# Disapprove of a book list-Don't read these! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 19, 2013, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132 "2013-04-19T13:54:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Osiris\_the\_1st](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9de0a6/32.png) [@Osiris\_the\_1st](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Osiris_the_1st)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/21 "2013-04-19T16:10:56Z")
Any of the _Dune_ books written by **Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson**. I would much rather have been left with the ambiguous ending of _Chapterhouse: Dune_ than to have seen Frank Herbert’s opus shat upon by his own offsping. I know some people don’t like the later books of the series, but I found them to be worth while. BH and KJA took a well written and mostly highly regarded series and first began taking it apart with prequell books that not only vastly undermined the personality of many of the characters in _Dune_, but outright contradicted series continuity having events occur litterally thousands of years before they were supposed to. It read like bad fan fiction. Also Kevin J. Anderson could not write his way out of a wet paper bag. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/22 "2013-04-19T16:16:16Z")
The later Piers Anthony books in his Xanth fantasy series. The first 3 or so were actually quite good but the curve dropped sharply. The later Wheel of Time books- so don’t get sucked in. You’ll regret it later. I am having some doubts as to GRRM along those lines. He’s a great author, no doubt- but now thinks he’s too great to need editing. He’s not. A Confederacy of Dunces is possible the most over-rated book. It seems to be liked by dudes of only slightly higher than normal IQ’s that have delusions of grandeur and thus like to point and laugh at a guy they think that they are sooooooo much better than. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/23 "2013-04-19T16:16:53Z")
**[The Sword of Shannara](http://amzn.com/0345314255)** by Terry Brooks. How has no one claimed this low-hanging fruit yet? A blatant rip-off of the **Lord of the Rings** series; even disregarding that, the writing is dreadful. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/24 "2013-04-19T16:18:54Z")
I was gonna go all Dan Brown on this thread but you guys are way ahead of me. So I’ll be controversial and say _Life of Pi_. An interesting premise morphing into a series of increasingly improbably events and utterly ruined by a suddenly ambiguous ending. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/25 "2013-04-19T16:21:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The later Piers Anthony books in his Xanth fantasy series. The first 3 or so were actually quite good but the curve dropped sharply. Eventually Anthony was just crafting his plots around bad puns sent in by his fans. But they were still better than the borderline-kiddie porn of the _Bio of a Space Tyrant_ books. > [@](#): > > A Confederacy of Dunces is possible the most over-rated book. It seems to be liked by dudes of slightly higher than normal IQ’s that have delusions of grandeur and thus like to point at laugh at a guy they think that they are sooooooo much better than. Them’s fighting words. ACoD is a classic farce and if you read it as such it works a lot better. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/26 "2013-04-19T16:23:49Z")
> [@StusBlues](#): > > I concur. I read about three pages of the first volume. Ouch. I skipped ahead about 100 pages and checked the prose there. No improvement. Not sure why anyone would like these. Me too. I wasn’t expecting great writing, but it isn’t even good sex. I skipped ahead looking for the good parts - but there weren’t any. On a less exotic note, **Turing’s Cathedral** is a book about an early computer, the IAS machine - which Turing had almost nothing to do with. My first adviser worked on this machine when he was in grad school in Princeton, so I was excited. It is a total mishmash, badly structured, badly written, with hardly anything about the controversy on who invented the “von Neumann” architecture. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/27 "2013-04-19T17:15:43Z")
**The Historian** by Elizabeth Kostova. The plot hinges on amnesia caused by someone drinking absinthe. Vampire hunters search for a copy of _Dracula_ but can’t find a single one. Every character’s voice is the same – men, women, young, old, American, European. The answer to the mystery of why people are chasing around and dying? Dracula is still alive and needs someone to catalog his library. I shit you not. ---
**Author:** ![geneb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e4f/32.png) [@geneb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/geneb)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/28 "2013-04-19T17:37:38Z")
Violin by Anne Rice. I finish reading any book I start on principle, but I gave up on this one fairly quickly. It has been quite a number of years since I tried to read it, but it seemed like she spent the first 6 chapters describing the window\*. She described every single little thing in unrelenting detail. When it got to the point that I was well into the book and still had no idea what it was about and nothing had happened yet, I gave up. Never regretted it one bit. - Not necessarily completely accurate. Despite my utter hatred of this book, I can’t remember what it was she was describing. It could have been a chair. One of the Amazon reviews mentions her dead mother’s used menstrual pad so it could have been that too. But I hope not. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/29 "2013-04-19T17:49:41Z")
I would nominate the Graphic Novel series Crossed by Garth Ennis. It’s sort of a Post Apocalyptic/Rage virus story that is just utterly over the top violent and shocking just for shock’s sake. Almost no redeemable characters and an utter sense of hopelessness with little entertainment value and absolutely no sense of fun. I did not like it. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/30 "2013-04-19T18:42:17Z")
> [@Osiris\_the\_1st](#): > > Any of the _Dune_ books written by **Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson**. I would much rather have been left with the ambiguous ending of _Chapterhouse: Dune_ than to have seen Frank Herbert’s opus shat upon by his own offsping. I know some people don’t like the later books of the series, but I found them to be worth while. > > BH and KJA took a well written and mostly highly regarded series and first began taking it apart with prequell books that not only vastly undermined the personality of many of the characters in _Dune_, but outright contradicted series continuity having events occur litterally thousands of years before they were supposed to. It read like bad fan fiction. Also Kevin J. Anderson could not write his way out of a wet paper bag. Just about any Kevin J. Anderson book qualifies, really. > [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > The _Sleeping Beauty_ trilogy by Anne Rice. Never was sex soooo boring. Maybe she was paid by the word. (She did use a pseudonym.) > [@StusBlues](#): > > I concur. I read about three pages of the first volume. Ouch. I skipped ahead about 100 pages and checked the prose there. No improvement. Not sure why anyone would like these. This, a thousand times. I bought the trilogy as a set from a used book store. Dear Og, but those books were boring. They’re supposed to be stroke books. They are so bad that the books didn’t fall open anywhere…that is, the previous owner didn’t find any of the passages so stimulating that s/he kept returning to the scene. The books weren’t even faintly erotic, and there was no plot that I could detect. ---
