Bible.
The Book of Mormon. Someone literally paid me to read it. It is so glaringly obvious that it’s tall tales by Joseph Smith it hurt to read from the cringe. And it was so dark, too! Most memorably the section titled “Doctrine & Covenants.” In chapter 132, verse 54, Joseph says Emma Smith, his ninth wife, would be destroyed by god, and her entire family destroyed for good measure, if she refused to sleep with him.
I don’t understand how Mormons can be so gullible, and in believing all of it, how they can believe a deity that threatens women for refusing to sleep with a sexual predator can be a deity they want to worship. It makes me sad to think about.
Any of the Reacher books. God, they’re terrible. They’re just about a guy who jumps to outrageous conclusions and is always right nlbecause he’s just so special. He’s also big and tough and the best sniper in Army history.
In the first one, a guy skips town because he’s a witness, and Reacher finds him in a hotel instantly because of the following logic:
Clearly he would have changed cities every night going in clockwise order or whatever - except for the one night after the place he was in was closer to the city he was fleeing - he’d rest 2 nights in the next city because sleeping thay close was so exhausting.
Because Reacher saw a Beatles album in the guy’s house, he just knew he’d be using the last names of the Beatles, but keeping his own first name (which was Paul iirc), cycling them at each hotel.
So he walks into a random hotel near a bus stop in a random city and asks for the room of Paul Lennon and finds him because Reacher is just so smart!
And in the second book, he comes upon a woman being raped, kills the rapist, and the woman has sex with Reacher instead because he’s a big, tough hero. And nothing like attempted rape puts you in the mood to fuck a stranger.
Here’s a condensed version of all the books …
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
10/10 copypasta 🤌
Served al dente
And the acoustic guitar version for the uninitiated.
Wow haven’t seen that meme in so long I forgot about it, thanks!
Sounds kinda like this great rant about the show ‘Sherlock’:
So apart from tumblr fanbase, why doesn’t /tv/ like this show?
Because it has smart characters written stupidly.
Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is a smartly written smart character. When Chigurh kills a hotel room full of three people he books to room next door so he can examine it, finding which walls he can shoot through, where the light switch is, what sort of cover is there etc. This is a smart thing to do because Chigurh is a smart person who is written by another smart person who understands how smart people think.
Were Sherlock Holmes to kill a hotel room full of three people. He’d enter using a secret door in the hotel that he read about in a book ten years ago. He’d throw peanuts at one guy causing him to go into anaphylactic shock, as he had deduced from a dartboard with a picture of George Washington carver on it pinned to the wall that the man had a severe peanut allergy. The second man would then kill himself just according to plan as Sherlock had earlier deduced that him and the first man were homosexual lovers who couldn’t live without eachother due to a faint scent of penis on each man’s breath and a slight dilation of their pupils whenever they looked at each other. As for the third man, why Sherlock doesn’t kill him at all. The third man removes his sunglasses and wig to reveal he actually WAS Sherlock the entire time. But Sherlock just entered through the Secret door and killed two people, how can there be two of him? The first Sherlock removes his mask to reveal he’s actually Moriarty attempting to frame Sherlock for two murders. Sherlock however anticipated this, the two dead men stand up, they’re undercover police officers, it was all a ruse. “But Sherlock!” Moriarty cries “That police officer blew his own head off, look at it, there’s skull fragments on the wall, how is he fine now? How did you fake that?”. Sherlock just winks at the screen, the end.
This is retarded because Sherlock is a smart person written by a stupid person to whom smart people are indistinguishable from wizards.
And I blame shit like sherlock for making idiots online think they can deduce shit based on random shit like this. Even if Sherlock is smartly written, he’s still written to be right and bases deductions on random tiny details. Not to mention, there’s tropes to writing that makes outcomes more easily predictable, and someone picking up on foreshadowing might think they can do what Sherlock can do and apply it to stupid shit on the internet, like if a story is real or if someone is telling an accurate version of the story for AITA type judgements.
