The 'Not Recommended' Thread

A few of us were recently discussing the possible usefulness of a thread for 'Not Recommended' books. These would be books either poorly written, offensive, or otherwise a complete waste of time for nearly everyone. To me that would be a book with a zero or 1 star rating, it might even be a rating of 2 for some people.

What are your 'Not Recommended' Books, and why?

Note that this list, like all lists, is composed of personal opinion(s). The links in the list below are provided so you can check other LT reviews and go right to the post and see what was said. Use this list at your discretion, read these books if you like!

I'll start with one.
The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber. Check my review for more details. It isn't a good story and the book is offensive to just about everyone of any group, which does not excuse it. It really has no redeeming qualities.

To make this list more useful, I will attempt to keep all mentioned books here, in the first post. For commentary, start with the referenced post. This is still in progress.

Please double-check the touchstones in case I send you to the wrong book!

Book Author (link)

The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber (>1 Karlstar:)
Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson (>2 majkia:)
The Younger Gods by David and Leigh Eddings (>3 Karlstar:)
The Seven Secrets of the Prolific (>4 reconditereader:)
Queen of Hearts by Rhys Bowen (>10 justjukka:)
Keeping it Real by Justina Robson (>12 amberwitch:)
Venco by Cherie Dimaline (>13 mnleona:)
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (>15 justjukka:)
The Tyranny of Desire by Morty Shallman (>17 Jim53:)
Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland (>18 Jim53: and >20 MrsLee:)
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (>21 MrsLee:)
On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells (>24 alco261:)
John Grimes: Survey Captain by Chandler (>25 Karlstar: and >60 haydninvienna: and other threads)
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus (>26 libraryperilous:)
Designing your Work Life: by Bill Burnett (>27 reconditereader:)
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (>28 Bookmarque:)
Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas (>28 Bookmarque:)
Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym (>29 Darth-Heather:)
A Winter's Love by Madeline L'Engle (>29 Darth-Heather:)
Long earth by Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter (>30 amberwitch: >31 2wonderY: >32 clamairy: >33 hfglen: >34 Sakerfalcon:)
We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal (>35 Maddz:)
Feed by Mira Grant (>38 stellarexplorer:)
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (>38 stellarexplorer: >40 2wonderY: >43 stellarexplorer:)
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (>35 Maddz:) and (>39 amberwitch:)
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente (>41 Maddz: >42 amberwitch:)
Horseclans by Robert Adams (>50 stuartperegrine:)
Arkham County: An Audible Original Drama by Guy Adams (>60 haydninvienna:)
Lifesign by Carl Goodman
Silverlock by John Myers Myers (>67 ludmillalotaria:)
Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire (?) (>68 amberwitch:)
6 books from post >69 gilroy::
The Runaway Jury by John Grisham
A world out of time by Larry Niven
Witch's Bell Book One by Odette Bell
Ties that Bind by Carolyn Arnold
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
Universality by Mark Ward (>71 hfglen:)
The Black Loch: The Lewis Trilogy, Book 4 by Peter May (>72 Bookmarque:)
Magician by Raymond E. Feist (>73 Interstellar_Octopus:)
Persuader by Lee Child (>74 Karlstar:)

Earlier this year I attempted to read Dorsai! which was horrible. It was misogynistic, didn't even read like a novel, rather like a bunch of vingettes, and wasn't even that interesting. Of course, YMMV. Maybe if I'd read this when I was a teenager I'd have fond memories, but thankfully I hadn't read it before. Oh, and awful genetics stuff in there too.

The Younger Gods Book Four of The Dreamers series by David and Leigh Eddings. Even if you start this series by mistake, please stop at book two. This book was a total waste of time. Predictable, repetitive, so much like their other books, it just isn't worth reading, at all.

The Seven Secrets of the Prolific by Hillary Rettig is cuckoo bananacrackers bonkers-town. What is this mythical job where you can work 25 hours a week and still have health insurance? Plus you're then supposed to have enough money to outsource all your housework and cooking? No way.

