Bad Books (by Writers You Love)

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Utopia Avenue really messed me up.
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[@TheBookchemist]

The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/thebookchemist11201

[@dannigreen7126]

I love this topic DEEPLY. I first read Patrick Modiano roughly a year ago from this month. The first novel I read was SO YOU DON'T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD which published the year he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel was amazing. I started going back and reading all his work. I read in several articles that his best work was MISSING PERSON so I eventually read it. It's the novel that won him the Prix Goncourt (France's highest literary award). It was WEAK. I was and still am baffled by the accolades that novel bought him. There is a clear difference in quality between his work from the 70s and 80s and his work in the 90s until now. He gained more confidence in his voice and was able to write more convincing ties between the topics he focuses on (memory, history, identity). I don't tend to read an author's entire work as cohesive because I think books are products of where an author was at a time. However, with this book I was truly let down.

[@TheBookchemist]

A very interesting take - thanks for the sharing :)!

[@CN-xp7qk]

Hi! At the moment I can recall three works by beloved authors which I didn't like: Poe's The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Lovecraft's At the mountains of madness, and Goethe's The new Paris.

[@therasbull]

I love your negative reviews. Helpful and insightful

[@MetalMadness1984]

Great content as always! Been an avid follower of your channel for years and was wondering if you would ever do reviews of "War and Peace" , any Dostoyevsky you haven't previously done, and Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" (Remembrance of Things Past)?

[@TheBookchemist]

Once I read them, why not? I hope to read War and Peace next year! My fiancee read Lost Time earlier this year and I almost did it too, but then got scared - I think that one will have to wait until I have a long holiday booked ;)

[@MetalMadness1984]

@@TheBookchemist looking forward to it!

[@1book1review]

I think it is very normal to not click with every book by an author. I think what a favorite author mainly has is the benefit of the doubt by their readers. If I already know and love an author I am more willing to forgive duds and still read their next book. Whereas if an author hasn't achieved that status yet I am more likely to give up on them after a book I didn't enjoy. An example would be Graham Swift's Wish You Were Here. I really didn't like the book and thought it was more or less a boring rehashing of what he's done for years. That will not stop me from picking up any of his books, and I did enjoy the following ones more again.

[@mark-jensbarton8363]

Though I flirt with fiction (James Joyce, Graham Swift, Virginia Woolf, A.S Byatt, Don Delillo, Philip Roth, John Fowels, and Cormac McCarthy being my personal favourites), I am a poetry guy. Eliot, Pound, Dickinson, HD, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Hughes, Yeats, Heaney, are only a small taste of the poets that I love. Ted Hughes' collection Cave Birds, right after his collection Crow, was super lackluster to me. You can tell that he was just emotionally burnt out in Cave Birds and it's really obvious in the poetry.

[@ploovey]

Try Love Is A Dog From Hell or Burning In Water, Drowning in Flame by Bukowski . He builds over these poets and shines brighter

[@Pedone_Rosso]

As I've seen one of the disliked books from your subscribed was on the same topic, I remembered a good read on something you mentioned. Here's the title (after some research... long title!): Christopher Moore, "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" Thanks for your videos!

[@zan8152]

mostly a fantasy fan and there it seems the most dangerous thing is to get stuck in a rut and draw out an idea far beyond its worth - I think the broadest disparity in what I've. read - loved vs. hated has to be Glen Cook's Black Company. Couple of them are wildly imaginative, full of style and wit and characters... and then there are a couple that are just absolutely vile? Similarly Octavia Butler is very interesting... Nearly all of her novels follow the same structure/idea in a way, but some of them deal with it beautifully, and the others are just... I dunno, *very* awkward in how obsessed they are with incest cults?

