/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19855297]

What are some of the worst books you've read?

[Anonymous No.19855305]

[Anonymous No.19855408]

[Anonymous No.19855414]

[Anonymous No.19855416]

[Anonymous No.19855424]

White Noise
Mao II
Underworld
Cosmopolis

best: Libra

[Anonymous No.19855432]

>>19855424
Strange, I really liked White Noise but really disliked Mao II. Libra I liked as well

[Anonymous No.19855445]

>>19855297
Your diary

[Anonymous No.19855455]

>>19855432
DeLillo is fucking terrible but that Lee Harvey Oswald book...damb

[Anonymous No.19855475]

Cloud Atlas
The Bell Jar
Birchwood

[Anonymous No.19855480]

O cortiço

[Anonymous No.19855490]

>>19855297
I haven't read many books but Lolita was insufferable. Yeah we get it you use fancy prose, can you just not insert passages of fucking french in there too. Idk, was it supposed to show how arrogant and obnoxious Humbert is?

[Anonymous No.19855496]

>>19855297
Is that Line Trap?

[Anonymous No.19855500]

“The Picture of Dorian Gray”. A few years ago a girl at work and I were talking about our favorite books. We decided to do a book exchange and read each other’s for the first time. I gave her “Flowers for Algernon” and she gave me this overrated piece of crap. I’m sure plenty will give me shit for this, but this was the most painful 200 pages I have ever forced my way through. I liked the girl though, so I stuck with it and tried to like it. When I finished it I picked out a few things that I liked and tried to talk about it.

>so that (character I don’t remember now) is pretty funny. Definitely says some interesting things?
>Who?
>The guy from your book. He’s in probably half of the scenes.
>Oh. I don’t remember. I haven’t read that book since high school.
>Oh… so how do you like my book?
>I haven’t started it.

And she never did. She ended up moving to the other side of the country with my copy of my favorite book.


tl;dr: Why do women pretend to like reading?

[Anonymous No.19855516]

>>19855490
You know, I felt the exact same with Lolita after loving a handful of his books. I’m currently trying to read through his bibliography, and one thing I noticed is that I really like it when he pairs his mastery of the English language and style with his great sense of humor. He does this best in Pnin, but with Lolita I felt like it was almost entirely masturbatory and without the self-aware humor that Pnin had.

[Anonymous No.19855524]

>>19855500
For validation

[Anonymous No.19855527]

i'm reading the last magician cause a friend kept me nagging me to do it and it is so "for women" it is actually hard to read, it is not bad in a sense that it accomplishes what it wants to be but it is not my cup of tea
If I had a vagina I would love the shit out of it i'm sure

[Anonymous No.19855570]

Ignore the fact that Fowles is a highly competent writer. This was so long winded and exhausting. Degenerate and unsympathetic characters. Hyper focus of trivial body language. I read this because some anon posted a thread that it was his favorite book of all time. Now it isn’t absolute shit, the writing is good, but I did not like it whatsoever. I was hoping for Eyes Wide Shut and got the most pedantic thing possible. If you are not a hedonistic fag, skip it.

[Anonymous No.19855583]

>>19855297
Mercycle by Piers Anthony was one standout.

[Anonymous No.19855593]

>>19855500
Oh yeah I dropped Portrait very early. I hate Wilde in general.

[Anonymous No.19855615]

>>19855297
>Norwegian wood
Narcissistic sexist garbage. Every single female character wants to jump the sensitive nerdy writer self insert protagonist for no reason.

>The girl with the dragon tattoo
Narcissistic sexist garbage. Every single female character wants to jump the sensitive nerdy writer self insert protagonist for no reason, but the writer also claims to be a feminist.

>Malina
Weird and boring, barely any plot. Somewhere in the middle Bachmann writes that when she moved to Vienna after WW2 she was hoping to get raped by some Russian soldiers, but unfortunately only the Americans were still around, and no one wants to get raped by those.
Her plays are alright though.

>A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Boring, sexist, overrated. Didn't enjoy the coat hanger abortion scene.

