Five Books That Sucked Too Much To Finish

Just for a bit of fun today, I’m starting a meme. In a complete reverse of the “10 Books That Influenced You” meme making the rounds among my writer type friends, I give you What “Five Books Sucked Too Much To Finish”. I could have padded it out to ten, but I’m feeling lazy.

1. Atlas Shrugged: This book was an angry manifesto filled with irredeemable, geometric-point characters (one-dimensional would be giving them too much depth), overloaded with exposition, a barely discernible plot, all designed to deliver an intractably clueless ideological message with all the subtlety of the 9/11 attacks. I almost finished it twice, but by the time John Galt goes full-retard in his rant, I just, I can’t justify doing that to my brain. And I’m a Wisconsin drinker.

2. Battlefield Earth: If anything could help to redeem the abysmal failure that was Battlefield Earth: The Movie, it’s the source material. Seriously, if it’s a choice between drinking anti-freeze, (the green anti-freeze that looked like mutagen, not that eco-friendly hippie shit they’re pedaling now) and reading Battlefield Earth, call the poison control center and get ready to have your stomach pumped. You’ll thank me. I made it through maybe the first 200 pages before I had to start weighing the options.

3. Twilight: Bella isn’t a character, okay? She is a fucking chair that the real characters sit in while the story happens around her. As the father of a little girl, I HATE THESE BOOKS. All of the internet memes about how literally every other female character in the history of time have been stronger, better role models for girls don’t even scratch the surface. Hattie McDaniel’s character in “Gone with the Wind” is a better role model than Bella.

4. Fifty Shades of Grey: It is every bit as terrible as you would predict reheated Twilight fanfic leftovers would be. I would rather subject myself to all of the horrors and debasement endured by Bella… I mean Anastasia, than to be forced to read more than five consecutive lines from this blatant assault against literature and good taste. There is, and has always been, good erotica in the marketplace to fill in whatever kinks you want to explore in the bubble bath. Find it. Avoid 50 shades like you would herpes, and for the same reason. You’ll never be rid of it.

5. I don’t know, The Bible?: It’s wordy and poorly edited. Some fact-checkers wouldn’t have killed you either. I’m running out of steam here…

 
So there you have it. Don’t say I never gave you anything. Now go forth, draft up your own lists, and share liberally on Facebook, twitter, and anywhere else easily entertained and distractable people congregate.