Mexican Deathgasm posted:

I haven't read a lot of truly terrible books because I tend to drop them as soon as I realize they're bullshit, but when I was a teen I read some awful stuff:

The Dragonlance Series

mycot posted:

Huh, the timing of this thread matches up with the Steam thread in Games discovering the Doom novelizations (yes, they exist).

quote:

Meet Jack Flint

Flint hurdled a table and tackled Dr. Blood. They slammed against the kitchen stove as they battled for control of the gun.

Dr. Blood's free hand tore at Flint's face, narrowly missing his eyes. Flint smashed Blood's other hand against the top of the stove, but Blood wouldn't let go of the gun.

Flint tried a different tactic. He held Blood's hand down on one of the burners and turned the flame on full.

There was the smell of burning hair and then burning flesh. Blood screamed and dropped the gun.

reality_groove posted:

I know it's popular and optioned and everything but Ready Player One was physically painful to get through. The protagonist is the geekiest geek of all geekdom, gets super buff, gets an online girlfriend, repeatedly outsmarts an entire corporation of evil murderers and wins the world by having an 'on the spectrum' dedication to rewatching 80s movies and TV shows. All while making frequent terrible references to pop culture. Adamantium! Godzilla! TIE fighters!

Nanomashoes posted:

NLJP posted:

edit2: Ah I forgot The Dresden Files: "Urban Magician" Harry Dresden Private Eye etc. is too cool for all of your bullshit. Dames, trenchcoat gets into the establishment's face, scrapes through each situation in banter and blood, general fuckup but only so that he can shrug through it all but actually he's really miserable and man just awful all around. A pastiche of a noir sleuth meets Die Hard and magic. I got through three books of this now 15 book series for some reason (people told me that's when it gets good I think). Now all this might sound ok again as a dumb escapist fantasy (which, yeah, got no problem with that kind of thing) if it wasn't so miserably badly written.

theflyingorc posted:

All the Sword of Truth I read was at a young enough age that I did not note the libertarian subtext at all.

loquacius posted:

- A guy comes along claiming to be the son of Emperor Palpatine. He has three eyes. His name is "Trioculus"; this is a word meaning "three eyes." As proof of his ancestry, he produces a glove that he claims to be the glove of Darth Vader. He is able to use this glove to choke people at a distance, and, you see, the glove is what allowed Darth Vader to do that in the movies, and only a son of Emperor Palpatine could use it (I guess Darth Vader was also a son of Emperor Palpatine?). Trioculus wants to marry Princess Leia (as a Main Villain in an '80s kids book/cartoon he is contractually obligated to want this); when she proves less than amenable to this idea, he instead marries a robot replica of Princess Leia. It kills him. At the robot wedding.
- At some point it is revealed that Trioculus isn't actually the son of Emperor Palpatine. Another guy is. This guy also has three eyes. His name is "Triclops"; this is a word meaning "three eyes."
- The main character of the series is a kid named Ken. He is a kid Just Like You, who grows up in a room full of Star Wars memorabilia and like C3PO action figures or whatever, only his room is in an underground city on Yavin IV (the Lost City of the Jedi!!!!) where he was raised by robots and has no human contact before being discovered partway through book 2. The robots give him "lessons" that consist entirely of Star Wars trivia.
- All the Grand Moffs fly around on a ship together. That ship is called the Moffship. On the Moffship they have conferences. Those conferences are called Mofferences.
- There is a character named Zorba the Hutt; he looks like Jabba the Hutt except he has a full human-style beard
- Han and Leia build their dream house (a Cloud House, on Bespin) and have a housewarming party. Later they attempt to elope to a theme park, called Hologram Fun World. In the end they decide not to elope and make a big production out of planning their REAL wedding. These are subplots in a Star Wars book.

Zamboni_Rodeo posted:

Ah, Heinlein. The only book of his I ever attempted was Stranger In A Strange Land. The setup was interesting and I actually hung with it until. Until.

There's a scene where he's having sex with... whoever, and in the throes of passion she cries out, "Thou art God!"

Aaaaannnd that's where I gave up in disgust. According to a friend of mine who read the whole thing, I picked a good place to stop.

The Saddest Rhino posted:

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.

She stares at him, startled. Silence hangs as heavy and impotent as his monstrous dick.

quote:

She rose from her seat and moved her hand to that big dick of his, which proceeded to grow even larger.

"You could always stop the night. America'll still need saving tomorrow."

He looked at her with submissive eyes. She smiled and dropped to her knees, then spread her lips and slid his giant penis into her mouth.

