# Books you've thrown across the room in rage (open spoilers likely) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 24, 2006, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799 "2006-07-24T08:41:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/41 "2006-07-24T18:15:58Z")
I’ll third Hannibal. Much more disturbing than the other Lecter books, and the characters behave in completely unbelievable ways. Unfortunately, I finished the whole thing before I kicked it across the room. I was in a snit for days after that. > [@Zeldar](#): > > Stephen King’s **The Shining**. I did see the movie and it wasn’t as disgusting as the book, but I couldn’t tolerate the abruptness with which King shifted gears in the book. Unforgiveable. Wow. The Shining is one of my favorite books of all time. I’d never argue with you, but if you can remember any specific thing that irritated you, I’d be interested to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/42 "2006-07-24T18:21:37Z")
The second book of the Dark Tower series(The Drawing of the Three?). In the first 10 pages King decides to randomly mutilate the main character. It was so senseless I dropped the book right there. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/43 "2006-07-24T18:27:43Z")
> [@Dung Beetle](#): > > Wow. The Shining is one of my favorite books of all time. I’d never argue with you, but if you can remember any specific thing that irritated you, I’d be interested to hear it. It has been a long time. I’ve tried to forget the thing. Best I can recall at this point is that the story was progressing quite well along one line of plot and then, about halfway into the book, it was as if King said to himself, “Okay. Enough of that story. Let’s try this.” Anyway, when he started up the new story line, I wasn’t ready for it and just set the book aside. I didn’t hold out much hope for the movie, but since you can watch a movie implode in a couple of hours, as opposed to having to wait several days for a book to do so, I gambled the movie would at least make sense. It was okay. I still felt the Redrum gimmick was cheap and too easy to figure out, but I didn’t drop it for that reason alone. ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/44 "2006-07-24T18:36:40Z")
Mein Kampf Lovely Bones The first two Dark Tower Books (though I managed to muddle through them both) Some Star Trek book that was supposed to be a biography of Kahn Noonian Singh Oh, Bio of a Space Tyrant book one, which Mrs. ddgryphon loved and read all of. I found it hopelessly silly and awful. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/45 "2006-07-24T18:43:19Z")
For me it was a romance novel set in the unspecified fairy-tale middle ages – fair ladies with heaving bosoms and knights with strong swords, etc. The “hero” finds the “heroine”, who is the daughter of his mortal enemy, wandering in the woods and kidnaps her. She is a spineless whimperer and he is, not to put to fine a point on it, an asshole. He treats her so shabbily that Princess Spineless finally _jumps out the window_ to try to kill herself. But does not die, of course, no . . . gets _amnesia_. He realizes he loves her and starts treating her well . . . now that he lets he go or anything . . . and she falls in love with him. So one day they’re out in the woods humping like rabbits beneath a tree and mid-hump, _the tree is struck by lightning_! They are both otherwise unhurt but she regains her memory, of course, but love conquers all and she decides she still loves him. That last part is an assumption, since after the lightning strike, I threw the book down the stairs. In fact, I was so pissed off at it that I picked it back up and put it in the kitchen sink, which I filled with water, in order to watch the book blow up and make sure it would never be read again, by anyone. If I could have done the same with every existing copy, I would have done so. On the plus side, reading that book helped spur me to persevere with writing myself, since I was completely confident that I (even I) can write better than that. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/46 "2006-07-24T18:57:20Z")
> [@ddgryphon](#): > > Some Star Trek book that was supposed to be a biography of Kahn Noonian Singh Have you seen the guy who wrote that book? I saw an interview with him once, ye gads! If there _ever_ was a stereotypical Star Trek geek, that guy’s it! Bad teeth, drool sucking, overweight, the works! :::shudder::: ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/47 "2006-07-24T19:28:14Z")
I forgot to mention “The World According to Garp” which could have saved everyone a lot of time and trouble if he had simply written a fortune cookie that said: Life sucks and then you die. or No matter how good things seem, something will Fvck it up in the end. ---
