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| SFReader Forums > SF Fiction and Art > Books You Should Read > WORST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ | Forum Quick Jump
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Daniel Ausema
Acolyte
      
Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 298
| Posted 7/29/2007 6:00 PM (GMT -4) |   | For a long time I thought Herbert's God, Emperor of Dune and LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven shared that title. Nothing against Dune--the first book was great, even rereading it recently, and the second and third books very good too, but that fourth book...well, it certainly wasn't for a 13-year-old. Now I love LeGuin's work--Earthsea, Left Hand of Darkness, even her essays (maybe I should say especially her essays)--but I think I was just too young to try to read it (11? 12?). I've read many other LeGuin books since then but never gone back and tried that one again. The one Eddings book I've read has to be up there--I couldn't stand it. Every character talked as if s/he found her/himself incredibly funny, and the plot involved gods trying to one-up each other. It was embarrassingly bad.
Thinking of Lit classes...I actually ended up enjoying most that I read. I remember strongly disliking Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge in high school. I actually took it back out and began rereading it a couple of years ago, and there were things I appreciated about it...but not enough to keep reading. And I remember one Victorian novel written in verse that simply could not keep me awake...though that may have had as much to do with the fact that I was physically fatigued from track practice and not getting nearly enough sleep as a freshman in college...
If I wanted, I could probably come up with more, but really most books I've read, even those I haven't liked, I ended up appreciating on some level.
Twigs and Brambles (my writing blog) | | Back to Top | | |
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2324
| Posted 8/8/2007 4:10 PM (GMT -4) | | A lot of Edwardian stuff is unpalatable to modern audiences. With The Four Feathers, the story itself keeps it alive as a classic; I really doubt many modern readers could generate interest. Dracula suffers from the same problem, with the added old-fashioned trope of being written in epistolic fashion, that is, as a series of letters and diary entries. This was clever and well-received 100 years ago.
Read me in 2007!
"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, Feb 2007
"Voice of the Spoiler" The Sword Review, June 2007
"Servant of the Manthycore" The Sword Review, July 2007
"Darkling I Listen; and for Many a Time" Fear and Trembling, coming soon!
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, August 2007
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Summer 2007
"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review, September 2007
"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Fall 2007
"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, October 2007
"The Stars by Law, Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, November 2007
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Dave Hardy
Oblast je pri nas ljudska!
Date Joined May 2005
Total Posts : 202
| Posted 8/8/2007 6:05 PM (GMT -4) | | Michael Elhart said...
With The Four Feathers, the story itself keeps it alive as a classic; I really doubt many modern readers could generate interest. Dracula suffers from the same problem, with the added old-fashioned trope of being written in epistolic fashion, that is, as a series of letters and diary entries. This was clever and well-received 100 years ago.
It is a good story, as the movie adaptations show. They are far superior to the novel, much like Last of the Mohicans. That reminds me, The Deerslayer was poisonously dull. Twain was spot on with “The Literary Crimes of Fenimore Cooper”.
I think Mason also got a boost from being considered “literary” in contrast to Rider Haggard (for instance). Mason affects a “realist” style, where Haggard didn’t mind a bit of unashamed fantasy with lost cities, magic, etc. Therefore Mason is “serious literature” and Haggard “mere entertainment”.
The irony is that Haggard had some experience in Africa as a colonialist in peace and war. While he regularly gets slammed as an imperialist/racist, I’m not so sure you can dismiss Haggard entirely. He wears his liberal imperialism on his sleeve as it were. At least you get a feel that Africa exists in his books and that there are such people as Africans (white and black, no less). All I got from Mason was the notion that people at London tea parties were incredibly stuffy and dull.
-Dave
Dave Hardy
Fire & Sword
Fire & Sword Blog | | Back to Top | | |
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Keralen
Adept
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 529
| Posted 9/7/2007 11:17 AM (GMT -4) | | The worst book experience I ever read (in our genre anyway) was by Lawrence Watt Evans. I can't remember the title, but it's about a guy who finds an entrance to a magical world in his backyard. Yeah, it's an old trope, but I figure I'll try it. So he takes his wife and kid along on this happy adventure. And they're all caught by space pirates and sold into slavery; his wife is murdered; his 8-yr-old daughter is raped to death; the hobbits get sick and die; the magical hero (not the protag) gets castrated; the protag is slapped into a sadistic prison where they allow you to escape only just so far... When he's finally rescued by resistance fighters, they give him the chance to go home but beg him to stay and keep fighting. And the book ends with him NOT DECIDING.
