The Really Awful Writing in a Published Book Thread

[jomar]

Context - nighttime, Vietnam.

The rifle poked into the black night like a needle point into a giant-sized bowl of black raspberry Jello.

 

[Handley_Page]

Context - nighttime, Vietnam.

The rifle poked into the black night like a needle point into a giant-sized bowl of black raspberry Jello.

Quite descriptive, I think

 

[lovecraft68]

Look, there's always room for Jello.

 

[KlaytonFrost]

Where was that from?

As far as really awful writing in a published book goes, I've not yet found a better goldmine than Fifty Shades.

 

[lovecraft68]

Where was that from?

As far as really awful writing in a published book goes, I've not yet found a better goldmine than Fifty Shades.

I read about 10 chapters scattered through the three books just to get a feel of was this as bad as people said.....

It really is terrible. I cannot believe a 40+ year old adult wrote that. Never mind how bad the content is.

I am hard pressed to find another example of a book that both main characters were totally unlikable.

 

[jomar]

Quite descriptive, I think

I came to a screeching halt in a WTF moment.

Look, there's always room for Jello.

The next FAWCK theme!

Where was that from?

As far as really awful writing in a published book goes, I've not yet found a better goldmine than Fifty Shades.

A Few Good Men by D Gazzinga (not the TC/JN movie). A good heart and well intentioned, but really clumsy.

 

[allamagione]

From The Maltese Falcon, as Sam Spade prepares to bed the femme fatale for the first time:

His eyes burned yellowly.​

 

[lovecraft68]

From The Maltese Falcon, as Sam Spade prepares to bed the femme fatale for the first time:

His eyes burned yellowly.​

I never knew colors could be adverbs.

 

[allamagione]

I never knew colors could be adverbs.

I never knew eyes could be yellow-gray to begin with. I'm calling Marty Stu on that one.

 

[jomar]

From The Maltese Falcon, as Sam Spade prepares to bed the femme fatale for the first time:

His eyes burned yellowly.​

Not Hammett!

 

[lovecraft68]

I never knew eyes could be yellow-gray to begin with. I'm calling Marty Stu on that one.

Maybe in a non human scenario.

I kept hearing of "grey/blue" eyes, but it wasn't until a few years back I saw someone that had eyes that could be described that way.

But come to think of it maybe the yellow eye description was because the woman had jaundice?

 

[allamagione]

Not Hammett!

That is rather like shooting fish in a barrel, isn't it?

 

[gotherella]

i think you have to go a long way to find worse writing than by dan brown, my favourite sentence from the da vinci code, chapter 4:

radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

i really think the man needs a dictionary how can anything forecast a reputation, makes no sense at all to me.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

i think you have to go a long way to find worse writing than by dan brown, my favourite sentence from the da vinci code, chapter 4:

radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

i really think the man needs a dictionary how can anything forecast a reputation, makes no sense at all to me.

Well, he's either Mime or a telepath.

 

[gotherella]

Well, he's either Mime or a telepath.

lmfao, defo a mime lmfao

 

[jomar]

i think you have to go a long way to find worse writing than by dan brown, my favourite sentence from the da vinci code, chapter 4:

radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

i really think the man needs a dictionary how can anything forecast a reputation, makes no sense at all to me.

Awesome. I need to drill down to his specifics. The overarching happenings are so ludicrous that I miss the awful writing.

 

[Bramblethorn]

"...he carried about an insidious atmosphere of irony or amusement, accompanied at certain moments by a deep, guttural chuckle like that of a giant turtle which has just torn to pieces some furry animal and is ambling away towards the sea". - Adolphe De Castro/H.P. Lovecraft, "The Last Test".

I think it's supposed to be sinister but it just left me thinking "wtf dudes you both fail at turtles". They even mention the "testudinous chuckle" again later in the story.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

"...he carried about an insidious atmosphere of irony or amusement, accompanied at certain moments by a deep, guttural chuckle like that of a giant turtle which has just torn to pieces some furry animal and is ambling away towards the sea". - Adolphe De Castro/H.P. Lovecraft, "The Last Test".

I think it's supposed to be sinister but it just left me thinking "wtf dudes you both fail at turtles". They even mention the "testudinous chuckle" again later in the story.

Goddamn turtles! Always laughing at me behind my back. I know it!

 

[Hypoxia]

Goddamn turtles! Always laughing at me behind my back. I know it!

It's turtles all the way down. But I digress.

I nominate, not a single book, but the early oeuvre of a publisher, a technical publisher: Sybex. For amusement, I used to read their computer manuals and highlight all the typos, misinformation, redundancies (the same irrelevant diagram FIVE TIMES in one book!) and blatant horseshit. Masterpieces of muckiness!

 

[AMoveableBeast]

It's turtles all the way down. But I digress.

I nominate, not a single book, but the early oeuvre of a publisher, a technical publisher: Sybex. For amusement, I used to read their computer manuals and highlight all the typos, misinformation, redundancies (the same irrelevant diagram FIVE TIMES in one book!) and blatant horseshit. Masterpieces of muckiness!

I just referenced this in my Nude Day story!

