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Bestsellers you Didn't like

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:07 pm
by Linksquest
What are some bestselling books that you ended up not liking after reading them?

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:21 pm
by Arnobius
Gaijin-- James Clavell
HP and the Order of the Pheonix
Da Vinci Code

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:33 pm
by Maledicte
The DaVinci Code. Florf.

And Forever Odd.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:58 am
by bigsleepj
"The Other Side of the Wind".

Starts out as one of the best books I've read and ends as the worst. That takes some doing. It just goes overboard and goes from nicely gothic to absurdly gothic.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:17 am
by Authority3000
The Left Behind Series - It was much to long in my opinion (12 Full-edition books), rather drawn out at some points, arguably overly detailed in its writing, and primarily focused on extremely dull events. On top of that, some beliefs, (primarily the Rapture) were forced upon you somewhat.

The DaVinci Code -
It's infamously blasphemous plot notwithstanding, the book was terribly written, it contained bountiful blatant grammatical errors that even a group of well educated high schoolers should have been easily able to detect and repair, and had several poorly structured segments and sentences as well. It's name (check the translation) is a perfect example of this.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 4:09 am
by Technomancer
Left Behind (the original book)- Why a book this atrociously written made it on the best seller list I do not know.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 7:16 am
by rocklobster
Authority3000 wrote:The Left Behind Series - It was much to long in my opinion (12 Full-edition books), rather drawn out at some points, arguably overly detailed in its writing, and primarily focused on extremely dull events. On top of that, some beliefs, (primarily the Rapture) were forced upon you somewhat.

Not to mention its anti-Catholic stance. :rant:

Authority3000 wrote:The DaVinci Code - It's infamously blasphemous plot notwithstanding, the book was terribly written, it contained bountiful blatant grammatical errors that even a group of well educated high scholars should have been easily able to detect and repair, and had several poorly structured segments and sentences as well. It's name (check the translation) is a perfect example of this.


Not to mention it even got France's geography wrong. They almost wrote up a more correct version, I hear.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:04 am
by mechana2015
The Left behind series, or what I could read of it with out attempting to throw the book out the window. It came off like an end times (overdoneus genreus) soap opera (overextendedus plotus, idioticus plotticus twisticus).

I would say da Vinci Code, but I never read it and I personally detest the author, which dosn't qualify me for the book.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:27 am
by Puritan
Hmm. To avoid belaboring earlier points, I'll mention a couple other books. I really disliked "The Purpose Driven Life" for reasons I will not discuss here, I despised the "The Night's Dawn Trilogy" by Peter Hamilton because it was lewd and strange (although, oddly, recommended by a friend), reading "Demian" by Hermann Hesse made me feel dirty, and I abhored "As I Lay Dying" by Faulkner. Please note I am including a couple books considered "classics", as their sales have almost assuredly reached the bestselling level over time (due to students having to read them)

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:35 am
by Linksquest
I really loathed The Lovely Bones and only read it because I had heard it was "such a great book!" from my friends and because it was a bestseller.

PostPosted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:19 pm
by mitsuki lover
The entire Left Behind series.The only interesting character is Carpathian and he's the villian!

PostPosted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:02 pm
by Rachel
I really, really hated The War of the Worlds. It started out great, like really great, and then at the end , I was just like "Well that was a waste of three hours." It had such promise but then it was wasted.

PostPosted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 12:41 pm
by mitsuki lover
Who'd a thunk the bacteria would save the world?

PostPosted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 12:45 pm
by Angel37
mitsuki lover wrote:The entire Left Behind series.The only interesting character is Carpathian and he's the villian!

You know I really liked the beginning of the series but the end got stupid. Carpathia rocked though...which is sad XD.

I HATED the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was so pointlessly dull!

PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:27 am
by Kokhiri Sojourn
I think I should get rid of this comment... sorry if I offended anyone. It wasn't my goal.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:35 am
by Mithrandir
Hmm... This thread is going to be watched carefully. Let's keep the bashing to a minimum and continue on the current path of not descending into bickering.

