Whats the worst book anyone has ever recommended you?

Lord of the Rings. What incredibly boring, pompous blather.

Freakonomics

The Fountainhead. Full stop. Purple prose by a Soviet hack writer with a serious r*pe kink, in praise of dog-eat-dog social Darwinism.

Ready Player One and Three Body Problem stick out to me as regularly recommended scifi slop.

Red Rising. The whole series, really. They're probably fun for a 10 year old but... I am not a kid anymore. As much as I sometimes wish I were.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like the author couldn't focus on his own story. Just "and then this happened, and then this, and then this" with no details or reasoning.

I can see why you'd say that.
Book 2 or 3 got so bogged down with MC indecision that I had to drop the series. I recently picked up the Sun Eater series on Audible for cheap and it's looking like it's going to trend the same way.
Instead of a story lead, it seems like the author wanted a story leaf that flits back and forth between overthinking this, melodrama that, and a whole slew of other plot contrivances that leave the story spinning in place for big chunks of the book.

My great great aunt made me read the Bible so I'd be a good little Christian. Read it got the privileges for it, sucked right ass. My only conclusion is that I liked Samson and that most Christians are hypocritical asshats. But what was I expecting my great great aunt thought Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia were evil because they had magic.

Also if anyone is curious how well the good Christian aspect faired now that I'm 26 and not 8. Well hark to the ancestors, the spirits, and the gods, I'll burn every last mega church to the ground and send them to their god to face a second judgement not my own.

The Bridge, by someone I don't care to remember. Recommended by a hackaday post. I can't believe I was dumb enough to get a copy based on what was essentially an advert disguised as a tech post.

Anyway, it's a rip off of Aldis' Non-Stop / Starship only written really badly and with utter nonsense plot holes. I'm saying this fully aware that Non-Stop had telepathic rats for one of its chapters.

Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems

The Sword of Truth series.

I read the first book as a teenager. I was rather skeezed out by the roughly one-third of the book that was a poorly-disguised authorial kink fantasy.

Then the second book had a lovingly detailed description of a witch gaining demonic power by getting railed by a demon.

If you had stuck around because the sex stuff didn't bug you, it devolves into capitalist propaganda. The evil bad guys follow communism, except the focus is on making sure everyone suffers similarly and talent is kept down (because everyone must be equal, thus anyone with talent are trying to be better than others). Of course Richard changes the hearts of those he comes in contact with by carving a statue so amazing it changes their worldview. Oh and he protects everyone from the evil bad guy boss dream walker by having them swear allegiance and if they truly mean it in their heart, it'll protect them.
Near the end, Richard monologues for pages and pages about the greatness of capitalism and became the second book I was reading for fun where I skipped over parts because even young me found the preaching to just be too much and his portrayal of communism so cartoonishly evil that it must be bullshit.

You guys have never experienced JOHN RINGO.

The first book opens with Osama Bin Laden and the leader of Iran hatching a plot to kidnap sexy American coeds to rape and torture.

It then switches to the POV of our hero, a former SEAL who left the army due to his arthritis and has now enrolled in college. He is stalking a female student from his class whom he is thinking about raping, he lets the readers know that he is 100% a rapist and also that all these left-wing female students secretly desire to be raped by a strong conservative man.

But unfortunately for our hero, a white van pulls up and kidnaps the girl he was stalking right in front of him. Thinking quickly he follows the van and then ends up stowing away in the wheel well on an airplane that's on it's eay to Iran.

Long story short, he single-handedly rescues dozens of sexy coeds from the combined forces of al-queda and iran - killing Osama Bin Laden himself.

In the sequels, for which there are many, he travels to Georgia (the country not the state) and finds an isolated community descended from the Varangian Guard. These people recognize him as an alpha male and make him their leader The Kildar whoms job it is to lead them into battle and impregnate their daughters, most of whom are 14-18 year olds.

"John Ringo" sounds like he writes from his home in Mom's spare room, when he's not perusing the online manosphere.
- It's a great insight into what conservative men see as an entertaining fantasy.
That sounds like it has a direct to video adaption starring Steven Seagal.
- "Fat Commando! This gut don't wobble."
For everyone else's reference, I searched this up and found that John Ringo is the author.
The specific book being talked about is named Ghost.
- Definitely a real name
Oh, John Ringo, no!

Shadow Moon, the sequel to the movie Willow, written by Chris Claremont and George Lucas was hot shit. I couldn't finish the 2nd book in the trilogy.

Wait, that Chris Claremont? The man that reshaped the X-Men series into what it is today?
- Yes. He turned Willow into steampunk non-sense and killed all the characters from movie except the princess and Willow.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

50 shades of grey. The writing was so cringe that I just couldn't get further than one chapter or so. And I've read some bad writing on AO3 before, so it's not like I'm especially sensitive.

There's also really good writing on AO3 too.
Some works have genuinely surprised me and surpassed my expectations, to the point where continuations of a series would come out and I'd be disappointed over how little development the characters actually received by contrast.
Strange how the wattpad slop is always the stuff that seems to find publishers lol
- There’s also really good writing on AO3 too.
  Oh for sure, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It just happens to be where I read through some pretty bad writing when I was invested enough in the source material, so it came to mind as an example.

I was in a horrible spot mourning for a close relative who had just hanged himself. I made the mistake of posting on Facebook and a friend from high school recommended "12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos".

I was not in a good space and didn't even look at the author before ordering it. When it arrived a few days later I only had to read the first page before realizing I'd been had. Jordan fucking Peterson. What a pile of shit that guy is.

I read "Jordan fucking Peterson" in the same voice as Crowder saying "Sam fucking Seder"
- Steven Toast saying "Ray bloody Purchase" here.

