As you may have guessed, I am not what you would call a voracious reader. Don’t get me wrong. I like reading the labels on whisky bottles. But books? Whoa, slow down there, mister. That’s a lot of words, many of them big and fancy.
Books are very thick, and therefore intimidating. I like lots of books I’ve read, but I’ve also been so traumatized by the books that I was forced to read in school that I approach them now with a good deal of trepidation. Will this book transport me to a whole new, enrapturing world that holds me in its thrall? Or will it be “Great Expectations”?
/shudder
We had a book draft earlier in the year, in which we all pretended to be crazy literate, and Ufford referred to his writing as “his prose”, which is rather high-minded nomenclature for dead stripper jokes. One reader, PBNW11, who might be some sort of robot beta model, even compiled our choices (and many commenter choices) into this Amazon list, which was damn near the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for us.
But now it’s time to explore the other side of the coin. Oh, I like me some books. But I also hate a great deal of them of them as well. Now, I don’t normally admire Nazis or crazy Midwestern preachers, but I do like me the occasional book burning. Books are plentiful, and highly flammable. I see no reason no to use the shittier ones as an alternative fuel source. The time to switch from oil to Coulter is upon us. These are books you’d pick to throw into a bigass A&M-style bonfire.
THE RULES: Pick one book at a time. All editions of the book you pick will be incinerated, and can never be republished. Once a book is selected, wait 10 choices before selecting another. Once an author is selected, all their books are off the board. Sorry, Otto Man. Only one Bill O’Reilly book for you. I get first dibs, so I’m picking the single worst piece of shit foisted upon me by the English staff at Exeter.
“Herland,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I’ll let Wikipedia describe “Herland” for you:
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of Aryan women who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination.
Racist? Yep. Reverse sexist? Yep. Demonstrative of pushy, annoying, extreme liberal ideals? Oh, yes. Worst of all, there were no Cliffs Notes for it. Guhhhhhhhh.
Your turn. Will Leitch, Bill Simmons, and Buzz Bissinger await your picks with horror.
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Hello there, just doing some browsing for my BC Rich Guitars website. Amazing the amount of information on the web. Wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but cool site. Have a nice day.
Hello, wow, this is top notch stuff, i enjoy it allot.Cheers
Howdy, excelent, this is hot stuff, i enjoy it allot.Greetings
I’m a huge fan of Ayn Rand’s work, and the objectivist philosophy. Free markets, and free will lead to growth and prosperity. More government and regulation leads to less growth and prosperity.
Life is too short for bad beer. :-)
sarcastic-an adjective, describing a type of humor. People who are sarcastic usually annoy the hell out of everyone who cant get their jokes.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sarcastic
Very late answer to dork matter – part of why I hated Number of the Beast was because I actually enjoyed Starship Troopers quite a bit, so NOB was a huge disappointment. And for my last pick, I’m happy to burn the comment written by ChunkyDark. People have different tastes, asshole. Some of the other drafters on this board have taken books I thought were terrific (well, not so many. I liked Infinite Jest; I don’t give two shits that CRP drafted it, if I cared so much about David Foster Wallace I would have drafted something else of his and gotten him off the board). There’s a reason why this draft got more comments than anything else I’ve seen, because it was fucking fun.
I just read went through 300-some comments to see if any of you smart fucks would skewer this dude for me, but you didn’t, so thanks a lot.
“Everything Will be Illuminated” by Jonathan Safron Foer.
I would like to meet the author just once so I could punch him in his smug goddamn face.
Darwin’s Black Box and all of its ilk
Fuck you assholes.
Between your literature hating, emotional repressed, homo-erotic, unimaginative, cheap liquor guzzling, narrow-minded, sexist, bandwagon sports following, short limped dick, spineless, 2-bit tranny whore fucking, syphilic riddled, Camero driving, mullet wearing, racist, fecal freak loving, tobacco chewing, pot bellied, basement dwelling, jerk-offs have deprived the world of some of the best books ever written.
At least future generations will be able to gather around my Kindle and enjoy them.
