General Discussion

@Gabbiani To push their agenda, I assume. The author tried to demonize autism, and portray it as something negative, so that anti-vaxxers would be afraid to vaccinate their children. :( The book made it clear that the author saw people with autism as helpless, unintelligent, and worst of all, lesser than people without autism. It disgusted me too, as it could not be farther from the truth.

Also, I’m sorry that the description offended you, I’ll edit in a content warning at the top of my last post!

@Ryasma yea neither series by SJM ended up being very good, ToG was actually the better of the two though imho. I felt like Aelin was better written than Feyre.

[quote name="2000watts" date="2020-12-05 13:58:31" ] Gabbiani To push their agenda, I assume. The author tried to demonize autism, and portray it as something negative, so that anti-vaxxers would be afraid to vaccinate their children. :( The book made it clear that the author saw people with autism as helpless, unintelligent, and worst of all, lesser than people without autism. It disgusted me too, as it could not be farther from the truth. [/quote] Yeah... This is one of the main reasons why I don't really tolerate anti-vaxxers in general. Just because some peoples' brains work a little bit differently than others' doesn't mean that it's some kind of disease or that they're more unintelligent than neurotypical people. And thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[quote name="Gabbiani" date="2020-12-05 14:24:57" ]Just because some peoples' brains work a little bit differently than others' doesn't mean that it's some kind of disease or that they're more unintelligent than neurotypical people. [/quote] I could not agree more! I wish more people saw it like this.

Ten year old hot take: I have never gotten less enjoyment from ANY book than I did from the Hunger Games. I know people dearly love it, but I personally hated every last thing about it. It was a rare example of a book I'm not enjoying that I actually finished...mostly because people whose tastes I often align with told me that I would like it if I kept going, and that time never came.


It wasn't the WORST really, but it is really up there.


I guess the WORST would probably be a self-published book I read by a popular and quite likable Twitter author who I don't want to name drop. I haven't read many self-pub books I've enjoyed, which I don't think is representative of self-pub in general. There are thousands of excellent ones, I am sure. I've just not found the right ones for me. It's hard to tell based on Twitter ads and one-paragraph blurbs.

I've been on the lookout for more to try. I liked this guy...Found him funny, had nice interactions with him, etc. Decided to try his book. Whew, man. It was like someone's awful D&D game made into an awkward, REALLY cliche (which I can usually look past) and badly-paced "fantasy epic".

It literally started with a hooded man looking into his drink at a bar, then a fight breaking out and his hood falling down and...wow, he's an elf! Elves are rare and marginalized, and the patrons all tried to kill him. He easily beat them all without harming anyone too seriously. Then the cold, stern, "I don't need any friends, I only need myself" female character with no additional personality traits showed up. As far as I can tell, she never gained them either...though I was sure she would learn the power of friendship by the end. Oh, and a prophecy had foretold that the elf would ruin his village, so he'd been cast out. Now these outsiders needed to band together to save the world. Silly side characters with very specific powers and tragic backstories were added. They all conveniently fit D&D class archetypes and easily dominated all encounters. It was 80% side plots. Macguffins. Evil warlords. Orcs.

I'm sure the game was fun, but I stopped reading at about 30% of the way in. There was nothing offensive about it or anything, but it exemplified empty calories.

I did not tell the writer how much I hated his book, and I did not leave a review. I generally don't leave bad reviews for things I don't finish, and I generally don't finish books I don't like. I wish him well, and he apparently has enough fans that he receives fan art, so there's really no accounting for taste.

[quote name="@Antiheroine" date="2020-12-05 07:43:10" ] TFW you asked for villain/heroine romances and your friends had the nerve to recommend you the Grisha trilogy, what a waste of time that series was. [/quote] have you read her other books, the six of crows duology? its set in the same universe with different characters and some years later. but its [i]so much better[/i] than the trilogy was. the characters, the plot, it was all just way more interesting and engaging also im gonna be that person... i hated animal farm and to kill a mockingbird, and not even cause i was forced to read it for school. i tried to like them, they were just so dry and boring

LITTLE WOMEN. There are not enough words to describe how much I despise this book. Nothing interesting happens, it has no overarching plot, the author preaches morality lessons directly to the reader sometimes, and the most interesting of the entirely boring cast of characters get married off to each other in a really rushed, poorly-written section (this I can forgive the author for because her publisher forced that, but I still hated it). It boggles my mind that there was an entire FANDOM for that sack of crap at the time of its publishing. I should have known I wouldn't like it when I picked it up, I get very bored by domestic scenarios unless they're comedic. I want life or death stakes, not some silly drama about society and marriage. But it was the only title I recognized on the list of books my teacher gave us. I'm sure I'd enjoy the movie a lot more but I have no desire to watch it. [quote name="Asthenia" date="2020-12-04 16:15:45" ] 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. [/quote] I'll be honest, I hated that book from the very first sentence. I absolutely despise it when authors refuse to use their characters' names or even give them one. Supposedly it makes the characters more relatable but how am I supposed to relate to someone whose identity is so nebulous that they don't even have a name? The whole journey the protagonist went through felt pointless and boring even without me loathing the phrase "the boy" by the end of it. I donated my copy to my English teacher at the end of the year, I had absolutely no desire to keep that piece of crap in my bookcase. [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. 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. [/quote] Also this. On top of the characters being pieces of human garbage, the story has no plotline. None of the events are significant in any way and all of them happen with the most ridiculous and unrealistic flow of events EVER. My English teacher for this book was an absolutely horrible teacher and we took so long to get through that piece of crap book that I hated it even more. That was another one that I gleefully tossed in the recycling bin when the year ended.

[quote name="@Ambervale" date="2020-12-04 22:44:38" ] oof...so many. *This is an unpopular opinion no offense guys* but i... i HATE Ender's Game. I haven't read it in years but I mostly remember a cruel loss of innocence(yes, I know that's the point) and a lot of children's manipulation. Vocabulary seemed outdated without having the poignant old English charm. End of rising action took literally forever. Anybody else out there? [/quote] you’re absolutely right and you should absolutely say it. i hated all those seven year olds talking like they were seventy. and orson scott card is a garbage human so that makes us especially justified