 

[gotherella]

i had previously read the holy blood and the holy grail so could find nothing even remotely new in dan browns paranoid little conspiracy claptrap, i really think dan brown is the idiots umberto eco, how or why his books became so famous i have no clue, here is another one of my favourite sentences of his, the opening sentence of the da vinci code even i can see the errors and it gives you a good idea of the book you are just about to read. or how to fill up the pages with details to stop people questioning the lack of coherent story lol.

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.

 

[Handley_Page]

Maybe in a non human scenario.

I kept hearing of "grey/blue" eyes, but it wasn't until a few years back I saw someone that had eyes that could be described that way.

This colour of eyes is often seen in the UK.

I never knew eyes could be yellow-gray to begin with. I'm calling Marty Stu on that one.

I've never quite got my head round the idea of a first double-name. It's done a lot in France (Jean-Claude, and so on), but not much in the UK, although I guess some twerp will try it on). It's as if there are insufficient names in the database, which I find difficult to grasp, given the size of the "Baby's name" books (for some people).

i think you have to go a long way to find worse writing than by dan brown, my favourite sentence from the da vinci code, chapter 4:

radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

i really think the man needs a dictionary how can anything forecast a reputation, makes no sense at all to me.

Should that more properly be fore-cast ?

It's turtles all the way down. But I digress.

I nominate, not a single book, but the early oeuvre of a publisher, a technical publisher: Sybex. For amusement, I used to read their computer manuals and highlight all the typos, misinformation, redundancies (the same irrelevant diagram FIVE TIMES in one book!) and blatant horseshit. Masterpieces of muckiness!

Oh, I do so agree.
Most of these were not written by a Technical Author (who, let's face it, is supposed to be a writer First), but some poor (ignorant) clot who had the job thrown at him/her at the last minute.

 

[DesEsseintes]

I love Inspector Morse and have read all the novels, though I think this was one of the rare occasions where the TV version outshone its precursor. But there is an astonishing passage in the first book, which deals with what looks very much like a sex murder. Not exactly badly written, but - well, you be the judge.

Man: Do you believe a young girl can get raped?
Woman: It must be jolly difficult for the man.
Man: Mm.
Woman: Have you ever raped a woman?
Man: I could rape you, any day of the week.
Woman: But I wouldn't let you. I wouldn't put up any resistance. Peter.....rape me again!

This was written in 1975 (not 1575!) and was not remarked on as anything at all unusual at the time. It almost makes me sympathize with Andrew Dworkin.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Goddamn turtles! Always laughing at me behind my back. I know it!

"Even as a child, I was hated by skeletons!"

 

[Bramblethorn]

ooh ooh ooh!

The vampire - perfect incarnation of Eros and Thanatos, whose coming ruptures the hymen of midnight, corrupts the virtuous virgin and de-enlightens the sexual morals; illuminating the eclipsed subconscious, and embodying archetypes of the sexual imagination. A vampire's spectre augurs erotic deliria: carnal debilitation, auto-erogenous metempsychosis, fetishism and lesbianism, necrophiliac dementia, auto-symbolic incest, masturbation. As the Shadow's avatar, the vampire represents the anima or animus of manifest desire and dread, born of the right side of the brain; opening the body's blood-gates, flooding the repressed psyche with wonder and disgust.

The male vampire is a catamenial harbinger supping blood from the newly violated throat (neck) as menses discharge through the cervix (neck of womb) from the rawly-opened uterus. He is the psyche's first lover, supping on the purpled maidenhead. The Prince of Darkness, with his waxing and waning crescent fangs, is the over-riding animus of menstruation prevalent in late 19th Century and modern mythology. An anathema abalienated from the recesses of the "imaginary". Appearing at the "dark" time or tenebrous side of the cyclical female calendar, he conveys the impression he is withholding esoteric knowledge and an animalistic magnetic instinct. The sexual lycanthropy of the dream-mind. Like a religious master. Frightening but unbelievably exciting. Lupine, bestial, yet often serene. He liberates his lady (his hostess). Her Victorian bustles and corsets unravel, and she swiftly cavorts in a white shroud encrimsoned with bloody maculations; utterly unhampered. Gone is her ascetic pallor as her full sexuality is embraced by her very own "dark lover" and "alternative husband". The one who relishes, feeds upon the side of herself ordinarily denied her by patriarchal Victorian standards. The accoucheur of the sexual antinomian. Worshipping the raw eternal wound.

And the vulva can be a flower. The overly lush orchid or narcotic opiate poppy. Blooming, blossoming, expanding and opening. Or stifled. And menstruation can be the flower; the bloom of power and possibility. The flow-er. The Olde English flower; a posy of roses; red, red roses; blood and roses. And as a flower mysteriously holds within it the promise of future fruit or not, so can she. Only she is forced into being passively maternal, and so the flower becomes a threat and not a promise. For it is a symbol of non-procreation, and the women turn inwards during their bleeding - towards their dreams and the multi-aspects of their deep or truer selves. Towards archetypal lovers, animal accomplices, bestial alter-egos and mythological icons.

- from the introduction in a book of vampire fiction. It went on like this for another twenty pages. THESAURUS PRIVILEGES REVOKED.