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Books that you want to throw out of the window.

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I was recently listening to the radio when a book review programme came on, one of the reviewers had a very dry sense of humour and he lamented the current crop of (celebrity) books to hit the bookstalls in time for Christmas, including Susan Boyle's latest block buster.

 

The review went something like this:

 

"…and it falls right into a very select sub category of books where by page eight I've thrown it out of the window in disgust, the last time I did that was with 'Portrait of a lady' a book so bad even the woodlice gave it a wide berth.

 

I believe it rotted away eventually because mildew was the only organism so monumentally stupid enough to go near it…"

 

Anyway, when I'd finished laughing, I was reminded of a book with a similar title 'Portrait of the artist as a young man' by James Joyce which I once bought whilst on holiday.

 

I purchased it from one of the local bookshops then wandered down to the beach because I had a few hours to kill, little did I know after reading this book I'd also have a motive…

 

To be honest I couldn't give you an accurate review of how awful this book is as the memory cells that held this information have self destructed. (Rather like the previous owner of the book, who made copious notes in the margins that began to read more and more like a suicide note.)

 

Therefore, for your delectation, I've included below a few reviews from Amazon.com.

 

 

This is a book that English Literature professors love to use as a torture device on their unsuspecting students. Written in the undisciplined, post-modernist style, Joyce's book is painful to read and utterly incomprehensible to all except for the five or six people on earth who actually think sloppy, self-indulgent writing infers greatness. If a student were to hand in a piece of work like this for a grade, that student would promptly receive an "F".

 

 

 

What a painful read. I'm just glad it's over. One of the most confusing, meandering, pointless books I've ever read. I can't see why this is considered great literature. Seriously. The language is complicated, archaic, filled with references to political figures in Ireland that are unrecognizable. And boring. Extremely boring.

 

 

Avoid it at all costs, and punch anyone who recommends it to you square in the gob.

 

Glad it's not just me then…

 

Normally I take books that I'm never going to read again to the charity shop but when I got back home and found the book in the bottom of the suitcase I had a moral dilemma, did I really want some poor, innocent reader to stumble across this abomination? Could I live with myself? Why don't I just throw it in the bin? - But what if the bin man finds it? He may read it then take it to a charity shop!

 

I was left with no choice; I removed the cover, tore the pages out and fired up the shredder, then fired up the brazier and burnt the shreds, then nuked the brazier from space, just to be sure. (copyright James Cameron, Aliens)

 

So I was wondering, has anyone else come across a book that made you want to throw it out of the window and if so, why?

 

Put your nominations on this thread, then bathe in the warm altruistic glow that you may have saved some future reader from purgatory.

Edited by Mantaspook
sp.

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Haha! Portrait of the artist... isn't that bad - you should try Ulyses (I've never made it past chapter 4).

 

Down and out in Paris and London by George Orwell really annoyed me. Little rich boy decides to slum it and refuses Daddy's money for the fun of it. Writes about washing dirty dishes for a pittance and sleeping in boarding houses. Oh boo hoo.

 

I also hated the Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Euginides and I wasn't keen on Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

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I had a similar experience with 'On the Contrary' by Andre Brink. I didn't actually throw it out of the window because I like my windows too much, but normally I just refuse to be beaten by a book so was relieved to find that my sister (who is similarly tenacious with literature) was of exactly the same opinion as me with the book.

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Years ago, I was a member of a writer's group whose leader was obsessed with James Joyce's Ulysses. He enthused about it so much that I went out and bought it and sat down to enjoy what I was assured would be the best and most influential book ever written and that I would ever encounter. So after an hour of trying...... I'm thinking...... Er.......I'm not getting this...... am I stupid or something? Seems more like self-indulgent drivel to me.

 

The group leader had spouted that it was a book that 'defied summary'.....well let me summarise. It is about as interesting as watching paint dry and Molly Bloom's inane ramblings, which are laughingly referred to as a 'soliloquy' (Shakespeare must have turned in his grave), had me scanning forward for a full stop so that I could comfortably fall asleep before reaching it.

 

Joyce seems to have been totally hung up on Greek Mythology - perhaps seeking glory by association? Ulysses is the only book (and books are precious to me) I have ever chucked in the bin along with the cat litter and vegetable peelings. The only influence Joyce had over me was the decision to stop wasting my time at that writer's group and to avoid his works like the plague.:gag:

 

 

And is it me or does anyone else find the Harry Potter books bloody boring........formulaic..........zzzzzzzzz.....snore

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I felt the same way. I bought Ulysses and felt stupid to not be able to understand what was going on.

