General Discussion

Let me start.

This book called Impulse. It's supposed to be a poem book about mental illnesses, but... It's most definitely for perfectly mentally healthy people who want to romanticize mental illnesses. There's also this gay person whose problems are fixed by becoming straight.

My parents recommended it to me because they saw it in the 'self help' section of the library. When I finished it, I told the library to just burn it.

Edit: Can't forget Trickster's Choice. Looking back on it, it was really dirty and just softcore erotica. The main character was 15, by the way.

"Then if this is incest, give me incest anytime" - actual quote from the book I'm currently reading. This book is actually three books in one half the reason it's an unreasonable 1000 page is because 60% of it is just the author takes the opposite approach of "show don't tell". We're continuously told how amazing, show stopping never before seen, wonderful, the characters are but they rarely do anything worth noting. Outside of cousin incest, that happens a lot.

There's some moments that are truly so weird and out of place they make me laugh. Like we go from discussing business stuff to this one dude taking his horse to Ireland and just... pining about his Celtic bloodline for 3 pages.

There's also a part where the main female protagonist cannot decide if she likes or hates the character above's mustache.

If one was to read this book and took a sip of water every time someone is drinking alcohol they'd be very well hydrated.

One thing I've noticed is the incest stuff is so intertwined that any character who was an outsider and married in either dies or suffers tragically but it's all good fam because they were mean so us readers were suppose to hate them anyways.

Also it's the 70s but I only realized this when, at 3/4th of the way through book one the characters literally tell us this. Up until that point I had no idea what time period it was lol.

@TheLittleDeath I read all those edgy verse Ellen Hopkins books when I was probably too young. Geez, did I read anything back in high school that I don't look back on and go "yikes"?

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which I had to read twice for two separate English classes and it was terrible both times.

The whole book is written in dialect, so it already makes my brain hurt trying to comprehend the old and outdated 1800s slang. Also none of the characters are remotely interesting or likeable and apparently that is a good thing, according to my English professor, because that is "symbolic". Symbolic of the book being a slog, apparently.

"The Courtship of Princess Leia". Despite introducing one of my favorite groups of the Star Wars Universe (the Witches of Dathomir, such as Nightsisters), it is just a mess. Even the Star Wars young reader books were written better than that one. [quote name="Iokharic" date="2020-12-04 11:46:54" ] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which I had to read twice for two separate English classes and it was terrible both times. The whole book is written in dialect, so it already makes my brain hurt trying to comprehend the old and outdated 1800s slang. [/quote] There was a book my grandfather gave me that made Twain's books look like proper English. I can't recall the name of it, but it was written with bad attempts to spell out really outdated deep southern accents (the entire book, not just character speech), and to this day I have absolutely no idea what the book was actually about. I know the main character was a teenager and something happens with his family and friends, but that is really all I could decipher. I get the feeling the author was attempting to mimic stuff like Huck Finn, but it just made the whole thing so confusing.

Unpopular opinion: Wonder was a HORRIBLE book. I had no interest and it just bored me. But I had to read it for school.

[quote name="@TheLittleDeath" date="2020-12-04 09:18:44" ] Let me start. This book called Impulse. It's supposed to be a poem book about mental illnesses, but... It's most definitely for perfectly mentally healthy people who want to romanticize mental illnesses. There's also this gay person whose problems are fixed by becoming straight. My parents recommended it to me because they saw it in the 'self help' section of the library. When I finished it, I told the library to just burn it. [/quote] oh no oh god i saw a video essay on that book and no p l e a s e

I remember picking up a book called Riot of Rot (I think) when the book fair came around from when I was still in school. The book and story itself was actually pretty interesting last I remember, but my god, the entire book would be 100% better if they just got rid of the character Nix. For the two books I actually read from the series, her only dialogue was yelling the main character's name when he was in danger.Benny! Benny! Benny! It still rings in my head. She did nothing and added nothing to the actual story other than screaming Benny's name. It just ruined the experience of actually reading the book because that's all she was good for and she just made suspenseful events just annoying. They only kept her around because Benny had a crush on her, or he needed to have a crush on someone. There's been characters in stories I've hated and despised, most being because you were supposed to hate them, but never had I ever read a book where the character just ruined the actual experience of reading the book for me until then. Another one is that "I know what you did last summer" book. I gave it a chance but I don't know. The title really grabs you, but boy is it boring. It's supposed to feel suspenseful, but I didn't feel any of that. The characters are extremely uninteresting to me so I really had nothing to latch on to. It really is that feeling of someone telling you they have a secret, but that they're not gonna tell you because it's a secret, but you aren't in the mood to care and you're tired of hearing about it, so you become this meme: [center][img]https://media.tenor.com/images/7e567df8c48649cc2d40caadcd127523/tenor.gif[/img][/center] Needless to say, it's in my donation bin. Still haven't finished it, probably never will.

I'm gonna be that one person who brings up The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho :I

I'm sure there are objectively far worse books out there but few have left a taste in my mouth as bad as this one. It's basically one guy's super-subjective simplistic life lessons in the form of a narrative, and most of those "lessons" can be condensed into either pseudo-spiritual fluff written like a bad self help book, and/or being beat over the head with the message "want something badly enough and the whole universe will bend to help you get it." (which is uh... flawed, to say the least) The book uses terms like "Personal Legend" to make these themes seem more mystical and complex than they actually are. You would hope from a title like "The Alchemist" you would at least get some kind of interesting fantasy story out of it all, but the actual narrative is very basic and kind of boring. I guess it barely counts as "fantasy" but you realize pretty quickly that that's far from the point or focus of any of it.

If you want a saccharine follow-your-dreams narrative, just go curl up with some hot chocolate and watch a cozy Hallmark movie and save yourself the trouble of having expectations tbh.