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I'd like to nominate everything Jonathan Safran Foer's ever written. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close especially. Twee author avatar insert narrators suck. Come to think of it, if I read an author bio mentioning the Iowa Writer's Workshop or Columbia, I mentally prepare for the worst.
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Jul 2, 2015 04:43
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Do comics count? Scott Pilgrim is like the Ready Player One of comics.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:04
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Ninurta posted:gently caress you and your poo poo opinions. Because when we dislike one of your favorites out loud, we're actually casting a creativity impotence spell on its creators. I got around to reading David Brin's The Postman and ended up giving the book away. Self insertion fic after the apocalypse.
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Jul 7, 2015 06:51
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22 Eargesplitten posted:These threads always make me want to start writing again, because even though I have maybe a thousand hours of writing to go before I would even submit something to CC for critique, I know I will never be as bad as some of these authors. Go ahead and write, even if it's stuff you'd never show to another living soul. Recording the words is most of the way to a finished work and I'll fistfight anyone who says otherwise.
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Jul 9, 2015 23:48
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Wasn't there a false memoir published sometime in the early aughts by an abused and drug-addicted transgender teen from some southern or midwest shithole that turned out to be written by a middle-aged woman who got royally pissed off when her persona got outed? (pokes the internet for a while) Aha. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by JT LeRoy. EDIT: I long for the alternate reality where Lucas didn't get 100% merchandising rights in perpetuity and Star Wars has the same kind of cult status as Battle Beyond the Stars or Last Starfighter. I brought my Drake has a new favorite as of 04:19 on Jul 18, 2015 |
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Jul 18, 2015 04:14
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Sleeveless posted:There's also A Child Called It, which was a really popular piece of torture porn among the Chicken Soup for the Soul crowd in the 90s that turned out to be almost completely fabricated, complete with the author suddenly "remembering" enough material to make a sequel after the book became a bestseller. It also shows up on middle/high school reading lists. And IIRC it's only a NYT bestseller because the author buys up tons of copies from the distros to sell at his speaking engagements and seminars.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:52
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The footnotes prevented me from enjoying Dr Strange and Mr Norrell. Footnotes in fiction and creative nonfiction piss me right the gently caress off. It's like that one person you know who's always dropping asides only humorous to him or her.
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Nov 2, 2015 01:53
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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 Who has two thumbs and hates trite textual storytelling? This guy! (Now I'm trying to think of a book that was published maybe 2009-2010 where the authors came up with the "innovative" idea to include YouTube links to filmed scenes during the chapter breaks. They copyrighted this under a twee portmanteau, and it's not cinenovel, but I can't remember what it is. Argh.)
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Nov 2, 2015 05:05
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Pretty longwinded for a backhanded compliment. And thanks (I think) for jogging my memory, rangpur. Anthony E. Zuiker's written other stinkers. (And Steve Dark's name in the German translation is Dunkle Seele.) Murder in Mystery Manor posted:British butler Giles has taken a job for three times his usual salary. He is soon to find out that he will forever be cursed and faced with allowing a group of unknowing people to meet a killer so maniacal and twisted that the murders are virtually motiveless. Giles welcomes ten guests to a luxurious estate where they will be embarking on a diabolical game of life and death. Giles, while on the guests' side, is a leader who will get out of the way of the killer and stand by as one person in each chapter is murdered in an outrageous manner. For example, one murder is a choreographed shark where the guests have to retrieve the victim's head from the shark's body. Another murder will be at the hands of a driverless car ala Stephen King's Christine. After each murder, the rest of the guests will have their choice of investigating the crime scene, the body or the last known whereabouts. They then must present their account of the details of the murder. The two whose assessments are least accurate will not sleep easy, knowing one of them will be killed shortly and painfully. In the end, we will be left with the winner, the loser and the killer. The epilogue will set up Giles's continued journey and Book 2.