>The somenumber laws of power
Easily the worst book I ever read. The writer takes historical events out of context to fit his narrative. Suffers heavily from survivorship bias.

[Anonymous No.19855747]

>>19855615
>Norwegian Wood

Everything you said about it is true but it's still an enjoyable and decent read (for me at least)

[Anonymous No.19855890]

>>19855297
Kafka on the Shore
Norwegian Wood
War and Peace
Submission
Leaving the Sea
Notes from the Fog

[Anonymous No.19855920]

>>19855297
>canetti - auto da fe
every single character was human garbage
>schlink - the reader
le nazis are...le bad, also i like milfs

[Anonymous No.19855926]

[Anonymous No.19855982]

>>19855305
I don't even know why I bothered with this, it's purpose built for horny women on r/books. I knew I was gonna hate it but it managed to be leagues worse than I expected.

[Anonymous No.19855989]

>>19855297
Temple of the Golden Pavilion

[Anonymous No.19855991]

>>19855989
Kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.19856011]

>>19855297
Entirely indistinguishable from those millennial self help books you see at the Adulting section at BnN. Holy fucking cringe.

[Anonymous No.19856249]

>>19855989
Gay retard

[Anonymous No.19856280]

>>19855408
First half was pretty good when I skimmed past all the endless philosophical conversations.

Second half went full retard with all the wannabe-Christ stuff... like dude, you aren't gonna do a better job than the evangelists whose pens were guided by the holy spirit. And certainly not with a faggotty Christ figure with magic Martian brain powers

[Anonymous No.19856286]

Ubik

[Anonymous No.19856301]

horribèl

[Anonymous No.19856305]

[Anonymous No.19856321]

>>19855297
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I mean as books for little kids they're fine but they're sort of hyped up as if there's more to them than that. And there isn't. (Well, except maybe the fact that Lewis Carroll was a ridiculously blatant pedophile and apparently back then everyone was totally cool with that, lolwtf)

[Anonymous No.19856327]

>>19855500
checked
The last time i met a woman who enjoyed books was in highschool and she was my Brit Lit teacher

[Anonymous No.19856337]

>>19855297
worst book this year? punk 57
never reading another book tiktok recommends ever again

[Anonymous No.19856346]

>>19855408
I hate that this is still on my bookshelf. I liked his shortstories but that novel disgusted me too, I need to dumpster it.

[Anonymous No.19856384]

>>19855991
>>19856249
It was trash and boring. Fuck you weeb losers. Go back to /a/.

[Anonymous No.19856401]

Everytime I see it getting recommended in /sffg/ I get massively triggered. What a waste of time.

[Anonymous No.19856425]

>>19855297
Orwell , anything really , talentless hack with ideas as profound as the Intellectual level of the average 9th grader,but this could be said about a lot of anglo authors tho

[Anonymous No.19856857]

>>19856425
What was wrong about his ideas?

[Anonymous No.19856886]

>>19856857
Not OP, but animal farm and 1984 were pretty on the nose

[Anonymous No.19856909]

>>19856886
and people still misses the point

[Anonymous No.19856944]

>>19855615

Everything I hate is sexist: The Post

[Anonymous No.19856946]

>>19855500
>favorite book is algernon
>wants us to take him seriously

Kek

[Anonymous No.19856958]

[Anonymous No.19856985]

>>19855416
This is amusing in parts

>>19856321
>muh pedophilia
kys

>>19855297
Aside from complete memes like Ready Player One, Between the World and Me, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter, Ginsberg, Stephen King etc. from people who were barely professional writers:

Mexico City Blues
Dharma Bums
On the Road
Big Sur
Sun Also Rises
Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Rabbit, Run
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets
Pedro Paramo
Ulysses
The Silence - Don Delilo

[Anonymous No.19857005]

>Aldous Huxley - Crome Yellow
It's just boring. Nothing to say about it. After I finished reading it I left it behind at the place I was holidaying.
>Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald
Read it as a child and was profoundly disturbed by it. I can't really remember what it's about but I do remember it's disgusting.
>Spike Milligan - Puckoon
Spike was a great entertainer but whatever he had going on did not lend itself to writing. Or he was unable to harness it when he wrote this. Unreadable at times and ultimately pointless and aimless.

