A twist on the "books you'd bring to a desert island" question

[firecat]

A family member was visiting this week and he, the OH, and I were arguing a lot about various books, TV shows, and movies we liked. Even though we're all SFF fans, we couldn't all three find anything that we'd (a) all read/watched and (b) all liked. (We did agree on Star Trek: TNG and the first two Star Wars movies.) So we flipped it around and tried to find something we all agreed that we hated. That was also hard. It led to this game:

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You are a person addicted to reading. You are stranded on a desert island.

On this desert island is also a book, or a series, or the entire ouvre of one author.

What book/series/author, if any, would you REFUSE to read, even if it were the only reading material on the island?

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Rules:

1. You have to have some familiarity with the work, set of works, or author you nominate. So, for example, no fair saying "Rush Limbaugh" if you've never at least started to read any of his books.

2. It's OK to diss works, but not other commenters.

Comments

[senmut]

Ayn Rand.

My one attempt to read Rand was met with severe frustration and not even an ability to spork it.

[teigh_corvus]

I feel like saying the Twilight series or the Shades of Gray series is wicked obvious. Still relevant, though.

But 'Wicked' is my actual nom. It's a 'flames on the side of my face' book.

[lilacsigil]

Orson Scott Card. I have read Ender's Game and didn't particularly like it, but after that the rampant and disturbing fictional AND real world homophobia was too much for me.

[legionseagle]

Absolutely nothing by John C. Wright. I've read some of the bits that are out there as Hugo nominated works and they're overblown and ridiculous.

[libskrat]

Dune and its gazillion sequels. Nope.

[akycha]

What a fun game! The Thomas Covenant Books by Steven R. Donaldson, otherwise known as "let's have a rapist for a protagonist, but he's afflicted with leprosy so he's allowed to!"

The entire oeuvre of Piers Anthony, some of which I read when I was young, stupid, and did not know he was a defender active proponent of child sexual abuse.

The Gor series (admittedly I have only read selected paragraphs, but they were enough, although sometimes unintentionally hilarious)

Anything by Vox Day. The bits being described by Imperator Nataliosa via Twitter are QUITE ENOUGH.

[ironed_orchid]

Seconded.

My one attempt to read Rand resulted in cutting up The Foutainhead and using it to make angsty goth poems.

[ironed_orchid]

Posted as a reply to you by mistake.

[ironed_orchid]

Dan Brown conspiracy books. Someone gave my ex a copy of The Da Vinci Code and I read 13 pages in an attempt to see what the fuss was about, before giving up.

[tagryn]

Interesting topic! First two are more "wince, but if it's the *only* thing to read...", last is more a definite "no, using it as fire feed"

* I gave up on Heinlein's "Farnham's Freehold" about halfway through. I also didn't find "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be at all the seminal book that others apparently have found it to be. Which is odd, because his "Expanded Universe" and "Time Enough for Love" are ones that I go back for a reread every so often.

* Ian Slater's "USA vs Militia" series. I so wanted to like this one, seemed like it had an interesting if implausible premise (basically a chronicle of a second US civil war), but the lousy prose and lack of character development lost me quickly.

* I'd put in a different category something like a cache of hate literature - "Turner Diaries" comes to mind - which I see as the literary equivalent of viewing a collection of snuff photos and movies. By which I mean, something that I know would diminish me as a person and shrink my soul if I partook of it.

[firecat]

Ayn Rand is definitely on my list too.

[firecat]

Best use of an Ayn Rand book ever!

[adrian_turtle]

Am I stranded alone on the desert island, or do I get to bring a friend? In the right company, it can be a lot of fun to read something terrible and take it apart sentence by sentence. Whoever it is that wrote "Oh John Ringo, NO," was obviously having a great time. And Ana Mardoll's commentary on the Twilight books is downright gleeful (in a serious feminist way, of course.)

[firecat]

I liked Ender's Game and one other book of his, but yes he's one of the writers I can't read any more.

[firecat]

I love Dune despite its many flaws, but I wouldn't touch any of the sequels again.

[firecat]

The Covenant books were the ones that taught me it was OK to stop reading a book or series if I hated it. Unfortunately, it only taught me that AFTER I'd finished it.

I liked the one Piers Anthony book I read, but I've been warned to stay away from all the rest, and yeah, some author behavior means the books are tainted.

I used one of the Gor books as porn when I was a teenager, so if they were on my desert island, I would probably read that one again for nostalgia value.

[firecat]

I've heard a lot of people say that, and I thank them for saving me the time of trying to read it.

[firecat]

Heinlein's entire ouevre would go untouched on my island. I've read some of his books and didn't hate all of them, but I have a special loathing for him having to do with encoutering some of his aphorisms as polyamory mottos.

[firecat]

That's a very good point! I'm not sure I would have many items on my no-read list if I could bring a friend.

[senmut]

This makes unending sense to me.

[tani]

This is such a hard question, because I suspect that eventually I would break down and read any book, just out of desperation.

1Q84 by Haruki Murkami was the first book that came to mind. I slogged through the whole thing, and hated it intensely. I wouldn't rule out his other works, though. This one could have been a fluke.

A Child Called 'It' by Dave Pelzer, and all its sequels might make it on there. I read the first book, and it was not only a horrifying topic, but pretty badly written, so I might be able to stay away from those.

Catherine Coulter might make the list as well. Admittedly, I've only read one book by her, but it was pretty terrible.

[howlingsilence]

The suggestions above are good ones. Ayn Rand came to mind immediately.

I'll list a series I desperately wanted to like, but couldn't: The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski. I loved House of Leaves, but this new series aggravates me to no end so far. The writing style is unrelentingly repetitive. It gave me a headache. The book is over 800 pages! And it's Part 1 of a series of 28 books! Kill me now.

[firecat]

I like some Murakami, but if the book on my island was Kafka on the Shore I would not read it. There was something extremely unpleasant in it.

[firecat]

Yes if I had books on my island that were from writers who refuse to countenance editors, I would not read them unless I also had a case of red pencils so I could edit them myself. Ann Rice, I'm looking at you.

[azurelunatic]

I liked Ender's Game when I read it, but it wasn't life-changing for me; I had quite a collection of books by him until I learned about his political views, which then shone through in a way that I could not fucking cope with in the slightest.

They all went in the burning trash when I was back at my folks' place cleaning up my old room.

[azurelunatic]

Shari S. Tepper. I read Beauty, and it made me feel seasick.

[silveradept]

Utter refusal to read might be difficult, as being stranded makes the mind want to relax into a book occasionally.

I would have issues with the writing of Stephenie Meyer, though, as Twilight was a book that I read only to see what the hype was about, and it was not an entertaining read at all.

[firecat]

his political views, which then shone through in a way that I could not fucking cope with in the slightest.

Yes, that sums it up exactly.

[azurelunatic]

The Twilight series is best read with a friend and some popcorn. Most of my problems with it are actually based on the writing craft: I think Stephenie got characters that were too wilful for a new writer to manage properly. Since I remember basically being Bella (minus vampires) when I was 14, I can't hate her specifically.

[sabotabby]

I'd be tempted to say Ayn Rand, who is nearly totally unreadable, except that I rather enjoy slagging her work.

So I have to go with Adolf Hitler, the Ultimate Avatar, by Miguel Serrano, which was so terrible I couldn't even get through it to mock it.

[firecat]

Wow, at least that book's title warns a person what they might be getting into.

[sabotabby]

You should see the rest of it.

There are illustrations.