>4 reconditereader: "cuckoo bananacrackers bonkers-town" seems like a definite no, thanks for the warning!

hmmm, i find it strangely appealing.

This thread is a wonderful idea. I'll have to comb back through some of my worst-rated books to see if there are some awful enough to include.

>7 Jim53: Bring on your worst and save us from them!

Just giving this a bump to see if anyone else wants to contribute a not recommended book.

I enjoyed Her Royal Spyness (plus prequel) until book 6.  Heirs and Graces was okay, but the cracks started to show.  I don't remember how far along I was in Queen of Hearts before I noped out of there and wrote a negative review.  Having done so, I need to make time to write positive reviews for the books that I did enjoy.

One of my foster doggos chewed on our copy of Operating System Concepts with Java (7th edition), so I'll take that as a scathing review. XP

At least half of the ER titles I get!

I recently DNF'ed on Keeping it real by Justina Robson. Just not a good book. Not the writing, the characters, the worldbuilding or the plot.

I won Venco by Cherie Dimaline from GR and cannot get through it with the language. I keep trying.

>13 mnleona: Ouch! That's one of the reasons I stopped requesting them.

Would it be considered low-hanging fruit if I included Ethan Frome?  My brother and I call it “An Ode to Symbolism”, which is a highly offensive insult in the language we’ve cultivated over three decades of reading.

>Aww, I really enjoyed Ethan Frome, but I can certainly see that it would not appeal to all people at all times. Not sure I could enjoy it now, as a matter of fact.

I recently accepted a challenge from NetGalley and tried The Tyranny of Desire. There's truly something in it to offend everyone, and nary a redeeming quality to make it worth the effort.

One of my first ER books was Any Given Doomsday, the first volume of the Phoenix Chronicles. It took me a couple of months to decide to ask for another ER title. Aside from a trite story line, lack of character development, overuse of explicit sex, and a main character who can't seem to make a good decision, there wasn't much to recommend it.

>10 justjukka: I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the Royal Spyness series. I've read all of them and found them to be excellent bedtime reading. They're not exciting or great literature, but I found them fun, with just enough change happening to keep them from getting boring. (I may be influenced by having met the author a couple of times and corresponded a bit; she is a delightful lady.)

>18 Jim53: I agree with that one! Pretty sure I left one of my more scathing reviews for it, and mine was mild compared to a lot of others. Now I have to go check and make sure I'm remembering the right title.

Looking through some of my 1 or two star ratings, I will try to share some that other people actually read and liked, but I didn't.

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, my review:
"I finished this book out of some masochistic tendency, I think. I suppose it was the sick fascination of just how much humiliation a person will put up with to keep a job. I did not enjoy the story. I never liked the narrator, Andrea, or anyone else in the story. Not her friend, her boyfriend, her coworkers, possibly I liked her father, that is all."

Most of my ER books have been good, with a couple of exceptions.

The Sustainable Network: The Accidental Answer for a Troubled Planet (Sustainable Living Series), for example, was just junk. 'The internet will save the planet' was the gist. That could have been done in a meme and still would have been wrong.

>16 MrsLee: We were in high school when it was assigned to us, so that probably didn’t help.   I don’t know about the teacher my brother had, but mine was full of herself and dismissive towards anything less than what she considered literature.  I enjoyed reading about Edith Wharton, years later (on my own time), and while I think I still wouldn’t like the book, I could probably enjoy learning about what went into her writing.

>19 Jim53: I honestly can’t imagine the author being anything other than delightful. ♥

>21 MrsLee: One that comes to mind in this regard is On the Blue Comet. There were two reviewers, myself and one other, who thought the book was terrible whereas all the other reviews thought it was great. My main objection was the authors attempt to weave historical facts of the period into the narrative. There's nothing wrong with doing this but the historical mistakes just went on and on. The other reviewer took a very dim view of the fact that the hero of the book jumped back and forth through time, solving this and that problem but didn't bother to jump back in time to prevent the accident that killed his mother (I agreed with that point as well).

