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I just read an excellent terrible book. It's called Americosis volume 1: The Savior Cometh and it's by Haydn Wilks. I posted a full review of it on Goodreads but I'll just quote some of my favourite passages from the book here to give you an idea of what it's like. All typos etc. as in the actual text.quote:as Maybelline got closer, she became aware he was fully naked, and she noticed his penis, an improbably long protrusion, stretching down almost to his kneecap quote:"What year is this? he demands, his voice military-precise. quote:She rose from her seat and moved her hand to that big dick of his, which proceeded to grow even larger. quote:The car chugged through traffic enough that John was brought level with the river. The Hudson. The skyscraper-lined natural feature that one of humanity's greatest artifices has been constructed around. quote:Now it was the edge of his world. Manhattan. He'd made the inner-circle. The central island. The pumping heart of global commerce, he a schmoozing, blustering capillary. quote:"The internet, John," the Wolf sighed. "The internet gives a poo poo." quote:"their manager done lied to the television network and said they could speak English good." quote:"Well my employer will be staying as a hotel a few blocks from here. The Four Seasons. Perhaps you've heard of it?" quote:The blonde smiled again. "Dr. Fitzkoff, I think America may be the only country on Earth where our most eminent scientists and healthcare professional are blessed with the good looks of Hollywood movie stars. But even in such an environment, you are a stand out, if you don't mind me saying. We showed our employer the headshots of several of New York's best-known clinical psychiatrists, and the moment he saw yours, he became quite smitten." quote:After the blonde had left, Erica thought back over the small slither of information he'd let slip regarding his employer: one of the two most important men in America. Erica wondered who that could be: perhaps Jay-Z or Kanye West? LeBron James or Floyd Mayweather? Robert Downey Jr. or Dwayne Johnson? quote:"Your concept of 'years' is based on the passing of four seasons. I am from a time when seasons have ceased to exist." Also there are dinosaurs.
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Sep 16, 2015 16:48
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Tiggum posted:I just read an excellent terrible book. It's called Americosis volume 1: The Savior Cometh and it's by Haydn Wilks. I posted [url=https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1393462788]a full review of it on You realize you're going to have to do a Let's Read of this when it's done, right?
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Sep 16, 2015 18:44
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flosofl posted:You realize you're going to have to do a Let's Read of this when it's done, right? If I even remember it by then. Who knows how many volumes it'll end up with or how long it'll take for them to come out?
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Sep 17, 2015 02:08
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Tiggum posted:I just read an excellent terrible book. It's called Americosis volume 1: The Savior Cometh and it's by Haydn Wilks. I posted a full review of it on Goodreads but I'll just quote some of my favourite passages from the book here to give you an idea of what it's like. All typos etc. as in the actual text. quote:Secondly there's the time traveller with the giant penis – “stretching down almost to his kneecap” quote:Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about that penis, right? Well, the time traveller appears naked, Terminator-style (a similarity one of the characters actually remarks upon), and almost immediately gets hit by a car. So the woman who hit him immediately takes him home and, somehow, gives him a blowjob. Because doesn't every woman want a man with a penis the length of his thigh? And let's not even get into the logistics involved, because that's getting into some real DeviantArt territory.  Are there any sci fi books that don't descent into loving deviant art level sex fic bullshit.
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Sep 17, 2015 02:36
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Klaus88 posted:
Welcome to the world of self publishing.
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Sep 17, 2015 02:48
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flosofl posted:Welcome to the world of self publishing. Now, now, there are plenty of traditionally published books that descent into deviant art level sex fics. We had plenty of those on the last few pages.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:29
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flosofl posted:You realize you're going to have to do a Let's Read of this when it's done, right? Why wait until it's done? 
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Sep 17, 2015 13:36
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See, this is a dilemma I've run into recently. Do the "sexy" parts of a story matter? If it was good otherwise, would it be OK for him to have a kneecap dick? What about the opposite? My sister-in-law asked me to edit her werewolf romance/erotica. If someone is writing a book that is mainly about the sex, does it matter if the rest of the story is good? Because part of me wants to go "You never explained this, this, and this, these mythical creatures aren't from where you say they are, the creation story you told is horrible, and the whole Indian thing is frankly offensive". And then the other part of me says "It's freaking werewolf porn, make sure penis is spelled right and move on".