**Author:** ![BurnMeUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@BurnMeUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BurnMeUp)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/31 "2013-04-19T18:54:46Z")
The Special Prisoner - Jim Lehrer - Overly simplistic, absurdly racist even for it’s subject matter, and generally a waste of time. Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk - Again horribly racist in the sense that it’s written entirely in pigeon dialect, not even offensive in creative amusing ways like some of Chuck’s other work, the end doesn’t make any sense in conjunction with the lead up. Just complete trash. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/32 "2013-04-19T18:54:50Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > This, a thousand times. I bought the trilogy as a set from a used book store. Dear Og, but those books were boring. They’re supposed to be stroke books. They are so bad that the books didn’t fall open anywhere…that is, the previous owner didn’t find any of the passages so stimulating that s/he kept returning to the scene. The books weren’t even faintly erotic, and there was no plot that I could detect. A few years ago I was checking out some books from the local library branch, and there, in the children’s section, was the first of the Sleeping Beauty books. I picked it up and asked why it was in the children’s section. The librarian just blinked and said, “Because it’s a fairy tale.” I handed it to her and told her to open it anywhere and read. She did. She flushed. She thanked me very kindly, and sent it to be marked as Adult Fiction. ---
**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:** [April 19, 2013, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/33 "2013-04-19T19:07:54Z")
Anything by Philippa Gregory, a popular writer of offensively creative historical fiction. This is an author who, when writing _The Other Boleyn Girl_, didn’t think Anne Boleyn’s story was dramatic enough and decided to embellish it by making her actually guilty of incest and witchcraft. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/34 "2013-04-19T19:25:06Z")
_Ghost_ by John Ringo. > **[books to make my flist's heads explode: John Ringo](https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html)** > > Lately, some folks on my f-list have been looking at Lord King Bad profic. brown\_betty gave us LEOPARD LORD , and cereta reviewed THE SHEIK , and burger\_eater pointed me to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books's take on Shayla Black's DECADENT . These books,... ---
**Author:** ![TheFaerie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheFaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFaerie)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/35 "2013-04-19T19:48:37Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > L. Ron Hubbard. (snip) …but his “epic” ten-volume _Mission Earth_ series is far and away the foulest, nastiest, worst-written steaming pile of dung I’ve ever been exposed to. I came here to post this too. Horrible. I read the entire series waiting for it to get good and it never did. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/36 "2013-04-19T19:58:25Z")
An author to avoid is Gentry Lee. **Cradle** makes the works of Pel Torro appealing by comparison, and many of us are aware of how he turned the concept of Rendezvous with Rama into total crap. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/37 "2013-04-19T20:28:38Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Them’s fighting words. ACoD is a classic farce and if you read it as such it works a lot better. Nope; I read it knowing what it allegedly was; it still stank. There was a thread recently that was (initially) devoted to bashing _ **Dunces** _; I read it with great pleasure until Toole’s tools started showing up to defend it. (Yes, I know I am a bad person. :D) If that’s not enough to get me piled on, I’ll nominate _ **Cryptonomicon** _. I slogged through 900 pages of it, constantly expecting The Awesome to show up as it had in _ **Snow Crash** _, and then the book was over and I said, “What? That’s it?” Grr. Another–which I don’t think I made it fifty pages into–would be _ **Lord Foul’s Bane** _. I understand that the protagonist is supposed to be rather unlikeable; I didn’t make it that far because I couldn’t get past all the (unintentionally?) hilarious/painful High Fantasyisms–likes like, “You shall seek him for seven times seven years, and you shall endure three times twenty-four trials, and blah blah blah.” Its rare for me not to finish a book–I either have low standards, good taste, good luck, or some combination of the three–but this one barely made it past the second chapter. ---
**Author:** ![pohjonen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pohjonen/32/423_2.png) [@pohjonen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pohjonen)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/38 "2013-04-19T20:37:45Z")
I checked out _Winter’s Bone_ from the library and settled down for a great read based upon it’s 4 and a half stars on Amazon only to encounter on the very first page a reference to the heroine’s “abrupt green eyes.” What? I made it about 30 pages into this book before i gave up. Apparently, however, I am in the minority. ---
**Author:** ![Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stark_Raven_Mad)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/39 "2013-04-19T20:49:57Z")
The one other book I regretted reading was Paolo Coelho’s _The Alchemist_ - another one I picked up because of all the mad raving over it. Turns out the raving really _was_ mad, because it’s pure, unmitigated, self-important, steaming crap, masquerading as some sort of deep spiritual journey. One day I’m going to hunt that man down and demand a frigging refund. ---
**Author:** ![Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stark_Raven_Mad)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132/40 "2013-04-19T20:51:33Z")
> [@pohjonen](#): > > I checked out _Winter’s Bone_ from the library and settled down for a great read based upon it’s 4 and a half stars on Amazon only to encounter on the very first page a reference to the heroine’s “abrupt green eyes.” What? I made it about 30 pages into this book before i gave up. Apparently, however, I am in the minority. The book gets better. The film, however, is the far superior of the two. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disapprove-of-a-book-list-dont-read-these/656132.md?page=3)