. I kid. But seriously, interesting topic.In your immodesty you are probably wrong. You are probably not as good a writer as you think you are. Your stuff only reads that well, identifies that well with yourself.
The fact is that many styles and a lot of material only appeals to a certain group. If you don't think this million best seller's stuff is any good, chances are greater that you simply aren't in that group that his or her stuff appeals to than that he or she is fooling the entire world that his or her stuff doesn't stink to high heaven.
Anyway, I am interested to hear who you think is the worst author or worst book you have ever read. Please, not just hate talk. Give a reason why you thought it was bad.
If you feel the need to defend a material or author please do it without insulting the previous poster. I don't want to start any fights.
Either way, I'll got one. "Bad" certainly, though maybe not "worst." Rather than retype that, I'll just name the book, and maybe fill in details later. It's relatively new: Swimming Without a Net by somebody calling herself Mary Janice Davidson.
It is called THE masterpeice of science fiction--and it very well may be.
It was a brilliant world/universe that Frank Herbert created. I loved the complexities, but as to style, it gets a 2 out of 10.
Most of the people I know are still confused about the plot because it was so poorly explained, on every page there were at least three words that were unpronounceable(making it very difficult to read.) and ideas that were almost impossible to wrap ones mind around. Many people give up on Dune for the odd names the characters have alone.
As to style, it certainly is not a strict POV. Throughout the book you are bombarded with thoughts from different characters from every direction. However that is more unusual than bad.
All in all a great story, but a book I would not have soldiered through the first 200 pages had I not been garuanteed that it was worth the effort.
Anyway, I, too, am going to garuantee that it IS worth the effort.
in summation: Great story, but Herebert's storytelling is confusing at best.
[This message has been edited by Patrick James (edited April 16, 2008).]
Well, what-do-ya-know, I thought it was just a movie with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, and a good one at that. But, noticing your review, I can see why it might make for a dull book. It's a western, enough said . I kid. But seriously, interesting topic.
I would have to volunteer some of my own writing as the worst I've ever seen. Though some of it strikes me as some of the best... err, at least passable. Kind of inconsistent.
Of course, it's by that, what's his name...?, oh yeah: Michael Crichton guy. What a hack...
All except a very few short stories (the Skitty ones) are grating. Somebody should hold her head beneath the great whirring, clacking blades of the printing press and make her recant and swear on her inkstained soul to "Show, not tell."
Frank Herbert, on the other hand, can do no wrong.
Anybody read Foundation?
Sure you have, we all have.
Is it not the biggest info dump that has ever been written?
Did anybody find it exciting? I didn't. If you DID tell me why cause I am feeling like a dope for not understanding what millions have seen in this (uck) 'classic'.
Okay i just know somebody is going to say: "Exciting" isnt what it aimed at. It was for enlightened minds, unlike yours.
I would like a better insight than I am just a dope (because I already know that 
).
Do I like the trilogy? Well, yes, probably my favorite Asimov fiction book. But is it good science fiction? I'm not sure, either about the trilogy, or a definition of "good science fiction."
(Just "thinking about," mind you, not "rereading"...my copy is inaccessable without a lot of effort, being behind a big stack of boxes.)
(Oh, yeah, and just the original trilogy, not the sequels and prequels and connector novels and such that Asimov wrote late in life. They were okay, too, but didn't have the impact the original trilogy did. At least with me.)
Grant
I will be sure to stay away from Seagull.
There have been several books (and movies, and TV series, and so on), that I liked when I was a kid, but didn't "hold up" when I reread them much more recently. I guess tastes do shift with time. But on the other hand, some works improve as I've aged. It balances out.
(I did recently reread a short story by L. E. Modesitt---is that how he spells it? I don't have the book in front of me---his first story, I gather. I clearly remember seeing the story when it first appeared, and I even have a clear memory of the illustration that went with it. But I remembered nothing of the story itself---and, rereading it now, it seemed no great shakes.)
I've read a number of un-memorable stories. I've read a few predictable books, or books where I could have written a better, more satisfying ending, but this one is #1 on my Most Hated Stories in Print List.
For the record I'm limiting my choices to books published by reputable houses. I'm positive their's a lot of self-published drivel that's worse. But withuot further ado.....
The absolute, worst book I have ever read is Matthew Reilly's Seven Deadly Wonders. This book transcends bad, turning it into pure gold.
For a start, the author's seething jealousy of Dan Brown is palpatible, not unlike some of the writer's here's attitude towards Paolini. He references the DaVinci Code several times, and the book is clearly his missguided attempt to replicate Brown's success by drumming up the biggest possible scandal he can think of.
The plot is terrible. A bunch of mercenaries search for piece's of the 'golden capstone' in the bellies of the wonders of the ancient world, trying desperately to find them before the Tarturus sun. The fate of the world is on the line! I don't have time to go into the details, but it involves Natzi's, terrorists, a prophecy, a giant american army, and more traps then you can think of, with each escape narrower and more cheesey then the last.
The prose is terrible. Sterling examples include (I'm paraphrasing)
quote:
The tower was tall and sleek. It jutted into the gorge. It was topped by a spiked parapet and a spiral staircase ran down the other side.On the other side of the gorge was an identical tower. It too jutted into the gorge. It too was topped by a spiked parapet, and it too had a spiral staircase running down the side.
It also contains the funniest line I've ever read:
quote:
The wily old nazi lunged at him with a knife!
Finally, and perhaps worst of all, Reilly has two infuriating habits. He. Really. Overuses. Telegraphic Sentences. Like. All. The. Time. (I am aware that just inserting a period doesn't make a sentence telegraphic, you'll just have to imagine the frequency). And he italicizes. Not the words you or I would italicize, but words seemingly chosen at random. Words like knife and his. He italicizes on average two or three words per page. I wish I was exaggerating.
Anyway, as this long, drawn out rant comes to a close, the message I would like to leave you with is, read this book! It is hilarious.
Isaac's Storm by Eric Larson, which I picked up 'cause the subject (the Galveston-smashing hurricane around the turn of the last century) was interesting to me...but I didn't care for something in the way it was written, something hard to put a finger on but something that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Larson went on to write a couple of other books on appealing and interesting subjects...but I remember what I thought of this book, and haven't picked them up.
That should be on the jacket cover! You will have a hard time keeping me away from this book now. Thanks smncameron
I'm going to have to re-read Foundation now, in light of posts here, because I don't remember it being so ... pedantic. But maybe it is? Hmm...
Then I read the phrase "first ultimate use". First *last* use. Yeah okay. It's a good thing a "friend" loaned me that book, or I'd have defenestrated it.
I admit the beginning was a bit slow (thankfully the second book does not have that problem), but i have found many doorstopper fantasies do start that way. I loved Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy, but the last one seemed a little dragged out. Fool's Errand the first book of The Tawny Man trilogy, begins with 220 pages of recap, only in PoV. Then it gets good. <shrug> Sometimes that happens.
I think they were great for their time, even if the same style today wouldn't make it past an agent.
You can see the same thing in movies -- back when most actors had mainly stage experience, their performances looked exaggerated and god-awful on the rare occasion I'm forced to watch one. Did people really think Zero Mostel was funny?
Anyhow, not trying to have a flame-war defending old favorites of mine. Just wanted to put the info-dump style into context. I think it's more interesting to hear about authors making it to publication today that people are less-than-enamored with.
It's been a growing suspicion with me, that Asimov "made it" because he happened to live in New York City and was willing to go to the Street & Smith editorial offices and meet personally with John W. Campbell...I'm not sure his early stuff would have gotten a second look if there hadn't been a personal contact.
Hell of a thing to become so cynical about one of the giants of the field, isn't it? Well, I doubt if I'd'a done so well with a personal connection. My early self resented my early stuff being bounced...but my later self owes them a debt of gratitude for their not publishing what I wrote. My later self resents the current editors for bouncing my later stuff and buying some of the stuff they do publish...
To me at least, it felt like the author buried the magic of the story in fifty layers of bureaucracy and dust. It was so self-conscious that it felt more like a literary author trying to make fantasy "serious" than someone out to write a good story. Maybe it was just indigestion, but I got through the thing at great personal cost--and I love a good doorstop novel, including Goodkind and Herbert, bless their overly descriptive little hearts.
Just finished THE HOST by Stephenie Meyer (in reference to a discussion of her other books), and I really liked it (which, of course, means I shouldn't mention it in this topic). Oh, well.
Hype around a book often kills any interest I might have in reading it.
The ending disappointed me, though. The love story was a little too sudden, and the rush at the end did seem out of character and unrealistic to me. The young girls love affair with the college boy struck me as strange, and the final showdown poorly handled too.... Still, I recommend it to people, with a warning on the ending. That first three quarters, though... wonderful.
Jayson Merryfield
I recently tried to read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. I couldn't get past the overly pretentious writing by Rand.