Silas Marner was so hated by my English class our teacher cried. It turns out it was what she wrote her master’s thesis on and no one agreed with her about it being good.

Ready Player One.

I laughed my ass off starting on like page five. It was such a hate read, total hail corporate nostalgia bait slop. Never took the coworker who recommended it serious again.

Having read the book, the movie is significantly better, and the movie wasn't even that good really.
- Neither were good. I'd argue the book was better for what it is, which is 80s 90s nostalgia porn for Gen X/Millennials. The book was just a string of cultural references and the movie was just bland grey action in the vein of the transformers movies.
- That makes sense. Haven't seen the movie yet but I imagine getting high and gawking at the color explosion could be a nice enough evening.
I loved it, but its not a work of art, its a tween drama book...but im obsessed with everything he wrote about in that book so it was just fun to read for me.
2nd one sucked bad. Movie wasn't great for me
When i saw how bad the movie was, i kept hearing that the book was good. I finally read it and omg i couldn't believe it. It was just like the movie, it was just a guy talking about things that the author liked.
It was the worst twenty pages of masturbatory fanfiction I've ever read.

Three Body Problem

It's like, the opposite of "fun". Especially as the series continues, it just gets more and more bleak. 2 out of 10, I'll certainly never read them again.
Really!? Curious why? I enjoyed it, but I didnt watch the TV show.
- If it had been written in the last 3 years, I'd have been utterly convinced it was written by a bad AI.
  I lost my last shred of respect for the Hugos when that won for its year. Execrable trash.

Bible.

Any self improvement or "gain x skill" book

The Bible

I skimmed it but all I ever saw was just a bunch of begat this and begat that with some quotations sprinkled in between.

And this fucking thing is partly responsible for why numerous things are going wrong with humans today and humans of history.

When I was around 20 and looking for purpose in life, I actually really tried to get into Christianity.
I mean, they seemed to have a light guiding them through life, something that takes away the feeling of senselessness and chaos in the world. I especially loved the idea that "you can never fall deeper than into god's hand".
So I prayed to god to show me the way to him, went to the local church every Sunday, and started reading the bible.
All of it. Cause I obviously wanted to know what I was supposed to believe in. And it completely killed my desire to become a Christian.
The only way to make sense of it, for me, was to interprete the old testament as a collection of the stories that goat herders told each other to make sense of world history, followed by a heavily propagandized history of the Israelite people, legitimizing their claim to Israel after displacing and genociding the people who had lived there before.
The new testament is the story of a wandering preacher who tried to establish an early version of peaceful communism.
But when that became too popular, the Roman state embraced and co-opted the message and turned it into the basis of a hierarchical state church, which later turned into Christianity as we know it today.
Since I read God's book while praying to God and that was the interpretation I was left with, I have to assume, it's the one God agrees with ;)
If you can get hold if it, look out for Thomas Jefferson's The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. It's the New Testament with all the spirituality, supernatural, etc edited out. Instead you've just got a book about morals and ethics as taught by some guy.
- I assume he also edited out the slavery bits 🙄
That's mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.
R crumb, the comics artist, has a fantastic graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate. This made genesis, the most boring and pedantic part of the Bible, more interesting.
The Bible has undoubtedly led to incalculable suffering as a cult, but just as a book, it's nowhere near the worst piece of literature I've ever read.
- It's definitely not just the first chapter of Genesis. Like the entirety of First Chronicle is genealogy.
- That's mostly the first chapter, genesis, the begat this stuff.
  But then, don't discount the chapter where the twelve Jewish tribes send their gifts to Moses (iirc), and the full account of the lavish gifts is given, per each tribe. I've read through the whole thing to confirm the madness that the list is identical for each tribe, and is repeated twelve times.
  I'd like someone in a US church choose that chapter for their Sunday reading of the Bible, and then see the faces of the congregation sitting through it.
  Whoever wrote those books, didn't have much consideration for the reader.
  graphic novel of Genesis where he communicates the emotions through his drawings of what the words are trying to communicate
  I have a long-standing dream of someone just adapting the Bible to the screen exactly as it's written — at least the first parts up to and including Moses' wanderings. I have a feeling that a direct retelling would cause more than a few butts to be hurt.
  Pasolini, an atheist and communist, came close in the approach with ‘The Gospel According to St. Matthew’, but the result is a rather romantic vision of the life of Jesus, perhaps dictated by both the chosen source material and Pasolini's ‘nostalgia for belief’.
what's wild to me is the people who swear by it as the answer to all lifes questions and yet...they've never read it.
if i thought and all knowing all powerful being put answers to all lifes questions into a book i'd be reading the shit out of it
HE LIVED FOR 942 ~~DAYS~~ YEARS AND THEN HE DIED.
Edit how incredibly stupid I am saying "days".
- Honestly it’s probably just a poor translation/carry-down from what would now be understood as “months”. That makes it 72 years which is entirely reasonable.

Any of the Reacher books. God, they're terrible. They're just about a guy who jumps to outrageous conclusions and is always right nlbecause he's just so special. He's also big and tough and the best sniper in Army history.

In the first one, a guy skips town because he's a witness, and Reacher finds him in a hotel instantly because of the following logic:

Clearly he would have changed cities every night going in clockwise order or whatever - except for the one night after the place he was in was closer to the city he was fleeing - he'd rest 2 nights in the next city because sleeping thay close was so exhausting.

Because Reacher saw a Beatles album in the guy's house, he just knew he'd be using the last names of the Beatles, but keeping his own first name (which was Paul iirc), cycling them at each hotel.

