Looking to avoid a bad book

[dragonshaos]

Looking for a good book
      http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=16.0

Terry Goodkind is terrible
      http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=24.0

After thinking about these two I want to know what kind of book series to avoid and with ample reason to avoid them.  Like now I have reasons to avoid the Sword of Truth series, dosent mean I wont read it or something (I wont), but now I have good reasons to avoid it.

[clockworkjoe]

The Left Behind series. Read the Slackivist's extensive commentary (page by page!) for reasons why it sucks.  http://exharpazo.blogspot.com/2007/01/index-to-slactivists-left-behind.html

This is the first commentary of the first novel http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2003/10/left_behind_pre.html

Left Behind: Pretrib Porno

Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Tyndale House Publishers, 1995.

Pages 1-3.

The first words of Left Behind are "Rayford Steele," the protagonist's name.

It sounds like a porn star's name -- and in a sense it is. The Left Behind series is dispensational porno, but it's more than that. One of the most disturbing things about this book is the way LaHaye and Jenkins portray men, women and the relationships between them.

Note that Tim LaHaye's wife is something of a professional misogynist. She runs the 500,000-member "Concerned Women for America" -- jokingly referred to by its critics as "Ladies Against Women." For years, while Beverly LaHaye's husband pastored a church in San Diego, Mrs. L. spent most of her time 3,000 miles away, in Washington, D.C., running a large organization committed to, among other things, telling women they should stay at home and sacrifice their careers for their husbands. She is not an ironic woman and doesn't seem to find any of this inconsistent. (Nor, as I found out firsthand, does she appreciate jokes about the Freudian implications of the view from her L'Enfante Plaza office window. Sometimes the Washington Monument is just a cigar.)

Our porn star hero, Rayford Steele, interacts with women just like any porn star does -- minus, of course, the sex. It's all about dominance, exploitation, titillation and the stroking of -- in this case -- egos.

The character Rayford Steele is, like the authors, no longer a young man. Younger authors might not have been compelled to give their protagonists names -- "Steele" and "Buck" -- that seem such a blatant assertion of male virility. Bev is apparently not the only LaHaye who seems oblivious to phallic imagery.

If you're thinking I'm reading too much into all this, that this theme isn't really as present in the text as I'm making it out to be, consider the opening lines:

Rayford Steele's mind was on a woman he had never touched. With his fully loaded 747 on autopilot ...

That's more than just subtext.

[Tadanori Oyama]

I would suggest that you stay away from most of the older Dragonlance stuff. It's classical but by current standards, pretty poorly written.

[rayner23]

Oh the Left Behind series . . . or as I like to call it, "Jerry Bruckheimer's Book of Revelations."

If you have never read any of Robert E. Howard's Conan stuff, you can get it for free on wikisource. I recommend doing so because it is fucking amazing.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Tolkein's work are good. I mean, that souds strange to say in an RPG based forum but the fact seems to be many people haven't actually read the books. If you haven't give it a short. Or get the unabridged tapes from the library.

[dragonshaos]

The Left Behind series. Read the Slackivist's extensive commentary (page by page!) for reasons why it sucks.  http://exharpazo.blogspot.com/2007/01/index-to-slactivists-left-behind.html

Ooooh boy...I started that book when I was in junior high, didn't even know what it was about until I think the third book, and by that time i just had to have a good sit and think about what I had read...then kill myself (i joke).  But honestly I hate that series...good series to add

[clockworkjoe]

ok avoid this or do not i dont care http://vandonovan.livejournal.com/1088311.html

Her pubes was a field of wheat after the harvest, a field neatly furrowed; it was a nest, a pomegranate, an arrowhead, a rune. It was a shadow. It was moss on a smooth white stone. There was an orchid within the moss. There was a drop of dew upon the orchid. It had the breath of moss-beds, of the deep seas, of the abyss, of scrimshaw and blue glass, of cold iron; she had the sex of rain forests, the ibis and the scarab; she had the sex of mirrors and candles, of the hot, careful winds that stroke the veldt, the winds that taste of clay and seed and blood; the winds that dreamed of tawny, lean animals.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Yeah, distrubing choices aside, those aren't great analogies. And mixed tenses... I hates that.

[clockworkjoe]

Yeah, distrubing choices aside, those aren't great analogies. And mixed tenses... I hates that.

disturbing or totally hilarious?

[Tadanori Oyama]

Hilarious mostly, because I'm pretty sure those aren't compliments.

[Maze]

Wow. The main character must have been trippin'

[codered]

 The books That started it all for me was The Chronicles of Narnia, then it was the old time dragon lance, now I'm hooked on the forgotten Realms stuff I have around 80 books or so and counting.  but I have to say the best book I have ever read was: How to win Friends and Influence People. By far the most useful book I have ever read granted this isn't the kind of book your probably looking for but its a must read for any one.


again How to win friends and in fluence people
by Dale carnegie
ISBN 0-671-72365-0


P.S David Bowie Rocks

[dragonshaos]

The books That started it all for me was The Chronicles of Narnia, then it was the old time dragon lance, now I'm hooked on the forgotten Realms stuff I have around 80 books or so and counting.  but I have to say the best book I have ever read was: How to win Friends and Influence People. By far the most useful book I have ever read granted this isn't the kind of book your probably looking for but its a must read for any one.

This should be under Looking For A Good Book thread.

This thread is for books to AVIOD

[wrotenbe]

ok avoid this or do not i dont care http://vandonovan.livejournal.com/1088311.html

Her pubes was a field of wheat after the harvest, a field neatly furrowed; it was a nest, a pomegranate, an arrowhead, a rune. It was a shadow. It was moss on a smooth white stone. There was an orchid within the moss. There was a drop of dew upon the orchid. It had the breath of moss-beds, of the deep seas, of the abyss, of scrimshaw and blue glass, of cold iron; she had the sex of rain forests, the ibis and the scarab; she had the sex of mirrors and candles, of the hot, careful winds that stroke the veldt, the winds that taste of clay and seed and blood; the winds that dreamed of tawny, lean animals.

Spikenard.

SPIKENARD.

SPIKE.

NARD.