Girl Detective talks about book memes and hated books today. I like that she thinks that talking about books you hate is often more fun than talking about books that you adore. I totally agree with her. There’s nothing I enjoy more than getting a vitriolic rage on about some sucky book.
In her post the Girl Dective talked about how she hated Prep, while I didn’t hate it. She makes some very valid points about the lack of character growth. However, for me, there were a few scenes in the book that totally redeemed it for me.
So I got to thinking, what book do I really, really hate. There’s the obvious Shitty Shitty Secret Life of Bees and The Shitty Wedding, but those targets are too easy. I am sure there are lots of people who would claim one or both of these as their favorite books, but my guess is that these people also think America’s Funniest Videos is funny.
After studying my bookshelves, I thought about going with Jonathem Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude as the book I really hated. But then I spied a better one, Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I really hated that book. I found it long, boring, the plot implausible and very nearly cliche and the ending just so pathetically wrapped up in a sweet little bow that I wanted to vomit. VOMIT.
I often dismiss Kavalier & Clay as a shitty romance novel for men. Because, well, it is. It’s got comic books and nazis and the guy get’s the girl after many misunderstandings and various mishaps that are the staple of romance novels.
What’s sad is that this book won the Pulitzer. Of course, that’d be much sadder if the Pultizer actually had any sort of reputation for taste. In my mind the Pulitzer is often a means of telling us to stay far, far away from a book.
Okay, I should temper that a bit, some amazing, wonderful books have won the Pulitzer Prize (To Kill a Mocking Bird, Beloved, The Shipping News). But it seems the prize most often goes to the book most likely to make you go ‘Meh’ (see: Gilead, Breathing Lessons and Summons to Memphis [a book so awful and horrible that I totally gave up my pipedream of reading all the Pulitzer Prize winning novels, that book is a dream killer]).
I like how you use vitriolic and sucky in the same sentence. Honest, I do.
Don’t make me insert a smiley, okay? TCBB–Mike
that’s so funny because i recently unearthed my version of the fortress of solitude and popped it right up on BookMooch.com. fucking sucky shitty book! i’m glad that i didn’t finish it. fucking thing. but hey, pass me that copy of Kavalier & Clay. i’ll make hubbin read it.
Summons to Memphis made me want to never, ever read again. Truly wretched.
I liked Prep, but I also had a big problem with the lack of character growth. I shouldn’t want to thump the main character on the forehead for doing the same stupid shit she was doing three years earlier, right? I finished The Man of My Dreams, Curtis Sittenfeld’s new one, last week. Better, but it has some of the same problems. Hannah, the main character, was essentially Lee from Prep with the same stupid streak.
It’s always more fun to write about stuff that sucks. One can only gush so much.
Robin, thanks for the mini-review. I was thinking of looking into the new Sittenfeld, but if it’s plagued with the same problems as Prep, I’m gonna skip it.
well, i guess i should take fortress of solitude off my tbr shelf. but i loved motherless brooklyn.
i liked kavalier & clay, but didn’t love it. also liked gilead & want to read again.
HATED secret life of bees. so trite, and narrator’s voice of adolescent girl was all wrong.
But loved both Bee Season, and the Beekeeper’s Apprentice, so not all Bee books suck.
What is The Shitty Wedding–Dorothy West’s The Wedding?
Girl Detective, it’s The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks, chances are it’s not even a book you’d entertain reading. It’s horrible avoid it like the plague.