Saturday Book Discussion: Worst Books of 2013
As December rolls on and we approach the end of the year, people will begin posting their Yearly Book Lists.
Rather than just a list of everything you read this year (I will post one too), let's also talk about the best and the worst and whatever other categories I can think of.
I will kick the December SBDs off with the bad: what is the worst book you read in 2013?
Granted, I have a few weeks left and might encounter something worse, but my worst read for 2013 was one of my very few DNFs:
The 50th Law, by 50 Cent and Robert Greene
I am not into rap, but for some reason, I find Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, or "Fiddy" to his fans, a fascinating study in entrepreneurship. His personal mythology is largely showmanship, but he's obviously a smart guy and the "hard man" act is not all act. So I was interested to see what his autobiography and "philosophy" would be like.
Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that this book was entirely ghostwritten by his "coauthor," Robert Greene, who just slapped "Fiddy's" name on a reassembled pastiche of his previous Sun-Tzu-for-suburban-weenies self-help treatise The 48 Laws of Power. Each chapter started with a quote from 50 Cent and some irrelevant anecdote about his life, and then Greene starts yabbling about Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, and mastering the authentic spirit of your secret disciplined creative inner warrior self for leveraging the maximum effectiveness to utilize task-centered productivity multipliers in cross-domain multi-disciplinary revenue-enhancing streams BOOYAH! Thanks, Dr. Phil.
An absolute waste of time.
The worst book I read that I actually finished was Mr. Churchill's Secretary, by Susan Elia MacNeal. My full review is at that link, but it was one of the few books I've ever given one star.
So, before we post our favorites and other recommended reads in the weeks ahead, share your worst. What books hit the wall in 2013?
Mod Note:
What would y'all think of a recommended and not recommended tag? I am thinking of adding these, but I don't know if they would be useful and/or overused. (They'd certainly be more useful if LJ had some way to do multi-tag searches.)
Previous Saturday Book Discussions.
Rather than just a list of everything you read this year (I will post one too), let's also talk about the best and the worst and whatever other categories I can think of.
I will kick the December SBDs off with the bad: what is the worst book you read in 2013?
Granted, I have a few weeks left and might encounter something worse, but my worst read for 2013 was one of my very few DNFs:
The 50th Law, by 50 Cent and Robert Greene
I am not into rap, but for some reason, I find Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, or "Fiddy" to his fans, a fascinating study in entrepreneurship. His personal mythology is largely showmanship, but he's obviously a smart guy and the "hard man" act is not all act. So I was interested to see what his autobiography and "philosophy" would be like.
Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that this book was entirely ghostwritten by his "coauthor," Robert Greene, who just slapped "Fiddy's" name on a reassembled pastiche of his previous Sun-Tzu-for-suburban-weenies self-help treatise The 48 Laws of Power. Each chapter started with a quote from 50 Cent and some irrelevant anecdote about his life, and then Greene starts yabbling about Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, and mastering the authentic spirit of your secret disciplined creative inner warrior self for leveraging the maximum effectiveness to utilize task-centered productivity multipliers in cross-domain multi-disciplinary revenue-enhancing streams BOOYAH! Thanks, Dr. Phil.
An absolute waste of time.
The worst book I read that I actually finished was Mr. Churchill's Secretary, by Susan Elia MacNeal. My full review is at that link, but it was one of the few books I've ever given one star.
So, before we post our favorites and other recommended reads in the weeks ahead, share your worst. What books hit the wall in 2013?
Mod Note:
What would y'all think of a recommended and not recommended tag? I am thinking of adding these, but I don't know if they would be useful and/or overused. (They'd certainly be more useful if LJ had some way to do multi-tag searches.)
Previous Saturday Book Discussions.