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Most disappointing read

Such Irony

Honor Thy Inferior
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I recently picked up the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. I picked it up because the premise sounded interesting- nanotechnology and its implications. Plus I heard excellent things about the book. Yet I gave up after the first 10-15 pages, usually I persist with a book much longer than that. I found his writing style confusing and hard to slog through. I thought I had a large vocabulary, but I found like every 5th word to be something I'd never even heard of. I dunno, maybe some of those words were just made-up jargon for the story. It was difficult to tell.
 

JestherCrim

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I personally did not find Wicked too exciting. Everyone talking it up might have been a reason... but I guess all the goodness of the book went right over my head.

My mother would say Animal Farm. I remember telling her I had to read it for school one day, she replied "Do people still think that book is important? Yikes."
 

Ingrid in grids

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I read all of Chuck Palahniuk's books up until Snuff. After that I decided to give him away. It was Invisible Monsters that I fell in love with and I should have left it at that. After too many you realise he's using virtually the same formula, novel after novel. It's all very repetitive and eventually you numb to the shock factor.
 

disregard

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original Dracula sucks & i thought it would be good

I was just watching Brahm Stoker's Dracula last night with my boyfriend and we decided to read the book we were so impressed with the movie!

Hmm... I'll have to check it out.
 

Dyoni

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I recently picked up the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. I picked it up because the premise sounded interesting- nanotechnology and its implications. Plus I heard excellent things about the book. Yet I gave up after the first 10-15 pages, usually I persist with a book much longer than that. I found his writing style confusing and hard to slog through. I thought I had a large vocabulary, but I found like every 5th word to be something I'd never even heard of. I dunno, maybe some of those words were just made-up jargon for the story. It was difficult to tell.

Oh dear. Try it again... it's an EXCELLENT book. One of my favorites.
 

InsatiableCuriosity

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Someone else has mentioned Poisonwood Bible and I have to agree - I found it cloyingly depressing.

I also forgot my feelings on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera"! Maybe it is my T or the fact that I had an obsessive ex fiancee but this book didn't strike me as romantic at all. It gave me the sick feeling of this poor woman being stalked for a lifetime - creepy - made my skin crawl!! :sick:
 

ragashree

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I also forgot my feelings on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera"! Maybe it is my T or the fact that I had an obsessive ex fiancee but this book didn't strike me as romantic at all. It gave me the sick feeling of this poor woman being stalked for a lifetime - creepy - made my skin crawl!! :sick:
:yes:

I read the whole thing, but I have no idea why I put up with it for so long, it was an awful book, one of the worst I've read. Perhaps I was hoping it would resolve itself into something less sordid than glorifying this remarkably self-absorbed, unimpressive, slightly sinister man's boring lifelong obsession with a remarkably vacuous and equally self absobed woman. But instead we ended up with our already deeply tiresome elderly "hero" making a disturbing digression into paedophilia with a young girl he was supposed to be the guardian of. It seemed to serve no purpose other than to prove he was still "up to it", and in posession of whatever mystifiying attraction to the opposite sex he had been imbued with. Perhaps we were supposed to be impressed that he still wanted a woman in her seventies, like himself, when he could have the willing and barely pubescent girl he was keeping at home. I, however, was far from impressed.

Worse, the writer appeared to be determinedly making a weak and psychologically unconvincing justification for the paedophilic episode as an equal relationship. I haven't seen this too often from mainstream novelists, and wasn't particularly enthused by seeing it here. Then he remembered the story was supposed to be about the revolting man whose life history he had been following and his obession with a woman his own age, and therefore killed the girl off.

The hero, as though to set the seal on his essential worthlessness, and lack of depth or conscience, in case we still needed convincing of it at this point, shows no real remorse for her death and the part he played in it. Instead he gets it on with the vacuous woman, now conveniently a widow, who we are supposed to be impressed with him having obsessively waited his entire adult life for her to be freed of her husband, so that he could have her; while screwing around with most of the willing female population of Columbia in the meantime, naturally. The only thing I wanted at this stage was for his manhood to prove not up to the task, or maybe suffer a nasty accident, which would have been poetic justice after what I'd had to put up with for 200 and whatever pages up until this point. Naturally it didn't happen, so the book remains unredeemed, and irredeemable... :rolli:
 

MacGuffin

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Yup. My absolute favorites are ones that appeared in the first 10-15 years max into his career:

- Carrie
- The Shining
- The Dead Zone
- Firestarter
- IT
- The Stand
- The Tommyknockers
- Different Seasons

(Heck, I'll even reread Pet Sematary sometimes.)

The longer he went, the more duds that showed up with increasing frequency.

Good list but The Tommyknockers sucked.

