lisarea

I have this problem, see. I'm a compulsive reader, and I don't mean this in a snobby way, either. I mean, I read good books, of course, but not exclusively. I've always done this, and it's even become a bit of a joke. One of my brothers makes it a point to find the stupidest books in the world and either bring them when he visits, or actually mail them to my house so I'll read them. And I do.

Why am I thinking about this now? Because I just read the autobiography of James Watt's WIFE. No reason. It was there. Stupid book. Stupid woman. Stupid me for reading it.

I used to have this Margaret Atwood problem, too. I don't like Margaret Atwood. But somehow, I end up reading all her books. My ex-boyfriend actually had to do this intervention on me for that. "STOP READING MARGARET ATWOOD BOOKS AND THEN COMPLAINING ABOUT THEM."

I'm not going to actually go look for these to get the right titles and all, but here's a brief list of books I've read recently for no good reason:

1. The first ten or so Nancy Drew books, plus the first five or so Hardy Boys books. This was not for nostalgic reasons, but just because they were there. These books SUCK.

2. This insane book about housekeeping written by an insane, subservient Mormon wife. It had about a whole chapter on how to get your sons to make their beds without turning them gay.

3. Some godawful book by the Cosmopolitan editors about how to be a slut and how to get married men to divorce their wives and stuff like that.

4. Michelle Remembers. This was the crazy book that set off the rash of 'recovered memory syndrome' in the 80s. It's just this long, crazy story about how traumatized 'Michelle' was when she remembered, like, having sex with demons and stuff when she was a little kid. Good grief.

5. Some memoir/beauty advice by Miss America 1957 or something. Crap about how to be demure and ladylike. DOESN'T WORK.

6. The Secretaries. A sleazy romance novel for 'career gals' from the 70s or something. The really good part about this is that, in the course of a couple of visits with family, my sister and one of my brothers ended up picking this up and reading it, too. We are thinking about starting a book club now.

7. Twixt Twelve and Twenty. I bought this for my son for his twelfth birthday, lo these many years ago (four these many years ago). It is advice for teens by Pat Boone. He didn't read it, I don't think. Punk.

8. Pirate, by FABIO. Some friends and I bought this years ago as a joke against this guy we worked with. (We'd asked him if he wanted to go to lunch with us, and he said he didn't want to go out for some girly finger sandwich lunch, all talking about hair and makeup, so we picked it up on the way back and pretended to be swooning over it.) I was picked as the one who got to keep it. So I read it. In case you didn't know this, Fabio the Pirate invented condoms.

9. 2000 More Insults or something. This is another product of my brother's reverse robberies. (Reverse robberies are a very big problem for me.) It was just sitting there in the living room, and my son and I had taken to picking it up and reading the insults to each other. They make just no sense, so they tend to be delivered with a very incredulous look. This was fine, but then I took it into my room and read the damned thing. Cover to cover. Like it was a real book or something.

10. You Can Trust the Communists...TO BE COMMUNISTS! For some reason, I started buying these weird Cold War era books about those darned Communists a while ago, just because they are so crazy and so angry. I should have known I'd end up reading them.

This is probably going to end up being one of those horribly awkward things where I say, "So, you know when you..." and everyone ends up looking at me funny and saying, "Um, no. Do you really do that?" and then I have to fake like I was lying.

Has anyone else read anything impossibly stupid lately?

Don't say the Bible, either.

Monkeybot

LMAO. Even "better" are the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys crossover books, which I used to read in my younger, dumber days. I'll never forget the one where the Crown Prince of Blabidyblabidyvania fell in love with Bess

I also picked up and partially read a book called Red China's Fighting Hordes, by Some American Guy Who Got Captured During the Korean War and Sent to a Chinese Prison. Seriously. Needless to say, the author wasn't exactly a paragon of objectivity; any insight he may have had into Chinese society/prison system/military prowess was totally overwhelmed by his rabid racist hostility towards the Chinese. There were some delightful illustrations of Chinese "hordes" as well. This book was like a 14-car pileup -- I was horrified, but I just couldn't look away.

slept2long

1. Easy origami or something like that (everything I made looked nothing like the book)
2. Batman(the movie book)straight through on a sleepless night
3. The Bible either
4. Tonnes of Tone, Tube Power Amps, The Ultimate Tone, and some projects book though I know nothing about electronics besides what I've read in those it's just interesting stuff. All those books are on the subject of vacuum tube amplifier design and construction
5. My health care manual
6. My brother's lojack policy(did you know your warranty doesn't apply to acts of god?)

dangin

I've got you all beat, I own this book

Of course I was already an atheist when I bought it. Rubbish, utter rubbish.

lisarea

That reminds me.

I have this:

Ravaged by the New Age: Satan's Plan to Destroy Our Kids

It used to be on a bookshelf in my den, where I held a number of parties, and CONSISTENTLY, someone would pick it up and read it all the way through during the course of said "party."

Needless to say, I suck, and my parties suck.

August Spies

Honestly... I dont' read many bad books. In fact, the books im goign to list as the worst ive ever read are probably people's favorite books. Im only doing works of fiction, ive read too much bad history/philosophy.

Frankenstien - Mary Shelly. (Im not sure if I should put this on, cause the plot was good and the characters were well developed. But... oh man, it just isn't written very well. )

Pride and Pejudice- Austin. ( Annoying and stupid characters. ZERO plot. zero interest... but ill admit the writing is not bad)

Jane Eyre (sp?)- This was the book that both the boys and girls in 9th grade could agree sucked.


hmm I can't really think of anymore. But, as far as books I can remember (9th grade on, im sure I read lots of horrible books pre-high school) these were the worst to read. Even then none of the above are really bad. They were just the hardest to get through, the least interesting.

August Spies

I also read part of a book of poems by
Lenord Nemoy.... by far the worst published poems I have ever read.

pz

Have you considered using the book as a party planning guide?

Monkeybot

Ew, speaking of literary "classics" that I regret ever wasting my time on, The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy springs immediately to mind. Two words: Bor Ring.

Mediancat

When I was in graduate school a class on publishing I was in read The Bridges of madison County. Stupid, stupid, venomous little book, with a heart of mush pretending to be a beating one, a main character who's a wish-fulfillment of the author, a plot expanded for no good reason from twenty pages to over a hundred, a "postscript" about as Garry Trudeau put it -- "Every black horn player's dream: To write a song about a white guy's dead girlfriend," and the most blatant example of poisoning the well I've ever seen, with the author opening saying in his introduction that those who don't like his tender little tale have scabbed-over hearts.

Let's put it this way: The movie was BETTER.

I sat there in amazement as a class full of women I'd regarded as sensible fell for this shit. I bought it on Tuesday, read it on Wednesday, returned it on Thursday, and still regard it as one of the most wasted experiences of my life.

As for other books, if I don't like them, I give up as soon as I've judged the books not worth the effort. Almost universally.

Rob aka Mediancat