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Sep 18, 2015 23:06
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Domus posted:See, this is a dilemma I've run into recently. Do the "sexy" parts of a story matter? If it was good otherwise, would it be OK for him to have a kneecap dick? What about the opposite? My sister-in-law asked me to edit her werewolf romance/erotica. If someone is writing a book that is mainly about the sex, does it matter if the rest of the story is good? Because part of me wants to go "You never explained this, this, and this, these mythical creatures aren't from where you say they are, the creation story you told is horrible, and the whole Indian thing is frankly offensive". And then the other part of me says "It's freaking werewolf porn, make sure penis is spelled right and move on". If someone asked, before this moment, "Flosofl, do you ever think you'll read about someone having an existential crisis regarding the fundamentals of a narrative while editing werewolf porn?" the answer would have been no. Then I'd think, "Oh, yeah. The Internet." and change my answer.
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Sep 18, 2015 23:44
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The Wise Man's Fear has been mentioned a couple of times and so I wish to clarify the book's dumb sex so that it can be sneered at properly. The actual order of events (stuff happens before and after but whatever) is: Main character, Kvothe, aged 15 or 16 and a child prodigy has just gotten done doing some heroic stuff Kvothe hears legends about the goddess/fairy Felurian and how she's irresistible but also abducts men, and there are precautions you can take (looking away, blocking your ears, standard fairy tale stuff). Kvothe and company run into Felurian. He does the whole Odysseus thing and says "I gotta hear this!" but instead of lashing himself to a mast or whatever he just says "Later guys" and goes to fairyland after sexing Felurian. Felurian tries to brainwash Kvothe like she does to all the guys he abducts. Because Kvothe has Main Character Powers he has the skills to resist it and establish himself as 'in control', though he doesn't admit to her that he used the Main Character Powers as a fluke on instinct and he probably can't manage doing that again. Felurian goes "hey you sexed pretty well" and Kvothe says "Well uh I know anatomy and I read a lot of books, I'm actually a virgin" and Felurian is disbelieving. Important: from my memory, Felurian does not say that Kvothe is the best she's every had, or anything! Just that he seems skilled. It's dumb, but it's not that dumb. Actually kinda cool in a fairy tale way bit: Kvothe sings Felurian a song of praise that describes her as 'sufficing'. Felurian's insulted. Kvothe says "Well, I was a virgin. I can't sing a proper song of praise if I have nothing to compare you to. You need to free me from fairyland to see other women, and then I can come back and give you the song you deserve." The dumb bit: Kvothe spends like, literal months in fairyland learning Felurian's sex techniques, all of which have goofy names. Also he meets a cool evil tree, before he finally leaves. It's been months in fairyland, but only a few days in the real world. At this point Kvothe is super sex god and all women can 'see it in his eyes' and some get wet making eye contact and stuff when he wants. Then because of other plot reasons, Kvothe goes to GreekJapan to learn martial arts. In GreekJapan the best martial artists are all women. Also, all the martial arts move names are pretty much indistinguishable from the sex move names. The GreekNinjas have apparently never learned how human reproduction works, because they don't know that you need a man and a woman to make a baby, they think it's just random (also they have sex a lot, including with Kvothe). Cherry on top: Not only did Penny Arcade do a strip on this, but Patrick Rothfuss is enough of a neckbeard to literally have a framed signed print of that strip. 
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Sep 19, 2015 02:28
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The best bits are directly to shenanigans with his issues in paying tuition for fantasy collage. Everything else sucks.flosofl posted:If someone asked, before this moment, "Flosofl, do you ever think you'll read about someone having an existential crisis regarding the fundamentals of a narrative while editing werewolf porn?" the answer would have been no. I have read this post. I have come to full comprehend this post. I have seriously evaluated the life choices that lead me to both of those aforementioned things. Why did you lie to me Morgan Freeman at the end of se7en. Why. 
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Sep 19, 2015 02:46
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flosofl posted:If someone asked, before this moment, "Flosofl, do you ever think you'll read about someone having an existential crisis regarding the fundamentals of a narrative while editing werewolf porn?" the answer would have been no. Hey, fundamentals of narrative apply to all stories  The question does interest me though. Does a book have to be bad throughout to be truly bad, or can it just be bad in parts? If said parts aren't the key focus of the story, does it matter?
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Sep 19, 2015 03:48
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Does Neal Stephenson ever learn how to write a loving ending? Snow Crash and Diamond were both fun books that loving collapsed on themselves in the last 40-50 pages into hot garbage. Also, I'm going to assume that he has some extremely weird and specific sexual issues with teenage girls because he is constantly making them sexual objects in a really terrible and ham-fisted manner.
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Sep 21, 2015 11:55
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pentyne posted:Does Neal Stephenson ever learn how to write a loving ending? Snow Crash and Diamond were both fun books that loving collapsed on themselves in the last 40-50 pages into hot garbage. Cyptonomicon has an ending. It's a stupid ending, but it's an ending.