Sounds like Republican erotica basically.
It’s definitely incel erotica. Saw a video once demonstrating that Reacher never actually needs to initiate anything with a woman, show any interest whatsoever, flirt, etc. He just sorta exists in proximity to women and they just sort of “give” him the sex that they apparently owe him for being the main character.
Haha, jeez i forgot about these.
I think I read the first three? Such a tropey train wreck i actually had fun for the first couple.
But I was well and done after two, I was like well this is just unhealthy now by the second book you can tell childs isn’t paying any attention to plot or character development or anything that would make a story interesting, he was actively shutting my brain down.
it felt like that episode of The boondocks where Huey exclusively watches UPN as a social cognitive experiment.
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=travis+mcgee
Travis McGee is what Reacher and Dirk Pitt dream of being. He lives on a houseboat he won in a poker game, and solves crimes when he finds himself low on cash.
The author died in 1986 and the books are still being published.
Wait, is this real? Fuck sake that’s bad.
You guys have never experienced JOHN RINGO.
The first book opens with Osama Bin Laden and the leader of Iran hatching a plot to kidnap sexy American coeds to rape and torture.
It then switches to the POV of our hero, a former SEAL who left the army due to his arthritis and has now enrolled in college. He is stalking a female student from his class whom he is thinking about raping, he lets the readers know that he is 100% a rapist and also that all these left-wing female students secretly desire to be raped by a strong conservative man.
But unfortunately for our hero, a white van pulls up and kidnaps the girl he was stalking right in front of him. Thinking quickly he follows the van and then ends up stowing away in the wheel well on an airplane that’s on it’s eay to Iran.
Long story short, he single-handedly rescues dozens of sexy coeds from the combined forces of al-queda and iran - killing Osama Bin Laden himself.
In the sequels, for which there are many, he travels to Georgia (the country not the state) and finds an isolated community descended from the Varangian Guard. These people recognize him as an alpha male and make him their leader The Kildar whoms job it is to lead them into battle and impregnate their daughters, most of whom are 14-18 year olds.
Ready player one. If I wanted to read about a guy masturbating over memorizing 1980s Wikipedia I’d just go to forums.
It was the most boring Mary Sue-esque trash and I have no idea why it was so popular
Yeah, I was a third of the way through and realized it kinda sucked. I did stick it out to the end though.
One of the plot points has the main character literally act out scenes from classic movies. It’s never a good idea to remind the reader that there’s better entertainment that they could be enjoying right now.
I forced myself to finish foolishly hoping the ending would blow my mind. Now people keep telling me the movie is even better but I’m like that’s such a low bar I’ll just go read Annihilation again or something
I’ve perused both. The film is the same wank-fest over 80s references.
Same. I like Spielberg, but after reading the book I can’t imagine I’d like the movie!
There’s mind-blowingly bad stuff in the world building.
This is exactly what happened to me. I was reading it for a while like okay, I guess this is kind of fun, and then a third of the way through I thought “oh wait, this is just kind of boring”.
I like the part where they figured out the previously undiscovered secret in the race was to drive backwards. I tried that shit in Mario Kart when I was 8, you’re telling me NOBODY had tried it in that game before?
I still remember exactly how the announcer enunced “You’re Going The Wrong Way!”
I haven’t read the book, but yeah that really broke immersion for me in the movie.
The book’s first puzzle is solved by Wade playing the arcade game Joust against a bot. Then when he wins, he’s dropped into the movie WarGames, replacing Matthew Broderick’s character, and he has to act out every scene to progress.
Seriously, that’s it.
Eh, to each their own. I liked it. I also liked the different pacing than the movie. It made more sense.
The only Kindle book I’ve ever returned.
Ready Player One isn’t event the worst book Ernest Cline has written. lol
I enjoyed it as a fun YA adventure but Armada is so much worse.
I thought the movie was kinda fun. Never read the book though.
I liked the book a lot, but the movie looked bad. They made the MC white for some reason?