So he walks into a random hotel near a bus stop in a random city and asks for the room of Paul Lennon and finds him because Reacher is just so smart!

And in the second book, he comes upon a woman being raped, kills the rapist, and the woman has sex with Reacher instead because he's a big, tough hero. And nothing like attempted rape puts you in the mood to fuck a stranger.

Why did you read the second book lol
Sounds kinda like this great rant about the show ‘Sherlock’:
So apart from tumblr fanbase, why doesn't /tv/ like this show?
Because it has smart characters written stupidly.
Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is a smartly written smart character. When Chigurh kills a hotel room full of three people he books to room next door so he can examine it, finding which walls he can shoot through, where the light switch is, what sort of cover is there etc. This is a smart thing to do because Chigurh is a smart person who is written by another smart person who understands how smart people think.
Were Sherlock Holmes to kill a hotel room full of three people. He'd enter using a secret door in the hotel that he read about in a book ten years ago. He'd throw peanuts at one guy causing him to go into anaphylactic shock, as he had deduced from a dartboard with a picture of George Washington carver on it pinned to the wall that the man had a severe peanut allergy. The second man would then kill himself just according to plan as Sherlock had earlier deduced that him and the first man were homosexual lovers who couldn't live without eachother due to a faint scent of penis on each man's breath and a slight dilation of their pupils whenever they looked at each other. As for the third man, why Sherlock doesn't kill him at all. The third man removes his sunglasses and wig to reveal he actually WAS Sherlock the entire time. But Sherlock just entered through the Secret door and killed two people, how can there be two of him? The first Sherlock removes his mask to reveal he's actually Moriarty attempting to frame Sherlock for two murders. Sherlock however anticipated this, the two dead men stand up, they're undercover police officers, it was all a ruse. "But Sherlock!" Moriarty cries "That police officer blew his own head off, look at it, there's skull fragments on the wall, how is he fine now? How did you fake that?". Sherlock just winks at the screen, the end.
This is retarded because Sherlock is a smart person written by a stupid person to whom smart people are indistinguishable from wizards.
- And I blame shit like sherlock for making idiots online think they can deduce shit based on random shit like this. Even if Sherlock is smartly written, he's still written to be right and bases deductions on random tiny details. Not to mention, there's tropes to writing that makes outcomes more easily predictable, and someone picking up on foreshadowing might think they can do what Sherlock can do and apply it to stupid shit on the internet, like if a story is real or if someone is telling an accurate version of the story for AITA type judgements.
Here's a condensed version of all the books ...
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
- 10/10 copypasta 🤌
- Wow haven't seen that meme in so long I forgot about it, thanks!
Holy shit that just sounds like some conservative, gun-toting, military cosplaying wanna-be tough guy's wet dream in the form of a novel.
- Except Childs also doesn't know shit about guns.
  In the first book Reacher carries a Desert Eagle, and anyone who knows anything about guns knows the Desert Eagle is a range queen. They're unreliable, eject shells into your face, not terribly accurate, have a tiny ammo capacity and don't make a person any more dead than a 9mm.
  Then in the second book he shits on Glocks for being unreliable, and describes the Barrett 50 cal as a sniper's weapon of choice. The Barrett isn't a sniper rifle - it's an anri-materiel rifle made to break shit. The only reason it even exists is because the Army wanted foot soldiers to be able to use the 50 BMG round to take out enemy equipment without having to carry a 130-pound gun that had to be assembled to use.
  Basically, he gets his gun knowledge from video games.
Sounds like Republican erotica basically.
- It's definitely incel erotica. Saw a video once demonstrating that Reacher never actually needs to initiate anything with a woman, show any interest whatsoever, flirt, etc. He just sorta exists in proximity to women and they just sort of "give" him the sex that they apparently owe him for being the main character.
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=travis+mcgee
Travis McGee is what Reacher and Dirk Pitt dream of being. He lives on a houseboat he won in a poker game, and solves crimes when he finds himself low on cash.
The author died in 1986 and the books are still being published.
Haha, jeez i forgot about these.
I think I read the first three? Such a tropey train wreck i actually had fun for the first couple.
But I was well and done after two, I was like well this is just unhealthy now by the second book you can tell childs isn't paying any attention to plot or character development or anything that would make a story interesting, he was actively shutting my brain down.
it felt like that episode of The boondocks where Huey exclusively watches UPN as a social cognitive experiment.
Wait, is this real? Fuck sake that's bad.

This is probably divisive here, but I just...do not care for Brandon Sanderson. As someone who has read a lot of fantasy before getting into him, he's always praised for having a coherent magic system, but that isn't really enough to make it an enjoyable fantasy story. There's just a lack of.... something in his writing (and I've tried to read Mistborn and his shorts) that I have a hard time quantifying to others.

Also I was really surprised that I found his writing weirdly bland in the same way I found Stephanie Meyer's writing bland, considering that they write completely different genres. Then I found out they were both had Mormon upbringings, and I can kind of see why I found the blandness similar.

