Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Horrible / Literature

Go To

1%%
2%%
3%% Due to the nature of this trope, finding a proper image will be very tricky.
4%% DO NOT add an image to this page without discussion in Image Pickin'.
5%% Image Pickin' thread for reference: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1482208684003082500
6%%
7%% Please do not delete any review links from these pages unless the link is dead and has no alternates or there's consensus to remove it.
8%%
9->''"Get away from the book by any means you can. Or, if you've been unfortunate enough to pay money for it already, fling it against the wall. It'll make a really satisfying thwack! when it hits. Just make sure no pets or toddlers are in the way."''
10-->-- '''Smart Bitches, Trashy Books''' on "Top Ten Signs You're Reading A Very Bad Romance Novel" [[https://web.archive.org/web/20130118121112/http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/books/extras/top-ten-signs-youre-reading-a-very-bad-romance-novel (archive.org link)]]
11
12There are some books you pick up and read, then put down and never pick up again. These books, once you've read them, may make you want to hurl them against the nearest wall, or tear out every last page so that ''no one else'' can ever pick them up again. Nobody of any political affiliation would object to you [[BookBurning burning these books in particular]].
13
14'''''Important Notes''''':
15
16# Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not sufficient. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy, no matter how small a niche it is. It has to ''fail to appeal even to that niche'' to qualify as this.
17# This page is not for horrible ''individual'' chapters of otherwise good books. For those, see {{DethroningMoment.Literature}}.
18# To ensure that the work is judged with a clear mind and the hatred isn't just a knee-jerk reaction, as well as to allow opinions to properly form, '''[[Administrivia/NoRecentExamplesPlease examples should not be added until at least one month after release]]'''. This includes "sneaking" the entries onto the pages ahead of time by adding them and then just commenting them out.
19
20----
21!!Examples (more-or-less in alphabetical order):
22[[foldercontrol]]
23
24[[folder:Authors]]
25* '''Denise Brown Ellis''' published two children's fantasy novels, both allegedly co-written with [[CreatorCouple her husband]] '''Larry Ellis'''. The below descriptions alone will make you glad she/they didn't publish any more (despite the "About the Author" section on Amazon claiming "[t]he couple has several books ready for publishing for children, teens and adults" and [[StillbornFranchise both books that did get published being advertised as the first in their respective series]]):
26** In 2010, she/they wrote ''The Adventures of the Teen Archaeologists: (Book 1) The Land of the Moepek''. Full of bland powerhouses, dull conversations that have nothing to do with the plot, misuse of the word "sarcastically" and lots of grammatical errors.
27** ''[[http://www.amazon.com/ANTIGUA-Land-Fairies-Wizards-Heroes/dp/1425997821 ANTIGUA: The Land of Fairies Wizards and Heroes]]''[[note]]No relation to the real-life Caribbean island.[[/note]] is just as bad. It's most notable for featuring at least as many exclamation marks as it does full stops. [[ArtisticLicenseGeography At one point, a character actually takes a train from Britain to England]]. The excerpt available on Amazon is SoBadItsGood, but the novelty wears thin before long. It purports to be a teen novel, but reads like a book written for ''preschoolers'' due to its terse narration and dialogue. Denise blatantly advertised her/their book in review sections and insulted people who tried to give her advice. And there's a genuine, unironic 4-star review that was blatantly written by Denise, Larry, or somebody close to them.
28* '''Dario Ford''' [[note]]real name Bozhidar Gospodinov; also known as Darko Ford[[/note]] has published several books on Amazon with others listed on Goodreads. [[note]]''Skywalker''/''The Aliens and the Earth's Water, Ravenclaw, Dark Force, EMP Effect'', ''Calabrian Vendetta'', ''The Secret Side of the Moon (Calabrian Vendetta 2)'', ''Ethan and the Aliens'', ''Who Are You, MR (sic) Rayne?'', ''Franchise/StarWars: A Jedi On Earth'', and ''[='=]Ndrangheta''[[/note]] All are poorly-written and barely edited works that desperately try to emulate Creator/TerryPratchett and Creator/TomClancy, without any of the intelligence, charm, or style. His books probably would have gone unnoticed -- [[VeryFalseAdvertising had he not tried to claim]] that Pratchett and Clancy ''co-wrote'' many of these books, that the former also contributed a foreword to ''Skywalker'' (in reality, the book apparently doesn't have a foreword at all!), and that ''Dark Force, EMP Effect'', ''[='=]Ndrangheta'', and ''A Jedi on Earth'' are officially-licensed ''Literature/JackRyan'' and ''Star Wars'' books, respectively. As you might guess, neither of them wrote a single word of any of Ford's books, there's no evidence either ''A Jedi on Earth'' or his ''Jack Ryan'' books are official, and Ford's attempts to capitalize on the popularity of ''Star Wars'' and especially Pratchett and Clancy's deaths with half-assed stories is a disgusting joke. Ford has also given five-star reviews to all his books; on at least one occasion, he even posted two of them on the same book. At least two of his book covers also feature [[BlatantLies blatantly faked]] review quotes claimed to be from ''The New York Times'' and ''Entertainment Weekly'', as well as claiming to be published (again, without any evidence) by Random House.
29* '''Michael Pearl''' is an [[FameThroughInfamy infamous]] [[TheFundamentalist Independent Baptist]] pastor who, alongside his wife '''Debi''', advocates the "Pearl method", a bizarre and horrific philosophy on family dynamics that can be summed up as "any family where the mother is anything more than [[StayInTheKitchen the father's slave]] and [[AbusiveParents accomplice in tormenting the children]] is Satanic". They primarily spread their beliefs through [[VanityPublishing vanity-published]] guidebooks.
30** ''To Train Up A Child'', published in 1994, is a parent's guide based on the "Pearl Method" but more commonly called a "child abuse manual". Among other things, it says beating your kids is not only okay but mandated by God; it recommends [[KickTheDog pulling a newborn's hair]] if they bite while breastfeeding; it lists the best methods and implements for hitting your kids without leaving bruises; it suggests that you trap your child and then punish them for falling for it; and claims that if you don't do these things, you don't really love your kids. Most of it also comes with highly questionable Biblical justifications. These methods have been [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200112064124/https://www.babble.com/mom/to-train-up-a-child-teaches-punishment-that-kills-kids/ proven to kill children]], which is unsurprising given that the intent is to violently discourage ''normal child behavior'', and makes the Christian aspects highly ironic given that the parents of those children ended up violating [[ThouShaltNotKill a Commandment]]. The Pearls (perhaps unsurprisingly) have called medical professionals and child protection services "[[GodwinsLaw the Gestapo]]" for their natural reaction to their methodology. It's no wonder Rational Wiki [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/To_Train_Up_a_Child finds their stance on child discipline]] even more extreme than ''[[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]]'''s. Rachel Oates dissects this book in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5miNERB1Pe0 two]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUXgbsSqvoE parts]], and in the latter video she is [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness clearly on the verge of tears]].
31** ''Crafted to Be His Help Meet'' and its SpearCounterpart ''Created to Need a Help Meet'' are about marriage, and blatantly advocate DomesticAbuse. The Pearls preach total obedience in women toward their husbands, even if they're abusive, and that anything that goes wrong in a marriage is the woman's fault for not being obedient enough. The book fails to show any compassion for its readers, regularly resorting to such immature tactics as name-calling and fear-mongering. It's also indicative of subconscious [[HeteronormativeCrusader homophobia]] in that the Pearls never consider the possibility of a person being created for a relationship outside one with the opposite sex. Libby Anne sporks the first book [[https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/tag/created-to-be-his-help-meet here]], and Aletha does the second [[https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/tag/created-to-need-a-help-meet here]].
32* While '''Robert Stanek''' has written some passable-to-good nonfiction books [[note]](mainly guides for Microsoft Windows computers under the name William Stanek; Robert is his middle name)[[/note]], his [[BlatantLies "bestselling fantasy novels"]] are more famous for their low quality and [[http://conjugalfelicity.com/robert-stanek/ the ludicrously unethical tactics he used to promote them]], including the use of {{Sock Puppet}}s to pose as fans:
33** His main series, the ''Ruin Mist Chronicles'', is full of typos, [[ClicheStorm clichés]], stilted dialogue, bad PurpleProse, {{Flat Character}}s who are uninteresting at best and unlikable at worst, and writing so awkward that it makes the bland plot downright incomprehensible. The "children's versions" of ''Ruin Mist'' are not rewriting the books into something kid-friendly, Stanek just split each of them in two and called it a day.
34** The ''Dark Path'' is supposedly a retelling of the ''Ruin Mist Chronicles'' [[POVSequel from a different point of view]]. In reality, it's mostly content that was copy-pasted from the original series. The order of the scenes has been changed a bit, which just makes the plot even more confusing than it already was. ''Dark Path'' also contains several errors that were absent from ''Ruin Mist'', which suggests that it was just an early draft of the latter published for a quick buck. ''Dark Path'' also got split in half and released as two separate books.
35* '''Nigel Tomm''' is an "absurdist artist" who has acquired many detractors for his [[SmallNameBigEgo conceited, pretentious attitude]]. His works, [[Horrible/LiveActionFilms in multiple media]], aren't much better:
36** ''The Blah Story'' is the second-longest novel, contains the longest English sentence, and the second-longest coined English word. That sounds like it might be SoBadItsGood, but the book replaces every other word with "blah blah blah", leading to sentences like "In a blah she was blah blah blah down a blah between blah roses blah blah blah her blah blah hair blah blah gently the blah blah trees..." The length alone should scare you -- when you consider that Robert Jordan's ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' has 4,012,859 words, and it's made up of 15 {{Doorstopper}}s, and then see that ''The Blah Story'' has over ''11 million'' words, you know you'll be in for a bad time.[[note]]The claimant for longest novel, Mark Leach's ''Marienbad My Love'', is over 17 million words and is [[ProceduralGeneration generated entirely by Markov chain]].[[/note]]
37** ''Scarlett Johansson Asked Artie Lange: "Are You Too Fat To Fish Some Natalie Portman?" He Answered: I Must Have Sex With Adriana Lima, Robin Quivers & Eva Longoria Parker As They're My Life Calendar'', is just as bad. It's a lot like ''The Blah Story'' in that it replaces actual words with phrases like "tra la la", "taram pam pam", and "ha ha ha" so that the sentences (and thus the book) make no sense.
38[[/folder]]
39
40[[folder:Publishers]]
41* Several publishers try to make money by printing Website/{{Wikipedia}} articles and then ''selling'' them -- when you can just go online and get them for free. These books seem to be compiled almost entirely by machine, preserving any spelling errors and [[WikiVandal vandalism]] the original articles might have had and doing other truly bizarre things:
42** '''Alphascript Publishing''' and '''Betascript Publishing''' claim to have published over 300,000 books -- and they're all like this. Each book's cover claims it contains "High-Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA Articles!" Each book is titled after one of the articles in it, when there are several more unrelated articles, which is why ''Giving Circles'' contains the article on the United Kingdom (and also on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giving_circle giving circles]], but that makes up a single page of the 108-page book). Its [[http://brianbusby.blogspot.com/2011/10/alpha-beta-dada.html covers]] are epic failures; for instance, ''Fieseler Fi 167'' shows a [[ArtisticLicenseMilitary C-130]], and ''1867 Canadian Election'' shows [[EpicFail the United States flag]]. Many of these books were only 40-50 pages long, and yet they sold them for up to $100. Although they were printed on demand, many of them were listed on Amazon as "temporarily out of stock". Thankfully, they stopped doing this in 2013.
43** '''Books LLC's ''Wikipedia Source''''' series is as bad as Alphascript and Betascript, but with even weirder flaws. The articles are put together almost randomly, leading to incoherent descriptions and verbal diarrhea like "Gremlin Interactive Games: Loaded, Fragile Allegiance, Jungle Strike, Top Gear 3000, Harlequin, VideoGame/BodyHarvest, {{Utopia}}: The Creation of a Nation". The presentation is given the barest minimum effort, with most covers just being made of plain words, like [[http://www.biblio-moto-books.net/images/motorcycle_manufacturers_of_italy.jpg this]]. For copyright reasons, the original images are [[ClumsyCopyrightCensorship replaced with URLs pointing toward them]]. They also publish books with content from Fandom, formerly known as Wikia.
44%%* '''Flu Press''' is yet another publisher that publishes so-called books made of Wikipedia articles, and it even sells them on eBay.
45[[/folder]]
46
47[[folder:Standalone Examples]]
48* '''''101 WACKY Computer Jokes''''' by J.B. and G.C. Stamper is one of the worst joke books ever made, and that's saying something. Every single "joke" is a cheap, nonsensical pun based loosely around some computing term -- for example, "What did the prisoner do when he got a computer? He ESCAPED!" (Get it? 'Cuz there's an [-ESCAPE-] key!) Its worst segment is the "Presidents of the Computed States of America", which is just the names of UsefulNotes/ThePresidentsOfTheUnitedStates turned into lame computer puns -- but not ''all'' the presidents, just five of them. And all of them have their own page, with just the pun, not even an illustration. Seanbaby tore into this book in the third part of [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-geek-humor-books-by-authors-who-understand-neither/ this Cracked article.]]
49* '''''500 Manga Creatures''''' by Yishan Li might have been a decent clipart/how-to-draw book... if you like blatantly-plagiarized ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' and ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' artwork. [[https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51NIIZ4xjnL.jpg Just by looking at the cover]], you can see what is clearly supposed to be [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Caterpie, Dragonair, Hoothoot, Oddish, Latias]], [[Franchise/{{Digimon}} Cherrymon, and Mummymon]], as well as (for some reason) [[Franchise/SailorMoon Artemis]], Whispy Woods from the ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'' franchise, the MS Girl version of [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamF91 Vigna Ghina]], and a catgirl centaur stolen from a Deviantart gallery. [[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061650501/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PCMT9FGZ1WA6PXB70Q28 Most of the reviews for it on Amazon]] point out how a good 90% of the artwork is blatantly ripped off from official ''Pokémon'' art.
50* '''''[[Literature/TheAdventuresOfStefonRudel Die Abenteuer des Stefón Rudel]]''''' (''The Adventures of Stefón Rudel'') is the German equivalent of ''Literature/TheEyeOfArgon'' or ''FanFic/MyImmortal'' [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE]]-]! Lackluster writing, a morass of PlotHoles, poor pacing, [[FlatCharacter flat]] or [[UnintentionallyUnsympathetic creepy characters]] -- by golly, it's all there! The protagonist is Stefan, a six-year-old [[SelfInsertFic self-insert]] of the author, who is forced to flee with his parents from Mars to "World-Earth" (there's a "Main Earth", but it's only mentioned once). In the space of only a few months, he's adopted by UsefulNotes/JacquelineKennedy and then later by [[ThoseWackyNazis Hans-Ulrich Rudel]], moves from Occupied Germany to "[[RougeAnglesOfSatin Itörnetie Plato]] 18", changes his name to [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign Stefón]], enrolls in the "Mars Centauri", picks up a ridiculous number of military ranks -- on Earth and in space, and falls in love with several girls. While [[ImprobableAge remaining six years old]]. [[https://www.klopfers-web.de/stefonrudel.php This German guy]] {{MST|ing}}ed the book, commenting that it reads like it's written by a child raised on old ''Franchise/FlashGordon'' comics, war films, military magazines, and German adult humor. German [=YouTuber=] [=ReziMafia=] shares her opinions on the novel [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz8ndSfX9K0 here]]. Or head to Amazon [[https://www.amazon.de/Abenteuer-Stef%C3%B3n-Rudel-Stefan-Knapp/dp/8490156484/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=Die+Abenteuer+des+Stef%C3%B3n+Rudel&qid=1583835713&s=books&sr=1-1 to see for yourself]].
51* '''''Literature/AlfiesHome''''' ''(1993)'' is a vicious attack on homosexuality aimed inexplicably at ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids children]]''. It's about Alfie, a boy who's [[RapeAndSwitch molested]] by his CreepyUncle which, of course, [[RapeAndSwitch makes you gay]]. However, he ends up being saved by [[CureYourGays conversion therapy]] (which had been discredited decades earlier and is in fact illegal in several jurisdictions). The boy's uncle, meanwhile, pulls a KarmaHoudini. There are as many holes in the plot as there are in the logic. And the barebones, inconsistent illustrations defy all perspectives and could have been made in UsefulNotes/MSPaint; they look like drunken ''WesternAnimation/SchoolhouseRock'' concept sketches. And if that wasn't enough, one of the pages actually has a ''homophobic slur'' (you can probably guess which one) in a speech bubble! WebVideo/InfamousSphere reads the book [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jLMlqydz4w here]].
52* The '''''Franchise/BaldursGate'' novelizations''' by Philip Athans are a prime example of how not to adapt a video game to book form. The story is little more than a seemingly unending series of fight scenes; the original games' intrigue, story, and themes are not even touched upon. Many characters are introduced only to be killed pages later. The protagonist is an unlikeable and uninteresting {{jerkass}} who does little beyond have sex with various women and fight; he shows none of the interesting traits of the games' player character. Characters from the games are [[CanonDefilement completely misrepresented]]: [[ActionGirl Jaheria]] becomes a DamselInDistress who exists to have sex with the protagonist; her husband [[NiceGuy Khalid]] becomes a cruel {{Domestic Abuse}}r; and [[PluckyGirl Imoen]] becomes a depressed victim of ''the protagonist''[='s=] bullying, and also has a pointless lesbian sex scene. Oh, and everyone praises the protagonist [[DesignatedHero for no reason]]. The fanbase ''reviles'' these books, which got nearly unanimous negative reviews on both [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baldurs-Forgotten-Realms-Philip-Athans/dp/0786915250/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SMWPP4Q4AZ6TMHJ1V2JP Amazon]] and [[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/291738.Baldur_s_Gate_II Goodreads]]. Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast officially declared the novels CanonDiscontinuity, and the writer of the final book, Creator/DrewKarpyshyn, lamented that there was [[http://drewkarpyshyn.com/c/?page_id=7 little he could do to fix it after the mess made by the first two books]].
53* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' fans can be very argumentative on what constitutes good media, but '''''Literature/BerserkTheFlameDragonKnight''''' is a rare case where very few fans are willing to defend it. Written by the screenwriter of [[Anime/Berserk2016 the 2016 anime]] and focusing on the background of Grunbeld, a second-tier character from the manga's later run, the resulting story seems to embody all the worst traits of writers attempting to mimic the manga's notorious CrapsackWorld without the actual skill. The prose hovers between "blandly matter-of-fact" and "barely comprehensible", with frequent grammatical mishaps and the whole thing reading less like a story and more like a description of a more interesting one. Sexual violence is used insanely liberally (which given its source material is saying a lot), with a graphic scene of genital mutilation and multiple gang rapes happening in the first twenty pages, which pairs poorly with the BeigeProse (four sentences get dedicated to describing Grunbeld's penis at one point). Grunbeld himself is given almost no coherent motivation and few humanizing traits beyond "wants to fight things", and his DealWithTheDevil, the moment the novel is supposed to be built around, breaks one of the major themes of the series by making his sacrifice not be an actual sacrifice. The only redeeming trait of the novel is that Creator/KentaroMiura did illustrations for it, but even that's a bitter pill for many fans to swallow, as it meant his artwork was being spent on this project.
54* '''''Blood: The Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts''''' by Creator/MamoruOshii is a continuation of the anime film ''Anime/BloodTheLastVampire'', which stars a vampire hunter named Saya fighting monsters. Given that the film involved a lot of blood, monster-hunting, and gory action, you'd think the book would be more of the same. Instead, the novel is less a story about vampire-hunting and more a clumsy collection of essays that fail to form any semblance of a coherent narrative. Rather than focus on Saya, the story focuses on a bland male student who goes from location to location listening to people have philosophical discussions and debates on increasingly uninteresting topics such as body disposal, the hunter hypothesis, and religious conspiracies. Saya, meanwhile, briefly appears only three times in the entire book and barely interacts with the protagonist, if at all. The novel is such an ill-conceived mess that one can only feel sorry for the translator who had to translate Oshii's incoherent and incredibly dull ramblings.
55* '''''The Book of the Ninja''''' wins the award for the most useless martial arts manual of all time. It's a supposed "ninja manual" that includes "deadly fighting secrets" and cautions the reader not to kill people with them. But within are the most laughable "fighting techniques" in history; the book should caution that they could get the ''reader'' killed. The photos have nothing to do with the moves they depict and look more like [[WhatTheFuAreYouDoing vague limb flailing]]. It's also horribly put together; the photos are practically xeroxed on the pages, and the AboutTheAuthor page devolves into a tangent about ninjas. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf61Z58jKwY This video]] does a pretty good job of tearing it apart.
56* '''''The Chalice of Origins''''' from Isabel Canet Ferrer, is a mediocre YA-esque novel about a girl with a face deformed after an accident [[InformedAttribute (Not that it comes up very often)]] who finds herself being the pivotal player in a battle played by various Italian paintings, and the sole wielder of the sacred weapon of the Chalice of Origins. [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot The plot could've worked]] but it's mostly just an excuse for the writer to flex her artistic knowledge, and it doesn't fully take advantage of the setting. With continuity errors gallore, dialogue that switched between cringe and {{Narm}}, plot twists so obvious that you'd swear they were going for a RedHerring, poorly paced sequences (At one point, the protagonist is said to need to go to a certain painting, and we're treated to various pages explaining its importance and difficulty reaching. Next page, she already is there), a RomanticPlotTumor the size of a peach and a general sense of amateurishness, the book has been lambasted by Spanish readers and by critics and is considered at best an attempt to cash in on the Young Adult genre [[TwoDecadesBehind years after it had ended.]]
57* The '''''Literature/ChroniclesOfBloodAndStone''''' series by Robert Newcomb was billed as the next big epic fantasy series by its publisher, Del Rey, and given all sorts of heaping praise by reviewers who were clearly both bribed into giving a positive review and incapable of reading the books themselves. The first in the series, ''The Fifth Sorceress'', presents all women as either stupid and complacent or horrendously, disgustingly evil and corrupt, or both; it's essentially a series of one DeusExMachina after another, and suggests that [[ArtisticLicenseBiology pregnancies last for somewhere between 24 hours and six months]]. It has several plot holes, like for example how the misandrist evil women encourage their male minions to treat women as slaves, the supposed heroes show criminal incompetence, especially the supposed wise old mentor, and there is ''far'' more buildup and payoff for a very fetishized rape of the protagonist than the actual final showdown. Frighteningly, the sequel is several dozen times worse in every possible way. Newcomb's follow-up trilogy ''The Literature/DestiniesOfBloodAndStone'' is the culmination of badness; the final book, ''Rise of the Blood Royal'', includes a ClicheStorm so big that it makes Hurricane Katrina look like a breezy spring morning.
58* '''''[[https://www.amazon.com/Collectables-Guitars-Makes-Models-Stars/dp/1847862063 Collectables: Guitars: Makes, Models, Stars]]''''' is, even as a bargain bin picture book, not really worth the paper it's printed on. The book itself is very minimal in terms of information and doesn't show any full pictures of the instruments. The more you see incorrect dates of [[AnachronismStew obviously modern guitars supposedly being created in 1955]], the more you realize that they just didn't care. [[https://web.archive.org/web/20180506213848/http://iheartguitarblog.com/2012/07/worst-guitar-book-ever.html#sthash.2ha0hbER.dpbs Take a look at a review of it here.]]
59* '''''Literature/DanganronpaTogami''''' is a three-part ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'' Light Novel series which has the distinction of getting the franchise's perpetually BrokenBase to agree on ''something'' -- namely, that it's utter garbage. To describe the story is rather pointless, as whatever narrative there is gets filtered through a massive RandomEventsPlot that takes so many {{Ass Pull}}s as to become incomprehensible. The books are full of plot holes and nonsensical developments, some of them plot-breaking (a good example is when two characters somehow drive to the Czech Republic from ''Hokkaido, Japan''). There's a large cast of characters, but the characters from the main series are heavily OutOfCharacter, and the original ones are extremely one-note and unlikable; the intended TragicVillain goes way too far over the MoralEventHorizon to be sympathetic, and the protagonist is probably meant to be TheWoobie but instead comes off as a sycophantic AuthorAvatar. The story is filled with tons of references to literature and obscure history, most of which interrupt the story and make it come off as intensely pretentious, especially when the story interrupts itself ''mid-climax'' to [[SmallNameBigEgo brag about how good the author is]]. Oh, and if you came in wanting to read about Byakuya Togami, you don't even get ''that'', as he spends the vast majority of the story OutOfFocus. Its only saving grace is that it's gone completely ignored by canon, with several plot points contradicted in ''[=DR3=]''.
60* '''''Diary of a Lonely Demon''''', by Jon David, is a classic example of an author using an [[InvincibleHero obnoxiously perfect]] AuthorAvatar to push a hateful message. In a nutshell, the story revolves around one Jasper Davis, a {{wangst}}y self-insert who blames everything that's wrong with his life on [[StrawFeminist evil women]]. Jasper then runs into Morgalla Smythe, a demon girl who [[LoveRedeems apparently became a Christian thanks to her newfound boyfriend]]. All of a sudden, [[ClicheStorm demons show up]], and it's up to Jasper and Morgalla to stop them. It's ultimately an AuthorTract on [[TheUnfairSex how women are wrong and how Jon is right]]. The author sets up a plethora of flat characters, adds a dash of blatant racism, sexism, and other offenses, and caps it all off with a metric shit-ton of grammatical errors and plot holes. Many passages are just copied from other works, and the author [[SmallNameBigEgo suffers from an inability to take constructive criticism properly]].
61* '''''Literature/DragonsLexiconTriumvirate''''' is a book featuring dragons, cyborgs, firearms, and computers, which would normally be awesome, or at least [[SoBadItsGood awesomely stupid]], but unfortunately the author ruined it with poor writing. The plot is incoherent, the characters are one-dimensional, and the clunky prose is full of [[PurpleProse thesaurus abuse]]. The author tried to make the main character seem intelligent by having him recite, learn, and muse over scientific facts, but they're all at most high school physics things which wouldn't impress anyone in a sci-fi setting (and he sometimes [[ArtisticLicensePhysics doesn't even get]] ''that'' right). While the book has a 3-star rating on Amazon, its 5-star reviews are either joke reviews or from suspected SockPuppet accounts.
62* '''''Literature/EmpressTheresa''''' by Norman Boutin rose to infamy thanks to the author's numerous DearNegativeReader diatribes and his insistence that the book is the greatest in human history. The book follows the titular Theresa, a 10-year-old child prodigy who merges with an alien entity referred to as [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey HAL]], giving her various superhuman abilities. The book's story is incomprehensible and flat, with plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, bizarre story elements (such as [[ArtisticLicenseMedicine Theresa being revived after falling into the ocean by having the heat turned up]]), and bad pacing and grammar. The cast is flat and uninteresting - although Theresa is constantly praised as being perfect and virtuous, her actions paint her as petty and narcissistic (at one point eliminating winter because she doesn't like it), with the problems she faces being the result of her own carelessness. ''WebVideo/DownTheRabbitHole''[='s=] Fredrik Knudsen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TedsiCaV2B4 did an episode]] detailing how far Boutin went to defend and promote the book, and then devoted [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNCUp2VkKhs an entire livestream]] just to tearing the book itself apart. To further run the point home, [[WebVideo/TheBookWasBetter KrimsonRogue]] has dedicated [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JopR-biL0I4 five]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wSfqrSKJFs videos]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oyd20AxoRc worth]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TuD4qPEt60 of]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1sMawiLLw commentary]], with even the shortest running just over an ''hour''. He noted that over 400 pages, he could only spot ''two'' that didn't feature blatantly poor grammar or embarrassing writing.
63* Two of several ''Franchise/FridayThe13th'' books released in a deal between Creator/NewLineCinema and publisher Black Flame:
64** '''''Friday the 13th: Hell Lake''''' is a {{Doorstopper}} with pacing problems that [[OutOfCharacter completely derails]] Jason's character. The author uses stereotypes about him and ignores earlier canon in the process. Jason now hates sex so much, he'll drop what he's doing to kill some rapists ''and'' their victims. He now can ''[[OffscreenTeleportation teleport]]''; [[SpeakOfTheDevil just thinking about him apparently summons him]]. At one point, he appears to materialize from a television. Through an unexplained mental bond, he befriends(!) the secondary villain [[ItMakesSenseInContext which serves almost no purpose past escaping from Hell]]. He also has a gang of goons following him around at several different points. He flays a guy and wears his skin and clothing as a disguise. (UsefulNotes/EdGein taught him how to in Hell. Yes, that's canon.) He screams in pain and throws tantrums when he's hurt, and in one sequence he mows down dozens with a hunting rifle. Most of the characters, who are from the backwoods New Jersey town of Crystal Lake, talk like stereotypical [[UpperClassTwit airheaded rich people]] (even the jocks!) and insult people by calling them "[[YouFool fool]]". And the author [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking keeps referring to Camp Crystal Lake as "Lake Blood" instead of using the correct nickname "Camp Blood"]]. Finally, if all of the above wasn't bad enough, have fun attempting to follow the extraordinarily confusing prose and figuring out just what the fuck is happening at any given moment. [=YouTuber=] [=SlasherPepper=] shares his thoughts on the novel in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODsenGUX6iE this video]], in which he speculates that the whole thing was ChristmasRushed, as evidenced by a character's random ShoutOut to ''Film/TheDevilsRejects'', a film released only a few months prior to ''Hell Lake''[='s=] publication.
65** '''''[[Film/JasonX Jason X: Death Moon]]''''' often feels like the pretentious nonsensical ramblings of a stoner due to the author constantly going off on weird rants unrelated to anything, most infamously in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bowP_Oe0WWw Chapter 4]], which is made up almost entirely of non-sequiturs, including a pages-long ramble about ''Film/BrideOfFrankenstein'' star Elsa Lanchester. Various concepts (Teknopriests? Akasha.net?) are introduced but never explained, and the story is unreadable half of the time because [[RandomEventsPlot you can't tell what the fuck is even going on]].
66* '''''The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-Squares Financial Statements''''' by Dwight David Thrash is a 2016 novella in which the protagonist Titus Uno, [[TrytoFitThatOnABusinessCard Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant,]] is tasked to investigate a terrorist who blew up the 64-SQUARES skyscraper and stole its hard disks, as well as needing to get the company's finances back. Despite its short length, huge blocks of text are straight-up copy-and-pasted elsewhere while [[AlwaysIntroducesThemselves the main character]] has his full name and professional credentials referenced ''every single time'' he is mentioned as if the author was desperately trying to reach a particular word count. [[RougeAnglesOfSatin Typos and missing words]] abound alongside overall sloppy typesetting, a confusing story with several PlotHoles, and the extremely samey chapters will likely send you into some kind of endlessly looping hell. [[FlatCharacter Everyone is incredibly boring]], with more details going into their personal lives than their characterization, while the main character comes across as [[ItsAllAboutMe very egotistical]] even though he barely does anything of note. See [[WebVideo/TheBookWasBetter KrimsonRogue]] get defeated by the book [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DytIPdE8PAo here]] and check out the ''[[Podcast/ThreeHundredSeventyTwoPagesWellNeverGetBack 372 Pages]]'' podcast (starting at Episode 30) for an in-depth analysis.
67** The author also throws out the concepts of plot and characterization to explain accounting in mind-numbing, excruciating detail but as if it was being explained to a child [[ViewersAreMorons despite the presumptive target audience.]] However, the reader is very unlikely to learn much about accounting considering what a huge slog it is to get past the non-existent action and its weird infantile, childish tone. Whatever details do exist, such as the chess championship outside of 64-SQUARES (bizarrely competing against loud carnival games for some reason) [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse are never brought up again]].
68* '''''From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Freedom and Global Justice''''' by Madhavi Sunder, J.D. would barely even be a blip on the radar if not for WebVideo/YourMovieSucksDotOrg and his [[https://youtu.be/FzyRQXMbOro multiple features on it]], and it really isn't hard to see why. While its premise is somewhat admirable, arguing for greater recognition of intellectual property, it's poorly written and researched, littered with {{bias|Steamroller}} and CowboyBebopAtHisComputer. The real insult, though, is that its author is a ''law professor''. See how much she gets wrong:
69** She goes on about how ''WesternAnimation/{{The Lion King|1994}}'' supposedly plagiarized from ''Anime/KimbaTheWhiteLion'' when she very clearly hasn't seen ''either'' work. She can't tell ''Kimba''[='=]s Pauley Cracker (a parrot) from ''The Lion King''[='=]s Zazu (a hornbill). She thinks they have the same "rocky terrain" as a setting, when ''Kimba'' mostly takes place in the jungle. She notes that both Claw and Scar are darker-skinned lions with a scar over their left eye -- and misses the massive differences in their characters' personalities, as well as the fact that Claw is a much less prominent character than Scar. She notes that "Kimba" and "Simba" are similar, and fails to pick up on how "Simba" is [[YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord Swahili for "lion"]]. She claims that Kimba and Simba's fathers both had their ghosts appear as an image on the moon, even though the ghost of Simba's father Mufasa actually appeared in clouds.
70** She has a very clear pro-UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} bias; one chapter is devoted entirely to how Creator/StevenSpielberg allegedly stole the premise for ''Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial'' from an unmade 1960s Bollywood movie called ''The Alien''. Throughout the book, she comes across as a xenophobic twit who hates Hollywood on principle and thinks that it is incapable of coming up with anything original.
71** Her use of sources is ''strikingly'' poor, especially for a lawyer writing about copyrights. Some claims are unsourced. Others come from things like poorly made Website/YouTube videos. And some claims clearly come from uncredited sources, particularly the ''Lion King'' claims, which come from a 2004 book by Fred Patten. Imagine the {{Irony}} in a law professor accusing Disney of plagiarism having to plagiarize to support her claims.
72* '''The official [=BradyGames=] StrategyGuide for ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX''''' is universally hailed as the worst strategy guide of all time. Likely due to ExecutiveMeddling from Creator/{{Squaresoft}}, the guide consists of extremely short sections with minimal detail that ask the reader to visit Square's [=PlayOnline=] website for the ''actual'' information. There's also a misprint during one of the Disc 2 boss fights, Lani, whose strategy is inexplicably replaced with the copy-pasted with one for the first mini-bosses in Disc 1 (but the website had the actual strategy to defeat her). This was in 2000 when many people didn't have access to the Internet, and those who did would be better off visiting Website/GameFAQs anyway. When Prima did a 2015 omnibus re-release for the ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII VII]]'', ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII VIII]]'', and ''IX'' guides, [[AuthorsSavingThrow it got a complete overhaul]].
73* '''''Ghost Hunting 2.0: Breaking New Ground''''' by Chris Bores (better known as WebVideo/TheIrateGamer) is supposedly about new methods of ghost hunting that he developed, but is actually just another testament to his already [[SmallNameBigEgo famously massive ego]]. The book is plagued with spelling, grammar, and formatting errors, which Bores openly defends as intentional. Most of the "facts" presented are contradictory and have little to no evidence, sourcing, or reasoning other than his own word that the experts are wrong and he is right. The majority of the tools and texts he brings up, which he claims no one else uses, have been used before -- and thoroughly debunked as useless by professional ghost hunters (including peanut butter baits and the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead'', which is an extremely-poorly-translated Buddhist self-help guide). He spends half the book referencing things like ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' and ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo''. He repeatedly brags about how he was at one point the 55th most subscribed person on Website/YouTube, conveniently leaving out the fact that it was for his video game review show. And by the end, he declares that he has created a new branch of psychology. The book has a 3-star rating on Amazon, as actual critiques are counterbalanced by a flood of 5-star reviews written by the author's own spambots and defensive ''Irate Gamer'' fans who [[PraisingShowsYouDontWatch admit to not having read it]].
74* '''''Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie''''', by Paul Spadoni (under the PenName Mabel Barr)[[note]]a reference to the fictional book's author, [[PunnyName Mabel Syrup]][[/note]], is a lazy, unlicensed {{Defictionalization}} of the ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' [[RunningGag bedtime story]] and a good reason to be thankful that Creator/BillWatterson [[NothingIsFunnier never discussed the plot in the strip]]. The story itself is unimaginative, the illustrations are crude, and it was likely published [[MoneyDearBoy for a quick buck]]. Indeed, it's only eight pages long with a good chunk of the last page being an order form. However, a used copy as of this writing is being pushed for ''$650'', which equates to over '''$80 per page'''. All of its [[PolishTheTurd positive]] [[http://www.amazon.com/Hamster-Huey-Gooey-Kablooie-Adventure/product-reviews/0974909009/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 Amazon reviews]] are [[AstroTurf from the author's hometown]].
75* Clifford Bowyer's deservedly-obscure '''''Imperium Saga''''' could rival ''Literature/TheEyeOfArgon'' for sheer bad writing, but it's worse for its characters tossing around the IdiotBall every five seconds, to the point where it just isn't funny anymore. The first book in the series ''alone'' provides the following highlights:
76** "Legendary" Warlord Braksis sets an invading [[MultipleHeadCase three-headed]] "[[PerfectlyCromulentWord tragon]]" on fire and watches it demolish a town in its death throes, then afterward decides [[DidntThinkThisThrough it was a bad idea]]...but [[AngstWhatAngst the people praise him for the destruction of their city]].
77** Heroic groups of five [[ConservationOfNinjutsu fight off hordes of fifty or more without a single injury]].
78** A sex scene uses "raging inferno" [[MillsAndBoonProse five times in three pages]].
79* '''''Jokes for Minecrafters: Booby Traps, Bombs, Boo-Boos, and More''''', by Michele, Jordon, and Steven Hollow, is a notoriously bad yet fortunately unofficial ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' joke book. The jokes (tongue twisters, riddles, limericks, and haikus included) are either unintentional AntiHumor (''e.g.'' "What do you call a Creeper with a bomb in his hands? Doesn't matter; he will be blown to smithereens!", "How did the player keep from getting hurt while battling a blaze? He used a potion of fire resistance!", etc.), extremely weak puns, or otherwise lack proper punchlines (''e.g.'' "What's funnier than a baby zombie pigman? A baby zombie pigman dressed up as Notch"). Some jokes are not even relevant to ''Minecraft'', such as the constant use of bombs, something ''Minecraft'' never explicitly references. There's even a chapter of ''Minecraft'' sayings that functions as little more than {{Filler}}. The terrible illustrations do not add any sort of humor. In short, it's a failure of a book with a bunch of mundane statements passed off as "jokes" that even the youngest of kids would never find entertaining. Check a reader's commentary out [[https://imgur.com/a/S8eaO here]], or listen to the fine folks over at ''WebVideo/SootHouse'' take the piss out of it [[https://youtu.be/18fxVZI3pd4 here.]]
80* '''''Literature/TheLegendOfRahAndTheMuggles''''', by Nancy Stouffer, rose to infamy after Stouffer claimed that Creator/JKRowling took inspiration from her book for her ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' series. She filed a FrivolousLawsuit on this basis, which she lost comprehensively and which [[BileFascination drew interest in her works]] -- and a realization of how ''bad'' they were. A small-time publisher tried to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity cash in]] on the scandal and did a small printing run, only to quickly go bankrupt. ''The Legend of Rah and the Muggles'' has so many blunders that a full list of them would at least double the size of this page, so [[http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here are]] [[http://impishidea.com/tag/the-legend-of-rah-and-the-muggles/ a few]] [[http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%20the%20legend%20of%20rah%20and%20the%20muggles handy plot breakdowns]] should you wish to subject yourself to them. Its main problem is that it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- it's equal parts dark apocalyptic drama, [[SweetnessAversion sickeningly sweet fantasy]], children's GhostStory, and fable about where stars come from (which mostly gets tacked on at the end). ''Very'' briefly: The protagonists are twins who, as infants, are [[MosesInTheBulrushes sent away from a post-apocalyptic wasteland]] by their mother (who is [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome never brought up again]]) and end up in the land of the eponymous Muggles. One of the twins is AlwaysSecondBest and becomes the antagonist, while his brother Rah is the nominal hero but [[DesignatedHero doesn't care about his brother at all]]. The Muggles are [[UnintentionalUncannyValley grotesque, almost infantile creatures]] mutated by radiation. Their land is stuck in a nuclear winter -- until the twins bring the sun back. Somehow. They also have a "lemonade lake" and a character who keeps changing ages. The plot isn't about Rah redeeming his brother so much as trying to defeat him -- which is easy, because he does things like getting horrendously sick by [[IdiotBall keeping his hideout in a ridiculously irradiated tree]]. It reads as if nothing was planned out in advance, and everything ends up being ridiculous.
81* '''''Literature/ListOfTheLost''''' is Music/{{Morrissey}}'s first foray into literary fiction and, self-evidently, should be his last. So unsalvageable, one critic compared hiring an editor for it to hiring "a doctor [for] a corpse that had fallen from the top of the [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity Empire State Building]]." The story is of four high school track stars' fortunes turning sour after they kill and dump a homeless man. But the book is really about [[WriterOnBoard every single one of Morrisey's pet peeves]], including UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill, UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily, the court system, the meat industry, and [[HeManWomanHater women in general]]. All else is anciliary; the plot follows no order and serves no purpose but to slot in {{Author Tract}}s, and there's no sense or characterization or even character voice. The story proper barely makes up a fraction of the 118 pages, compared to the in-character tirades. And despite its length, it's an excruciatingly dull and slow read, thanks to the at times nigh-unparseable PurpleProse. It begs suspension of disbelief that one of the most important lyricists in AlternativeRock history had ever picked up a pen before in his life. Seamas O'Reilly does a more thorough dissection of it than we're capable of [[https://www.balls.ie/the-rewind/morrissey-novel-390800?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=web here]].
82* Creator/GloriaTesch rose to infamy thanks to her [[VanityPublishing vanity-published]] series '''''Literature/MaradoniaSaga'''''. The books themselves are styled as a "trilogy", but there are [[TrilogyCreep five of them]][[note]]A sixth book, ''Maradonia and the Battle for the Key'', was advertised but never published[[/note]]. The first two entries are 700-page {{Doorstopper}}s, while the third only has about 400 pages; she then [[DividedForPublication split up the first two books]], and thus we get five. All the books are riddled with awful formatting, [[DesignatedHero callous and self-absorbed protagonists]], and [[RandomEventsPlot a confusing story]] that plagiarizes from other far more credible works. Among the "exciting" plot elements are a talking grasshopper, an antagonist with a "Club of Evil" that sings "Mother Earth songs" and has a water park, and random use of the salsa dance. Tesch's father [[Creator/GerryTesch Gerry]] bankrolled her and backed her up with an army of lawyers and {{Sock Puppet}}s to promote the books (and silence their critics). Tesch was billed as "[[VeryFalseAdvertising the world's youngest novelist]]", even though people younger than her had published much better books before she did. Gerry even funded a [[Film/MaradoniaAndTheShadowEmpire film adaptation]], which [[Horrible/LiveActionFilmsGToM was also poorly received]] and appears to have bankrupted him. Impish Idea has a {{Spork}} of the entire series [[http://impishidea.com/tag/maradonia-%28series%29/ here]]. As of 2020, Tesch seems to have tried her best to [[BuryYourArt suppress the series]], effectively disowning ''Maradonia''.
83* '''''Literature/MassEffectDeception''''' is a tie-in book released in the months leading up to ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. Notably, it was also the first novel not written by the head writer Drew Karpyshyn. It was supposed to be a side story featuring the continuing adventures of Gillian Grayson; it wound up gaining the hatred of fans for its tactless treatment of homosexuality and [[ThrowingOffTheDisability autism]], a [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBpMF3ONlI308D9IGG8KICBHfWKU0sXh0ntukv-_cmo/edit?pli=1 list of research errors]] longer than IMDB's "Goofs" page for ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'', and [[SeriesContinuityError overall absence of anything resembling consistency or continuity]]. Not that it fared any better among non-fans -- long, drawn-out chapters (often [[ShowDontTell expository]] and [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment redundant]]) were a common occurrence. Proofreading, however, was not. Publisher Del Rey openly apologized for the book (and promised to radically rewrite it, though it never happened).
84* '''The James Vincent Murphy translation of''' '''''Literature/MeinKampf''''' took something already derided as being [[{{Doorstopper}} overly long]] and [[PurpleProse hideously thick]] in its original form and somehow made it worse. [[AdaptationDecay The writing style was changed drastically]], alterations and expansions were blatant and hackneyed, and [[ObviousBeta spelling and grammar were all over the place]]. The book resembles some bad fanfics of the original. Its clunky, dull, flowery prose results at least partially from the author's habit of [[BlindIdiotTranslation looking up the words he didn't know in a German-English dictionary]] and picking the first definition he saw. It was submitted incomplete; Murphy changed his mind about the Nazis and fled Germany, meaning the press had to finish the translation. Perhaps fortunately, the few copies that the Nazi press produced were lost until 2008, effectively destroying any chance for this abomination to become anything more than a bizarre curiosity.
85* '''''Mermaid's Kiss and Siren's Song''''' is a poorly disguised ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' fanfic published on Amazon. All the characters are thinly-veiled {{Expies}} and one-dimensional, there's RougeAnglesOfSatin everywhere, and rather [[{{Squick}} disgusting]] metaphors are used to describe a character's hair in the first chapter alone. One piece of evidence to the novel being a Final Fantasy VII fic with the names changed is how one character, named "Gamba Dumey", is at one point referred to as "Gamba Dumey Wallace". As for the rest of the novel, [[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1419617710#customerReviews the reviews]] speak for themselves.
86* ''VideoGame/MortalKombatDeception'' was a fine game, but '''its official strategy guide from [=BradyGames=]''' was almost unreadable, and not entirely because [[RougeAnglesOfSatin it's anyone's guess whether it was even proofread]]. It spends a lot more time on fighting strategies than stage mechanics, which is pretty useless for a fighting game--the guide outright has nothing to say about the Courtyard. The Konquest section is terribly organized, and clearly based on an early build as none of the information given is remotely correct. Neither the [[FinishingMove Fatalities]] nor the Krypt, two major draws of the game, are described in any real detail. Its attempts at hiding [[SecretCharacter Ghostly Liu Kang]] are too little, [[TrailersAlwaysSpoil too late]], disclosing pretty much everything about him but his name. And the extras are pointless; the fold-out with character bios is practically all wrong, and the Kombat Kodex, meant for an online service, never actually saw use.
87* '''"[[https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/6pfmim/this_incredible_poem_by_ready_player_one_author/ Nerd Porn Auteur]]"''' by Creator/ErnestCline (known for ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'') is a supposed poem, but to call it poetry would be a crime against language, for not a single line scans in any way. Every single line has a different number of syllables from the ones before or after it, and no attention is paid to the natural rhythm of speech, so it definitely isn't free verse either. The only way it could be passed off as poetry is by having nonstandard line breaks. If that weren't bad enough, the entire poem is just a [[EntitledToHaveYou "Nice Guy"]] complaining about girls sleeping with jocks instead of people like him; despite claiming to dislike the objectification of women, he [[{{Hypocrite}} does so himself]] without any self-awareness. It's included in the poetry collection ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Importance-Being-Ernest-Cline-ebook/dp/B00NMXR16I/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 The Importance of Being Ernest]]'' ([[SimilarlyNamedWorks not to be confused]] with Creator/OscarWilde's [[Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest classic play]]), all of which fails at being poetry, resembling blog posts with random line breaks about subjects ranging from ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'' to Nostradamus as your roommate to [[BreadEggsMilkSquick cunnilingus]] -- but "Nerd Porn Auteur" stands out as the worst. After some time, [[CreatorBacklash Cline himself eventually came to agree with the criticism]] and wrote a scathing SelfParody poem to show he no longer held these attitudes.
88* '''''No Touching''''', by Aileen Deng, was commissioned by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, who [[CreatorBacklash would kindly like to forget it ever existed]]. It was intended to promote awareness of [[UsefulNotes/{{asexual}} asexuality]] and debunk common myths about it, but the writer is incredibly ignorant of the theme and can't convey correctly what little she gets right, giving us a ClicheStorm that makes you want to scream to the protagonist "StopBeingStereotypical". What little enjoyable stuff this tome has is ruined by the unpolished writing and inconsistent characterization. [[http://www.amazon.com/No-Touching-Aileen-Deng/dp/1449900313 Elizabeth the Gray's review]] goes into more detail.
89* '''''Org's Odyssey''''' by Duke Otterland is a ClicheStorm of a fantasy novel about Org of Otterland, a hero born from the daughter of a god who must save Anglia from evil. The beginning explains how the Anthropians came to be, but it comes off as PurpleProse. Moreover, the battles are unfair -- the good guys outnumber the evildoers [[OneSidedBattle seven to one]]. See the reviews [[http://www.amazon.com/Orgs-Odyssey-Tale-Post-human-Earth/dp/0595316794 here.]]
90* '''''The Overton Window''''' by Glenn Beck is a thriller about how awesome people like Beck are fighting left-wing extremists-- except it wasn't written by Beck at all, but rather ghostwritten by Jack Henderson, who in 2005 [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/glenn-becks-new-novel-abo_b_613861.html wrote a very similar novel]] called ''Circumference of Darkness'' where the bad guys are right-wing lunatics. That would be forgivable if the story itself was good, but that isn't the case. It has been called one of the worst works of literature ever written; the ''Los Angeles Times'' called it less a train wreck than "[[http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/23/entertainment/la-et-rutten-20100623 a lurching, low-speed derailment halfway out of the station]]", and the ''Washington Post'' is [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/14/AR2010061405423.html inclined to agree]], as is [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-steps-to-writing-successful-suspense-with-glenn-beck/ Cracked]]. José describes its awfulness [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=100XL1eON6Y here.]] How terrible is the [[PurpleProse prose]]? Here's an excerpt:
91-->''"these liberated chestnut curls framed a handsome face made twice as radiant by the mysteries surely waiting just behind those light green eyes."''
92* The ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' story '''''The Pit''''' by Neil Penswick is commonly regarded as the worst ''Series/DoctorWho'' novel of all time, not least because of the tedious nature of the story, which is written entirely in BeigeProse. The Doctor is completely useless and does virtually nothing throughout (which was part of a larger ''New Adventures'' StoryArc that is taken ''way'' overboard in this novel) and Bernice Summerfield acts completely out of character, coming across as cold-hearted and irritable. Legendary poet Creator/WilliamBlake appears as one of the main characters, but is [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter completely wasted as a character]] and just spends most of his time complaining about the situation he's in. Worst of all, the whole thing ends up being one giant ShaggyDogStory, making it even more infuriating to have to sit through the bland and confusing storyline. Fortunately, you don't have to read through the whole thing; [[http://www.drwhoguide.com/whona12p.htm this prologue]] (originally published in ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'') illustrates its main problems well enough.
93* '''''Franchise/{{Pokemon}} and Franchise/HarryPotter: A Fatal Attraction''''' by Phil Arms is the worst of the many books designed to warn frightened parents about [[NewMediaAreEvil hot new franchises]]. Despite the name, [[NeverTrustATitle most of the book]] is about ''Pokémon'', with ''Harry Potter'' only getting a single chapter. Arms clearly knew nothing about either franchise and [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch admits outright that he's never seen, read, or played anything from either one]], apparently getting most of his information from internet forums dedicated to criticizing them. He seems to think that you can kill, maim, and steal in a ''Pokémon'' game (when in fact you can't harm human characters in any way, the only violence in a ''Pokémon'' game is the fights between Pokémon and even those are never fatal), and that ''Pokémon'' and ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' are the same thing (a clear indication of someone who doesn't know what he's talking about). Although the average Amazon [[http://www.amazon.com/Pokemon-Harry-Potter-Fatal-Attraction/product-reviews/1575580675/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop/192-5176829-5466719?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R230APTPXBBOZO review]] is sitting at a 4.1, most of the five-star reviews are obviously written by {{troll}}s.
94* '''''Reaper's Creek''''' by Greg Jackson, better known as Onision, is his third foray into literature. While his first two books were bad, this is much, much worse. In it, a boy named Daniel is [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens]] and given powers -- first, he can just sense dead bodies, but he gets so many more NewPowersAsThePlotDemands that he becomes more powerful than God and [[RageAgainstTheHeavens fights him]]. Almost every challenge he faces is resolved instantly, and anything resembling real difficulty comes off as artificial. Daniel is a borderline SociopathicHero who goes against his own [[ThouShaltNotKill moral code]] in the blink of an eye, such as when he kills a SerialKiller and his accomplices (including the one who [[UnintentionallySympathetic was blackmailed into doing it]]). There's a graphic sex scene between Daniel and his girlfriend, when [[{{Squick}} he's 12 and the girlfriend is 16]]. There are various grammar and spelling errors, and perhaps the most telling is one where Daniel is accidentally referred to as "[[HerCodeNameWasMarySue Greg]]". It's so bad, [[WebVideo/TheBookWasBetter Krimson Rogue]] did a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiJfGq-iyp0 two]]-[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djTgW-1HHKg hour]] rant on it and dubbed it worse than his known BerserkButton, ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga''.
95* '''''Das Reich Artam''''' by Volkmar Weiss is an AlternateHistory set in a victorious UsefulNotes/NaziGermany which even exists more than 100 years later. If you think this could be problematic to write, you'd be right -- while he doesn't say so outright, the author seems to have a bit too much sympathy for the Nazis and not too much for their democratic successors who wreck the Reich. Add some soft porn for "controversy" and a scene about developing NewSpeak copied almost word-by-word from ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', and you've got a stinker for the ages.
96* '''''The Robot''''' by Paul E. Watson is a self-described "wildly improbable male teen fantasy" in which two awkward high school friends, nerdy Gabe and [[CasanovaWannabe Dover]], discover a RobotGirl named T.R.I.N.A. in the [[MadScientistLaboratory secret laboratory]] in Gabe's father's basement. They mistakenly activate the robot when trying to have sex with it, and it escapes. Then they set out on a quest to foil an assassination plot against Series/DrPhil. The characters are all stereotypical {{Jerkass}}es, ''especially'' Gabe and Dover. The dialogue mainly consists of tired clichés and crass sex jokes. The subplot where Gabe tries to [[WellDoneSonGuy connect with his father]] falls flat because he's [[AbusiveParents an extremely mean-spirited father]] (who [[spoiler:after everything that happens still grounds Gabe at the end]]). Every chapter begins with an inspirational quote that has more or less nothing to do with what happens in said chapter. Ridiculously enough, the book is [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids intended for 12-year-olds]].
97* '''''The Sacred Seven''''' by Amy Stout is a deservedly obscure fantasy "epic" which is nevertheless only novella-length. The plot's a ClicheStorm in which a BigBad EvilSorcerer is trying to take over the world and playing MacGuffin GottaCatchThemAll. The attempts at "originality" are things like forest dwarves and the BigBad being a female elf leading a troll army instead of the traditional orc army. But what makes this book special is that it has over two dozen point-of-view characters over its meager page count in a large font. Most ''pages'' have at least one POV switch, which can be to a character in a completely different geographic location having completely different adventures. As you might expect, nobody of the large cast of characters has [[FlatCharacter much of a detectable personality]]. The whole thing reads like an internet round-robin written by a bunch of teenagers.
98* '''''Literature/SaveThePearls: Revealing Eden''''', [[VanityPublishing vanity-published]] by Victoria Foyt, claims to be "the next ''[[Literature/TheHungerGames Hunger Games]]''" with its premise of a post-apocalyptic dystopia, taking place in a world where [[PersecutionFlip white people ("Pearls") are the disadvantaged minority and black people ("Coals") are the dominant majority]]. Despite being purported as a book with an anti-racism aesop, the book instead ends up coming across as racist. Ridiculous lengths and liberties (particularly with its use of [[HollywoodScience science]] to explain why black people are at an advantage) are taken in a transparent and ineffective attempt to make the white characters (and whites as a whole) more sympathetic. The protagonist at one point has to use paint to disguise herself as a "Coal", leading to a [[https://vimeo.com/33250757 promotional video]] featuring an actress in {{blackface}}. And the book as a whole is ham-handed and devoid of any real effort, even when it's taking batshit turns such as the "love" interest (a ScaryBlackMan who is also the initial antagonist) becoming a [[HalfHumanHybrid panther man]] via genetic splicing. The book is currently rated 1½ stars on [[http://www.amazon.com/Revealing-Eden-Save-Pearls-Part/product-reviews/0983650322/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0 Amazon]], with strong evidence that the handful of positive reviews [[AstroTurf were faked]].
99* '''''La Septima M''''' (''The Seventh M'') is the first published book by Chilean author Francisca Solar, a YA/paranormal detective novel about the investigation of a series of strange suicides in southern Chile. The main characters are an impossibly beautiful and talented young female forensic investigator (whom the author calls a "Thanatologist" in one of the worst cases of SeparatedByACommonLanguage in the Spanish language) who has an unspecified disorder and takes medication with vaguely defined and inconsistent effects, a detective with NoSenseOfHumor whose investigative capacities are more of an InformedAbility, and an obnoxious photographer who was intended as PluckyComicRelief but comes as TheScrappy instead. The [[TownWithADarkSecret location]] reeks of [[ArgentinaIsNaziland Chile is Naziland]], every bad police procedural cliché is played straight, the "mystery" is practically ripped off an ''[[Series/TheXFiles X-Files]]'' filler episode, some of the very tense situations happen in Hanna-Barbera cartoon style (including what may be the worst attempt at playing the ScoobyDoobyDoors for drama), PlotHoles abound, and the IdiotBall is passed around like a volleyball match. All the former and the [[PurpleProse very purple and pretentious writing]] would make the book [[SoBadItsGood hilarious]] in other circumstances, but here they dogpile to slog the text and infuriate the reader. A sequel (named ''El Hada de las Cadenas'', "''The Faerie of Chains''") was eventually written and published, but the editorial decided to release it as digital-only -- which was its death-knell, as Chile is not a place where digital content is widely sought after.
100* Creator/BobChipman's '''''Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick-by-Brick''''' touts itself as the definitive analysis of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' but fails in every way. Right from the start, it's bogged down by a badly-told history of the franchise that encompasses almost the first third of the book, random tangents that have nothing to do with anything, fringe far-left political opinions that even most leftists would disavow and are also [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment completely irrelevant to the topic]], stories from Chipman's personal life that might be interesting if not for Chipman coming across as highly immature and egotistical (with statements likening the reveal of ''[=SMB3=]'' in ''Film/TheWizard'' to the JFK assassination and the Nintendo/Sega UsefulNotes/ConsoleWars to Vietnam becoming [[MemeticMutation memetic]], and ''not'' in a positive way), spelling and grammar errors that betray a lack of copy-editing, and massive amounts of ego-stroking. As a piece of analysis, ''Brick by Brick'' fails as the portion describing ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' consists of dull steps-by-steps descriptions of every level in the game broken up by the occasional personal musing, with preciously little attempt to go beyond surface-level observations or describe what makes it tick as a game. There's a reason he [[CreatorBacklash has since disowned it]], along with all of his other books. The book has a 2.20 on Goodreads, with the top reviewer saying they'd rather stare at a vase or eat sand than read the book. You can listen to Terrible Book Club discuss the book [[https://terriblebookclub.com/episodes/episode-52-super-mario-bros-3-brick-by-brick-by-s1!31843 here]], or watch [=MagicMush=] dissect the book and its contents [[https://youtu.be/YmcrVQ1MDTc?t=1174 here]]. [=ProcrastiTara=] also reviews the book [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvEyVBEQh84&t=1672s here]], where she dubs it ''worse'' than Onision's books.
101-->''"I recall reading about the author who was hired to write the [[Literature/HaloTheFlood novelization]] of [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved the first Halo game]] saying that his book was a series of passages about Master Chief running and shooting because he was hired to write the book version of Halo and that running and shooting was all he saw in the game. The author of this book similarly wrote about only running and jumping, but sells itself as finally being THE book to treat games with a trained critical eye. This is not a book of game criticism. I say this as a person who has written numerous articles and a book on critical analyses of game environments, levels, and worlds for respected publications. Super Mario Bros. 3 deserves better than this lazy effort."''
102* '''''Touched by Venom''''' by Janine Cross, better known as ''The "Venom Cock" Book'', would have barely been a blip if not for the Internet. The closest one can get to a plot summary is to say that ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'', ''Literature/{{Gor}}'', and ''Literature/ClanOfTheCaveBear'' get thrown in a blender with extra helpings of pain, suffering, and sex with dragons. It takes FromBadToWorse to [[DeusAngstMachina ludicrous degrees]]: The Dragon Temple screws Zarq's serf enclave out of all their worldly possessions on a technicality? Sell Zarq's sister into [[AFateWorseThanDeath sex slavery]] to buy food and supplies. Mom schemes to get her back? The scheme backfires, resulting in Dad's execution and Mom and Zarq's banishment. (Also, Mom's pregnant, and they're kicked out immediately after she gives birth to a son she's not even allowed to hold.) They find refuge in a convent that houses old dragons? Just in time for Mom to drop dead! Then Zarq has to undergo [[{{Gorn}} "circumcision"]] to be considered "clean and holy". The nuns hold fertility rites with the old dragons. And that just takes you halfway through the book; after that, the damage spreads to people other than Zarq. To Cross' credit, she never tries to pretend that it's anything other than a CrapsackWorld, and the sequels (while not ''good'') are a significant improvement and explain many of the baffling plot points in ''Venom'', but the book doesn't stand on its own.
103* '''''Troll''''' is a self-published "romance" novel by Emma Clark. The writing is incredibly creepy (sexual assault and blatant stalking, including breaking into someone's house, [[StalkingIsLove is treated as true love]]), the pacing is terrible (it takes until the second-to-last chapter for there to be an exposition on the characters or any semblance of a plot), the prose is awful, the author seems unaware of the logistics of hacking and social media culture, and there are just so many other problems. WebVideo/JennyNicholson rips it apart [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZMt87ZdUbw here]]; despite often [[BileFascination enjoying reading bad fiction]] on her channel, she has to take a break while reading this one because the love story makes her legitimately uncomfortable.
104* '''''The World Rose''''', a self-published novel by former ''Countdown'' champion Richard Brittain, rose to infamy after he drove several hundred miles to [[DisproportionateRetribution assault a young woman for giving a negative review]], but beyond that, the book itself is just bad -- it's dull, [[PurpleProse full of superfluous wording of a fuchsia hue]], and the characters within are bland Mary Sues, particularly the main female character. It has an average review score of 1.72 on Goodreads with 350+ ratings and 100 reviews. However, what truly makes it despicable is the fact that the main character was purposefully based on a woman [[StalkerWithACrush he had stalked from his university days who wanted nothing to do with him]], even giving the character the same name and writing a detailed blog post about a planned PR stunt that revolved around tracking down this woman and [[CapturedOnPurpose faking her kidnapping]] (unsurprisingly, she not only declined but was disturbed that Brittain had managed to track her down). Said main character is sexualized enough that the woman who was assaulted by the author called her "boobilicious" in her review.
105%% Johnny The Walrus was cut per cleanup thread. It fails the "Fail to appeal even to its niche" requirement and its listing could risk drawing unwanted attention to this page. Do not re-add without consulting the cleanup thread.
106%% Link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15574101790A64005900&page=196#comment-4893
107[[/folder]]

Top