I’ll give two:
Mockingjay (the third book in the Hunger Games series). It read like a dream sequence. And since it’s purely from Katniss’s point of view, we don’t even really get a conclusion to the story and what happens to the government.
Ready Player One. The 80s references were fun and the tech was cool to read about, but I don’t get the excitement in reading over and over again, “This would have been a difficult challenge for anyone else. Luckily, I’ve already memorized every single thing ever written or made in the 80s, so this was no trouble for me at all. No, you will not see me learn anything new that will help me in my quest. I will just already know everything and be able to figure everything out immediately.” What kind of story is that?
Edit: Y’all made my day. I was sick and wanted to read other people’s thoughts on books while I was laid up. Y’all certainly provided that. Thanks for making my sick day better!
by Flowtac
26 Comments
*Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow*.
I was recommended this by some booklover friends. I’m a dude who doesn’t mind a good romance story and the whole backdrop of the 1990’s and the characters being game designers piqued my interest. Instead, I was disappointed. The video game/game dev stuff came across like the author just skimmed some Wikipedia articles, and the two protagonists didn’t connect with me.
It ends with us. No.
‘it ends with us’ was one of the most awful books i’ve ever read. maybe i’m biased bc i dislike colleen hoover books, but this book was just bad. main character irritated me so much. her name being Lily Blossom Bloom??????? really? also i felt it really romanticized abuse, which is especially bad given her audience is a lot of younger women.
saw someone else mention ‘seven husbands of evelyn hugo’ and that one i HATED. it was boring to me and i hate books where i hate the main character. the plot twist at the end didn’t make up for the rest of the book.
honorable mention: shatter me series. not sure why i finished the whole series, but its all badly written and a little corny.
*The Lovely Bones*.
Eat, pray love. The main character is so whiny 👎
The Atlas Six. It was just 400 pages of nothing.
Has anyone mentioned The Alchemist yet? Because **The Alchemist** !
No, it’s not super deep and philosophical and “you just don’t get it”. It’s philosophical on the same level as wall stickers that tell you to “live laugh and love” or “carpe diem”.
Where the Crawdads Sing.
I just couldn’t get into the premise. And the writing style was not my cup of tea. Then I looked up spoilers (because I hate a lack of conclusion) and just went “Yeeeaaaah no… I’m good.”
Ah well 🤷🏻♀️
The Maid was a top book on Goodreads for like a year, and it was the worst book I’ve ever read. It had a really stupid “gotcha” at the end that fell flat and seemed like this book only got published/advertised because the author worked in publishing. It’s not a good book, let alone a good murder mystery. (To be clear I mean The Maid by N. Prose- unrelated to the tv series. Also, I think it’s such a pompous choice to choose the name “Prose” as your pseudonym).
I used to fully agree with you on Mockingjay, but on a recent reread, I’ve completed changed my mind. When I first read it (when it came out as a teenager), I hated it. I agreed with all of your comments and the ending felt a pointless. I thought the book was a let down with a lot of details missing. But over the years I’ve come to really appreciate that the point was that Katniss’ actions were kind of pointless. The author wanted to make commentary on the entertainment industry, war, governments, propaganda, child soldiers, etc. and she accomplished that. I think the ending showed growth, that the world carries on despite horrific violence. I have a lot of respect for the author that she stuck to hard themes and didn’t wrap everything up nicely with everything explained in great detail. It felt more impactful for me.
The “story” of Ready Player One was pure wish-fulfillment for every bar-trivia night dork who, after showing off for an hour to try and win a gift card for the group, gets told several times that they remember so much “useless knowledge” and that they should try out for Jeopardy.
Oh yeah, Mom?! Well one day, all this so-called useless knowledge might come in handy one day!!
The whole A Court of Thorns and Roses series. I could barely sit through book 3 without wondering how on Earth this got published when there are so many plot holes, terribly written characters and a cringe as heck romance plot with no substance. Even now, I still don’t get what the fuss is about.
A court of thorns and roses! I got to middle of book three and could no longer keep up the façade of liking it. It fucking sucks. Full of sex scenes but somehow the writing felt like a 14 yo did it and the plot is so basic. The pace of the book was weird. Nothing would happen for like 15 chapters then all of a sudden everything happened in 1. It’s just not very good.
The alchemist was a book recommended to me by all my hippie friends, saying it was deep and insightful, I thought it sucked and the message was something I’ve heard a lot before
Anything by Nicholas Sparks.
That last Twilight book. It was gearing up for a war and then… nothing. Nothing! You don’t tease a battle and then leave without it. I felt ripped off. It’s been years and I am still bitter about the end.
I had a friend who was big into the books so I went with her to all the movies and even rented the last one so we could watch it together. Was not about to pay theater price for something that annoyed me. And granted, the movie tried to give the war but still, backing out to save everyone was irritating. Better as a movie but still not great.
