# The moment you realized that a book sucks. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 25, 2006, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917 "2006-07-25T03:01:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Blanche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Blanche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blanche)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/81 "2006-07-31T20:27:23Z")
[QUOTE=Mirror Image egamI rorriM] Whatever the first Thomas Covenant book was. Covenant rapes a girl, and the reader is supposed to forgive him. Um, no. The depiction of leprosy was also ignorant and repugnant, and there was also a clan of women who were spiritually in tune with a herd of horses or something stupid like that. [/QUOTE] There were extenuating circumstances. Covenant did not think the girl was real - he thought he had experienced some sort of psychotic break and that it was some kind of hallucination. True, it doesn’t say much of his character that he used what he saw as a sort of lucid dream as an opportunity to rape someone, but he hadn’t experienced any sexual feeling in a long time and acted that way because he “knew” it wasn’t real. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/82 "2006-07-31T21:04:52Z")
Angela Carter finally lost me in a collection of essays, one of which was a review of a couple of cookery books. Seems an innocuous enough topic, but she had to preface it with an account of how, when she left her husband, she went all Earth-Mother and started baking her own bread, then quit because she figured that baking was “an ecstasy of false consciousness” and besides she was putting bakers out of work. Who _gives_ a shit, you prolix hippy bitch? ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/83 "2006-07-31T21:15:17Z")
Over on the Godawful Fanfic Forums, there was a discussion asking what is the one line in a fanfic (or original story) that instantly tips you off that it’s _all_ bad from here on out. There were a lot of nominations, but I think the winner ended up being: Any story in which a character is being raped, but then she thinks to herself, that deep down inside she really wants it. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/84 "2006-07-31T21:47:26Z")
[QUOTE=Case Sensitive] Angela Carter finally lost me in a collection of essays, one of which was a review of a couple of cookery books. Seems an innocuous enough topic, but she had to preface it with an account of how, when she left her husband, she went all Earth-Mother and started baking her own bread, then quit because she figured that baking was “an ecstasy of false consciousness” and **besides she was putting bakers out of work**. Who _gives_ a shit, you prolix hippy bitch? [/QUOTE] How much bread was she EATING? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/85 "2006-07-31T21:50:20Z")
[QUOTE=Case Sensitive] Who _gives_ a shit, you prolix hippy bitch? [/QUOTE] :mad: Hey! She wrote TheThe Sadeian Woman, **Case**! She’s allowed to be prolix! Besides, that book is full of people who gave shit. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/86 "2006-07-31T22:12:32Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] :mad: Hey! She wrote TheThe Sadeian Woman, **Case**! She’s allowed to be prolix! [/QUOTE] Too much ineffable porphyry and inchoate lapis lazuli for my tastes. And her essays are all “me, me, me”: she wrote a few about living in Japan in the late 60’s, which should have been interesting, but swiftly degenerated into an exercise about talking about herself some more. I have a theory that Angela Carter never existed as a person, but was simply a persona created by a focus group in order to sell books to 19 year old tarot-reading Wiccans Until Graduation. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/87 "2006-07-31T22:59:32Z")
[QUOTE=Waenara] And I actually _like_ some of Tom Clancy’s books, but only the Jack Ryan/John Clark books up until _Rainbow Six_ (_The Bear and The Dragon_ was so stupid I think my IQ dropped reading it, and I didn’t even attempt _The Teeth of the Tiger_ after I heard the premise). [/QUOTE] Yup. Clancy has written some very good tight thrillers (The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Cardinal of the Kremlin). And then I guess his editor lost a lot of influence - Sum of All Fears and Debt of Honour are still pretty decent books, but the bloat is really starting. I read the whole of Executive Decisions but, fuck me, there’s no reason at all for it to be almost the same length as LoTR! I got Rainbow Six and The Bear and the Dragon from the library but I had to skim big chunks of both. Apart from the utterly tedious padding in his latest books, I wonder if his major problem was not dropping his regular cast and geo-political timeline at the end of Debt of Honour. To continue with both beyond that point painted him into a corner he seems not to have the wit to get out of. The other thing about Clancy is that I suspect he knows shit about other cultures. The parts of Patriot Games and Rainbow Six set in the UK reveal only a passing acquaintance. I don’t know anything about Japan, but I suspect the scenes set there in Debt of Honour would grate similarly. TBH, it makes me wonder about his depiction of US military life and Washington politics. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/88 "2006-07-31T23:13:26Z")