They made the MC white for some reason?
Yeah, if that’s the case I’m even more inclined to walk away.
I opened the comments to mention Ready Player One, and I was delighted to see you’ve beat me to it 😅 What a dumb piece of trash.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand hands down. it’s like normal economics except they stripped away the mask that makes it look human.
The main point of the book could have been summarised up in an email. I listened to it as an audio book just to know what it’s about and it’s just “communism bad” mixed with everything Margaret Thatcher could masturbate to.
But isn’t it better writing to summarize it in the climax radio speech that takes three hours to read aloud?
Good book to take with you to jury duty if you want to avoid being picked for jury duty. 😉
I found a use for Atlas Shrugged, to kill wasps.
But who is John Galt???
Mein Kampf. Apart from being a bad person, Hitler was a terrible writer. Low quality thoughts articulated badly. I only read it so I could nail neonazis when they came at me with their stupid arguments.
Adolf Hitler was a modern-day edgelord and an incel. He didn’t have any original thoughts, he stole the ideas from the magazines he read while he was poor and unemployed
It’s a good thing people don’t act like that any more /s
And when he finally did get laid he got syphilis. Loser.
Modern-day edgelords and incels are…edgelords and incels. Maybe “premodern” would be more accurate? Probably not, I’m not sure.
That was the modern era, we live in the postmodern era.
Was that helpful or necessary in the end? Or was is such trite that you could have done without?
It is extremely babble-minded and not at all worth reading or deconstructing.
I read it in the mindset of your first question.
Turns out, any argument you can think up in 2 seconds against bigotry is going to be more insightful and well-founded than a rebuttal against nascent nazi scribblings.
Well I’ll save myself the trouble of being put on some sort of list for reading it then, thanks.
You got it.
I finished it and was like omigod at least nobody I ever come across with the same morbid curiosity has to read this now.
Only way I can look at reading that book not being a complete waste of time.
If nothing else, it’s worth it just to see how brain-dead nazism really is. They’re not Machiavellian masterminds, they’re thugs with an ideology built on brainfarts. Also quoting from the book (in the original German) is a good way to kill a conversation with one of the modern spawn.
Many years ago, I posted about how horribly written it was, and right on cue, a neo-Nazi pipes in asking which translation it was, because apparently all the faithful translations are a Jewish trick, or something…
No reply when I posted the introduction in original German, of course.
Yeah, that’s probably the one thing that makes the book almost (ALMOST) worth reading. Using their own tripe against them.
I’m guessing it’s the same kinda situation as one having to actually read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to see for themselves that it’s a complete turd of a book.
A Friend of mine with similar political inclination keeps telling me I should read it, for the same “know thy enemy” kind of argument.
I just can’t bring myself to it, we all get bombarded enough with that shitty ideology, and have to push it back irl constantly, so I’d love to escape it, a bit, in my downtime.
It does in fact help a little bit, when you see how Rand portrayed the libertarian paradise for which she advocated: where everyone is a genius at the top of their game, and a few dozen of these geniuses build the shiny libertarian utopia. It’s juvenile, just like her other literary attempts. The ‘utopia’ wouldn’t stand against just a few real-life problems. It’s also notable that Rand herself was on social security and Medicaid in her late years.
Furthermore, it’s fun to read some of Aleister Crowley, e.g. ‘The Diary of a Drug Fiend’, compare it to Rand’s ‘objectivism’, and ponder as to how Crowley was called ‘the most wicked man’ while Rand became the torchbearer of USian unabashed corporatism. At least, Crowley actually could write, had a soul, and was generally a fun man — but he didn’t have a Red Scare to ride on.
Who recommended it to you?
A friend of mine years ago. He was a history buff so he always tried to help me understand historical things better.
I listened to parts of it as an audiobook. I felt like I was going insane. Helped me pass the time at work though.
I think it’s even worse in German. It comes across as a toddler trying to sound grown up.
I’m always a little bit scared that what I’m listening to will start blasting out of my phone speaker because I forgot to turn on my headset or something.
