Yep, that was it. Don’t worry, I’ll forget again, then a few years down the road you’ll have to tell me again.
I think I’ve actually been pretty lucky, as far as printed literature goes—even the worst stuff I’ve read at least makes me think: “man, if that can get published, I might have a chance, after all!”
That said, I could probably live without having to remember Robert Zubrin’s Mars exploration novel, First Landing. As much as I support the Mars Society, and manned space exploration in general…well, maybe the story would have been salvageable, in the right hands. And by that I mean “anyone with equal or greater skill than a 1930s pulp detective serial author.” God, that book deserved to be beaten with a tire iron. Beaten, robbed, then dumped from a moving car into a drainage culvert. Without it’s shoes.
I’ve seen some fanfic, though, that I’d sure like to get out of my head. With a sharpened icepick.
Stephen King–I’d just as soon forget I ever heard of him or his books.
Anything by Jodi Picoult.
American Psycho
Utterly revolting in some parts, and mind-numbingly boring in others. Okay, so it’s meant to be like that, but it’s unreadable rubbish nonetheless.
The Bible.
S. M. Stirling’s first book in the Nantucket series. Chock full of strawmen politicals and unappealing protagonists, I put it down after reading 2/3rds of it.
A dragonlance book called “Tas el incorregible” in spanish, thankfully it was so bad that my mind seems to have already forgotten it, no doubt in an attempt to prevent trauma.
I remember the title, and nothing else.
I know there are some, but I seemed to have already erased them without the use of a neuralizer…
The only one of the Gor books I ever read. I understand all the others are much the same. Fortunately I have forgotten the author’s name and the title.
Spoiled regarding a mystery novel by Dennis Lehane.
The Dennis Lehane book in which the dog gets poisoned. I’m not sure which one it was, I just know it was the last book of his I read, and I’m not reading any more. I finished the book to make sure the bad guy got it in the end, and he did, but didn’t get it nearly bad enough.
I don’t see any point in blanking out just plain boring regrettable reads, like DaVinci Code and Great Expectations. I guess I prefer being able to speak knowledgeably about their defects.
This thread is about books, dearest, but I’ll make an exception because (a) it’s you and (b) you’re dissing that inexplicably popular movie.
Read 'em (well, not all of Juliettes) for my undergrad senior paper.
Robert Anton Wilson wrote a buncha books (Schrodinger’s cat was one). I read one of his books in my youth. I didn’t understand. So I kept hunting down and reading book after book, thinking that eventually it would all come together and make perfect sense. That never happened. Erase away. /fnord
I’m tempted to ask to be rid of Battlefield Earth, but it did have one good effect, at least: That was the book that finally convinced me that some books really are so bad that it’s OK to not finish them (a lesson learned too late to benefit me for that book, alas). If you can edit the warning message to include that, too, it’s gone.
Quoth dangermom:
I dunno… None of his stuff is particularly good, but some of it’s at least kind of fun. I don’t regret at all reading the five Incarnations of Immortality books, and the first several Xanth books were OK. But I see no harm in erasing For Love of Evil, And Eternity, Macroscope, Mercycle, Race Against Time, or Battle Circle.
LOST SOULS by Poppy Z. Brite
Gay vampires- OK
Incestuous vampires- OK
GAY INCESTUOUS VAMPIRES- ESP. PARENT/CHILD- NOT OK!!!
I actually like the first three Apprentice Adept books, where he actually stays on topic and remembers that the story is about the protagonist and not merely a frame for puzzles.
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Unless, of course, I need to battle off a sudden bout of “not feeling nearly suicidal enough.”
I know everyone thinks it’s great, but I just hated On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I remember finishing it, and thinking what an awful, enormous waste of time it was, considering the other books I could have been reading.
This was about 15 or so years ago, so maybe I’ll give it another shot someday.
I have suppressed the name of this book and am grateful of it. I believe I read it about twenty years ago.
It was Science Fiction set in the distant future with Earth at the center of a Japanese-styled Empire. The Emperor was an evil, amoral SOB, and the author took way too much delight in describing the crap he did.
He kept naked little children in his throne room to fondle and had their forearms pierced to put a shackle through so he could chain them up. He also took his latest concubine, an improbably luscious crystal woman, and had her frozen solid so he could chisel her apart while she was conscious, starting with her breasts.
Looking back on it now, I realize that it was torture porn, and the author was probably getting off as he wrote it. Me, I was getting sick.
I think that’s the only book I’ve ever owned which I chose to destroy instead of donate or sell.