The books you hated!

[SimonDoom]

I didn't mean to imply for a whole season. I was speaking of individual games, but it isn't unheard of in a single series in postseason play to get there. Carlos Beltrán hit .435 in the 2004 postseason with eight home runs. Proving my point about swinging for the fence, Nelson Cruz scored eight home runs in a 2011 postseason series. In the 2020 postseason, Seager also hit eight home runs, tying with Carlos Beltrán, Nelson Cruz, Barry Bonds, and Adolis García. Randy Arozarena holds the record for most home runs in a single postseason series, with a remarkable 10 in the 2020 postseason. In the current season, at the moment, Aaron Judge has the highest batting average since 2000, with an average of .395.

And yes, no one has maintained a 400 for an entire season in forever. But hope springs eternal, right?

Aaron Judge, as of today, is up to .398 at the beginning of June. That's remarkable. It's possible.

I recall watching an interview with the late biology professor --and die-hard Yankees fan-- Stephen Jay Gould, who explained the disappearance of the .400 hitter. It's because baseball players have, overall, gotten better, not worse. As the overall quality rises, it becomes more difficult to be an outlier. The distribution curve changes, so it's harder than ever to be a .400 hitter. Average pitching it much better than it used to be (not "use to be" ).

Another factor working against batting average is that with the rise of sabermetrics players focus more on on-base percentage and on-base percentage + slugging percentage (OPS) more. Barry Bonds was the master of this. He didn't always have the highest batting average but his on base percentage was astronomical because he walked so often. People figured out that getting on base, by whatever method, was more important than getting a hit, in terms of value to the team.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Did I write use to be? My bad!

Aaron Judge, as of today, is up to .398 at the beginning of June. That's remarkable. It's possible.

I recall watching an interview with the late biology professor --and die-hard Yankees fan-- Stephen Jay Gould, who explained the disappearance of the .400 hitter. It's because baseball players have, overall, gotten better, not worse. As the overall quality rises, it becomes more difficult to be an outlier. The distribution curve changes, so it's harder than ever to be a .400 hitter. Average pitching it much better than it used to be (not "use to be" ).

Another factor working against batting average is that with the rise of sabermetrics players focus more on on-base percentage and on-base percentage + slugging percentage (OPS) more. Barry Bonds was the master of this. He didn't always have the highest batting average but his on base percentage was astronomical because he walked so often. People figured out that getting on base, by whatever method, was more important than getting a hit, in terms of value to the team.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Game of Thrones. I stopped after book 2, bored out of my mind with all the padding and a plot that was all over the map.

Russian novels in general. I did a university course in 19th century Russian Lit, and I read them all. Tolstoy. Dostoevsky. Pushkin. Turgenev, Oblomov, by Goncharov (or was it the other way round), Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, Gogol's Dead Souls. I tried a few later ones too - Doctor Zhivago (loved the movie), and Mikhail Sholokhov's "And Quiet flows the Don." And of course Solzhenitsyn.

"The only thing more boring than Russian novels in English is Russian novels in Russian," as my lecturer said. He was right. Russian novels are an infallible cure for insomnia. Try one right after breakfast. You'll be back asleep before you know it. You may even deleop a deep seated dislike of Russians just from the novels.

Anything by Neil Gaiman. (yawns and falls asleep at the mere mention of the name)

Twilight. (Gags)

There's lots more but those are the ones I react to without thought. LOL

 

[MillieDynamite]

Fifty Shades of Grey poor writing worse grammar and romanticized bondage, WTF‽ I put it down after the second chapter and never fouled my mind with any of E. L. James's works again.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Fifty Shades of Grey poor writing worse grammar and romanticized bondage, WTF‽ I put it down after the second chapter and never fouled my mind with any of E. L. James's works again.

I read all three but honestly I couldn't see the appeal altho it was readable and it didn're bore me. I managed to read all three. The sex wasn't great, the bdsm was pretty vanilla, and they weren't that well written

That said, she made a bundle and I can't fault that. Good for her LOL.

 

[MillieDynamite]

@ChloeTzang No, I don't either. I have it Mum and she also tried to read it. She was born in England, moved Malaysia when she was 10ish, and then spent her life in Austria until coming here. She said for Brit, James was terrible with the Queens English. I guess nowadays it would be the Kings English. I think Mum made it through third chapter, she donated it a used bookstore. She's friends with the owner. Actually, she traded it for a better book, at least it was to Mum.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The Silverblood Promise by James Logan

I picked up this book because the next book in the series - The Blackfire Blade, recently came out, and I read a recommendation for the book.