Infinite Jest. The most pretentious thing ever written in any language. And almost 1100 pages of it. I hope David Foster Wallace falls in the fire, too.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I had to read this over Christmas break for a high school English class and needless to say my break was ruined – the only thing that kept me from killing myself was one cuba libre after another, followed by the occasional mojito. “Oh Mr. Darcy, you are so annoying but I am attracted to you” “Oh Elizabeth Bennet I dont like you but now I have a hard on for you but you are of lower stature than I am” “Oh I am so progressive for breaking class boundaries-” “Oh I have to get married bla bla bla-” GET A REAL FUCKING PROBLEM YOU STUPID CUNTS. Fuck Jane Austen for subjecting the world to this crap, she can shove this book right up her dead asshole. Had I known this book would have been so bad I would have gladly eaten a steaming plate of my own shit to get out of reading it.
I give Oscar Wilde infinite credit for making The Importance of Being Earnest (the other book we had to read) a million times more readable…
“The Education of Little Tree”
Freshman year of High School they give us this crap. And this is just before either apathy set in or we learn how wonderful Sparksnotes really is, so you can bet your ass we read every horrible word. God dammit I hated this pile.
Honorable Mention: Undaunted Courage
A few years back, my wife joined this book club with a friend. So what do they pick for their first selection? Why, the story of Lewis & Clark and their quest to the Pacific of course – Undaunted Courage. Apparently nobody could bear to read it, as everybody kept coming up with excuses to delay the meeting. It got to be a running joke. I told my wife, how bad can it be and started reading it. I still don’t know what was worse – how slow or how boring it was, and I usually eat up history stuff.
How about ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ by some jackass. I hated English class for 2.5 years only because of that pile of shit that some call a book.
Amen, Hochuli. Amen.
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig.
My therapist told me to read this, so I did. Then I found a new therapist.
THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood
How was this even still around? Probably the worst piece of garbage I have ever read.
How about “The Godfather Returns”. Talk about dogshit. And anything new by WEB Griffin, c’mon, I know that’s your son writing now (chuckles with his virgin bride while drinking Famous Grouse). Wait, is that two? Awww Fuckit.
Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Poisonwood Bible” – Oprah’s endorsement should have been enough to make me know better
the awakening, worstr book ever
Zack,
Larry Niven is a lousy writer and a miserable old crank. Thought Destiny’s Road was bad? Stay away from Footfall; Earth gets invaded by little elephants, and not in a good, delerium tremems kind of way. Heinlein’s young adult books are great, Starship Troopers and Stranger rock, but Farnham’s Freehold was so paranoid-racist I felt unclean for days after reading it.
My pick: the unabridged Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. 900 goddamn pages long. I got halfway through, but after slogging through a 100-page non sequitur on the Battle of Waterloo I hurled the thing against the wall. Unreadable.
The Elements of Style by William Stunk and E.B. White
I’m graduating college in 9 days. I hope to prevent future undergrads from my experience, which is my professors telling me, “Well, if you read this book five times a day, then your paper wouldn’t have sucked so bad. Get out of my office.”
Dammit, I came to this late! And I was all set to select “The Old Curiosity Shop” because those of you who hate “Great Expectations,” “Oliver Twist,” and/or “David Copperfield” have no. Freaking. Idea. I mean, the man got paid by the word – what do you expect?! [sputter]
/gets ahold of self
Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler.
Utterly boring.
Grendel by John Gardner. I had to read this fucking piece of shit in high school and still haven’t forgiven my English teacher for it. It’s the worst book that I’ve ever read. Which means it’s worse than a few coloring books. Synopsis: it takes the monster from the Beowulf story, Grendel, and you get to listen to his whiny ass throughout the entire book. He complains that nobody likes him and society is to blame for that or something. I see red when I think about it and it may or may not have caused me to kill a few homeless people. He had plenty of mother issues as well. Apparently Grendel was Jewish.
SILAS GODDAMN MARNER!
How it fell 330 something picks is beyond me. A lady used the pen name of George Eliot since literate women were so frowned upon at the time. Now I see why.
