Thread 24576168

ITT: worst thing you've ever read

>>24576168 (OP)
this shit

>>24576168 (OP)
Is this really bad??? I heard of it recently and wanted to read it just because the guy say I'd prefer not to all the time or something like that

Felt like an AI aggregate of every first year comparative religious mythology course without invention nor subversion.

>>24576168 (OP)
No longer human…a very boring book about a very uninteresting character.for those who never read, the theme of the book is “reeeee normies I must fuck whores and being and addict reeeeee”.

>>24576418
It's basically an 1850s version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

>>24576471
>I must fuck whores
based

>>24576418
Bartleby is undoubtedly one of the best short stories ever written, and might actually be the best, bar none. Ignore >>24576472 he doesn't know what he's talking about.

>>24576544
>Bartleby is undoubtedly one of the best short stories ever written, and might actually be the best
Ok I'll ignore ops opinion then, thanks

>>24576480
It's not based trust me. Having a gf that you love and loves you is so much better than having sex with prostitutes. At least for me

>>24576617
Ignore >>24576544 he doesn't know what he's talking about.

>>24576472
that is not even remotely close to what it is. guaranteed you have never read it. melville is the best writer in the english language

>>24576472
It’s about non-violent resistance to authoritarianism. Bertleby never outright refuses a command nor does he ever resist anything. He is like a Jesus character who responds “I would prefer not to do such and such a thing” which is merely a declaration that he feels he wouldn’t enjoy doing said thing. This is different from actual refusal which is confrontational.

Tl;Dr- it’s a modern Jesus parable

>>24577230
His dad is a powerful attorney with many important connections in Big Pharma (serious people who make sh*t happen — cursing is undignified), better watch what you say. They will backtrace you

"Journey to Become a True God." It's a machine translated xianxia knock-off written by some sea monkey or some indian on Webnovel. The author doesn't seem to speak english at all, and he literally paraphrases every sentence two or three times to bloat his word count. Absolutely asinine.

Honorable mention for my 8th grade table neighbour, who gallantly volunteered to read a dreadful story he wrote to the class in which he describes two people kissing in considerable detail until the teacher cut him short because it had nothing to do with the assignment.

>>24576184
Borges' butt buddy. Anything worth reading by Casares?

>>24576446
The Hobbit was his masterpiece if we’re being honest. Well, that and the Beowulf analysis he did.

anything by that nabokov hack

Justine by Marquis de Sade
Dune by Frank Herbert
5 Horus Heresy (audio)books by various authors
Anything by Wittgenstein

I think this is the very worst.

>>24577383
This is one of the most retarded interpretations I’ve seen about the story.

>>24576168 (OP)
I was forced to read Anne of Green gables in school, massive book of American slice of life faggotry.

>>24578219
This looks like subahibi perchance. Your taste is dogshit and I hope you get annihilated by demons for being a cause of the weak shitty taste of this world.

>>24578529
What's a subahibi I just thought that photo looked cool

>>24576168 (OP)
I always hear such retarded descriptions of Bartleby the Scrivener. Its clear most never read it, like I did. It was assigned in literature high school class. It confused us as teenagers, the teacher explained the power of passive resistance. Once you saw that? It made sense. But to all the people claiming to read this book who haven't? I can only say this. "I would prefer not to", which is all you would say, had you read the book.

>>24578686
>>24577383
>>24578507
This is the most baffling interpretation of the work to which I've ever been exposed. I don't know how one can even justify it given the plot that Bart does less and less until he is inevitably taken to a tomb where he dies . If anything I'd think it's an argument in favor of the futility of passive resistance.

>>24578535
Subarashiki Hibi ~Furenzoku Sonzai~
(Wonderful Everyday - Discontinuous existence)
is where that screenshot is from. My favorite story of all time. It will probably filter you and obliterate you though.
It makes me feel annoyed when people try to describe it, a sacred work to me. You seething over wittgenstein might not help because he is referenced, but the point of the story is experience. If i became supreme master controller of reality, I would make everyone read it and then purge them by their reaction.

>>24578699
>>24578686
>>24577383
And how does the most important part of the story, the questions about necessity and free will would fit into this superficial reading of ''passive resistance''? You can only give a barely profound explanation of and connection with those themes, subjecting them to the supposedly main theme of ''passive resistance'', and not the contrary, putting those themes at the front and making references with popular movements at the time (hint: Emerson). This interpretation of ''resistance'' is as bad as anti-capitalist readings, outrageously as bad, depriving the story of all of its philosophical depth in order to moralize it.

