Do not read these books

Mortality Bridge. A junkie rock star dies and ends up traveling through Hell in a modern re-imagining of Dante’s Inferno. The original is far, far better. Read that instead.

I wound up reading like 70% of this before finally just crashing out, gasping for breath and bleeding from the eyes. It is truly execrable, every page of it.[quote=“RichVR, post:21, topic:128025, full:true”]
Did you say Dean Koontz?
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I devoured like 4 of his books back to back to back before suddenly realizing A) they were all the same, and B) they were all terrible. Never went back. . .

The funny thing about Dean Koontz books is when you start reading them, you think ‘wow, they are setting this up to sound like some sort of alien conspiracy - wonder how he’ll turn that around’ only to find that it is always an alien conspiracy.

Except that time the aliens were actually the devil!

Koontz wrote Demon Seed and Ticktock, which I liked. But his usual novel seems to be the guy with the power to see things, his super smart dog and the girl that falls in love with the guy eventually.

I loved the book Watchers before it became the basis of the plot for 75% of his following novels. I do agree that his writing has become somewhat self derivative. That’s probably why I only like his early stuff, before he started regurgitating storylines on a semi annual basis.

And the mind control rape. Don’t forget the really creepy, almost every book appearance of mind control rape.

(I have not read a Koontz book in many years. But back when I was reading them in high school, it was disturbing to me that he seemed to have some predilection for setting up a woman character to be raped or almost raped while mind controlled. Like “I think this is saying something about Koontz” creepy.)

I mean, rumor has it that he got his start as a psuedonymmed erotica author before the regular books finally took off. . .

Well, that covers my Dragonlance. Restropectively, it felt like one of those TV shows you wished would have already ended last season the further I progressed. Yet, I kept reading them… to a point.

Ignoring the blatent Star Wars theme, Wizard’s First Rule isn’t that bad. It’s a bit of pulp fantasy.

The main problem it has is that you might be tempted to read the others, which are some of the worst books I’ve ever read. I’ll spare the wordcount on why (ironic, considering the later half of the series spend 50% of their words pointlessly recapping), as there’s lots online about why The Sword Of Truth series sucks. My favourite moment was how Richard caused communists peasants to revolt against their communist overlords because of “Freedom”, all because Richard unveiled a particularly nice statue.

I’m fairly certain this is one of the Sword of Truth novels!

I’ll posit James Joyce’s Ulysses. A while back I thought I’d read some classics, and this was one I tried.

It’s one of the few books I’ve abandoned reading, and I did so in about 3 chapters. It’s utterly incomprehensible. I couldn’t even figure out which character was speaking which line, or even how many characters there were in the room. So I just flung it across the room in frustration. I then read more about and it’s apparently James Joyce’s way of trolling English professors.

To each their own, I guess, because Battlefield Earth was great, IMO; one of my all time favorite SiFi novels and I used to read the genre pretty heavily. The movie was nothing like the book and sucked dead baby weasel lips.

I also really liked L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth decatology. Bit of a slog, but really good schlock SiFi.

Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy…Fall of Giants, Winter of the World and Edge of Eternity.

I have read some other Follett and for the most part enjoyed it. But I couldn’t get more than a few chapters into the third book of this series, which I only started because I got it really cheap, without putting it down and designating it for donation. This trilogy is like 2,700 pages of characters you don’t really like.

I guess what really killed it for me in the third book was President Kennedy taking a nice hot bath with the latest girl from the secretarial pool who just happened to be black. WTF?

Anything by Piers Anthony. I have fond memories of reading some of his books in middle school but I cringe at them now.

I probably own over 100 of them. I agree most aren’t really worth reading / anything special. There are a few gems though in the Dragonlance & Ravenloft series. Recenty enjoyed “The Doom Brigade”

A couple of Anthony’s pre-Xanth books were okay before he discovered the magical formula for sexist innuendo mixed with bad puns.

I hear you, but, I love this book. My Irish Lit prof when I was an undergrad turned me on to Joyce and while the book is difficult, and about, um, nothing, really, like Seinfeld, I find it as good as all the critics have said for a hundred years. But it’s an acquired taste.

Now, Finnegan’s Wake…my prof once said that “Prof. So and so says he read the book. He’s lies.” No one actually can read that book.

Yeah. Joyce is pretty much the fons et origo of modernism. You may not like Ulysses, but it’s absurd to condemn it when so many other people do like it and when it influenced and inspired generations of writers and continues to do so. Same thing applies to Mark Twain’s dislike for Jane Austen. For my own part I’d say Ulysses is not my cup of tea, but I can respect the artistry and craft that went into it.

I don’t think I’ve ever read an entirely positive account of Finnegan’s Wake, though. The best I’ve seen I would paraphrase as “a brilliant failed experiment”.

The first two were decent enough, but that last one stunk. Follet has never been subtle, but oh my, Mary Sues all over the place.

And I strongly suspect that the character who was actually fellating JFK was the author’s gender & race swapped stand-in.

I’m reading Finnegan’s Wake. And have been for over 30 years. I like to start from the last two pages and then go to the first page and continue.

Works as well as any other method. Well, any method not involving hallucinogens.