I recently read Chuck Palinhuiks Invisible Monsters after an entire thread of comments praising how insane and shocking the twist was. I kept waiting and waiting for the twist and then the book ended and it never came. Maybe what people think was the twist was just obvious to me all along. The whole book felt like it was written to be a play, the characters were flat and stilted, the plot went basically nowhere, and it was just overall intensely uninteresting.
by diceblue
22 Comments
Grabbing the r/books Hater Bingo card from off the shelf
no, but i constantly see recommendations for books i thought were pretty bad or ok at best…
FantasticLand is the worst book Ive ever read on other people’s recommendation.
A Secret History. Had such high hopes and I just threw in the towel halfway through.
Kings of the Wyld.
The fantasy subreddit hyped it up so much and I thought it was so freaking slow and not interesting at all.
Something Wicked This Way Comes. I just wanted to read a Halloween book. I didn’t want to slog through dense prose.
When I first started browsing the book subreddits I was much less judicious with recommendations and read Gone to See The River Man without checking a sample. I normally don’t finish books I hate that much but it was so quick and easy and I thought it’d make me grateful for how much better everything else I read is, and it did. The fact that people like that book seems like an elaborate Truman Show esque plot lol
I tried to read a book highly praised by my mom, boring
Dune-boring lol
I couldn’t get into *The Road*. The writing was too choppy for me. I keep meaning to give it another chance because I enjoyed the movie, but haven’t made it a priority.
I respect blood meridian for what it is. But I’ll be honest any discourse I’ve seen about it on reddit feels a bit circlejerky.
I see Malazan recommended a lot and couldn’t get past the first chapter.
The Cabin at the End of the World-Horrible writing.
Does BookTok count? I have nothing against YA (and there are plenty of YA books are in my all time favorite rankings!) but two teen YA books were so cliché and predictable that finishing them felt like a waste of time. The first is “If He Had Been With Me” and the second was “Orbiting Jupiter”.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
when people rave about a book or a movie, I can guarantee its garbage.
shades of grey, anyone! I saw Barbie and thought, really????? so glad I never paid for it!
House of Leaves may be the most boring horror movie I’ve ever read. The house gets bigger and there’s footnotes and weird syntax.
The Murderbot Diaries. No subtlety at all.
It wasn’t exactly highly recommended so much as controversial but I decided to give Manic Pixie Egirl a try because I don’t like to take what the masses say at face value. I actually didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would.
Things I liked:
*Super quick read. It took me no more then 6 hours to read this book. It read at a quick pace with short and long chapters. Some being a page long, some being closer to 5 or 7 pages.
*I liked the character growth of Anon and Aldon. I enjoyed the way their stories walked parallel to each other. They also had great growth. Aldon had the life wrecking experience to put it all into perspective.
*Being around the same age as Aldon I connected with his disillusion about the modern world.
*Abbie is a girl boss. Is she trying to Boss real close to the sun with that Chaos Sex Magic? Possibly. But I felt like I’ve met people like her, just without the motivation to start a cult.
*Journal Entry Story- I like how these gave a window into the foundations of the eGirl cult.
*eGirls- It reminds me of Suicide Girls back in the day, some of them had a cult like following so its kind of interesting to see a cult develop.
*I felt like I knew everyones motivations/purpose.
Things I did not like
– I did not like the 9/11 conspiracy theories wrap in. Nothing on the cover or descriptions lead me to think this would have that kind of content.
– I wish Lemcke would have spent more time describing the scene. I didn’t have a clear image of the places where we were in. I’m not saying that he needs to spend 6 pages talking about the grass and trees like Terry Brooks would, but the visuals didn’t come in very strong.
– Aldon’s ex girlfriend/roommate should have had more backbone about the people living in her garden and other things. There should have been more conflict.
– I felt like the resolution came too quickly. I wanted this book to have more drama and things to resolve. But It felt like things were left on the chopping block that could have been useful.
Hey this is great, I’m wearing my **”The Three Body Problem Sucks”** T-shirt today!
The Bible. 2 out of 10 I would not recommend
The book thief… the characters felt one dimensional to me.