this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

The bible. Set aside any religious connotations and just look at it as a piece of literature: it's terrible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The Tarot of the Bohemians.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Ayn Rand's fountainhead, by a fat mile. I was young and didn't know better

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

God, me too. I thought I was too dumb to "get it".

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I tried reading two different series from Stephen R. Donaldson, and it seemed to me he was somehow unable to write a book without a horrific rape. I just stopped reading the first book in each case because I felt like they were salacious and hateful.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Same for me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I just had a friend tell me he loved the whole series (with caveats), why didn't you like it?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The handwaving "science" part. And then in the end there's this deus ex machina plot point that comes out that makes all the rest of the plot utterly pointless.

I've read a lot of SF, that was the worst because I had such high hope for it after reading what everyone had to say about it. And it turned me off reading anything that's won a Hugo entirely. That and Redshirts...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

That definitely makes sense. What's a good SF book you've read recently?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

'How to write with style'

me, clueless thinking its going to be a good resource to help with my fiction writing

Author in the first 50 pages;

So heres why the USSR was evil

bro who asked

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ready Player One

The cringe is massive with that one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The entire thing is the author wanking himself silly over his knowledge of pop culture references from his childhood. Some of it reads like it was written by a 14 year old who isn’t all that into books.

The bit about the gaming suit that wanks the user off but also means you’re exercising so you get fit from wearing it was honestly one of the cringiest things I’ve ever read. If I thought the author was capable of the level of self reflection required, I’d have thought writing that part of the book was him acknowledging that the book is literally a work of literary masturbation.

It should have received the same response as The Room; a bad book only made into a cult classic by the people laughing at it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (4 children)

War and Peace. Heard so many good things about it. Despite everything, went in not having super high expectations.

The whole book turned out like a reality tv show. All the characters had some petty drama that they blew out of proportion. Hundreds of pages where nothing really happens, people just complain or bad mouth other characters.

I had to stop half way through.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I could only make a few pages in to the first chapter, it was hard to read, very, very detailed, which should be a good thing but I found myself losing track of where we even were or what the scene was about for all the detail. Once they started describing the buttons on the coat of one of the characters and how it had been the fashion some years prior at some point in the 19th century to wear them that way... I gave up. I'd like to try again some time but I can't see myself experiencing it differently. Curious about the 7 years in the making Soviet film adaptation, but its also 7 hours long.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

The Casual Vacancy

I forced myself to finish it at the time, but I hated every single moment. They were all bad people and I had zero sympathy for any of the kids or adults, except for the one girl who died at the end. Obligatory Rowling can jump off a cliff too.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's been quite a while since I've read it, so this may not be a fair assessment. But, I fucking hated The Catcher in the Rye. I wasn't even required to read it for school or anything, I just did. Perhaps I just found Holden to be insufferable. I think that was the point, but it did not make it a particularly enjoyable or insightful read at all, save for the overwhelming supertext of DO NOT BE LIKE THIS GUY. The part where he hires a prostitute and just cries in front of her really stuck in my mind. That was when it really sunk in for me that someone read this book and decided that Holden's views were so accurate that he had to go shoot John Lennon with a gun for being phony. Almost unbelievable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I'm curious at what age you read it. Because I first read it at 15 and thought it was the best book ever. I would even recommend it to people for years.

Then I read it again in my late 20s and had the same reaction you did. I thought he just came off as a whiny little shit. I still feel embarrassed that I recommended that book to people for over 10 years.

I remember telling my wife this after I reread it (she was someone I recommended it to) and she was like, "yeah, I didn't want to say anything at the time, but I hated it."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It was the end of 9th grade, so I was 15 or 16. I read it immediately after To Kill a Mockingbird, which did not make it look good in comparison πŸ˜‚

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