The Time Traveler's Wife. Someone recommended it to me because of the angsty romance, but the "wife" in question has hardly any agency. It drove me bonkers.
"The Kingdoms" by Natasha Pulley. The idea for the story is great, and at times it feels like the most self-indulgent kind of fanfic ever, which is good, but it's all ruined by racism, and also mistreatment of a female character that had the potential to be amazing! I haven't read anything else by Pulley, but I've heard that her other books have the same problems.
To be fair, the idea for the story *was* pretty good, but the way she writes about women and POC was really annoying and ruined the book for me. After I read this book, I looked up reviews of some of her other books, and apparently she usually chooses to write about "exotic" settings and characters, with a very white gaze. >:(
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. God I hated this book. Perhaps you've read it because for a time, this thing was everywhere and there's the movie with Kate Winslet, too. I didn't mind the romance with the big age difference, that wasn't the problem. It was that Schlink seemed to decide that he needed to pile any kind of relevant "tragic issue" he could think off into this book. Huge age difference that is controversial! Oh noes she is dyslexic the sadness the tragedy! OH NOEZ she was a nazi!! And responsible for the evilest war crimes!!!! Isn't this so tragic and shocking!!!!! Like, fuck off dude! Harold & Maude did it all so much better!
You can just feel how he made a list of "important issues that critics will love" and crammed as many into the book as he could. Ugh. By far the worst book I read in school, bar none. All the other books were at least okay ("Andorra" and "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch, for example) or even really good ("War of the Buttons" by Louis Pergaud, "Harold & Maude" by Colin Higgins, "The Judge and his Hangman" by Friedrich Dürrenmatt), but this was just a lot of annoyed groaning. XD
My usual go-to is Hallowe'en Party, which is one of Agatha Christie's later mysteries. I've heard other people praise it, but when I reread it the ratio of sour commentary on Kids These Days to actual mystery was overwhelmingly skewed towards the former.
Otherwise I'm hard-pressed to think of a book that you'd be tempted to read that I overwhelmingly loathed. (Especially since you're not reading het romance these days.)
Lol, you see so many of my bad-book rants already, though! And I've given my anti-Guns, Germs, and Steel rant to you directly, too!
Let me employ some lateral thinking. You shouldn't read Joshua Bennet's Owed, you should listen to Joshua Bennett's Owed, because his delivery makes already-great poems truly sing. The collection is wonderful, obviously, but you are truly missing out if you only read the words on the page, unaltered by his performance.
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God I hated this book. Perhaps you've read it because for a time, this thing was everywhere and there's the movie with Kate Winslet, too.
I didn't mind the romance with the big age difference, that wasn't the problem. It was that Schlink seemed to decide that he needed to pile any kind of relevant "tragic issue" he could think off into this book. Huge age difference that is controversial! Oh noes she is dyslexic the sadness the tragedy! OH NOEZ she was a nazi!! And responsible for the evilest war crimes!!!! Isn't this so tragic and shocking!!!!!
Like, fuck off dude!
Harold & Maude did it all so much better!
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It was that Schlink seemed to decide that he needed to pile any kind of relevant "tragic issue" he could think off into this book.
Oh, yeah, I get that! I can imagine how off-putting that would be!
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All the other books were at least okay ("Andorra" and "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch, for example) or even really good ("War of the Buttons" by Louis Pergaud, "Harold & Maude" by Colin Higgins, "The Judge and his Hangman" by Friedrich Dürrenmatt), but this was just a lot of annoyed groaning. XD
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Otherwise I'm hard-pressed to think of a book that you'd be tempted to read that I overwhelmingly loathed. (Especially since you're not reading het romance these days.)
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(Especially since you're not reading het romance these days.)
Yeah, I pretty much don't read any romance at all anymore.
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Let me employ some lateral thinking. You shouldn't read Joshua Bennet's Owed, you should listen to Joshua Bennett's Owed, because his delivery makes already-great poems truly sing. The collection is wonderful, obviously, but you are truly missing out if you only read the words on the page, unaltered by his performance.
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Okay, I am not one for audiobooks--I cannot focus--but...I could do a book of poetry. That sounds lovely!