I'm currently reading some Vonnegut, and I'm also not enjoying that. I read "Cat's Cradle" and thought it was utter tripe, and now I'm 1/4 through "Slaughterhouse 5" and don't think it's much better.
I read his books, buy don't like to admit it in public. The only reason I slogged through the Dune prequels and sequels was I HAD to know how the story ended (and he delivered). His writing is very staid, I enjoy the Seven Suns novels, but his writing is often distracting. He has some nice ideas and characters but his prose style does not carry them well.
There is a special place in hell for people named Paolini :-)
quote:
There is a special place in hell for people named Paolini :-)
It's the dungeon, isn't it?
Stephanie Meyer has weirdly addictive books, but they drone on sometimes and don't feel all that well developed. In her Twilight series the lead female is a classic Mary Sue. The males all just fall for her. I'm waiting for her next book to really see if I can fully respect her story. If the lead character is turned vampire, then no, I don't think I can and she belongs in this thread. It's just too predictable!
Also I enjoy Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, but I've been revisiting it since I bought it a couple of years ago and still haven't been able to finish it. I don't agree with it being put out there as "Harry Potter for Grown-ups" though. It just isn't comparable to me.
I think I failed at this a little. None of these are really the worst books.
Usually I'm late in coming to them, whatever they are, and wind up reading them through all at once, one by one.
Happens in the best of them. The tone of the first Alvin Maker book was different from the last (to date) one. Probably I'll pick up any more when and if---they seemed to hit a couple of nerves with me, and I regretted coming to the series so late in it...
One effect of that kind of marketing had on me, made me determined any single work of mine would stand entirely on its own. Somebody reading it wouldn't have to get a bunch of other stories just to figure out what was going on. I never had much luck with it in writing-for-publication, of course, but when I tried it in a series in Internet Fan Fiction, I got quite a few compliments for it.
As a genre, I don't like books based on video games.
Most disappointing read (that I finished), for me, was Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C Clarke, was a book that I slogged through, only to get caught by the last sentence, and realized that the book was just a hook for a trilogy. I didn't care enough to puy the others. Same thing with 2001. Actually, now that I think on it, there's not much of Clarke's stuff I like.
Come to think of it, those books disappointed me, largely because the world of the first sequel didn't seem to have anything to do with the world of the original---then they left that world behind, too, leaving me wondering what happened in the Solar System afterwards...
I think when that book came out, there was only one trilogy, and it was fantasy (Lord of the Rings). Clarke hadn't been in the habit of writing sequels to his novels, that I recall, and it didn't even occur to me that he might be planning to write one to Rendevous with Rama.
As Robert pointed out, there wasn't one until years later when it seemed that everyone who was anyone was collaborating with some new writer to get sequels out (and I suspect the new writers were the ones who were doing most of the writing in at least some of those cases).
Did you read it when if first came out, or later, when there were sequels to it?
[This message has been edited by Corky (edited July 16, 2008).]
The problem is to generate an idea which will continue to produce viable plots, characters, etc. for a lifetime of writing! There must be other ways to establish a brand.
The McCaffrey Dragon books started out as a trilogy, then two trilogies, then an open-ended series with prequels and sequels...though the first two books were compiled from a series of stories mostly published in Analog, of all places. (I don't think I read them either until later---I may have read the first story in the Hugo Winners collection.)
And for whatever it may be worth, I read and enjoyed the Twilight books as well, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
I have said before (and will say again, whenever I get the chance or see the need) that fiction writers have two main aspects of their work that they need to consider.
The first is what I call "wordsmithing" which refers to the actual writing.
The second I call "storytelling" which refers to what the writing is about.
I submit that good "storytellers" like Stephanie Meyer and JK Rowling, to name two, will get a lot of people to read books who might never have done so, but they will also get a lot of complaints from people who care about "wordsmithing."
I also submit that the books that sell in the fiction market are the books with great stories, and not necessarily great writing.
A great story covers a multitude of writing sins, but great writing will never make up for a poor story.
And maybe when people post about a book in this topic, they could be a little more clear about which aspect (wordsmithing or storytelling or both) made them hate the book.
I remember running into people who had read BORED OF THE RINGS before reading the story which it satirized, and being saddened that their experience with Tolkien's work was trivialized by reading the satire first.
Then I ran into people who had read SWORD OF SHANNARA before reading LORD OF THE RINGS and who asserted that Tolkien had "ripped off" Brooks. That outraged me.
Sometimes, context really can make a difference (I'd submit that it does all of the time, but I'm hedging here).