She sucked and licked and rubbed and pumped, sucking for the future, sucking America's savior.

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."

Erica tried to stop herself blushing, as her lips pursed into a smile. Her inner goddess wanted to take offence, to lash out at the reduction of her credentials to how good she looked in a photograph, but the fact was the compliment had come from someone important enough to have well-mannered blonde guys in good suits running around making appointments for him.

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."

flosofl posted:

You realize you're going to have to do a Let's Read of this when it's done, right?

quote:

I hid a smile as I strode forward, feeling the glint of the hot cybersunlight on my bare scalp, along my long, muscle-packed thighs. The last time I'd come here, I'd been in search of a connection; this time, I hunted an outlaw. I'm a sheriff, Talia Fortune by name, and tracking down and deactivating lawbreakers is my job.

...

The Amphitheatre was a locale, an entrance to a virtual sub-plane of existence that people called different names, a reality whose very ambiguity was one of its charms: the Netherwood

...

The Netherwood started out as an ordinary virtual landscape, founded by a gaming guru, Geoff Provocateur, about twenty years before I entered the Amphitheatre as the warrior queen Amazonia. But the Netherwood unraveled [sic] pretty quickly, with gambling, cybersex, synthtrading, hacking, and computer sabotage becoming the entertainments of choice. Under the cover of the "games" - the virtual arena matches - in the Amphitheatre, illegal and dastardly acts were committed on a regular basis. And crime was my drug. I was sworn to smell it out and obliterate it.

Jerome Agricola posted:

How? I fall asleep to books on a weekly basis. Even really good books. Do you not read a lot or are you some super-human non-dozer.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Look at this rear end in a top hat who doesn't like Bartimaeus or Discworld or Infinite Jest or I could go on

Thinky Whale posted:

Seriously, what the hell was with Heinlein and incest?

lenoon posted:

Don't Jubal and Valentine get it on in SiaSL? I feel like Valentine at least doesn't make any distinction between homosexual and heterosexual sex.

Thinky Whale posted:

And the part early on where all Jubal's secretaries line up so Valentine can kiss then all in turn, and he asks about kissing guys too, and they say nah, don't do that, it's weird.

lenoon posted:

I've only ever really liked Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and even that has an extremely tedious self-insert libertarian character in it.

The Muffinlord posted:

The Conrad Stargard Series: a Polish engineer(there's a trend here) gets involuntarily time-travelled back to 13th century Poland, ten years before the Mongol hordes invade. It's up to him to basically jumpstart the industrial revolution, and, through a series of amazing lucky breaks, manages to basically become the most powerful person of the Middle Ages. Has some cool set-pieces but the protagonist is more or less infallible, and as it turns out the guy who owned the time machine feels Really Bad and is also his cousin so he sends him all sorts of ridiculous-rear end plot devices to help him on his quest to gently caress every girl in the 1280s and completely win this real-life game of Civ 4. Falls apart really loving hard after the Mongols are defeated.

malal posted:

As for Stephen King and the Dark Tower, you really owe it to yourself to read it.

Telemaze posted:

I can't believe it has 4/5 stars on Goodreads. Legit Christian romance readers must have really, really low standards.

Carnival of Shrews posted:

quote:

She looked as though she had just emerged from a week-long orgy with a gang of hard rockers.

Carnival of Shrews posted:

quote:

childlike breasts

Carnival of Shrews posted:

quote:

Her extreme slenderness would have made a career in modelling impossible

spite house posted:

A bunch of seventh-graders proooobably shouldn't have been reading about 80% of what we were reading.

muscles like this? posted:

The thing that bugged me about Timeline was that it seemed like he kept forgetting it wasn't actually time travel.

Ryoshi posted:

It's even worse than that because the characters keep insisting its not actual time travel while completely ignoring that literally none of the plot makes any kind of sense if it's not.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I had thought that this had been posted already, but I guess not. Well, better late than never. My all-time favorite terrible book:

Mr Toes posted:

Good gods; Wheel of Time - I'd forgotten about that series. I think I gave up at book 8 or 9 after realising that I could not give two hoots whether or not the whole cast lived or died. They were all so irritating in their own unique ways

Tracula posted:

It's just bizarre to me to read that when there's literally a book in the original trilogy called Second Foundation while now apparently there's another trilogy referred to as the Second Foundation Trilogy which I'm guessing doesn't actually have anything to do with said Second Foundation

canis minor posted:

Terry Pratchett book covers



In this case - Wyrd Sisters

Terry Pratchett posted:

Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one’s shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, tight boots and naked blades. Words like ‘full’, ‘round’ and even ‘pert’ creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down. Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialized buyer.

Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword.

Terry Pratchett posted:

Look at him. Scrawny, like most wizard, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality. Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University

SiKboy posted:

I always assumed that was Bethan on the cover

Terry Pratchett posted:

As the druids spread out around a great flat stone that dominated the centre of the circle he couldn't help noticing the attractive if rather pale young lady in their midst. She wore a long white robe, a gold torc around her neck, and an expression of vague apprehension.

Terry Pratchett posted:

By the light of the torches he saw that it was a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called 'spry', with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city. Despite the snow he wore nothing more than a studded leather holdall and a pair of boots that could have easily accommodated a second pair of feet.

BioEnchanted posted:

I don't know the general opinion but of the Discworld series I really liked the Moist Von Lipwig series, due to them being Vetinari realising just how badly Ankhmorpork is being held back by lovely infrastructure, and ordering Moist to fix it. Then some backwater kid invents a train and he's like " I gotta get in on that..."

King of Foolians posted:

So.....you literally judged a book by its cover?

kreyla posted:

Ready Player One is a critique of nerds

HopperUK posted:

I can't remember if I've bitched about this before in this thread but nothing ruins an otherwise-decent scifi book for me more than the author's dick just slapping itself all over the page. It's not even that egregious, it's just something that annoys me to no end. I tried to read the Uplift trilogy and then the first time a woman appears, on like page four or something, the book immediately drools all over the swimsuit she's wearing like, gently caress offffff

outlier posted:

It's a fault with genre fiction generally, where strange foibles and fetishes are ignored or even expected by fans, who will defend prosaic writing with "oh but the characters are interesting" or "the world is so fascinating" or even worse "but the story has potential". Fans of genre - be it SF, horror or crime - want the literary equivalent of comfort food. I once heard it described as "commodity fiction", it's like bread, they're going to buy it anyway.

back cover posted:

Ex-cop Jake Cardigan has come back to Earth bent on revenge. Someone framed him for dealing Tek, the ultimate computerised drug.

page 261 posted:

Silent images of the funeral of a public official showed on the huge screen. A black skyhearse circling a sun-bright slanting hillside cemetary, six ebony robots carrying a black coffin, a gaunt old woman, sobbing, being supported and comforted by a gleaming silvery priestbot.

quote:

He was a good-looking gentleman in his thirties, handsome in a way no longer fashionable, not health-club handsome, not rock-star handsome, but Eisenhower-era handsome, Pillsbury-doughboy handsome, his hair cut by a barber rather than a stylist, his suit purchased at a discount warehouse.

quote:

Madame Alexina began to tease the bowling ball, tracing little circles around the finger holes. The shell was becoming steadily more translucent, the interior less dark, more liquid. Hesitantly, Madame Alexina slid her fingertips ever so slightly into the holes and, emboldened by the lack of resistance, began to probe ever more deeply and vigorously. ... As Madame Alexina’s pace quickened and her fingers grew more confident, the inky depths grew ever weaker, until, in a moment, the bowling ball surrendered itself—transparent, exposed, and vulnerable.

quote:

Still, as the daughter of a developer, herself a part-owner of Harbrough and Daughters, the conventional wisdom was that Doah would never elect a developer as mayor.

quote:

Mr. Caputo was fiercely neutral, took great pride in the fierceness of his neutrality

ibntumart posted:

Just please tell me that the bowling ball in this story isn't sentient a la Lumiere or Cogsworth.

McKilligan posted:

What the gently caress? Someone fingerbangs a magic bowling ball so hard it turns from opaque to transparent? Is that what I'm reading?

divabot posted:

Feminazi bitches, amirite?

Strom Cuzewon posted:

using a title that only British citizens can be awarded

Alhazred posted:

That's not how umlauts works

Wiggy Marie posted:

- Daemon and Jaenelle end up as a couple. They share a father, but it's OK because Jaenelle is his adopted daughter.
- said father is Saeten, who rules over Hell and the series' vampire stand-in, the demon-dead. He is extremely handsome. His sons, Saeton Daemon (goes by Daemon) and Lucivar (who has bat-like wings) are also extremely handsome. I know someone else already pointed out the naming scheme, but it's worth repeating for emphasis. One of the characters is named Surreal. Clever.

Side Effects posted:

So I found this in the free book share near my apartment. I think it might be the most Boston thing ever:





I'll post some quotes from it when I get home.