**Author:** ![cmosdes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cmosdes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmosdes)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/48 "2006-07-24T19:31:56Z")
Well, I didn’t throw it across the room in rage, just tore each page out, one by one, and threw them across the room. The book: _Paper Airplane Folding_. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/49 "2006-07-24T19:34:25Z")
I really liked Illium, by Dan Simmons. I got very upset with its sequel, Olympus, because it was just so bad. Ilium promised me lots of mindblowiness. Olympus gave me stupid action flick. It was alot my experience of watching the third installment of the _Matrix_ trilogy, in fact! Also, I read the first book of the Chung Kuo cycle by an author named Wingrove. Thought it showed promise, found it tended to keep me glued to my seat turning pages though it was not great literature by any means. Picked up the first sequel, and simply couldn’t finish it. Was very upset. I’ve read reviews of the other 6 in the series and apparently it just keeps getting worse. Too bad. Also, I hate, hate, hate The Wheel of Time. That book is awful. -FrL- -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/50 "2006-07-24T19:39:32Z")
The most disgusted I’ve ever gotten with a book was Philippa Gregory’s **Wideacre**. The heroine was utterly vile. Gregory also pissed me off with her treatment of Anne Boleyn at the ending of **The Other Boleyn Girl**. As much as I like the Tudors, I have avoided the rest of her historical fiction. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/51 "2006-07-24T19:46:09Z")
> [@Skald the Rhymer](#): > > 1. Hannibal by Thomas Harris. There are many reasons to hate this book. You can hate it because Harris tries to make you feel sympathy for the serial-killing cannibal who mutilated Will Graham and mind-fucked Clarice Starling the protagonist. You can hate it because he has Clarice, the best thing by far about The Silence of the Lambs, fall so in love with Dr. Evil that she lets him suck champagne off her bare nipple (thus making lusting after Jodie Foster much more complicated than it should be). But the best reason is because Harris lost the clean, competent, at times grimly funny writing style that marked his earlier works. At one point he describes a group of people at a gun show as “egg-bound…truly of the resinous heart.” As a reviewer at the time noted, "What the hell does ‘egg-bound’ mean? What does “of the resinous heart’ even think it means?” Doesn’t egg-bound refer to a constipated hen, so to speak? 😛 and "of the resinous heart’ refer to [Yeats](http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yeatspoems/TwoSongs) ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/52 "2006-07-24T19:46:31Z")
Because I liked the cover, I read “The Copper Crown” by Patricia Kennealy. I found it silly–this “Keltic” thing is getting out of hand. 99% of the characters were “Mary Jane’s.” And the prose was absolutely Leaden–despite all the “Celtic Twilight” balderdash, _some_ Irish/Scots/Welsh/Whatever have been known to write with style. However, I was marginally interested in the characters–enough that I read a sequel (or maybe it was a prequel). All the faults were magnified. The writing was even more plodding. And the characters were nauseatingly perfect. I keep far too many books. And I recycle all the rest–Half Price Books will take anything, even if they pay you almost nothing for the losers. Both of these went into the garbage. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/53 "2006-07-24T20:16:07Z")
> [@mamboman](#): > > “The Pact” by Jodi Picoult, which I threw approx. 22.5 feet and caused to land with a very staisfying thud, upon reading the verdict at the end. After ploughing through 451 pages of Picoult’s turgid, seat of her pants writing style I at least wanted the satisfaction of seeing the perpetrator get a long long prison sentence. Bur bewilderingly, he is acquitted. And he stone murdered that girl. Augh! Same with Perfect Match. No way she should have gotten away with it. it’s like A Time to Kill, wait till the person gets off before shooting them dead. And My Sister’s Keeper a little convenient killing off the sister who didn’t want to give up her heart so she ends up having to give it anyway :rolleyes: I read a bunch of her stuff in a row and got pretty tired of the same formula and same resolution. American Psycho is the only book I threw out partway through. I was in a fragile state in life and the images in there did me no good. I think it was well done though. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/54 "2006-07-24T20:19:11Z")
I rarely fail to finish books (I know, it’s a sickness), and I throw them even less frequently. I have only thrown _The Dance of Anger_ across the room. Because it made me so, well, angry. During a dramatic reading of inaccurate information from Rubin’s \*Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), \* my friend grabbed the book from my hands and defenestrated it. I burned my Barron’s GRE study book in 1982, little realizing that my perverse drive toward higher education would mean I’d wind up taking the GRE two more times as each set of scores hit its expiration date. ---
