4 ms·

am interested, do you have a listing of terrible books?

gnulinux 3y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not a writer, but I do write music. I think there are two types "bad" writing and I think people have a hard time having nuanced discussion about this. First category is what I would personally describe "uninspired". These are works created by artists who arguably have either (1) too little exposure to prior art, or (2) too inexperienced with core skills of writing. So, in terms of my field, these artists probably (1) didn't expose themselves to enough music, or read enough music, or (2) didn't practice how to construct and write music enough times that they're comfortable. Examples of "uninspired" works include student works (i.e. practice works written by people to gain skills), works whose only purpose is to make money and there is no other consideration (this is probably very debatable), or works created by people who are unreasonably unexposed to the prior art (e.g. someone who has sufficient writing skills who is writing a novel, but really only read 2 novels before.) Second "bad" category is what I would describe writing that is too stylish where aesthetic choices aren't appealing. This is when creator (1) is sufficiently exposed to prior art and (2) is experienced enough to produce works similar to prior art. Now, this gets very tricky because the problem with these works -- i.e. what separates them from Category 1 -- is that the work itself needs to convince the observer of these qualities, which can oftentimes be very hard. Unfortunately, I cannot give examples from literature, but to give an example from the history of music writing: oftentimes people listen to works of Schoenberg and they complain it sounds horrific, dissonant, random and ugly etc etc... However, if you look at the work closely, you'll find choices that are only consistent with thorough understanding of the prior art and an experimental desire to create something entirely novel. Now, it is "ugly" (for some, of course) but it is well-informed. In other words, it convinces most that the artist was able to create something "prettier" but for whatever reason decided not to. Unpacking this is important when consuming "bad art" because each category teaches you something else. When you consume Category 1 "bad art" you need to pick up (1) in what ways this work is unaware of prior art, and (2) in what ways this creator is inexperienced. This can be crucial to understand points where you struggle. E.g. you look at some student works, and you see consistent patterns that diverge from prior art -- consistent patterns are not explained with creativity. This can be a good reminder to work on these skills. When it comes to Category 2, it's more complicated. This kind of art can be jarring, but can be the most useful kind of art you can consume to perfect your skills. These can show prior experiments, and how various styles work. You don't have to enjoy it, but it will be useful to see. E.g. slow movies may not be your favorite, but if you're filmmaker you likely want to sit through the entire "2001" movie. Ultimately, it's up to you, and up to your relationship with your art. I personally consume a lot of art I dislike and think it's important to expand my understanding how things work. An artist is not just the work, but also the entire lifetime spent on observing, and critically thinking about other humans' art. So, the answer ultimately lies in you.
- thunderbong 3y ago
  I found your comment to be very insightful. I realise that a lot of the developers I see fall in the first category, primarily due to a lack of experience. The challenge I see in a lot of software in corporate environments is that, unlike music, the code written due to lack of awareness / experience becomes technical debt as the software keeps growing over time.
- woolion 3y ago
  Great analysis, that hits a number of very good points! In particular it's interesting that you call the first category "uninspired" rather than "lacking skills". A lot of people equate this "uninspired" category with "lacking in personal expression". Typically a really skillful artist can generally make something absolutely mechanical _feel_ personal, whereas an unskilled artist cannot make anything sound personal. There are also specific genres that skew the perception in one way or the other, that will change the threshold of skill for something to be considered "personal" or not. The second category is interesting if you can identify how problems introduced by the rule-breaking elements could be solved. Any "art rule" solves a problem, and determining an alternative solution for it can lead to a breakthrough. Keyword is "can", there's a lot of experiment required. But in many cases it at least helps understanding better why the "rule" is useful.
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    That's a very useful distinction. A lot of pop used to be - maybe still is. It works because its self-expression connects strongly with an audience. In music, the people with the technical skills often work in support roles as session musicians, producers, and arrangers. They lack individual expression and charisma but have the skills needed to polish someone else's work. The same applies to books. Dan Brown and Twilight are terrible writing but they give middle-of-the-bell-curve readers experiences that mean something to them. Most art aims higher, but the middle of the bell curve is where the big money is. True mediocrity comes from having very limited technical skill - probably imitative in a narrow niche - and no ability to connect with an audience. I think that applies to most academic attempts at serial music. The style is a bit of an oddity because the rules were contrived rather than evolved. And (IMO) that kind of dissonance has a very limited expressive range. Schoenberg could get away with it, but there was a fad in 50s to 70s where that kind of serialism became academic orthodoxy. The result was hours and hours of music by clever educated people with absolutely no cultural relevance outside of academia.
fodkodrasz 3y ago
Read The Dosadi Experiment from Frank Herbert. It is a scratch at best, it is terrible. Was recommended for me by some Dune fans.
- Robin_Message 3y ago
  What's wrong with the Dosadi Experiment? I remember enjoying reading it and finding the worldbuilding really interesting and the drama kept me reading. But I am a sucker for Frank Herbert so maybe I missed the flaws.
  - fodkodrasz 3y ago
    As I said: it is/feels like a sketch. The prose (often) reads like notes which should be rewritten, and filled with depth, and life. Also the story is bad, there is too much "deus ex machina". Also no characters one can relate to. Sounds like you read a totally different book than me :P. If I had read it and the Dune without knowing their authors, I could not have told them they were written by the same person. Especially not that it was written after the Dune, where he has proved he can write well.
    - offices 3y ago
      But most of your first paragraph also describes Dune!
- touisteur 3y ago
  See, Dosadi is one of my favorite books. It's not perfect by any means but a concentrate of Herbert tropes with interesting plot lines. Like most Herbert it's very much for a young adult / adolescent public (this not being a negative, it's pretty thin on many axes, focused on delivering the tropes in a enthusiastic way). The other Herbert 'destination, jesus' book cycle is harder to swallow though.
fumeux_fume 3y ago
We never kept a list, but 50 Shades, Flowers in the Attic, the Greg Brady Autobiography and Satanic Panic were some notables. Everyone had their own taste for bad writing and read from books like Heroes Are My Weakness to others like A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay (which actually turned out to be a big crowd pleaser).
- dsign 3y ago
  > A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay I just read that one, bought straight from Amazon. It's so bad that it made me chuckle. > Which actually turned out to be a big crowd pleaser Crowds are weird.
dale_glass 3y ago
For an intentionally terrible book, there's Atlanta Nights (https://archive.org/details/atlantanights0000teat https://archive.org/details/atlantanights0000teat ). A bunch of authors got together to write the worst book possible. It has pretty much every kind of awful prose in existence, including an early case of AI generation. For awful but readable books: Most anything by Dan Brown, but for the audience here, Digital Fortress will make you tear your hair out in frustration if you know anything at all about cryptography. The climax of the book seems to be made for a movie and is a completely nonsensical sequence in which people stare at a screen showing attackers breaking through a firewall, as if it were a wall that can be slowly drilled through. For me that was the book that did it. If Dan Brown couldn't take 10 minutes to research the simplest basics of the subject he based his book around, imagine what the quality of the rest of the work is like. Ender's Game I rate as a fairly enjoyable but puerile teenage power fantasy. But after that comes Speaker for the Dead, which to me is absolutely awful. Ender turns into this insufferably saintly martyr, who acts as some sort of Gordon Ramsay, only fixing an awful colony instead of a restaurant. Everyone in the book is insufferable and a complete moron, except for Ender of course who knows how to fix all those awful people. Oh, and it justifies domestic abuse. And maybe Battlefield Earth. I've never read the entire thing, but here's a quote: “His valet! In the rush of getting him off, his clumsy damned valet had put the wrong boots on him. Oh, when he got home ... when he got home he would have the oaf punctured! Worse. Dragged through the streets and bitten to death by small children.”
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  Battlefield Earth brings back a memory: it was the first book I had read where I realised that authors can have serious mental problems. Most books are written by sane, intelligent, and educated people. The books you'll read in a high school library are also curated by librarians. There's an expectation of quality you don't notice until suddenly you pick up a book at the local council library authored by someone with some serious untreated mental issues. After that revelation I started noticing the author of a book instead of just paying attention to the content of the book. Similarly to L Ron Hubbard, I found The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson impossible to finish. There's something deeply wrong about him that I can't quite put my finger on. (I did finish his Gap Cycle series, but felt dirty in my brain after.) I picked up The Dragonriders of Pern series based purely on the dragon on the cover and just started reading. A few chapters in, I though to myself: "This is written by a woman, isn't it?", flipped to the cover page and lo-and-behold: "Anne McCaffrey" -- I had guessed correctly!
runeofdoom 3y ago
The Eye of of Argon by Jim Theis is legendarily awful in SF circles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon

Disclaimer: I'm not a writer, but I do write music. I think there are two types "bad" writing and I think people have a hard time having nuanced discussion about this. First category is what I would personally describe "uninspired". These are works created by artists who arguably have either (1) too little exposure to prior art, or (2) too inexperienced with core skills of writing. So, in terms of my field, these artists probably (1) didn't expose themselves to enough music, or read enough music, or (2) didn't practice how to construct and write music enough times that they're comfortable. Examples of "uninspired" works include student works (i.e. practice works written by people to gain skills), works whose only purpose is to make money and there is no other consideration (this is probably very debatable), or works created by people who are unreasonably unexposed to the prior art (e.g. someone who has sufficient writing skills who is writing a novel, but really only read 2 novels before.) Second "bad" category is what I would describe writing that is too stylish where aesthetic choices aren't appealing. This is when creator (1) is sufficiently exposed to prior art and (2) is experienced enough to produce works similar to prior art. Now, this gets very tricky because the problem with these works -- i.e. what separates them from Category 1 -- is that the work itself needs to convince the observer of these qualities, which can oftentimes be very hard. Unfortunately, I cannot give examples from literature, but to give an example from the history of music writing: oftentimes people listen to works of Schoenberg and they complain it sounds horrific, dissonant, random and ugly etc etc... However, if you look at the work closely, you'll find choices that are only consistent with thorough understanding of the prior art and an experimental desire to create something entirely novel. Now, it is "ugly" (for some, of course) but it is well-informed. In other words, it convinces most that the artist was able to create something "prettier" but for whatever reason decided not to. Unpacking this is important when consuming "bad art" because each category teaches you something else. When you consume Category 1 "bad art" you need to pick up (1) in what ways this work is unaware of prior art, and (2) in what ways this creator is inexperienced. This can be crucial to understand points where you struggle. E.g. you look at some student works, and you see consistent patterns that diverge from prior art -- consistent patterns are not explained with creativity. This can be a good reminder to work on these skills. When it comes to Category 2, it's more complicated. This kind of art can be jarring, but can be the most useful kind of art you can consume to perfect your skills. These can show prior experiments, and how various styles work. You don't have to enjoy it, but it will be useful to see. E.g. slow movies may not be your favorite, but if you're filmmaker you likely want to sit through the entire "2001" movie. Ultimately, it's up to you, and up to your relationship with your art. I personally consume a lot of art I dislike and think it's important to expand my understanding how things work. An artist is not just the work, but also the entire lifetime spent on observing, and critically thinking about other humans' art. So, the answer ultimately lies in you.

thunderbong 3y ago
I found your comment to be very insightful. I realise that a lot of the developers I see fall in the first category, primarily due to a lack of experience. The challenge I see in a lot of software in corporate environments is that, unlike music, the code written due to lack of awareness / experience becomes technical debt as the software keeps growing over time.
woolion 3y ago
Great analysis, that hits a number of very good points! In particular it's interesting that you call the first category "uninspired" rather than "lacking skills". A lot of people equate this "uninspired" category with "lacking in personal expression". Typically a really skillful artist can generally make something absolutely mechanical _feel_ personal, whereas an unskilled artist cannot make anything sound personal. There are also specific genres that skew the perception in one way or the other, that will change the threshold of skill for something to be considered "personal" or not. The second category is interesting if you can identify how problems introduced by the rule-breaking elements could be solved. Any "art rule" solves a problem, and determining an alternative solution for it can lead to a breakthrough. Keyword is "can", there's a lot of experiment required. But in many cases it at least helps understanding better why the "rule" is useful.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  That's a very useful distinction. A lot of pop used to be - maybe still is. It works because its self-expression connects strongly with an audience. In music, the people with the technical skills often work in support roles as session musicians, producers, and arrangers. They lack individual expression and charisma but have the skills needed to polish someone else's work. The same applies to books. Dan Brown and Twilight are terrible writing but they give middle-of-the-bell-curve readers experiences that mean something to them. Most art aims higher, but the middle of the bell curve is where the big money is. True mediocrity comes from having very limited technical skill - probably imitative in a narrow niche - and no ability to connect with an audience. I think that applies to most academic attempts at serial music. The style is a bit of an oddity because the rules were contrived rather than evolved. And (IMO) that kind of dissonance has a very limited expressive range. Schoenberg could get away with it, but there was a fad in 50s to 70s where that kind of serialism became academic orthodoxy. The result was hours and hours of music by clever educated people with absolutely no cultural relevance outside of academia.

fodkodrasz 3y ago

Read The Dosadi Experiment from Frank Herbert. It is a scratch at best, it is terrible. Was recommended for me by some Dune fans.

Robin_Message 3y ago
What's wrong with the Dosadi Experiment? I remember enjoying reading it and finding the worldbuilding really interesting and the drama kept me reading. But I am a sucker for Frank Herbert so maybe I missed the flaws.
- fodkodrasz 3y ago
  As I said: it is/feels like a sketch. The prose (often) reads like notes which should be rewritten, and filled with depth, and life. Also the story is bad, there is too much "deus ex machina". Also no characters one can relate to. Sounds like you read a totally different book than me :P. If I had read it and the Dune without knowing their authors, I could not have told them they were written by the same person. Especially not that it was written after the Dune, where he has proved he can write well.
  - offices 3y ago
    But most of your first paragraph also describes Dune!
touisteur 3y ago
See, Dosadi is one of my favorite books. It's not perfect by any means but a concentrate of Herbert tropes with interesting plot lines. Like most Herbert it's very much for a young adult / adolescent public (this not being a negative, it's pretty thin on many axes, focused on delivering the tropes in a enthusiastic way). The other Herbert 'destination, jesus' book cycle is harder to swallow though.

fumeux_fume 3y ago

We never kept a list, but 50 Shades, Flowers in the Attic, the Greg Brady Autobiography and Satanic Panic were some notables. Everyone had their own taste for bad writing and read from books like Heroes Are My Weakness to others like A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay (which actually turned out to be a big crowd pleaser).

dsign 3y ago
> A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay I just read that one, bought straight from Amazon. It's so bad that it made me chuckle. > Which actually turned out to be a big crowd pleaser Crowds are weird.

dale_glass 3y ago

For an intentionally terrible book, there's Atlanta Nights (https://archive.org/details/atlantanights0000teat https://archive.org/details/atlantanights0000teat ). A bunch of authors got together to write the worst book possible. It has pretty much every kind of awful prose in existence, including an early case of AI generation. For awful but readable books: Most anything by Dan Brown, but for the audience here, Digital Fortress will make you tear your hair out in frustration if you know anything at all about cryptography. The climax of the book seems to be made for a movie and is a completely nonsensical sequence in which people stare at a screen showing attackers breaking through a firewall, as if it were a wall that can be slowly drilled through. For me that was the book that did it. If Dan Brown couldn't take 10 minutes to research the simplest basics of the subject he based his book around, imagine what the quality of the rest of the work is like. Ender's Game I rate as a fairly enjoyable but puerile teenage power fantasy. But after that comes Speaker for the Dead, which to me is absolutely awful. Ender turns into this insufferably saintly martyr, who acts as some sort of Gordon Ramsay, only fixing an awful colony instead of a restaurant. Everyone in the book is insufferable and a complete moron, except for Ender of course who knows how to fix all those awful people. Oh, and it justifies domestic abuse. And maybe Battlefield Earth. I've never read the entire thing, but here's a quote: “His valet! In the rush of getting him off, his clumsy damned valet had put the wrong boots on him. Oh, when he got home ... when he got home he would have the oaf punctured! Worse. Dragged through the streets and bitten to death by small children.”

jiggawatts 3y ago
Battlefield Earth brings back a memory: it was the first book I had read where I realised that authors can have serious mental problems. Most books are written by sane, intelligent, and educated people. The books you'll read in a high school library are also curated by librarians. There's an expectation of quality you don't notice until suddenly you pick up a book at the local council library authored by someone with some serious untreated mental issues. After that revelation I started noticing the author of a book instead of just paying attention to the content of the book. Similarly to L Ron Hubbard, I found The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson impossible to finish. There's something deeply wrong about him that I can't quite put my finger on. (I did finish his Gap Cycle series, but felt dirty in my brain after.) I picked up The Dragonriders of Pern series based purely on the dragon on the cover and just started reading. A few chapters in, I though to myself: "This is written by a woman, isn't it?", flipped to the cover page and lo-and-behold: "Anne McCaffrey" -- I had guessed correctly!

runeofdoom 3y ago

The Eye of of Argon by Jim Theis is legendarily awful in SF circles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon