this in such a "boom: roasted" tone when it's absolute nonsense.

>>21850443
Filtered being a loner is the hippest path a young man can take. Normal people degrade me.

Denial of Death