Ever regret reading a book?

[Damaris]

(disclaimer- this is a drunken post on a laptop.  I am not responsible for any typos that may appear)

I love to read, but I don't have nearly as much time as I would like anymore.  As a resutl, I tend to put down books that I dont find interesting rather quickly.  Overwhelmignly, I can't think of any books I regret reading, although I do have to say that Danielle Steel is on author I love to hate.

She's a terrible author.  Awful.  Can't string a coherent sentance together bad.  And she writes in a weird tense I have yet to identify.  Yet, I am inexplicably drawn to her work, and continue to read it occasionally.  Obviously, there is something wrong with me.

I just hope that one day she learns proper usage of tense.  I will obviously wait a long, long time.

[Lysander]

I'd say any book I was made to read in school that was chosen by the teacher. Luckily I can only remember three: The Iceberg Hermit, the Giver, and The Great Gadspy. Hermit wasn't intended for symbolism, but the other two were and I despise programmed symbolism. A test question: "what does the yellow car (Gadspy) symbolize?" Freakin' a...   

[Brunhidden]

one thing literary teachers need to realize is that it is incredibly rare for an author to stop mid sentence and ask themselves 'how can i cram random symbolism into this scene?'

no, the author tells a story, thats his job, and part of that job is to fill it with details that make sense. does it make sense?   probably NOT symbolism

[Angel]

one thing literary teachers need to realize is that it is incredibly rare for an author to stop mid sentence and ask themselves 'how can i cram random symbolism into this scene?'

no, the author tells a story, thats his job, and part of that job is to fill it with details that make sense. does it make sense?   probably NOT symbolism

Which is why I was one of the few kids who was thrilled when we read "The Stranger" and "Waiting for Godot." My English teacher in senior year was a good guy who realized that most writers aren't really trying to make something look symbolic just for the sake of tormenting students. They may be trying to represent something, as with Hawthorne, or they might be writing symbolically without really meaning to, as I believe Mary Shelley was doing. But with Waiting for Godot, symbolism was purely in the minds of the readers. Beckett himself never explained the play, knowing that that would ruin the whole purpose.

Symbolism is a bitch of a concept, really. Every time you look at the concept of it, you change your definition of it.

[superluser]

I just finished Interaction of Color, and while I don't regret reading it, I do wish I could have read it with a bunch of other people and had the materials to try out the experiments that were suggested in the book.

Just thought I'd mention it.

[rabid_fox]

I'm an English teacher. Woe.

[Angel]

...I'm not sure whether to envy you or give you a sympathetic hug.

[TheGreyRonin]

I've read quite a lot, but it's rare that I read a book that I take nothing good from, even if it's just an example of how not to write. Pilgrim's Progress is one of those few. Utterly horrible.
And Stephen Donaldson should never be let near anything that can make marks on paper again.

[rabid_fox]

...I'm not sure whether to envy you or give you a sympathetic hug.

I'd accept an empathetic punch in the face.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

...I'm not sure whether to envy you or give you a sympathetic hug.

I'd accept an empathetic punch in the face.

Settle for a full bottle in front of you? ;-]

[Myxini]

well, as read-it-for-school books, I regret reading roughly one each year. 

9th grade: Ethan Frome.  beats you over the head with "OMG THIS IS SYMBOLISM!"  mostly unlikeable characters, and the dumbest suicide attempt i've ever heard of... sledding into a tree.  sledding. 

10th grade: Things Fall Apart.  or rather, I regret reading the first half of it, because when it was STILL going on and on about Yam farming, I said 'screw this' and just guessed the rest for the tests. 

11th grade: Their Eyes Were Watching God.  mostly because so much of it was written in heavy dialect that took a lot of effort to mentally translate it to english, and ruined the flow of the story.  (heavy dialect should be left to 1 or 2 characters at most.  or short poetry, preferably scottish)

12th grade: In french class, we had to read Candide (ou, l'Optimisme).  in french.  I got so sick of 'we are living in the best of all possible worlds.'  I know (now) that it was satire, but at the time, between reading it in french, and lack of context, it was just very very irritating.

and just a couple of  the Worst Offenders I've read since I left school...

The Phantom of the Opera - The musical is a cute little romance, the book it's based on is miserable.  Eric is an outright sociopath, Raoul is a spoiled, posessive brat, and Christine is so passive and weak-willed that I wanted to slap her.  Plus the Opera House Basement setting is ridiculously overblown.  Not just a lake and house, but a series of torture chambers as well, all supposedly hidden in the walls.

The Lair of the White Worm - It's a Bram Stoker story.  I thought 'hey, Dracula was fairly good, lets try this thing.  what a load of crap.  Plot hooks are picked up, then never mentioned again, characters change personality drastically between chapters.  Apparently, Stoker was going insane at the time due to syphillis or somesuch, which MAY explain it, but holy crap what mess! 

I'm currently trying to read Goethe's Faust, but it's in verse so i'm having a hard time remembering what's actually *happening* among all the pretty flowery language. 

[Alteisentier]

Confessor by Terry Goodkind, the last book in the Sword of Truth series.

