Disappointing reads.

[HareBrain]

Which ones? I haven't even finished Riddley Walker yet!

Exactly! You should have read it in one sitting.

 

[JunkMonkey]

If I'm being fair, The Road probably isn't a bad book so much as a mediocre one. I really dislike McCarthy's style in it, which feels pretentious, and I feel that once the pretention and reputation is stripped away, there's nothing exceptional there. However, it does feel inexplicably successful, the sort of "book club book" that makes me wonder "Why is this so popular?". I find it irritating that occasionally a "literary" writer has a go at science fiction and suddenly makes science fiction good.

This might be heresy, but I've never quite got what was especially deep about Philip K Dick. I've never worked out if he had something profound to say, or was just a cranky man being cranky. Perhaps a bit of both.

Is PKD regarded as 'deep'? I'm a fan and have enjoyed his weird paranoic-al stories for years but I've never thought of him as being deep: curious, obtuse, frustrating, puzzling and just down weird at times but not 'deep' - that said I liked his "earlier funnier ones" and I've never read any of the books he wrote after he had some teeth removed and got totally navel-gazingly mystical - VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Are those the 'deep' ones?

 

[Parson]

hadn't read anything from Heinlein later than Starship Troopers, so I decided to jump back into his writing when Friday was trumpeted as a return to form. Really?! How bad had his previous form become? I never bothered to find out since his characterization of Friday was suspect, and the book as a whole shallow. I'm not fond of Starship Troopers, but it was better than Friday by a long stretch.

I actually liked Friday a bit more than Starship Troopers. Like most of Heinlein's books, they are pretty political but Friday seemed a bit more plausible.

 

[Randy M.]

I found Friday's reaction to rape implausible, which was essentially, "Hey, sure, I know, it's just business." Nnnnnnooooo ... I don't think so. And that left me feeling the rest of it wasn't based too firmly on human behavior, either. I didn't care for the politics of ST, but it didn't occur to me that the people in it were acting beyond the usual spectrum of human behavior.

 

[KGeo777]

The Devil Rides Out bored me terribly.

The Godfather was a pain to read.

 

[Vladd67]

The Devil Rides Out bored me terribly.

The Godfather was a pain to read.

The Godfather was that rare thing, the film was far better than the book.

 

[Parson]

I found Friday's reaction to rape implausible, which was essentially, "Hey, sure, I know, it's just business." Nnnnnnooooo ... I don't think so.

Interesting take here. It seemed to me that she did what pretty much any powerless person would have to do. It's only when she gained power that, although her actions were understandable and proportional, I was disappointed. I had hoped for a bit more of grace on her side of things, not that society would have stood by her if she had done a more righteous thing.

 

[KGeo777]

Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is a disappointing read but I knew going in that it was radically different from the movie.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Starship Troopers was a book I read many, many years watching the movie (which I enjoyed very much). I did think that the movie satirist militarism and facisim far more than the book did, which (to me) read like a realistic portrayed of a futuristic human soldier.

What very much surprised me was just how old the book is; more than 65 years ago. It (to me) feel like a book written in the 80s, not the 1950s. It isn't one that I will likely go back to again, as there is far less that happens than there is in the movie. Its a shame really that he never wrote a sequel.

 

[Toby Frost]

acting beyond the usual spectrum of human behavior

I think women in some older SF novels just do that. I get the impression that a lot of older SF writers thought that women were basically insane, and that their actions were largely random (doubly so if babies were involved).

Is PKD regarded as 'deep'?

I always thought that he was seen as such, and that he was striving to say something general about human existence. Books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? felt to me to be "about something", although I'd find it hard to say quite was that something was.

 

[Vladd67]

I think women in some older SF novels just do that. I get the impression that a lot of older SF writers thought that women were basically insane, and that their actions were largely random (doubly so if babies were involved).



I always thought that he was seen as such, and that he was striving to say something general about human existence. Books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? felt to me to be "about something", although I'd find it hard to say quite was that something was.

I have always thought that Dicks had wonderful ideas but he struggled with expressing them.

 

[Randy M.]

I think women in some older SF novels just do that. I get the impression that a lot of older SF writers thought that women were basically insane, and that their actions were largely random (doubly so if babies were involved).

Heinlein had done better. While he didn't make women his heroes, really, he credited them with more wit and insight than most s.f. writers. I don't think he understood the emotional life of women, but then most male s.f. writers ... make that most males ... don't.

(He says, noting no women have chimed in on this yet.)

 

[Provincial]

I thought The Catcher in The Rye might be an interesting read because it was used as the ‘trigger’ in a few movies which set programmed people off to spy, assassinate, etc. Not a great reason, I admit, but I had also read a few reviews saying how wonderful it was. Anyway, it wasn’t interesting at all, it was almost unreadable. However it has a special place of honour in my heart because, as the first book I ever read that I couldn’t be bothered to finish, it was the one which gave me permission not to waste my time on other overhyped trash.

I do like the work of PKD, and some of it (like The Man in the High Castle) has amazing ideas behind it. But I dare say The Catcher in The Rye has its fans in Chrons as well!

 

[JunkMonkey]

I thought The Catcher in The Rye might be an interesting read because it was used as the ‘trigger’ in a few movies which set programmed people off to spy, assassinate, etc. Not a great reason, I admit, but I had also read a few reviews saying how wonderful it was. Anyway, it wasn’t interesting at all, it was almost unreadable. However it has a special place of honour in my heart because, as the first book I ever read that I couldn’t be bothered to finish, it was the one which gave me permission not to waste my time on other overhyped trash.

I do like the work of PKD, and some of it (like The Man in the High Castle) has amazing ideas behind it. But I dare say The Catcher in The Rye has its fans in Chrons as well!

I told my kids they had to read Catcher in the Rye.... But if they hadn't read it by the time they were 16 not to bother. Only my oldest did and she told me she thought Holden Caulfield "was a dick".

 

[Vince W]

I told my kids they had to read Catcher in the Rye.... But if they hadn't read it by the time they were 16 not to bother. Only my oldest did and she told me she thought Holden Caulfield "was a dick".

So did I. I feel much the same way about Jack Kerouac in On The Road. A complete wanka.

 

[msstice]

I've never quite got what was especially deep about Philip K Dick.

I don't know about deep, but I once read a lot of PKD at one go and got into a weird state of mind. No other author has done that to me.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The Catcher in The Rye ... was almost unreadable. However it has a special place of honour in my heart because, as the first book I ever read that I couldn’t be bothered to finish, it was the one which gave me permission not to waste my time on other overhyped trash.

It was assigned reading in my High School English class. I don't remember which year, but this was back in the sixties, and I guess they thought Holden would be one protagonist that the kids could identify with.

I don't know what my classmates thought, but I didn't care for the book or Holden, who just struck me as whiney and tiresome. I think I ended up just skimming the book (since obviously I couldn't just abandon it and had to make a stab at reading enough of it to try and fake the assignments).

The funny thing is that the book was considered so racy—I guess because of the language?—that I had a hard time finding a bookstore that would sell it to me, and ultimately my mother had to be there to give her permission. For a book assigned in class. Well, it was another era, of course, and it may not just have been because I was so young but because I was a young female.

Anyway, in spite of whatever it was that made it improper reading for my virginal teenage ears, I just found it boring.

 

[Randy M.]

I thought The Catcher in The Rye might be an interesting read because it was used as the ‘trigger’ in a few movies which set programmed people off to spy, assassinate, etc. Not a great reason, I admit, but I had also read a few reviews saying how wonderful it was. Anyway, it wasn’t interesting at all, it was almost unreadable. However it has a special place of honour in my heart because, as the first book I ever read that I couldn’t be bothered to finish, it was the one which gave me permission not to waste my time on other overhyped trash.

I do like the work of PKD, and some of it (like The Man in the High Castle) has amazing ideas behind it. But I dare say The Catcher in The Rye has its fans in Chrons as well!

A dissenting voice. I found The Catcher in the Rye understandable and affecting when I read it for a high school class -- one of those assigned books I actually liked. And I liked it again years later when I read it along with my then teen daughter, who also found it compelling.

 

[Bick]

A dissenting voice. I found The Catcher in the Rye understandable and affecting when I read it for a high school class -- one of those assigned books I actually liked. And I liked it again years later when I read it along with my then teen daughter, who also found it compelling.

I agree. I read it while at university (not an assigned text, but a choice) and I liked and appreciated it.

 

[DaCrazyKat29]

a book (Not as bad as what you’re asking for but still) I once was kinda disappointed by was Shatter Me. It had a good idea, and the first read thought it was alright. Every time I re think it it becomes worse -I think it had potential. Started reading the second book and gave up.