@tech n9ne’s tribute to Falco
You just made me remember the “Windward Heights” by Maryse Conde. Wuthering Heights didn’t suck enough for you? Why not re-imagine it on a Caribbean island in the 19th century?
Screw you Bronte(s) and your pretentious umlaut.
The first comment mentioned “The Catcher In the Rye”, thus all is right with the world.
Johnny Assfucking Tremain.
You’re welcome.
And if you throw in Merriam-Webster’s rhyming dictionary, we’d never have to deal with a new Nickleback or Gwen Stefani album again!
Oxford English Dictionary. Then, no more books can be made.
“Obasan” by Joy Okagawa. A mind-numbing book that was ostensibly about how shitty life was for the Japanese in Canada during WWII, but was really just an outlet for the only fat Japanese chick to vent about how bad her life had been.
In conclusion, fuck high school english.
@ Church of Da Coach
as a securities litigation attorney, i will say that i learned more in 2 years of watching kudlow & cramer than i learned in 4 years of high school
Fuck me, I almost forgot this, Wide Sargasso Sea, take Jane Eyre and cross it with Toni Morrison. This book is my antithesis.
I’ll let wikipedia elaborate:
Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. After many years of living in obscurity since her last work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more and became her most successful novel.
The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys’ novel re-imagines Brontë’s devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation.
@ Otto Man,
oh sure, if you go by “publication date”.
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser.
Boring ass book that I couldn’t get through 20 pages of. I think it’s a good rule of thumb that when you read a high school or college US History or Western Civ text and it gives shoutouts to how great books from certain periods are, you can be assured they are crap. It’s like they have been grandfathered into the Western Canon but nobody wants to admit that they cannot finish or comprehend these books.
Think of all the examples of books you’ve mentioned today lilke Joyce, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, etc. Once you voice that you hate these books, people who haven’t even read them immediately defend them as classics.
Is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” a book, cuz I think we should probably burn it anyway. Damn anti-masonic trash.
I’ve found several t’s and a bitchin’ black trench coat at the Goodwill, so no laughter here. And yeah, at 14 I may have been able to finish the fucking thing.
Late to the party, but …
Jim Cramer’s Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich
First I always couldn’t stand this screaming jackass. It was like watching the really bad informercials on Sunday where some asshat scamdicapper yelled and raved about this week’s selections and showed you a clip of last week where he nailed a winner. Of course, if you watched last week’s show that was the only winner he nailed in the 10 plays he gave out but who’s counting.
Cramer could nail every stock he picks from now until he retires and it will still not make up for him telling his loyal viewers not to unload Bear Sterns a week before it went belly up and lost investors billions. (video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUkbdjetlY8)
Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity. I think Sean needs to be sodomized by John Waters.
On that note porky1, I made the mistake of venturing into The Butlerian Jihad and it reads like a fourth grade show and tell presentation.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. This book was boring, drawn out, and for once was done much better in movie format with Apocalypse Now. It’s the only book I didn’t finish in school, and even hearing about it pisses me off
@ smaaron
And everytime my wife sees a vampire/Dracula movie, she has to crack a joke that he’s looking for help with the Dewey Decimal system.
I have that same leather bound Hitchhiker’s Guide that I picked up at Goodwill for 2 bucks–you may laugh, but books is a’spensive and they get good shit there, particularly historical non-fiction.
It’s like the Nerdcronomicon. And it was a lot more entertaining when I was 14 (what isn’t?)
@ the Incredilbe Fulk.
Nice pick. That book inspired the phrase “English Shiterature” from my wife.
@porky1 – Good choice. I haven’t read any of them for all of the reasons you listed.
Since I’m in this thing really late anyway, I’ll pick again.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
I have a biblically bound copy of this thing in its entirety that I borrowed from a friend, forgot to give back before he moved, and we’re not in touch anymore. So it’s mine now. Yes, I’m a dick. I like this book…for about 200 pages. Then I can’t fucking stand it’s whimsical nature and put it aside. A year or two will go by, I’ll read other books, run out of things to read and remember, “Hey, I never finished Hitchhiker’s Guide.” However, I forget what had happened up to the point where I stopped the last time, so I start from the start. I then get burned out on the book again and the cycle continues. Destroying the book, I fear, is the only way to break it.
