Criticise books you like, and praise books you hate!

List a story you liked and another you didn't like, and give a very brief description about why this is so. To keep this from turning into gushing or bitching, try to be brief (no more than a few short sentences).

Make a list of at least two things that you actually enjoyed about the book that you hated, or something that you really thought worked well. No backhanded compliments please - eg. "The best part of Twilight was that it ended eventually," or anything along those lines.

On the flip side, make a list of at least two things that you thought were detrimental to a book that you loved.

On zerky's end:

One of zerky's favourite books ever is China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. The worldbuilding is amazing, with a steampunk society that's both well-thought out and carried out realistically. The characters were a good blend of sympathetic and flawed, and it was not hard to step into their very strange shoes.

Things she did not like about it:

• The slake moth Plot Tumor, while entertaining, was a little unwelcome. They worked well as Eldritch Abominations, but they were kind of dull and took screentime away from the much more interesting plotline about the garuda getting his wings back.
• It is cynical and depressing as fuck. This is probably the worst one in the series on this front. It was practically a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story, where nothing is gained by anyone.
• Vermishank. He seemed like a very Flat Character to zerky, and she could not see why Isaac loathed him so much, or why he got so much screentime.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Piers Anthony's On a Pale Horse. At times the book alternated between being sexist Author Appeal, sophomoric, and just plain sexist. On top of that, the dialogue was utterly contrived, with characters needlessly spouting out their motivations in unrealistic and overly-wordy ways.

Things she liked about it:

• The worldbuilding was genuinely quite interesting! There are all these immortal sort of... Anthropomorphic Personifications of things like Death, Time, Fate, Nature, War, etcetera. They also get run bureaucratically, which adds another layer of cool!
• That Irish Ghost girl was one of the most interesting and sympathetic people in that book. She's got spunk, that's for sure! zerky wonders how she died, and whether she gets any screentime in the other books of the series.
• When Zane asked his death horse a question, and the death horse answered with, "Neigh," zerky actually laughed.

edited 15th Mar '12 7:11:07 PM by zerky

Boy, this is not going to be easy!

For me, my favourite series is the In Death series by Nora Roberts. It contains a lot of stuff to criticize and praise!

What I like about it:

• Eve Dallas is definitely a female version of Sherlock Holmes. She has been able to figure out stuff faster than most people around her.
• Eve and Roarke's relationship is entertaining to watch for the most part.
• The series contains a load of Lampshade Hangings.
• Character Development occurs for a number of characters as the series goes on.
• Even though the series is Strictly Formulaic, each book feels different in its own way.
• Peabody does a fine job as The Watson!

What I dislike about it:

• There are lot of Contrived Coincidences in the series, like Eve was going to be sold to Patrick Roarke, Eve's target Max Ricker had business with her father Richard Troy at one time, and one woman Eve was hunting for turned out to be none other than her mother Stella! They can really break Willing Suspension of Disbelief at times.
• McNab is so annoying at times that I kinda wish that he would get hit by a bus!
• Eve Dallas can be such a Jerkass at times, that I wish she would take it down a notch with people like Webster!
• Eve and Roarke's relationship has All Amazons Want Hercules vibes at times, but at least they are even for the most part.
• There are points when you get the impression that the world revolves around Eve and Roarke, but considering how she's married to a man who owns more things than you can shake a stick at, it probably is!
• Peabody sure isn't shy about wearing pink to the job. At least Eve razzes her about that.

edited 17th Mar '12 10:42:55 AM by TiggersAreGreat

Harry Potter:

The romances were sloppy, and even the author knows how much she fails at math. Also, not so good with avoiding Unfortunate Implications.

Hitch hikers:

Densely written, characters are given sloppy send offs, plots make no sense and are hard to follow, mediocre female characters

—

Twilight:

Good with minor characters, like the romanian vamps

Like:

Gravitys Rainbow: occasionally, even Thomas Pynchon gets too obscure for his own good. There's one six-page monologue that's so dense I cannot decipher it at all. I also feel like the shit-eating scene is gratuitous, but of course this is GR we're talking about.