By the way, one big takeaway of ‘Triumph of the Will’ is that the Nazi rally was extremely fucking boring after the first ten minutes or so. But apparently seven hundred thousand people had nothing better to do than stand and listen to Nazis shout at them for hours.
I’m terrified of that personally
I couldn’t get through the first chapter. Utter babbling nonsense. It’s not that I disagreed with it, I had no idea what it was supposed to be saying!
It doesn’t get better after chapter one haha.
I was in a horrible spot mourning for a close relative who had just hanged himself. I made the mistake of posting on Facebook and a friend from high school recommended “12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos”.
I was not in a good space and didn’t even look at the author before ordering it. When it arrived a few days later I only had to read the first page before realizing I’d been had. Jordan fucking Peterson. What a pile of shit that guy is.
Ready Player One.
I laughed my ass off starting on like page five. It was such a hate read, total hail corporate nostalgia bait slop. Never took the coworker who recommended it serious again.
My great great aunt made me read the Bible so I’d be a good little Christian. Read it got the privileges for it, sucked right ass. My only conclusion is that I liked Samson and that most Christians are hypocritical asshats. But what was I expecting my great great aunt thought Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia were evil because they had magic.
Also if anyone is curious how well the good Christian aspect faired now that I’m 26 and not 8. Well hark to the ancestors, the spirits, and the gods, I’ll burn every last mega church to the ground and send them to their god to face a second judgement not my own.
The DaVinci Code
I have now!
I noped out about page 3 where the author wrote ‘world famous symbologist.’
I knew there was no such word,
This is in my discarded drafts; I thought I was the only one
It’s far from the worst book I’ve read, but it’s the worst that’s been recommended to me by someone I’d listen to.
I managed one page and gave up. Dreadful stuff.
I read it and then the other three that were out at the time (Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons I think and something else I can’t remember) because I was morbidly curious. Four physical books. Apart from the general awfulness Brown tried to cover up with frenetic pacing, the biggest thing I noticed was that even though there were four books, there were effectively only two stories, just repeated with different character names.
Ha ha, amazing! I salute your fortitude in getting through them all 😁
I threw it across the room after 5 pages. Utter crap.
I bought the illustrated version in high school because I was taking an art history class and liked looking at the pretty paintings. The story itself did not leave any impression on me lol
Anything and everything written by Ayn Rand.
i feel like i’m the only person in this thread who never knew anyone dumb enough to read that crap, let alone enjoy it or think it’s great.
I read Atlas Shrugged because the designer of Bioshock said it was the main inspiration for the game.
I didn’t realize they were making fun of it until after I read it. I don’t remember why I read The Fountainhead, but after that one I realized she just fucking sucks.
She was such a bag of dicks, wan’t she? Pseudointellectual and edgy teenagers read it because it feels like a rite of passage to get through the bad writing and long drawn out meanderings, and it’s controversial. Then you realize she’s just an asshole…
I listened to Fountainhead audiobook and from the very start, I knew I was going to fucking hate this Roarke fella. What an absolute wanker.
My dad read it and loved it. Yes, he’s MAGA. No, I don’t talk to him much.
I’m pretty sure I was tricked into reading Anthem, along with Animal Farm.
End of 8th grade, several of the other students were talking about these two books, how the first day of 9th grade at the big scary high school there was gonna be a test on these books, so we had a summer reading assignment.
It didn’t occur to me that precisely half of us had signed up to take literature class in the Spring.
So I borrowed a copy of them and read them…for no apparent reason.
Animal Farm is basically The Soviet Union For Dummies and Anthem is basically That Other Book Ayn Rand Wrote.
yeah i have never heard of ayn rand being required school reading.
animal farm, yes. that’s typically a 10th grade book
The wheel Of time series. I got through the first 2 books before realising that I disliked every character. Also every female character was written so poorly it made me want to “Tug on my braid and stamp my foot”
Did you at least lament tugging your braids wistfully? :)
Don’t make me box your ear!
