Books that sucked

I liked Great Expectations.

[QUOTE=LeHaHi;957985]I liked Great Expectations.[/QUOTE]
did it exceed all your expectations of it?

Yeah.

[QUOTE=bearchaser;957840]Homer's [I]Odyssey[/I].

quite repetitive.[/QUOTE]
I believe the word you're looking for is formulaic.

How can you not like it? There are at least a hundred different stories in it there must have been a few bits that you liked at least.

I find it difficult to see how Crime and Punishment could be considered "terrible".
It's a 19th-century Russian existential novel, so I can see why a lot of people wouldn't [I]like [/I]it, but to call it "terrible"????

I just finished The Idiot by the same author, and thought it was inferior to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

I got about fifty pages into Karamazov.. it's so, hard. To keep awake with.

I love Joe Gargery.

Definitely. Good in concept, bad in execution. I could go on, but those six words sum it up so perfectly, it's unnecessary.

Probably my most disappointing book, after having anticipated it for a while, was Alex Garland's [i]Coma.[/i] I dig a lot of his other stuff, but Coma was like...ugh. Pretentious, nonsensical. It was like trying to be "Memento" or something, but way, way shittier.

[QUOTE=chimney scott;958165]I got about fifty pages into Karamazov.. it's so, hard. To keep awake with.[/QUOTE]
Dostoevsky's the author of the moment for me. I want to say, "Give Karamazov another try," but to be realistic you're probably better off reading stuff you don't give up on after 50 (out of 1000) pages.
But if you ever do finish it, let me know what you think.

I want to finish it. I'll probably end up getting to it after a few more books.. but I've heard a lot of good things about Dostoyevsky.. I'm hoping they're somewhat true.

Tip: Whenever you're overwhelmed by a massive work of literature... download the audiobook and listen to it on your way to class/work/the dentist!

[QUOTE=Vendetta;958066]I believe the word you're looking for is formulaic.

How can you not like it? There are at least a hundred different stories in it there must have been a few bits that you liked at least.[/QUOTE]

some bits I like, but not as a whole.
It was like:

monster
sailing
monster
sailing
villian
sailing
death
sailing
home
more death
fin

[QUOTE=tom9d;957968]i thought the great gatsby sucked..[/QUOTE]

I concur. Not only did it suck, but I was 10 or so pages from the end and some half-wit told me how it ended. Good times.

[QUOTE=xec8;958159]I find it difficult to see how Crime and Punishment could be considered "terrible".
It's a 19th-century Russian existential novel, so I can see why a lot of people wouldn't [I]like [/I]it, but to call it "terrible"????

I just finished The Idiot by the same author, and thought it was inferior to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.[/QUOTE]

I think you said something the other day about having finished all of Dostoevsky's works. Did you go through his short stories as well? I've been pimping this Dream of a Ridiculous Man for so long I'd like to hear some thoughts and opinions from someone else that might have read it.

No, I have been saving the short fiction for later. I actually read Notes from Underground after all the thick books. I still need to read The Possessed, though. It's his least-read major novel, if you don't count A Raw Youth, which according to almost every scholar I'm familiar with is not worth half a turd.
But if you like, I'll get to reading Dream of a Ridiculous Man sometime soon. I'm going to London next weekend, I can bring my Collected Shorter Fiction of Dostoesvky back to Oxford with me.

What about Demon, how was that? I liked the cover.

Demons is the same book as The Possessed, and is the better translation of the title apparently.

[QUOTE=xec8;958890] I'm going to London next weekend, I can bring my Collected Shorter Fiction of Dostoesvky back to Oxford with me.[/QUOTE]

Doo Eet!

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker;954663]The Catcher in the Rye
The Naked Lunch
I want my money back on those two[/QUOTE]

Although this is going far back and almost useless to post. I started reading Naked Lunch my freshman year of high school and realized halfway through that I had no real idea what was happening. Sometimes I see it on my bookshelf and want to attempt to conquer it, but I seriously doubt I'll ever get to it.

For whatever reason, I enjoyed The Great Gatsby. I'm not sure if it's because I was 16 when I read it or the way my teacher loved every moment so would try to portray some new type of depth that may not have occured, but I might even say it's one of my favorite books. It's typically tragic by current standards and people may hate it for that, but it remains high on my list.

Why do people bang on about what a classic "Naked Lunch" is when it makes no sense!! Can someone explain what the hell, is going on in that book??

I started it because it was said to be so good and I've read what it's supposed to be about, but I have no idea what actually occurs in there.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01;955133]I'm the same way. I can't tell you if I hate a book or love it until I've finished it. I've had too many books totally change my view point of them - for good or bad - in the last few pages.