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Nov 28, 2015 03:09
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Senior Woodchuck posted:This is the flap copy (or digital equivalent)? Like, he's trying to sell us the book with this? Yup, that's the publisher description! Even has a sequel--takes place at an island resort.
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Nov 28, 2015 05:58
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Huh. So it is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whodunnit%3F_(2013_U.S._TV_series) And Zuiker is the brainchild behind the CSI franchise. Enough money to hire a ghostwriter, enough ego to believe it unnecessary.
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Nov 28, 2015 08:11
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Sham bam bamina! posted:This is just a Penny Arcade punchline, right? Not a real, published piece of fiction? the linked wiki entry because it hurt me so i hurt back posted:The IG Series Prototype Project was the visualization of Imperial Supervisor Gurdun to manufacture the ultimate assassin droid. The IG-88 prototype was activated at the Holowan Laboratories sometime prior to the year of 15 BBY.[source?] Due to the sentient programming of one of the particular assassin droids, it immediately developed a sense of independence. After dispatching the laboratory personnel, IG-88A infused his programming into three identical counterparts. The four quickly commandeered a starship and made liftoff. Traveling to Mechis III, they developed a stratagem to seize command over the galaxy. And, because it's a fandom wiki, assume every made-up word and proper noun links to its own page.
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Dec 8, 2015 00:35
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Darthemed posted:Checking the back cover, Free Enterprise + Elves/Leprechauns was published in 1990, so for all of its faults, at least Harry Potter-chasing isn't one of them. ElfQuest, maybe? The 80s fostered a lot of stupid punny sci-fi. I can't believe I ever read anything by Spider Robinson and actually enjoyed it.
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Jun 9, 2016 02:51
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Jim Hines' Libromancer series opens with a cataloger entering books into a public library catalog by zapping ISBNs with a barcode scanner. The audience (and the story for that matter) doesn't need a palletload of technobabble to understand why a specialist is competent or even the best specialist who ever specialized. It's the little things. Books describing legendary gunslingers are bad about this too.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:13
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I like it when Mike pretends he has any right to make fun of anyone else's writing style
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Aug 31, 2016 16:29
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Kay Kessler posted:Everyone complains about having to read The Scarlet Letter or The Pearl, but I haven't met anyone that hated when their class read Shakespeare. I can't stand Romeo and Juliet because I sat through it in four classes, two in high school and two in college. I just wanted to write the paper and be done with it.
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Sep 10, 2016 00:50
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Dienes posted:Did your class need to read it out loud, in class, in its entirety? Nothing fosters a love of literature like the stumbling, monotone, bored recitations of teenagers. Yes. And stopping at all the lewd parts for explanations. Why is there always one kid in every Shakespeare class who wants to write their essay on Billy's werty derdys?
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Sep 10, 2016 01:32
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Alaois posted:CSI co-creator Anthony Zuiker's Level 26: Dark Origins is amazingly awful, but don't take my word for it, watch the trailer to see for yourself! And that's not the only video, cause this is a diginovel. With hyperlinks in the text, no less. I remember flipping through it at the library. It was kinda like reading a mid-90s point and click adventure game with Quicktime video cutscenes. There was also that piece of trash J.J. Abrams co-wrote where the REAL story was marginalia written by two different people in a library book. Gimmicky garbage.
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Dec 8, 2016 08:03
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Cornwind Evil posted:The thing that always bugged me the most about Twilight is they are/were so goddamn popular while also being absolutely terrible in every sense: I ask the same thing about Fifty Shades of Grey, The Help, and everything by Dan Brown (who apparently has a new book coming out soon, can't wait to find out which poorly-researched historical conspiracy his Gary Stu will be investigating this time.)
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May 8, 2017 01:36
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Some poor guy has been doing a chapter-by-chapter deconstruction of the whole series and it's an informative, if not depressing, read. And it's sometimes funny! And depressing.
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May 25, 2017 04:48
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outlier posted:Looks like revisionist Tolkien is a genre in Russia. It's a genre in America too. It's called dark fantasy. (As opposed to high, low, tapestry, etc. fantasy, why the gently caress do I remember this poo poo and not anything of value or worth anymore.)