A Clockwork Orange: no, Mr. Burgess, that last chapter really isn't such a good idea.

Dislike:

Pride And Prejudice: she wrote good prose. I detest the characters and story, but she wrote good prose.

Why is Literature the forum most likely to have threads in it that would fit best in a general fiction forum?

Anyways, like:

I'm not sure I buy the whole society-good savageness-evil schtick in Lord Of The Flies. It's poetically presented, but it often comes off as supernatural, which is never a good thing when you're trying to apply your moral to the real world.

Otherland should never have been split into four volumes. Almost the entire first book is a glorified prologue.

Dislike:

Chronicles Of Blood And Stone is a good demonstration of how other genres can take heed from elements of splatterpunk. At the same time that it plays up how casual the villains are about the deaths of people they don't like, it describes those deaths in matter-of-fact terms, letting readers fill in their own moral repulsion at the details. (Of course, it then missteps into both And That's Terrible and Moral Myopia . . .)

Battle Royale is also gruesome, but it tries to soften rather than strengthen the shock. As part of this, it has probably the best Lemony Narrator I've ever encountered. (It's like Douglas Adams on a very bad day, with a hint of Chuck Palahniuk on a good one.)

edited 17th Mar '12 9:49:09 PM by feotakahari

What I dislike about the Flora Segunda series: The dialogue-style narration can be dense and impenetrable at times, the romance elements in the second book are kinda tacked-on, and the worldbuilding and cultural aspects sometimes stoop to mere Palette Swap levels. "Oh look, it's just like a modern-day rock concert! EXCEPT MAGIX!"

What I liked about the Dragon Champion series: The worldbuilding was pretty good, and nicely in-depth. The wolf pack characters were a lot of fun, and the way their society worked was interesting. The main character manages to end things off on a fairly logical decision, and the prose was pretty consistently good.

All right, let's do a favorite book other than Harry Potter, to be different. The Valley of Fear, there we go.

• Has probably the worst inter-work continuity issues in the Canon. There's a taboo on acknowledging continuity issues in Sherlock Holmes, I know, but, I mean, way to twist facts to suit theories, you guys.
• The romance in part two is honestly pretty creepy, and though some of it was probably intentional, I don't think all of it was.
• The two storylines aren't so much intertwined as strapped together, and the tones are pretty uneven, too. That first bit, at least, is par for the course in Sherlock Holmes; the fault is that the non-Holmes storyline, unlike in the short stories, is too much of a story in its own right, and unlike the Alkali Flats, is too engaging to be cut. And that's why nobody has heard of Valley of Fear outside fandom, I think.

And I'll have to pick a book I hated that I also got all the way through. Eragon and Eldest will do - never picked up the last two, but I'll do my best.

• The Seithr oil and the idea to track the Ra'zac by checking its shipments was inventive and awesome.
• The fact that the rebels can be pretty scary and factional and mutually exclusive added a good frisson to the middle third of the two books.
• There's only a few logistical issues between Roran and unreserved BAMF-dom.

Oh, and Catcher in the Rye:

• You can completely see why Holden likes Phoebe so much when he hates about everything else in the world. She's a sweet kid.
• That chick he meets at the ice rink is exactly the kind of "phony" a teenager would try to impress against their better judgment.
• The scene with the prostitute was pretty touching, I'll admit.

edited 18th Mar '12 6:46:31 AM by DomaDoma

Like: Lord Of The Rings.

• The characters were completely flat, with just the bare minimum of personality.
• The descriptions were painfully long, especially when compared to the movies, which did a remarkable job of showing everything quickly.
• The Black-and-White Morality was so simplistic that I ended up hating it.

Dislike: Mockingjay.

• I enjoyed the general sense of worldbuilding and how the characters went through death after death bravely.
• Primrose's death was handled nicely.

Here's a set of books that I loved at first...and then came to loathe: the Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels! Nevertheless, I'll try to show both the parts I like and dislike about it.

