# The worst sentences you've ever encountered in published books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 6, 2013, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204 "2013-09-06T21:07:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/41 "2013-09-09T02:59:21Z")
A vulture gets on a plane with a dead possum under each wing. “Sorry,” says the attendant, “only one carrion per passenger.” ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/42 "2013-09-09T04:16:19Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > A nonfiction example: I remember in college reading a book on postmodernist thought, and there was a chapter on architecture that was impenetrable. One building was mentioned “whose putative volume was ocularly quite undecidable.” I read that sentence (the quote is from a much longer sentence) three or four times before I figured out he was saying you couldn’t figure out its size by looking at it. I was outraged. My favorite from feminist poststructuralist theory: > [@Donna Haraway](#): > > Ironically, Zihlman reproduced a modernist humanist discourse featuring a troubling universal being, woman the gatherer, who threatened to subdue the heteroglossia of women’s power-differentiated lives by means of the univocal language of sisterhood, while Hrdy delineates a map of proliferating differences written in to the primate female body that might indicate directions for a postmodernist, decolonizing biopolitics. 😕:smack::eek: ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/43 "2013-09-09T04:35:50Z")
I can’t and won’t pull it up exactly but I remember in one of the Harry Potter books, (4 or 5? Goblet of Fire I think) there was this “thing”. It looked like a small paragraph but was actually one sentence except, of course, that it didn’t exactly have a subject and verb. So it wasn’t a sentence. I’m not sure if such a thing would qualify for this discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/44 "2013-09-09T05:26:07Z")
> [@pohjonen](#): > > “Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.” > > I know lots of people loved that book, but come on. Sorry, but I don’t get what’s wrong with this. I think it’s kind of a good first line, actually. I particularly liked the abrupt green eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/45 "2013-09-09T05:43:48Z")
Her cheeks reddening as if smacked? Sheesh! Brutal metaphor. Nothing more attractive than the red cheeks of a lovely young maiden who’s been smacked around a few times. (At least “bee-stung lips” is only figurative!) ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/46 "2013-09-09T05:47:11Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Her cheeks reddening as if smacked? Sheesh! Brutal metaphor. Nothing more attractive than the red cheeks of a lovely young maiden who’s been smacked around a few times. > > (At least “bee-stung lips” is only figurative!) I don’t think it’s supposed to make you think she’s a lovely young maiden. I would guess the violent image was on purpose, though I don’t know the book. ---
**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:** [September 9, 2013, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/47 "2013-09-09T11:15:07Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > My favorite from feminist poststructuralist theory:… “Theory” is a good source for bad nonfiction writing. Australian art critic Robert Hughes mentioned certain French aesthetic theoreticians whose work showed “absolute prophylactic opacity.” ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/48 "2013-09-09T15:19:19Z")
I come to defend James Fennimore Cooper. Yes, it would take him ~80 words to say “the dog died,” but he was also capable of breathtaking imagery. Here’s his description of a field after battle: > [@The Last of the Mohicans](#): > > Long before the night had turned, they who lay in the bosom of the ruined work, seemed to slumber as heavily as the unconscious multitude whose bones were already beginning to bleach on the surrounding plain. Stops you cold, doesn’t it? This thread is tough because many of our hated books we don’t have at our fingertips with the worst passages earmarked. I do remember wanted to strangle the book itself several times while reading _ **Big Stone Gap** _ by Adriana Trigiani, often for the forced false southern-ism of the voice. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/49 "2013-09-09T16:37:30Z")
While I agree that these are pretty terrible, I’m more interested in **MichaelEmouse** ’s question: what makes a sentence bad? In particular, what makes one overly-long sentence bad and another good? I doubt it’s _just_ that words are misused. If that’s too much of a hijack, I can start another thread. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/50 "2013-09-09T17:41:20Z")
Long sentences are bad if you have to re-read to make sense of them. “Sense” is different from “meaning”, IMHO. I don’t mind re-reading for meaning, but I don’t want to re-read for sense. Here’s a long sentence that I think is fine: “I shut my eyes, held up my head, and faced the sky; and when I opened them I saw the breaking of a clear summer day and I damned the color of the horizon, which was such a sharp blue that it mocked the dread horror at the landing now suffering for the human need to approximate the work of the Lord.” That sentence could be broken down into two or three, but the rhythm would be lost. ---
**Author:** ![gonzoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@gonzoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzoron)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/51 "2013-09-09T20:43:46Z")
Ok, this one’s not a single sentence, but I thought it worthy of inclusion: “A half-finished keep occupied the spot where the outpost once stood. The builders never competed the keep, and from the looks of things they had abandoned the place some time ago. The unfinished keep was little more than a ruin, empty of lords or knights, servants or tenants. The place felt unfinished.” - _The Mark of Nerath_, by Bill Slavicsek. Yes, I forced myself to read this whole book… long story… ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/52 "2013-09-09T21:09:52Z")