For the longest time, Sanderson was utterly terrible at writing romance, and it was very obvious. A lot of it was probably due to a lack of personal experience. He's gotten better, but a lot of the 'lack' you're feeling in his writing probably stems from the same place. Despite writing about dark topics - apocalyptic events, oppressed populations, the failures of heroes, etc. - he is missing the edge that you get from other authors who write similar stories. Personally I don't mind, and I really enjoy his books - but I can understand why others would find them bland.
- Despite writing about dark topics - apocalyptic events, oppressed populations, the failures of heroes, etc. - he is missing the edge that you get from other authors who write similar stories.
  You know what, I think you're onto something here. I don't need Scadrial/Cosmere to be the darkest and edgiest fantasy world ever, and a lot of fantasy readers read for escapism. But there is a certain friction you expect in the genre that just isn't there for me in the first Mistborn trilogy, or the Stormlight books I read. Again, I can't quantify it (and maybe I don't have to), but the best example of my feeling is when I recall reading The Magician's Nephew with my younger cousin around the same time that I started the Stormlight Archive, and man was I way more invested in Diggory and Polly's reactions to the dystopias they were visiting than who/whatever was screwing with Kal again (free my boy from suffering, Sanderson).
Ooooo shit I never knew they both had Mormon upbringing. That's 100% what it is.
I totally agree with Sanderson. Something was missing. Read elantris and dropped mistborn about halfway through.
To be fair this is when I picked up Malazan, and that kinda ruins most things.
yeah, can't agree with either of these opinions

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand hands down. it's like normal economics except they stripped away the mask that makes it look human.

But who is John Galt???
The main point of the book could have been summarised up in an email. I listened to it as an audio book just to know what it's about and it's just "communism bad" mixed with everything Margaret Thatcher could masturbate to.
- But isn't it better writing to summarize it in the climax radio speech that takes three hours to read aloud?
I found a use for Atlas Shrugged, to kill wasps.

Ready player one. If I wanted to read about a guy masturbating over memorizing 1980s Wikipedia I'd just go to forums.

It was the most boring Mary Sue-esque trash and I have no idea why it was so popular

Yeah, I was a third of the way through and realized it kinda sucked. I did stick it out to the end though.
One of the plot points has the main character literally act out scenes from classic movies. It's never a good idea to remind the reader that there's better entertainment that they could be enjoying right now.
- I forced myself to finish foolishly hoping the ending would blow my mind. Now people keep telling me the movie is even better but I'm like that's such a low bar I'll just go read Annihilation again or something
- This is exactly what happened to me. I was reading it for a while like okay, I guess this is kind of fun, and then a third of the way through I thought "oh wait, this is just kind of boring".
I like the part where they figured out the previously undiscovered secret in the race was to drive backwards. I tried that shit in Mario Kart when I was 8, you're telling me NOBODY had tried it in that game before?
- I still remember exactly how the announcer enunced "You're Going The Wrong Way!"
  I haven't read the book, but yeah that really broke immersion for me in the movie.
Eh, to each their own. I liked it. I also liked the different pacing than the movie. It made more sense.
Ready Player One isn't event the worst book Ernest Cline has written. lol
I enjoyed it as a fun YA adventure but Armada is so much worse.
The only Kindle book I've ever returned.
I thought the movie was kinda fun. Never read the book though.
- I liked the book a lot, but the movie looked bad. They made the MC white for some reason?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMBylNJQEbg&list=RDVMBylNJQEbg&start_radio=1
I opened the comments to mention Ready Player One, and I was delighted to see you've beat me to it 😅 What a dumb piece of trash.

Mein Kampf. Apart from being a bad person, Hitler was a terrible writer. Low quality thoughts articulated badly. I only read it so I could nail neonazis when they came at me with their stupid arguments.

Who recommended it to you?
- A friend of mine years ago. He was a history buff so he always tried to help me understand historical things better.
Adolf Hitler was a modern-day edgelord and an incel. He didn't have any original thoughts, he stole the ideas from the magazines he read while he was poor and unemployed
- It's a good thing people don't act like that any more /s
- And when he finally did get laid he got syphilis. Loser.
- Modern-day edgelords and incels are...edgelords and incels. Maybe "premodern" would be more accurate? Probably not, I'm not sure.
Was that helpful or necessary in the end? Or was is such trite that you could have done without?
- It is extremely babble-minded and not at all worth reading or deconstructing.
  I read it in the mindset of your first question.
  Turns out, any argument you can think up in 2 seconds against bigotry is going to be more insightful and well-founded than a rebuttal against nascent nazi scribblings.
- I'm guessing it's the same kinda situation as one having to actually read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to see for themselves that it's a complete turd of a book.
- If nothing else, it's worth it just to see how brain-dead nazism really is. They're not Machiavellian masterminds, they're thugs with an ideology built on brainfarts. Also quoting from the book (in the original German) is a good way to kill a conversation with one of the modern spawn.
I listened to parts of it as an audiobook. I felt like I was going insane. Helped me pass the time at work though.
- I think it's even worse in German. It comes across as a toddler trying to sound grown up.
- I'm always a little bit scared that what I'm listening to will start blasting out of my phone speaker because I forgot to turn on my headset or something.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The author is over a billion in debt. Just constantly leveraging assets in a never-ending chain of debt.

The advice in the book is outdated to be fair. He essentially says "use money to make money instead of your time" and recommends getting on the housing ladder and using the fact that upgrading houses doesn't cost capital gains.

Chicken soup for the teenage soul.

Because apparently reading about other people's problems while grounded was somehow supposed to automagically fix my behavior.

The wheel Of time series. I got through the first 2 books before realising that I disliked every character. Also every female character was written so poorly it made me want to "Tug on my braid and stamp my foot"

I loved Wheel of Time for the world building and the background mythology. I did trudge though till Jordan's last book and I have not returned to it. The only character I liked at all was Mat. It just seemed like a long D&D game that got a little out of hand.
Did you at least lament tugging your braids wistfully? :)
The first book I really enjoyed. The second was good. It started sliding downhill quickly from there... So much stuff needed to be either cut or at least re-written! His wife was his editor. She was a professional, but I feel like she didn't have the heart to be tough on him. Or possibly he felt he didn't have listen to her like he would an editor he wasnt married to... Could have been a great series with another draft or two. One of the rare instances of the movie versions being better than the books.
Don't make me box your ear!

