I started thinking about this when Flowers in the Attic was mentioned in a recent thread about “worst books ever.” It reminded me of a colleague who absolutely hated this book. I once heard her rant about how dumb it was, wrapping it up by saying “It’s a book about children who are kidnapped by their loon of a grandmother and kept in an attic, resulting in hot sibling-on-sibling love action and dwarfism!” After a pause, she grudgingly added “Although I have to admit, it’s not a plot you see every day.”
My personal favorite is a book that I hated, Caleb Carr’s The Alienist.* It does, however, contain possibly the best ending ever – namely, that Theodore Roosevelt shows up, kicking ass and taking names. I have come to believe that almost every book would be improved by adding what I like to call the “TR Ex Machina” ending. The Great Gatsby? Gatsby needed a little TR enforcement going on at his party. To Kill A Mockingbird? TR would have straigtened out those Euwells toot sweet, and I bet he would have taken Scout and Jem on a cool exploration voyage after. The Sound and the Fury? TR would have marched in and demanded that everyone clearly state their positions and stop all this waffling around. Okay, so maybe improved is the wrong word, but it would certainly make things interesting.
*I’ll add here that I know many people like this book. I’m not trying to make a case for it being a bad book, just that I personally hated it. So in this thread, you don’t need to defend your choice, you can simply say that you hate it.
Oh lord. You have me in tears of laughter. That’s great. Now I want to go and read The Alienist just for the ending. Not to mention the faint praise for Flowers in the Attic. I guess the nicest thing I have to say about books I don’t like is that at least the puns weren’t the absolute worst thing about the Xanth novels by Piers Anthony. I guess that’s pretty weak praise indeed!
Terminal Virus is a very bad movie – badly written, badly directed, badly acted – a bottom-of-the-barrel Roger Corman cheapie set in post-apocalyptic southern California. That said, it is the only movie I have ever seen that has come up with a completely believable justification for nonconsensual sexual bondage (i.e., rape) as a totally noble and selfless thing to do (in this one case) for the benefit of all humanity. Needless to say, it completely misses out on the ethical dilemma this poses, and the dramatic potential as well. Oh, and the fact that an ethical dilemma exists at all. It would have been vastly improved if it had been done as a LIfetime movie.
I believed so little of The Da Vinci Code when I read it that I sought out the facts behind the claims and learned quite a bit about early Church history. There now seems to be a cottage industry in debunking the book so I can only guess that others have learned lots about religion, art and architecture and every other subject which is so willfully misrepresented in the book.
Though probably not nearly as many as those who have read it unquestioningly…
I think one thing that is obvious here is that all of the works mentioned would be vastly improved with some TR Ex Machina. However, in regard to The DaVinci Code, I would skip the book entirely, and rather send TR over to Dan Brown’s house for a little sit-down. I think we’ve got to go direct to the source in this instance.
I have really hated everything by Stephen King I have forced myself to read. However, and I sincerely mean this, His action sequences in the first two Dark Tower Books (and I say that because I couldn’t force myself to begin the third even after I bought it for full retail price) are among the best and most exciting I’ve ever read.
But the rest of the books could do with a lot of TR ex machina – they are godlessly boring.
Left Behind: Armageddon would make an even better doorstop if I had bought the hardcover. Meanwhile, one of the similar books from the 70s (and I can’t remember which), aside from being hilariously wrong about everything, is just the right thickness to level my card table.
Natalie Portman is pretty hot in Star Wars 1 to 3.
The whole Stephanie Plum series. Makes every other state’s (New Jersey was a prominent character in books 1 through 3. I only got as far as half-way through 3 before I gave up in disgust) residents look like the epitome of class and intelligence in comparison.