Loved:

• The Sisterhood (later called the Vigilantes) go after all those terrible Karma Houdinis out there and make them pay!
• The series can be compared to Charlies Angels.
• The Sisterhood proves that women can be amazing at being Action Girls.
• The series captures your interest with the sensational drama that occurs.
• The stories are just like those old Serial Films you hear about from time to time.
• The series gets its own first female President of the United States.
• The old women of the story show that age has not them weaker!
• Washington, D.C. is prominently displayed in this set of stories!

Loathed:

• The spelling mistakes and inexplicable name changes that pop up in the series.
• The loads of Unfortunate Implications that appear, like Revenge being treated as a positive thing, the incest that pops up due to one of the members of the Sisterhood adopting several members as her sons and daughters (and some of the "sons" and "daughters" are married), the Moral Dissonance that occurs, the fact that the Vigilantes are Straw Feminists (as opposed to the reasonable feminists they are supposed to be), the anti-Asian mentality, the anti-men mentality, Drinking the Kool-Aid, Hen Pecked Husbands, Protagonist-Centred Morality, the fact that the women are Jerk Sues, and the list goes on!
• At first, the series starts with Acceptable Targets, like rapists, pedophiles and murderers. However, the A.T. list grows to include men in general, and very few women in general.
• The blatant Critical Research Failure on the author's part, with her believing that "caning" equals "skinning someone alive", that "China" equals "Japan", and that Japan is a Third World Country. Flat "What".
• The Cool And Unusual Punishments often turn into a Fate Worse than Death, like the aforementioned skinning, stripping targets naked, driving people insane, tarring-and-feathering, No Holds Barred Beatdowns, threatening bee-allergic targets with bees, and so on. In case you're wondering, the Vigilantes shrug off every punishment they commit on their targets every time.
• The main characters get struck with Designated Hero status hard.
• The author's use of Inherently Funny Words like "dear", "speckled", "scurrilous", "silly", and so on.
• The Narm that occurs between male characters when they talk, because they are supposed to be serious, but readers can tell you that no adult male talks like that with another adult male.

By the way, the author is a 79-going-on-80-years-old Southern woman who is a Crazy Dog Lady (as opposed to a Crazy Cat Lady), and also claims I See Dead People!

Personally, I think the quality of her series is comparable to that one Fan Fic story How I Became Yours!

edited 18th Mar '12 10:01:26 AM by TiggersAreGreat

I like this concept a lot, of finding the good in something you hate, and finding the bad in something you like. Here we go.

A book I totally hated other than for its unintentional comedy value: The Adventures Of Archie Reynolds

Avoiding the inevitable backhanded compliments ("it's so bad it's hilarious", which I literally think considering the book cracked me up several times), here I go with the genuine positives:

• I like the author's intent, of mixing Slice of Life neighborhood antics with an adventure involving smugglers. The concept is really good.
• The author shows a surprising amount of knowledge of tunnel building, which I think was used well in those areas to create a mood.

A book series I really liked: Pyrates

What I didn't like about it:

• The characters could have used more personality. While they do have distinguishing characteristics, almost all their dialog is goal-oriented or in some way relates to the adventure, and I would have liked to see some more moments not related to the adventure.
  • Related to the above, a lack of indications that they have much of a life outside the adventure, with only a handful of references to things not related to the adventure.
• In the fourth book, once the main character's dad got involved, he basically entered into the background and became subservient to the kids, following them around and doing what they wanted, rather than taking charge (he IS the adult after all, even if the kids have all the experience with cave exploration, etc.). It was strange, although he did get to show knowledge of things the kids didn't know.

With this praise/criticism, bear in mind that I actually did hate The Adventures Of Archie Reynolds and love Pyrates, but the books do indeed have the positives/flaws I mentioned above.

Disliked book: The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco.

• The interactions between the three narrators were fascinating. It's really a novel about the reliability of narrators and the assumptions of perspective. As a meta-fictional exploration, I enjoyed it.
• The subject matter, particularly the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Dreyfus affair, were interesting. I hadn't encountered them in fiction before.