>>24578686
>>24578789
>>24578686
most stories that are this well realized and which arent simplistic allegories lose all meaning and power once you try to make it about empty abstractions. the story is first and foremost about bartleby and has so much great detail that would be rendered useless if it was reduced to general ideas. its not about "passive resistance", its about the passive resistance of bartleby. they teach nothing at school.

>>24577230
I had to drop this, goddamn how many times do you need to repeat the process of hitting people in the chest with a hammer to turn them into weirdo cultists? It just kept repeating itself

>>24578981
Your post means nothing. What do you mean there’s “so much detail”, it is about Bartleby and would be rendered useless? We don’t know literally almost everything about Bartleby, the story is from another character’s point of view. Anyway, people really miss the point of the story this bad.

Had to read it in HS

still assmad that you fags memed me into reading no longer human. that shit was terrible and gay.

>>24578699
>>24578789
>>24578981
I fully agree with your sentiment. I blame Zizek for the shallow interpretation.

>>24578981
Bartleby is a fictional character and his only existence as a character is to communicate general ideas.

>>24576544
This guy is right. Bartleby the Scrivener is a solid short story. I read it in high school, and it was so memorable I was excited to read it recently again.

>>24579569
i dont know why anyone with this mindset would engage with art at all. do you not see the value of a writer creating something original, fleshing it out to give it life, playing with language, weaving an interesting particular narrative with internal connections that give it the joy of musicality and intent? is the point just a dumb generality to you, whose applicability falls apart the second you actually examine it like all other generalities? surely if the idea was to reach generalities, a simple fable would suffice, and we would never have fictional characters or worlds that feel real. we wouldn't have art in general. is the difference between a story's wikipedia synopsis and the story itself just padding to make you soak up the generality better? in an ideal world there would be a government official in every room to shoot people like you.

Quran
Anne Franks Diary
To Kill A Mockingbird

In order

>>24576168 (OP)
Ghastly rigamarole

>>24578699
>If anything I'd think it's an argument in favor of the futility of passive resistance.
Looked at that way, then yes. But. I remember just seeing the book play out as i read it in my head. There's this guy, just *standing* there. All day, every day. And all he will say, when you tell him to leave? "I would prefer not to." And while they removed him at the end, he was a monumental pain in the ass, up until then. And, he's just ONE guy, doing literally nothing. Imagine if ten people, did as he did. Or a hundred. No one has to do a thing? And its even more powerful.

>>24579781
And is there anything in the text to suggest that extension?

>>24576168 (OP)
there should be an award for getting filtered this hard

>>24578724
> search what subahibi is
> its a fucking weeb visual novel
Get the fuck out of here and go back to /a/ right now. If you wanna read japanese novels, read murakami, mishima, soseki.

worst is a strong word ,but recently i DNF reading:
Shogun
neuromancer

>>24576628
>>24578220
Also this
>>24579764
Fuck you, filtered.

>>24576446
J.R.R. Tolkien just plagiarized Frank Baum but made it more British by replacing Dorthy with homosexual midgets.

>>24577460
>Honorable mention for my 8th grade table neighbour, who gallantly volunteered to read a dreadful story he wrote to the class in which he describes two people kissing in considerable detail until the teacher cut him short because it had nothing to do with the assignment.
Ah so every English class has one of those, it wasn't just me.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It's misery porn for mousey manipulative women.

hands down

nothing even comes close to this wat, and i'm not even racist

>>24576617
>Having a gf that you love and loves you
Yeah and I leave cookies for Santa. Good luck bud hehe.

>>24580312
Christmas in July..
I leave cookies for Santa, anon, but he never eats them. Perhaps knowing that I want them he leaves them as a gift, for me: one of life's few win/win situations

>>24579938
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.