[Anonymous No.19857013]

>>19855297
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

[Anonymous No.19857026]

>>19856944
It's rather that I dislike sexist books

[Anonymous No.19857033]

>>19855297
A Brief History of Seven Killings
The Sound and the Fury

[Anonymous No.19857043]

>>19856985
>Pedro Paramo
>Ulysses
Sounds like you're just a tastelet, anon

[Anonymous No.19857045]

>>19855615
Are you like lost or something man?

[Anonymous No.19857058]

>>19857045
No, why would you think that?

[Anonymous No.19857066]

>>19855297
I tried reading Falguni Sheth's 'Toward a Political Philosophy of Race'.
It was abysmally shite.

[Anonymous No.19857102]

Dracula
House of Leaves
The Making of a Nurse (had to read for school)
The Killing Circle
Are there even any good leaf authors?

[Anonymous No.19857114]

>>19856909
Me and the miss still misses the point.

[Anonymous No.19857116]

>>19856011
You didn't read it or you're < 24

[Anonymous No.19857121]

>>19855297
m-mommy

[Anonymous No.19857250]

Just couldn't enjoy it

[Anonymous No.19857287]

>>19855297
any "american literature"

[Anonymous No.19857356]

>>19857013
it’s a fun book for kids, come on m8

[Anonymous No.19857380]

This series was my first experience with self published fiction (the author put up his books for free on his website) and this volume was easily the worst. It was basically an American slave tale but set in space with a bunch of aliens. Some of the earlier books had some clever ideas (although they were not at all well written) but this one had very little going for it.

[Anonymous No.19857382]

>>19857033
Looks like you don’t like books reliant on incessant and unrealistic internal monolgues as their primary narrative device. I’m starting to become the same way

[Anonymous No.19857391]

>>19855297
Crime and Punishment. Absolute dumpster fire of a novel, the only other novel that comes close to how bad C&P is would be 100 Years of Solitude.

[Anonymous No.19857393]

>>19857382
That and the lack of plot or memorable characters.

[Anonymous No.19857402]

>>19855500
You were bamboozled, she loves reading and has found a foolproof strategy of having people give her excellent books that she can abscond with.

[Anonymous No.19857409]

>>19855890
>War and Peace
There are people on this board right now that can't appreciate the greatest novel ever written

[Anonymous No.19857419]

>>19857409
There are people on this board right now that think what is equivalent to a telenovela is the best book ever written.

[Anonymous No.19857420]

>>19856425
Literally every single one of Orwell's novels is a masterpiece. If you can find nothing moving in any of his books I honestly just pity you.

[Anonymous No.19857430]

>>19857005
>I left it behind at the place I was holidaying
A fitting fate for that book. I like Huxley but that one was definitely a miss.

[Anonymous No.19857446]

>>19857419
Explain the attributes you have disdain for in telenovelas and then how any of those attributes apply to W&P

[Anonymous No.19857449]

>>19855615
Sexism has never and will never be a valid critique of a book. Try again.

[Anonymous No.19857453]

>>19857446
Unrealistic and incredibly histrionic dialogue between characters to the point of absurdity

[Anonymous No.19857466]

>>19857449
Why do you get so offended at someone's personal opinion?

[Anonymous No.19857476]

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki.
Bland, bland bland.

[Anonymous No.19857477]

>>19857449
Murakami's sexism means that his female characters are dull and two dimensional. It's a valid criticism.

[Anonymous No.19857493]

>>19857466
Offended? No I'm stating a simple truth.