This was just old, bad scifi. Nothing redeeming about it. John Grimes: Survey Captain.

Whalefall: pretentious lit fiction full of toxic masculinity. It's labeled sci-fi but the speculative elements are gory and corporeal.

Designing your Work Life: The massive entitlement of white men, I swear. Includes recommendations to take gigantic pay cuts, as well as Chapter 5: In which the authors have read the same 2 books everyone else did, and mis-interpreted them the same way everyone else does.

Get in the ocean.

Two recent DNFs that I thankfully had from the library -

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
Ok enough about the "junk box incident" already. We know Nell has some disaster that derailed her career, just let it pass and get to it when you're ready. We'll remember, don't worry. Ugh. Trust your reader already. And the incident is pretty dumb and made me glad her father was dead.

Writing is weak and uninspired, dialog is hammy.

Bleah...Ramona's part is utterly vapid and boring. Too long and info-dumpy. And the narrator is forced and too breathily dramatic. Zoning out for minutes at a time. Nothing is happening so it doesn't matter. Now it's over, it didn't contain anything vital - why the fuck did she bother to tell this "story" to Nell? How does this help? No one would do this. Dumb.

Might end up being a DNF. Good thing it came from the library.

Odd use of words. Waiting for the subway to arrive, not the train. What? Don't you wait in the subway itself? Why would you need it to arrive? There are others like this, but I can't think of another off the top of my head.

Still slogging along. Now we've gone into the absurd - the phantom settlement on the gas station map turns out to be sort of real. If you have the dumb thing the town will appear to you. Oy vey. Really? This was NOT billed as some supernatural thing.

OMG Felix and Nell are morons. Have they no adult relationships? WTF business does he have dictating terms to her in five minutes of non-commitment?

I'm done. DNF. Can't take this anymore.

Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas
Not as strong as a later book of hers I read. This one is too sentimental and soppy. I get that teenagers have no sense of proportion when it comes to emotions, but 40-year-olds should and so the contemporary time frame feels wrong. Can't these people get some distance and deal with things? Dumb decisions and snap judgements speak of teenagers again. Grow up already, people. And the whole addressing the narrative to the dead Sophie is grating and juvenile.

Almost 1/2 way through and it's just too repetitive. The envelopes. The fights with men who shouldn't matter this much to Frankie. Weird encounters and asshole locals. Enough already. Get on with the plot.

Where is the pacing? Must be trapped in amber.

The whole Sophie/Alister thing is just gross in the extreme. Why is she so passive? Why is he such a moron? Ditto with the Mike/Frankie thing - he takes it into his head to drive up to her when she broke it off on the phone of all ways and is then pissed when she doesn't welcome him as savior. WTF men? When women aren't all sweetness and light it's automatically her fault if a man is crossing a line or being pushy. Take no for an answer and that's it.

The repetitive scenes are getting to me. Am going to bail soon. Another DNF from the library. I thought I'd get on with this author, but she's blown it.

Recent reads that I would add:
Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
A Winter's Love by Madeline L'Engle

I usually enjoy both of these authors, but both of these books were DNF for me. After 50 pages I still couldn't find anything to like about the characters or the settings. I would recommend other books from these authors, but not these.

Two recent Series that are not recommended: The Long earth Series by Terry pratchett and Steven baxter is amazingly bad. I gave up after the second book, but I am told it only get worse. So is the Great Cities duology. Amazingly, Absurdly bad.

>30 amberwitch: Glad someone confirms my impression of The Long Earth. I thought I might be letting Pratchett down.

>30 amberwitch: & >31 2wonderY: I did the first in that series as an audiobook, and I only made it all the way through because it was an audio. I never looked for the rest of the series.

