Astrophysics Like Melville

[mrissa]

Quote of the evening: "And there wasn't even any nifty astrophysics like there would have been if Melville had written it." -- timprov

No, this was not a complaint at the book club discussion of Tam Lin. In the car on the way up, we were discussing the worst books we've read. So I have questions for you: what's the worst book you were ever forced to read in school? And what's the worst book you ever read on your own? (For my purposes, "on your own" includes "my best friend/grandmother/other important person wanted to discuss it.")

Comments

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

"Electric kool-aid" I do not remember the author.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Worst book in school? I assume you mean fiction, because otherwise it was Mintz's Sweetness and Power, in which it takes a book to make the points of a ten-page essay.

Worst book in school... you know, heretical as it is, I found Oliver Twist to be just awful. Everything was so contrived and sensationalized, which I realize was Dickens doing his job, but please. Stop. Making. Me. Read. It. (was all I could think). I think anything else I wouldn't have otherwise enjoyed was made up for by good teaching, like all the Faulkner. I quite liked Faulkner after Killer Miller got through explaining him. Oh, and Jude the Obscure. There was nothing in that story that mitigated the unrelenting depression of Jude's life.

Worst book on my own: The Scarlet Letter. I say that, and not any of the myriad of romance novels which have been far, far worse, because I expected more out of it. A lot more. A book devoid of any redeeming emotion, that cannot be read for pleasure on any level, in my view.

I may be answering this wrong.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ken Kesey, I believe. Was that on your own or for school?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think there's a 50 year statute of limitations on spoilers.

I also hate Tess and some Terry Hickman. And we had a hard time remembering the titles of a lot of the bad stuff, too. It was, after all, bad.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know how you could answer this wrong, Mer, although I don't mean to exclude nonfiction if it's the kind you sit down and read.

I can't stand Hardy or Dickens, and I don't find that heretical at all. Also, there is an F-word we prefer not to hear used in our house gratuitously. We prefer euphemisms like "The Sound and the Fury's author."

And I can see how high expectations play into the most memorable bad books. Makes sense to me.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Well, see, I *do* like Dickens, some... everything I hate about Oliver Twist, I like in A Tale of Two Cities. I also like Tess, or maybe I don't like it, but I respect it, because I turned critical theory on its ear when I wrote a term paper for it and impressed the hell out of my prof. So, I associate it with personal triumph.

But I suppose you're right: there's no wrong way to answer this question. I'm just over-analyzing. But it's what I do. :)

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

That's the fellow. Anyway reading someone elses acid trip was not all that fun to me. Definately a school assigned book. Some college english class but I can't remember which.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

In school -- probably The Horse's Mouth (Joyce Carey). I'm *pretty* sure that was worse than The Scarlet Letter and Johnny Tremaine. (Johnny Tremaine appears to be out of print; at least all the hits at Amazon are from references to it in other books. Hooray!)

On my own -- probably the first of Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books. Although Dhalgren (Delany) has to be in contention (that book moved Delany from one of my favorite authors to one I gave up on).

[palinade.livejournal.com]

School: Edith Hamilton's Mythology. I remember it was drydrydry and about the most uninteresting book on mythology I'd ever come across.

Own: Donna Tartt's The Secret History was awful. Robert Jordan's Eye of the World--I could never finish it, it was so bad. Most of the Dragonlance series and most of the novels based in the D&D worlds.

But the absolute worst books I've ever read, the ones that made me throw it at the wall and rant about it for hours, were the Conrad Stargard novels by Leo Frankowski. How this man ever got a contract, I'll never know. They were supposed to be humorous, possibly parodies of high fantasy/adventure sf, but they were so insulting, so badly written, so full of misogynist images (despite Leo's protestations of not being anti-women), I couldn't stand them. This was work-related, so I didn't have a choice; at least I didn't pay money for them. But wow, those are hours I'll never get back. Ugh.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Red Badge of Courage, probably, or Robinson Crusoe. I don't remember either well enough to provide specifics, but I think the former had a repetition problem and the latter struck me as flat-out dull.

I should probably give them a second chance, but there's just too much stuff out there that I _am_ excited about reading.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I quit the first Thomas Covenant book about a chapter and a half in, back when I never quit reading books. I haven't gotten to Dhalgren yet (though I do like the Delany I've read), but when I was in my mid-teens, a middle-aged geek saw me sitting on the floor looking at the Delany section in a used bookstore, walked over, and bent down to look me in the face. He said, "Three places mankind has never been: the center of the Sun, the bottom of the Marianas Trench, page 100 of Dhalgren." Straightened up and walked away, giggling hysterically.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There's just too much stuff out there that I _am_ excited about reading.

Exactly. I get book-drunk just thinking of it. I know that I could probably read Hemingway now, but I haven't found a reason to do so. I hated Hemingway so much in high school that my eyes would skip right on off the page. I had to read out loud to keep myself reading, and even then I was ignoring my own voice half the time. I doubt that they would be that much of a mismatch this time around, but...there's so much else to read.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The Covenant was the *first* free promotional copy of a book I'd ever received, or I probably would have quit. I rarely quit reading a book even today.

I probably would have quit reading Dhalgren, but I was so angry at Delany that I didn't want anybody to be able to disregard my opinions because I hadn't finished the book.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Me, I like Hardy, but admittedly more for style than plot. Plus I didn't have to read him in school.

