Yeah, that’s pretty right on, I’m afraid. And those were the highlights of the series.
I liked Flatland. And I liked The Wasp Factory, though I did find it a bit alarming that the protagonist reminded me of a former flatmate.
I did read a John Norman book once. It’s not something I’m proud of.
Fire Cops. On someone’s recommendation, I bought this, thinking it would be like Dead Men Do Tell Tales, but for arson investigation. Technically, that’s what it was about, but you could have changed the crime to shoplifting or assault and still had the same book for all the investigating that was done. What made the book vile, however, was the attitude the authors had toward anyone who wasn’t a cop. I stopped reading after their approving description of a homeless guy in a wheelchair being deliberately run over by a truck driver: “he gunned his big diesel and smashed the wheelchair and its obnoxious occupant flat.”
Oh yeah, and the fires? They’re all Clinton’s fault.
Forgot to mention the perps, err, authors: Michael Sasser and Charles W. Sasser.
And FWIW, Flatland is one of my favorite books.
Another vote for “Naked Lunch”, also its sequel “The Soft Machine”. I like Burroughs, but I appreciate you may need a strong stomach. Those with more delicate sensibilities might like to try “Junky”.
“Complicity” by Iain Banks has its moments.
Naked Lunch was the first book I thought of on seeing the OP, too. (Well, Turner Diaries was first, but I haven’t read it, so NL was the first i’d read). Read it when I was sixteen,a nd midway through a chapter consisting solely of older men raping young boys and breaking their necks as they ejaculated, I realized that I wasn’t really getting anything good from the book and put it down.
I read Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates several years ago and really liked it: it’s the creepiest, most believable depiction of a serial killer I’ve ever read. I read it around the same time that I read Exquisite Corpse, by Poppy Z. Brite; both books have similar plots, but Zombie blows Exquisite Corpse out of the literary waters.
Daniel
Well, I liked Battlefield Earth, as a book. The movie looks like one of the worst ever adaptations of a book in history. Some people really hate BE and some really like it, it seems to polarize readers. I gave up on Mission Earth because after the first book they hadn’t even left for earth yet, so I figured I’d be in for a loooooong read.
My addition to this list are the later books in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Not because they’re all that bad on their own, but because they have effectively destroyed one of the most promising series to come along in years.
Has Poppy Z. Brite gotten over her fixation on makeup-wearing bisexual boys? Just asking; I’m not likely to read any more of her books anyway.
I wasted two hours of my life reading The Bridges of Madison County because somebody told me it was moving. Normally I’d say it was lame rather than loathsome, but since it became a bestseller and brought its halfwit author so much undeserved adulation, I’ll go with loathsome. (The most annoying thing about that book: we’re told, early on and then repeatedly later, how damn brilliant and world-traveled the protagonist is supposed to be, yet must wait in vain for him to say something that doesn’t sound like a 22-year-old English major with a few beers in him.)
I LOVED Geek Love.
I HATED Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card (SPOILERS). I am a fan of the Bean stories (hence my user name), and can’t believe what Card is doing to these characters. Instead of the tough, calculating, intelligent kids of the past we now get Bean and Petra, two fools in love, and half the book is debating whether or not Bean and Petra should have kids. Puke. What happened to the kids we loved from the other books? I understand that Bean, Petra and the others are growing up, but the characters of this book seem like two different characters that are also named Bean and Petra.
Loathsome is synonymous with Shardik.
I am the Cheese is rather a good book. I just couldn’t figure out whether he dies or remains in the psych ward or escapes.
Anything by John Irving, but especially The Hotel New Hampshire. What a piece of crap!
The World According to Garp is okay if you assume that Garp is supposed to be a total schmuk and a lousy writer, but somehow I doubt that was Irving’s intention.
Amazingly, three very good books have been mentioned as “loathesome”.
“Flatland” is, quite simply, a masterpiece of early speculative fiction before it ossified into science fiction. If you can get around the coy Victorian sexism or I suppose parody of same (in this universe, status is determined by how many sides you have - women are straight lines), it is an absolute brain-teaser of a book. Still a favorite of mathematicians, I hear.
“I am the cheese” is a wonderful play on paranoia - a 1984 for adolesents. I still like it. I won’t spoil it for others, but the ending is a real shocker … I did not see it coming.
“The wasp factory” is loathesome - but great. It is supposed to be loathesome. Amusingly, Ian Banks put all of the very worst reviews on the dust jacket … such as “this book is contemptable trash”. A great read for the strong of stomach, but not really gratuitous. 
It deals with one child’s private religion and rituals, from the child’s point of view …
A little alarming?
That is very alarming!:eek:
Isle of Dogs by Patricia Cornwell.
Sorry Patty, love your stuff, but this book blew chunks. That stupid columnist was easily the worst writer I’d ever read!
Now please, get back to forensics!
LoL, The Hotel New Hampshire is my favorite book. The characters and situations were developed with incredible verve and energy as to almost be over the top but somehow resist that predicament, at least in how emotionally real it felt. Never been more absorbed by characters in a novel, though Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye comes close.
Not that anyone cares, since my OP on it got 10 views and no responses, but In the Hand of Dante, by Nick Tosches, sucks ass.
For a more well known work, I despised The Chamber, by John Grisham.
The central character was about to be executed, a richly deserved punishment given the crimes he was convicted of, and yet we were expected to feel sorry for the sub-human piece of human filth!
What amazed me even more was that somebody thought this story was good enough for a movie!!
I usually like his books, but I guess nobody bats a thousand.
I disliked The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. The man can write and is sometimes very funny, but after I finished it I realized that all the characters either annoyed me or bored me to distraction (not to mention that the only ethical character in the thing hallucinated turds).