The first book I really enjoyed. The second was good. It started sliding downhill quickly from there… So much stuff needed to be either cut or at least re-written! His wife was his editor. She was a professional, but I feel like she didn’t have the heart to be tough on him. Or possibly he felt he didn’t have listen to her like he would an editor he wasnt married to… Could have been a great series with another draft or two. One of the rare instances of the movie versions being better than the books.
I loved Wheel of Time for the world building and the background mythology. I did trudge though till Jordan’s last book and I have not returned to it. The only character I liked at all was Mat. It just seemed like a long D&D game that got a little out of hand.
The 3 Body Problem. It’s trash and I’ll die on that hill.
Haha that trilogy might be my favorite of all time but I also TOTALLY get that take. I’m just a big fucking sucker for the second and third books as they get increasingly ridiculous.
If the author totally doubles down on ludicrous, maybe it’s worth a go! I only barely got through the first book.
I almost stopped after the first book, so I can understand your view.
But compared to the second and third, it’s basically just a boring opening chapter
2 and 3 get weird and wild
Might be worth giving it another try
Totally worth it to read the second and third. The first book almost feels unrelated but it’s got some crucial context that gets built on to the extreme later Easily my top 5 sci-fi
I didn’t even make it through the first few chapters, Chinese writing style is just terribly convoluted and full of unnecessary pathos. Reminded me of some early 1700s literature from Britain, like Robinson Crusoe.
Related:
The tencent tv adaptation was boring as hell lol, couldn’t get past like episode 8/30 as a native Mandarin speaker.
The netflix adaptation was far more enjoyable.
Also tencent cut out the cultural revolution scene from the book… boo… governments really stifles creativity.
The netflix series was one of the best science fiction shows I’ve seen, it was very intelligent. I’m sad so many people thought it was slow and boring, it had real moments of humanity and awe and horror. I guess if you don’t understand a lot of the concepts and scope and scale of the ideas being portrayed it may seem as convoluted and hand-wavy as any other science fiction that doesn’t make an effort.
Yeah the Netflix show was a good watch, agree. Didn’t even try the tencent one, I saw it coming…
But ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is good. For a solid couple months after finishing it, I was still daydreaming about some kinda survival shelter-building game set on a tropical island — only a mobile one, because I didn’t want to be perched at the desktop more than necessary.
Have you read the original? It’s half book, half bible study. There are modern copies with most of the religious context removed or shortened which are great.
I need to recheck exactly how ‘unabridged’ my audiobook was (I typically search for a while to make sure I’m getting the whole package). At least, I’m vaguely certain it wasn’t modernized regarding the language, since I would hope English from 1719 is fairly understandable — but yeah, it’s quite ornate. I might’ve blacked out the religious parts for their small relevance to the adventure part.
I can see that. I definitely gave it a huge benefit of the doubt, as it was the first post-revolution Chinese fiction-cum-political commentary I ever read. In retrospect I feel like the point of the book was the commentary and the story was just some kind of allegory that didn’t resonate as an American.
Yeah agree. I was living in China when it was recommended to me since it was super popular with the locals, but really couldn’t get through.
I did enjoy the Western series though despite the mixed reviews, they reduced all the political clutter to the bare minimum to provide historical context, so maybe that’s something to check out instead.
100% agree, just listened to it recently and wow was it boring. That and Foundation, thought since liked the show that I’d like the books, wrong. Those are the only 2 books so far that I just couldn’t get into. But I suffered through to the end with both. Even started the second Foundation book and then asked myself why I was torturing myself.
LOL! totally agree about foundation. It was like he was so busy imagining the universe that he forgot to write a story. I Have been a big fan of the show though.
Asimov was a sexist pig, so if you vibe with that, his writing is enjoyable. Otherwise, reading his works is a chore. Often prescient, but still a chore.
And it’s worth remembering what decade it was written in, a lot of the older prose and pacing hasn’t aged well.