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Sep 21, 2015 13:33
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pentyne posted:Does Neal Stephenson ever learn how to write a loving ending? Snow Crash and Diamond were both fun books that loving collapsed on themselves in the last 40-50 pages into hot garbage. Seveneves ended ok, and was pretty much totally devoid of any teenage girls.
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Sep 21, 2015 17:41
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Endings are hard! SEE: Stephen King
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Sep 21, 2015 20:20
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loquacius posted:Endings are hard! SEE: Stephen King King's a master of denouement compared to Stephenson. The guy has no concept of falling action at all.
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Sep 21, 2015 20:35
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See, I think if an author has some creepy fixation on underage girls or whatever, then that actually makes them incapable of writing big meaningful sci fi monoliths on the nature of humanity. They don't understand a thing about humanity, especially the teenage girl portion of it. All they understand is white, male, middle aged paedos (and probably fascists too). And yeah there are plenty of dickwolf self-publishers going at it, but most of the 'respectable' big sci fi names do the same in one way or another. gently caress em. I'm not desperate enough for spaceships to wade through that.
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Oct 9, 2015 13:49
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I thought we were talking about Neal Stephenson, not Piers Anthony!
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Oct 9, 2015 15:36
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I know it's passé to rag on Twilight, but for its 10th anniversary, Stephenie Meyer has decided to address the complaints about Bella's character, by gender flipping the whole cast in a "reimagining" of Twilight - Life and Death.   What it amounts to is her simply replacing the names Bella with Beau, Edward with Edythe, and Jacob with Julie. That's loving it. 
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Oct 9, 2015 18:15
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this was my favorite change
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Oct 9, 2015 18:33
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Hey, I know that! It's the classic short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote:Jorge Luis Broges posted:He did not want to compose another Quixote —which is easy— but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes.
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Oct 9, 2015 18:50
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I think my favorite change so far is how instead of Bella being tricked into facing bad guy vampire claiming to have kidnapped Bella's mom, Beau is coaxed into facing bad girl vampire because love interest vampire is kidnapped. Making the "gender flip" attempt 100% greater bullshit than it was to begin with because the real purpose of this exercise is Meyer's wish to be a being beyond the power of God (pro tip: she's not "Bella," she's the abomination Bella becomes).
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Oct 10, 2015 11:56
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While most people know of Rosemary's Baby as a horror film, it was actually a novel first. The novel isn't really all that bad, what is bad however is how 30 years later the books author, Ira Levin, decided to write a sequel "Rosemary's Child." It takes place 36 years after the end of the first book and has Rosemary waking up from a magic coma that she was placed in by the coven that organized everything in the first book. The novel has a bizarrely racist subplot where a woman tricks everyone into thinking she's Indian by just getting a tan and has quite possibly the stupidest ending of any book ever. Rosemary's son, the Antichrist, accidentally fulfills Satan's plan to kill everyone on Earth with poison candles and Rosemary herself is then dragged to Hell by Satan. Then she wakes up and it turns out that both books were just a dream... OR WERE THEY?
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Oct 12, 2015 05:44
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muscles like this? posted:While most people know of Rosemary's Baby as a horror film, it was actually a novel first. The novel isn't really all that bad, what is bad however is how 30 years later the books author, Ira Levin, decided to write a sequel "Rosemary's Child." It takes place 36 years after the end of the first book and has Rosemary waking up from a magic coma that she was placed in by the coven that organized everything in the first book. The novel has a bizarrely racist subplot where a woman tricks everyone into thinking she's Indian by just getting a tan and has quite possibly the stupidest ending of any book ever. Rosemary's son, the Antichrist, accidentally fulfills Satan's plan to kill everyone on Earth with poison candles and Rosemary herself is then dragged to Hell by Satan. Then she wakes up and it turns out that both books were just a dream... OR WERE THEY? You forgot the subplot where her son keeps trying to seduce her. Levin is such s good writer otherwise it's hard to imagine this as anything but a giant gently caress you to publishers insisting on a sequel
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Oct 13, 2015 15:00
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Tiggum posted:She sucked and licked and rubbed and pumped, sucking for the future, sucking America's savior I'm sorry but this particular phrase is the actual best thing I've read in a long while.
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Oct 13, 2015 16:35
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I'm reading Stephen King's Cell. I'm at the "we only use N% of our brain" speech which I of course skipped to save myself from a cringe-related death. Does it get much worse from that point? because I had just finished kicking and shoving myself through The Dark Half (I have to make a post about that some time) and Cell seemed to start alright and free from the usual King-isms.
