I came across this prompt via Books, Movies, Reviews! Oh My! blog. While I do give negative reviews now and then to a book that just does not hack it, books that anger me or give me the feeling I need to toss them out, burn them, etc. tend to be rare. To be honest, I had to think back a bit and look through my book lists to remind myself of some of the "worst" reading hits I've had. The original prompt asks for ten books. I probably had five I could think of right away, and the rest I had to look up and remind myself how bad they were. If I reviewed the book, I am linking to the review. I will add some comments on what I may recall about a book, etc.
- Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow. To this day, this is the top book in any list of books I think should be burned and erased from collective memory. I was forced to read this in library school for one of my reader's advisory classes; we used it for a lesson on running book clubs. I remember a good number of my classmates hated it as well. I think the teacher picked it because it was trending at the time. It takes a lot for a book to piss me off, and this one did it.
- Jose Saramago, Ensayo sobre la ceguera. English title would be On Blindness. I read this in part for a reading challenge and in part because Saramago is a Nobel Literature Prize winner. All I can say is this is another book that should not be inflicted on anyone, and it honestly makes me wonder just what the hell they were thinking. Link to my review on GoodReads.
- Michelle Garza and Melissa Larson, Mayan Blue. This was just plain bad.
- Jen Mann, People I Want to Punch in the Throat. This was bad and mediocre.
- Harry Fisch, with Karen Moline, The New Naked. A sex education book for adults you are better off skipping. There are good reputable better books out there on the topic.
- Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. I tried reading this in Spanish translation, mainly because that is the edition the library had at the time. It was awful hack writing, and I do not think reading it in English would have made a difference. However, Brown is one of those writers who knows what buttons to push to get people to read his books, in this case things like conspiracies, an evil Catholic Church, a lot of esoteric pap, and cheap thrills. Good for him on making a fortune, but I could not care less.
- Loosing my espanish. One of the first books I reviewed on a blog, and it was bad. I remember it because I got some anonymous troll leave a comment on it to whine about the bad review; probably some lackey of the author or publicist. It was bad then in 2004 when I read it, and seeing my review again it is still bad, and I see the reason I have mostly removed it from my memory.
- Timothy Gangwer, From Both Sides of the Desk. I read this back in 1995 or so when I was still a high school teacher. Link to my short review on GoodReads.
- Next two books are what I often call "franchise" books, i.e. part of some property or series. In this case, one from Warhammer 40,000 and the other from the Horus Heresy. Franchise books, such as these as well as Star Wars, Star Trek, etc., can be very much hit or miss. When you find a good one, it is a good day. When you find one that is dreck, you honestly wonder why you bother. For the most part, I enjoy Warhammer 40,000 and Horus Heresy books, but once in a while I come across a bad one. Here are two of the bad ones, but still I do not let them deter me from reading more in the series:
- The Blood Angels Omnibus. This is part of the Warhammer 40,000 series. I was a bit generous on the review of the this one, since some of the material was OK but the rest not so much. Still, not a book I kept and if it falls into the ocean I would not shed a tear.
- A Thousand Sons. This is the 12th book in the Horus Heresy series. In a series that has some very good novels, such as the first three in the series, this one was a miss. I would drop it into the ocean, but again, if it accidentally fell in, I would not dive in to get it back,
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