The book starts nicely, with a fun situation, and you immediately get The Lies of Locke Lamora vibe. But that's where most of the comparison stops. The thin MC, whose only redeeming point is an occasional semi-funny quip, the too-obvious and very thin plot, the uninteresting characters, save for one little girl, the gender pandering, the lack of worldbuilding...

I honestly don't know who writes these reviews, but I can't recommend it at all. It's too long to be just a fun read, and it's severely lacking to be anything more than that.

 

[Britva415]

Christopher Paolini.

I quit Eragon at about the half way point. The writing was so ham-fisted and the plot was so uncompelling. A sterling example of someone who can world-build their ass off and not write an interesting story from it, or make me care about a character.

 

[Duleigh]

I quit Eragon at about the half way point.

I congratulate you for your valor! I barely made it a quarter way in. When you set a book down for a day and realize you forgot what you read yesterday and have to refresh your memory, it's not worth the effort.

Robert Asprin wrote a book that I adored back in 1978. I was young and living in Germany. I was reading Robert Asprin's Another Fine Myth, it was sharp and funny and ended all too quickly. A truly fun read, and I couldn't wait for more. When I returned to the US and got myself settled in North Dakota (yes, I'm looking for pity) I found #2 in the series, Myth Conceptions. followed two years later by Myth Directions. The stories were readable but getting progressively worn, bland. By the time he hit #6 Little Myth Marker, they were horrible compared to Another Fine Myth. The plots were tired, the jokes were stale. He lost the spark. Luckily there was discworld to rescue me. I'll still read Another Fine Myth on occasion, but that's it. Their publishing house is gone so I'm not sure if the books are available outside of a used book store.

 

[Djmac1031]

I wouldn't say "hate," but certainly a disappointment.

As a huge Stephen King fan, I was excited by the release of Its The End Of The World As We Know It, an anthology of short stories by various authors set in the universe of The Stand, one of Kings most popular and acclaimed novels.

Unfortunately I think too many of the authors missed the point. Almost every story felt like a set up for what should be a much longer tale.

I found myself asking variations of "what happens next? / what was the point?" at the end of almost every story.

Perhaps the limitations of being set in an already established world where we know the outcome of many events, events set in stone in the original novel, limited their ability to tell a complete story. Perhaps there were also limitations imposed on how much their stories could interact / crossover with characters or events in the original.

But overall I just found the whole thing generally disappointing and ultimately pointless.

 

[THBGato]

I quit Eragon at about the half way point. The writing was so ham-fisted and the plot was so uncompelling. A sterling example of someone who can world-build their ass off and not write an interesting story from it, or make me care about a character.

I made it through. It's basically "Star Wars: A New Hope".

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I made it through. It's basically "Star Wars: A New Hope".

They are also looking for droids in Eragon?

 

[Britva415]

I made it through. It's basically "Star Wars: A New Hope".

The author couldn't have made me care less if he tried.

For that matter, I don't believe he could have made me care more if he tried, either.

The trope isn't what makes a story good. The execution sucked ASS.

 

[Britva415]

I wouldn't say "hate," but certainly a disappointment.

As a huge Stephen King fan, I was excited by the release of Its The End Of The World As We Know It, an anthology of short stories by various authors set in the universe of The Stand, one of Kings most popular and acclaimed novels.

Unfortunately I think too many of the authors missed the point. Almost every story felt like a set up for what should be a much longer tale.

I found myself asking variations of "what happens next? / what was the point?" at the end of almost every story.

Perhaps the limitations of being set in an already established world where we know the outcome of many events, events set in stone in the original novel, limited their ability to tell a complete story. Perhaps there were also limitations imposed on how much their stories could interact / crossover with characters or events in the original.

But overall I just found the whole thing generally disappointing and ultimately pointless.

I haven't read it, but it makes me think about how one of the cool things about the short-story format is that sometimes stuff doesn't have to "happen" in one. They can be about merely evoking a mood, feeling or situation, without resolving it.

It's also very common for a short-story which does have a minimalist plot to leave a lot of unanswered questions. Like "what happens next." The impact of a short-story's ending very often derives from NOT knowing what happens next, as that enhances the poignancy of what happened.

Wouldn't being told what happens next have ruined The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry), for example? It wasn't the point at all.

Anyway, like I said, I haven't read it, but I'm a huge fan of the short-story as a literary form and I wonder whether I would have reacted the same way.