[@constancecampbell4610]

I adore Haruki Murakami, especially Kafka on the Shore, Hardboiled Wonderland, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I truly hated 1q84. By the end I felt personally betrayed. Which is ridiculous, of course. But it makes me think about this issue you raise as, for me, something deeply felt. When I have had consistently positive, even transcendent, experiences while reading an author’s novels, I return to that author with a sense of their being an agreement between us that my expectations will continue to be fulfilled. I don’t expect each novel to hit in precisely the same way and I realize an author who is truly imaginative will probably try different things at times, but, honestly, 1q84 seemed like a juvenile’s caricature of Murakami. What do you think? Does anyone love that book? Is it just me? Thanks for the interesting video. Stay safe.

[@joshold5840]

It's my least favourite Murakami for sure. I can't even remember why. I just think it set up a lot of plot points in the beginning that I felt I would really get into and then spent hundreds of pages waiting for nothing to happen - not that I was expecting everything to tie up in the end... I know better from this author, I just expected more. My favourites are Dance Dance Dance and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and I even really enjoyed Killing Commendatore, which many seem to not like. But with 1Q84 I just remember feeling hugely disappointed.

[@constancecampbell4610]

@@joshold5840 I am glad to hear I am not alone in this. I also enjoyed Killing Commendatore, but was not as thrilled while reading. If that makes sense.

[@rjd53]

@@constancecampbell4610 1Q84 and Wind-Up Bird are on my shelf wating to be read. So, I'll see ...

[@constancecampbell4610]

@@rjd53 Cool. Love to hear how that goes.

[@joshold5840]

@@constancecampbell4610 Yeah totally makes sense. I felt a strange kind of familiarity with Killing Commendatore, almost instead of the usual mystery! Also noticed some similar tropes from Wind Up Bird and Kafka on the Shore - maybe that was what it was!

[@christiangastelum7035]

I would call Buckowski one of my favorite writers having read Post Office, Factotum, Women, and (currently reading) Ham on Rye. However, Pulp was atrocious. It presents itself as "charmingly bad" but, to me, the bad writing was ugly and lacking Buckowski's usual dry poeticism. I lasted no more than 10 pages.

[@christiangastelum7035]

@@ploovey yo I was just responding to the prompt

[@steeplyy]

So happy to see Black Books on the shelf!

[@TheBookchemist]

A classic! What a great show!

[@chuckles222]

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster.

[@levitybooks3952]

I still haven't gotten over the amount of GoodReads users that see no problem with the narrative of Craig Thompson's "Habibi", raising its average rating close to his far and away superior Blankets.

[@tarico4436]

What? Do the opinions of fat GoodReads users count for more than those who are thin?? It's not the AMOUNT that you are looking for, but the NUMBER.

[@romm4516]

Philip K Dick is easily one of my favorite authors, but I feel Dr Bloodmoney (which borrows from a favorite movie of mine), just falls flat for me.

[@TheBookchemist]

I also disliked that one, I must confess! It felt a bit too much on-the-nose with its message?

[@martintaylor7685]

"The Humbling" by Philip Roth. Simply awful. Hard to believe he wrote it just after "Indignation" which is one of my favorite Roth books.

[@tonybennett4159]

I haven't read Utopia Avenue, but I loved everything by Mitchell until I got to The Bone Clocks : it had a great beginning, then gradually went to pieces, and by the end was a mess. Ali Smith's The Accidental just didn't work for me and Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary, while an interesting concept was a bit "meh".

[@alext7621]

What are your favorite Ali Smith novels? I really enjoyed The Accidental.

[@tonybennett4159]

@@alext7621 I can't go beyond the seasons quartet. I think they are masterly.

[@doctorsueno1048]

"The skating rink" (La pista de hielo) and "Monsieur Pain" by Roberto Bolaño. He's one of my favorite writers but those books are just bad in my opinion.

[@lepoeteonaniste1480]

agree, "Monsieur Pain" just bored me

[@doctorsueno1048]

@@lepoeteonaniste1480 Yes, it's boring as fuck

[@supreeth1369]

Agree with Monseuir pain, it's so short, yet bored me to death.