That’s just not true. I’d say it was generally better back then (and prior)
I’m sorry, but I just don’t agree. I love 70s sci-fi, and have aread a huge collection of weird books… But none of them have prose as good as some of the modern books, such as The Final Architecture, The Expanse, or even Red Rising.
Are we just talking about sci-fi? Because it’s not exactly known for having the best prose.
I was referring more to like actual literary classics. Have you ever read Nabokov? Shit is insane, and English wasn’t even his first language.
If I remember right the first couple of books were originally published as a series of short stories in a sci-fi magazine and sometime later were compiled into novels. That’s why the books seem a bit disjointed where they’ll suddenly just jump ahead in time to some new setting.
Yea, I was thinking pretty explicitly of SciFi, from the 60s/70s vs modern SciFi.
You just don’t get 11 dimensional particle physics. I was actually into it up until that point. As soon as they pulled that shit, I would have quit but wanted to finish for our book club discussion.
Coincidentally, eleven dimensions is how many there are in the M-theory, which is a unified variant of the different versions of the string theory, which in turn is a ‘theory of everything’ that marries gravity to quantum physics. Alas, to my knowledge, string theories don’t make new predictions that could be tested and potentially falsified, so there’s no way to know if they’re actually true.
Probably not a coincidence
LOL until they tried to explain to me that humanoid people just randomly rolled up like parchment and got carried around until things cooled down a bit, I was like, “OK I’ll keep an open mind to this weird political story.” And then when they figured out logic gates but only with 5th century hoards with flags, I just mentally noped out. I did finish the first book but I had regrets.
Humanoid didn’t roll up, that was just inside the game. The aliens weren’t humanoids
Humanoid didn’t roll up, that was just inside the game. The aliens weren’t humanoids
If that’s the case, that would A) have been explained in book 2 or 3 which I didn’t read, and/or B) conflict with clips I’ve seen from the show which showed thousands of them in a field waving flags just like from the book. Either way, it sounded stupid. Also, if they had interstellar spacecraft, why did they need post-revolutionary Chinese people to tell them “hey come here!!” before just leaving their fucked up system and find somewhere else to live?
I love you friend, but there is just so much wrong with 3 body problem.
That’s fine, I’m not saying you should like it, I just want to explain it. The clips are from inside the game, and I thought they figured out aliens were not humanoid during the first book, but that was just in passing.
The Dark Forest book talks about how every civilization in the universe is trying to hide from each other, and when Earth sent that signal in the first book, everybody noticed Earth exists, and it was just a matter of time until some more powerful civilization would try to take advantage.
I didn’t read books 2 or 3 either, and just limped to the end of book 1, but they do make it quite clear that the things depicted in the game are meant to be strange but not totally alien to the players. that’s why the leader was some ancient well know Chinese figure from folklore, despite that not being the actual name of the alien
figuring out binary logic wasn’t with flags, it explained in the book that in reality they reflected light with their bodies, but that’s super alien to humans so they used flags as an equivalent in the game
I agree though that the science and logic don’t follow with their decision making regarding earth. you could argue that with this godlike AI why didn’t they just go to the nearest uninhabited livable world instead of earth, and they kinda addressed it by explaining that the trisolarians (which is a way better name than the san-ti, Netflix) were scared of humanity so want to squash us before we can become another interstellar superpower
but I don’t buy it. I’m watching through the netflix adaptation now and I’m already disappointed in it. better in some ways for sure, but also presents its own brand new problems.
it’s a real shame, honestly, because the history of an alien civilization evolving on a planet in an unstable orbit of a three-body star system sounds really interesting, but the book cares less about world building than it does about political allegory 🤷
Thanks for your take on this! So much better than “you should watch it” or whatever. I’m going to give it a shot just so I can have an honest opinion.
50 shades of grey. The writing was so cringe that I just couldn’t get further than one chapter or so. And I’ve read some bad writing on AO3 before, so it’s not like I’m especially sensitive.
