Ask Lemmy

The Silo series. First one was okay though the protagonist could be a bit of an idiot at times (I'm freezing, I should light these small tires on fire. That'll keep me warm for 2 minutes while I choke on the smoke), but as a hard scifi, the series never answered enough critical questions (how do they get clean air?, is there really an oil deposit under Atlanta?). Also, the entire premise of how "wool" enters the story is so contrived, I failed to catch why it was necessary both in-universe and from a storytelling standpoint.

The second book was a prequel and the back stories of one of the characters was so fucking boring and predictable I just started skipping his chapters.

I read Wikipedia for the third book.

Stranger in a Strange Land. I was told I'd like it because it was critical of religion, but it turns out it was only critical of organized religion. Too specific for my tastes.

Jehova's Bible. No, I'm being serious.

I read the whole thing. I can't remember shit from it. At that time my life was more boring than reading that book, though.

I forgot the name of the book, but it starts out with some alien overlord dying, and a whole bunch of people commit ritualistic sewer slide over the death of the alien, and i just couldn't force myself to care.

I even started writing down names and details on the characters, just to try and make it stick. But I don't remember anything happening, to the point I just forgot to finish it.

Edit: Recommended by my brother, but I just didn't get what he got out of it.

Edit 2: The Praxis

The Sword of Truth series.

I read the first book as a teenager. I was rather skeezed out by the roughly one-third of the book that was a poorly-disguised authorial kink fantasy.

Then the second book had a lovingly detailed description of a witch gaining demonic power by getting railed by a demon.

My great great aunt made me read the Bible so I'd be a good little Christian. Read it got the privileges for it, sucked right ass. My only conclusion is that I liked Samson and that most Christians are hypocritical asshats. But what was I expecting my great great aunt thought Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia were evil because they had magic.

Also if anyone is curious how well the good Christian aspect faired now that I'm 26 and not 8. Well hark to the ancestors, the spirits, and the gods, I'll burn every last mega church to the ground and send them to their god to face a second judgement not my own.

I can't remember the name of the book nor do I care to. Some knob slobberer wrote a biography about Elon Musk before most people figured out he fucking sucks. I picked it up and was so disgusted by the half way mark that I became an early hater.

The problem is I can actually name quite a few books I regret reading, but none of those were recommendations lol.

Most recommendations I've gotten are average, maybe a handful of mediocre, but nothing like "why did I waste my life on this?"

Regardless, here is a book (series) I think had to be a prank written as a joke submission that somehow got approved and somehow made enough money to make a complete series: https://www.scholastic.com/andygriffiths/chapter_butt_wars.htm

Seriously I want you to read the Scholastic excerpt and tell me with a straight face the writing wasn't a bet to see if the publisher would pass anything if you slapped a fasade of a poop joke title onto a book.

I cannot emphasis this enough. This doesn't read like a children's humor book, it's literally just a drunken action packed story that the author did a word substitute to see how far this could go lmao.

I'm going to say "The prince" by Machiavelli. The modern title would be "How to play power games and hold onto power" or something. The content is nice and solid but it's clear he should have hired an editor. His sentences are longer than most paragraphs.

Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems

I recommended The Painted Man, which I had just read and thought was pretty good. A friend of mine read it (and liked it) and, contrary to my fate, proceeded to continue the series. Next time I saw him he was fairly mad at me, stating the the series took a sharp downturn in quality after the first one. After this I haven't been able to get him to read any other books, despite the one I actually recommended being fairly good. So in a way, this was me recommending a really bad book. Which just happened to be good.

The Conch Bearer. Oh dear god, what a boring attempt at young adult literature. Also, The Catcher in the Rye, but that one was required by the school curriculum for reasons beyond my comprehension.