[@doctorsueno1048]

@@supreeth1369 You can tell Bolaño was shuffling style and themes in both books, but no really getting anywhere. It's impressive how it's the same author of literary monsters as 2666 and The savage detectives...

[@supreeth1369]

@@doctorsueno1048 not many people talk about this, but I really loved his distant star, third Reich and nazi literature in Americas. Something about fascism + Bolano just work too well.

[@ashurbanipalcousin]

China Mieville’s King Rat and Don Delillo’s Mao II stick out to me as the only 1 star reviews I have given in the past six years even though I have liked all other books I have read by them. I’d be interested in hearing your view on authors who you initially read and loved and then wasted a lot of time on their other mediocre and bad works because of how you felt on the one or two of their books you actually enjoyed (Haruki Murakami and Nabokov for me).

[@TheBookchemist]

An interesting topic for a future video indeed! And interestingly enough, I also wouldn't rank Mao II among DeLillo's strongest - and yet it seems to have so many fans!

[@ingratitude]

I would be very interested in your review of Three-Body Problem, if you have read it.

[@soundtrack795]

Speaking of recent stuff, I really couldn't get into DeLillo's The Silence. I'm not a big fan of his post-Underworld work in the first place (I know, a cliche at this point), but this time I think he went too far. Too abstract, absurd, removed, too much navel-gazing.

[@AndalusianIrish]

I think a lot of fiction in the twentieth and twenty first century has either been navel gazing or willy waving. Not a fan of either.

[@ohwellwhateverr]

@@thehardhours I'm probably just dense, but what do you mean by "we're in the age of Encounter"?

[@TheBookchemist]

Oh dear! I'll be reading that one soon :P

[@frankshrew2852]

Kafka is my favourite writer but Amerika doesn’t hold up to his other novels IMO, while being unfinished along with The Castle, it doesn’t share the same ascetic sense of completion that the latter has and feels unclear and disorganized. Didn’t hate it but I wouldn’t recommend

[@tarico4436]

I finished and loved The Trial. A few months later I tried The Castle. It was more of the same, not quite a carbon copy of The Trial, but close enough. I got about halfway through, then put it down. It just seemed unnecessary to continue. Have you read The Trial? If so, how does it compare with The Castle?

[@sean..L]

I know this isn't completely relevant to the topic of the video but if Lovecraft is one of your favourites then I suggest you read the stories of Algernon Blackwood and Clark Ashton Smith.

[@bryangarcia5599]

Agreed. Also, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, and Robert W. Chambers.

[@TheBookchemist]

I'm a big fan of Smith, for all of his awkwardness ;) I appreciate Blackwood but I must confess that, for all that I appreciate him, he doesn't resonate any too deeply with me (for all that he was easily the best prose stylist of the early-20th C "weird" genre - unless one counts James among them).

[@AndalusianIrish]

I haven't read any other books by this author but a book I really wanted to like was The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. I could see the jokes but like a bad comedian the delivery let him down. I had seen Jacobson on TV and thought he was funny and engaging. Also the book won the Booker prize so I was really disappointed.

[@nikchemnyk]

I rather often feel disappointed after finishing a book but it doesn't translate to a feeling of betrayal. As with my favorite authors I always find a way to explain away their performance on that story or give them a benefit of a doubt and decide I might have just not got it, and with the authors I hardly know I just shrug and walk away. But lately I found "Mort" the least rewarding of the Discworld books I read, and "Mother", a play by the great Karel Capek, wasn't to my taste at all. I understand why it was written - it was an important thing to say at the time right before the Second World War - but the characters are purposefully underemphasized and the ideological argument going on felt somewhat circular and not quite as engaging or persuasive as I expected. Incidentally just finished my first collection of odd Lovecraft stories and "The Street" is obviously indefensible but the ones that irritated me more were the ones that go the boring route and don't arrive at anything like "The Temple" (though, I think, it actually has a good rap?).