Nearly anything thrown at me in school. If I hadn't loved books already, I would have given up on reading after the shit they forced on us.

The 3 Body Problem. It's trash and I'll die on that hill.

Haha that trilogy might be my favorite of all time but I also TOTALLY get that take. I'm just a big fucking sucker for the second and third books as they get increasingly ridiculous.
- If the author totally doubles down on ludicrous, maybe it's worth a go! I only barely got through the first book.
100% agree, just listened to it recently and wow was it boring. That and Foundation, thought since liked the show that I'd like the books, wrong. Those are the only 2 books so far that I just couldn't get into. But I suffered through to the end with both. Even started the second Foundation book and then asked myself why I was torturing myself.
- LOL! totally agree about foundation. It was like he was so busy imagining the universe that he forgot to write a story. I Have been a big fan of the show though.
You just don’t get 11 dimensional particle physics. I was actually into it up until that point. As soon as they pulled that shit, I would have quit but wanted to finish for our book club discussion.
- Coincidentally, eleven dimensions is how many there are in the M-theory, which is a unified variant of the different versions of the string theory, which in turn is a ‘theory of everything’ that marries gravity to quantum physics. Alas, to my knowledge, string theories don't make new predictions that could be tested and potentially falsified, so there's no way to know if they're actually true.
- LOL until they tried to explain to me that humanoid people just randomly rolled up like parchment and got carried around until things cooled down a bit, I was like, "OK I'll keep an open mind to this weird political story." And then when they figured out logic gates but only with 5th century hoards with flags, I just mentally noped out. I did finish the first book but I had regrets.

I worked at a book store back a while now so people would ask and recommend books

The Secret was big at the time The Secret sucks ass I disliked any customer that recommended it to me after that I wouldn't say that though, I'd thank them politely.

I usually recommended Neuromancer, but it depended on topic.

the Secret
Absolute trash
I remember it being a documentary instead of a book, but regardless, I'm embarrassed to admit that my family actually believed in it for awhile, as if a pile of money will just fall in your lap if you simply believe that it will. What a load of first world, white privilege, copium bullshit.
- That accurately describes the people recommending the book all the time, yes.
Never read it, but what I've heard it's wishful thinking combined with a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like "I manifested getting a healthy body so I started eating healthy and going to the gym so the Secret works". The manifest part in completely optional but I can see it helping some people.

The problem is I can actually name quite a few books I regret reading, but none of those were recommendations lol.

Most recommendations I've gotten are average, maybe a handful of mediocre, but nothing like "why did I waste my life on this?"

Regardless, here is a book (series) I think had to be a prank written as a joke submission that somehow got approved and somehow made enough money to make a complete series: https://www.scholastic.com/andygriffiths/chapter_butt_wars.htm

Seriously I want you to read the Scholastic excerpt and tell me with a straight face the writing wasn't a bet to see if the publisher would pass anything if you slapped a fasade of a poop joke title onto a book.

I cannot emphasize this enough. This doesn't read like a children's humor book, it's literally just a drunken action packed story that the author did a word substitute to see how far this could go lmao.

The DaVinci Code

Have you read this? https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/
- I have now!
I noped out about page 3 where the author wrote 'world famous symbologist.'
I knew there was no such word,
This is in my discarded drafts; I thought I was the only one
- It's far from the worst book I've read, but it's the worst that's been recommended to me by someone I'd listen to.
I bought the illustrated version in high school because I was taking an art history class and liked looking at the pretty paintings. The story itself did not leave any impression on me lol
I threw it across the room after 5 pages. Utter crap.
I managed one page and gave up. Dreadful stuff.
- I read it and then the other three that were out at the time (Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons I think and something else I can't remember) because I was morbidly curious. Four physical books. Apart from the general awfulness Brown tried to cover up with frenetic pacing, the biggest thing I noticed was that even though there were four books, there were effectively only two stories, just repeated with different character names.

The Art of the Deal, by some Putz. I don't know whatever happened to him.

He had a minor role in Home Alone 2, then I think he spent a bunch of time visiting some other putz's private island.
- Putzes gonna Putz.
lol your yiddish tho

Stranger in a Strange Land. I was told I'd like it because it was critical of religion, but it turns out it was only critical of organized religion. Too specific for my tastes.

The Da Vinci Code. It was laughably awful. This includes the premise as well as the writing. Dan Brown is probably sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies, though.

DON’T MAKE FUN OF RENOWNED DAN BROWN
What, exactly, do you find unbelievable about the best linguists of the last 400 years being unable to solve a 10-letter anagram? Anagrams are really hard.

Easily The Fountainhead.

There's a reason that

Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript before an editor at the Bobbs-Merrill Company risked his job to get it published.

Harry Potter back when I was a child and the first book was released. After reading a few pages I was already fed up with that horsecrap and continued reading The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

I read this when I was in my mid 20s, so I wasn't the target audience. It might have been nostalgia, but I compared it against similar things I'd read as a child and it came out poorly. Derivative and twee. I understand that as the series went on it got less twee but I didn't bother reading any more.
I will say that at the time when it got really popular I thought it was great that so many kids were getting into reading books, so for that it deserves some credit, I guess.
Honestly I read it when I was a preteen-teen so right in the intended age range and I liked it quite a bit, not my favorite by any means but it was good. Not going to reread it now for obvious reasons, at least not legally.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It was a while back, so I can't remember exactly, but I do remember my friend not doing it any favours by really praising that book. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but by contrast, I found it to be a rather naïve, consensual, and superficial self-help book trying to masquerade as something more profound with a thin veneer of new-age spirituality.