In 1992, straight women were earnestly obsessed with “The Bridges of Madison County.” I read it and thought, “If this story resonates for you, you need relationship counseling!” Yet it has been made into a movie and, God help us, a musical. Let’s hope it has inspired a lot of people to get relationship counseling!
I feel like that’s the point of Mockingjay.
Rewind to the beginning and remember that you are working with an unreliable narrator: a teenager that is locally interested and by design has no real historical or civic knowledge outside of the lore that is fed to them by district one and passed down by oral histories.
Now, after she has been repeatedly traumatized by two hunger games and used as propaganda in a game that she can’t even begin to understand while the only person who can possibly understand her trauma has been conditioned to try to kill her…
The story isn’t about the world of hunger games, it’s about the trauma of the struggle and the damage of exploitation.
The movies made it about the love triangle between Katniss and the boys. The books were about Katniss trying to save her family… And failing because she was used as a tool by the very group she was fighting for.
Her actions weren’t for the good of society outside of the good of society being good for her sister. Her final acts were out of revenge rather than preventing a new panem.
I really loved Mockingjay. It really showed the impact that war has on a personal level, and just how messy it is. Collins didn’t pull any punches or give anyone a cheap happy ending. I’m glad they didn’t do the thing every other YA book does where the young main character single-handedly saves the day. Katniss tries to do that and it doesn’t work, because that’s not how war works in real life. There’s some great bleak imagery as well, especially at the end. The epilogue made me cry. It’s perfect in how imperfect it is.
“The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.” Seriously, people need to stop reading that book.
Historians and Holocaust educators around the world, including the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, actively discourage people from reading the book or seeing the movie based on it. It is widely viewed as having been detrimental to Holocaust education. The term “Pyjamafication” is even used frequently to describe inaccurate and counterproductive Holocaust education because the book has been so widely condemned.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tz3932/comment/i3wdaba/?user_id=337878451759&web_redirect=true](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/tz3932/comment/i3wdaba/?user_id=337878451759&web_redirect=true)
[https://news.yahoo.com/boy-striped-pyjamas-criticised-harming-124310793.html](https://news.yahoo.com/boy-striped-pyjamas-criticised-harming-124310793.html)
[https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/](https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/)
>The study reported, for example, that the story regularly elicited profound and often somewhat misplaced sympathy for German and even Nazi families whom, students argued, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas helped them to see as ‘victims’ too.
[https://www.kveller.com/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-set-holocaust-education-back-by-decades-now-its-getting-a-sequel/](https://www.kveller.com/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-set-holocaust-education-back-by-decades-now-its-getting-a-sequel/)
>But the thing I find most upsetting is the tearjerker moment over Bruno’s death. Shmuel’s living conditions, his family’s destruction and his father’s murder are apparently not tragic enough for Boyne to serve as the climax of his fable. Shmuel is just a two-dimensional plot device, devoid of personality, present to advance Bruno’s story and provide a Nazi redemption arc. We’re left with the twisted moral that the accidental death of a single non-Jewish child is somehow “comeuppance” for the deaths of millions of Jews.**This book has single handedly set back Holocaust education by decades.**
EDIT: Seriously? Downvotes for <checks notes> …sharing the views of historians about a wildly misleading historical novel.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Absolute garbage of a book.
*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* was hellatiously popular when I was young. I started reading it, but found the protagonist selfish and narcissistic. I skipped to the essay on “quality” and he lost me even more. He was just a jerk and a bad father.
Verify by Colleen Hoover. Horrible writing, disappointing “twist” (if you can even call it that). Needless to say, I won’t be reading any more Colleen Hoover books.
I might get downvoted for this lol but Outlander. I found it to be super rapey, damn near rolled my eyes out of my skull at how great the sex was when one partner was losing their virginity, and finally put it down forever at the spousal abuse (that was compared to a parent disciplining a child).
Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart
I get really mad at popular young adult books, especially those specifically marketed to teenage girls, that normalize really shitty behavior by men. He runs hot and cold. He showers you with unwanted gifts, sets you up to be dependent on him, or extends life-saving help, but then expects reciprocity and payment. He withholds information or lies to you to manipulate your choices. He tells you to your face that you mean nothing to him, you’re a means to an end, that he is toxic, that his past loves have died, that he is a bad bet. He is a 100 year old vampire that could contribute to art, science, medicine, history, and humanity – but hangs around in high schools. Girls, you can do so much better.
I wish more authors would model healthy relationships for our girls instead. There are tons of problems in the world, why not let the story focus on making the world a better place? Let her face outside problems with someone who has her back, that is a partner, that respects her agency and contributions to the relationship, instead of making the focus story about women curing men of their toxicity?
50 shades. Glorifying garbage writing and a book that is a disgrace to the bdsm community always made me irrationally angry. NO VIRGIN IS SIGNING THAT CONTRACT YOU CREEPY AF WEIRDO RICH GUY