<31 I was about to third you and @amberwitch, but Clam beat me to it. Evidently I'm fourth in line to consider The Long Earth and its too-many sequels to be disasters. Was Sir pTerry perhaps suffering from Alzheimers when he wrote his share?

>30 amberwitch: I am so glad someone else is not impressed by the Great Cities books. So cliched and tiresome. Apparently Jemisin herself had trouble caring enough to finish the second book.

>28 Bookmarque: Uh-oh, this is on my TBR pile. I was unimpressed by the author's first book, The book of M, but thought I'd give her another chance. Sounds like that was a bad decision!

We Hunt the Flame. I eventually finished it, but it was a close-run thing. The writing was atrocious; it read like it was aimed at a 5-year old not the YA market. I’m surprised it was rated so highly, but I suspect the hype was Internet-driven by people who don’t read and dog-piled onto the reviews claiming racism was the reason for the bad ratings.

I’m sorry, but to me somebody can be any ethnicity and still can’t write an engaging book. Heck, look at Space Opera, that was another barely readable book, this time from an established author. Here I found the story atrocious - puerile, and frankly too long - but it was well-written. It would have worked better in short form.

I think most of the problem lies in the YA market; people are trying to write for that market without understanding what makes a good story and reading experience. When I was in that age bracket and you’d outgrown the children’s section in the library, you started taking books from the adult section (the librarian might intervene if she thought the theme was too adult, hem, hem). I don’t recall the pile of drek one sees nowadays.

>35 Maddz: "... claiming racism was the reason for the bad ratings ...": Back in the old country there's a journalist called Ian Warden. He used to refer disparagingly to a singer called Kamahl, who was Sri Lankan and a favourite with the blue-rinse set. it was said from time to time that Warden disliked Kamahl because Warden was a racist (although Warden is or was married to a Sri Lankan woman). Warden's answer: Nasty people come in all colours.

>14 clamairy: me too!

>1 Karlstar: I don't post much these days, but this thread really grabbed me. Not because I immediately want to non-recommend a whole slew of books - no doubt I do - but because I am often animated by my reactions to bad books, or just ones I really disliked. Maybe its a little like "losses are more painful than gains are good"?

Just to throw in two for the sake of the project, here's my review of Feed by Mira Grant:

"Embarrassingly bad. Execrable writing, Shameful that this book won awards. Caution in reading reviews of subsequent books in the series: they were probably written by people who liked the first book well enough to continue. You will find no such review from me."

And of The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie:

"An ugly book. Unlikable, sadistic characters; gratuitous violence; overly long. I resist populating my precious reading realm -- and time -- with the unpleasant people in this bitter world."

>35 Maddz: Agree on Space Opera. I'd kept my eye out for a Catherynne M Valente book since another of her books got recommended a lot (something circum somthing), and this was the first book of hers I came across. I so regretted buying it (in hardcover even).

>38 stellarexplorer: I believe it was an Ambercrombie book I bought (with a nagging caution) secondhand and tossed it almost immediately. Why would I spend time with these nasties?

>39 amberwitch: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland? I read it and thought it acceptable, albeit on the twee side. I haven’t bothered with her other fairyland books, and I’ve been putting off The Orphan’s Tales because of the poor reaction I’ve had previously.

>41 Maddz: exactly! Good to know you found her disappointing as well.

>40 2wonderY: Great minds....:)

>38 stellarexplorer: Re The Blade Itself, I wasn’t impressed. Glen Cook does grimdark fantasy far better. I did end up reading the whole series, and thought it was too much Hollywood kewl in style. It also tended to leave something of a nasty taste in my mouth. My take was if I had them in hard copy, they’d be in the Oxfam box.

This is why I tend to borrow so much using the Libby app. If I like a series enough I will buy the Kindle versions when they go on sale. There have been so many books I have started and abandoned with no regrets in the last 10 years.

>38 stellarexplorer: Sometimes it is hard to appreciate the greatness of a book right away, but the bad ones hurt immediately? Maybe something like that?