Fantastic book, simply a wonderful build up to the final climatic ending and the nail in the coffin of such a long series.
But then you get to the past few chapters and NRRRAWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM Off takes the Dues Ex Machina concord heading straight for the moon at hundred million miles an hour.

It's hard to understand how the book got published with such a strange ending. I'll not go into it for spoliers though.

[superluser]

12th grade: In french class, we had to read Candide (ou, l'Optimisme).  in french.  I got so sick of 'we are living in the best of all possible worlds.'  I know (now) that it was satire, but at the time, between reading it in french, and lack of context, it was just very very irritating.

I don't think we can ever be friends.

Though I suppose reading it in French would be pretty irritating.

[Lady Buggery]

I regret Harry Potter 7. I was seriously depressed over the crappy-ness of it all. The plot holes, the easy plot devices, the terrible grammar. 

[Sunblink]

I regret Harry Potter 7. I was seriously depressed over the crappy-ness of it all. The plot holes, the easy plot devices, the terrible grammar. 

Heh, my ex hated the plot holes and plot devices in Harry Potter 7 as well. Personally, I still love the series. I still haven't finished the book because some troll on Deviant Art spoiled it for me

[Lady Buggery]

I regret Harry Potter 7. I was seriously depressed over the crappy-ness of it all. The plot holes, the easy plot devices, the terrible grammar. 

Heh, my ex hated the plot holes and plot devices in Harry Potter 7 as well. Personally, I still love the series. I still haven't finished the book because some troll on Deviant Art spoiled it for me

Curse them! Oh don't get my wrong, HP6 was my favorite out of all of them, but after riding that tremendous high only to land the festering puss filled boil that was book 7...I was seriously depressed for 2 days after reading it. I wanted that day and a half of my life back .

[Myxini]

12th grade: In french class, we had to read Candide (ou, l'Optimisme).  in french.  I got so sick of 'we are living in the best of all possible worlds.'  I know (now) that it was satire, but at the time, between reading it in french, and lack of context, it was just very very irritating.

I don't think we can ever be friends.

Though I suppose reading it in French would be pretty irritating.

I think if I'd read it in english I'd have liked it better.  especially if it included a foreword explaining the ideas of the day that it was satirizing, context is vital to satire.  As it was, the teacher gave no context at all.  She introduced it as a famous book by a brilliant writer.  And a high-school level understanding of french really isn't complete enough to catch the nuances that give something away as Satire.  I'm sure that someone with only 4 years of English lessons would be similarly horrified at A Modest Proposal. 

[superluser]

I think if I'd read it in english I'd have liked it better.  especially if it included a foreword explaining the ideas of the day that it was satirizing, context is vital to satire.  As it was, the teacher gave no context at all.  She introduced it as a famous book by a brilliant writer.  And a high-school level understanding of french really isn't complete enough to catch the nuances that give something away as Satire.  I'm sure that someone with only 4 years of English lessons would be similarly horrified at A Modest Proposal.

The English translation I read provided no context, but it was still pretty clear that it was satire.

One of the things that made the satire work was the exceedingly simple language.  For example:

"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end. Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for stockings--and we have stockings. Stones were made to be hewn, and to construct castles--therefore my lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Pigs were made to be eaten--therefore we eat pork all the year round. Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best."

If you're used to the simple constructions of foreign language primers, it would be easy to miss the fact that the language is simplistic to the point of being trite.

[Myxini]

If you're used to the simple constructions of foreign language primers, it would be easy to miss the fact that the language is simplistic to the point of being trite.

I suspect that's the main reason it wasn't obvious.  The previous book we'd read in class was Le Petit Prince.  when you're reading on kids-book level, the absurd simplicity isn't apparent.

[Brunhidden]

If you're used to the simple constructions of foreign language primers, it would be easy to miss the fact that the language is simplistic to the point of being trite.

I suspect that's the main reason it wasn't obvious.  The previous book we'd read in class was Le Petit Prince.  when you're reading on kids-book level, the absurd simplicity isn't apparent.

this is probably why my sister and i had a row over literary matters. the sheer contrast between books can be more then you think- two pieces may be from about the same category but sitting right next to each other its like comparing 'the cat in the hat' with 'the boxcar children'

to elaborate on the specific row

she is a teacher for special education middle school students, and thus to her harry potter was a godsend as it gave kids a reason to read, where they would later find other books also of interest (hopefully, many became so enraptured by harry that they refused to read any other books for fear of contradicting rules of magic) bur more importantly sit still for a few minutes and not bite themselves. the odd contradiction is she herself never read much at all, she was one of those 80s girls obsessed with music which, in retrospect, was not the mainstream 80s music.

I on the other hand was raised on Terry Brooks, Tolkien, and the mindblowing writing skills of scifi masters like Heinlein, Asimov, and my personal favorite Larry Niven in addition to complete nutjobs like terry Pratchett and Spider Robinson

thus she could not understand when i called harry potter a 'kids book', and she could not understand when i called LOTR 'a literary epic.

untill of course the day the fellowship of the ring came on VHS, she rented it, and the following morning she drove over to where i lived, attempted with limited success to pick me up by the scruff of my neck out of the garden, and demanded i fork over my books and a peck of raspberries

[gh0st]

the worst book i had ever read was the true confessions of Charlotte Doyle (sp) it had the worst plot line i could ever read, i mean half way through the book she changes her gender just so that she can be one of the crew. my only condolence is that i was practically forced to read it. stupid english class.

i usually like the science fiction books, like ender's game and what not, what i like to do is take their advanced technology and think about a way to make it.