[@TheBookchemist]

"The Temple" is generally regarded, critically at least, as a minor work. Personally, I like it! I think it's Lovecraft funniest (although in a rather obnoxious, blatantly racist/anti-German way).

[@nikchemnyk]

@@TheBookchemist many English people didn't like Germans at the time, huh? I heard Kipling also didn't. Strange. I guess I just thought, oh, cool he's gonna make a story out of conflicts between the crew members there. A change of pace for him. And then they all are out of the picture before the middle point. :D

[@sanchitvarma1282]

Oh boy, this maybe controversial but I really really hated The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick (An author I really really admire). It felt laboured, contrived and surprisingly stagnant. Also it was extremely on the nose and over the top in its imagery, especially by the end. I really wanted to like this book but it just didn't connect with me at all.

[@tarico4436]

I've read four by PKD, and I want to read Flow My Tears, The Copper Said but want feedback first. Have you read it? How does it compare to his other works? Any and all commentary will be treasured by me and my friends over at the firm.

[@alvisinger112]

I didn’t like Man In the High Castle either! Great concept but weak delivery.

[@alvisinger112]

@@tarico4436 Would recommend The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubiq, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly (hoping that you haven’t read those exact 4!)

[@alant8140]

Interesting topic 😊

[@milesknightestrada3286]

At last. Someone sensible enough to dismiss Lovecraft's racism, and merely appreciate his greatness as an artist. Take notes everyone.

[@beatingaroundthebooks]

The Music of Chance by Paul Auster. It was one I read right in the middle of an Auster binge and I felt like it was a huge waste of my time, but still picked up several others by him afterwards. Although I will say, I've not read any of his novels in at least 5 years. Two others that immediately came to mind: Demian and Narziss und Goldmund by Hermann Hesse. With those two I felt like maybe I read them at the wrong time/in the wrong order, as I'd already read and loved The Glass Bead Game and Demian to me felt like it was playing with similar ideas which are explored more deeply in The Glass Bead Game, but at an earlier time in his development as a writer.

[@TheBookchemist]

How interesting - as someone who's read a lot of Auster novels I definitely feel like he's written his share of disappointing ones (Man in the Dark? Travels in the Scriptorium? Possibly even The Book of Illusions?) but I seemed to remember Music of Chance as quite a fascinating one! It was ages ago that I read it, though.

[@rjd53]

I read most of Auster, and I think Music of Chance was even one of his best. I think it is a very good allegory about how power works; what I also liked about it was, that the story in it was coherent, what isn't always the case in Auster.

[@beatingaroundthebooks]

@@TheBookchemistInteresting indeed! I'm not going to argue with other opinions, since I have nearly no memory of the novel apart from feeling like I wasted my time - which in itself is a statement about it I guess. But it could all be due to my age then - I think I may have been around 18. Funnily enough I really liked Man in the Dark.

[@beatingaroundthebooks]

@@rjd53 I seem to remember feeling like it was a bit 'on the nose'. Lacking coherence isn't a factor for me it seems 😂

[@rjd53]

The best example in my reading experience: Roberto Bolano is an author I read everything by, and I loved everything he wrote - with three exceptions: 1. I think his poems aren't very good. But, okay, no problem, he's a prose writer after all. 2. "Distant Star" didn't impress me that much. But, so what, nobody's perfect and he wrote so much. - But 3. what did disappoint me was the fifth part of 2666, "The part about Archimboldi". Always found it difficult to explain, why, there is just something wrong with it, the only narrative by him I did not enjoy to read at all. I did some research on what others think about it, and some agree, but others think it is some of the best he wrote ... My two "excuses" for him: 1. He died before he could finish the book and certainly would have edited that part, so he certainly did not intend it to be the final version. 2. "The Woes of the true Policeman", a novel that certainly and obviously was meant to be a part of 2666 but for some reason has not been included by the publisher, is one of my favourites by him ...

[@joshold5840]

Hey wasn't the Part about Archimboldi the fifth part? Either way, I get that. Personally it was my favourite part of the book but also it was a struggle to get through at points and questioned whether I was actually enjoying it! - I felt it paid off beautifully though.

[@rjd53]

@@joshold5840 You're right. Thank you. I corrected it.

[@TheBookchemist]

I see what you mean! I personally get the strong sense, from 2666, that it is an unpolished draft - and yet Bolano's editors (who, of course, are not disinterested in this matter) claim that he would not have changed much of it anyway, had he lived longer....

[@MarcNash]

Have you read Michell's "Bone Clocks"? If you had, you'd know h'd lost it and couldn't be too surprised by the execrable "Utopia Avenue". Bone Clocks parasites Cloud Atlas (badly) and Utopia Avenue parasites Bone Clocks. A writer possibly out of ideas, or maybe just obsessed by this Fantasy world he created in Bone Clocks and all his future works will draw on that world.

[@TheBookchemist]

I haven't read Bone Clocks, but with Utopia Avenue I definitely got the sense (which has been confirmed by many comments I've read) that Mitchell's greatest preoccupation as he wrote it was being all cute with the interconnected worlds he's created. Don't get me wrong, I like recurring characters like the next guy and they make me feel all smug for reading the other book, but it shouldn't be the only thing your novel has to offer.

[@alvisinger112]

Bone Clocks had some great parts but just got weaker and weaker towards the end, starting with the Iraq journalist plot line. But Parts 1-4 I really really enjoyed.

[@briancollins1296]

Love Cormac McCarthy, but I'm gonna say his first two novels are borderline unreadable. Too abstract, he hadn't nailed down his way of writing dialogue yet, and he was copping too much from Faulkner at this point.

[@TheBookchemist]

I totally see what you mean! I actually remember appreciating Outer Dark, but Child of God (and most definitely The Orchard Keeper) left me a bit cold and puzzled, and I think when I read them I didn't actively "dislike" them only because I assumed I was missing something I suspect is not there at all.

[@rubeng9092]

Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima. Mishima is a literary badass, his output always grabs me, be it on prose or character terms. He crafts such compelling experiences on the page. But this one, is just meh. So mediocre. The plot had potential, but I just got wacky and lost all sense of direction so quickly. And the prose felt very generic.

[@ashurbanipalcousin]

I felt this way about his Confession’s of a Mask.

[@alexeitasevich]

Henry Miller - "Tropic of cancer" - one of my all-time favourites; "Tropic of capricorn" - total disappointment.

[@sjin8896]

David Mitchell from “Peep Show” is an author?

[@ianp9086]

There are two different David Mitchells

[@ohwellwhateverr]

There's another David Mitchell who's a fantasy novelist.

[@ilwayeebstay1080]

Vanity publishing. ;)

[@ericgeneric135]

Yes, he wrote Business Secrets of the Pharoahs.

[@ohwellwhateverr]

@@ericgeneric135 I approve this reference.

[@crowdofdissidents155]

Did you get your PhD man?

[@bughead5615]

Yeah I think so

[@TheBookchemist]

Yes!

[@wardm4]

I love Don DeLillo. I think of White Noise and Underworld as two of the greatest novels of all time. I reread them frequently. I quite like Libra, Mao II, The Names, Cosmopolis, and others. I can't get over how funny and tragic and philosophical he can be all at the same time while having a gripping plot underneath it. Then there are ones that just fall flat like Point Omega or The Body Artist. (I've somehow never read End Zone).

[@joshold5840]

Exactly the same as me! I've read everything by Delillo apart from Zero K and his latest. The Body Artist and Point Omega were the only two I found to be utterly dreadful. I quite enjoyed End Zone by the way!

[@ohwellwhateverr]

@@joshold5840 I loved Zero K, though it has that subdued flatness that later DeLillo novels all seem to have. I do think it's worth reading - the central concept (cryogenics and consciousness) is fascinating.