I agree with >44 Maddz:, Glen Cook does it better, but try telling that to Joe Abercrombie fans. I just re-read my review of The Blade Itself and it isn't all that positive, but I did read the rest of the series.

I'd also say that if you want a similar type of fantasy, Anthony Ryan's original Raven's Shadow series is better, at least the first 3 books, the last 2 take a definite turn to the dark side.

>46 Karlstar: The difference between Glen Cook and Joe Abercrombie is that Glen Cook is a Vietnam vet and Joe Abercrombie doesn’t have any military experience. So Joe Abercrombie is writing a fantasy based on an idea whereas Glen Cook is writing a fantasy based on actual experience. As I said, Hollywood kewl - I hesitate to call it Disneysification because of the general tone, but that is what it boils down to.

>47 Maddz: Thanks, I appreciate the insight.

>33 hfglen: my guess is that Sir pTerry helped with the beginning of first book in the series--there are flashes of his humor in it--then more or less handed it off to Baxter. I read three books and wished I skipped the second and third. I kept hoping they would get better.

Oldie but a baddie- The Horseclans series by Robert Adams. Start out somewhat okay for post-apocalyptic fantasy, but then just go downhill fast. Unlikable characters, self-disgusted homo-eroticism, just... dreck.

I have a couple...nearly anything "free" from Amazon. When I first got my Kindle, I was downloading free books. Almost all were pretty trite, and really needed an editor. One was a mystery, and the story was pretty good, and so I ignored the many typos and grammatical errors. But when the author had the protagonist come upon the murder scene, it was described as "the grizzly scene". My reaction: Where the hell did the bear come from? I never finished that book.

And this one will probably make some people aghast (it did my former library director). Anything by Faulkner. I had to read several back in college, and they were so awful I can't even remember which ones they were.

>51 theretiredlibrarian: I will disagree only in that quite a few of the free monthly selections from the Kindle First Reads (I believe it's just called First Reads now) program have been exceptional. But you have to have Prime, and you usually can only pick one of eight or so choices per month. When I first got my Kindle, like you, I was grabbing quite a few of the free ones they offered, and most of them were truly terrible.

>51 theretiredlibrarian: O Absalom! I so agree about Faulkner. Dreary. Unlikeable. Tedious.

By coincidence, this morning someone posted a picture of a electronic highway sign with the words,
“Drive as slowly as it takes Faulkner to get to the point.”

As an English minor, one memory I have from taking the GRE (Graduate Record Exam for those unfamiliar) Subject test for Literature was an "identify the author" portion. One of the quotes was approximately half a page of writing that began with a capital letter and ended with a period and had no other punctuation in between. I didn't even bother to read it, just looked for "William Faulkner" in the multiple choice answers, marked that letter and moved on.

@terriks @bookmarque Found it.

>56 Karlstar: So I see! From what the first post suggests, you started it - no wonder it was nagging your memory. :)

>57 terriks: You'd think I would have remembered sooner...

>58 Karlstar: Well, you've been busy...

>25 Karlstar: I read most of the "John Grimes" stories in an omnibus edition that I bought in Vancouver years ago. I was delighted to find it, because A Bertram Chandler is a fellow Australian, but then I started to read it. Let's just say I left the book, unfinished, in the hotel room with a note on it saying something like "Yours if you want it."

>60 haydninvienna: I recently noticed one of his books hiding in the 2nd row on a shelf and threw it out. I don't like throwing out books, but I wouldn't want to even donate that one to a library sale and inflict it some unsuspecting buyer.

I just created a 'DO NOT READ' collection for such books.

Woo hoo! This completely slipped my mind- so glad you remembered and uncovered it. I shall star and try not to lose track of it again. So many books to add...only one per post though. Darn.

Here it is! Ah yes, now I remember the discussion about The Long Earth series. LOL

Another Audible Plus freebie. Good thing, too.

Thanks whoever pinned this thread!

