General Discussion

There was a book we read in school that I luckily don't remember much about, but I do remember I hated it after half a page, and I mean hated. I'm still getting stressed out just writing this. I'm still disappointed the copy belonged to the school because I still have the urge to destroy it.

[quote name="Greyjoy" date="2021-05-01 07:39:24" ] Eragon, obviously. 100% trash. Badly written, awful story, awful characters, horribly edited. Sure, it was written by a teen and you know what? IT SHOWS. And doesn't excuse poor editing. Pure nepotism got that garbage published. Also The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic by RF Kuang. Horrendous. All of the characters are amazingly unpleasant, the writing is sub-par and it's so obviously, painfully derivative that I think the author needs to have The Last Airbender removed from her possession before she just files the serial numbers off Zuko and inserts him in wholesale. Worse, it was recommended by an author I actually like. Blech. [/quote] I remember enjoying eragon actually, albeit i never got the chance fo finish it Didnt know it was written by a teen!

[quote name="Purrloinedlove" date="2021-05-03 22:46:50" ] [quote name="Birdarang" date="2021-05-02 12:43:02" ] [quote name="Shian" date="2021-04-29 06:10:45" ] Then, years later, I had the same experience with the Homestuck comic. I just kept reading, hoping it would get better. So many people love this? It has to get interesting at some point?! I think I gave up after 400-something pages. [/quote] I tried Homestuck, thinking there had to be something to it. Something. Anything at all. But I never got out of the MC’s house. All I can remember is thinking my character need false arms in order to pick anything up. Does it have a plot? I guess it must, but I was never able to find it. Just hours of confusion and clicking aimlessly. [/quote] You aren't the only two. I think I gave up almost immediately. [/quote] Homestuck was painful and frankly, the fandom was even worse

I loved a lot of objectively bad YA back in middle school/early high school. Its hard come up with a long list of books I hated, because I'd usually drop them after the first chapter or two, and like I said, I liked a lot of pretty tropey YA.

Most of the books I really hated were required reading. Walden was probably the worst, just, the most boring book I have ever read. There's no real plot to Walden, its basically just an autobiography of some guy living in the woods and talking about philosophy, about as riveting a reading experience as you might expect.

I also hated Crime and Punishment, but that was honestly half because of the teacher, who absolutely loved it and assigned a hundred pages and a 60 question quiz every night (no joke). Also, for a book about a guy who murders his landlady (spoiler i guess), there's just a whole lot of nothing in the middle of that book. Like I get he's having an inner conflict, but do we really need to read about him laying on a couch for 200 pages?


Edit:
So, upon looking through this thread a little more, I do have one non-required reading addition to add.

Any Maximum Ride book past the third one:
I loved this series in middle school. The first three books were some of my favorites at the time, to the point that me and my friend both had fan characters we would write about and roleplay together. The first three books definitely weren't masterpieces by any means, but they were fun, fast reads with an interesting enough concept to spark some fan creativity. Boy did it go downhill from there. Just...plot twists, love triangles, weird unexplained powers, none of it made any sense. It just went entirely off the rails. I think the final nail in the coffin for me was in Nevermore when they started actaully ret-conning stuff that worked back in the first three books for the sake of plot drama. Absolute garbage, I dont understand what compelled eighth grader me to keep reading it.

I remember having to read “The Bell Jar” in my high school AP Literature class and I absolutely hated that book, not to mention the fact that I was surprised we were allowed to read it in a school setting considering how graphic it is. It’s supposed to be a coming of age story and tries to brand itself as a “feminist” story but is the complete opposite and not a fun read. The main character goes through all these struggles but you can’t even really feel bad for her, just annoyed at the author for the way she wrote this book.

On the internet no one can hear you scream, so I'm allowed to safely admit: colleagues and friends' published novels. There is nothing more exhausting than a journalist. They all have back-of-the-drawer manuscripts they eventually publish, and they're all terrible, but you have to read them because you work with them and you need to be polite. Please go back to reporting on current events, your next-great-American novel isn't.

_{I include myself in subjecting them to my own terrible stories, to be fair.}

[quote name="Zikitty" date="2021-05-01 23:21:12" ] The Warriors series. Yes, the one about the cats. (Rest cut so it doesn't take up too mmuch space) [/quote] Oof yes. It's kinda sad because I loved the first season (and still do). But everything after that went downhill pretty fast. Firestar became insufferable from season 2 onwards and most new characters were generally more annoying than anything else. I hoped it would've get better in Season 3 because I found the premise of experiencing the Story from the view of a Blind cat interesting but I was disappointed again. I stopped reading after that. Another terrible book I've read was Divergent. The worldbuilding was all over the place and made no sense and the romance between the two protagonists was terribly written. I stopped reading after the first book. (I heared to movies are even worse)