There are a few good ones later (Bag of Bones, Lisey's Story, and the Dome one is supposed to be good too but I haven't found the time to read it). All his short story collections are great. Less sucking when he isn't stretching out past 100 pages.

The only book that nauseated me was when I read Lord of the Flies in high school and I was so disturbed at how humanity could deteriorate to its most base level in those school boys!

It is awesome for that very reason.



Stranger In a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
So bad I've never attempted to read anything else by him. You have to be under the age of 15 and male to like it. Pure juvenile revenge-masturbatory fantasy. Also with the bonus of bad writing. The Da Vinci Code of the '60s, only worse.
 

Nonsensical

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Yup. My absolute favorites are ones that appeared in the first 10-15 years max into his career:

- Carrie
- The Shining
- The Dead Zone
- Firestarter
- IT
- The Stand
- The Tommyknockers
- Different Seasons

(Heck, I'll even reread Pet Sematary sometimes.)

The longer he went, the more duds that showed up with increasing frequency.

I'm a huge Stephen King fan and I agree with your list. His newer stuff is washed up...he should try something new or put the pen down. The Shining and The Stand are his two best works, imo

What first came to mind, as far as disappointing reading goes, was Great Expectations which was the most god-awful boring book I've ever read. Pip was an annoying little %$#@&
 

Dyoni

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'The Stand' was all right, but I feel like it could have been much shorter and still had the same effect.
 

CuriousFeeling

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In high school, it's got to be The Scarlet Letter. It did not hit it well with me at all. I enjoyed the symbolism of it, but the way the story was written, it seemed so austere and far removed from where I was coming from.
 

Gloriana

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In high school, it's got to be The Scarlet Letter. It did not hit it well with me at all. I enjoyed the symbolism of it, but the way the story was written, it seemed so austere and far removed from where I was coming from.


Yes, now that I think of it I didn't enjoy that one either and I actually blocked most of it out. I just remember really wanting to care about the characters but finding them really cold, to the point I was just like "Meh".

Made me remember how much I don't like anything by any of the Bronte sisters either. Again, not knocking anyone who really loves those books, I just personally didn't. I hated Heathcliff and Catherine. Heathcliff reminded me of one of those dudes who got wronged by a woman once, then used it as an excuse to treat every subsequent woman like crap. I was like "Gah, get over it".

That was just me though!
 

Queen Kat

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I'm busy making the most disappointing read ever right now. It's a short story, a project for a scifi- fantasy- and horrorwriting contest you can win 250 euros with. It's title (translation): "Petey Poo and the Cursed Frikandel Sandwich". Says enough. :D
 

Stevo

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Although it may have been mentioned already judging by the posts on this page, I was highly disappointed by the last three books in The Dark Tower saga by Stephen King. They just completely fell apart and I found his self-insertion to be completely inexcusable. He made hugely bad narrative and pacing decisions in the last book and I was unable to continue reading after he killed Randall Flagg for the sole purpose of proving how powerful the little Hellspawn was.
 

CrystalViolet

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I was terribly disappointed with Wicked, too. Read the whole thing hoping there would be something redeeming in the end, but I don't remember that happening.
Dude, I just finished it and felt the same way. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was.

American Psycho, I think scarred me for life...one of those books I couldn't stop reading, but it was very traumatic for me. I had nightmares for months after wards. Very graphic and not for sensitive souls. I think I burnt it (and I don't believe in censorship and burning of books) after wards, I felt so dirty and impure after reading it. Really needed a few more warnings on the cover or in the synopsis. And yes I know it was a metaphor, but still...
 
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Gloriana

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American Psycho, I think scarred me for life...one of those books I couldn't stop reading, but it was very traumatic for me. I had nightmares for months after wards. Very graphic and not for sensitive souls. I think I burnt it (and I don't believe in censorship and burning of books) after wards, I felt so dirty and impure after reading it. Really needed a few more warnings on the cover or in the synopsis. And yes I know it was a metaphor, but still...

I totally understand.

When I read Ellis' stuff, I wondered if I was just being a pansy. Y'know, just being resistant to shallow, vapid, selfish characters because I have just been spoon fed the opposite or something. I really did ask myself whether I was just being closed off or judgmental because his characters are not cuddly or pretty.

It wasn't that though. I just got this feeling the guy wasn't writing to truly challenge anyone or truly provoke thought. I found his style really blunt and lazy. I felt the author manipulating me, hence it just took away from any experience of a story.
 

CuriousFeeling

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I think All Quiet on the Western Front is another one I could tack on. Great storyline, but the graphic nature of the novel was a bit disturbing for me when I was 15. Made me hate war even more.
 
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