The "Lensman" series was one of the first set of books I read, after I exhausted the works of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. I remember seeing them in one edition, then another with different cover artwork, which I finally bought. (Don't know why, actually.)
But so ignorant at the time was I, that I picked up the third book of the series, not realizing what "series" meant. (It wasn't catastrophic---basically, Books Three through Five were one continuous epic, the others being kinda pasted on in retrospect.)
MOVIE
EVER....
I felt like something precious had been taken from me after seeing it....
My least favorite book/author? To be perfectly frank, I don't have enough time to read books that don't immediately catch my attention. I don't read novels nearly enough anyway, since I'm constantly swamped with textbooks while reading things on forums, websites and more.
[This message has been edited by wetwilly (edited August 03, 2008).]
I picked up some recent reprints of the original Foundation Series, and, I've gotta say, after about thirty-five years...it's less wonderful than it was. Did I really think this was as wonderful as I know I did back then? It has a lot of interesting stuff...but also has the characters doing a lot of chewing the fat...besides, I've read a lot of real history since then, and I can't see some of the things as happening the way Asimov has them happen...
(One problem with knowing too much...I regret not ever thinking to ask Asimov if the character Lord Dorwin was based on the then-British ambassador to the US, Lord Halifax, once known as Lord Irwin...I don't know if anyone ever did...)
[edited to fix a typo...hope it's the only one...]
[This message has been edited by Robert Nowall (edited August 03, 2008).]
The Sword of Truth series. Wasn't that supposed to be the most awesome series in the whole wide world? Well, after reading Robert Jordin it was a terrible comedown. Things were so dang predictable.
Eddings' Belgaraid Series.
Fantasy folks, please answer this question, why is it that when you have the Ultimate Super Dude, Like Rand or Ender, the only person who doesn't know they are some sort of grand chosen one is them? Rand and Ender are great because they weren't exactly psyched with the idea of their crucial roles, but they owned it. That is too much for me. I can't stand a book that shows me this person who is so clueless that they can't put the birthmark and the assasins and the strange magical happenings together and come up with at least a hunch that they are going to be saving something. I don't want the fate of all of MY tribes resting on someone of that intellectual calliber.
And no matter how many times I stop to think, "Oh come on now," I have to read the series out.
Then there was some series called Something Magic. Anyone help me out here? Trilogy, government project goes wrong, people in modern world start taking on supernatural powers. I remember there were Dragons and these fairy like things. Goldie a blind guy and this lawyer and... ah nevermind, that's how much I LOVED that one.
And the best for last, or worst rather, is my reading drug of choice; Stephen King. Mostly anything by him. I think he's an amazing writer but a terrible story teller. He hurts me bad with his endings. Why is it he has to do these terrible things to kids. I have 3 and I can't help but to paste one of my kids' face on his dead-kid character. Cujo - (unlike the movie, Kid dies from asthma attack); Cell - what a friggin rip!; The Mist, OMG, the father has to do what in the end? I was crying and cussing Mr. King that particular night; Storm of the Century - I read that one, such a cute boy, such a good father; Duma Key - again, can you say Daddy-Daughter issues; Lisey's Stories - Oh man, those kids, Where was DHR in all of that?
Am I a masochist? I fall in love with the people though. I'll never say Mr. King is a bad writer, but I will stick by the fact that he must be on a mission to depress the world, yeah? My heart aches for days after one of his better/worse ones involving kids. I'd have to say above all, these are the worst ones because the others were such a joke that they were just poorly written or thought out, but The Kid Tragedies have a REAL impact on me and it isn't a sunny one.
My problem is that there are so many books and so little time, and I just can't keep reading a book that does not make it worth my time. So I risk missing out on some stuff that would have been worth reading if I'd kept at it. But I don't think I miss it all that much.
quote:
If you don't finish it, how can you know it was really that bad?
As is often said, "one does not have to eat all of the egg to know it is rotten."
*****
Me? Well, I can think of only a few books I've thought were rotten, that I've failed to finish. But I've got to beware---I've taken up The Brothers Karamazov and War and Peace recently, and liked them a whole lot better than when I read them in high school.
And I fail to finish a lot of books, not because they're lousy---but because one thing crowds out another. My reading of War and Peace stalled out at the end of Book One---further in than I got in high school---but has been crowded out by this and that.
*****
I can think of a few books I stopped reading because they were rotten. The one that comes to mind---can't remember the title, but it was a recent fantasy, and Book Two of a series, about intelligent centaurs. Two chapters in and I could read no more.