[Nikki]

Twilight was okay.

I hate the series so much, yet i can't stop reading it.

New Moon sucked. Greatly.

Why am i not giving details? God knows when i'll be harassed by a rabid Twilight fan again =<

Twilight ruined Vampires for me.

They are not supposed to sparkle like pretty princesses.

Yet, i will read it to the end. I am not one to drop a series after 2 books.

[Netrogo]

I personally regret anything and everything I was 'forced' to read in high school. An example of this was Dean Koontz - Lightning. I had to read and write a report on this thing for tenth grade english. Liked some of the concepts at the time but couldn't really get into the book itself knowing the classwork involved. Down to road a few years I came across the book again and started skimming through it, then immersing myself in it. Loved it the second time around. Without the pressure and such it was a much more enjoyable experience. It also makes me wonder about some of those other books I 'had' to read.

[Zina]

I just finished The Never Ending Story.

I wanted to punch Bastian in the face multiple times throughout the second half. I'm kind of sad, since I loved the movie a lot as a kid.

Ugh, the book was like someone read The Never Ending story and then wrote a fanfic about it, where they were the biggest Mary Sue ever. I think that's what happened. I think I was tricked. Someone wrote this fanfic and snuck it into the bookstore and I ended up buying it by mistake.

Somewhere out there is the real Never Ending Story and it's a good book and I'd have a good time reading it.

[LionHeart]

Sorry to break this to you, Zina, but I've read the book too, and that is it, I'm afraid.
----

On the subject of books I'd rather not have read: One I read many years ago; the author I forget, but the the title was "Super-Folks". Being a superhero fanboy, I picked it up and read it. This was not a good thing.

I'm not sure how much detail I can go into here without breaking the forum rating, but:

The book is ostensibly about the last superhero on Earth, basically a sort of Superman pastiche. He's having a mid-life crisis, as his powers have begun to fail him. He retreated behind his secret identity, which is something of an achievement in itself, as this guy has blue hair(!). Said career as a superhero is apparently unknown to his wife and family.

From there it gets worse.

He goes to see a therapist, in costume, because he has sexual difficulties in his super-identity.

There is a scene of incest described between two characters who are obvious pastiches of Billy and Mary Batson. As a result, they have a son, who gets lamed, and grows up to be a super-villain.

The other main villain (one of them) is a man named Stretch O'Toole. He gains elastic powers. (I'll spare you the details.)

Oh, and there's an appearance by Peter Pan in the story. Who is smoking pot.

[Brunhidden]

Shadow Moon, by George Lucas.... technically its a sequil to the movie 'willow' but where the movie was a heartwarming and GOOD movie the book was.... well... 'i regret reading it' sums it up about as much as possible

spoilers to anyone who loved willow


willow himself is now a powerful sorcerer, he makes a creepy enchanted teddy bear to give to Elora on her birthday, Elora is now a fat, spoiled, and bitchy preteen which seems to have for no real reason spontaneously become involved in another prophesy trying to kill her. however this time it seems like the whole world sets on fire as a result, and the rest of the book is mostly just running from doom and willow (now named thorn) randomly planting trees with his blood in the ashes.... due to the fact that it sounds like everyone's dead but the heroes i kind of thought there was no point after a while, and have no desire to read the book that comes after this one

George Lucas seems to get his jollies by raping childhood memories, but that much is probably obvious by now

[Alondro]

George Lucas seems to get his jollies by raping childhood memories, but that much is probably obvious by now

Of course he likes raping childhood memories.  He is a fanboi with lots of money. 

[Tipod]

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
I understand it's certainly a literary classic by most definitions, but there was something so... lacking about it. And it's not that I hate 18th or 19th century novels (Wuthering Heights and Robinson Crusoe were great), but good God could I not care any less about these hoity-toity people in Virginia or Carolina or wherever the hell it was. Technically, there's intrigue with the untrustworthy lovers and possibly getting kicked out of your only home and blah blah blah, but Austen really failed in making me care about this insufferable family at all.
The movie, on the other hand, was surprisingly good.

[Tapewolf]

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
I understand it's certainly a literary classic by most definitions, but there was something so... lacking about it. And it's not that I hate 18th or 19th century novels (Wuthering Heights and Robinson Crusoe were great), but good God could I not care any less about these hoity-toity people in Virginia or Carolina or wherever the hell it was.

I was lent a copy of that a few years ago.  IIRC, the first half of it was extremely boring, but it picked up about halfway through.

[Alondro]

I tend to read mostly either fantasy or hard fact (non-fiction).

The only real-life situation stories I like are ones in which the characters get in trouble through no fault of their own.  I'm just not interested in stories about idiots who get into situations I never would, because I'm too smart to get into such situations.