Hope I don't offend someone who loves it. I don't feel strongly about it now, it was a while back, so maybe I missed something then. If someone disagrees with me I won't die on that hill.

I canceled reading it after 50 or 60 pages. It felt dusty and predictable. I also remember the language to be kind of prophetic, like it has something important to say, while failing at doing so.
The book might have proven me wrong, if I finished it. Who knows.
- Don't think you have. If memory serves me right, it's about being mindful and focusing on what matters, but wraps it in a ridiculously artificial "spiritual" setting.
  This book is to literature what Instagram inspiration quotes are to poetry.
interesting take. I don't remember much of the detail but I do remember it helping me to take big next steps more confidently when I read it at 16.
- Totally fair.
  We all seem to agree that we kind of don't really remember it though. It's at least reassuring that that's a shared experience.
Had to read that for summer reading in high school. All I remember about it was how utterly forgettable it was.
- So many Brazilian books and you get the one I can't imagine any school in Brazil recommending.
It felt like one of those sappy motivational posters, but dragged out over 200 pages.
Is that the one where the boy has a bag of pebbles?
Paper factory or something?
- I honestly couldn't remember any specifics beyond the fact I eyerolled many more times than one should when reading a book.
  Something about a boy in a desert, meeting a wise old man who helps him find himself by telling him a few mystical stories...
I literally have that book at home because of how much I agree with this. A friend highly recommended it and borrowed it to me when I was ~15. I never gave it back purely to avoid having to tell them how eye roll inducingly fake deep I found it. To be fair though, I don't remember much of it either.

I'm going to say "The prince" by Machiavelli. The modern title would be "How to play power games and hold onto power" or something. The content is nice and solid but it's clear he should have hired an editor. His sentences are longer than most paragraphs.

I had an English teacher that had us read The Prince along with the Life of Castruccio as a parody of the Medici/Italian ruling class, and how it made Italy worse as a kingdom. Much more enjoyable that way tbh. Fantastic teacher, I hope she's living the life in retirement.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Unrelenting mawkish sentimental slop with a big old dollop of new-age spirituality. Repulsive.

Revolting.

My father recommended The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson and I fucking hated it. The main character is an awful person. I was waiting for someone to kill him the whole book

I didn't finish it either, but to be fair him being an awful person is kind of the point.
He was truly a terrible character. I got fed up with the asshat and never finished it.
That is actually one of my favorite books of all time. Well, at least the first two trilogies. After that, I don't think he really had much to say.
What worked for me was a protagonist who was in many ways a terrible human being, but actually thought about the morality of his actions, and respected the values of the secondary characters.
It was also the first book I ever read that required me to keep a dictionary nearby. I was only about 16 when I read the first book, but I enjoyed having my vocabulary expanded.
Some people probably dislike the overwhelming amount of similes and heavy use of metaphor, but it made me sit back and think about what I was reading, rather than just burning through it.
I can sympathise, but it's interesting as one of the only books to depict a truly terrible person being summoned to a fantasy world. IMO it has quite the slow burn character arc over the series.

i don't really know if it counts as a "book" but harry potter and the methods of rationality.

the premise is interesting, but the writing is ass. the politics more so.

(Hagrid voice) “You’re irrational, Harry!”
but the writing is ass. the politics more so
You will not be surprised to learn that the author, Eliezer Yudkowsky, started a cult called LessWrong, which had members that would spin off into ANOTHER (more murder-y) cult, the Zizians.
- oh i'm all too well aware of roko's basilisk and its knock-on effects on the current ai bubble, thank you x_x
On the flipside, I went through an internet novel phase and Worm by Wildbow and that was so good.
- I've gotten sucked into just about everything Wildbow. Currently working on Pale, but taking a break

Starship Troopers. Military wankfest

Oh my god I just finished that. I'm not a big reader and it was such a fucking drag from the second half of the book. Good action in the fist few chapters and I liked the old timey sci fi lingo but a total wankfest as you say.
- I read it after seeing the movie. I didn't think it was serious at first because the movie was obviously a military industrial complex/fascism parody, but the book plays it straight, in a bad way.
- Sounds like something a couple of skinnys would say.

The Turner Diaries

It depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and, ultimately, a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites.

This book was recomeded to me by a fellow activist. It's a disgusting and baddly written book, however it does give one insight into the mind of far right militants/terrorists. It also outlines the playbook that neo-nazis and various other bigoted assholes use to gain power while distancing themselfs from direct action and blaming minorities.

It holds up as something a leftist should read to know your enemy.

To that end, I also recomend every American read project 2025.

The Bible. Never read it.

Used to be a Catholic, have to say this one as well. Used to get in trouble for asking too many questions.
- Ey same my way! Haha Asked too many questions, critiqued the church too much on the base of the bibels writing, and my relatives got mad. Even thought if i should debate the local priest because he invited me to a "discussion about church god and life" in a letter after leaving the church.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but several people heavily and repeatedly recommended me the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

\ I had read a few books by King before and really enjoyed some of them. Even the first book in the series (written well before the others) was interesting but the whole series is just unbearable. It's long and disjointed and while there are some interesting moments, there are three times the amount of adding grotesquerie for no narrative reason, literal self-inserts, or worse, grabbing references to other IPs that get shoehorned into the story.

\ I know there are a lot of people that liked the series and I am happy it exists for those people, and I realize not everything is made for my tastes, but the ending was just so irredeemably bad. It makes the ending of GoT look like Breaking Bad.