[QUOTE=Waenara] And I actually _like_ some of Tom Clancy’s books, but only the Jack Ryan/John Clark books up until _Rainbow Six_ (_The Bear and The Dragon_ was so stupid I think my IQ dropped reading it, and I didn’t even attempt _The Teeth of the Tiger_ after I heard the premise). [/QUOTE] Yup. Clancy has written some very good tight thrillers (The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, Cardinal of the Kremlin). And then I guess his editor lost a lot of influence - Sum of All Fears and Debt of Honour are still pretty decent books, but the bloat is really starting. I read the whole of Executive Decisions but, fuck me, there’s no reason at all for it to be almost the same length as LoTR! I got Rainbow Six and The Bear and the Dragon from the library but I had to skim big chunks of both. Apart from the utterly tedious padding in his latest books, I wonder if his major problem was not dropping his regular cast and geo-political timeline at the end of Debt of Honour. To continue with both beyond that point painted him into a corner he seems not to have the wit to get out of. The other thing about Clancy is that I suspect he knows shit about other cultures. The parts of Patriot Games and Rainbow Six set in the UK reveal only a passing acquaintance. I don’t know anything about Japan, but I suspect the scenes set there in Debt of Honour would grate similarly. TBH, it makes me wonder about his depiction of US military life and Washington politics. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/89 "2006-08-01T01:18:49Z")
[QUOTE=Case Sensitive] Too much ineffable porphyry and inchoate lapis lazuli for my tastes. And her essays are all “me, me, me”: she wrote a few about living in Japan in the late 60’s, which should have been interesting, but swiftly degenerated into an exercise about talking about herself some more. I have a theory that Angela Carter never existed as a person, but was simply a persona created by a focus group in order to sell books to 19 year old tarot-reading Wiccans Until Graduation. [/QUOTE] You completely ignored my coprophagia joke. Now I must commit ritual suicide. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/90 "2006-08-01T02:24:47Z")
I try not to read books that suck. Several that I think suck were class assignments but the only one I that I thought sucked that I also had to read for class was _Armageddon_ (the penultimate book in the Left Behind series.) When my family (none of whom have any interest in reading any of that crap) asked what it was like, I said it was like really bad Tom Clancy. Not even bad like later Tom Clancy, but bad like those series that are just affiliated with Clancy somehow and are written by somebody else, like Tom Clancy’s Op Center or whatever it was that **DiggitCamera** described. Let’s see…I realized that _Number of the Beast_ sucked sometime during it, though I don’t remember when. I finished it and then went to the used bookstore to see if I could trade it in for something good. For some reason, I read some entire trilogy called something like the Singing Sorceress (by some lousy fantasy writer), I guess because I like pain. That, and I wondered what would happen if you took a ghettoblaster into that world. Also, for some reason I went through Card’s entire Homecoming Saga though I stopped liking it very early into book 2. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/91 "2006-08-01T02:28:55Z")
I should say, the only one I thought that sucked that was not also a “classic” was that Left Behind crap. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/92 "2006-08-01T02:53:46Z")
Speaking of Thomas Covenant, I have to link to [Fantasy Bedtime Hour](http://fantasybedtimehour.com/episodes/EP1.php), the basic cable adventures of two drunken bimbos reading _The Chronicles of Thomas Covenent_ aloud. In bed. And then try to figure out what it means. And then a bunch of SCA rejects act it out. Not the book, the girls interpretation. When the girls assume “hoary” means “slutty,” we get two see two wizards bypassing a ward by singing “Roxanne” to it. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/93 "2006-08-01T05:35:53Z")
No one’s mentioned The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand? As stated above, at some early point you start wishing the protagonist would develop fatal laryngitis, or at least switch identities and Leave The Book. But you know it ain’t gonna happen; simpler to put the book down and find something else to do. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/94 "2006-08-01T12:10:18Z")
[QUOTE=Blanche] There were extenuating circumstances. Covenant did not think the girl was real - he thought he had experienced some sort of psychotic break and that it was some kind of hallucination. True, it doesn’t say much of his character that he used what he saw as a sort of lucid dream as an opportunity to rape someone, but he hadn’t experienced any sexual feeling in a long time and acted that way because he “knew” it wasn’t real. [/QUOTE] Indeed yes, and this is the key to understanding Thomas Covenant: he had been shown another patient with a horribly terminal case of Hansen’s Disease and knew that if he ever let his grip on reality slip by an inch, he would not hit the bottom of the spiral until he too was a walking mass of corruption. He had to devote every waking minute to ensuring that he did not inadvertently damage or infect himself, because he had no surface sensation to speak of and would routinely cut, graze or scrape himself without even noticing, if he was careless. And then he was magically transported to a land where someone slapped healing mud on him and put all his nerves back into working order - \*which he knew as the central, defining cold fact of his existence was impossible \* - and he did a crazy, horrible thing for which he spent the next 1600 pages repenting and trying to make amends, all the while cursed to make matters worse instead of better. Really, we’re overdue for a Covenant thread. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/95 "2006-08-01T14:38:31Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] Really, we’re overdue for a Covenant thread. [/QUOTE] I’ve been starting book threads each week and had covenant in mind for the next one…but feel free to beat me to the punch. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/96 "2006-08-01T15:13:11Z")
