The Nightstar Zoo

Okay, what in your collection would you not wish on your worst enemy? You have to actually own the book.

For me it's a tossup between: Bears Dicover Fire and Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies.

Jean Auel's latests, Shelters of Stone. She wrote one really great book - Clan of the Cave Bear - and then degenerated into writing Stone Age romance novels. The latest offering truly sucked. It's a massive, rambling, stream-of-consciousness narrative wherein nothing ever really happens.

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card... I thoroughly loved Ender's Game, but I felt the series got weaker as it went on. And Ender's Shadow's retcon on a few things IMHO takes away from the original book.

Have you noticed that as a trend in literature? There are notable exceptions - Asimov's Foundation series comes to mind - but they're only exceptions.

Some authors (Jean Auel, take note) should learn when to just stop.

Donnerjack, by Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindeskold. Mostly Lindeskold. The syllables/word count is higher than most drug names. it doesn't help.

Vorn

If a book still sucks for me by page 50, I stop reading. Ergo, I haven't read any truly horribly books. However, I own several books that just look horrible. My grandmother had lame tastes, apparently.

Oooh, actually, my Greek textbook is pretty evil. I could make my enemies study it the same way I did... only they're not as linguistically overskilled as I am!

I think I've got a copy of "Last of the Mohicans" around here somewhere... Goddamn, what a boring load of drivel.

No, on second thought, I think I *BURNED IT*.

Which means the worst book I own is "Fell Swoop" by Piers Anthony. He really does not like writing Xanth anymore, and you can tell.


(Oh, and for the record, I enjoyed Shelters of Stone)

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I wish Robert Asprin would learn this lesson. I have to list "Phule Me Twice" as one of the worst books I own. I loved Phule's Company, but after that...*sigh*. And a 5th one is coming out

I agree with you about Shelters of Stone, enjoyed the series up to that point and could put up with the romance but I finished the book feeling like nothing had happened.

Interesting. I actually greatly enjoyed that book... And yes, I own it.

Probably the worst book I currently own are a selection of bibles. However, I find them useful at times. *wry grin*

-John

The Law of Sequels applies to literature as well as movies.

Odd. I didn't enjoy the later books in the Ender series as much, but I loved Ender's Shadow and to a greater extent Shadow of the Hegemon. But I guess to each his own.

I really don't hate very many books with a passion, but a few come to mind. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I despise those sisters and the perversions of literature they created. Evil I tell you, Evil.

I do like Dickens though. He isn't bad. Twain is also excellent.

90 Trillion Fausts by Jack Chalker
I loved the concepts in The Demons at Rainbow Bridge and its sequel, The Run to Chaos Keep still managed to amuse me, but the final book was terribly executed. I'm starting to think that Chalker shouldn't be allowed to finish his own series. Simply put, he takes a great idea and f***s it all up.
Despite all that, I highly recommend the first book.

"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. I hate that book.

For those of you who haven't read it, here's the abbreviated version:

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"Vox populi? Vox humbug!"
- William Tecumseh Sherman

Hmm...The Old Testament (no offence intended to anyone...But MAN, did I hate having to read it).

Those are both, indeed, very bad books, though made worse by being mandatory reading.

Genisis, the first half of Exodus, Judges, I and II Samuel, most of Daniel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes those are okay.

The rest of the Pentateuch, I and II Chronicles, most of the prophets... even during my most zealous days I couldn't read them for too long of periods at a time.

Kings, Psalms, neutral.

The main problem is a good bit of the history portions are veryveryvery monotonous.

I couldn't get past the begats.

James Michener (in a very good book) tells us that the Hawaiian alii, when first exposed to the "begats" of the Old Testament, understood the significance of them immediately. Each alii had to memorize his own family tree, back a few hundred generations; they kept their "begats" through a memorized verbal tradition for a thousand years or so.

Exactly. Those parts of the Old Testament are not so much for teaching or for entertainment as they are for record keeping. I doubt most Rabbis or ministers care much about those books either.

I have a few philosophy books. One by Bergson. Ew.

I also have Stephen Lawhead's Dragon King's book. The title was misleading. They can be summed up as "pagan gods are bad and don't exist. The One God rules." If I liked that kind of stupid ass message, I'd read the bible, not high fantasy.

I'd say the Wheel of Time series, but I don't actually own them. I did, however, live in an apartment with them for a time.

Either The Red Badge of Courage, Great Expectations, or Grapes of Wrath. I had to buy these books and read them in high school. The worst had to be GoW though. God was it boring...

I also had to read Common Sense by Thomas Paine for a US History course. That was terrrible. It was only 100 pages, and I still didn't finish it.

Oh! Or Uncle Tom's Cabin! I never got through that one either. It's amazing that I still got an 84 on the essay I had to write afterwards when I read about 100 of the 400+ pages.

Now that's not to say that everything I read in high school was terrible. I enjoyed The Scarlet Pimpernel and had a newfound respect for Shakespere by the end of grade 12 (Hamlet is my favourite play), but most of the stuff we had to read was just awful

Same, Grapes of Wrath should never have garnered "Classic" status. To be honest, I think it's a "classic" because schools keep buying it because they think it's a classic, high sales. It's a vicious cycle!


Is that the book about the girl with an abusive uncle? "Go out back and cut me a switch?"

You know, I think a lot of people are disgusted by some books because they had to study them in High School. (I liked "Uncle Tom's Cabin", but I read it independantly)


Nope. "Uncle Tom" is an unfortunate slave who gets tossed from master to master in pre-1861 America.

The Scarlet Letter was just as bad. The author was so busy beating the reader over the head with symbolism that he lost track of the story he was trying to write.

And something more modern that I found distastful was Mercedes Lackeys' Fire Rose. Normally I think she's an incredible author but this time she fell flat.

The Scarlet Pimpernel was a wonderful read and surprisingly well written and well paced. This one I do have to recomend everybody to read

And just about her entire Heralds series.

Oh! I've got a great set. There's the Gap series from Stephen R. Donaldson. Essentially this is 5 successively larger books about space outlaws. The universe had a huge amount of potential, but in the end he used the whole damn thing to write about the main characters' sexual misconduct, some pretty bizarre stuff (bondage, rape, torture, etc)... and keep in mind I first started reading this when I was about 10. Talk about an eye-opener.

In my mind he and lackey aren't much different. The only real difference is that lackey writes sexual misconduct for women.

Now, I know I read this one, but I can't for the life of me remember if I liked or hated it. I guess I had no real opinion on it.


Indeed, but like I said, I did enjoy some of the books we read in school. The vast majority though were terrible. The thing I never understood though was that the teachers all knew that we would hate the books (my grade 9 english teacher in particular was sympathetic to our plights), but they still forced them on us. Why not alter the curriculum until books we might appreciate better are found. I'm not saying don't teach Dickens, just read a different one (we read A Christmas Story immedeately after Great Expectations and nobody complained about it).

Oh man, I hated the Scarlet Letter. I wanted to smack every single character in it.

The scary thing is that it's an accurate portrayal of how life was in the 1600s in America.

You must not even pick up any romance novels. Actually I find with few exceptions Lackey is a truely great author. You are just probablly as sick of Valdamer as I am of Pern.