Dickens: I had a classmate who claimed that Bleak House was the only book she'd encountered that was so unrelentingly dreary she felt compelled to resort to the Cliff Notes to cope with it. (I feel a bit that way towards Joyce, actually - not that Portrait or Ulyssess were bad, but I felt more than a little resentful at how utterly unpenetrable they were to me without The Bloomsday Book, and yes, Cliff Notes.)

Worst book in school - I'm sure my memory's lost track of the worst of the worst, but Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was a major UGH. I seem to remember calling him all sorts of names while cringing through case study after case study, of which "condescending bastard" may have been the least violent.

Worst book perused as a retail buyer - some animal psychologist gushing on and ON about pet telepathy.

Worst "book" in recent memory - a manuscript featuring a smug married sixtysomething spy with a penchant for exotic twentysomethings who invariably can't wait to hit the hay with him. Ugh, ugh, UGH.

Hm. I hadn't realized how much I detest mindreaders until just now.

[leaina.livejournal.com]

Well, I actually read and reread Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology as a kid, and quite enjoyed The Secret History. I'm trying to think of the worst book I had to read in school: probably the absolute worst in quality was The Sword of Shannara (can you believe I had to read it for school?), which even as a seventh-grader I found vastly inferior to and derivative of Tolkien. I didn't hate it with a passion, though; can't really think of any school reading I hated with a passion. Vastly underwhelmed by The Catcher in the Rye.

Worst book I read for a book group: tie between Henry James' Portrait of a Lady and Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools. Dull, dull, dull.

On my own: most books I start reading, I also finish. One of the very few I couldn't finish was Greer Gilman's Moonwise--I've seen other people rave about her writing, but I found it unreadable.

(Worst books really are hard to think of: my usual ploy of looking around at my bookshelves clearly doesn't work, and I think my usual reaction to a bad book is to forget it and move on.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I didn't want anybody to be able to disregard my opinions because I hadn't finished the book.

I do this, too, especially with things that are trendy and "hot" in my favorite fields but not at all to my taste. I get frustrated with this problem in TV shows, though: unless you watch the entirety of a series, some of its rabid fans will claim that you must have gotten the bad episodes and naturally if you would just give it a chance, you would have their opinion instead of your own. This makes me grind my teeth. I am allowed to dislike Buffy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I knew you were going to say that.

Moo

[pmh7.livejournal.com]

Redirected by a friend... (moo fellow Nebraskan)

Worst from school: Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner. I had to read this tripe in my first term of college, and I almost couldn't finish it (I know the report I had to write on it STUNK). If I never read Faulkner again, I shall be a happy cow.

Worst from outside of school: Hmmm, this is much tougher, because if a book stinks halfway through, I simply stop reading and pick up another (I have a large enough queue to do this forever, methinks). I think I'd have to say The Complete and Uncut Stand by Stephen King. His attempts at embellishment were simply sophomoric. I literally had to force myself to read the entire thing (I was a big King fan at the time, and felt a need to read everything he wrote).

Moo!
Tenchi

Re: Moo

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't generally moo to greet people, but hi anyway!

[greykev.livejournal.com]

Worst in school: The Giver by Lowry for a children's lit class--could have been so much cooler than it was, and the ending seemed totally tacked on. I keep meaning to reread it to see if it was a 'time in my life' reaction, but there're so many *good* books to read...

Worst on my own: I too stopped reading the first Thomas Covenant book, but worse than that was slogging through Longyear's Naked Came the Robot. Bleh! It was just so awful I kept reading to see where it would end up.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

But the absolute worst books I've ever read, the ones that made me throw it at the wall and rant about it for hours, were the Conrad Stargard novels by Leo Frankowski.

For an audience of 10-16 year old boys it hits it's mark very well: violence, innovation, lots o' women... ;D

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Worst book for school: Based on gut instinct, this is Natalie Babbit's Tuck Everlasting, although that may be because I had to read it four times in four different schools.

Worst book on my own: The Giver, which pissed me off something fierce when I realized that the reason my mom had suggested it to me was because it'd won an award.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

A general Thomas Covenant response... I read those. Found them too depressing to pick up again, and too sloggy (think: super-exposition-Tom Bombadil-Tolkein being willfully imitated, or, that was my perception), but I finished them. Donaldson wrote an SF series, all titles including The Gap into... in them, that I found just unreadable.

Miserably unreadable.

I take back everything I said about Oliver Twist in light of that recollection.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Did other people avoid the "it won an award" recommendations with you, so it was specially bad that way? Or did you expect better of your mom? Or what?

Four times through Tuck Everlasting is unjust. Flat-out not fair. When I had already read a book in grade school or junior high, I would argue with the teacher until she let me read something different. Sometimes this was a lengthy process, but I felt that I had the right of it, and I usually came away victorious.

[(Anonymous)]

I had forgotton the Gap books, they probably win for worst book I decided to read on my own. (And I don't even have dd_b's excuse, having bought the first two new in paperback.) I made it through the first one, despite the protagonist's continual "almost" { bursting into tears | wailing | screaming | etc. }

As Marissa already knows, the worst that was forced upon me in school was _Great Expectations_.

--Mark

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I'm thrilled to be validated, trust me. They were so bad, I sometimes think I imagined it...