[Anonymous No.19857497]

>>19857477
It’s not really sexist because all his characters are badly written and dull regardless of their genders. He couldn’t write a compelling character if one came out his ass

[Anonymous No.19857511]

>>19857453
lol, you either didn't read it, got a bad translation, or are just a moron

[Anonymous No.19857512]

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Middlemarch
To the Lighthouse
The Golden Notebook
Possession
The Ice Age
White Teeth

[Anonymous No.19857598]

>>19857511
And you are easily awe stricken by mediocrity

[Anonymous No.19857603]

>>19857512

[Anonymous No.19857608]

>>19857497
There is a clear difference in quality between his male and female characters. Compare Tengo and Aomame for the most obvious example.

[Anonymous No.19857613]

>>19857598
Tolstoy is anything but mediocre lmao. You got filtered.

[Anonymous No.19857620]

[Anonymous No.19857632]

>>19857608
I have read ten of his books, but I haven’t read 1Q84. In the ten I have read, almost without exception (besides his What I Talk About memoir), the main character is the same. The women he meets are the same. And the 12 year old, wiser than her years, girl are the same. Regardless of the book. There is little to no characterization or anything at all representative to nuanced reality in his characters. This is not sexism, this is an objective lack of ability in writing dynamic, compelling characters. He can write atmosphere well, but in no quantifiable metric are his characters good. Nor is the stifled dialogue, which is so formal and pedantic, that it seems like people speaking a foreign language without the knowledge of colloquialisms or informality of speech.
That being said, I truly liked Windup Bird and his memoir. All others were mediocre or bad.

[Anonymous No.19857636]

Lindsay Ellis' book was fucking terrible.

[Anonymous No.19857659]

any book with sexual degeneracy (infidelity, promiscuity, non-heterosexuality etc.) because sexual degeneracy is the lowest-hanging fruit of literature

[Anonymous No.19857688]

>>19855615
Shut the fuck up tranny

[Anonymous No.19857702]

>>19857598
>Tolstoy is mediocre
You really felt the need to out yourself as an absolute plebeian like that, huh?

[Anonymous No.19857726]

>>19857598
He's also retarded. Fuck Tolstoy and western faggots who worship that retard. Dostoevsky sucks too.

[Anonymous No.19857736]

Brave New World

[Anonymous No.19857774]

Brave New World
Stranger

[Anonymous No.19857775]

The Thirty-Nine Steps
Starship Troopers
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Neuromancer

You can skip these. Worst quality writing I have read so far. Real hell to get through.

[Anonymous No.19857849]

>>19856011
Haven't read it, but isn't there a part were he thanks everyone in his life that prevent him from growing up to be a little bitch? Also wasn't he a fag or I'm I thinking of Hadrian?

[Anonymous No.19857859]

>>19855297
Fuckin hated monkey wrench gang

[Anonymous No.19858041]

>>19855500
The old movie of it is surprisingly much more fun than the book.

[Anonymous No.19858154]

>>19857726
seethe and dilate

[Anonymous No.19858204]

>>19857632
Why did you continue reading ten of his books if the characterization and dialogue are bad?

[Anonymous No.19858231]

Snow Crash. In certain computer programming circles it's practically their atheist scriptures. Totally absolutely overrated all to hell and back

[Anonymous No.19858285]

>>19855297
Robert W. Chambers "Who goes there!"

Not to be confused with the great "Who goes there?" by John W. Campbell

I made that mistake but decided to give it a try anyway. What a weird take on WW1. Especially the idolization of a supposed code of honour in soldiers (on both side) is aggrieving, since especially at that time there was none. Also the rose tinted look on Belgium (and its dark past) is really odd.

[Anonymous No.19858312]

>>19858285
is this the same as Bladee's "Who Goes There"?

[Anonymous No.19858338]

>>19856985
I'm currently reading On the Road. I don't think it is that bad so far, I really like how it captures the zeitgeist of the time. The characters are interesting (in a weird way) but I think it is a, albeit dirt ridden, gem

[Anonymous No.19858383]

Probably none of the books posted above can compare with this shit. Thankfully the author's books are only relevant in my country

[Anonymous No.19858400]

>>19858204
Because I wanted to feel the same magic as I did while I read Wind Up Bird, which was my first. I finished Norwegian Wood last year and it was the last straw for me.