>65 Karlstar: It was me.
You're welcome.

I recently DNF’d Silverlock. The first few chapters were mildly amusing, but after that it became tedious and just didn’t hold my interest. I got halfway through and decided it wasn’t worth forcing myself to finish.

I forgot about this thread!
I’ll have to remember to update it when I read something particularly egregious, it will be cathartic.

Right now I mostly remember Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil with the subtitle ‘A delightfully witty cosy fantasy’. And well, if your idea of cozy is dirt and death and nasty people being mean to each other, and you think footnotes makes inanities witty, it might be right. Otherwise, I’d stay clear.

I blame Terry Pratchett for the footnote thing, which is not unique to this author trying to be funny.

Are these for just this year? Cause I can make a longer list if needed...

But just for 2025 so far:
The Runaway Jury by John Grisham - normally a fan, but this book didn't catch me.
A world out of time by Larry Niven - The concept seems good, but the execution just kept throwing me out of the story.
Witch's Bell Book One by Odette Bell - struggled to get into the book, characters were questionable or annoying and none worth feeling sympathy
Ties that Bind by Carolyn Arnold - Written more like someone trying to write a story for a TV series episode then filling in details.

And Just because i can be contrary on these:
The Wheel of Time - this is the series more than a single book. It's overly verbose and I just struggled to reach each book. Stopped after book 5 (forced myself to finish them all.)
A Song of Ice and Fire - Read the first book, couldn't get into it. Too many characters, too scattered, too much to follow without pen and paper beside me

>1 Karlstar: I’ve noticed a lot of indie authors struggle with visibility more than writing itself.

Universality. The cuckoos' cry of 'woo-woo' comes loud and clear on every page.

After reading and liking the Lewis Trilogy, I thought returning to Fin's world would be good. It wasn't -

>1 Karlstar: I read Magician a few weeks back at the recommendation of my mother, and it was pretty bad. Characters are at best vaguely interesting, the female characters are god awful, a lot the worldbuilding feels unoriginal (pretty standard medieval fantasy, but with aliens this time) and the story tells the audience what happens way more than it shows. For a book about a war between worlds, there is a whole lot of politics and strategic manoeuvring but very few actual battles depicted.

2/5

Persuader by Lee Child. Of the three Reacher novels I've read so far, this one was terrible. The plot isn't great and the writing of the characters is worse.

Well I just had a good laugh. I stumbled in as I do on occasion these days and saw this thread. It made me smile, as I do enjoy justly throwing shade on books I disliked. Great thread concept!

Only to find >38 stellarexplorer:! I had the same experience two and a half years ago :)
At least I’m consistent. And the good thing about forgetfulness is you can enjoy the same surprises over and over!

>75 stellarexplorer:
LOL

I am still slowly updating the list in >1 Karlstar:, but I still have a ways to go.

>78 Karlstar: Thank you for doing this!

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, who can do a lot better.The sci-fi plot and the concepts are interesting, but the execution is abysmal and characters are flat and annoying.

>80 Alexandra_book_life: Agreed! This book was such a disappointment after the Revelation space trilogy and related books.

>81 Sakerfalcon: I will need to find a good book by Reynolds to ease the blow ;)

Chasm City is great, if you haven't read it yet. It ties in with the Revelation Space books, focusing on events that are mentioned as backstory.

>83 Sakerfalcon: Thank you! :) This book might actually be hiding in one of the bookshelves. I'll check.

Inevitably, these lists contain books which I like. All I learn is that someone really doesn't like them.

>85 GaryMcGath: Of course, that's inevitable, but the intent was to create a list of truly bad books, so people would at least be informed before starting to read them. People have been good about including explanations, so determining if a book is for you is possible.

Wow, some of you people are extra fussy. ;o) I see a few books/ series that I really enjoyed being added to the list. I feel compelled to second @Karlstar's suggestion to look up everything yourselves. And perhaps not to take this list too seriously!