Have you an awful book that you are reading? Or is it simply a stinker of a story that you’ve heard about?
Do you want to torture me and get book reviews at the same time? If you have answered yes to any of those, here is your chance to share the pain ladies and gents.
Once a month I am going to throw myself on the literary sword (as opposed to a literal one) and order into the local library, download or otherwise lay my hands on whatever really bad book you choose to inflict upon me. I am sure we can throw up a poll if there are a lot of suggestions, otherwise it will be random pick by the staff.
Go for it, torture Ardy.
(Word of warning to the staff, most of you live within smiting distance.)
We want Twilight!
I know where you live!
Eep! *Hides behind everyone else*
Uh, I love Twilight!
I have a subtle suggestion (mostly because I think I’m closest within your smiting range): Stephen Hunt’s Court of the Air.
I will, in advance, point out the word substitution trick, whereby Marxists become Carlists, communists become communityists, and so forth.
And having pointed out that much, I shall now sit back and await audible tooth-grinding.
Wizard’s First Rule
Ouch! That was the only truly good book in the series! ;p
I second Spinks, and motion for Shadowmancer by GP Taylor. Good example of a person with a message/mission and no technical writing skill.
It was a long time ago I read it, but the distaste is still lingering in my mouth.
The Sword of Shannara.
Enjoy.
Seconding Drew’s suggestion. Court of the Air is certainly not the worst book I’ve ever read, and I did enjoy the first half, but I’m finding it very hard to read the second. I think I’ve got through two pages in the last three months.
Eye of Aragon
Good call, Roguish1. If you do read Eye of Aragon, be sure to do so out loud to an audience of some kind. It’s just a short story, but I bet you can’t make it all the way through without an episode of LMAO.
I thought The Alchemist was particularly bad. The idea behind it – I think – is to be a make-you-think philosophical book. Many people seem to really benefit from it, but I thought it was obvious, poorly written (although I can chalk that up to the translation) and totally unbelievable. For me the hallmark of good fiction is that you forget it’s not real and become engrossed in the characters. Throughout the whole thing, I felt like I was just reading a drab fairy tale. Book clubs everywhere flock to it, so I suppose with some good discussion I could come to appreciate it, but reading it solo felt completely pointless.
Sword of Shannara was a ploy by Terry Brooks to make a living off of the popularity of Tolkien (the same could be said by a lot of fantasy writers). Think about it. It wasn’t until the late sixties, early seventies that Tolkiens work gained a large following. Before that no one really had time for all that flim-flam fantasy stuff. After the invention of acid and other mind altering substances Frodo became a hero of ledgend and the sales of LOTR and Hobbit increased significantly. Strangely, Sword of Shannara was published in 1975 (I believe) and if you read the book the plot is very similar to LOTR. Gnomes are goblins. The Sword is the Ring. Allanon is Gandalf, ect ect. I stopped reading after the first trilogy so I can’t say much about the rest but I assume his books get better or he wouldn’t still be publishing them.
Bad Books? The 3rd book and beyond of the Wheel of Time series. How terribly boring with way too many characters. I lost interest after ‘The Great Hunt’.
-NK
I remember that the ‘wizard’ was fighting a monster on a bridge to let the protagonist get away, and then fell down with the monster. I kind of tuned out after that.
I recommend “Paradise” by Chaz Brenchley. Normally I like his work, but this one… I alternated between bored halfway to tears and going “WTF?”.
Oh you are going to be punished :)
If I could throw a Sci Fi book in, then it would be Destinys Road, by Larry Niven. It’s one of 3 books I have never finished in 28 years of reading.
Here’s one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackbird-Silver-Freda-Warrington/dp/0450058492/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244043287&sr=1-9 take that !!!
I will be hitting my bookshelfs in the next couple of days, to dig out my Sh!t list, which is not a good place to be. I have one, that’s on the tip of my tongue, which will really put the cat among the pigeons.
This is a great idea and I am really chuckling to myself about the damage I hope to do your brain :)
Leapholes by James Grippando is one of the worst that I have found, but have you tried any of the early L. Ron Hubbard pulps? I read Dead Men Kill, and it showed me why they were printed on pulp. Galaxy is re-publishing all the old L. Ron pulps, it seems.
@Skar, you need to punish him for not coming to the pub with us all!
Okay. this is going to set the cat among the pidgeons.
The whole Princes Of Amber set I thought was rubbish and should be forced on anyone who is performed a crime.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chronicles-Amber-Princes-Unicorn-Masterworks/dp/1857987268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244118289&sr=8-1
Suggestions will close Friday evening and the staff will send me marching to my doom on Saturday.
Noooooo, I have barely made a scratch on my list of “crap books I have read all the way to the end in a hope that they somehow redeem themselves”.
Hehe, worry not mate. This will be a recurring feature unless you drive me to gouge out my eyes.
Pff, there are audio books.
And that ladies and gents is how far we at Quilldragon are willing to go to review the books you want. No sense will be left unpunished.
Ooh I like the idea of this site.
My vote!
Tanya Huff’s Smoke and Ashes.
I wouldn’t have believed someone could write a book with vampires, demons, sex-demon-sort-of-stuntwomen, a gay wizard, and a whole lot of other stuff and have it be…
…so utterly boring.
*new person waves hullo and runs off cackling*
Lovely Bones and The Alchemist. Both really bad. The Alchemist is the worst of the two because it is so pseudo-philosophicall pretentious. At least Lovely Bones just tries to be an interesting story.