[Anonymous No.19858475]

>>19858400
Does that mean you thought the characterization and dialogue in Wind Up Bird were an exception? I thought it's written in quite the same style as most of his other novels.

[Anonymous No.19858672]

>>19857409
maybe it's fine in the original Russian, but the translations are fucking laughable. it's just soap-opera shit, completely bloodless writing.

[Anonymous No.19858680]

The Kreutzer Sonata. Nothing is more annoying than an author who expects you to find their character(s) interesting.
The main character, who's supposed to be a stand-in for the audience, hops on a train and sits next to this weasely old man who is so obviously Tolstoy's self insert that suspension of disbelief is impossible; Tolstoy, as you may already know, held extreme hatred for his wife, and he even died after escaping their house. This culminates in a character who just got acquitted for murdering his wife after she cheated on him, and he proceeds to spend the entire book giving his /r9k/-tier opinions on women, marriage, and anti-natalism to the main character, who (of course) thinks the man is an enlightened genius.
It's a story so bitter that I feel comfortable calling it the most embarrassing book I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.19858752]

>>19858475
No, it definitely was. I guess I was just blinded by the mystique, and then the repetition and lack of development in his writing became noticable after each book. I won’t reread wind up because I assume I will not like it anymore. I do wanna still read his book on the Tokyo gas attack though.

[Anonymous No.19858794]

>>19857013
It's not a great book, maybe even not that good, but it's not terrible.

[Anonymous No.19858822]

>>19855297
The worst book I read was "Hot Line" by Luis Sepulveda.
The guy is a known Chilean author for a couple of books for children with a similar vibe to "The Little Prince", and I saw the book on my father's bookshelf but it was the most predictable crime novel, and the main character, which was indigenous, only served for a snowflake purpose (that is, I am discriminated against therefore I stand for the people oppressed by whites).
Close ones where Ian McEwan's "Chesil Beach" and frankly "Naked Lunch". I still haven't been able to read it, but everytime I tried it I hated it, I haven't seen a single helpful resource for reading the book and I gave it three tries, each one separated by months.

[Anonymous No.19858833]

>>19855297

[Anonymous No.19858940]

>>19858672
What translation did you read?

[Anonymous No.19858949]

>>19858680
I enjoyed it, friendly reminder that if your wife violates her vow then murder is the based option.

[Anonymous No.19859053]

>>19857659
so what is that like 99.9% of all literature?

[Anonymous No.19859080]

>>19856985
you are a cuck

[Anonymous No.19859116]

I've been trying to figure out the name of the worst book I ever read for years.
I was a voracious reader of exclusively fiction when I was in 5th-6th grade (2005). I would read literally every book that came into our school library in the fantasty, sci-fi and mystery categories. One stands out to me because it was so bad that I dropped it after ~50 pages which kid me would never do since I was a completionist dumbass.
The only thing I remember was the protag was some teenage kid. He was searching for a skull because some oracle told him to and for some reason he had to dive into an ice covered lake to find it. The author spent significantly too long explaining how the kid went through scuba lessons, then went into extreme detail on the kid going through cold water scuba lessons. 30 pages later the kid jumps in the lake and by the end of the page he's done with scuba forever. I dropped the book then and there. I would say it was like Tom Clancy but for kids.
Anyone remember this random piece of shit YA novel that came out in the 2005ish time frame?

[Anonymous No.19859584]

>>19859116
It does sound sort of familiar. I'm pretty sure I didn't like it and didn't finish reading it either so I can't remember what it is.

[Anonymous No.19859590]

Hogg, 120 Days of Sodom, Cow. Shits boring.

[Anonymous No.19859596]

>>19857005
>>Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald
>Read it as a child and was profoundly disturbed by it
kek that was not one of his kids books anon

[Blarty Hongo !H0lVGXJNm6 No.19859676]

>>19855297
London's "The Iron Heel" is practically unreadable.

[Anonymous No.19859737]

>>19855500
I remember thinking Lord Henry Wotton was based. It’s been years so I don’t remember and it was high school so I barely payed attention.