Dang! I thought Lunar Park was really good. It conveyed exactly what he was trying to do with it. He wasn't trying to write another American Psycho or Rules of Attraction. He was trying to do a Stephen King-like horror novel. I thought he did a pretty good job of it.

I thought Penny Dreadful was great. I don't think it quite fits in the trilogy, but it's a great stand alone book in my opinion.

Although I will agree with you on Crash. I had to drag myself through that book and it never really did it for me.[/QUOTE]

I agree with everything you said in this post. We should be friends.

House of Leaves - now that was a shitty novel.

....

[I]controversy...[/I]

I think it was pretentious and overrated.

[QUOTE=xec8;958159]I find it difficult to see how Crime and Punishment could be considered "terrible".
It's a 19th-century Russian existential novel, so I can see why a lot of people wouldn't [I]like [/I]it, but to call it "terrible"????

I just finished The Idiot by the same author, and thought it was inferior to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.[/QUOTE]

Crime and Punishment was awesome. Love Dostoevsky, only got into him recently but shit I love his books. My favourite by him so far is House of the Dead - thought I was disappointed by the lack of zombies.

[B]Parka'd!!!![/B]

Crime and Punishment was the worst book I've picked up. But according to my memory level, and my tendency to fabricate drama, I wouldn't take that too seriously. The Idiot was better but the prose made me put it down, never to pick it back up again, three fourths of the way through the book.

I highly recommend Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes, which is on Craig Clevenger's reading list, but don't take it as a clue to buy all of the man's books. Which is what I did on ebay for what I thought was a good deal, fifteen bucks. It wasn't. Kobo Abe, sucks in yen.

And, to slide this in there too, Stephen Graham Jones, I've got to not waste any more money on his books. Basically here's a Jones short story: You get disconnected dialogue, strange scenes, and nobody but fuckin' Jones knows the storyline.

[QUOTE=188416;961010]House of Leaves - now that was a shitty novel.

....

[I]controversy...[/I]

I think it was pretentious and overrated.[/QUOTE]

That's what I thought before I read it. It looked like a case of style over content. But there's a strong narrative thread. The main story could stand on its own as a novel. A lot of the other stuff is just adding...landscape for the story.
I guess it doesn't feel pretentious to me because the author's not being purposely elusive.

[QUOTE=sphinxvc;961046]
I highly recommend Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes, which is on Craig Clevenger's reading list, but don't take it as a clue to buy all of the man's books. [/QUOTE]

I would like to second that, and add that Kobo Abe's The Box Man is excellent as well.
As for books that sucked...Eragon.

[QUOTE=sphinxvc;961046]Crime and Punishment was the worst book I've picked up. But according to my memory level, and my tendency to fabricate drama, I wouldn't take that too seriously. The Idiot was better but the prose made me put it down, never to pick it back up again, three fourths of the way through the book.

[/QUOTE]

I did the exact same thing with The Idiot, I didn't like the prose at all. Oh and that awful long winded bit where he goes on and on about where Myshkin may or may not have been travelling for the past year or whatever - God awful bit that was.

Worst book I ever read was Moby Dick. Whole booldy chapter on the colour white. Yuck.

[I]anthem[/I] wasnt that good.

A Widow For One Year by John Irving.
But I can be proud and say I at least, finished it... I didn't throw it away...

[QUOTE=film_freak;960967]Why do people bang on about what a classic "Naked Lunch" is when it makes no sense!! Can someone explain what the hell, is going on in that book??[/QUOTE]

[I]Naked Lunch[/I] has to be taken with a certain grain of salt. If you're looking for a nice, clean linear narrative then it's only going to frustrate and annoy you. The beginning of the novel is pretty straightforward. The protagonist, Bill Lee, is a thinly veiled version of Burroughs himself. He describes falling into addiction and shooting his wife accidentally. (I know the "memoirs of a heroin addict" thing is the biggest literary cliche on the planet now, but when Burroughs did it, it was actually groundbreaking and transgressive.)

Hell, I'll just let Wikipedia handle this...

Naked Lunch consists of many loosely related vignettes in which several characters such as the sadistic, sociopathic and borderline incompetent Dr. Benway reappear. The primary character is agent Bill Lee.

The book's structure anticipates the cut-up technique Burroughs would later employ in novels such as the so-called "Nova Trilogy" (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express). The stories draw from his experiences in Tangiers and his life in America and Mexico, as well as a tour through South America he undertook after accidentally shooting his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in the head while supposedly playing a drunken game of William Tell. Throughout this period he became addicted to several drugs (notably heroin and morphine). The novel's mix of taboo fantasies, peculiar creatures (like the predatory Mugwumps), and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control. Burroughs explains the title as “a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork.” The title was suggested by Burroughs's friend Jack Kerouac. The novel is a particularly grand illustration of Burroughs's skill with dialogue. Poet Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs' close friend and sometime lover, refers to Naked Lunch in his introduction to his epic poem "Howl".