[@TheBookchemist]

I somehow always assumed that DeLillo's "quiet" novels (Body Artist, Point Omega, to a lesser extent even Zero K and Cosmopolis) are just meant to be witnessed like a bit of an enigma, without asking much satisfaction of them - but I would lie if I said I genuinely and thoroughly enjoyed them.

[@tarico4436]

American Psycho is literature; Glamorama was sooooooooo awful I have not read the man since. About halfway through or so, while characters were crossing the Atlantic in a ship, I could just tell that author had been given an ultimatum by publisher, a la, "Finish it now, or else," and so author just started mailing it in.

[@michellecostley7878]

Yellow Dog by Martin Amis

[@lysanderhock7014]

Strangely, I don't see why The Rats in the Walls should be one of the best Lovecraft stories. I have enjoyed everything else by him which I have read so far, while that story appears rather mediocre to me. (Perhaps I had too great expectations after hearing you mention it as one of your favourites).

[@FleurPillager]

You should read Laura Kasischke.

[@FleurPillager]

Mind of Winter White Bird in a Blizzard Eden Springs Suspicious River

[@Keaggan]

It doesnt matter how much work people put into writing book...if they have nobtalent, they shouldnt be writing.

[@OleD-HH]

John Updike - Brazil

[@reginalemoine5809]

Mine is The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. I hate that book so hard.

[@TheBookchemist]

How come? I've never read any Ishiguro but I actually thought I might start with that one!

[@earthbyapril915]

Same. Love Remains of the Day, much disliked Buried Giant. But fantasy has never been my favorite.

[@jkno21892]

I'm going to get a lot of pushback for this but I really didn't like the Earthsea books by Ursula K Le Guin, who is my all time favorite author

[@TheBookchemist]

I also really didn't like those!! They've been the only Le Guin I read so far and they put me off reading more of her works for a long time! (I plan to try Left Hand of Darkness quite soon)!

[@jkno21892]

You will love it, it is a masterpiece! The Dispossessed is also incredible. Its so nice in these troubled times to read about radically different social arrangements

[@SrGoldenCat]

"Homenaje a Cataluña" by Orwell perhaps

[@NCbassfishing24]

Why didn't you like that one?

[@jackdomanski6758]

I like that book quite a bit, actually.

[@hamzanaseer3050]

Awesomeee

[@gijsvanengelen]

Dante, Paradiso. So dull, lifeless, especially in comparison to the other ones. Also: A Portrait of the Artist. I like Ulysses, Dubliners and Finnegans Wake, but this one is too repetitive and too obsessed with christianity. As is Paradiso, come to think of it Finally, Rabbit Redux. Updike is great, the Rabbit books are amazing, but Redux is ugly

[@joerizzo5763]

Life of Pi.

[@laurasalo6160]

lol every is disappointed by that.

[@jorgemedina8083]

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

[@laurasalo6160]

say it ain't so! :( I'm 15 hours in! I was really into it (had to skim the inquisitor lol)

[@jorgemedina8083]

@@laurasalo6160 I’ve since come around to it but I got to about page 500 before I dropped it. It was good, but too wordy. Takes advantage of the reader’s attention span.

[@stavisince9595]

Cap

[@jamief7079]

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck is pretty boring

[@chillzillaful]

Have you reviewed anything by William Gaddis? JR to me is hilarious and so worth it, despite it's reputation for difficulty. The Recognitions is a lot of fun, too.

[@briancollins1296]

I can see him reviewing either of those books, but they're ball-bustingly hard. The Recognitions especially took me a couple months to get through, and I tend to be fast with my reading.

[@TheBookchemist]

I will eventually have to at least try The Recognitions - it's been sitting on a shelf in my parents' house for years ;)

[@matthewjonassaint440]

@@TheBookchemist (For me, "J R" is possibly better! ;) )

[@stavisince9595]

I hate skill share

[@chuckles222]

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster.