Ask Lemmy

Bible.

The Bible

I skimmed it but all I ever saw was just a bunch of begat this and begat that with some quotations sprinkled in between.

And this fucking thing is partly responsible for why numerous things are going wrong with humans today and humans of history.

Mein Kampf. Apart from being a bad person, Hitler was a terrible writer. Low quality thoughts articulated badly. I only read it so I could nail neonazis when they came at me with their stupid arguments.

Ready player one. If I wanted to read about a guy masturbating over memorizing 1980s Wikipedia I'd just go to forums.

It was the most boring Mary Sue-esque trash and I have no idea why it was so popular

Any of the Reacher books. God, they're terrible. They're just about a guy who jumps to outrageous conclusions and is always right nlbecause he's just so special. He's also big and tough and the best sniper in Army history.

In the first one, a guy skips town because he's a witness, and Reacher finds him in a hotel instantly because of the following logic:

Clearly he would have changed cities every night going in clockwise order or whatever - except for the one night after the place he was in was closer to the city he was fleeing - he'd rest 2 nights in the next city because sleeping thay close was so exhausting.

Because Reacher saw a Beatles album in the guy's house, he just knew he'd be using the last names of the Beatles, but keeping his own first name (which was Paul iirc), cycling them at each hotel.

So he walks into a random hotel near a bus stop in a random city and asks for the room of Paul Lennon and finds him because Reacher is just so smart!

And in the second book, he comes upon a woman being raped, kills the rapist, and the woman has sex with Reacher instead because he's a big, tough hero. And nothing like attempted rape puts you in the mood to fuck a stranger.

The DaVinci Code

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It was a while back, so I can't remember exactly, but I do remember my friend not doing it any favours by really praising that book. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but by contrast, I found it to be a rather naïve, consensual, and superficial self-help book trying to masquerade as something more profound with a thin veneer of new-age spirituality.

Hope I don't offend someone who loves it. I don't feel strongly about it now, it was a while back, so maybe I missed something then. If someone disagrees with me I won't die on that hill.

Harry Potter back when I was a child and the first book was released. After reading a few pages I was already fed up with that horsecrap and continued reading The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Reading Dune books ATM and the original is one of my all-time favorites. But fuck me, Dune Messiah is incomprehensible. It's 80% about Paul navel gazing. I'd read a paragraph and think, "I have no idea what that is supposed to mean." 80% of the words in the book hit me like that.

The Da Vinci Code. It was laughably awful. This includes the premise as well as the writing. Dan Brown is probably sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies, though.

The wheel Of time series. I got through the first 2 books before realising that I disliked every character. Also every female character was written so poorly it made me want to "Tug on my braid and stamp my foot"

The Turner Diaries

It depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and, ultimately, a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites.

This book was recomeded to me by a fellow activist. It's a disgusting and baddly written book, however it does give one insight into the mind of far right militants/terrorists. It also outlines the playbook that neo-nazis and various other bigoted assholes use to gain power while distancing themselfs from direct action and blaming minorities.

It holds up as something a leftist should read to know your enemy.

To that end, I also recomend every American read project 2025.

Easily The Fountainhead.

There's a reason that

Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript before an editor at the Bobbs-Merrill Company risked his job to get it published.

Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but several people heavily and repeatedly recommended me the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

I had read a few books by King before and really enjoyed some of them. Even the first book in the series (written well before the others) was interesting but the whole series is just unbearable. It's long and disjointed and while there are some interesting moments, there are three times the amount of adding grotesquerie for no narrative reason, literal self-inserts, or worse, grabbing references to other IPs that get shoehorned into the story.

I know there are a lot of people that liked the series and I am happy it exists for those people, and I realize not everything is made for my tastes, but the ending was just so irredeemably bad. It makes the ending of GoT look like Breaking Bad.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Unrelenting mawkish sentimental slop with a big old dollop of new-age spirituality. Repulsive.

I mean I enjoyed them at the time, but looking back, the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind had some questionable stuff in it. Pro death penalty, heavy objectivisation of women...

The Art of the Deal, by some Putz. I don't know whatever happened to him.

i don't really know if it counts as a "book" but harry potter and the methods of rationality.

the premise is interesting, but the writing is ass. the politics more so.

Eat Pray Love.

My god it was so self-important and out of touch.

I worked at a book store back a while now so people would ask and recommend books

The Secret was big at the time The Secret sucks ass I disliked any customer that recommended it to me after that I wouldn't say that though, I'd thank them politely.

I usually recommended Neuromancer, but it depended on topic.

I forgot the name of the book, but it starts out with some alien overlord dying, and a whole bunch of people commit ritualistic sewer slide over the death of the alien, and i just couldn't force myself to care.

I even started writing down names and details on the characters, just to try and make it stick. But I don't remember anything happening, to the point I just forgot to finish it.

Edit: Recommended by my brother, but I just didn't get what he got out of it.

Edit 2: The Praxis