Liked book: Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell.

• O'Brien: Winston's vision of the two meeting in a place with no darkness is never really explained. I wish his "they got me a long time ago" had been elaborated.
• I thoroughly enjoyed the bits of Goldstein's book we saw, but how we were prevented from seeing more of it felt contrived. It's disappointing that such a key part of Oceania and the book's ideas aren't detailed. We never get to read the "Freedom is Slavery" chapter, for example.

Twilight is...shiny?

Eragon is...long?

this hurts...

edited 21st Mar '12 1:01:25 PM by Joesolo

Hey! Hey! Read the rules, man. Read the rules, or you gon' get it, boy!

Like: Harry Potter - Sometimes the books were too long and I lost interest sometimes. Also the seventh book was quite boring.

Hate Dislike: Twilight - Some characters were well written, and there were some geniunely funny moments.

Like:

• Harry Potter: There are virtually no minority characters in prominent roles; the closest we get is Harry's one-time Love Interest Cho. Granted, minorities still get to do awesome things (especially Kingsley), but they never get to do it while being main characters.
• A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Nothing is resolved. Nothing. Things are implied to have been resolved (like the identity of VFD and the Schism within it), but nothing explicitly is. The most egregious instance of this? Throughout the story, various supporting characters pop in and out with little to no explanation. It seems like all of these characters are slated to be Chekhov's Gunmen. In the final book, we're informed by a third party that all of these characters have met up with each other and... promptly got eaten by a sea monster. All of this occurs offscreen. Err, page. Granted, this was very likely the author's intended Aesop ("There will always be mysteries in the world"), but it's just as likely that he spent so much time setting up these vague Chekhovs Guns that he never planned out exactly what he was going to do with them.
• The Jungle: Over-reliance on the Diabolus ex Machina makes it nearly impossible to care. Adding to that, Sinclair seems to have it in for basically every ethnicity except Lithuanians, and doesn't care who knows it.

Dislike:

• No Logo (nonfiction, but still literature): The anvils needed to be dropped. Now, if only she could stop beating us over the head with how horrible we are for buying things...
• Never Let Me Go: The middle part was great. Offset, in my eyes, however, by the Ass Pull Diabolus ex Machina ending designed to ensure the shaggy dog is shot.

edited 22nd Mar '12 12:44:55 PM by HamburgerTime

Liked: The Hunger Games

• Katniss would switch her vocabulary from a rather mature person to a 'normal' teenager sometimes.
• Mockingjay lost a few points for shifting as much of the plot to the romance as it did.
• District 12 was supposed to be fairly lax with the Peacekeepers, but I felt it was a little too nice.

Disliked: The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

• Daniel had moments when he honestly seemed lost, and missed his family.
• The idea of him needing to re-create his family and friends was good.
• He acted like an average teenager around most human girls.
• In the magna, when he met another alien around his age and they were talking, it was kind of nice.

Like:

Brave New World

- Decoy Protagonist is ultimately very spineless with what little personality he has

- The so-called Crapsaccharine World is almost too easily read as a utopia

- The conflict is only because no one can Take a Third Option

Dislike:

The Inheritance Cycle

- Minor characters,such as Durza or Nasuada are actually decently written

- "The Reason You Suck" Speech directed at Oromis is brilliant

- A Gold mine for Alternative Character Interpretation

edited 30th Mar '12 6:00:33 PM by terlwyth

Praise books I hate:

• Harry Potter — Rowling overall did a great job building the world. I actually felt as if I were in many of the places that she described, particularly around Hogwarts. (On the flipside, I just didn't find the plot very interesting, nor did I enjoy many of the characters — especially not Harry, who just seemed bland.) Granted, I gave up after Goblet of Fire.

