The Sword of Shannara. Dark-haired hero meets blong-haired hero and dwarf. Adventurous antics ensue. They encounter a Prophecy that the World will be Ruined if they don’t Do Something. The Something they need to Do is find the Sword of Shannara. What they don’t know is that the cover of the book has a picture of a dark-haired hero, a blond-haired hero, and a dwarf looking in stunned amazement at a glowing sword with the words The Sword of Shannara hanging over their heads. They decide not to Do Something and go their separate ways. I realize the author is required to portray his characters as kind of boneheadedly stupid if that’s what the characters are, but do I have to be treated like that? No, as it turns out.
Flatlander, Man-Kzin Wars. Anthologies of short stories I had already read. I bought them because at the time I’d buy anything with Larry Niven’s name on it, without checking to see what was inside. Those two cured me. Spider Robinson’s falling prey to the same disease with his Mindkiller series.
The only book I ever actually, physically threw across the room was the New Testament. I was a child, about eight or nine, and when I got to the parable of the barren fig tree, I thought that Jesus was just so unfair to that poor tree that I couldn’t stand it. Normally I have way too much reverence for books to throw them.
for mindless pulp fun i love the janet evanovich stephanie plum crime books… so when i saw an earlier novel by evanovich re-released i bought it. …more fool me.
‘Full House’ tells the story of a young mother of two, called ‘billie’ of all things, and her romance with a dashing millionaire polo player of cossack ancestry.
yes it is just as bad as it sounds. thrown with great force when i read line “she could literally feel the heat from his body, sense his vitality and maleness.”
I wasn’t exactly annoyed when I threw One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest across the room (well, across the car I was riding in at the time, right after I finished it), just remarkably unhappy about the ending. I liked McMurphy…my favorite character.
No other book has quite earned a toss across the room yet. Just looks of disgust and threats of burning.
I threw Crichton’s Rising Sun across the room about halfway through. The basic gist of the book is that the Japanese, while hardworking, are devious, shifty, black-hearted, two-faced, gangsta-lovin’, murderous bastards … and, oh, yeah, they’re racist, too. Not too much irony there, huh, Mike?
Not having learned my lesson, I picked up his autobiography Travels about a year later. I must say that I’ve never lost respect for someone after finishing his autobiography (Geraldo Rivera doesn’t count; I never respected Geraldo in the first place.) Crichton went from genius writer to spoiled whiny rich kid in about 60 pages. Also, Mike, while I appreciate advice about relationships, I don’t think there’s much of a point in taking it from someone who’s been married and divorced three or four times.
Sigh … sorry about the tone. I’ve just returned from school, I saw the thread and reading vunderbob’s post mentioning this dickweed’s name just touched something off in me.
I tossed Kevin Anderson’s Ill Wind after the first point when the point of view became that of the “bad guy” (a wandering ne’er do well) and had a protracted rant against “Captain Butthead.” For Og’s sake, the guy’s supposed to be human filth. Let him curse in his own head and stop sounding like a third grader. This is truly the Diet Coke of Evil - one calorie, not evil enough.
But… I couldn’t leave well enough alone - I had to finish it. At the end, the bad guy’s dead (by literally wearing a tinfoil hat and walking through a microwave farm), the Evil Warmongering General (who doesn’t seem overly evil except for the fact that he has mistresses and would like to keep civilians from becoming more miltarily powerful than the government) has been defeated, and the strong silent cowboy has found love in the arms of the spunky rock-and-roll lovin’ scientist.
Hello? The world’s still sliding headfirst into war and depression, and to steal a phrase, the lives of these two people don’t amount to a hill of beans. But at least your happy little farming community in New Mexico is all right.
Oh yes - and the reviewer’s quote on the cover is “Almost un-put-downable.”
Gone, Baby, Gone by the insufferable, overly-awful, trite, fraud-with-a-capital-F, “I wanna be a lightweight, smartass version of James Ellroy” Dennis Lehane. My only regret is that Mr. Lehane’s head was not in front of me when I threw it.
Fire Cops, by Michael and Charles Sasser. I’d been browsing for books on crime investigation and bought it at the same time as Dead Men do Tell Tales and Maggots, Murder and Men, both of which I enjoyed. I’d been expecting to learn something about specialized investigative techniques, chemical analysis, how the fire’s path is traced back to its origin, etc. Instead, almost every case was: Witness #1: “I saw Joe Smith’s car parked outside the victim’s house just before the fire.” Witness #2: “Joe Smith was muttering something about getting revenge on the victim while buying a 10-gallon can of gasoline.” Witness #3: “Joe Smith came into the bar smelling like smoke and gasoline laughing about how he torched his ex-wife’s house.” Interview with Joe: “Did you set the fire?” “Umm… yeah.” Now, this may be how most cases turn out, but it’s damn boring to read.
This isn’t what made me toss the book, though. The Sassers’ political views shone clearly through their descriptions of the crimes, and I finally got sick of it. In one part, they write about a case that started when “three crack bitches met with their black studs to arrange a deal.” And for the rest of the passage they refer to the women as ‘bitches’ or ‘crack bitches’ (without any quote marks to indicate they intend it as jargon) even after they’re killed in a fire. The last straw came with a passage that was included even though it didn’t even remotely connect with arson or fires. A large truck stops because a homeless guy in a wheelchair is crossing the street. The truck driver honks, the homeless guy, evidently deranged, starts shouting insults. “The driver gunned the engine, released the brakes, and the wheelchair and its obnoxious occupant were obliterated.” End of chapter. Nothing to indicate the Sassers disapproved of what the driver did, nor even the slightest consideration that his action was criminal or even morally questionable.
