Question for a Friday

[telophase]

Inspired by something in a post on matociquala's journal, and also by boredom: what was the last book you threw across the room,* and why?

(I can't really recall mine, because I haven't really been able to get into a non-manga, non-audio book in ages. I'm currently reading Chain Mail: Addicted to You [English adaptation done by rachelmanija :D], and it's definitely not a throw-at-the-wall candidate.)


* Metaphorically speaking, naturally. The last book you gave up on or hated, or whatever. :D

Comments

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Gravity's Rainbow. Between the recondite language; the bizarre, almost lack of plot; and the sheer size of the book, I just couldn't get through it.

I then read "The Crying of Lot 49", and decided that my brain is just not cut out to handle Pynchon.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've never attempted Pynchon. I probably never will. :)

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

A shadow on the Glass by Ian Irvine, because every single character uses an over-abundance of exclamation marks whenever they speak (and occassionally think), whether it's appropriate or not. It makes it sound like everything constantly surprises them.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Many comic books that punctuate primarily with exclamation marks make me feel that way.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Last book I metaphorically threw was a romance novel by P.C. Cast. Yes, I read romance novels sometimes. *shame* The book was highly recommended by the Smart Bitches (http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/) so I gave it a try, but I got about 200 pages in and realized that, nope, there wasn't going to be a plot of any kind. It's sitting unfinished beside my bed and gathering dust.

Last book I physically threw across a room, though, was Pamela Dean's Tan Lin. Not because I hate it--I like it a lot, actually--but because I wanted my neighbors to turn down their music and I thought flinging a thick paperback against the wall would make a nice loud bang.

Unfortunately I'd read it once too often and the spine was very weak, so it split completely in half when it hit the wall. I am now going to hell for doing such a thing to a book.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

You... You killed a book! *Is shocked in to stunned silence*

[affreca.livejournal.com]

I occationally quit books out of boredom, but Troll Taken by Rose Estes was the last book I quit out of frustration with author stupidness. The two page passage about the Troll Highway cave system through sandstone was to much for me.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

My God, is Rose Estes still writing? The last I saw, she had been consigned to the Hell of Bad D&D Novels.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I tend to give up on books because they're boring me more than because they're awful.

It looks like Good in Bed was the last one I really hated: http://buymeaclue.livejournal.com/300930.html

In September of last year! Which is not too bad.

But I'm getting tempted to try some Lackey again, so we'll see what happens next.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I hated that too! But then I generally hate chick lit. Oddly, I do not generally hate genre romance.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

Roanoake: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony by Lee Miller. My review of this book on LibraryThing reads:

This is one of the most poorly written history books it has been my misfortune to read. I regret having paid full price for it.

I think I stopped after two chapters because I just couldn't take it anymore. Painfully bad.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I checked Librarything and I really don't give that many books low scores. However I remember absolutely hating Wicked. I got it, despite my friend telling me I wouldn't like it, because I saw some really pretty fan art for it. Unfortunately the book as a checklist of all the things I dislike in a book. Disenchanting? Check. Terrorist cells? Check. Cheesy romance and adultery? Check. Heck it has been a long time since I read the Oz books or watched the movie, and I don't think the ending stayed within either canon. When seeing what happened in the end was the only reason I finished the book.

The one book I did literally throw across the room was The Hobbit. I absolutely hated Gandalf and just wanted to punch him in the face. Also the lack of females left much to be desired for me, though I enjoyed the book more when I turned Fili and Kili (spelling on that is probably wrong) into girls. But then came the ending with the rock, and yeah... not a fan of The Hobbit.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I had to keep reading Wicked until the end to see if it got any better. I thought the beginning was a bit iffy, then I quite liked the bit when Elphaba and Glinda were at school, then it all went a bit downhill again.

I think Wicked raised some interesting thoughts/ ideas, but they aren't the kind of thoughts and ideas I like to be distracted with when reading a book for fun.

There's a sequel to Wicked now, which I look at in disgust every time I walk past it in Borders, depsite never having read it.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

The last book I threw against the wall was Stephenson's Confusion, and it wasn't because I hated it--I was finished reading it and I was too lazy to get up and put it away, so I just skimmed it along the carpet towards the bookcase.

The last book I gave up on was C.S. Friedman's The Wilding. It is godawful misogynistic crap, moreso than her previous book set in that universe, In Conquest Born, which I think had the flimsy excuse of being her debut novel. However, she wrote several really excellent novels in between In Conquest Born and The Wilding, so I don't think I can excuse her occasional tendency toward s horrific gender philosophy as resulting from inexperience.

I wanted to read her new book, Feast of Souls, hoping that an entirely new universe might mean less dire gender politics, but my alarm bells were set off when the book was dedicated to the anonymous prostitute who Friedman credits with giving her insight into the book's main character (I do not trust any author who inflicted as many romantical acts of murder and pseudo-rape at the few female characters in the Coldfire Trilogy as Friedman did to write about prostitution), and I ended up checking out a giant stack of frothy Georgette Heyer regency romances from the library so I would have an excuse to read something else. It was such a half-hearted attempt to read Feast of Souls that I'm not sure it really counts as giving up.

I also literally throw the entire Boston Globe into the air in a fit of socialist pique on average of once every three weeks.

[mothoc.livejournal.com]

"Children of God" by Mary Doria Russell. It's the sequel to "The Sparrow", and shares many of the same characters. The protagonist is the same in both novels. After the complete world of misery the protagonist went through in the first book, the second book had him in a much better, more stable situation. And then something happened to change that. I'd have literally thrown the book across the room if it had been mine. I was borrowing it from a friend, however, so I simply closed it, set it aside, and didn't pick it up again for a few months.

[literaticat.livejournal.com]

I give up on books all the time, but that's more out of lethargy or non-interest than hatred.

The last one that I literally threw across the room was LEAPING BEAUTY by Gregory Maguire, which I just absolutely loathed and was disgusted by.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I was afraid to touch anything of his after I read Wicked. I'm glad to see I didn't waste my time or money (especially since I don't remember seeing his books in paperback).

[kate_nepveu]

_Planetes_, despite the apparently overwhelming consensus otherwise:

http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2006/12/yukimura_planetes.php

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Hmms, I own all of these, but have never read past the first volume. Maybe I should just flip through them and donate them to the library.

[unrelatedwaffle.livejournal.com]

Alva and Irva. I read through to the end hoping it would pick up, but it never did. It read like it was written by a 12 year old girl. The characters were underdeveloped, the plot was wafer-thin, and the book jacket gave a deceptive interpretation of the events within. I was utterly disappointed and confused when it ended. It had NO versimilitude, and I derecommend that book to EVERYONE.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Vurt, by Jeff Noon, was so bad it was unbelieveable. And as though the terrible writing, characterizations, and world-building wasn't enough, then the author threw in some brother/sister incest sex scenes.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I take it that it was not the hot kind of incest?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett really annoyed me. It's about a bunch of people who get taken hostage at an opera recital and get Stockholm Syndrome bond across cultural and class barriers until the cold cruel world tears them apart.

It was sappy, cutesy, twee, held up opera as the perfect form of music that all people with a heart love and adore even if they've never heard it before, and glorified terrorists.

(I don't mind sympathetic terrorists. But I object to cute terrorists.)

[marith.livejournal.com]

One Hundred Years of Solitude. Brilliantly written, I'll give it that. But even now, several years after reading it, I still feel the urge to jump up and down on a copy with spiked boots.

(of course I never would. *Next* to a copy, maybe.)

[estara.livejournal.com]

Star of the Morning by Lynn Kurland. She's trying to do a Luna Books series now, and it's just not what I want from her. There was a nice set piece at the beginning with the heroine and her old mentor, but I could not handle the start with the egotistical king and his ways, who keeps on being the third wheel for all of the book in between the main protagonists. So I'm giving it away now.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

The last book I hated was Laurell K Hamilton's Micah (read two days ago), though I knew I would hate it going in, and was reading it purely for snark value. So I'm not sure it really counts.