[Anonymous No.19859744]

>>19856011
You didn’t read

[Anonymous No.19859788]

>>19856305
Kino painting, what's the name?

[Anonymous No.19859803]

>>19857598
>>19857726

>t. Filtered by Tolstoy.

[Anonymous No.19859907]

>>19857497
If the female and male characters are both caricatures that reflect cliche, hackneyed gender archetypes, then that still warrants the label of ‘sexist’, so it’s a moot point. And yeah, from what I remember of bird box, this criticism is very valid. In fact, sensitive, intelligent male protagonists who inadvertently seduce woman seem to be a part of his ‘formula’.

[Anonymous No.19859911]

>>19859907
Oh shit that’s the wind-up bird chronicles, my bad

[Anonymous No.19859929]

>>19856985
>Sun Also Rises
>Farewell to Arms
>For Whom the Bell Tolls
>Ulysses
Low IQ pedophile

[Anonymous No.19859940]

>>19857511
I actually sympathize if their complaints about the book stem from inept translation, as I had a similar issue with the Brothers Karamazov. The Volokhonsky-Pevear translations of classical Russian literature have garnered controversy for their graceless prose, inappropriate diction, and plain, unambitious language. A poor translation can distort even the most well-developed characters if it has a lack of appreciation for nuance.

[Anonymous No.19859949]

>>19859116
>voracious reader
You're gay

[Anonymous No.19859988]

some recent misfortunes :
>Barthes - Mythologies
french retard thinks some bullshit association he made up in his mind counts as "social science" because he included a few diagrams and can use the word "semiotics". this legitimately made me research books about homemade explosives to entertain the idea of blowing up nearby universities.
>I, Claudius
just an enumeration of facts with some speculation. the author cannot write to save his life. utter shite.
>Maupassant Le Horla
the most boring fucking shit ever filed under "fantastic" i have ever read. oh wow, there is some supernatural thing whose name is HORLA? and this is the whole plot? incredible.
>Tampa
horribly written and generally so retarded i wouldn't know where to start

[Anonymous No.19860039]

>>19859949
Prime r/bcj material

[Anonymous No.19860063]

>>19855297
I got King's "The Shining" and the sequel as a gift. The Shining was pretty awful but it had its moments.
The sequel is the worst pile of shit i have ever read. Its fanfiction-level bad. There is a villain that wears a tiny top-hat and is called "The hat" as a nickname, im not even joking. It really disillusioned me to popular literature. I can't believe how bad the public's taste is when this fucking abortion can be a sales success.

[Anonymous No.19860067]

>>19855297
Grey Mountain, by John Grisham, can definitively be ranked among the worst novels I’ve ever read. My first and last foray into the soulless, factory-produced airplane fiction sold under names like Grisham, Patterson, Brown, and Koontz. It has a storyline that adheres to the predetermined path set by screenwriters 101 with fearful fervor, carefully treading areas that enable the summary blurb to cast this amateurish manuscript as a heart-pounding page turner - intrigue! Backroom deals! Political assassinations! Elite conspiracy! Romance!

Worse yet, this defunct hayride is illustrated with plain, uninspired prose that obstinately refuses to offer a vivid description or scene, save one sentence. I would call the effort sophomoric, but that term connotes a sense of earnestness and emotional texture that is entirely absent from this trash.

[Anonymous No.19860111]

>>19859988
Kek’d at the maupassant la horla review

[Anonymous No.19860120]

>>19859940
I'm reading Dead Souls translated by V&P and it's been extremely good. The humor has had me laughing multiple times and the descriptions and prose have been engaging.

[Anonymous No.19860159]

>>19860120
If they translated dead souls after the brothers Karamazov, it’s possible they got better over time. I remember coming across a relatively prominent reviewer who compared an excerpt from their book to a McDuff translation of the same passage, and the difference was astounding.

[Anonymous No.19860165]

>>19855297
Kingdom Come by Ballard was one of the worst books I read in recent years. It wasn't something I just lost interest in and stopped reading, I actively disliked, while I like the author, kept going to see if it got better in some way, and couldn't finish it.

[Anonymous No.19860233]

>>19855297
none, because i only read book recommended by /lit/

[Anonymous No.19860259]

>>19855500
for the same reason you pretend you like their personalities, anon

[Anonymous No.19860283]

>>19855890
>Leaving the Sea
>Notes from the Fog
Why the hate for Ben Marcus? And therefore why would you read so many of his stories?

[Anonymous No.19860291]

>>19856011
Save yourself fag-anon and supplement with Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean.

[Anonymous No.19860297]

>>19855297

[Anonymous No.19860302]

Narnia

[Anonymous No.19860306]

>>19856985
Did you choose these as form of hatred for whites?

[Anonymous No.19860486]

>>19855500
I loved Dorian Gray. Do you mind expanding on why you hated it?

[Anonymous No.19860498]

[Anonymous No.19860558]

>>19855297
>reading book reviews

[Anonymous No.19860563]

>>19855297
The Bible

[Anonymous No.19860570]

>>19860558
Books reviews keep hack authors accountable

[Anonymous No.19860728]

>>19860120
>Dead Souls by V&P
You fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.19860778]

>>19856321

That's why Alice's references are everywhere.

[Anonymous No.19860803]

>>19857849

No you’re correct.

Always hated this book. It’s like the author wanted to display that black men are innately inferior in some self flagellating exposé. No matter what angle I approach the analysis it from it appears nonsensical.

>the character made a bad decision because fear of racism, yet he goes on to commit horrible crimes irrespective of racism

or

>an absolute retard bungles every opportunity given to him but we feel bad anyway because he’s black and opportunity seeking and they’re white and opportunity giving

[Anonymous No.19860869]

>>19856305
agreed

[Anonymous No.19860878]

>>19857476
im reading this now and do not want to finish the concept sounded good but thats pretty much it

[Anonymous No.19860906]

There are no good novels longer than 500 pages (of typical formatting), Quixote being the exception that proves the rule.

[Anonymous No.19860926]

>>19857849
Hadrian was the gay one.
Marcus Aurelius was married and was succeeded by his son, Commodus.

[Anonymous No.19860935]

>>19855297
The only book I legitimately put down because it was so boring was As I Lay Dying.

[Anonymous No.19860953]

>>19855297
Turn of the Screw
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

[Anonymous No.19860961]

This thread more than any other confirms to me how inexcusably shit this board's taste is

[Anonymous No.19860973]

the worst books I've read were minority authors bitching about white people.

[Anonymous No.19860989]

[Anonymous No.19860995]

Pic related by far. Anything by Handke, Alice Munro, Patrick Modiano. I think Crash by J.G. Ballard is incredibly weak. For classics, Sappho is literally unreadable, and Hesiod is subhuman. Too many philosophy books to list, but definitely Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms and anything by Leibniz. I think Nabokov’s early American novels reveal how little he actually had to contribute, Laughter in the Dark is substantially worse than several pulp novels I’ve read. Speaking of, Raymond Chandler is a hack for low iqs. I can say the same about John Barth, whose Lost in the Funhouse is not very fun at all. I’m not a weeb, so anything I pick up by Mishima, Tanazaki, Kawabata, etc. is pointless to my rarified sensibilities.

[Anonymous No.19861050]

Hated Albert Camus' "The Stranger." I identify with some aspects of absurdism, but the book was just a complete drag from start to finish. The main character, who I thought was relatable at first, was just an unlikable spergy cunt who got himself killed because he was apparently too stupid to tell the officials he killed a man in self-defense and not pre-meditated murder. I get that defending his innocence clearly wasn't Camus' intention and would have taken away from the message he was trying to convey, but it completely killed my immersion into the story.

I also disliked "The Way of Men" by Jack Donovan. I don't know what people see in that book.

[Anonymous No.19861089]

>>19855297
All of McCarthy’s books

[Anonymous No.19861664]

>>19855297
so very, very disappointing. i thought i fell for a meme when i finished it. maybe i did.