 

There seems to be a number of people who have either been brainwashed into thinking it's a masterpiece, or want to look clever by citing it. Although I do remember some of Joyce's sentences in Ulysses are stunning. He is a very talented man but doesn't always have anything to say.

 

Dubliners, however, is a work of brilliance.

 

Virginia Woolf is much better at the stream of consciousness and experimentation and does with with style and elegance. I think I read somewhere that she reviewed Ulysses and called it the work of 'an adolescent scratching his pimples'. Tee hee hee.

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And is it me or does anyone else find the Harry Potter books bloody boring........formulaic..........zzzzzzzzz.....snore

 

I think it's because its too cliché? Or maybe it's because it's a book for kids, I don't know. Either way my sister loves it. :confused:

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Haha! Portrait of the artist... isn't that bad - you should try Ulyses (I've never made it past chapter 4).

 

Down and out in Paris and London by George Orwell really annoyed me. Little rich boy decides to slum it and refuses Daddy's money for the fun of it. Writes about washing dirty dishes for a pittance and sleeping in boarding houses. Oh boo hoo.

 

I also hated the Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Euginides and I wasn't keen on Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

 

I've read Cloud Atlas, and although I liked it, I confess to say that it was a disappointment comparatively speaking; it was easy to predict what was going to happen from about halfway through lol.

 

I've tried Ulysses and indeed I found it heavy going, and that's saying something...

 

However, the all-time star among books I have found it really difficult to complete is Margaret Attwood's 'A HANDMAID'S TALE'. Don't read this if you are a sci-fi fan who likes their post-apocalyptic drama and epic settings (such as in Wyndham's The Crysalids, or the novel 'After London')

There are only so many pages I can take of the same repetitive descriptions of oppressed women in a weird patriarchial society, and Attwood must be one of the very best in drawing out such scenes, to the total exclusion of real conflict and drama.

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Reading Joyce is, by all accounts, like listening to free jazz, one person trying to play and a bunch of other people trying to put him off. But he falls into the same category as someone like Umberto Eco: their prodigious learning means that they simply have to refer - obliquely at best - to something obscure so that only a certain select few of their readers will 'get it'.

 

Eco suffers from an inability to know something without it colouring what he writes. So The Name of the Rose is marred by some deeply dull explanatory passages about medieval scholasticism. Yes, Umberto, you spent a career learning this stuff, but that doesn't mean I have to. At the other end of the scale, he even goes as far as to say that his work is laden with references to other works (in an essay which wasn't quite entitled: "Why I am such an amazing writer") which the lay reader, sadly uninformed, cannot grasp. As such, he is both didactic, when it comes to matters of specific historical significance, and enigmatic to the point impossibility when it comes to what I should have already read to get the most out of his work. And yet I have read with interest all of his fiction and some of his academic work.

 

I shall have a go at Dubliners soon.

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Just to return to this thread to tell everyone that I finally picked up my copy of 'a Handmaids Tale' and succeeded in completing reading it in just a couple of days; it kinda 'speeds up' towards the end, with a bit more excitement, and of course, there is a bit of a fortuitous twist at the end. Just be warned, it is more of a melodramatic work than 'hard Sci-Fi' but it still has a lot to reccommend it.

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Totally agree with you all about Ulysses. Makes a good door stop, though.

 

The book that I threw across the room (not at the windows, mind - I'd already wasted £7.99 on the poxy book!) is Sophie Hannah's Little Face. Starts well, brilliant premise, even continues in a page-turning manner. But the ending was akin to 'and then she woke up and it was all a dream'. Now only did I throw it, Reader, I jumped on it!

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Sir Frances Bacon said:

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested."

 

I nibbled away at Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for 6 months before I made my way to the end. Gave me indegestion anorl.

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A long time ago, on a dare, I once set out to read every one of the Booker Prize winning novels. There's some serious suffering in that list, but for me the standout 'throw out the window' book was Ben Okri's "The Famished Road". I don't appreciate magic realism at the best of times, (however, check out "Midnight's Children" for how it ought to be done), but this book drove me nuts. It took me about four times longer than any other to get through and I suspect to this day my girlfriend still thinks the author is actually named Ben Bloody Okri.

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