Of the ones I tried to read, Atlas Shrugged, and it’s not even close.

the scarlet letter. I found it extremely unrelatable, and generally boring. I think The Crucible play by the same author arthur miller* conveys the same overarching principles about religious hypocrisy and herd mentality in a much more interesting way.

Foundations by Isaac Asimov. It’s a great story but it’s a tough read. Way better as an audiobook.

Rich dad poor dad. Rich dad never existed. It’s all made up grift and, consequentially, people fall for it and make expensive life investment decisions after it.

When I was a kid I absolutely loved The Chronicles of Narnia and I hated The Last Battle. I thought King Tirian was an unpleasant asshole and I thought killing the Pevensies sucked because they all go to Narnia Heaven forever while Susan has to bury them.

It probably wasn’t a bad book but it felt like it ended my childhood.

Of books I’ve completed, Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. Read it at school, hated it (as well as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles) - full of ridiculous coincidences. And also utterly miserable to boot.

I started reading The Da Vinci Code, but gave up after the very first page.

“Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer. I read it in high school so maybe I wouldn’t hate it as much as I do if I wasn’t forced to read it, but the plot is basically about a booksmart kid who decides to leave his rich parents and society behind to live in remote Alaska. The book follows Chris McCandless along his journey from the Eastern part of the country, through the South, and finally up the West coast and to Alaska (hitchhiking mostly). When he gets to Alaska, instead of actually being prepared and realizing the risk, he goes into “Into the Wild” incredibly unprepared - he ends up having to stay at his remote camp well into the spring because he didn’t consider all the snow melting would render the river blocking his path back to society completely uncrossable. He ends up dying because he ruins most of a moose by failing to properly smoke the meat, and eats a poisionous plant out of desperation. Obviously this could have been avoided by just doing the proper research or bringing extra food (he only brought a few pounds of rice, and the guy who drove him to his final stop literally told him it was a bad idea to do this with so few supplies and only a .22 rifle). Basically his horrible death could have been easily avoided if he wasn’t such an idiot.

The author clearly had a ton of respect for the guy, because he spent a year or two peicing all this together. He spoke about Chris (the unprepared trancendentalist wannabe) with a great deal of reverence, acting like he was a martyr for a cause unclear to me. Why you would want to spend years of your life in an attempt to immortalize an idiot, I am not sure. The author also decided to randomly interrupt the main story with a few chapters about his own moronic adventures, which made an already bad book worse.

The Bible!

Harry Potter. I tried to read first book but couldn’t, the cringyness was high and the naming convention was straight up from 90’s bad fantasy book parody. It’s like one of the few books i not finished after i started, and i read a lot. And while the others are just forgettable experiences, HP is constantly in my face in media, reminding me of it.

A tossup between books 7-10 of the Wheel of Time series. I gave up half way through book 10 and resent the time that I wasted on the series. 20 years later I still recall the desperate hope that the next chapter/book would advance the storyline, only to be greeted with more subplots, stupid things happening because of characters inability/unwillingness to communicate, and overly verbose descriptions of every little thing.

I hear the final books, written by a different author, were much better.

For me personally: Triton. I remember reading it 25+ years ago. I really had to fight through it, after circa half of it I put it away and never touched it again.

So remarkably not my favorite book that I still feel the exhaustion when thinking about it.

Can’t remember the name but there’s a novel set in Ireland in the not-too-distant future

Synopsis implied it had become a surveillance state but didn’t gave up before confirming due to the literal writing style

I swear every sentence was written in the passive voice (poorly remembered examples):

“It was made known through the clothes he wore they were sent from the department of security”

“As she walked outside the smell made Spring’s arrival clear”

Totally fine normally but do it every single sentence and it becomes a mystery novel where the mystery is what the hell you just read!

… Or idk, Harry Potter 5 is pretty meandering

Any author of the french mouvement réalisme.

Court of Thorns and Roses. It came highly recommended by my sister and many others.

I get the appeal, an adult retelling of classic fantasy. But it felt like it was written just to be edgey, sexy and proactive. Which is fine if that’s what you are wanting, lots of media does this. I was just hoping for a new angle or dimension on Beauty and the Beast, not just a sexy B&B. I guess that does count as a new angle, but not one for me.

The grapes of wrath. I hate read that in about 5 days in HSchool and still cannot stand it. The other books we were assigned I enjoyed…but this motherfucker, nope.