>>24578724
I know what subahibi is I was just fucking with anon and I wanted to see his response. I don't get why so many people say the first 2 chapters are "le big evil mean filters" when the game's page has a loud gore trigger warning so I was just waiting for it to happen. Im not a visual novel guy but it's by far the best one I have played and it's what tricked me into spending my time with Wittgenstein when his biography is far more interesting than his writings.
>>24579917
>murakami
Lol, lmao even

Sword of Shannara

The worst book i ever read used to be anything by Dan Brown, on account of i hate his deceitful grifter hack ways, but then i stumbled on this gem here.
I was looking for some classic generic fantasy imitating Tolkien, like the kind everyone is always complaining about, and the Shannara series kept coming up, so i decided to give it a go. Should be a safe enough bet, reading an acclaimed classic, and god knows my expectations were low. I was not expecting a fucking masterpiece, i was expecting that there would be a spot of cheeky plagiarism, but what i was not prepared for is that the guy can not fucking write.
I do not mean this in a snobby "his prose stylings are questionable" way.
I mean this asshole cant fucking write well enough to even HAVE a fucking style. This is the kind of semi-literate horseshit i've seen on peoples' creative writing practice blogs, but never in a published work. The Terry Brooks definition of "description" is adjectives. Doesnt matter how unfitting, jarring, or repetetive. If adjectives have been spewed, then description has taken place. At one point the main character describes the solid walls of a town, and then says he prefers the pregnability of his home forests. Now, i've enjoyed many walks and hikes in forests and not once has my heart sang out in appreciation of their sheer fucking pregnability.
I think at one point someone was also sitting "aboard" a horse, but that might have been te sequel. In this one Brooks had forgotten horses exist.
Now, sometimes a lack of writing talent can be compensated for by having interesting ideas, but what we have here is a complete and utter lack of any fantasy. I went in expecting "generic" and what i got was imaginational void. The world consists of Eastland, Southland, Westland, and Northland, and each of these points on the compass is inhabited by the corresponding race, humans in the south, elves in the west, trolls in the north, dwarves and gnomes in the east. Each of those races is actually human, except elves. The bad guy is The Warlock Lord who lives in Skull Mountain in the fucking Skull Kingdom. This sounds more fun than it actally is.
I can understand this trash getting published, everyone was wanting more Lord of the Rings, but what really baffles me is how it ever became popular. There is absolutely nothing going for it. No merit. And yet you can go on Goodreads and read reviews praising this monument to incompetence, some even describing the prose as "rich"
Fucking mental

Thanks for reading my blog
xoxo

>>24578724
Are weebs just manchilds? How one can read Wonderful Everyday and like it?
The japanese did too much damage to the young western mind.

>>24580803
Im the same anon. Both are me. the first chapter is probably my favorite and it's not a filter because of gore. Anything sexual or playful in nature is going to be a much harder filter in this world especially for lit faggots who think that if the number of
>Albeit perchance forshooth forthwith
Is too low and crass language is too high it's bad. Regardless of "why" it clearly doesn't have many appreciators by ratio.

>>24580973
How can one read anything and like it? Retard

>>24576184
Literally the coolest thing ever

>>24578236
This, also pic related

Nothing but the most lifeless descriptions of baby's first "surreal landscape," and they actually say "glowing rectangle," as if it's an incredibly clever euphemism for a smartphone. There's an aesthetic premise, and literally nothing else. Last time I take a recommendation from the wider internet, especially if published in the last 10-15 years.

>>24581034
>3/5 of the cover devoted to reviews and awards
You should have known it would be shit. On principle I never read anything this self-extolling

>>24581359
I half wished to appease a friend who wanted me to read it alongside him, and half to attempt to dispell my prejudice against modern female writers. Alas, lol.

>>24576168 (OP)
A perspective essential to have before reading this book is that Melville was closing in on financial ruin, what he wrote weren't accepted by publishers and what was already published didn't sell; which, if you ponder on it, is like the backstory of the scrivener where he had to burn letters that got virtually rejected in a way, such that he in the end he doesn't want to write anyway ; not to speak of the event where his printed books sitting in a warehouse *literally* burned.

>>24579938
>Shogun
Give me a QRD, I'm going to Japan soon and a family member has been pestering me to read it.
1000 pages of a chud learning about le mystical orient sounds like torture.

>>24581617
Not him but it's a fictionalized account of William Adams' stay in Japan after he was shipwrecked off its coast. He was an English sailor, a navigator actually, who wound up as a respected vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and one of his chief advisors for how to deal with Europeans. Shogun changes all of the names of the historical people (for example, the protagonist, John Blackthorn, is William Adams and Toranaga is Ieyasu), invents details and particulars, but the broad sweep of the plot is the same as real world history.

The culture shock stuff is actually not a huge part of the book, and is mostly in the earlier chapters as you might expect. The meat of the story is the political intrigue going on between Japan's most powerful figures, and in the background of this you have the scheming Jesuit priests who are the main antagonists for John, as he is a protestant and they fear he will wreak havoc with all they've done to sway the Japanese to Catholicism. While John is the protagonist designed to introduce us to this setting, he isn't the soul PoV in the story, and after a while you start to see John's preoccupation with the Jesuits kind of small potatoes compared to the titanic struggle for power going on between Toranaga and Ishida.