> [@gonzoron](#): > > Yes, I forced myself to read this whole book… long story… Did you lose a bet? Because that’s pretty bad. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/53 "2013-09-09T22:11:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Donna Haraway > Ironically, Zihlman reproduced a modernist humanist discourse featuring a troubling universal being, woman the gatherer, who threatened to subdue the heteroglossia of women’s power-differentiated lives by means of the univocal language of sisterhood, while Hrdy delineates a map of proliferating differences written in to the primate female body that might indicate directions for a postmodernist, decolonizing biopolitics. If it helps, [Hrdy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Blaffer_Hrdy) is the anthropologist/primatologist who wrote [The Woman That Never Evolved](http://www.amazon.com/Woman-That-Never-Evolved-Bibliographical/dp/0674955390). It’s touted as a groundbreaking feminist work, and it’s been at least a decade since I read it, but I remember it as being an argument against the idea of a past era of utopian matriarchy. Basically, I remember her saying that we evolved from other primates, so if utopian matriarchy was a stage we went through, there should be some traces of it in the behavior of other primates. But instead, there’s this and this and this. So maybe we should take a hard look at why evolutionary pressure resulted in our current social systems, because if we don’t take that into consideration, we’re unlikely to come up with a successful strategy to change things. Without knowing anything about Zihlman, I’d guess . . . no, I have to look it up. Ah. Zihlman was an early espouser of feminist archeology, also arguing from an evolutionary perspective. The main thing that googles up is her proposal that woman the gatherer was as likely to develop tool use in humans as man the hunter. So not really contrasting with Hrdy fundamentally. But if you check on [Haraway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway), she’s very Women’s Studies and History of Science and Consciousness and Metaphor. My best guess is that she’s comparing the two primatologists, but projecting a lot onto both of them. She’s more likely to quote from literary and SF writers than to quote primatologists, when she’s on a roll. She says things like: > [@](#): > > Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social science. I don’t think she’s particularly interested in being easily understood. ---
**Author:** ![norvalnormal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f19dbf/32.png) [@norvalnormal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norvalnormal)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/54 "2013-09-09T22:25:17Z")
In page proofs of a novel by Omar Tyree (no idea whether this made it into the final book): “The restaurant had a window.” This, in its entirety, was the author’s description of a restaurant where two of the book’s characters were meeting … ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/55 "2013-09-09T22:46:54Z")
> [@bup](#): > > I come to defend James Fennimore Cooper. Yes, it would take him ~80 words to say “the dog died,” but he was also capable of breathtaking imagery. > > Here’s his description of a field after battle: > > Stops you cold, doesn’t it? I dunno, what stopped me cold was “their bones were already starting to bleach.” Just how long have they been fighting? ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/56 "2013-09-09T22:56:01Z")
> [@gonzoron](#): > > Ok, this one’s not a single sentence, but I thought it worthy of inclusion: > “A half-finished keep occupied the spot where the outpost once stood. The builders never competed the keep, and from the looks of things they had abandoned the place some time ago. The unfinished keep was little more than a ruin, empty of lords or knights, servants or tenants. The place felt unfinished.” > > - _The Mark of Nerath_, by Bill Slavicsek. > > Yes, I forced myself to read this whole book… long story… I’m confused. This keep. Is it unfinished or what? He really should make that clear. ---
**Author:** ![gonzoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@gonzoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzoron)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/57 "2013-09-09T23:42:45Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > Did you lose a bet? Because that’s pretty bad. Not exactly… but it felt that way. That was only one example of much terrible writing. Boring story of why I read it in the spoiler box… feel free to skip… I’m a huge fan of the Ravenloft horror setting for the Dungeons and Dragons game. (I own and have read pretty much everything ever made for the setting, for good or ill.) In 4th Edition D&D, they pretty much carved up the setting for parts and folded it into the default setting as little pocket worlds called “domains of dread.” This book takes place (partially) in one of those domains of dread, which means it was close enough to a Ravenloft book to trigger my completeness compulsion, so I had to read it. And I’ve regretted it happily ever after. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/58 "2013-09-10T00:07:36Z")
From “The School of Essential Ingredients” by Erica Bauermeister: “She hadn’t expected the wine bubbles to reach her nose the way they did, like small, giggling children” The author overuses and misuses simile all the way through the book, but that was the worst of them. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/59 "2013-09-10T00:22:45Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > From “The School of Essential Ingredients” by Erica Bauermeister: > > “She hadn’t expected the wine bubbles to reach her nose the way they did, like small, giggling children” > > The author overuses and misuses simile all the way through the book, but that was the worst of them. 😃 That’s practically a Bulwer-Lytton entry right there. ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204/60 "2013-09-10T00:27:15Z")
From _The Radio Boys Seek the Lost Atlantis_ by Gerald Breckenridge and published by the A. L. Burt Company of New York in 1923: “For instance, it is said that the civilizations of the Incas in Peru and the Mayas in Central America, like the civilization of Egypt, were derived from Atlantis through immigration; that the Atlanteans were the first manufacturers of iron, and that the implements of the “Bronze Age” in Europe were derived from them; that the Phoenician alphabet, parents of all European alphabets, was derived from Atlantis, bearing a startling resemblance to the alphabet of the vanished race of the Mayas in Central America, whose ancient cities are just this very day, as you can read in your papers, being unearthed; that the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Hindus and the Scandinavians were merely the kings and queens and heroes of Atlantis, about whose real historic actions the migrating Atlanteans remembered stories which eventually went to create the mythology of their descendants.” And this is just from the introduction. It gets even better once one of the Radio Boys is kidnapped by Athensian warriors during an ostrich hunt just outside the Oasis Aiz-Or, and taken up into the mountains to the secret city of Korakum in order that he be forced to participate in the annual fight-to-the-death sacrificial slave war games. Thank goodness he managed to smuggle in his radio… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-sentences-youve-ever-encountered-in-published-books/668204.md?page=4)