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Jun 14, 2017 19:23
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Powaqoatse posted:commercial cloaca Great username spotted.
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Jul 15, 2017 01:23
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Brass Key posted:What annoyed me most about RPO is that it starts with an interesting setup- a future of grinding poverty and this kid trying to pull himself up though the medium of virtual reality where no one knows how he lives or what he's like in real life... I have yet to read this theme done right. I've also tried getting short stories like this published and haven't found a buyer yet, so either the market's glutted or I'm not as clever as I think I am.  SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:Oof, well that was pretentious. Anyway RPO is awful, I hope someone pulls it apart sporking/MST3K style, I hope the film fails miserably, and if my acquaintance praises its virtues beyond popcorn flick I may have to cut off all contact. The movie could be okay if the screenwriters cherry-pick from the book. (And they might have to because of all the trademarks.) Sham bam bamina! posted:Who could care that a straight white nerdy guy likes things that straight white nerdy guys like? No poo poo, of course he's going to quote Star Wars and not Paris Is Burning. Most people don't make a concerted effort to avoid conforming to their own demographics, which is why demographics exist in the first place. Of all the things to take him to task for (and you're really spoiled for choice), this might be the least reasonable. I'll spring the trap, I guess. For all the book's attempts to be progressive (the protagonist's trash-talking best friend in game is a fat black teenage girl irl) it's held back by the author's knowledge base. I've written a lot about small Southern towns in the 80s and 90s, and despite living here all my life, I still have to research stuff. Wade doesn't have to know everything about 1980s geek fandom, but Cline should--especially because Helen should know what it's like being a culture nerd of color. EDIT: I have fat thumbs and I must mobile post. I brought my Drake has a new favorite as of 16:55 on Jul 29, 2017 |
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Jul 29, 2017 16:53
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I had to put down Libromancer because the protagonist, a cataloger for a public library, did his job by standing at the front desk zapping ISBNs. Dude, really, you couldn't have just shadowed or interviewed an actual cataloger or other back-of-house staffer to find out what they actually do?
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Aug 23, 2017 21:53
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Pastry of the Year posted:Copy cataloging is a thing. There's no reason to create a MARC record from scratch for mass marketed materials that are all exactly alike when you can zap said ISBN and download a perfectly good MARC from, say, OCLC right into your local database, especially if you've got hundreds of new titles to add. That's true, and I also think it's a level of detail the author should know because the character should know it too. (Insert my exegesis on author/character knowledge, sand off the RPO part and replace with Libromancer.) I also never used Connexion at the front desk so I call foul. 
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Aug 24, 2017 01:58
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Tiggum posted:She's written a ton of stuff and I'm tempted to see if it's all this funny, but the prices are just slightly above my limit for something I expect to be bad. Those quotes are brilliant though. A public library should have it. My podunk one does--and in large print no less.
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Sep 12, 2017 17:42
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Antivehicular posted:If it's a competition... can't she just throw it? Do the Selection losers get Lottery'd to ensure a good corn harvest? From what I understand, it's a chance (possibly the only one) for a contestant to escape poverty. Hunger Games meets the Bachelor and all that. With so many things in this thread, it's a seed of a good idea grown to predicable conclusions.
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Sep 20, 2017 12:39
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Has there been a book like Watch on the Rhine done competently? I'm a fan of "summoning the Deep Ones to stop Cthulhu" stories and they all suck. Like eating your favorite treat not realizing it's stuffed with something disgusting and now it's running down your shirt.
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Sep 21, 2017 18:36
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outlier posted:You've reminded me of a Terrible Book from years ago (the mid-80s?): Airscream. For a while, it seemed to be in every used book shop and pile of free books, so as a bookish youth I ended up reading it. Essentially it's the lead to a horrific mid-air collision and the public inquiry afterward. The court material is decently readable, but the crash itself features lots of characters being finely detailed and then suddenly killed. The one that sticks in my mind is a whole chapter about a farmer, the details of his life, his worries about the farm, the conversations with his family, what he does that day, etc. etc. Then in the final paragraph of the chapter, he's eviscerated by red-hot falling debris and never mentioned for the rest of the book. That reminds me of a short story I read for school about an elderly curmudgeon who gets shot in the head during a bank robbery and the rest of the story is about his last fleeting thoughts: a childhood memory involving baseball and a curious turn of phrase. Like the story takes an abrupt and unapologetic turn. *Googles* It's Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff.
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Oct 12, 2017 01:26
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hackbunny posted:
It's been over a decade since my last college class, but I'm pretty sure rationalism is an aspect of literary criticism and not a goddamn genre.
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Jan 3, 2018 23:00
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Ugly In The Morning posted:It should be taught to all speculative fiction authors that if you’re thinking of writing a sex scene, don’t. I for one would love to read supernatural horror that doesn't involve a protagonist looking to bang or a written-to-be-bangable protagonist.
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May 5, 2018 19:35
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Lisa's mom has a peach butt.
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Oct 21, 2018 19:40
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McKays/Mr K's are beautiful places. EDIT: That's my snipe and I'm stickin' to it.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:10
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IshmaelZarkov posted:
Never thought about it this way, interesting.
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Dec 17, 2019 00:09
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:Just the concept of a vampire living through the centuries and having to adapt to changing societies and technologies while constantly changing his identity is interesting. You could still have love stories and even explore how he goes through numerous romances which all end in tragedy because he outlives them all. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St Germain series is really good historical fiction about times and places that aren't really told about often in fiction. Her take on vampires also cleaves toward the Romanian myths. It's been a while since I've read them but I remember being fascinated when I did. Hopefully they've aged well. I remember one of the main character's love interests became a vampire in Roman times and lived up until 17th century in France, I think. I wish more books would explore the morality of immortality.
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Dec 21, 2019 23:41
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Reminds me of the Geronimo Stilton books, what with the weird font changes and all. I doubt there's a stupid and creepy Cookie Monster vagina metaphor in Geronimo Stilton though.
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Jan 12, 2020 22:23
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AlbieQuirky posted:The Book of the New Sun is exceptional, though. I think a lot of his other work that isn’t related to that universe gets unwonted luster from that reflected glory. I think a lot of authors have one absolute banger and the rest are fairly middling, and the window shifts depending on how hard their best book bangs. I read Starless Sea for book club and it was terrible. Erin Morgenstern can't write a cohesive plot, which is a shame because the setting was neat.
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Apr 1, 2023 18:00
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My boyfriend works in a manufacturing plant with a bunch of rednecks aged 40s-70s. They thought twerk was what kids these days were using as slang for work, as in "I'll go twerk over here on this machine while you're twerking on that one." Every time he or I tell this anecdote, we can't get through it without cracking up.
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Sep 20, 2023 16:54
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Captain Hygiene posted:I lucked out in enjoying audiobooks, between listening in bed and while doing low brainpower stuff, I get through hours a day that I wouldn't have time for if I had to sit down and read visually. I slogged through my last book club book as an audiobook and I was drowning. I felt like I couldn't retain it unless I was laser-focused on it. And it was Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed of all things. I really liked Left Hand of Darkness. Yngwie Mangosteen posted:If you have a lot of trouble processing audio only stuff, and don't have a reason already, maybe get checked for ADHD, it was one of the things my shrink said to convince me to test. ...this explains a lot.
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Mar 5, 2024 04:06
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Samovar posted:I wouldn't necessarily say it was terrible, but Lovecraft Country had a bit in it that made me think, 'was this written by a white guy?' then I looked it up and found out that it was, and that experience kinda turned me off the book entirely. Victor LaValle's Ballad of Black Tom is Lovecraftian horror written by a Black author and it's good.
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Mar 5, 2024 17:04
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