The Historian by Elizabeth SomeRussianovich
Starts out interesting about this girl’s search for her professor father who may or may not have been abducted my Dracula. Halfway through we are treated to her grad school thesis for 200 pages about the history of Europe or some shit. Then her professor is kidnapped by, again, presumably Dracula. Would you like to know how it wraps up? “Spoiler” alert, as if the actual ending isnt the true spoiler:
Well, you may believe we’ll see a bait and switch.. but no, it really IS Dracula. But what’s his motivation for kidnapping professors and academics???? Since he’s been alive for a zillion years, he’s collected quite a few original works of literature and he needs somebody to CATALOG THEM AND BE HIS LIBRARIAN!! THATS IT!
And yes, this is absolutely grounds for digging up the dead over-used body of Comic Book Guy: Worst.Ending.Ever.
On that note, Biggus Rickus, technically a legal pick:
“Dune: The Butlerian Jihad” by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson
See “Godfather Returns,” above. As bad as “God Emperor” was, at least it wasn’t fucked up twenty years later by his son and one of the biggest hack-for-hires in all of SF fiction. We don’t NEED an endless series of half-assed prequels and sequels based on notes Frank Herbert scribbled on a cocktail napkin. It’s just a money-grubbing attempt to fill in the void created by the giant sucking hole that Star Trek became about 15 years ago. (Not a Trekkie, just an observation.)
And for my Bill Polian value pick…
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus-John Gray, Ph. Disaster.
Nope, we’re both from Earth. You sir…however…are an alien douchebag.
God Emperor of Dune – Frank Herbert
I enjoyed the first three books, but jumping us thousands of year ahead to read to a worm philosophize for 450 pages is just fucking brutal.
Also, kudos to everyone hating on “The Old Man and the Sea”. It’s the longest 90 pages in the history of literature. If I had the choice I’d go ahead and burn everything Hemingway ever wrote.
Edie on the Warpath, a children’s book by Elizabeth C. Spykman, about a stupid girl named Edie. In fifth grade there were like 6 copies of that book in the library so me and my friends thought it would be funny to all check the same book out (of course, I was the only one of the group who actually read books, or could actually read, but that’s neither here nor there.). But since in Catholic School there’s no such thing as a harmless prank, our teacher Ms. Zabrasky collared us and punished us by making us write a book report on it. It sucked. Completely and totally. And this from someone who read Pippi Longstocking and the Ramona books…but not Judy Blume!!
Hey Buzz Buttfinger and Costass (creative nicknames, hey?), looks like some of us got some book learning. I hope both of you drown with Jane Austen, the overrated Nora Roberts of her generation, and take all her novels to the depths with you.
Jesus Christ, you actually have to do work for a day and you miss out on a fun draft. Good to see both books I have pegged for burnage were picked though (Watership Down and The Scarlet Letter).
Other than that, I got nothin’.
I’m burning Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I’ve tried reading that damn book three times and have never made it. It’s interesting for a couple hundred pages, but the remaining 500 seem to be a daunting task once I reach that point.
Okay, one last one. Larry Niven’s “Destiny’s Road.” He’ll probably get cut in training camp, but I see no harm in letting him suit up and having the veterans take a few shots at him.
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
Suggestions include eating no more than 2 tablespoons of fat (total!) per day, that oral sex on a pregnant woman can cause an embolism, and that fetal hiccups indicate the cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck.
I’d like to throw the authors on the fire as well.
Football for Idiots by Joe Theismann.
Yes, this book really did happen. It should be burned even if only for redundancy; he talked to me like I was an idiot every Sunday night for over a decade.
WOWWW I thought I was the only subjected to reading the hell that was Herland. I sympathize with you, Drew. That shit was awful.
Annnnnnnnd my underlining didn’t show up.
I can’t believe nobody picked it yet, but as an opponent of the Blogosphere and until recently a member of the wapo staff I think I’m Back for More Cash: A Tony Kornheiser Collection (Because You Can’t Take Two Hundred Newspapers into the Bathroom) should be burned. Yes I used proper bibliographic listing.
