Authors or Books that are Torturous, Tedious, or downright Boring

[Doc Safari]

My list:

Arthur C. Clarke


Manages to make science fiction as exciting as reading a technical manual. B-O-R-I-N-G




Tom Horn and Cris Putnam

As religious books go, their subject matter is really cutting edge and controversial. Too bad they put you to sleep in a few pages.





Ernest Hemingway


"The water was wet." "Really wet." "Want to get wet?" "Are you sure it's wet?" He tested the water. It was wet. "Told you it was wet."

Could not sit through a single novel of his.




Charles Dickens

Depressing author. Best to read one of his books if all firearms, razor blades, and poisons are securely locked up.




Kevin Trudeau


Okay, cheap shot: he's not a real writer. He's an infomercial goon and convicted fraudster, but he's "written" several books. I tried to read one of his books once that I found in a used book store. I could not put my finger on a coherent thought or comprehensible sentence in the few pages I read. His writing is more on the order of random thoughts typed in any order on a page.

[26 Inf]

My list:

Ernest Hemingway

"The water was wet." "Really wet." "Want to get wet?" "Are you sure it's wet?" He tested the water. It was wet. "Told you it was wet."

Could not sit through a single novel of his.

Unfortunately I had to parse several to write papers on them. But I agree.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Loved "The Fountianhead", never got through "Atlas Shrugged". Like most women she needed to tighten up her stories a bit..
.
After non one had read "Grapes of Wrath" over Christmas, my English teacher in HS admitted that even he had a hard time getting through the book.

[chuckman]

I like Hemingway and Steinbeck. A couple of my faves.

My problem authors:

Dickens, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville.

[Alex V]

Ever tried to read War and Peace? Holy hell, I gave up after about 20 pages.

[chuckman]

Ever tried to read War and Peace? Holy hell, I gave up after about 20 pages.

Lol. Great book.

I had to read it, along with books/short stories/plays by Chekhov, Gogol, Turkenev, Dostoyevsky, and Chernychevsky in college--in freaking summer school. I managed, but I was a big fan of Cliff Notes. I still have some of those floating around.

Well, War and Peace, I read in a different class, not summer school, the only book we had to read in that class that semester.

[rero360]

H. P. Lovecraft

[Firefly]

Ever tried to read War and Peace? Holy hell, I gave up after about 20 pages.

Actually, having done Russian Lit. I have.

The stories were published over several years. You aren't supposed to read it all at once. It gets interesting as you go along.

The basic gist is everyone is a bastard. Like really. Everyone is someone else's kid. Its messed up.

[SteyrAUG]

Adolf Hitler.

I have an attraction to anything subversive or dangerous, basically if a book is considered a threat to society I have probably read it. People make fun of his art work and I don't know why, if you wanted to criticize him for something other than war crimes his book is the perfect place to start.

Never have I read anything where the author says the same things over and over with the belief that he has expressed dozens of different ideas. Now I know a lot of things don't translate well over decades and from other cultures and you have to remember time and place as well as the circumstances in which they were written.

But even still I amazed that anyone other than the most brainwashed, non critical thinker who is absolutely devoted to the idea of national socialism could read this book and come away with anything good to say. It's hundreds of pages of a kid complaining why life isn't fair and how he'd fix things if he was made "king for a day." And of course, everything is somebody else's fault. Were it not for the swastika typically put on the cover of every english translation I might think I was reading another book by Marx.

[Alex V]

Lol. Great book.

I had to read it, along with books/short stories/plays by Chekhov, Gogol, Turkenev, Dostoyevsky, and Chernychevsky in college--in freaking summer school. I managed, but I was a big fan of Cliff Notes. I still have some of those floating around.

Well, War and Peace, I read in a different class, not summer school, the only book we had to read in that class that semester.

Actually, having done Russian Lit. I have.

The stories were published over several years. You aren't supposed to read it all at once. It gets interesting as you go along.

The basic gist is everyone is a bastard. Like really. Everyone is someone else's kid. Its messed up.

Oh god it was terrible. Come on.

Yes, I know what it is about, my parents are avid readers and have an extensive library. They have read every classic piece of literature and encouraged me to do the same. Even they hate War and Peace and they read it in it's native Russian when it was called correctly, War and the World. The word "myr" in Russians can mean either "peace" or "world". Anyway, Anna Karenina was shit as well. Everything Tolstoy wrote was dreck.

Similarly I hated Remarques All Quiet On The Western Front and A Time to Love and a Time to Die. Holy shit. Talk about depressing!