The worst part was that there were references to cool things that he'd find in the tower once he got there, such as music that was enjoyed by people on a particular floor, and then

I dragged myself through the last couple of books to find out what was in that stupid tower and was so incredibly disappointed...
(I will say, though, that, the city of people who used their psychic powers to destroy the Universe because someone was going to destroy it anyway so it might as well be them because the job paid really well was pretty apt, though!)
Yeah, the Dark Tower series was a big ol' DNF for me. I just wasn't really able to get invested in anything. I stopped at the part with the train.
- dnf?
  also the next one "Wizard and Glass" is just a big retrospection and might be one of his best books imk
I couldn't make it past the endless beach with the lobstrocities
The first three were good. When I got to the fourth, where it explains how he became the most feared man on the planet I noped out.
- you disliked Wizard amd Glass?

I mean I enjoyed them at the time, but looking back, the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind had some questionable stuff in it. Pro death penalty, heavy objectivisation of women...

I had a friend recommend me Sword of Truth, which was, and is still, his second favorite book.
\
\ He just had a kid and named it Atlas after the Ayn Rand novel which is his first. I almost spit out my coffee when he told me that.
- I think your friend might suck
God I tried SO HARD to like that book. Liked the show growing up because Legend of The Seeker is campy and weirdly ABC channel sexy (blond leather ladies touching you with Pain Dildos, essentially) but it was just trash.
The main character, by all means, should be the least knowledgeable and probably the least 'wise' character, but in comes Richard educating the Men of Mud on proper government structures and how their primitive tribal society was stupid and the way they made decisions was dumb.
And you're right, don't get me started on the confessors and how anyone with eyes wants to get bent over the table by the protagonist within minutes of meeting him.
...still like the shitty CW show though.
- I didn't even know there was a show! I'll look up the trailer.. But that's as far as I'm willing to go, really 😅

Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land

tbh a bunch of Heinlein is like this. Number of the Beast is ok in parts, but mostly awful. Glory Road is terrible, too. He did write some good things, mostly the YA stuff, but even that had a lot of problems with the author lecturing about irrelevant stuff.
Yeah starts cool but then wtf
Yeah, I came for the sci fi, got bored because of the cult/religion derailment.
- That's not a derailment, that's the point of the book!

Probably some lightnovel

Sword of Truth, not sure how terry goodkind got 11 something books published

The Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb. It was my first experience with what could be considered a "grimdark" or where things consistently go wrong no matter how well the protagonists achieve their goals.

It was just a constant stream of the main character getting shit on and failing the people around him (despite doing his very best not to) without any successes. I think I got through two books before I finally had enough.

I'm sure people enjoy it, and it's well written... it just did not fit me at all.

The Farseer trilogy is one of my favorite book series but that's a fair assessment.
I hated this, too for...tangential reasons. Bad things don't just happen, see, they happen because the protagonist, the antagonists, and basically everyone in the entire book the author bother to give a name takes every available opportunity to fumble around and fuck things up.
If you've ever heard of "competence porn", just imagine the exact opposite and you pretty much get the gist.

Gone Girl. I didn't get very far because right off the hop I didn't like her, so I certainly didn't care why or how she went missing.

The Three Body Problem. I hated it, but I think I'm in the minority. I found the Cultural Revolution parts interesting, and the tech /cultural infiltration neat, but most of the book I hated. Could not care less about these beef jerky bastards.

I will say the second book, The Dark Forest, is much better, but I'd read it several years ago and I haven't come back to it recently.
Whenever I recommend it to people, I just give them a quick synopsis of the first book and that's seemed to be sufficient for them.
Watching the series on netflix I had the same reaction.

Anything by Dostoevsky, that shit is just too dense, stop describing every god damned item, piece of furniture, wallpaper, and hair follicle and get on with the fucking story already. The Idiot had three full pages of tiny text describing a train cabin and the one guy in it, absolutely not for me.

I forgot the name of the book, but it starts out with some alien overlord dying, and a whole bunch of people commit ritualistic sewer slide over the death of the alien, and i just couldn't force myself to care.

I even started writing down names and details on the characters, just to try and make it stick. But I don't remember anything happening, to the point I just forgot to finish it.

Edit: Recommended by my brother, but I just didn't get what he got out of it.

Edit 2: The Praxis

You can say "suicide", it's fucking fine to use dirty words on the internet.
I hope you just coined "ritualistic sewer slide," because that's great.
- Alas, I can't take credit, heard it in a Red Letter Media review of The Home.
Could it be The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams? If so, I didn't enjoy it either.
- Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
  The Praxis: Don't bother remembering the title, you won't remember the story.
I tried listening to this one on an audiobook. 2 hours into it and I never detected a plot.

The Martian

Now I'm curious why
- Not him, but I found it quite repetitive.
  Man has problem >> Man solves problem, Man has problem >> Man solves problem, Man has problem >> Man solves problem
  Got bored of it pretty quickly so I skipped to the end to see that they were in the middle of solving a problem...

The Case for Christ.

The Silo series. First one was okay though the protagonist could be a bit of an idiot at times (I'm freezing, I should light these small tires on fire. That'll keep me warm for 2 minutes while I choke on the smoke), but as a hard scifi, the series never answered enough critical questions (how do they get clean air?, is there really an oil deposit under Atlanta?). Also, the entire premise of how "wool" enters the story is so contrived, I failed to catch why it was necessary both in-universe and from a storytelling standpoint.

The second book was a prequel and the back stories of one of the characters was so fucking boring and predictable I just started skipping his chapters.

I read Wikipedia for the third book.