The book contains what is generally considered to be some of Burroughs' most memorable and quoted passages. One of the most quoted is a section (or, to use Burroughs' terminology, a "routine") known as "The Talking Asshole". This story-within-a-story involves a man who teaches his anal orifice to talk, a trick he soon regrets when it develops a personality and mind of its own and eventually takes over the man's body. The man is eventually incapable of doing anything other than consuming and excreting, becoming an "all-purpose blob." The anecdote serves as a symbol of material consumerism, which, like a man teaching his asshole to talk started with good intentions but ultimately ended in lobotomizing the population. The man is eventually stripped of his free-will, doubt, and reasoning, and can only serve as a more efficient consumer. The man is to represent society, who's been offered hopeful capitalism at the expense of being brainwashed by the media in order to forward the capital.

Several characters would reappear in many later works, most notably the surgeon Dr. Benway, Clem Snide "the Private Asshole", and Inspector Lee. In 1989, Burroughs published Interzone, a collection of short stories and other writings including a chapter entitled "WORD" that at one time was considered for inclusion in Naked Lunch. According to some sources, Burroughs original title for the novel Naked Lunch was also Interzone.

Interpretation
The redeeming literary merit of the work is found in the biting satire and social criticism many of these episodes contain. Burroughs digests the modern American mind and spits out a wild, almost repulsive parade of images and characters that encapsulate the current state of the 20th century. From the seedy abortionist who solicits pregnant women on the street, to the racist County Clerk who represents rural intolerance, to the macho father who buys a prostitute for his fifteen year old son on his birthday, only to discover the kid literally got a "piece of ass", Naked Lunch exposes the under workings of the American experience, and shows the beginnings of a social pathology and hypocrisy that would erupt in the 1960s as a 'culture war'. Burroughs himself found the material disturbing to write, but also a cleansing of his life-long frustrations and unconsciously repressed experiences.

On a more specific level, Naked Lunch protests the death penalty. In Burroughs' Deposition: A Testiomony Concerning A Sickness, perhaps the most shocking and pornographic section of the book, "the Blue Movies" (appearing in the vignette A.J.'s Annual Party) is deemed "a tract against capital punishment." Within "the Blue Movies," three overtly sexual adolescents take part in hanging one another, wherein Burroughs lewdly mocks by incorporating auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Using believable metaphors representing addiction (most notably heroin, along with medical practice [Benway resorting to subway abortions after having his license revoked] and even homosexuality), Burroughs repudiates America's consumerist post-World War II state, and the overall human addiction to control. Unfortunately because of its absurdity and strong drug content, many readers misinterpret Naked Lunch as merely a drug novel written by a delusional addict.

[QUOTE=188416;961011]Crime and Punishment was awesome. Love Dostoevsky, only got into him recently but shit I love his books. My favourite by him so far is House of the Dead - thought I was disappointed by the lack of zombies.

[B]Parka'd!!!![/B][/QUOTE]
House of the Dead is the one I'm reading now.

This thread should be called, "Bitch about books", because I keep waking up and looking at the thread title and think it's going to be how to enchant your books to give you head. Also, this thread is just terrible. Stop being so judgemental on novels until you've written your own, and had them published and stocked in book stores. I can understand to go as far as to say, I didn't like this, or, It got a little unreasonable. But christ you people have some cheek!

This thread has got nothing to do with writing novels, it's about reading and evaluating them. How does writing a novel and having it published make you any better qualified to judge a book? The way I see it, someone who has paid good money for a book and taken the time to read it has every right to judge it in any way they see fit.

yeah if you don't recognize crap when you read it how're you gonna keep from making it yourself, snap out of it Corellion.

back on topic i really enjoyed reading janice dickinsons auto-bio No Lifeguard on Duty so i was super dissapointed that the follow up (If everything about me is fake why am i so perfect or whatever) was a bit of a let down, just scraps from the first book really.

I'm not saying you can't judge it, just keep your judgement to yourself

Why?

we like our judgements

Catcher in the Rye was definately the worst book ever, it was annoying, definately overrated... ugh, just thinking about it, I wanna toss it

I gotta add just about all of Coupland's books except for "All Families are Psychotic" I liked that one for some reason.
Oh, and all of Bret Easton Ellis, if the guy spent more time making his characters 3 dimentional instead of describing how material and vane they are I'd probably like them a little more. But they always seem to end up the same, "I'm upper class, you suck 'cause you're po. Basically everything I hate. This coming from a guy who's biggest clothing decision is "Which pair of shoes won't stink today?"