this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
109 points (94.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43656 readers
1479 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Catcher in the Rye. I try it again every couple of years just to see if I can relate to it, and nope - it's still just as stupid as the first time I read it.

load more comments (3 replies)
[โ€“] Waldowal@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago (4 children)

The first 5 or so of Trump's books. No meaningful lessons in business to be had. Just him bragging about people he knew, people he'd screwed over, how good he thought he was at pretty much everything. How he got back at anyone who crossed him. Insufferable. I knew he was one of the worst people ever before he even mentioned getting into politics.

And in those 5 books, he probably name-dropped every New York socialite he ever met. It's consistent with his whole image of self-worth and needing to look and feel important. You know who he didn't mention? Someone we've seen him with in several photos? Who he definitely would have mentioned if there wasn't a reason not to? Jeffrey Epstein.

load more comments (4 replies)
[โ€“] Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

the Piers Anthony novelization of the movie Total Recall. it's very bad!

[โ€“] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I haven't read that, but his original novel Firefly is the only book I ever threw away instead of adding it to my collection shelves or trading it back to the used book store. It's horrifically gross. One of the main characters is shown in a flashback enthusiastically participating in her rape as a five year old. Anthony is a problematic writer already, but this was way worse than I could have guessed.

load more comments (4 replies)
[โ€“] lloydxmas@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Anything by David Foster Wallace. Smug, preachy stream of consciousness garbage that is then annotated to oblivion by more stream of consciousness smug preachiness.

[โ€“] jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 12 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The Alchemist and Song of Achilles are some popular books that I thought were mediocre. Probably not the worst book I've ever read though.

That probably goes to Sean Hannity's Conservative Victory that my grandma gave me when I was 12.

True slop. Fuck Sean Hannity.

load more comments (2 replies)
[โ€“] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (8 children)

Stephen King's It

Great story, but the writing was exceedingly dull, apart from the first chapter. I even tried getting through it via audiobook and still only made it halfway through. It's just a chore.

load more comments (8 replies)
[โ€“] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Moby Dick is the book I hated the most. Just the worst slog that i remember making it through.

[โ€“] JackbyDev@programming.dev 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh fucking hell, yes! How could I forget!? It's so loooonnnngg. There's a whole chapter that's an encyclopedia of whales.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[โ€“] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 10 points 6 days ago (3 children)

bit of a cheat but 120 Days of Sodom

The one redeeming part is the guy who fucks a horse and it gives birth to a half man half horse and then the fucks that

the rest is descriptions of pedophilia, coprophagy and torturing children to death.

load more comments (3 replies)

The Alchemist, I had to read it for a community college class. It's probably the most predictable book I've ever read, but not in an entertaining way. Just painfully boring.

I read Siddhartha for highschool a couple years before, I would say that the books are almost identical, except I liked Siddhartha more.

You want a book with similar themes but actually amazing? The wizard of Earthsea.

I know the books aren't literally the same. But the vibes feel very similar. I want to say they have very similar structure, but my memory doesn't work that great.

[โ€“] ThatsMrCharlieToYou@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The worst book I've ever read has to be 1984. The book is excellent, but did not do good things for me so it goes down as the worst

load more comments (2 replies)
[โ€“] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Mine is "the catcher in the rye".

The main character is insufferable and not enough bad things happened to him to make it worth reading the book.

I gave up on Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close after one chapter. No wonder neurotypicals think autistics are just insufferable nobs.

[โ€“] Dumbkid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago

Alone with you in the ether. Both characters just bothered me with their weird ways of thinking. Could not relate to either of them

[โ€“] anarchyrabbit@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Z for Zachariah. I read it when I was like 15 for school. Man I remeber feeling the book is like a farming manual when they tried to survive after the nuclear war. The older man trying to rape the other 16 year old girl survivor also made me super uncomfortable. Maybe it would be better if I read it now. I just remeber it being a drag.

[โ€“] jadedwench@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

The Casual Vacancy

I forced myself to finish it at the time, but I hated every single moment. They were all bad people and I had zero sympathy for any of the kids or adults, except for the one girl who died at the end. Obligatory Rowling can jump off a cliff too.

[โ€“] Hegar@fedia.io 9 points 6 days ago

The sookie stackhouse books that got turned into true blood have such a fun premise but are appallingly written. A friend and I used to play the audiobooks at parties for laughs.

[โ€“] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I finished Battlefield Earth.

The thing is, I remember enjoying it. I mean, it wasn't literature, but it was a lot of dumb fun.

[โ€“] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

The author - whose searchable name will not appear here - was once good at writing absolute trash. And fiction too.

Irony: when we lost everything in house fire, I'd borrowed a hard-cover copy of that famous nonfiction work, and then couldn't return it. I paid SO much to have it replaced with a good hard-cover copy that I must be on some watchlist now.

[โ€“] Vanth@reddthat.com 7 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I was assigned Ethan Frome in a high school lit class and to this day I think it is one of the worst books to assign to emotional, angsty, experience-limited teens.

I also don't understand why Romeo and Juliet is the go-to Shakespeare work that we default to.

How do we handle complex romantic relationships? Suicide / attempted suicide, of course! Just what every teen needs to hear /s

Possibly because Romeo and Juliet were stupid teenagers and and part of the tragedy is about the impulsiveness of youth. A good teacher can sometimes get that across, but I suspect it doesn't really sink in. And if they didn't teach it with A Midsummer Night's Dream it's also a missed opportunity - Romeo and Juliet is satirized during the Pyramus and Thisby play-in-a-play.

load more comments (2 replies)

I couldn't get through the DaVinci code, it had such a weird writing style and format if I remember right

load more comments
view more: โ€น prev next โ€บ