A while back I was on a forensic science kick, and purchased _Dead Men Do Tell Tales_ by William R. Maples, _Maggots, Men and Murder_ by Zakaria Erzinclioglu, and _Fire Cops_ by Charles and Michael Sasser. The first two were excellent, but the last was a piece of complete crap. I expected an in-depth look at the science of arson investigation. Instead, it was a pair of gung-ho macho wanna-bes writing breathlessly about the battle between their heroes and the scum. And I couldn’t help noticing that “the scum” had some very definite attributes. In one chapter, black men (the suspects in this case) and women (the victims) are referred to repeatedly as “bucks” and “bitches”. In another, they offhandedly describe a trucker killing a homeless guy: “he gunned the big diesel and smashed the wheelchair and its obnoxious occupant flat.” If these had been quotes made by a witness in the heat of the moment, I could brush them off, but they were all straight from the Sassers’ narritive. The main case in the book is described as the biggest arson case in Miami’s history, but Google turns up nothing on the names of anyone they say was arrested for it, nor do any of the book’s photos have anything to do with it. The detective work they present is shaky, with leads based solely on the suspect’s ethnicity and followed up more by threatening people with deportation than by the crime scene investigation I was hoping to read about. ---
**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:** [August 1, 2006, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/97 "2006-08-01T16:06:21Z")
I have a book out from the library called The complete Stephen King universe : a guide to the worlds of Stephen King, by Stan Wiater. I enjoyed reading it and was considering buying it to have as a reference book, except that I found so many typos. Also, in one case, it said that a character’s head was found on the seat of a car, when actually it was his hand. Pretty sloppy. ---
**Author:** ![Lightray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightray/32/391_2.png) [@Lightray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightray)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/98 "2006-08-01T16:53:03Z")
[QUOTE=Miller] Speaking of Thomas Covenant, I have to link to [Fantasy Bedtime Hour](http://fantasybedtimehour.com/episodes/EP1.php), the basic cable adventures of two drunken bimbos reading _The Chronicles of Thomas Covenent_ aloud. In bed. And then try to figure out what it means. And then a bunch of SCA rejects act it out. Not the book, the girls interpretation. When the girls assume “hoary” means “slutty,” we get two see two wizards bypassing a ward by singing “Roxanne” to it. [/QUOTE] Curse you, SurfWatch! _shakes fist_ I just know I’ll forget to check this out later at home… Anyway, to the point of the thread: just because there’s reason for the rape scene, and for Covenant’s actions, and how it affects him and the plot of the books, does not mean that the rape scene didn’t make the book suck – for some readers. In the context of the story, I accepted the rape scene for what it was, but I’m never surprised when others who read the book couldn’t get past it. It’s kind of how I understand that some people think _Catcher in the Rye_ is a good book, while I can still loathe it and wish awful things to happen to whiny Holden Caufield. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/99 "2006-08-01T17:18:09Z")
One thing you have to say about Covenant is that as far as fucked-up, angst-filled, barely-controlled fantasy heroes go… he’s still better than Rand al’Thor. ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917/100 "2006-08-01T18:31:52Z")
[QUOTE=Waenara] And I actually _like_ some of Tom Clancy’s books, but only the Jack Ryan/John Clark books up until _Rainbow Six_ (_The Bear and The Dragon_ was so stupid I think my IQ dropped reading it, and I didn’t even attempt _The Teeth of the Tiger_ after I heard the premise). Tom Clancy’s spin-off series books that aren’t actually written by him, but are created solely to enlarge the piles of money he sleeps on, also appear to be crap. (The _Op-Centre_, _Netforce_, and _Power Plays_ series). [/QUOTE] Since the first book I read was so absolutely boring, and since it was the description of a video-game (I forgot about that part), I decided I had not yet sampled “Tom Clancy, Best-Selling Bookwriter”. So I bought another one. One of the _Netforce_ series. And hated it. And, suddenly, realized it **WASN’T EVEN WRITTEN BY TOM CLANCY**. After that fiasco I decided I won’t EVER buy ANYTHING by Tom Clancy and cohorts. Nice description of SSN, by the way. To be honest I just couldn’t stop reading the book, because I kept thinking “there MUST be a point to all this crap!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-moment-you-realized-that-a-book-sucks/365917.md?page=6)