[Anonymous No.19861682]

>>19856011
you didn't read it or aren't old enough to have had the experiences to give it context

[Anonymous No.19861698]

>>19857250
really, fren? tell me why. this is unironically my favorite book. i love that each word is chosen specifically to match a theme in the book (dark/light/solitude/madness/etc). reading it puts you in a "place" that feels uncomfortable and emotionally real. it is so dense with symbolism that the book is only 70 pages but the movie adaptation (granted much different) is 3.5 hours.

[Anonymous No.19861726]

>>19861050
>The main character, who I thought was relatable at first
the death of his mother is a really important aspect. he can be hard to relate to, so can his decisions on the beach and courtroom, until you have had a lot of tragedy in your life.

[Anonymous No.19861795]

This load of crap. They were my crush's favorite books, so I read (just two) of them to have something to talk to her about. The first one is not bad, but they do decline. There is no plot, just the characters in weird situations. It's "The Walking Dead" of books, relying on cliffhangers to make one keep reading. No end goal, no growth, just witty circumstances. Ended up abandoning the 3rd book after 50 pages.

My crush ended up ghosting me so the silver lining is I didn't have to put myself through those books anymore.

[Anonymous No.19861797]

>>19855570
It's weird since everybody I've seen either completely loves this book or hates it.

[Anonymous No.19861841]

>>19855297
I have never considered a book bad. (Though I have also never considered a book good.)

[Anonymous No.19861859]

>>19857476
I actually rather enjoyed it, at least compared to some of his others - Sputnik Sweetheart was dogshit.

[Anonymous No.19861908]

American God's by Neil GAYman

If you're slightly younger than I am you have no idea how popular this book was/is and it is complete shit.

[Anonymous No.19861942]

>>19861795
did you smash or at least held hands? I hope you did

[Anonymous No.19861950]

>>19861942
We watched the movie on Zoom as a date. This was all at the begining of the pandemic so actually seeing each other was off the table.

[Anonymous No.19861975]

>>19857659
>t.didn't start with the greeks

[Anonymous No.19862058]

>>19861950
>We watched the movie on Zoom as a date.
that sounds horrible lol

[Anonymous No.19862080]

>>19862058
It was. Perhaps that's why she never considered me.

[Anonymous No.19862098]

>>19861797
It depends on whether or not you enjoy being cucked
Inb4 but muh Ulysses, obviously a different tier of writing than Fowles

[Anonymous No.19862120]

>>19861089
Why would you read "all" of them then? Checkmate. You want his 90 year old grandpa dick. Fucking faggot ewww

[Anonymous No.19862125]

Mao's Little Red Book

[Anonymous No.19862161]

>>19855297
> Drive your plow over the bones of the dead
It fails on everything. No nuance, the supposed dark humor is none existant, pretentious language with so many useless metaphors and comparisons. The ending almost made the book not be as bad, but it didn't

[Anonymous No.19862188]

>>19857726
enjoy burning in hell for eternity.

[Anonymous No.19862285]

>>19862120
Cry more mccarshit faggot

[Anonymous No.19862303]

>>19861050
"The Stranger" plot:
>M8 simply doesn't care

[Anonymous No.19862572]

>>19855424
>>19855455

I don't see a major difference between White Noise and Mao II vs. Libra except that there's more time spent with characters in Libra.

>>19855926 Tell me more pls

>>19855989 Hahahahaha

>>19856958 People really don't like Beat writers. I'm going to try to read this one day for personal reasons though.

>>19857005
Good reviews

>>19859988
lol i'm in the middle of reading Maupassant and Tampa

>>19860995
> I can say the same about John Barth, whose Lost in the Funhouse is not very fun at all
lol Barth is very fun to me, The Sot-Weed Factor is one of the funniest books I've ever read but maybe you wouldn't think so?

[Anonymous No.19862649]

>>19860728
What is better?

[Anonymous No.19862682]

>>19861664
In what way did it disappoint you? How were you led astray? Pynchon’s writing is not exactly sugar coated around here, and The Crying of Lot 49 is exactly what you would expect from what literally every person says it is.