Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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.

Jehova's Bible. No, I'm being serious.

I read the whole thing. I can't remember shit from it. At that time my life was more boring than reading that book, though.

Three Body Problem

Not recommended for me but I started looking at books that won the Nobel for literature. I tried reading Gunter Grass' "The Tin Drum". I'd seen a tv adaption of it previously and didn't follow what was going on. When I tried reading it the entire first chapter was about a woman with her son roasting a potato in a field. Then the 2nd chapter went on about his uncle's job. I couldn't keep going. Maybe I'll give it a 2nd chance.

I have a hard time following books that go on about huge family structures with endless aunts, uncles, siblings, etc. I feel like I need a chart next to me.

Super Sales for Super Heroes

A friend recommended it to me. A little less than half way I had to stop and remind my friend that I am very gay and this book is basically just a harem anime.

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.

The Conch Bearer. Oh dear god, what a boring attempt at young adult literature. Also, The Catcher in the Rye, but that one was required by the school curriculum for reasons beyond my comprehension.

Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

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

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.

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?