Okay, LWE may have been making a point, but I have never picked up a single book of his since. Sorry, guy. You just didn't play fair. | | Back to Top | | |
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Gustavo
Sage
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 1211
| Posted 9/7/2007 12:22 PM (GMT -4) | | Hmm... I liked God-Emperor, and I like most victorians....
But I hated "The Elder Gods" By David and Leigh Eddings. An unmitigated disater with shades of the Teletubbies (everything repeated again and again). Maybe they meant for it to be read by two-year-olds?
As for objectivism - I don't know. It might be logical to trash it in the US or in Europe, where, generally speaking things work, and hard work and dedication are admired. But I live in Argentina, a country where things are much worse, and the fault is 100% attributable to government interference in free enterprise, overregulation, unions, populism and socialism - the things that Rand attacks. Anyone who has a good job in private enterprise (or even just a college degree in business or, god forbid, an MBA) is viewed with suspicion by the majority, and sometimes they almost make you feel like an enemy of the state, despite creating jobs and adding value to the economy. So maybe she should have placed Atlas Shrugged in South America, where, no matter how compassionate one might be, it's very hard not to agree with her. | | Back to Top | | |
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Michael
Estranged Earth
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 137
| Posted 9/23/2007 6:17 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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adam
Stablehand
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 10
| Posted 11/29/2007 4:27 PM (GMT -4) | | Invisible Man by Ralph Waldo Emerson, yeah, I know it's supposed to be a classic, we were force-fed this thick slice of boredom my junior year of high school and thankfully we only had to write a report on it and not take some kind of test. I was able to limp valiantly along through it and see it to the end the night before the report was due. Ah, high school.
Now, this may get me booted from this forum but I also grow tired of Burroughs' work. His books aren't the worst I've ever read, it's just once you've read one John Carter you've read every John Carter. I absolutely love The Land that Time Forgot trilogy though, Bison Press did everyone a favor by publishing the three novels together. The Moon Maid trilogy was excellent as well, thanks again Bison. | | Back to Top | | |
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2324
| Posted 11/29/2007 11:07 PM (GMT -4) | | Ahhh, Daniel. Do not assume that those who hold Rand in distain are incapable of understanding her. I do, thoroughly. I have spoken more than once with Leonard Peikoff, and walked the midnight streets of London debating with Andrew Bernstein. I have several times broken bread with Yaron Brook and his lovely wife. I know a great deal of Objectivism and find it souless, mechanical and selfish, even though these modern leaders of the movement are charming and personable.
Rand was a decent novelist, though too in love with her own voice.
Buy my book!
The Servant of the Manthycore available Nov. 17th from DEP
Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock
Read me in 2007!
"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, Feb 2007
"Voice of the Spoiler" The Sword Review, June 2007
"Servant of the Manthycore" The Sword Review, July 2007
"Darkling I Listen; and for Many a Time" Fear and Trembling, coming soon!
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, August 2007
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Summer 2007
"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review, September 2007
"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Fall 2007
"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, October 2007
"The Stars by Law, Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, November 2007
"Who Comes for the Mother's Fruit" Every Day Fiction, November 2007
"Stand, Stand, Shall They Cry" Flashing Swords, November 2007
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darkbow
Rabbit lord
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1647
| Posted 11/30/2007 2:46 PM (GMT -4) | | Ayn Rand ... geez, where to begin? I'm disgusted by her philosophy, can't stand her politics, and what bio information I've read about her makes me think she was a witch. All that being said, I think she's one of the most facinating novelists of the last hundred years. I love her writing, her characters, her dialogue, all of it. I've yet to find another author who seems so self-assured, at least within the writing itself. Her dialogue is sometimes terse to the point of being more hardboiled than hardboiled, but other times she runs on for pages and pages with some political manifesto. For me, it works. I wish she had put as much time and energy into writing fiction as she did into her crusade.
www.tyjohnston.blogspot.com
"Hot Off the Press" available in Ray Gun Revival #25.
"Deep in the Land of the Ice and Snow" upcoming in the Flashing Swords anthology, "The Return of the Sword: A New Age of Heroic Adventure." | | Back to Top | | |
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