 

[AchtungNight]

The Bible. I found it boring and stilted as heck. Maybe because I was forced to read it so many times growing up with the forced church attendance. Yeah, it’s got good parts, but there are many better books out there.

 

[Voboy]

Robert Asprin wrote a book that I adored back in 1978. I was young and living in Germany. I was reading Robert Asprin's Another Fine Myth, it was sharp and funny and ended all too quickly. A truly fun read, and I couldn't wait for more. When I returned to the US and got myself settled in North Dakota (yes, I'm looking for pity) I found #2 in the series, Myth Conceptions. followed two years later by Myth Directions. The stories were readable but getting progressively worn, bland. By the time he hit #6 Little Myth Marker, they were horrible compared to Another Fine Myth. The plots were tired, the jokes were stale. He lost the spark. Luckily there was discworld to rescue me. I'll still read Another Fine Myth on occasion, but that's it. Their publishing house is gone so I'm not sure if the books are available outside of a used book store.

I had precisely the same experience with precisely the same books. I also felt the same way about Eddings and his endless tacked-on McGuffins to keep Garion moving around from place to place.

Asprin edited Thieves' World and that was amazing for awhile before it, too, sort of became a victim of its own worldbuilding.

 

[Djmac1031]

The Bible. I found it boring and stilted as heck. Maybe because I was forced to read it so many times growing up with the forced church attendance. Yeah, it’s got good parts, but there are many better books out there.

My main objections were that it was highly unrealistic and the main character was downright unlikable.

 

[Djmac1031]

I haven't read it, but it makes me think about how one of the cool things about the short-story format is that sometimes stuff doesn't have to "happen" in one. They can be about merely evoking a mood, feeling or situation, without resolving it.

It's also very common for a short-story which does have a minimalist plot to leave a lot of unanswered questions. Like "what happens next." The impact of a short-story's ending very often derives from NOT knowing what happens next, as that enhances the poignancy of what happened.

Wouldn't being told what happens next have ruined The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry), for example? It wasn't the point at all.

Anyway, like I said, I haven't read it, but I'm a huge fan of the short-story as a literary form and I wonder whether I would have reacted the same way.

Absolutely get your point and mostly agree. That said, when done properly, even an open ended short story can feel "complete" in that readers were given all they NEED to know, then left to imagine the rest as they will.

Again maybe it's because while these stories take place in the same world as The Stand at the same time as the events in that novel, they're not connected to those events directly. And I suppose they couldn't be. That story was already told.

Again I didn't HATE it. And there were stories I thought were good, entertaining, well written. But then they'd just end and I'd be like, "wait, that's IT?"

 

[THBGato]

They are also looking for droids in Eragon?

It's been many years, but basically young guy has to find recluse in the forest to train him in magic, then they need to rescue Princess from bad guy's lair with the help of an outlaw. There's a rebel alliance. No droids as I recall, but tons of other parallels.

 

[Britva415]

wait, that's IT?

Wrong universe!


(Supposed to be a picture of Pennywise there, idk why IT’s not showing up)

 

[YmaOHyd]

I didn't hate it, but Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose. It's fine, Ambrose is fine (if you can overlook the plagiarism scandals), whatever. It's a proxy for a thing you see all over the place with popular histories, which is the book written by assembling discarded bits of research plus pieces of books you already wrote. Citizen Soldiers is a particularly bad example (again, discounting the plagiarism). Ambrose relies heavily on oral history, and re-uses the oral histories he's already collected for other works, repeating long quotations to make the same points in the same places in the same ways he made them in previous books.

He's not the only one. I get the same feeling reading some of James Holland's work, like I'm reading something from the cutting-room floor of another book.

 

[MillieDynamite]

A different IT!

 

[redgarters]

Gatsby is on my 'most boring books of all time' list. Never understood the hype.
Twilight is just bad writing, I never got past the first chapters.
But Fifty Shades of Gray I absolutely hate. It has nothing whatsoever to do with BDSM, it's about abuse and domestic violence.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Wrong universe!

Same universe! Stephen King loooves his little Dark Tower metasetting.

 

[YmaOHyd]

But Fifty Shades of Gray I absolutely hate. It has nothing whatsoever to do with BDSM, it's about abuse and domestic violence.

As I understand it, at the end he's basically cured of his desire to do BDSM stuff by the love of a good woman. It's about the most anti-kink message possible. "Broken people do this, and only broken people, and when you are fixed you will no longer have these desires."