* teh management *

PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 3:44 pm
by rocklobster
Sojourn, that's three words

PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 7:19 am
by Mr. SmartyPants
Redwall. I never understood it

PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 11:38 am
by Mushishi
Mr. SmartyPants wrote:Redwall. I never understood it


*guffaws*

Was it because they were animals? I kind of grew on Jacques' books. Hehe.


Do 'classics' count? If so, Beyond Good and Evil. Bahah! But that's just because he's...well, Nietzsche. I'm not saying Friedrich wrote total crap (he did, after all, make philosophy popular). It's just hard to get around him being a blithering atheist.

I also can't stand any of Hemingway and Tolstoy. But there really isn't any reason behind that...^_^

Nowadays, The Inheritance Trilogy irritates me somewhat. I read the two books and thought it magnificent...then I sat back and thought about it for a while. Some things that got me was the blatant agnosticism rants Paolini threw in along with some unoriginality. I'm not saying you shouldn't read it! It's a good, average fantasy story. But nowhere near the caliber the critics praise it to be.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:22 pm
by Mr. SmartyPants
Angel37 wrote:I HATED the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was so pointlessly dull!

I hate it too

PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:51 pm
by Radical Dreamer
I'm not sure if Wuthering Heights was a best-seller or not (it was at least a classic), but I recently read it, and I didn't find anything appealing about it at all. XD

PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:22 pm
by shojoiscool2
LOTR- I cannot say how much I detest these books. I love the movies, but, the writing is so flowery and overly descriptive that I could not get into it. There was viturally no real interaction with the charactars, as mostly we followed them around in a sort of third person viewpoint. Far too much time was spent telling us about related but unnecessary history.

Perlandra- this is sci-fi allegory written by CS Lewis, it is wordy and hard to follow, love the Narnia books but this was painful to read

PostPosted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:40 am
by Shao Feng-Li
Hmm, just about every romance novel I've seen is a best seller and I can say that I hate those XD

PostPosted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 12:50 pm
by mitsuki lover
shojoiscool2 wrote:LOTR- I cannot say how much I detest these books. I love the movies, but, the writing is so flowery and overly descriptive that I could not get into it. There was viturally no real interaction with the charactars, as mostly we followed them around in a sort of third person viewpoint. Far too much time was spent telling us about related but unnecessary history.

Perlandra- this is sci-fi allegory written by CS Lewis, it is wordy and hard to follow, love the Narnia books but this was painful to read


Have you tried Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength as well or did you read Perelandra on it's on?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:12 pm
by HisaishiFan
DaVinci Code - due to the fact that it is just plain silly and badly written (the mystery shouldn't be that easy to figure out, and all the art and history errors were distracting)

As has been said by many others, the ENTIRE Left Behind Series - due to the badly written one-dimensional characters, anti-Catholic, horrid characterizations of women and minorities, I could go on but I won't - it is just so completely bad!

Cell - I think Stephen King may have just run out of plots

PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:13 pm
by HisaishiFan
Radical Dreamer wrote:I'm not sure if Wuthering Heights was a best-seller or not (it was at least a classic), but I recently read it, and I didn't find anything appealing about it at all. XD


I never did either.

PostPosted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:29 pm
by Animus Seed
HisaishiFan wrote:Cell - I think Stephen King may have just run out of plots


Anything with King's name on it I detest. However, with Cell, it's like he's deliberatly exaggerating his stupid best-selling ideas just to taunt me.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:31 pm
by Animus Seed
Is it just me, or is that every time I vent my detestation for King, the thread dies?

Interesting choice for a 125th post...

PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 7:02 pm
by Technomancer
Cell - I think Stephen King may have just run out of plots


This presupposes that any of said plots were actually good to begin with.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:38 am
by Myoti
Many of the 'classics' we had to read in class, such as "Of Mice and Men" (aggravated more on all the cussing and sad ending than the actual writing, though) and "The Great Gatsby" (to me, it seemed like pretty much everyone in the book were just psychopaths). Numerous others would fit in, but I can't recall them at the moment.

Redwall. I never understood it

I liked the concept of the books, but his more recent ones are starting to become a bit redundant.

Perlandra- this is sci-fi allegory written by CS Lewis, it is wordy and hard to follow, love the Narnia books but this was painful to read

I liked the Perlandra series, but yes, it was a bit difficult to get through.