**Author:** ![StuffLikeThatThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@StuffLikeThatThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StuffLikeThatThere)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/55 "2006-07-24T20:23:58Z")
> [@Shoshana](#): > > During a dramatic reading of inaccurate information from Rubin’s \*Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), \* my friend grabbed the book from my hands and **defenestrated** it. _DING_ You win a prize for using my favorite word in a sentence. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/56 "2006-07-24T20:32:20Z")
> [@Shoshana](#): > > I rarely fail to finish books (I know, it’s a sickness), and I throw them even less frequently. I have only thrown _The Dance of Anger_ across the room. Because it made me so, well, angry. > > During a dramatic reading of inaccurate information from Rubin’s \*Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), \* my friend grabbed the book from my hands and defenestrated it. > > I burned my Barron’s GRE study book in 1982, little realizing that my perverse drive toward higher education would mean I’d wind up taking the GRE two more times as each set of scores hit its expiration date. I remember reading long passages from that book as a kid, but I don’t remember anything it said. What are some of the inaccuracies in it? -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/57 "2006-07-24T20:42:02Z")
Very poor on gay stuff, for example. A lot of editorializing, like saying that gay men are “looking for love where there can be no love, looking for satisfaction where there can be no lasting satisfaction.” Also “One vagina plus one vagina equals zero.” He got the stages of female orgasmic response in the wrong order. The whole thing had the “Aren’t we sophisticated/isn’t this dirty?” flavor of porn disguised as science, as compared to Kinsey or Masters and Johnson, or even later authors such as Dr. Ruth. ---
**Author:** ![Kairos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecc23a/32.png) [@Kairos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kairos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/58 "2006-07-24T22:28:46Z")
I’ve started a few books that made me give up in disgust (memorably, _Billy Bathgate_ - I think E.L. Doctorow doesn’t believe in editors) but only three have made the trip across the room and into the wall. 1. _Still Life With Woodpecker_, Tom Robbins - Throughout the story, I instinctively knew how it was going to end - I knew the ending would be sad, and I would cry and feel hopeless and miserable, but I understood that it could have no other ending. The sad ending was as inevitable as the tides. I sat down with a box of tissues to finish it, only to discover that Robbins copped out and everyone lived happily ever after. Fuck you, Tom Robbins. (I like his work, I really do, but the end of that book pissed me off.) 2. \*[Death in Venice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_venice) \*, Thomas Mann - There was no way for that story to end well. I read it for a class in college and threw it across the room when I was done, scaring the crap out of my roommate. I was complaining bitterly about Aschenbach’s death and unrequited love and she looked at me in horror and asked “would you have rather him been a pedophile?” Damnit. 3. _Life After God_, Douglas Coupland - Specifically, the essay “Gettysburg.” Do not misunderstand me - this is one of my favorite books, and Coupland is one of my favorite authors - but the hopelessness and despair of that essay drove me to sobbing and throwing the book across the room the first time I read it. ---
**Author:** ![MagicXylophone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@MagicXylophone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MagicXylophone)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/59 "2006-07-24T22:31:34Z")
I’m sure I’m going to get lambasted for this one, but here goes… **Utopia**. You know what, Sir Saint Fucking Thomas More? As far as I’m concerned, you’re the patron saint of Writing Totally Indecipherable Olde English. I seriously couldn’t read more than 10 pages at once without thinking to myself “Fuck this.” Although I was in high school at the time, so maybe I’d have better luck now. ---
**Author:** ![eveanyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@eveanyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eveanyn)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799/60 "2006-07-24T22:34:13Z")
The Foutainhead by Ayn Rand. Blech! I even put it down for a few months and then tried reading it again from the beginning. My eyes glazed over every few pages and I never did reach the quarter-way point. That book only got a low fling across the floor. It wasn’t even worth the effort of a decent throw at the wall. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-youve-thrown-across-the-room-in-rage-open-spoilers-likely/365799.md?page=4)