Ten Books So Terribly Written That I'll Never Have Them in My House Again
Submitted by cmonster on Mon, 11/01/2004 - 02:24
Tags:
- Nice - Jen Sacks. Five pages in, and I hate the protagonist. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. Oh you're gorgeous and men throw themselves at you and that's a problem so you kill them? You're bitching about the washboard abs on the dude you just killed? Lady, where do I even begin?
- Neuromancer - William Gibson. I fought my way through it after five tries, and for what? Bupkiss.
- One for the Money - Janet Evanovich. Child molestation? Not funny. Attempted rape? Not funny. Rape and torture? Really not funny. This series? Is a crime against the trees chopped down to print it on.
- The Night Life of the Gods - Thorne Smith. Getting drunk and writing a novel does not make you a Great American Writer. Exhibit A.
- The Devil Wears Prada - Lauren Weisberger. This book will come out at night and try and steal your shoes, and possibly, your IQ.
- The Cat Who Talked Turkey - Bring me the head of Lillian Jackson Braun!
- Enter Talking - Joan Rivers. An immortal evil that knows no rest. This book will try and steal Lauren Weisberger's shoes.
- A Passage to India - EM Forster. "Dear EM, I made cholera for a reason. Look into it. Love, God."
- Love Love and Love - Sandra Bernhard. Oh the 80s were a trying time, when editors gave huge book deals to everyone who slept with Madonna, including Madonna. Still, this is taking the term "unreliable narrator" beyond the call of reason. Instead of say, to the clinic.
- Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way - Bruce Campbell. Which is a shocker, because Leading with My Chin: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor is supposed to be terrific. This, however, is not. It has name-dropping, unexplained large type and strange graphics. But more than that, it sucks all the humanity out of Campbell's character and no one really cares what happens to Renee Zellweger anyway.
Author Comments:
It's all her fault.
*Not literally, you happy stalker people.
Re: Bruce Campbell
Don't skip Chin just because Make Love wasn't any good. Chin is straight biography, and well written too.
-M
You know, I've heard this before, that Chin is everything Make Love wanted to be and wasn't. Hmmm. Inter-Library Loan! To me!
What was it you disliked (hated?) so much about A Passage to India? I know cholera must have its reasons, but what are they?!
Johnny Waco
It was a combination of unsympathetic characters on predictable story arcs, along with very slow-paced writing. Which surprised me, because I'm a huge fan of British Modernist writing in general. And that may be part of the problem. In comparison to some of the other works from that period, it's very disappointing.