Last book I truely hated was Mark Robson's The Trail of the Huntress. Which I feel guilty about, because I met him at WorldCon, and he seemed very nice. But man, that book managed to be both simulaneously boring and offensive (hint: If most of the book is in the POV of your female character that you keep telling me is fiesty and clever and brave, make her the protagonist. As in, actually let her solve a problem without having to get bailed out by a man. Bleugh.)

Last book I gave up on was P. D. James' Children of Men, and I gave up on it five minutes ago. Five chapter in, and I do not give a damn about any of the characters. Also, the worldbuilding seems awfully wobbly to me. Bored now.

(I may be prejudiced, because I just read The Warrior's Apprentice, and now all I really want to read is more Bujold...)

Micah

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oh, please do review it!

It's so cool that you've just discovered Bujold! I love her.

[oyceter]

The last book I metaphorically threw at a wall was Alma Alexander's The Secrets of Jin-Shei, and the only reason I didn't actually throw it was because it's large and heavy and might have dented the wall, which would be more trouble that it was worth.

The last book I physically threw against a wall was some random Mary Jo Putney, which had some horrible rape in the first few pages.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

The last book I gave up on was The Last Unicorn. The constant jumps in register made my head spin, to the point where I just couldn't care about any of the characters. I don't always mind metafictional commentary, and I like humor in my high fantasy if it feels like it belongs there, but Beagle's sudden shifts to lower or more distant registers just threw me completely out of the story-- it felt like the author was standing over my shoulder pointing and laughing every time I started to take him seriously. I just couldn't put up with it.

[ewein2412]

Sword of the Rightful King by Jane Yolen. Literally threw it.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

How come (And also, hello!) I haven't heard anything about it.

[fuchsoid.livejournal.com]

Some thing by Dan Brown, lent me by a friend. Nothing metaphorical about it; that bastard went right into the wall after about three pages.

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

I think my most recent loather was Poison Study by Maria Snyder. It was okay up until The Love Confession, which occured under colossally improbable and just-plain-stupid circumstances.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I didn't even get that far - I read a couple of chapters and the voice of the text drove me bugfuck - it was, somehow, just too modern for a pseudo mediveal/Renaissance fantasy book for me to be able to read it.

[cicer.livejournal.com]

I gave up on The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory after only a few dozen pages, and from what I've heard since, that was a wise decision. God, that book was awful. I'm still angry that I paid money for it.

I experienced some desire-to-book-hurl moments with The Birth Of Venus by Sarah Dunant, which I got for Christmas. I finished it and I didn't precisly hate it. There were some good parts, but a lot of it really pissed me off. And that made me extra-angry because it had the potential to be a really good story and it just wasn't.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The last book I gave up on was Iain Sinclair's Landor's Tower, which was Postmodern To A Fault without sufficient content to make the structural stuff worthwhile. I think I see what he was trying to do with it, but it just didn't. Which is a damn shame, as his novel Downriver is brilliant and I was hoping for something on the same level.

The last book I literally threw against a wall was a volume of the manga GTO. Don't get me wrong, I love GTO dearly, but the reading paradigm is 'go until you hit something horribly offensive, hurl book across room, wait five minutes, reluctantly go get book, get sucked in, repeat'. After a while you get used to it, and I do highly recommend the series, because the protagonist is awesome even when he is making me throw the book across the room.

[octopedingenue]

OMG fellow closet GTO fan! Come frolic with me in the crude sexist inappropriately raunchy anti-intellectual headache achingly heartfelt emotion!


(Still does not give me as much reading paradigm whiplash as Hot Gimmick, though.)

[snarp]

The last book I gave up on was Return to Labyrinth volume 1 last week. I guess not spectacularly bad, just not something that's worth any energy.

The last one I physically threw was Assassin's Quest, by Robin Hobb. I picked it up a few months ago, long after having finished the first two books in the trilogy, and had to stop after about twenty pages because I couldn't figure out how I'd stood two books full of this character. I am not very tolerant of Fitz's immense special pain.

[kate_nepveu]

It also goes very weird at the end, much different from what had come before.