11 Likes
That is perfect.
4 Likes
OK, if Heinlein is on the table, let’s talk about The Puppet Masters. A friend of mine swore it was an unknown masterpiece of his, and even lent me his precious copy in order to make his point.
Three days later, I gave it back. Right. we’ve got these skin hugging aliens who take over peoples’ personalities (like I’ve never heard THAT before) so everyone has to walk around nearly naked except for women, who get covered in the cute places – only to have to take those clothes off later on in the book. Childish overemphasis on EVERYTHING! LIKE! THIS! , heroish heroes, loathsome villains, plot twists you can spot a mile away…
“It’s kind of…stereotypical…” I said.
“Exactly! It was he who invented them!”
Somehow I think not.
5 Likes
I’d forgotten it because I read it years ago, but that one’s definitely on my list. I remember all the woman-hating parts, but the one that got to me the most was when Mr. Magic Martian sends a bunch of people to the cornfield because he felt threatened. Apparently it’s okay not only to murder people but to make them cease to exist as long as you’re the main character. The whole book just felt creepy, gross, self-righteous and unintentionally horrifying in the worst possible way.
4 Likes
There is a point in the story when the Colonial Defense Forces get their comeuppance but it comes after the part where you stopped reading.
3 Likes
Heinlein seems to have been the first to combine “monster possesses people” with “alien invasion,” but that doesn’t make it a good book
2 Likes
I encountered that book so much in my reading about new media and interactive narratives around the turn of the century. When I finally got around to reading it, I found it thoroughly unmotivating. It’s an object lesson in the difference between ‘clever’ and ‘smart.’ There’s a clever gimmick at play, but it’s not in service of anything particularly interesting or thoughtful. It’s kind of like a Christopher Nolan film in that respect.
4 Likes
I tried just one (The Information), and my resulting hatred of both it and him became a formative experience.
I’ve always been a reading mega-slut. I really identified with the character in Illuminatus! who’s reading Atlas Shrugged on a plane and is described as uncritically accepting whatever he’s reading for as long as he’s reading it – that’s how I read Ayn Rand books, too. And I still think that’s a good plan, because when you get to the end you can ask “OK, now what do I feel about that?”, and it’s a conversation between two people, and you can be clear that your main self thinks your Ayn Rand self is a dipshit.
But after I read The Information, I felt soiled that I’d given that person so much access to my brain. There weren’t any ideas I had trouble dealing with, just the sense that I’d spent 10 hours thinking the thoughts of a slimy unpleasant person: not the protagonist, the author. In a sense I guess that counts as a positive review, because most gross writers aren’t competent enough to really take over the channel like that. So, good for him? But ultimately, yuck. It made me realise there can be a cost to choosing to read something.
I don’t hate books just for having bad takes, though. If someone has an interesting train of thought, it doesn’t matter if they follow it to some dodgy conclusion; I can still follow it wherever I want. I quite enjoy watching Neal Stephenson chase his tail as he earnestly tries to figure out how science justifies his conservative protestant fixed beliefs. Tee hee! Will he ever realise he was searching for Marxism the whole time?
7 Likes
Wait until you try Reamde As a long-time player it’s really annoying to have described in great detail how an MMORPG works, and added to that the most hateable MarySue of a main character I’ve ever come across. I usually really enjoy Stephenson’s work, but found this one a real trudge…to the point that I haven’t even tried the sequel.
1 Like
It’s true, but I cut that book some slack since it’s basically just a dad-lit thriller, more in the Lee Childs or Tom Clancy tradition.
3 Likes
Jesus Christ, there’s a sequel?! This is like finding out that there are 14 Land Before Time movies.
4 Likes
Well, I only read the synopses beyond the point where I gave up, but I did get the impression that while the CDF might get their comeuppance several books later, but only for their methods of recruiting, not for being a war-mongering menace to the galaxy.
It still seems to be a zero-sum universe that is constructed to transport the idea that war is the only option.
Am I mistaken?
We might tolerate it for Tolkien, but a modern fantasy novel should not construct a world where it is just “rational” to distrust “Swarthy Southeners and Easteners” for some “perfectly sensible and non-racist” in-universe reasons.
And likewise, constructing a universe where war is the only option and is never questioned is not something that should be done by civilized people in the 21st century.
Many of the characters from Reamde are continued in Fall; or Dodge in Hell (including the main character, named here on the cover).
Our son ended up quoting it several times in his junior year college essays, to the amusement of a few of his professors (one is a confirmed Stevenson fan). Up until a handful of years ago, I didn’t even know one could major in / earn a degree in game development.
I liked Fall and think it’s a good book if for no other reasons than the comedic content and the rather too prescient naming and characterizing of “Ameristan” (largely, “flyover country”).
Flyover country is basically the region of the U.S. that I grew up in, and it’s clear to me that the region’s trajectory really is heading in a very Ameristani direction. I hope I and Stevenson are wrong. He’s spotted an alarming number of trends, as has the amazingly-still-alive-given-recent-events science fiction author William Gibson.
ETA:
Not all of us are long-time players.
In fact, I’ve never played a video game (surely a dated, outmoded term itself) or any MMORPG in my life.
Ask me about restoration ecology or water quality science or aquifer science or growing food though. I have spent a lifetime gaining proficiency in these.
3 Likes
Great comment - thanks for distilling it down quite so well - HoL is definitely a clever book… but pretty empty when you get past the trick.
And we definitely agree about Christopher Nolan - so much hype, so much craft, so much dull pretentiousness.
I have a few categories that overlap re books that suck…
- thinly-veiled propaganda for toxic causes/agendas
- poorly-written prose that abuses the reader’s time/intelligence
- incoherent plot, or plot with massive holes
- total absence of juicy (or at least lively) plot
- total absence of comedic moments, irony, left-turns, memorable characters or lines
- ghostwritten “autobiographies”
… and when these categories overlap so much they look like like a stack of tortillas, I mentally shelve these books in the Wall of Shame bookcase in my mind.
People can quibble all day about hating an author’s style.
Same goes for hating a poorly edited book.
Writing a book is harder than it looks, and I commend giving it a go even if you think you are not a natural writer, just to get a sense of how the literary sausage gets made.
If you hate the work of Charles Dickens, please folks, don’t read him! Don’t give the guy another minute’s thought! Maybe one A Christmas Carol movie on alternating years, viewed with family, friends, booze and too much holiday food still in the kitchen? Even the one with Michael Caine and the Muppets in it? It’s perfectly fine if you don’t like Dickens. Life is too short already.
Maybe you prefer Earnest Hemingway’s books, all lean prose cutting a wide berth around social criticism and human feelings etc. /s
Exactly.
11 Likes
John Walsh: Author and Independent columnist
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
There have been many contender, but for inspiring life-long loathing and contempt, nothing beats The Lord of the Rings. The childish storytelling, the valetudinarian mythologising, Tolkien’s lack of any feel for language, description, landscape, emotion or confrontation, the desire to garotte Pippin and Merry in a dark alley how can so many readers have put up with such codswallop for so long?
I think we can safely say that John Walsh (who wrote the introduction to this article!) has a complete lack of feel for language, description, emotion or confrontation.
5 Likes
Not what I was thinking of at all, but a great find!
But I seriously challenge all HP fans to take an ordinary broomstick, lay it across two tables so it’s high enough off the ground and actually sit on it while you make your case for everything great in the magic universe. If you last ten minutes (no cheating! Full body weight on the broomstick!) you have my respect, but if they could make an ordinary broomstick fly and support the weight of a person, how about making people levitate? Huh?
1 Like
I always thought the depiction of Potter was a strength of the books. After all how many authors are offering us “hero” protagonists who are in fact completely mediocre, succeeding only because of their willingness to accept the help of their cleverer, more talented and more motivated companions.
Then I started to suspect that that was perhaps not what Rowling intended to do…
I’m still not sure.
7 Likes
Because HP got mentioned, so must we include Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey and the Hunger Games; all utterly horrible books.
9 Likes