I never read the books, but I liked the series 'Silo' on Apple TV. Tim Robbins as the Mayor and Common as the Sheriff.
Interesting. I haven’t read Dust yet, but I thought the first two were fantastic reads. I also really like the TV adaptation so far. I agree it doesn’t fit well into the hard science fiction subgenre. I would categorize the books as soft sci-fi— focusing more on the social aspects of an isolated society with limited resources where technological advancement is restricted. I’m more of a soft-sciences nerd though, so I get it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
I’m not sure what you mean about the premise of “wool” in the story though? Are you wondering why it is important enough to be the book title? To my knowledge, the name of the first book is not solely derived from the wool pads used by the cleaners… this first book is actually a compilation of shorter novellas “woven” together (haha)(the author’s titles allude to this: Proper Gauge, Casting Off, etc). I particularly like the author’s juxtaposition between these textile-related terms/concepts and the alternate definitions that lend themselves to the dystopian setting of Mechanical and the Silo in general.
- I’m not sure what you mean about the premise of “wool” in the story though?
  <SPOILERS>
  I just didn't buy the impact of the cleaners. Like it's supposed to be a mystery why they choose to go through with it, but we find out they go through with it because a VR helmet convinces them that what they saw through the cameras was a lie when really the VR helmet is a lie. So like...what's the point? If you can make VR helmets, why not build a robot to clean the cameras? If you still need a scary death sentence, just kick people out of the silo and watch them die due to exposure as they clamor to get back inside. The result is the same: outside scary, don't do anything that gets you forced to go outside.
  Making a lie to cover up another lie seems like a very roundabout way to solve a lens cleaning issue.
  As for the rest of the wool references, puns do not metaphors make.

Liar Liar by Stephen Fry

This is How You Lose the Time War. It is my friend's favourite book and it didn't feel great to have to tell them I pretty much hated it. I think it's the lowest rating I've given a book so far.

Our library did a "big book club" thing where they made infinite e-reader copies available, and I thought hmm, I'll give it a try and wow I did like it. Later my penultimate kid read it, not knowing I had, and recommended it as one of the best books she'd ever read.
It was fantastical and strange, I can imagine not liking it but wow I sure did, and so did my kid.
Life of Pi is the one people seem to like that I hate. I want my 2 hours back, feel it was wasted.
I loved it. It was short, brisk, and gay.

I can't remember the name of the book nor do I care to. Some knob slobberer wrote a biography about Elon Musk before most people figured out he fucking sucks. I picked it up and was so disgusted by the half way mark that I became an early hater.

One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I hated every minute, and hated all of my classmates for kissing the teacher’s ass about how great it was when I know all they read were the Cliff Notes

I'm sorry, but you're wrong, that's a truly amazing novel.
- I agree that it's amazing, but it's fine for them not to like it IMO. I loved it but it's quite challenging and the style wouldn't be to everyone's taste :-)
- I don’t bring this opinion up in polite company for this reason.
  But I hate that book.
I mean, I liked it, but it is a weird book, I don't think everyone will like it, but part of it's appeal is how nonchalant it is about its weirdness. Not sure if the translations capture it, for example I don't think the beginning of the book has the same impact in English: "Many years later, in front of the firing squad", in Spanish that phrase is very weird, it's the continuation of another phrase, it's similar to opening a book and the first page starting with something like "of those, the one of his father taking him to see ice was the most cherished", it makes you pause and look at the previous empty page thinking you've missed the actual first page.
But if anyone is thinking on reading it, do so with a pencil and start a family tree, the book covers 100 years of a family where everyone has the same names over and over.

Worst book....

Bartleby, the Scrivener.

Written by Herman Melville, famously known as the author of "Moby Dick".

Which is of course second worst book.

Every book used in education book studies

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I'm not talking about the story, I'm talking about the writing style. I could not tolerate it.

Who else's Frankenstein could it have been?
Well, what do you expect from a compilation of letters from a half frozen scientific explorer telling the tale of how he found an almost dead guy who tells him the story of when a monster told him how a family taught a foreigner to speak and read. Of course the writing would suffer, at one point you're so many layers deep that you have to wonder if Inception took inspiration from it.
- I don't have to justify it, I didn't like it 🤷

I recommended The Painted Man, which I had just read and thought was pretty good. A friend of mine read it (and liked it) and, contrary to my fate, proceeded to continue the series. Next time I saw him he was fairly mad at me, stating the the series took a sharp downturn in quality after the first one. After this I haven't been able to get him to read any other books, despite the one I actually recommended being fairly good. So in a way, this was me recommending a really bad book. Which just happened to be good.

People raved about A Heartbreakimg Work of Staggering Genius for a while. 100% boring meh. Some guy has normal feelings and I have to pay like $17 to find out?

Macos

Gormenghast. I got about 100 pages in, bored off my ass, saw that I still had like 1000 more pages to go, and was just like "...nah, I'm good."

Beast by Benchley. I'm still mad at the time I wasted.

My MIL raved about Lessons in Chemistry and was excited to share it with me. I was shocked by how poorly written it was— perhaps it’s a decent story (enough people were enamored with it that it made it onto several best seller lists), but the execution was so bad I couldn’t even finish the first chapter. When asked, I ended up just telling my MIL it wasn’t my cup of tea and crossed my fingers she didn’t want to discuss plot points or anything that would make it obvious I hardly cracked the spine.

We read The Room by Jonas Karlsson for my works book club. I'm so glad it was only a 3-hour audiobook. I was done after the first hour. It was labeled as "magical realism" and a " dark comedy" but it was just some guy with mental issues trying to adjust and fail in an office setting. The main character is just an asshole so it makes it hard to relate to them, because of that you can't take their side when people start to question his Room. It just ends with a whole lot of nothing and I thought it was a total waste of time.