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Oct 13, 2015 21:51
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hackbunny posted:I'm reading Stephen King's Cell. I'm at the "we only use N% of our brain" speech which I of course skipped to save myself from a cringe-related death. Does it get much worse from that point? because I had just finished kicking and shoving myself through The Dark Half (I have to make a post about that some time) and Cell seemed to start alright and free from the usual King-isms. Cell is largely considered one of King's worst books, aside from the very beginning where all hell breaks loose there's absolutely nothing of value in it.
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Oct 14, 2015 01:00
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hackbunny posted:I'm reading Stephen King's Cell. I'm at the "we only use N% of our brain" speech which I of course skipped to save myself from a cringe-related death. Does it get much worse from that point? because I had just finished kicking and shoving myself through The Dark Half (I have to make a post about that some time) and Cell seemed to start alright and free from the usual King-isms. The great value in most of King's writing is his strongly-voiced characters, and their interactions and dialogue. Cell is all about everybody cutting themselves off from everybody around them and refusing to talk to each other. I think it's the only novel of his that I started, but didn't finish.
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Oct 14, 2015 02:12
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Ambitious Spider posted:a giant gently caress you to publishers insisting on a sequel
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Oct 14, 2015 02:37
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Coldheart Canyon. gently caress you, Clive Barker for tricking me into reading furry porn. Actually, all contemporary Clive Barker.
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Oct 14, 2015 03:22
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AKZ posted:Coldheart Canyon. gently caress you, Clive Barker for tricking me into reading furry porn. Actually, all contemporary Clive Barker. Let's be honest here: you never need to be tricked to start reading furry porn.
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Oct 14, 2015 03:33
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Antivehicular posted:I heard this about Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, and I refuse to not believe them, because the concept of the otherwise competent Thomas Harris intending those novels as serious works gives me hives. The Wikipedia article on Hannibal Rising mentions this, though its actually Dino de Laurentiis pushing for a movie prequel. I actually like "Hannibal" as a book - it feels like it was written to be unfilmable to destroy the franchise. But they filmed it. "Hannibal Rising", on the other hand, is a turd of a book written by a Thomas Harris broken by the machinations of the cosmos.
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Oct 14, 2015 04:52
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Antivehicular posted:I heard this about Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, and I refuse to not believe them, because the concept of the otherwise competent Thomas Harris intending those novels as serious works gives me hives. I don't know about HR but the story behind Hannibal was he just pooped up in front of the agent and dumped a manuscript on him, unasked. Sorry about your hives
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Oct 14, 2015 04:52
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AKZ posted:Coldheart Canyon. gently caress you, Clive Barker for tricking me into reading furry porn. Actually, all contemporary Clive Barker. I remember liking cold heart canyon, and don't remember any furry porn bits. I remember a Haunted painting, old Hollywood, though maybe I made up a better book in my head or just skipped over the furry bits
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Oct 15, 2015 12:07
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Saw an ad that reminded me of a terrible book: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I didn't make it past the first 3 or 4 pages. And to be fair maybe it's not a bad book, but I really had my heart set on some familiar and beloved characters being forced to deal with an outlandish scenario, and instead it was some generic badasses who happened to share the Bennet names. 
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Oct 15, 2015 17:17
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artsy fartsy posted:Saw an ad that reminded me of a terrible book: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Didn't read the original because I'm not a middle school student anymore, so I found it entertaining
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Oct 15, 2015 17:30
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I know that "Watch on the Rhine" has already been mentioned. I only made it through 10 or so pages before I recycled it. I didn't want to ruin anyone's life by donating it. My contribution is "Orcs" (My apologies if someone brought it up and I missed it) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcs:_First_Blood It begins with the worst sex scene ever written and degenerates into even worse fan fiction more quickly than I've ever seen. It reads like a teenager wrote it. It's even worse than "Eragon". I've re-read some of the garbage I wrote in 8th grade and this is what it's like. I used the book for lighting my fireplace a few winters ago. It didn't even do that well.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:45
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ElGroucho posted:Didn't read the original because I'm not a middle school student anymore, so I found it entertaining lol are you seriously saying that you won't read a classic because you think it's for children? I mean it's cool if you're not into Jane Austen, but you just got through explaining how you read trashy zombie fiction
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Oct 16, 2015 00:22
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artsy fartsy posted:lol are you seriously saying that you won't read a classic because you think it's for children? I only read literature for adults, like manga.
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Oct 16, 2015 00:40
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