No way it's the worst thing I've ever read, but in the last few years, this was certainly the book that most made me think "why did you even think this was worth publishing, Quiroga-san?"

>>24576184
I didn't like this one, but at least it was a thoughtful idea.

>>24576168 (OP)
OP has got to be baiting, but you can never tell.

>>24580308
I've said this before, but if I was going to put on a Racists Book Club, this would unironically be my first pick.

>>24580595
>Waah narrators have no right to be naive and sincere and all people who do bad things have to be irredeemable people

>>24581020
>Waah style and personality cannot sustain literature on its own, you have to have plot and structure, no one cares about this old man's blog

You people do not possess a soul, go read some fucking Dan Simmons

>>24576168 (OP)
Just listened on audio book and this book pisses me off so bad. I can relate 100% with the narrator and i guess i dont have much else insightful to add about the book itself.

I have two grown men who live with me who do literally nothing. Its worse than bartleby because they do NOT support themselves, and require me for electricity water and food supplementation, dirty the house, and keep me up at night. I have made every effort to offer opportunities within my power to help them become anything but vegetables, and also unlike bartleby they are fucking dicks. It fucking breaks my heart because i think good men should do their best even for bad but I just cant fucking bring the police in or beat their ass. Im about to be without electricity after getting laid off and they are there only to use resources, be a dick when i ask them to be quiet or be clean. I dont know. Just fucking asshole bartleby's without the decency to say nothing at all and at least keep themselves small.

>>24576168 (OP)
The first page of "Finnegan's Wake". WTH?

>>24579108
im saying the story loses its value when you reduce everything to background fodder to make a dumb general point. there is so much more to appreciate in a writers imagination and his craft than a message to be imposed on it in a middle school english class, though i assume you were posting during one

>>24581966
I think his criticism is absolutely devastating to Dosto. If you read Dosto's novels, they are chock full of a grotesque macabre fascination with suffering and shame, with murder and sex and the subsequent groveling misery of those who find themselves in such situations. This type of tripe is 100% on the level of a typical harlequin romance novel, but because it's some old Russian who added Christian Orthodox themes as an accent to the sadomasochism, /lit/ eats it up. It's perverse.

>>24576168 (OP)
Nah it's pretty good
Maybe you have a strong negative reaction out of fear or lack of empathy

>>24581966
It is, as in all Dostoyevsky's novels, a rush and tumble of words with endless repetitions, mutterings aside, a verbal overflow which shocks the reader after, say, Lermontov's transparent and beautifully poised prose. Dostoyevsky as we know is a great seeker after truth, a genius of spiritual morbidity, but as we also know he is not a great writer in the sense Tolstoy, Pushkin and Chekhov are. And, I repeat, not because the world he creates is unreal -all the worlds of writers are unreal - but because it is created too hastily without any sense of that harmony and economy which the most irrational masterpiece is bound to comply with (in order to be a masterpiece). Indeed, in a sense Dostoyevsky is much too rational in his crude methods, and though his facts are but spiritual facts and his characters mere ideas in the likeness of people, their interplay and development are actuated by the mechanical methods of the earthbound and conventional novels of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

specifically the translation that penguin used at the time they printed this cover. its not a very interesting poem anyway (maybe im missing some context and would find it more interesting if i was steeped in the time and culture) but the translator makes sure everything becomes an absolute slog. youd think a broad audience translation with plenty of action would be easy to make exciting but i guess not for this guy.

>>24581034
Thanks almost bought this. Anyone read tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? Modern female writers are terrible. I was tricked into reading that Achilles book and it was terrible.

>>24578686
>Passive resistance
The whole plot is the story of a man who works so hard his eyes go bad, at which point he gives up on life.
It's basically a condemnation of the wagie life

>>24582432
Based

>>24576168 (OP)
the alchemist

>>24576168 (OP)
Had to read this in undergrad, just pure ressentiful crap.
>I'm a rich, successful writer who belongs to a minority group that's much wealthier on average than white people, but here's why I'm still traumatized and oppressed
I read worse books for that class, but this is the worst one I can actually remember.

Anything by Harry Turtledove, the most basic alternate history scenarios imaginable with pulpy prose and flat characters. Days of Infamy wasn't bad though

Investigations of a dog by Kafka
Pooch should have just given up.