Good Omens by Pratchett/Gaiman, as I was just saying the other day. Wonderful concept, horribly written. So I compromise… I read it, then I throw it across the room.
The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice. I couldn’t even finish the goddam thing. Didn’t throw it across the room, but I did do something with it that my book-loving soul has never allowed me to do to a book: put it in the trash can.
It’s an obscure novel, and I didn’t exactly toss it, but Animus by Ed Kelleher and Harriette Vidal was, for me, a banal and unsatisfying read. As horror novels go, it so boring and pointless that I finished it only because my alternative (working) was worse.
The kicker, though, was that I read the final chapter and it was so anticlimactic that I didn’t realize the story was over, so I kept going. The publisher had put the first chapter of another book at the end of “Animus” as a preview and I must have accidently skipped the title page. For at least five minutes I sat wondering “wow, where did all these new characters come from?”
A few years ago (well, about 20 guess) there was a series of SF/fantasy novels published in the UK (and elsewhere I imagine) called the “Gor” series. Slaves of Gor, Warriors of Gor etc. A sort of early swords-and sorcery series set, I think, in a parallel earth or a very similar planet, where women were more or less enslaved. Every single book followed the same formula, an uppity woman who didn’t know her place (ie she wouldn’t lie down for the hero) was taught the error of her ways, usually with a good deal of violence and some bsdm, and ended up being the hero’s devoted slave. They were nauseating.
I read a couple of them because I was in my early teens and beginning to get interested in SF, and my older brother had a stack of them which I borrowed. But they were vile. Even at the age of 12 or 13 or so I realised that.
I wish I had the opportunity to burn all copies of the book Death, Be Not Proud. I couldn’t, since it was school reading. I also made my parents promise that in case I died young, they would not write a biography of my life.
Story: High school kid gets brain cancer, takes different treatments, at the end dies of it. My problem is not with the kid (although he is sometimes presented as a snob), but with the mother who wrote it. They are rich New Yorkers during the 1940-1950, she goes all of the way to try to show her son was a supergenius, she dismisses some doctors because their main language was Spanish, she mentions all their interactions with famous people, etc.
Why I couldn’t connect? Not necessarily in order of importance:
I’m not rich, in their description of their lifestyle there are only few things we have in common.
I read it half a century after it was written, many things have changed.
My first language is Spanish.
Oh, her precious son had to take 5 courses as a senior in high school? I had to take 7 when I was in seventh grade!
Bigger brain= greater genius. Well, that may have some truth (or again, it may not), but to infer that was some sort of definite proof about her son’s intelligence…I don’t think it is right.
A Doc Savage book, when I was about 8. It was too lowbrow. Then, when I was 12 I read most of the series. Just goes to show.
Also threw a couple gruesome and pointless Rudy Rucker cyberpunk bits of trash.
I’ve also heaved a couple “Evil religious people who hate everyone and have the audacity to oppose the march of science, just because it relates to suitcase nuclear weapons and designer plagues.”
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Keasey. It was a great novel and then just fell apart with all sorts of implausible crap. I threw it away and it’s rare when I can’t finish a book. Fast forward a few years to a 3 day train trip in China and the only english book I had was drum roll pleaseSometimes a Great Notion. So, I did actually finish it, but puhleeese, the drowning scene, the kid poking the wife, it was frickin’ horrible.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. - Dorothy Parker
Thought we should give credit where credit is due.
Stephen Baxter’s Titan is my “not to be tossed asside lightly” choice.
Spoilers
The book is about the political take over of the USA by fundy Christians to the point that they shut down NASA and some states cecede. The last three space shuttles are up for grabs for one last hurrah. The “hero” comes up with a sceme to use them to go to the moon Titan. (A scientist has some data suggesting there could be some kind of life there) The catch is that it will be a one way trip for the astronauts. The two leads find three others they convince to tag along. After much trial and tribulation they go. They lose one of the crew on the way another is blinded and driven mad. The third parachutes down in an old murcury capsule and freezes to death when it loses containment.
That leaves the two main characters wandering around Titan.
Meanwhile back on earth the political situation has gone to pot and the Chinese stage an attack on the US by dropping an asteroid on them. They misjudge the size/force they intended to just devistate the US and accidently cause the end of the world (or at least humanity).
The two on Titan find a recent crater impact that heated up the surface to the point that liquid water can exist in the crater. They decide to “seed” this crater with the “stuff of life”. They both die in the attempt.
Now if the book had ended there it could have worked. You know the last two humans using their last breath to make it possible for life to arrise again. That sort of thing. But no.
Skip hundreds of millions of years into the future. The sun has gone to red giant stage and Titan is starting to thaw out. Well the life form that arrose as a result of “seeding” has found the last two humans, who died many miles appart, and “put them back together”. Now one of these two died an emaciated hulk as a result of vitemin A poisening. But here they are seemingly younger than when they died and in perfect health. If that weren’t enough reason to give it a fling, the two other crew members WHO WERE BURRIED JUST FEET AWAY FROM ONE OF THE HEROS were not resurrected by these well meaning aliens. I guess these two didn’t have the “plot driver” badge on their uniforms or something.
The beginning of the book was far fetched. But hey this is SF I can tollerate that to an extent. THough even the beginning pushed the limit. But the end. The end is absolutely the most idiotic, lame brained idea I have ever encountered by a published auther.