The Corrections hasn’t been taken yet? Fine, I’ll pick The Corrections! Mainly because I kept hearing about how it would be the Next Great American Novel (and the author went to my school), but its plot fell flat and it didn’t live up to the hype.
Also, I understand the Eggers hate but fuck it, I’ll defend AHWOSG to the death. Great writing, great stories, tragic without being maudlin, funny without being over-the-top… yes it is pretentious but I was willing to forgive that.
@ John B – Yeah I noticed. Andromeda Strain still sucks ass.
It’s like High Fidelity if it was written by Mort Goldman.
I’d like to hear more about the time Mort miscarried.
@devin hester’s speech coach
Try again, I already picked that shitheel Crichton…
After I graduated from college, my Dad gave me “The Book of Virtues” by former drug-czar William Bennett. I can’t technically include it here, because it is still sitting on my shelf unopened, but I felt it merited inclusion here in case anyone else was subjected to that tripe.
Not that it’s worth getting all excited about, but I’m going to finish off with Robert Heinlein’s “Number of the Beast”. Absolute garbage.
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth.
An entire book about the inner workings of a completely neurotic, selfish, self-conscious, obnoxious, perverted pussy. It’s like High Fidelity if it was written by Mort Goldman. Only not funny.
Alexander Portnoy is one of the few individuals who could have actually become a better person through a semester of brutal hazing at the hands of a sadistic fraternity.
Dr. Spielvogel should have given him the following advice:
1) Shut the fuck up
2) Go tell your mother to shut the fuck up
3) Drink a liter of Wild Turkey
4) Go to a strip club
5) Eat a big lobster dinner
6) Shut the fuck up
I’m sure this shit was funny/shocking in the 1960′s. Now? It’s just fucking whiney.
@ Archie: That was going to be my second round pick, but I couldn’t remember the name of the book or author. I tried Google searching “creepy preacher self help book” to no avail. But anytime I go into B&N, I see his toothy grin jumping off the shelves and coming to sodomize me.
“Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul” – by Some Asshole
I got talked into reading this book by some girl I thought was hot in high school, and I made it about five pages in before I couldn’t take anymore.
Haven’t seen this so far …
“Flatland” by Edwin A. Abbott
For a few points extra credit, I had to read that last week for my “visual communication” class. We were supposed to write about three paragraphs on how this book relates to problems with communication.
Instead, I wrote four pages on how much I fuckin’ hated Flatland. Incomprehensible nonsense. The same “exaggerated viewpoint of the social injustices inherent in society turned into ‘amusing’ parody” bullshit from the late 19th, early 20th century that a bunch of authors tried to craft but failed on an epic scale.
I don’t even care if I get the points — at least I can sleep at night.
“My Turn,” by Nancy Reagan.
I won’t say any more on the subject, because I don’t want to start a PoFlaWa in this thread.
How the hell is Rick Warren’s A Purpose-Driven Life still on the board? From his site:
“The most basic question everyone faces in life is Why am I here? What is my purpose? Self-help books suggest that people should look within, at their own desires and dreams, but Rick Warren says the starting place must be with God and his eternal purposes for each life. Real meaning and significance…”
Color me a soulless atheist bastard if you must, but that just fills me with blind rage.
I don’t think this has been mentioned and I only chime in with it cause I absolutely loathe the existence of this book, “He’s just not that into you” by Greg Brehedshutthefuckup.
Watership Down – Richard Adams..aka the god damn bunny book. If not for a brief bit in the middle where it looked like a farmer was going to eat the bunnies, the whole thing would be unreadable. I had to read this in school at some point and only passed the test by watching the movie (which is only slightly less horrible).
@ hardaway – devil in the white city was pretty enjoyable in my opinion. HH Holmes is probably the best name for a serial killer ever.
I’m taking Friday Night Lights just to spite Bissinger.
And if I had to pick a terrible Toni Morrison book (is that redundant?) I’d choose The Bluest Eye.