Criticize books I like:

• Redwall series — Jacques' insistence that certain species always be good or bad, and the one-sidedness of many battles. Outcast of Redwall had a copout ending. Sometimes I have to read the moles' dialogue five times before I can tell what they're saying.
• Dave Barry Turns 40 — He derails the book for half a chapter to bash Republicans. I'm a Republican and I can take a lot of crap, but it just seemed overly mean-spirited and out of place.
• Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series — the numbered books are hilarious (and the books on CD have the best reader I've ever heard), but Janet's other stuff sucks. How does that work?
• The Hymnal 1982 — They use "Cradle Song" instead of "Mueller" as the tune for "Away in a Manger".

Praise books I don't like:

Sort of Robert Heinlein generally:

• He had some quite clever witticisms/aphorisms
• Job A Comedy Of Justice introduced me to James Branch Cabell
• Stranger In A Strange Land makes very well-done use of Nietzsche's concept of Dionysian versus Apollonian concepts of religion. Also, Heinlein was really prescient about televangelism.

Criticize books I like:

The Discworld series:

• I'm kind of put off by Pratchett's adoration of Combat Pragmatism.
• While not totally unheard of, characters who oppose the protagonists tend to be straw-manned. One way this stands out is how The Truth broke from the mold by having the Watch as antagonists of William de Worde and presenting a somewhat less flattering take on Vimes. However, whenever de Worde has appeared in subsequent books, Vimes' take on him/journalism is presented as accurate and Vimes' views aren't really questioned again as far as I can remember.
• Kind of related to the above, but while the Patrician and Vimes are cool characters, the series gives their Democracy Is Bad attitude way too much endorsement.

edited 23rd Mar '12 9:03:49 PM by Jordan

Huh, really? I liked most everything about Harry Potter except the worldbuilding. The number of goatherds they'd need for parchment alone!

I dunno — that was just the thing that drove me from HP. I liked the setting, disliked the characters. Nothing about any of them seemed interesting.

On second look, you're talking atmosphere, not logistics. Yes, the atmosphere is pretty great.

Book I dislike: Watership Down

• Hugely influential, opening up the scope for fantasy
• The imagined rabbits' world and Adams' description of their thought processes and limitations is well done.
• Epic scope

... still tedious as all fuck, though.

Books I love: Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath

• Even the biggest fan has to admit that heroine Jame is, if not quite a Mary Sue, only saved from it by Hodgell's ability to write. She scores at the 'Kill it with fire!' level in every single Mary Sue Litmus Test, and the author indeed describes her as her "dark alter ego", which tends to be a bad sign.
• Consistency is not the series' strong point. There are a few very noticeable continuity errors, although they don't really touch on anything crucial to the plot.
• Because the series has taken so long to write (mid-Eighties until today) the tone of the writing changes quite substantially over the course of the series. Thirty-odd years makes quite a difference.
• The author clearly changed her mind about things and retconned them in a couple places — deciding in book 4 that Jame has a fear of horses, when it didn't show at all in book 2, for instance.
• The Brother–Sister Incest clearly being set up between Jame and her brother could be bothersome to some.
• The Easy Amnesia used as a plot device is rather tired (though, admittedly, a little less so in the 80s, and this is probably magical amnesia.
• The main character's motivation is a bit poorly defined at times; she's oddly passive to the fates for all of her strength.

Books I dislike:

Twilight

• Meyers created a new type of vampire that I could have potentially found interesting the story were they not written so fucking badly. As is the base concept is intriguing.
• Alice. Partly because of the "You do smell nice..." to Bella, admittedly.

Book I like:

Lot R

• I think Tolkien's pacing is fine. His book isn't easily accessible however. Most of his writing isn't but Lot R gets the award for WORST FUCKING BOOK TO GET INTO for being his most well known work and for being so damned long
• This is a book you have to marathon. It's also long as shit so that takes a long while. Which can be annoying. To the point where I throw it down in disgust to go read The Children of Hurin.
• The orcs being chaotic evil and not being well fleshed out. He regretted this later on however.

edited 27th Mar '12 10:02:22 PM by Aondeug

After reading a couple sporkings of Breaking Dawn, I was also pleased by the fact that her wedding present to Edward and Bella was pretty much the racist lingerie she could find. She's got a sense of humor, that gal.